Читать книгу The Compass Rose - Gail Dayton, Gail Dayton - Страница 14

Safely behind the closed doors of Mother Edyne’s chamber, Kallista told her the rest of the story while the prelate tended Torchay’s cuts with her healing East magic. She sat with head bowed while Mother Edyne examined the mark Kallista had never herself seen. Finally, the older woman let the hair fall and sank into her chair with a sigh.

“Well?” Kallista hoped Mother Edyne had more answers than Belandra had proved willing to share. Provided Belandra had been anything more than a flicker from a fevered mind.

Edyne shook her head, hand over her mouth. After another moment, she removed it. “I fear that I have neither the knowledge nor the wisdom to deal with such mysteries.”

Kallista hid her instinctive wince at the word. Mystery was of the West. “Then what should I do?”

“Ask the Reinine. The oldest records in Adara are in Arikon. What the Reinine does not know, she will be able to learn. Most important, she should know that this happened.”

“I’m a soldier, I cannot go here or there or to Arikon on my own whim.”

“I will speak to the general. It will be arranged.” Mother Edyne rose, the other two with her.

“Do you not have a—a guess as to what all this means?” Kallista didn’t want to beg but couldn’t seem to help it.

The prelate opened her mouth as if to speak, then shook her head. “Better not to guess. You will know soon enough. The Reinine will know.”

Kallista nodded. “Come, Torchay. Seems we should pack.”

They sailed upriver with the dawn.

“What’s wrong with you?” Someone had hold of Stone’s hair, shaking his head as if it were a sackful of kittens to be drowned.

His mind felt full of kittens, crying and yowling and crawling over each other. His head hurt. And his hands. He was shocked to see his fingers raw and bleeding. “What did you do to me?” His voice croaked like a frog’s.

“What have we done?” The fat guard gave Stone’s head another shake. “You’ve done it to yourself, you barmy idiot. Clawin’ at the walls, bangin’ your head on it. We should’ve give you back to your side. Let them keep you from killin’ yourself.” He grabbed an arm and hauled Stone to his feet. “Come on.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Not that it matters—whatcha goin’ ta’do? Not come?” The fat man laughed at his feeble joke. “But you’re getting’ a cleanup. General wants you. Told ’er you were barmy, but she don’t care. You’re the only one we found alive. She wants to see you.”

Stone’s knees sagged at the reminder. Fox was dead. They were all dead. Save him.

He submitted tamely to the humiliation of his bath. They stripped away the stained remnants of his uniform and stood him in a courtyard with a drain in one corner, his hands fastened before him in finely wrought steel shackles. He’d never seen such expert workmanship wasted on a prisoner. The fat guard pulled a lever and cold water poured down on Stone from a pipe over his head.

He was scrubbed from head to toe with a rough brush, drowned again in the water and dressed in an Adaran-style tunic and trousers of unbleached cotton. Again the quality of the cloth was much higher than he would have expected. If this was their poor stuff, no wonder the king wished to rule here.

With the clothing sticking to his wet skin, Stone was marched into a second room where his hands were bandaged and his hair was taken down from the tangled top knot tied there days ago by Fox. Stone didn’t protest. He wanted the memory gone. Remembering caused pain.

The fat guard waited while another man combed the knots from Stone’s hair and began to braid it into one of the tight pigtails worn by Adaran warriors. No, not warriors, soldiers. They were not born to their trade. His hair was too short in the front and kept falling away, but the rest was caught tight.

“Perhaps your birthmark is the reason you survived the dark scythe,” the hairdresser said as he tied off the tail of hair.

“What birthmark?” Stone had one on his hip, round and small, but it was covered.

“This one.” The man ran a finger over the nape of Stone’s neck. “Shaped like a rose. Maybe the One protected you, since you bear His symbol.”

“I don’t have a birthmark there.” He’d never seen the back of his neck, but Fox would have teased him mercilessly about any flower-shaped mark.

“Of course you do.”

“Let me see.” The guard lumbered closer and shoved Stone’s head forward to expose his nape. After a few seconds, he made a sound through his nose and backed away. “You’re clean enough. Time to go.”

