The Compass Rose

“No, General.” He referred to his notes on the scraps of paper in his hand. “We sent out patrols immediately after—”

“I know that. Don’t tell me what I already know. Are our people dead?”

“No, General,” he repeated. “The citizens within the range of the…weapon…for the most part seem to have taken no harm, according to those patrols. The first Adarans we’ve found dead so far have all been known criminals. Thieves. Extortionists. That sort of thing.”

Kallista leaned unobtrusively on her bodyguard as her knees threatened to buckle in relief. When Torchay had survived the dark magic, she’d begun to hope, but had been afraid to trust it.

General Uskenda nodded and turned her piercing gray glare on Kallista. “Well, Captain? What exactly did happen? What sort of—” she eyed the blue of Kallista’s tunic “—of North magic was that?”

“I…can’t say.” Not because it was a naitani secret, but because she didn’t know. However, generals—most of those she’d known—preferred secrets to ignorance.

The general snorted. “Never knew any North magic to behave like that.”

“No, General.” Not one of the naitani in the North Academy when Kallista was attending had shown any magic resembling what she had just done. No instructor had ever mentioned the possibility of anything like it. And as a mature naitan with well-established magic, Kallista should not have been able to do it. No naitan had more than one gift. Sometimes the gift manifested itself in different ways, like Iranda being able to both light and burn, but it was always the same gift.

“No?” Uskenda raised a gray-streaked eyebrow. “Are you saying you didn’t just single-handedly wipe out an army?”

“That’s not—” Kallista came to hard attention. “No, General. The enemy was destroyed by magic, and I did cast the magic. But—” She tried to keep her voice from sounding as distraught as she felt, but feared she failed. “I don’t know what it was that I did—other than casting the magic—and I don’t know how I did it.”

The general hmmphed again, staring at her as if she could tell that Kallista kept secrets. “Very well. Maybe the naitani at the temple will know. Report for investigation.”

“Now?”

“Of course now.” Uskenda’s scowl actually made Kallista shiver. “Do you think I mean next week? You decimated the Tibran army, you didn’t annihilate it. With their ships foundered, they’re trapped here. We’ve still got a city to defend. Our numbers might just be close to even now. If we can pin them here, keep them from shifting their cannon up the coast to Kishkim, where they’ve got another damn army but not so many cannon, maybe we can keep them from taking Kishkim and Ukiny. We need to know what you did and whether you can do it again.”

“Yes, General.” Kallista saluted and departed for the Mother Temple, Torchay shadowing her. She was so tired she could barely stand, much less walk straight, but General Uskenda was right. They weren’t out of danger.

Torchay took her arm, supporting her, though she knew he had to be at the end of his strength as well. “You need to rest,” he said. “Not answer a load of unanswerable questions.”

“I’m fine.” Kallista would have blamed Torchay’s insubordination on their “friend” conversation yesterday, save that he’d always been on the insubordinate side. Especially when it came to generals. She saved her breath for walking and keeping her eyes open.

Ukiny was large enough to have three temples. Two devoted themselves primarily to education and healing, though they also served their areas as worship centers. The other was the first temple in the city, the Mother Temple. It provided education and healing like the others, as well as local administrative needs. It sat in the center of a vast four-petaled square in the oldest section of Ukiny.

The worship hall, the central portion of the building, soared high above the more utilitarian sections. Tall arched windows of colored glass were set into white stone walls that hardly seemed the same material of which the city fortifications were built. Though Kallista hadn’t been inside the Mother Temple yet, she knew that corridors would lead from each of the four entrances to the sanctuary in the center. Every temple in Adara was built to the same plan, whether in the smallest village or the capital city.

Rooms to either side of the corridors conducted temple business; healing to the east, schools on the north, administration and records, including the city’s birth, death and marriage records in the south. To the west, the direction from which they approached, the rooms served as the temple’s library and archives. Centuries of records were stored in the rooms to either side of the black marble corridor they traversed.

The priests of each temple formed their own ilian—bound as mates by holy oath—and lived in a big house across the southern plaza from the temple. She’d been raised in such a house with a dozen parents and half a dozen sedili, her sisters and brothers in the ilian who were close in age. Memories swarmed Kallista’s mind as they entered the sanctuary. She was too tired to keep them at bay. She’d run tame with her sedili in the temple built of gray mountain granite shipped down the rivers that joined there in Turysh. She’d been the only one of them with magic. When her magic woke in the North the way it had, it had set her apart from her sedili even more.

