She retreated a few paces toward the window, holding her hands up so they might believe she held magic. She pointed an elbow at the guards nearest the door. “You two, outside the door. Don’t let anyone enter until you’re told otherwise. The rest of you, in your rooms.
Now
. Torchay, with me.”
Joh picked Stone up from his chair, knocking it over, and hurled him toward the chosen bedroom. The rest of the soldiers vanished in a flurry of action as Kallista moved a few steps more toward the window.
“You too, Aisse,” she said when the small woman stood frozen in a panic of indecision.
“I help,” Aisse protested, despite her trembling.
“Torchay’s enough. You
go
.” Kallista threw out her hand to point at the bedroom door and both Aisse and Torchay flinched. Aisse hesitated a moment more, then ran to do as she was told.
When the room was empty, Kallista lowered her hands and took a deep breath, looking back at Belandra, who appeared highly amused by all the activity.
“I feel magic,” Torchay said, moving close to Kallista as he searched for danger. “But it’s not yours. It’s
like
yours, but it isn’t yours…Belandra?”
Kallista nodded. “She’s here.”
Belandra left her position and walked toward them, circling to inspect Torchay. Kallista circled too, keeping herself between her bodyguard and the long-dead woman.
“Why didn’t you come before now?” Kallista demanded. “Two Hopedays have passed.”
“I thought the redhead here was godmarked. Your marked companion. But he’s not, is he?”
“No, he’s not marked. And that doesn’t answer my question.”
“Who’s the little blonde?” Belandra strolled toward the door where Joh and Stone had disappeared, but didn’t enter.
“Answer my question.” Kallista forced the words through gritted teeth.
“I could not come because you had not yet found
him
.” Belandra pointed through the closed door. “You had not joined with any marked companion.”
“Well, why—No.” Kallista waved her hands, wiping out the question before she got it asked. She didn’t want to waste any of the six allowed, and she’d already asked one. She thought over the things Belandra had already said. “You didn’t tell me because you thought this ‘marked companion’ was Torchay. My bodyguard.”
“Exactly.” Belandra wandered toward the window and looked out, then swung around, shock in her expression. “This place is Arikon.”
Kallista nodded. “Arikon the Blessed. It’s the capital of all Adara.”
“It’s—” She turned to look again, leaning on the windowsill. “I recognize nothing but the mountains.”
“Look there.” Kallista joined her at the window, Torchay at her back, and pointed down and to the left. “Beyond that dome-topped tower. That’s Sanda’s Hall. It’s all that’s left from your time. Most of the old palace was destroyed in the Plains Rebellion about six hundred years ago, and what wasn’t, tumbled down on its own a hundred years later. It’s been a thousand years. You should have expected as much.”
Belandra shook her head. “I didn’t think. I don’t—a thousand years. For a thousand years, the people have been safe?”
Kallista blinked. She hadn’t thought of it that way. But wasn’t that what she had demanded of the One? To keep the people safe? “Not…perfectly safe, but yes, safe enough.”
She put her hand up to keep Belandra from speaking again. “It’s my turn. There are things I need to know. My bodyguard says that the night you gave me the ring, I stopped breathing. I almost died. He wants to know—I am asking—If it happens again, what must he do to keep me alive?”
“You stopped—” Belandra actually appeared worried. She turned around and leaned against the windowsill, folding her arms. “It must have been because you had to travel so far. You had to come to me the first time, to receive the ring. You must have something of mine in your possession so I can come to you. It will not happen again. I come to you now. Tell your bodyguard to stop worrying.” She frowned. “Why do you have a bodyguard?”
“For protection, of course.” Stupid question.
“Can you not defend yourself?” Belandra’s retort was scornful.
“Of course. But not during battle when I am calling magic. Very few naitani can keep track of their immediate surroundings when they call magic, and in a battle with bandits—or opposing armies—that can be deadly. The bodyguard watches for us. A naitan and her bodyguard work in tandem.”
“What danger faces Adara—”
“My turn,” Kallista interrupted.
Belandra swelled up with temper, then seemed to think better of it and subsided.
“What has happened to me? What is all this?” She cursed herself when she realized she’d asked two questions, using up four of her precious six.