The guard kept his distance as he escorted Stone out of the prison and through a square to a squat, imposing building, prodding him with the heel of his pike to indicate direction. He’d used his hands on Stone before, dragging and shoving him. Before he’d seen the rose supposedly marking Stone’s neck. Did he fear the mark? What did it mean?

Stone walked through corridors and antechambers filled with Adaran soldiers clad in dun and gray, their tunics decorated with bold devices like those on divisional banners in the Tibran army—green trees, gold lions, red stags. Most soldiers had ribbons in white, yellow or red tacked to the shoulders of the sleeveless tunics, left to fall free front and back. Stone’s skin crawled when he realized that the majority of the people wearing the uniforms were female. Why did the gods not punish them for their blasphemy?

Then the guard was opening a door, ushering him into a large room faced with maps and charts. A soldier stood at the window beyond the wide, paper-cluttered desk, back to him, shoulders sprouting a veritable fringe of red ribbon. The guard came to attention, snapped the heel of his pike against the floor and held it at ready. “General Uskenda. Sergeant Borril reporting with the Tibran prisoner as ordered.”

The gray-haired general turned around. Stone staggered and would have fallen except for the guard catching his arm. The commander of Adaran forces was also a woman. How could this be? The defenses should have fallen the first day. Everyone knew women had no war skills, no war sense. Of course, they had won through magic, not in a fair fight. That had to explain it.

“So.” Uskenda walked toward him, around him, as if conducting an inspection. “You are the one who lived.”

Stone stared straight ahead, refusing to speak to any woman who did not know a woman’s place.

“What is your name?”

He remained silent.

The general sighed and moved away a few paces, clasping her hands behind her back. “You would do well to answer of your own will.”

Stone’s eyes flickered toward the guard. He let his contempt show. Nothing they could do would change his mind.

“Oh, I know physical persuasion will do no good.” Uskenda lifted a sheet of paper, perused it briefly. “That’s why we rarely use it. We have no need. Corporal!”

The door behind Stone opened and a man spoke. “Yes, General?”

“Tell the naitan I have need of her.”

“Yes, General.” The door closed again.

Naitan. The word Adarans used to name their witches. Cold rushed from Stone’s heart into his outermost parts, and the hair along his spine rose.

“Do you understand me?” Uskenda leaned against the desk. She somehow looked like a warrior with her stern face and close-cropped gray hair, despite her femaleness. How was it possible? “I think you do. I think you understand every word I say.”

The guard came to clashing attention again and spoke when Uskenda looked his way. “General, the prisoner speaks perfect Adaran.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” She crossed her arms and studied Stone. “How did you come to learn it?”

How indeed? And when? Stone had picked up a word or two of the local language in the week after landing, but no more than that. He hadn’t realized he was speaking Adaran until this moment. His mind had been too filled with…what? Grief? Must have been. His thoughts were so fogged by grief that he scarcely knew how much time had passed since his capture. That was likely how he’d learned the language without realizing it, listening to his captors.

“What is wrong with his head, Sergeant?”

“General. The prisoner injured himself by striking his head against the wall, General.”

She tapped a forefinger against her mouth. “And why did you do that? I wonder.” She studied Stone a moment longer, then moved behind the desk and sat in the high-backed chair. “Ah well, no matter. We will know soon enough.”

They waited. Stone and the guard stared straight ahead. General Uskenda reviewed papers on her desk. The door opened once more and the general looked up.

“Ah, good.” She smiled. “Thank you for your promptness, naitan. Please, come in.”

Uskenda came forward to greet a tall, slender woman. The naitan was dressed in a pale blue robe open over a tunic and trousers much the same color as those Stone wore, but of an even finer quality. Her brown hair fell past her shoulders in a froth of curls. She looked much like any woman found in any women’s quarters. Until she turned her eyes on him. They were the same blue as his own. Stone shuddered, suddenly understanding how uncanny they seemed to others.

“I will allow you one more chance to give your own answers,” the general said to Stone. “The naitan holds North magic. She is Ukiny’s far-speaker, speaking mind to mind with others of her gift. Do you understand what I am saying?”

Stone tried to hold his gaze steady, to focus only on the window in the far wall, but his eyes rolled toward the blue-eyed witch again before he could jerk them away.

