The Barbed Rose. Gail Dayton

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      She looked up once, saw Obed watching with his flat, black stare, his face devoid of all expression. Save for the tension she could see in his jaw, the flaring of his nostrils. He was not happy.

      Deliberately, she turned from him, pressed a kiss to Joh’s forehead and rested her cheek against his hair.

      “Oh God.” Joh was fully present now, his voice a frog’s croak.

      He held Kallista tight enough almost to hurt. She couldn’t tell whether the damp against her breasts where his head was cradled was sweat or tears. It didn’t matter. She stroked a hand down the long, straight sweep of his hair, past his shoulders to his waist. “Tell us your dream.”

      Joh let her go, sitting up, drawing himself straight as he wiped his face with both hands. “Not here. Sergeant Om—Torchay is right. This should not be spoken of in this room. It already invades our sleep. We do not need more.”

      Kallista pulled on the tunic Torchay handed her, but didn’t take time for trousers. Obed went with her into the parlor, but waited for the others in silence, across the room from her.

      “Is this how you keep your vows as ilias? Your promise to be one of us?” Kallista’s question brought Obed’s head around, and he stared at her.

      “I ask only to serve you,” he said after a moment, “and through you, the One above us all. But how can I, if I am not given the opportunity. Even the newest among us has been given—”

      “Beware what you ask for, Obed.” Torchay came into the room, Joh jingling behind him, both of them fully dressed. “Believe me when I tell you, you do not want these dreams. You don’t.” Torchay settled onto the sofa beside Kallista, touched her shoulder.

      Joh sat on her other side, a careful distance away—enough room for Obed between. Kallista beckoned him closer without even glancing at her dark ilias. His choice, his problem. Joh obeyed, submitting to her arm around his shoulders with only a faint twitch.

      “Before, when—” Joh hesitated, choosing words. “When Torchay told his dream, I heard him say ‘demons,’ but I still thought ‘dreams.’ I thought ‘A dream is not so bad. A dream isn’t real.’ Demons are disturbing, perhaps even distressing, but in a dream, they aren’t real. I thought Torchay…exaggerated.”

      He took a deep breath, hands closing blindly into fists. Kallista covered one with her hand, turning it, clasping it. After a time, he gripped her tight.

      “I was wrong,” he said. “It was not as real as you, here, holding my hand.” He curled his other hand around hers. “But it was no dream.”

      “Yes,” Torchay said. “What did you dream?”

      Joh hesitated, eyes seeming to turn inward. Kallista used her free hand to tuck a stray strand of hair behind his ear, wondering whether she should encourage him or simply wait.

      “I dreamed demons.” He turned his eyes on Kallista, capturing her gaze, and held it while he spoke. As if she could keep the horror at bay. “Seven of them,” he said. “The number of misfortune.”

      Seven. Kallista didn’t speak aloud, not at this point. She wanted him to tell it at his own pace, without interruption, but her heart sank. Seven demons? Goddess help them all.

      “Six were small, as if the largest, the oldest—” a sudden shudder caught him, but his eyes never left hers “—the most evil of them had pinched off bits of itself and sent them out to cause independent mischief. No—not mischief. Wickedness. Destruction. Death out of time.”

      “Why do you say that?” Kallista asked. “Death out of time?”

      He blinked, slowly, the blue of his eyes shuttered, then shining again. “While I was away—in prison—I came to understand that death in itself is part of life. A blessing. It is death that comes out of its proper time that is an evil thing.”

      She tucked his words away to consider later. “Did you see all seven of the demons?”

      “I could not see forms. Only darkness. Seven…darknesses. Scattered across Adara.”

      “Could you see where?”

      “Here. At least one of them is here. Maybe two. If not here in Arikon, the second is close, I think. The others—” He grimaced. “I don’t know. Not close, but how far away, I can’t say.”

      Kallista struggled to wake the magic, to send it questing forth, seeking evil, but it merely turned round on its rug and lay down again. She swore. Torchay soothed her temper with a hand on her shoulder.

      “Why did you shout?” he asked.

      “Shout?” Joh chuckled, wry and self-mocking. “Speak truth. I screamed, friend.”

      “Ilias,” Torchay corrected.

      Joh’s lips pressed tight. He didn’t seem quite ready to accept the name or the role. But he clung to Kallista’s hand. “It attacked me—I assume the same way it did you.” He shuddered and Kallista put her arm around him again, hoping it would help. “That foulness…touched me. It was like—like the filth in the prison, but all that evil concentrated together into one touch that went through me.”

      He hunted words, chose them with desperate care. “It touched not just my skin, my outside, but me. It wiped that rotting filth on—on my soul. I can’t—God.” He shuddered. “I may never feel clean again.”

      “Now? You feel it now?” The idea worried Kallista. Could a man wear two marks?

      She reached through her skin-to-skin link with Joh and kicked the magic awake. It had to be pushed and prodded every inch of the way, leaving Joh gasping with every shove as she hunted any sign of a lingering taint.

      “You’re clean.” Relief had her leaning her forehead against his. “The demon left nothing behind.”

      “Saints and sinners.” Joh shifted, turning his face away from the intimacy. “Is it like that every time?” He looked at Torchay, who shrugged.

      “She lost her magic the day I was marked,” he said. “After she destroyed the demon. I wouldn’t know. Before yesterday, I’ve only been part of the magic that once.”

      Both men turned to look at Obed. Kallista looked, too. He wore his tattoos like a mask. “Yes,” he said, voice empty. “The magic always feels good. Sometimes it feels better than other times, but always, it is good.”

      “You are sure the demon…left nothing?” Joh squeezed Kallista’s hand, brought her attention back to him. “Why do I still feel it?”

      “Memories linger.” She leaned toward him, not particularly thinking of a kiss, but when he turned his face away to avoid one, she felt the loss.

      Sick to death of men pulling away from her, Kallista stood and headed for the bedroom. “We need to see what this magic will do. As soon as we eat.”

      Through the half-closed door as she hunted clean trousers, she heard the hoarse tenor of Torchay’s voice quietly pitching into Joh. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t you ever again turn away. If she wants a kiss, you give it. Whatever she wants, you give it.”

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