“Do you not know already?”
“I don’t know anything except that my magic is tangled like an old fishing net and I’m afraid to call it because I don’t know what it will do next. I speak perfect Tibran as well as Adaran, but I can’t tell which one I’m speaking when it’s coming out of my mouth. I killed tens of thousands of the enemy in one sweep of magic from these hands.” Kallista held them up, then quickly tightened them into fists to stop their shaking.
Torchay touched her shoulder and this time she let herself lean back into his support. He stiffened for a second, then relaxed, his chest against her back. He stroked his hand down her arm. He must have decided this was duty, not pleasure.
“You’ve been godstruck,” Belandra said. “Chosen to join with those who’ve been marked as your companions to protect the people of the One. The marked ones carry the magic. You use it. You are the naitan. The focus.”
“Use it how? And—”
This time Belandra put up her hand. “Don’t ask your last question. Not yet. I have to leave soon after it’s asked and there is much I want to know. As for how you use the magic—it varies. It depends on what sort of danger, what need you face. You are given what you need. When you killed all those enemies, were you alone?”
“Torchay was with me.”
Belandra frowned. “But he is not marked. The magic—was it like a dark mist? Spreading in all directions with you at its center?”
Kallista nodded, clamping her teeth tight together to keep the questions inside. Had Belandra used that particular bit of magic herself?
“The dark veil requires a tremendous amount of power. Even the most powerful naitan working alone can rarely create a circle of more than twenty paces around her. And yet you—how big was the circle?”
Kallista looked back at Torchay. “The dark scythe—how far did it travel? How far would you say the Tibran camp was?”
“At least two hundred paces. Maybe a little more. The scythe didn’t travel quite the whole distance.”
“Goddess,” Belandra swore. “There had to have been someone else to channel all that power. There had to have been. And you’re sure this one’s not marked?”
“Bend your head down.” Kallista moved away from Torchay so he could do as she asked. She pushed aside his thick queue and the few curls that had escaped it to expose his pale, unmarked nape. “Both I and the Tibran are marked here.”
Her mouth dropped open as she realized what she had said, as Torchay straightened. “The
Tibran
. Stone was in the battle. On the other side. The only one of the invaders inside the city who lived. Could he have—
Goddess
, one of the enemy?”
“Stone is the one who is marked? The good-looking blonde?”
“Yes.” Kallista realized something else. “The questions—I wasn’t asking
you
. I was just—”
“Just wondering.” Belandra gave one of her crooked, sardonic smiles. “I know. Sometimes they count, sometimes they don’t. I think it depends on intent. If you ‘just wonder,’ hoping to get around the six-question limit, it counts. And the One does not care which side of battle her people are on. What matters is surrender. That man—”
She pointed at the door behind which Stone had vanished. “He surrendered himself to the will of the One. That is why he still lives. That is why he bears the mark.”
“Goddess.” Kallista sagged against Torchay once more.
“For even one companion to carry so much power as you describe is unusual. There’s bound to be another out there. Maybe two.”
“How do I find them?” Kallista asked, and then swore. She hadn’t meant that as her last question.
Belandra grinned, a wicked grin if ever there was one. “They’ll find you. The marks draw them. Wait. They will come.”
“How many?” Kallista cried. “How will I know them?”
But the red-haired woman was gone. Vanished between one breath and the next. Kallista swore again. A limit on questions was stupid. How would she ever learn what she needed to know?
“She’s gone?” Torchay backed away, putting space between them.
“Yes.” Kallista spent the next few minutes telling Torchay the few things she had learned. Important things they needed to know, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
When she was done, she took a deep breath. “I suppose you can let the others out of their rooms and tell the two standing guard they can admit visitors again. Someone’s supposed to be bringing our trunks, aren’t they?”
Torchay nodded and went to take care of matters. Kallista turned to look out the window again, trying to soak up the beauty of the palace and surrounding city, rather than find safe points for her lightning.
“Naitan!” Torchay’s alarmed shout brought Kallista running to the room where her supposed godmarked companion had retreated.
Stone lay on the bed, limp and breathing hard, as if he’d been running a race. Joh looked up from beside him, accusation in his eyes. “What did you do? He went into convulsions not long after I closed the door.”
