She held her hand out to him, palm up, as if inviting him to dance. “Shall we find out?”
Stone stopped motionless near the center of the courtyard, making no move to approach. Kallista circled toward him, almost stalking him. He wore red again. A brighter shade today, in a tunic of everyday wear that looked far better on him than the clumsy prisoner’s clothing. Her ilias was a beautiful man with his golden hair and skin and his finely honed body. She could almost wish he were less so. He would be less of a temptation.
She came to a halt directly in front of him, holding her hand up at chest height, daring him with her eyes to take it. He swallowed visibly. They had not touched, not skin to skin, since the night they had come together. She truly had no idea what would happen now.
It frightened him. She could sense it. She would swear before the One that magic was the only thing in existence he did fear.
His hand rose, coming toward hers. It was one of the bravest things she’d ever seen. “Courage,” she whispered when he hesitated.
“Kallista.” His gaze locked onto hers. “Ilias.”
She nodded. “Ilias, Stone.” She knew what he asked and reassured him. She would not let him be lost inside the magic, would not let it have him, no matter the risk to herself. She was the naitan. He was in her care.
Kallista could sense Torchay and Aisse watching beyond the bank of windows. Torchay had wanted to remain in the courtyard, but she had insisted otherwise. She wanted to motion them farther from the glass but could not let her concentration waver. She shook her right hand to keep it loose and held the left up, waiting on Stone.
He took a deep breath, let it out and clasped her hand in his.
The magic woke. Instantly alert and eager, it rushed for the point where they joined to cross over into Kallista.
“No.”
She spoke aloud to reinforce her mental command for it to halt, to stay where it was.
It paid her no attention whatsoever, leaping from Stone into her. It bounced about, stirring things up that needed no stirring, running through both their bodies with exquisite skill. Stone’s head went back and he shouted, not in pain.
“Stop.”
But it didn’t. Kallista did the only thing she knew how to do. She fisted her free hand and brought it in to her chest. Then she flung it wide again, letting her fingers fly open as she wrenched the magic out of her and forced it into lightning.
A huge jagged bolt flashed from her hand, blackening the flagstones all the way across the courtyard to the leaden gutter pipe. It crackled up the length of the pipe to the roof where it broke a gargoyle from its place, which crashed to the ground at their feet.
“Khralsh!”
Stone pulled his arm from where he’d wrapped it over his head and looked at her, his eyes showing white all the way around. “Is that likely to happen again?”
Kallista shook her tingling fingers. The lightning had shocked her. That had never happened before. It had burned her a time or two, but never shocked. “I’m afraid it’s more than just likely.” She looked down at their still-linked hands. “You didn’t let go.”
“I was afraid to. I thought if I held on, the lightning might think I was part of you and leave me alone.”
Kallista grinned at him. “Smart man.”
“That’s not what Fox says. I’ve the brains of a tent flap, according to—” His speech faltered and his face shut down, all the wry humor gone. He tried to pull his hand away but Kallista held on tight.
“Fox—your partner who died?” She wanted to comfort him but didn’t know how. Didn’t know why. She’d barely known him a week. But he was ilias. That was why enough.
He nodded once, refusing to look at her.
“I’m sorry, Stone. I truly am sorry for your loss.” Especially since she was the one who’d caused it.
Stone remained silent another moment, then seemed to give himself a mental shake. “He was a warrior. We knew it would happen sooner or later to one of us.” He looked at her and hefted their clasped hands. “What now?”
But the
way
he had died wasn’t a warrior’s death. “You shouldn’t be afraid to talk about him. He was your friend and you loved him. Remembering honors his memory.”
This time Stone managed to twist his hand free. “Don’t tell me how to mourn my
brodir
,” he snarled. “You keep me bound close with witchery and flaunt my status with pretty jewelry that’s nothing more than dressed-up shackles. You crawl inside my mind and make me want you so I can think of nothing but the pleasure we have together. You own my food, my clothing—There is
nothing
I have, not even myself, that you do not possess, except
this
. It is mine and mine alone and I will not share it. Do you understand me?
I will not share
.”
