The Compass Rose - Gail Dayton

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with her. “No, no. Stay. Finish your meal. And then I suppose you must return to your duties. Unless there is something more you wish to tell me?”

      Kallista widened her eyes, doing her best to look as if not only did she have no secrets at this moment, but she had never had any secret in her entire life. “No, Mother. Nothing.”

      “Very well.” She motioned them back into their chairs and let a hand rest on each head as she passed from the room. “Be well, my children.”

      When the door was closed and Mother Edyne gone, Torchay drew his little blade and stabbed it through a melon slice. “And why,” he asked through clenched teeth, “did you not tell the prelate the truth?”

      Kallista hunched her shoulders, embarrassed by her fear and by the lies she’d told to cover it. What she had done terrified her. She didn’t wish it undone. Ukiny would have been taken and thousands more dead or enslaved if she had not done it. But she feared the consequences of her impulsive request.

      Already, according to Mother Edyne, people whispered. West magic involved the unexplained and the unexplainable. It dealt with hidden things and with endings, including the ultimate ending: death. No wonder people feared it.

      “I’m sure it’s temporary.” Kallista focused on the last of her meal, unable to meet his eyes. “Now that the enemy has been cut down to a reasonable size, I’ll have no need for such a magic. Why bother the prelate with it?”

      “When the One gives a gift, She rarely takes it back.”

      “But a onetime event is more common—more likely than my having permanent magic from two Compass points.”

      “You have the mark.”

      She refrained from smoothing her hair down over her neck only through sheer force of will. “Legend. Fable. Nothing more.”

      Torchay growled, a sound of utter disgust. She’d heard it countless times.

      “Besides,” she said, risking a glance in his direction, “talk is already circulating. I have no doubt word is already flying to the Barbs. How much quicker would they come to investigate if the Mother Temple here added its weight to the gossip?”

      The Order of the Barbed Rose believed an ancient and stubborn heresy, that West magic was evil, and that if it and all its practitioners were eliminated, death itself could be eliminated. The Order had been suppressed for centuries and yet could not be entirely crushed. The fear of death and the will to conquer it was too strong. Even the One’s promise of life eternal after physical death was not enough to quell this persistent falsehood.

      Everyone feared the Barbs. Their secret membership fanned out through all Adara, investigating any magic that seemed the least bit out of the ordinary. It occurred to Kallista now that perhaps true West magic hadn’t been seen in so long because the Barbs had somehow found a way to identify those rare ones so gifted and eliminate them before or as their power manifested.

      “I can deal with any Barb who comes calling,” Torchay said. “As could you. But do you really believe Mother Edyne would contribute to gossip in any way?”

      She didn’t, but she shrugged her shoulders. “The fewer who know a thing, the easier it is to keep it secret.”

      “Lying to a prelate has its own consequences.”

      “I’ll risk it.” Kallista set her plate aside and stood. “We should report in.”

      There were funerals to attend. Flames competed with the blaze of the setting sun as Kallista stood with General Uskenda and the honor guard in the plaza west of the Mother Temple. She let the tears flow, blaming them on the sun’s glare, and commended the souls of her entire troop, all five of the naitani and their five bodyguards, into the welcoming arms of the One. Never had she lost so many.

      Never had the Adaran army and its naitani been cast into a battle of such size. They fought bandits. They patrolled remote mountain passes and distant, lawless prinsipalities. They did not fight pitched battles against massive armies. They’d never had to. Until now.

      Kallista fought back her grief. So many bright young lives, so full of promise, ended here. Adara could not afford such losses. She feared that they would be facing many more such funerals if changes were not made. But Blessed One, did she have to be the one to change?

      When the sun had set and the fires burned to embers, there were letters to be written, paperwork to be done. How could she write so many at once? How could she put it off?

      The breeze, not so strong inside the city where it was broken by wall and building, stirred her hair. Kallista tucked it behind her ears yet again as they walked back to quarters.

      “If you will not braid your hair,” Torchay said from his place at her shoulder, “you should cut it.”

      “Oh, that will cover my neck so well.” She pulled her hair back from her face and held it with one gloved hand.

      “Don’t cut the back. Just the front, so it can’t get in your face. Or you could—”

      “This is not a time to be thinking about hair.”

      “True.” He picked up his pace and took her elbow to escort her quickly through a crowd spilling out of a public house. “But it was noticed. Today it was taken as a sign of mourning for the death of your troopers. If you continue to wear it so, it could be taken as a sign of something else. Perhaps that you attempt to hide something.”

      Kallista sighed. She was a soldier. That had been her duty, her destiny for twenty-one years. It kept things simple. She would rather things stayed that way, but the complications kept mounting. “We’ll work out some explanation later.”

      The sun must have hurt her eyes more than she realized. They kept watering during the short walk, even as Torchay ushered her into their too-empty billet. The setting sun must bother his eyes as well, given the way he was blinking them.

      Kallista gave him the courtesy of privacy, looking away even as she briefly touched his shoulder with an ungloved hand. “I have letters to write.”

      She managed three, writing to the accompaniment of steel on stone, before her eyes began to cross with weariness. Torchay tumbled her into her narrow bed and took his place on the pallet in front of the door.

      Once more her dreams were filled with shine and fog. Again the city wall fell and again she shouted a warning that no one heard. But the dream did not end there.

      She dreamed of a man, golden-skinned and golden-haired, his hard body moving over her and in her. As she cried out in passion, he changed. His black hair tumbled around her face, and he changed yet again. His dark skin paled, his hair going bright, and it was Torchay making love to her, Torchay making her cry out.

      She jerked, struggling to wake, but something caught her soul and drew her back. She went spinning across the dreamscape, colors of light and darkness flashing by and through her, until she was released to roll tumbling across a rough stone floor, fetching up against a fat table leg.

      Before she could pick herself up, a blade was pressed against her throat. The woman holding it shone fierce and bright with power. She was not young, perhaps ten or even twenty years past Kallista’s age. Her red hair was streaked with gray, her freckled face lined with experience. Her green-brown eyes stared deep into Kallista’s.

      “Who are you?” the woman demanded. “How did you get in here?”

      “I…” How did she get here? “…I don’t think I am here.”

      With a snarl, the woman sliced her knife across Kallista’s throat.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Kallista recoiled, hands flying up to push the madwoman away. She called for Torchay as she scrabbled backward across the stone floor, her voice a hoarse croak, surprised she still had a voice. She reached up to stanch the wound…but there was no blood pouring down over her undertunic. No pain. Carefully, Kallista

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