“I—nothing.” How could she explain without admitting she spoke to ghosts? The Reinine knew, but she’d kept the words between them quiet. None of the others in the room could have heard, and Kallista wanted it kept that way. West magic, if that was indeed what they were dealing with, disturbed too many people. “I went to the window to—take care of things. A false alarm, I’m afraid. That’s all.”
“He seems all right now,” Torchay said, checking the man’s pulse, his eyes, his heart.
“Khralsh.”
Stone groaned, sitting up. “Whatever you did, woman, don’t do it again. I feel as if every muscle in my body has been wrenched apart.”
“She is a naitan,” Torchay snarled, “and a captain in the Adaran army. You will address her as
naitan
and speak to her with respect.”
Kallista waited for Stone to respond to Torchay’s reprimand. She understood Stone’s attitude—he was Tibran, after all, and had been through much—but he needed to learn that things worked differently in Adara. He would have to adapt.
Stone glared at Torchay, then looked at Kallista. After a moment, he nodded. “Naitan,” he said. “Pardon my rudeness.”
“Granted. Now, we need to discover what happened so we can prevent it happening again.”
Torchay stood. “You seem fine now. Your heart is beating a little fast, but slowing.”
“You’re a healer?” Stone asked with more respect than he had accorded Kallista.
“I’m a bodyguard,” he said, as if that explained everything. Which it did, but perhaps not to a Tibran. Torchay crossed to Kallista, drawing closer than she expected. She held her breath as he lowered his face toward hers, then realized his intent and tilted her head so he could speak quietly into her ear. “Could Belandra have caused his fit?”
It was a tempting theory. The problem with it was—“Belandra was in the room before I sent everyone away. He was fine then.” Kallista offered Stone her hand. After a moment’s hesitation, he took it—no magic stirred—and she pulled him to his feet. Joh stepped in to provide needed support.
They moved into the parlor for more room and sat Stone on a sofa in the middle of the chamber just outside the bedroom door, facing the window. One step at a time, carefully watching the Tibran’s every reaction, Kallista backed toward the window. She’d taken perhaps a dozen steps when Stone’s eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp. Joh kept him from hitting his head on the serving table as Kallista hurriedly took a step forward. Stone’s eyes fluttered open and he struggled to sit up.
“Well,” she said, “that settles that. Torchay, send Aisse to find someone to have dinner brought up. We won’t be joining the court tonight.” She gauged the distance between herself and the godmarked man. Maybe ten paces. Half the length of the narrow central chamber.
“Why not?” Joh watched her as she closed the distance.
“Because I can’t go farther than ten paces from Stone without sending him into convulsions and I’m not taking him along to dine in the great hall loaded down with chains. He’s a Tibran prisoner, but he’s also a soldier. I won’t put him on display for the court’s amusement like some trained monkey.”
She’d seen monkeys. Southron traders sometimes brought them through Turysh on their way to become a spoiled rich man’s pet.
Joh inclined his head, his face holding an expression Kallista did not know how to interpret. Wonder? Surprise? Respect?
“Besides,” she went on, looking over Stone’s grimy prisoner’s garb. “His wardrobe needs some improvement before he’s fit for such surroundings.”
“He can’t sleep in that room,” Joh said as Torchay returned. “Not if you’re in the opposite end.”
Torchay sighed. “Take the next chamber. Move the beds against the shared wall. The rooms aren’t large, but even if they were, that would serve. Aisse can move across the way.”
That reminded Kallista of something. “Lieutenant, inform your troops not to bother my servant. Young ones sometimes have trouble recognizing when their attentions aren’t wanted. And you, Tibran—” She fastened her glare on the yellow-haired man. “If you don’t understand it already, I’ll explain it to you now. This is Adara. Not Tibre. Women are off limits to you. No sex, understand? Unless someone approaches you, you’ll do without.”
“I must—” Stone seemed to struggle for words. “Provide service to them?”
“Only if you wish.” Kallista should have expected his misunderstanding. According to what Aisse had told her, anyone with power could demand any service from one without. And Stone had no power here. “If one asks, you may say yes or no. But
you
may not ask. And you will not demand. This includes my servant.”