“Are you all right?” Kallista shouted, dragging Stone with her as she ran toward the now-windowless room where Torchay and Aisse had been working.
“Are you?” Torchay caught her in a hug, then shoved her back to arm’s length to inspect her for damage. He brushed at the glass dust coating her face and scraped off a layer of skin.
“Careful, it’s glass.” She pulled out of reach, spitting out more glass.
“What happened?” Torchay pulled Aisse from behind him into the circle. “You’ve never done that with windows before.”
“That was Per Ostra,” Domnia the ghost announced. “You raised him, now you have to lay him again.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“H
ow do I do that?” Kallista demanded.
Torchay took a step backward. “Belandra? But Hopeday hasn’t passed again.”
“Not Belandra. My twelve-times-great-grandmother.” Kallista introduced her iliasti to her grandmother’s ghost, even if they couldn’t see her.
“If you don’t know how to lay him, what are you doing raising him?” Domnia demanded. “Don’t you know better than to be mucking about with magic you don’t understand?”
“I’m trying to learn,” Kallista retorted.
“Without a teacher? You’re more a fool than I thought.”
“Who is there to teach me? There’s not been a godstruck naitan in a thousand years. She can only answer six questions at a time. I scarcely learn anything and she’s gone.”
“The godmarked are a myth.” Domnia’s mouth turned down in semitransparent scorn.
Stone gave a short bark of laughter. “Is this a myth?” He lifted his flyaway hair and bowed his neck. “Is the magic I carry inside me a myth?”
When he straightened, Torchay leaned close and muttered, “You can see her?”
“You can’t?” Stone’s glance showed his increasing unease.
Kallista squeezed his hand, hoping he would find it reassuring. “Just tell me how to lay this ghost, the one who broke the windows. I’ll deal with the rest of them later.”
“The trick isn’t so much laying him as it is finding him,” Domnia said. “He’s wicked fast and he’s angry. Give me a weeping ghost anytime over one who feels his grief as anger. Per Ostra’s lover was killed in battle during the pacification of the northern coast. He was brought to Arikon to be married
di pentivas
because he was a handsome man. The night of the wedding, he killed his ilias and himself, and he’s been taking out his anger on Arikon’s palace ever since.”
“Until you laid him to rest,” Kallista said.
“Well, yes, I suppose.” Domnia’s satisfaction was short-lived. “Until you woke him again.” She folded her arms across her ample chest. “I suppose I’ll have to wait here for months while you find him.”
Stone shivered as Kallista scooped a bit of magic from him. “Did you feel it when I blocked the glass?” she asked.
“Yes. What are you doing now?”
“Hunting a ghost.” She tacked a name onto the summons, fighting to keep hold of the slippery magic, and sent it out, willing it to return with the missing Per Ostra. It spun out into the distance, connected to her by a thin filament she struggled to maintain. Distantly, she felt it strike, sweeping the raging ghost back toward her.
“All right,” she said, her attention focused on the poorly controlled magic. “I’ve found him. He’s on his way back here.”
“How—” Domnia shook her head. “Never mind that. You’ve done it. To lay him, you must soothe his anger. He must want to sleep. Remind him that his lover waits. They will be reunited in the arms of the One. A little
push
in that direction won’t hurt.”
The ghost of Per Ostra was little more than pulsing, formless rage when she reeled it in. Kallista pulled more magic from Stone to control it, but thought she might be having more trouble controlling the magic than the ghost. They both had their own ideas about what they wished to do.
Eventually the ghost took on shape as the anger faded, becoming more like the man it once was, and Kallista was able to use persuasion. By the time he dissolved completely away, she was bathed in sweat, her muscles quivering with exhaustion, and she sagged against a hard male body. Torchay’s, she discovered when she looked. Stone didn’t appear in too much better shape than she was.
“We are finished for today,” Torchay said firmly, encircling her waist with an arm. He took Stone’s arm to provide support and after a second’s hesitation, Aisse let Stone drape his other arm across her shoulders. They made a disreputable-looking crew as they trudged back through two palaces to their suite.