“Wait here.” Torchay pushed her onto one of the benches against the wall in the worship center reserved for the old and infirm who couldn’t stand for long periods. “I’ll find the prelate.”

Kallista thought about protesting, reminding him that she was neither feeble nor aged, and was his superior besides, but at the moment she didn’t feel any of those things. Using her lightning often left her tired, but not drained like this. She leaned her head against the wall and watched the sunlight dance in the colored glass.

She traced its downward path till it sparkled on the floor mosaic, the compass rose depicted in every Adaran temple. A slash of blue tile lightning pointed north. To the east, the compass arm was a green twining vine. Yellow flame stretched south, a blackthorned briar pointed to the west, and in the center, uniting the four cardinal points was the red rose of the One.

The compass rose symbolized both the gifts of magic and the One Herself. Just as a rose had many petals yet formed a single flower, so the One had many aspects, yet was still One God, holding all that ever was and ever would be within Her being. All came from Her and all returned when its time was done.

Kallista had no idea how much time had passed before Torchay returned with a plump, smiling gray-haired woman dressed in a green robe over her loose white shirt and gray trousers. She struggled to her feet and bowed. “Honor to you, Mother. I am Kallista Varyl. I’ve been sent by General Uskenda to be examined—”

“Of course you have, dear. Come.” The woman put her arm around Kallista’s waist and guided her toward the leaf-and-vine-decorated entrance to the eastern corridor. “You’re exhausted. You should rest.”

“The general was most explicit that I be examined right away.” She had never failed in her duty and didn’t intend to begin now.

“How can I examine anything when you’re asleep on your feet? No, you come and rest, and your ilias with you.”

“He’s not my ilias.” It seemed as if she had to force the words past her cottony tongue. Or maybe it was her brain that was cottony. “He’s my friend. I mean, my bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard, ilias.” The woman waved a dismissive hand. “All the same. Like aspects of the One.”

She ushered Kallista into a small room containing a large bed, and pushed her onto it. “Rest. You too.” She pushed Torchay after Kallista. “Sleep. I will speak with those I must. When you wake up, we’ll talk.”

Something was wrong here. Kallista had to think for a wide space of time before she knew what it was. “Torchay doesn’t sleep with me,” she mumbled. “Not in the same bed. He’s my bodyguard.”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” the prelate said as she was closing the door. “Of course he does. Now sleep.”

The word must have held magic, for instantly Kallista fell into unconsciousness. She fought it. There was something she needed to do, warnings she needed to give, but her body wouldn’t release her from its exhaustion.

She wandered in dreams through shining landscapes and blurring fogs, hunting something. Abruptly, she flew through the air, images blurring below her until she stood in the soot-blackened street before the broken wall around Ukiny.

The sun high in the sky near blinded her with its brilliance. Men and women swarmed the breach, clearing away rubble, stacking the salvageable stone near the wall in the space left after the Tibrans had burned the houses built against it. A small trickle of gravel spilled from the southern edge of the wall still standing.

“Back away,” Kallista shouted. “It’s unstable. It’s going to fall!”

But no one moved. No one seemed to hear her. When the wall gave way, sending massive stones and piles of rubble crashing down, shouts and screams of warning came too late. The workers couldn’t escape. The rock fell and they were beneath it.

“Quickly! Move the rock. Get it off before it crushes them. Adessay—” But he was dead. He couldn’t help. Kallista ran forward to pull people out of danger.

“Kallista!” Torchay called to her, drew her back, and she was lying fully dressed in a too-soft bed in a too-dark room with Torchay gripping her shoulders.

“A dream,” she breathed, rubbing her hands down her face. “It was just a dream like any other.”

“Not exactly like,” Torchay said, releasing her cautiously, as if he thought he might have to grab hold again. “I could always wake you from the others.”

“You woke me from this one.” Kallista let drowsiness claim her.

“Not till you were damned good and ready. Not till I shook you five turns and called your name five more.”

“Lie down. Go back to sleep.” She tugged at his sleeve and reluctantly, he did as she bid him.

“It’s not proper,” he grumbled. “I can take the floor. Or out in the corridor.”

“Too far away. And there isn’t any floor in this room. The bed’s too big. Big enough for two more bodies beside ours.”

“You didn’t want me here before.”

“Changed my mind. I need you to wake me from the dreams.”

He lay quiet a moment and Kallista thought he had gone to sleep. As much as he ever slept. He woke at the slightest noise. Then he spoke. “Nightmares aren’t part of a bodyguard’s duty.”