He stood in the center of the courtyard, magnificent in his anger, his eyes wild, nostrils flaring, mouth set. Kallista saluted him with her fist over her heart and bowed. When she rose, she saw Torchay beyond Stone’s shoulder, hesitating in the open doorway, and she sent him away with a look.
“My apologies,” she said, “for intruding.” She considered saying more, that she’d forgotten he was Tibran, forgotten his status, but decided he wouldn’t appreciate it at this moment.
He nodded once, brusquely, accepting her apology.
“Do you wish to be finished for today?” She had learned virtually nothing so far this morning, but if Stone could not face more…
He shook his head. “No. I can take it, if you can.” The sly grin on his face startled her. He could smile again already? “Just warn me before you set any more lightning off.” Stone held his hand out to her, the challenge in his eyes this time.
Kallista had to smile. “Torchay does not forgive so easily.”
“Torchay cares more. You were partners first.” He grinned again, wickedness in it. “Besides, who says I have forgiven?”
She laughed outright at that. She was still smiling when she gathered her concentration and slid her hand into his.
The magic was there and awake, but calmer. More willing to listen and—perhaps—obey. When nothing untoward happened for a moment or two, Stone began to relax and the magic calmed more.
“Good,” Kallista murmured. “That’s good.”
“What is?” His tension ratcheted up again, the magic with it.
“No, relax. Can you feel it?”
“I feel your hand in mine.”
“That’s all?” She lifted her free hand, wanting to take both his hands but afraid of what might result if the circle closed.
“I…don’t know. It’s not like the other times, when you ran the magic through me.”
“That was the magic on its own, running through both of us.” Kallista’s mouth twisted. “I had no control over it. It was controlling me. Controlling us. That’s why we’re here now, to learn to do something a bit more useful with it, and I hope, how to make it behave.”
Stone gave her another of his mischievous grins. “I wouldn’t object if you let it run through me every now and again.”
Kallista shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. “You are a wicked man.” She flexed her free hand, trying to decide on a next step. “It does feel good, doesn’t it?”
“My one compensation.” But he still smiled as he said it.
“Let me try something. Tell me what you can sense.” Kallista called a thread of magic from him.
It shot out so quickly she almost didn’t catch it. She raised her right hand, willing the sparks to dance, but the magic felt skittish, hard to shape. She let it slide back into Stone, her fingers tingling again. She rubbed them against each other. “What did you feel?”
“Did you do something?”
“Very little.” She pulled her left hand free of his. “I want to try something else.”
Kallista strode a few paces from him, motioning him back when he would have moved with her. She stopped at the farthest point she could get from him, opened herself and called the lightning.
A tiny spark crackled blue from her fingertip. She set it dancing from one finger to the next, laughing out loud when it obeyed. She called a spark to her other hand and bade them pirouette in unison. She brought her hands toward each other in front of her and the sparks leaped the gap, crackling as they joined forces, stretching bright and blue between her ten fingers.
She gathered the lightning into one hand, compressing it into a compact spark, then threw it to the other hand. Back and forth she tossed it, from hand to hand, letting it build in power until it was a blazing, spitting ball larger than her head. Finally she caught and held it, feeling her unbound hair stand out straight from her head with its force. Then bit by bit, she let it bleed safely away into the ground below her feet until all that remained was a single, tiny spark on the tip of her right forefinger. With a flip of her hand, she extinguished it and let the satisfaction fill her up.
The sound of hands clapping brought her attention back to Stone. “I stand in awe,” he said, walking toward her, still applauding. “If you can do all that, why do you need me?”
“That’s what we must discover.” Kallista sought words to explain what she had just learned. “The magic you carry—I can’t do with it what I just did. It—if I must, I can force it into lightning, but I could never—”
“Make it dance?”
“Yes, exactly.” She reached for his hand, asking silent permission with her eyes before she touched. Stone gave it by taking her hand in his. “This magic of yours is shaped for something else.”
He grinned and raised a salacious eyebrow.
Kallista felt the blush burn. “I doubt
that
is its only purpose,” she scolded. Or tried to. Stone seemed impervious to scolding.
“What other things can you do with magic?”