Lieutenant Suteny came out of his office chamber as they approached, and Kallista dragged the others to a halt.
“Lieutenant.” She summoned enough energy to return his salute. “You might see that someone is sent to sweep up glass from our practice yard. But don’t bother having the windows replaced just yet. In case.”
He inclined his head and saluted again, suspiciously blank-faced. “Naitan.”
She was too tired to worry about the lieutenant now. Kallista let Torchay propel her on into the suite.
“Baths.” Aisse turned back at the door. “Send servant for baths.”
Over the next several weeks, Kallista struggled to master Stone’s magic. It defied her control, slipping through the tiniest cracks to go racketing around inside her until she thought she would either scream, or take Stone up against the courtyard wall like some bitch in heat. The paving wasn’t safe. Shattered glass still lay all over the flagstones.
Joh assured her that he had given the message to have it cleared, but it had obviously got lost somewhere in channels. Just as well. The glass gave Kallista something to practice her magic on.
Torchay would leave Aisse with her exercises and come through the window to toss glass at Kallista for her to deflect. Sometimes she could stop and hold it in midair for brief moments. Sometimes she could only bat it away. Sometimes the best she could do was shatter it into mostly harmless bits. But she’d never been able to do any sort of defensive magic before.
She was better at defending Stone than herself—she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because he held the magic. Or perhaps simply because he was her ilias and that was what one did. Kallista had small cuts all over her right hand and arm from the bits that got through. Stone got one on his shoulder the first day, and none thereafter.
Ghosts kept appearing and following Kallista through the palace complex, asking her questions she didn’t know the answers to. Mostly she ignored them, since no one else seemed able to see or hear them. A few she managed to soothe and lay to rest. Her however-many-times-great-grandmother wasn’t one of them.
Domnia always appeared at the least convenient moments. Save for that, Kallista didn’t mind her presence so much. Domnia knew a great deal about ghosts and visions and didn’t mind imparting her knowledge to her descendant. The fact that Domnia had been a West naitan had been suppressed by some family archivist in the last several generations. No one wanted to admit having West magic in the bloodline.
Domnia was herself horrified to hear that the West magic academy had been shuttered for almost fifty years because no child had been born with West magic in much longer than that. She spent a great deal of time pacing the palace halls muttering about imbalance and sacrilege.
Belandra came when summoned. Most of the time. Kallista didn’t yet understand what rule attached to summoning, beyond the passing of Hopeday, though there had to be one. Nor did she flatter herself that she’d gotten any better at asking her questions, though she learned more with every encounter. It was still not nearly enough.
Kallista was careful not to be seen talking to, or even noticing, the ghosts, but whispers about West magic began to float through the palace nonetheless. Whispers linked to Kallista and her ilian. The rumors were so pervasive that when they returned to the court dinners as ordered by the Reinine, they were avoided and isolated.
It didn’t bother Kallista particularly, nor did she think it bothered any of the others. They weren’t in Arikon for political advancement or for playing social games. They had a task lying before them—once she understood what it might be.
She did worry when it seemed that the rumors began to interfere with that task. The failure to clean the glass from the practice yard was only the beginning.
Kallista’s and Torchay’s army pay packets, thin as they were, went astray. Servants answered summonses only after extended delay and sometimes not at all. And when they did answer, they responded to orders with either sullen disrespect or eye-rolling skittishness. These were small, annoying things, but they did not bode well for the future. And they had Torchay turning himself inside out trying to watch for danger.
He nearly exploded the morning halfway through Katenda, the first summer month, when Kallista announced that she and Stone would go to the practice yard alone. She had researched the dark veil magic as much as she could, given the archives’ scarcity of West magic records. It was time for her to try it. But she didn’t want Torchay, Aisse or anyone else anywhere in the vicinity of her experiment.
“No.” Torchay stood in front of the suite’s double doors, arms folded across his chest. “Absolutely not. I forbid it.”
“This is magic, Torchay. Not your authority. It’s too risky for you to be there.” Kallista glared back at him, her stubborn stance echoing his.
“I survived the last time.”
