Gail Dayton - The Compass Rose

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.”

“I know.” Kallista grinned, knowing he couldn’t see it in the dark. “But they are in the Handbook of Rules for Friends. Right after ‘See that your friend gets back home after drinking all night.’”

Torchay turned his back to her. “Go to sleep.”

Kallista turned over and settled her back against his, as they slept in the field while hunting bandits. “Yes, Sergeant.”

She slept the sun around before waking early and alone on the second morning. A smiling acolyte in the yellow-trimmed white of a South naitan-in-training led her to the baths on the floor below. Kallista paddled about in company with a trio of chubby toddlers and their pregnant minder before being escorted firmly but politely to breakfast in the prelate’s office with her hair dripping down her back. There she not only found the green-robed elder, but Torchay looking entirely too comfortable. The first finger on his left hand wore a white-bandaged splint, but it didn’t seem to interfere with his ease.

“Eat, child.” The woman indicated a tray near overflowing with food.

Torchay picked up the plate and began filling it, ignoring Kallista’s sour look.

“I am sorry, Mother,” she said. “I don’t know your name.”

“Mother is fine. Mother Edyne, if you insist on more.”

Kallista took the food Torchay handed her and began to eat, discovering an appetite she hadn’t recognized.

“Your guard has told me what he observed that morning,” Mother Edyne said without waiting. “Tell me what you experienced.”

Over sweet buns, early melon and steaming cha brewed from leaves shipped over the southern mountains from the lands beyond, Kallista told her. When she had finished, the prelate frowned.

“This magic…” Mother Edyne shook her head. “It has frightened people. It smells of the mysteries of the West. That is why I’ve kept you here, you know. So that their fear would have no target.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” Kallista shuddered. No one had been found with West magic in over fifty years. “But I am a North naitan. I’ve always been North. Not West.”

“I admit it puzzles me.” Edyne peered at Kallista, her eyes sharp green. “Have you found a mark somewhere on your body? One that you did not have before.”

Kallista felt Torchay’s gaze on her as she lied. “No. Nothing like that.”

The magic she had already was enough to bear. She didn’t want more. Maybe if no one knew, it would just go away. She reached back and combed her hair down closer over her neck. She didn’t have to wear a queue. It wasn’t regulation for officers the way it was for other ranks. She could grow her hair longer.