“She can touch minds. There is a kind of North magic that can reach into your mind and see what is there. You do not have to say anything at all. A naitan can simply take what we wish to know from you.” Uskenda pursed her lips. “Of course, sometimes it isn’t easy to find what we are looking for. Who knows what havoc might be worked upon your mind?”

In his peripheral vision, Stone could see the witch looking most unhappy. Did the process perhaps cause her discomfort too?

“General, I don’t—” the witch broke off when the general raised a hand.

“Naitan, does this sort of magic do all that I have said?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“And,” Uskenda interrupted, “does it not on occasion leave those who are mind-searched…altered?”

“Yes, it might, but I—”

“Do not bother to explain the techniques. This Tibran would not understand. His kind have no magic. Is this not true, Tibran?”

Stone tightened his jaw and stiffened his spine yet again. He feared no man. Nor did he fear any woman. Any ordinary woman. But this witch and her magic…how could he not fear a thing that could go crashing about in his thoughts, shredding them to bits, stealing away whatever seemed interesting?

Long moments slid away while Uskenda watched Stone and Stone watched the far wall.

“Shall we start again, warrior?” The general’s gentle voice reminded him of ease, of soft comfort in women’s quarters. “What is your name? A simple thing, your name.”

Simple, yes. But the first word spoken, the first truth told would change everything. Would the gods forgive him for failing to punish this woman’s sacrilege? Would they count his blasphemy against him for following her orders? The warrior god was a harsh one, demanding much and forgiving little. But surely he would understand about the magic.

Uskenda sighed. “Naitan—”

“Stone.” The sound of his own voice startled him. “Stone, Warrior vo’Tsekrish.”

Uskenda came to attention and saluted him. “Warrior.” She nodded at the witch. “I believe we will not be needing your services after all, naitan. But please hold yourself in readiness in case our Tibran friend changes his mind.”

The witch smiled, bowed and left the room. Stone sagged in relief, but only for a second.

“Stone, Warrior vo’Tsekrish.” Uskenda paced the floor before him. “You are a long way from home, are you not?”

“Yes, General.” He hoped all his answers would be so guilt free, but the hope was small.

“How did you learn our language, warrior?”

“I…do not know. I—after the assault, when I was taken prisoner, the soldiers spoke to me, and I understood.”

“This was after the—” She checked a paper on her desk. “After the dark scythe, the magic, was it not?”

“Yes, General.”

“You were captured in the breach?”

“Yes, General.”

“And you never advanced into the city. Is that correct?”

“No, General.”

Her head came up and she stared. “No?”

“Fox—my partner and I were in the First and Finest, those leading the assault. We took the breach, held it for the next wave, then advanced into the city.” Talking about the past, things that had already happened would surely hurt nothing.

“How far into the city?” She spread a map on the desk, obviously expecting him to come look. Stone spared a glance for his guard who grunted and prodded him forward with the pike.

Uskenda indicated the position of the breach and the high-spired temple with its colored windows. Stone pointed to a street a quarter of the way between, his shackles rattling. “Here.”

“Are you sure?” She held his gaze, the light gray of her eyes almost as unsettling as the blue of the witch’s. “Every other Tibran within the city walls was found dead.”

Stone studied the map again, letting the shivers take him. He was among witches now. He had to live with the fear. “It might have been here.” He pointed at a place a few streets to the south. “My memory isn’t good, not for those minutes—but I know we were inside the city.”

“Then how is it you were found in the breach? Alive?”

He met her gaze, held it, willed her to believe him. He did not want her to call the witch back when he was telling the truth. “I do not know. I remember the world coming to an end. And then I remember waking up in the breach. Nothing else.”

They stared eye into eye for a long moment more, until Uskenda broke contact, looking down again at the map. The guard crashing to attention startled both of them. “General,” he rapped out.

“What is it, Sergeant?”

“There is a mark on his neck.”

The general’s eyes widened and her eyes flicked from one man to the other. “What kind of mark? Show me.”

The guard seized Stone by the scruff of his neck, forcing him to his knees, shoving his head forward. He raked the pigtail out of the way. Uskenda’s gasp as she touched a finger lightly to the nape of Stone’s neck sent a thrill of terror shooting through him yet again. What was this mark? What did it mean?