She blew out a breath. “Once I would have said nothing, but now…”
Stone raised the other eyebrow, inquiring.
“Now, I am afraid of what I might do.”
“That’s probably a good thing.” He tightened his grip on her hand, their palms beginning to sweat where they touched. “At least you’ll proceed with care.”
Could she call that dark scythe again? Dark veil, Belandra had called it. Kallista could see Torchay and Aisse dimly through the window, reflected in the mirrors on the far side of the room. Torchay had survived the magic the first time she’d called it, but had Aisse? Or had she simply been out of range?
Kallista was beginning to like the little Tibran, beyond the pity she’d originally felt. And she was ilias now. Kallista didn’t want to risk hurting any of them. She would wait for another time, when she and Stone were alone, to risk calling the dark magic.
What else could she do? She could see things far off, things that hadn’t yet happened. She could talk to Belandra a thousand years dead. Could she talk to other ghosts?
She pulled another small thread of magic from Stone. He gasped.
“I felt that. Like your hand inside me.” He stroked the back of her hand down his cheek. “A touch no more than that. What did you do?”
“I drew out a bit of magic. I’m going to—” Did she want him to know she talked to ghosts? Would it disturb him more than the magic alone already did? “Try something,” she ended.
“What?” His breath came a bit quicker and his grip tightened.
She had better tell him. Not knowing made him nervous. Knowing might make him more so, but he wouldn’t like being kept in ignorance. She understood that much about the man. “To call a ghost,” she said. “I can talk to one ghost. I thought I’d see whether I could call others.”
“What earthly use could that be?”
“I don’t know. I won’t until I try. Be still.”
Stone went absolutely motionless.
The magic seemed a bit easier to shape this time, though it jumped about like quicksilver, leaking through her control before she could grasp it all. Finally she caught hold of what she could and sent it questing for ghosts.
For a long moment nothing happened. Or nothing she could see. Then a flickering of pale mist blocked the sun’s light. Kallista shivered at a sudden chill. A man rushed through the solid stone wall, stark fear in his face. “My children,” he said. “Have you seen my children? Four of them. They went climbing today, but they should be back—”
Kallista’s entire body went cold. The Searching Father had been a story told for years, how he wandered Arikon in search of his missing children after he fell to his death trying to reach them where they were trapped on the cliffs below the city.
More mist floated through the courtyard, some thick enough for faces to appear, or arms, hands grasping. Screams shivered in the air, cries for mercy, for aid, for justice. Just how many ghosts had she raised?
“Here now!” A plump prelate bustled into the courtyard. “What do you think you’re doing? I’ve only just got him settled and here you go stirring him up again!”
“I’m sorry—stirring who? Who are you?”
“Per Ostra, of course. Who did you think I meant? He’s only been bashing everything in the palace for the last two hundred years.”
Kallista frowned. “Who? I am sorry, Mother Per, but I—”
“
I’m
not Per, you idiot. I’m Domnia Varyl. I’ve been trying to lay the man for—”
“Grandmother.” Kallista bowed low, trying to hide her shock. Domnia Varyl was the many-times-great-grandmother who’d founded the Varyl line some twelve generations back.
“Grand—” The ghost stopped in her tirade to peer at Kallista. “I don’t know you.”
“No, Grandmother. I am Kallista Varyl, daughter of Irysta Varyl who is the daughter of Sinda Varyl, the daughter of—” She recited her grandmothers as she had learned them in childhood, the blood of her line, ending with “—Domnia Varyl who ruled the Mother Temple in Arikon.”
“Oh my.” The ghost fluttered her hands. “Has it been so long? My child—” She beamed at Kallista in a way that might have been maternal.
“My ilias, Stone.” She presented him and he bowed, without taking his eyes off Domnia.
“Ah, newlyweds. How nice. Congratulations.”
Kallista thought to ask how she knew, but a violent crash sounded as all the windows surrounding the courtyard exploded into a glitter of shards. Kallista snatched magic from Stone and threw it outward in a frantic attempt to catch the glass before it impaled either of them. The magic eluded perfect control, flaring and sliding in all directions, but it stopped the biggest shards, grinding them into a sharp dust that rained down on them.