“I’m not taking that chance. Stone will be with me. You’ve honed his skills yourself. He’s almost as good as you are.”
“He’s still a Tibran.” Torchay’s glare shifted past Kallista’s shoulder to Stone, standing just behind her. “Who knows if he’ll bother to defend you?”
“Who knows if I’d survive her death?” Stone said cheerfully. Sometimes Kallista did not understand the man. “I certainly don’t. Better to keep her alive.”
Torchay growled and Kallista had to hide a smile. “See? He’s not going to let me get killed and he’s obviously not going to kill me himself. If he wanted to, he could have done it the night after our wedding. He didn’t do it then and he won’t do it now.”
“Especially since she can bring me to my knees just by touching me.” Stone shivered elaborately. “Please, ilias?”
Kallista thumped his arm, bare in the sleeveless summer tunic. “Stop goading him.”
“Do that again. With your gloves off.”
She smacked him lightly on the back of his head and he laughed. Stone could make them all laugh. Even Torchay when he wasn’t being stubborn and Stone wasn’t being deliberately provoking.
“Come along as far as the end of Summerglen.” Kallista gave in as planned, offering the compromise she hoped Torchay would accept. “But not into Winterhold. Stone and I go on alone.”
“You can have the mark if you like, Torchay,” Stone offered, “and I’ll stay behind.”
Torchay made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat and stepped from in front of the door. “Are you coming, Aisse?”
The bond between Aisse and Torchay had grown even closer during the past weeks of instruction. Kallista comforted herself with the thought that he treated her like a younger sibling, a sedil related by ilian rather than blood, then scolded herself for feeling comfort. They were all in this ilian. And she’d mucked things up with Torchay all on her own.
“No. I practice here.” Aisse had on the baggy muslin she wore for working out.
“Don’t go out alone,” Torchay warned as they left.
He spent the whole of the walk through Summerglen Palace trying to change Kallista’s mind, but she remained adamant. She would not allow him anywhere near while she attempted this dark and deadly magic.
At the narrow service corridor where one palace melted into the next, Kallista sent Torchay to the suite. He could return in an hour to escort them back. She didn’t know if he would go, but at least he stopped there. Without too much argument.
In the practice yard, Stone surprised her. He turned and gave her the small, formal bow of the military, then held out his hand. “Naitan,” he said. “I accept your gloves.”
Did he understand what the little ritual did for her? How it helped to center her and focus her attention on the test ahead? Kallista returned his solemn gaze as she pulled her gloves from her hands and placed them in his. Perhaps he did. He tucked the gloves in his belt, just as Torchay always did, and extended his hand. She clasped it in hers.
The magic inside him quivered with eagerness, but it didn’t go rushing uncontrollably about. They’d learned that if they made this connection at least once every day and Kallista used the magic for something—anything—she was better able to control it the next time they touched. She didn’t know whether it was a matter of keeping the magic “in training” or whether it simply had to be bled off daily to avoid an uncontrollable buildup. Why didn’t matter.
Stone complained on occasion because the mind-shaking surges of pleasure came less often, but Kallista thought the attitude was mostly for show. Her control wasn’t yet
that
good.
“I’m going to pull as much magic as I can,” Kallista warned him.
Stone took a deep breath and nodded.
Praying for control, she drew the magic from him as fast as she could until there was nothing left to draw. Magic swam behind her eyes, roared in her ears, stoppered her nose, and yet it still wasn’t as much as she’d held on that first day. Perhaps it wouldn’t escape the courtyard.
She focused on the veil itself rather than what she wanted it to do. The crumbling records had seemed to hint that the naitan’s intention had an effect on the deadliness of the veiling mist, that it didn’t always kill.
The magic seemed to understand what was wanted, but that didn’t help in controlling it. The power built, shaping itself. Before she could finish, the magic burst from her grasp in a lopsided glitter of pale blue that dissolved the remnants of broken glass halfway across one side of the courtyard.
“Was that what you were trying to do?” Stone eyed the shiny new surface on the exposed flagstone.
“I don’t think so.”
“Useful, though. You might want to remember that one.”