The guard released Stone’s head, but held him on his knees with a foot on the chain connecting wrist shackles to leg irons. Uskenda shuffled through the papers on her desk. She found the one for which she searched and scanned it quickly.

“You say this man has been behaving strangely?” she asked the guard.

“He beats his head on the wall and claws at the stones. You see the bandages. His hands are much worse than his forehead.”

“Does he know he is doing this?”

The guard shrugged. “Who can say? All Tibrans are barmy, you ask me.”

“Are you aware?” Uskenda asked Stone. “When you do these things?”

He didn’t want to answer. But more, he didn’t want magic mucking through his mind, making things worse than they already were. “No.”

Uskenda touched the back of his head and he bent it obediently forward. She moved the pigtail aside but made no attempt to touch him again. Then she released him and stepped back, her boot heels a brisk clap against the polished wooden floor. “Make ready to take the prisoner to Arikon.” Her orders snapped out with spine-chilling authority, the corporal appearing again to take them. “I wish I had seen him earlier so I might have sent him with Captain Varyl, but no matter. He will go on the next boat, at dawn tomorrow. Inform your captain. I want him escorted by an officer and a quarto of her best soldiers.”

Once more, the guard stiffened to attention. He hauled Stone to his feet and hustled him out of the building and back to his prison. What would befall him next in this cursed land?

Torchay spent the first day of the week’s journey upriver fighting sleep. Since the night his naitan had suddenly stopped breathing, he’d scarcely slept at all, dozing off and jerking awake seconds later, afraid it had happened again. It hadn’t, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t. The riverboat hadn’t enough room for him to keep moving and every time he stilled, sleep tried to claim him.

He studied the boat, hoping the mental activity would help. Typical of its class, the Taolind Runner was long and narrow with a shallow draft to keep it running when the water level dropped in late summer. The exposed wood of the decks gleamed with varnish, but the exterior hull had been stained inky black with tar before it was sealed and proofed by South magic. The single triangular sail was set well forward in the crew section, its lack of wear evidence of more South magic. A pair of North naitani wind-callers took turns keeping the blue-and-gold-striped sail filled, moving it briskly against the current.

All the magic that had gone into this boat gave evidence to the prosperity of the owner who captained the ship and served as one of the wind naitani. The four elegantly furnished passenger cabins near the ship’s stern attested to the same. On this leg of the journey, only two cabins were taken. Torchay would have expected some of the wealthier citizens of Ukiny to take advantage of the opportunity to escape the city, but the general had apparently forbidden it.

His head bobbled and he jerked his eyes open, blinking rapidly in an attempt to convince them to stay that way.

“Go ahead and sleep,” his captain said from the chair beside him under the blue-and-gold-striped awning stretched over the passenger area at the stern.

Confinement area, to speak truth. The crew did not want passengers wandering indiscriminately about the ship. Torchay had been sent politely but firmly back to the “passenger section” several times already. “I need to be alert, watch for threats.” He scanned the bank to either side, peering into the scattered trees for human shapes.

“You can’t be alert if you don’t get some sleep,” she said, sounding far too reasonable. “No one can function without sleep, and I know you’re not sleeping at night. Sleep now. I’ll watch.”

“It’s against regulations. My duty is to—”

“How can you do your duty if you’re asleep on your feet? We’ve been on this boat all day. We’re beyond the Tibran lines. There are no bandits or river pirates between Ukiny and Turysh. We took care of the last band ourselves two years ago, remember? Sleep. I’m tempted to sleep myself.”

He didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. He needed to sleep. “We should go to the cabin.” They would have more protection there.

“It’s too hot. If you’re that worried about my breathing, ask Uskenda’s courier to keep an eye out.”

“Excellent thought.” He could tell by her expression when he stood that she hadn’t expected him to take her suggestion seriously and was none too pleased that he had. But he would take no chances with his naitan.

The courier, an amiable young man, seemed surprised and not a little nervous at Torchay’s approach. Those in bodyguard’s black often evoked that reaction. Still, the courier willingly agreed with a little puffing out of his chest to move his chair closer and keep watch.

Torchay stretched out on the long wooden chair, arranged the cushions behind his back, stuffed one under his head and closed his eyes. But now that he had the opportunity to sleep, it eluded him.

