without expression, without reaction, simply allowing her to rain them down on him.
“Damn you,” she raged. “Don’t you care about anything?” She wanted to mark him, to cut him open and see if he would bleed. Her beautiful, exotic Southron ilias with his black hair, brown skin and the tattoos of his devotion to the One God written on his face and body was beyond anything in Kallista’s experience. She didn’t know how to deal with him. And just now, that infuriated her.
Like the rest of their ilian, he’d been marked by the One and bound by that godstruck magic into a whole as unlike other iliani as a military troop was from the rabble of a mob. But since her daughters’ birth, Obed had been pulling back, withdrawing into himself until he seemed a stone carving, rather than a man. And she didn’t know why.
His behavior worried her, for more reasons than the personal. It drove cracks through their ilian, because much as she tried to hide her hurt at Obed’s actions, she couldn’t quite, and that made the others angry for her sake.
Torchay pushed his way into the space around the restive horses, limping slightly. Kallista refused the rising guilt, but it seeped inside her anyway. She’d caused that limp. Obed released her into Torchay’s arms and he pulled her from the saddle, holding her tight when she would have turned her anger on him. He wouldn’t let her strike him.
“You don’t want to cause any more of a scene. Not here.” He spoke into her ear, holding her head still with one long-fingered hand planted on the back of her skull. “Think, Kallista. If you ride out of here, you’re more likely to lead the danger to them. You’re the godstruck. You’re the one the rebels will watch, if they’re watching any of us. You don’t know for certain that there is any danger at all, do you?”
Gradually, his words sank in and made sense. She did not want to make anything worse than it already was. She stopped struggling and Torchay loosened his hold. He didn’t let go of her entirely—he knew her too well for that—but he would know she was listening now.
“You have to trust in the plan.” He led her back toward their place near the gate where his well-trained horse waited, calmly cropping grass. Obed followed, leading Kallista’s mount.
“They’re my daughters too, remember?” Torchay said. “Blood or no, Lorynda and Rozite are both mine. Don’t you think I want to be there myself, watching over them, as much as you do? But this was the plan. To draw attention our way, make anyone interested come after us. And for that, we need Obed here.
“If we’re drawing attention to you, I want our best fighters protecting you, and that’s Obed and me. I won’t risk you, too. We fought through rebels more than once on our way here, and more than once, it was Obed who made the difference. Trust the plan. Trust Stone and Fox and Merinda to keep them safe.”
“Fox is blind, and Merinda’s a healer, not a fighter.”
“You know as well as I do that Fox’s blindness doesn’t make any difference in his ability to fight. That extra sense of knowing he has from your magic gives him eyes in the back of his head. You’ve seen it. You know it. And a healer’s exactly what they need right now with Aisse so close to her time. You brought Merinda into the ilian. She’ll watch over the girls and Aisse like they were her own.”
The durissas rites weren’t used much in the cities any more, but in the countryside, in the mountains and plains, they were still fairly common. During a crisis a person could be temporarily made ilias, or two iliani could bind themselves into one, swearing to guard the others—especially the children—as their own.
Merinda had come out from the capital, a cheerful, comfortable tabby cat of a woman, to help with the twins’ births and wait for Aisse’s baby, so she had been present and available when Courier Torvyll had brought word of the emergency. Merinda had accepted Kallista’s offer, taken the bracelet from Kallista’s own arm bound together with the band from Torchay’s ankle, and become part of their ilian just before they’d left on their separate journeys.
Usually a durissas bond lasted only as long as the crisis, though sometimes it became permanent, if a child resulted or the parties agreed. In this instance, Kallista didn’t care much which way it went, as long as Merinda took care of those who needed her. Kallista couldn’t do it, and it was ripping her apart.
At the gate again, Torchay looped an arm around her neck for a rough hug. “They’ll be all right.”
“How do you know?” Kallista couldn’t stop the retort, her fears eating holes in her. “You don’t have any idea how they’re faring.”
“But you do.”
Did she? She should. At the least, she ought to be able to find out. Kallista took a deep breath, fighting for calm. Could she do it?
Turning her back on the city, she faced North and opened herself. There, that was the sound of all the people dammed up before the gate, talking, laughing, complaining. She named it and set it aside, letting it fade from her consciousness. And that was the horses, and those noises belonged to the other animals—cows, chickens, dogs, cats. Kallista closed them from her mind as well.
She shut out the sound of the wind whipping the flags atop the city walls and making the trees whisper to each other. One at a time, she identified and eliminated the sounds falling on her physical ears. With everything that was in her, she listened for more. And she heard nothing.
No hum from the mountains. No whisper from the sun. No joyous song of magic.
She wanted to scream with frustration. Once, she had destroyed a demon with the magic she wielded. Today, she could not destroy a gnat.
Kallista pulled back inside herself and let the physical world back in. Other female naitani gradually lost their magic during pregnancy and gradually got it back after the birth. Kallista’s had vanished all at once, and it had yet to reappear. At least she still had the assurance of the magical links binding her to her iliasti that the magic would return.
She wouldn’t worry—hadn’t worried about the magic’s absence until Courier Torvyll had arrived at their mountain home, where they had retreated for the birth of their children, with news of the rebellion spreading from the plains westward into the mountains, toward Arikon. Now Kallista wanted it back. The sooner her magic returned, the sooner she could help quash the rebellion and go back home.
Needing the reassurance, Kallista reached for the place deep inside her where her magic slept, where the links with her iliasti abided, and touched them with incorporeal fingers. There was Torchay and there, Obed. And—stormwaves of panic rolled through her.
She caught Torchay’s arm to keep from falling. “They’re gone.”
“What?” He put an arm around her, held her up. “Who’s gone?”
“The others. Fox and Stone and Aisse. The links are gone. I can’t find them.” She wrapped her hand in his tunic and held on tight, shaking. “Oh Goddess, they’re gone.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she snapped, again taking refuge from fear in anger. “The links were there. Now they’re not.”
“Look again.”
She already was, scarcely aware of Obed dismounting, coming to stand close, at guard. She rummaged through that hidden place. Obed, there. Torchay there. Fox…not there. Nor Stone. Nor Aisse. Frantic,