Sounds intruded—the slap of water along the boat’s sides, the creak of the sail’s rigging, the murmur of voices as the boatmen talked and laughed among themselves. He could feel the hum of magic over his skin as the naitan on shift directed the pocket of winds pushing them against the current. He opened his eyes a slit to be sure his own naitan hadn’t moved. Their chairs sat side by side, wooden flanks touching, but too far for him to sense her continued presence.

“Oh for—” She took his hand, laced her fingers through his. “There. Now you’ll know if I decide to run away.”

Content, he closed his eyes again. The sounds swelled then faded away as he categorized and dismissed them. Without their distraction, his mind began to buzz. He was seriously worried. The not-breathing business was only a small part of it. Though she tried to pretend otherwise, something more had happened to Kallista when that dark and deadly magic swept through her.

She dreamed things that came true. She saw people who weren’t there and talked to them. Dead people, by her own words. Torchay felt a faint chill slide down his spine. West magic was as much a gift of the One as any other. He believed that. But it still unnerved him by its very nature. Not that it mattered. His place was by her side.

She could manifest magic from all four cardinal directions at once and his place would not change. He was her bodyguard. Her welfare, her life was in his charge. And that was why he worried. That, and the fact that he loved her, had loved her for years.

He’d loved her since she took the blame for the fiasco he’d caused, almost getting them both killed in their first year together, in his first combat. He’d been wounded, nearly gutted, spent months with the healers recovering. She’d visited nearly every day. And when he came out, she insisted he be reinstated as her bodyguard. How could he not love a woman like that?

There had been a great deal of hero worship about it at first, but after nine years at her side, he loved her for her flaws as well as her virtues. He would never inflict his emotions on her. She didn’t want it. Her highly disciplined, carefully controlled, duty-bound life had no room for anything as messy as love. But he could pour his devotion out on her without having to speak the words. It had taken nine years to gather the courage to speak of friendship. That was enough.

Shouts from the front of the ship brought Torchay bolt upright out of a sound sleep he didn’t remember falling into. The lanterns on the very back of the ship held back the night’s darkness. He had been asleep for quite some time. He still held Kallista’s hand clasped in his.

Torchay stood, releasing her hand. “I had better go see what that is. Go back to the room and wait for me.”

She gave him her “think again, Sergeant” look and followed him down the narrow walkway beside the passenger cabins.

Just past the cabin area where a passageway cut from one side of the ship to the other, half a dozen crew members were standing over a huddled figure crouched on the deck, arms folded protectively around its head.

“What’s happening?” Torchay asked.

Kallista leaned over the boat’s rail to look around him, trying for a better sight of the situation. Torchay elbowed her back upright with a snarl to stay hidden. She crouched to peer beneath his elbow. His protectiveness could be so annoying.

“We found a stowaway. A Tibran spy.” One of the sailors kicked at their find.

“Don’t hurt me. Please don’t!” the stowaway cried in the high-pitched voice of a child or woman. “I mean no harm. I’m no one. I’m not a spy.”

Kallista tried to squeeze past Torchay. She should have known better. The man could give lessons in immovable to mountains. “What are you, then?” she called past the barricade of his body.

“A woman. Only a woman.” The stowaway shuffled around on her knees to face Kallista’s direction as much as she could. She wore a torn and dirt-stained tunic. Her hair was chopped raggedly short, matted with more dirt, and her thin arms were dirtier yet.

All the crew members had stopped their abuse to stare at Kallista. Even Torchay looked over his shoulder at her until he recalled his duty and swung around to face front.

“Tibran?” Kallista said. “Are you Tibran?”

“No longer. I was born in Haav, over the sea, but I have left Tibre. I am here and here I wish to stay.” Still curled into a ball, the woman stretched her hands along the deck, reaching toward Kallista in supplication.

“Why? Why abandon your home?”

“It has never been my home.” The woman’s bitterness startled Kallista.

“Do you understand her, naitan?” one of the crew members asked. Kallista thought he was a boat’s officer since he wore a tunic rather than going about bare-chested like most of the other males in the crew.

“Yes.” She almost continued with a question but thought better of it. Setting her hand against Torchay’s taut back, she leaned forward and murmured in his ear, “Please tell me you understand what she’s saying.”