03 - The Eternal Rose (23 page)

Kallista rubbed away the tears that followed his fingers. “Stone,” she mumbled, embarrassed. “I was hunting Stone.” She cleared her throat of its tightness, but it didn't help. “It hurts so much, Torchay. I can't make it stop hurting."

“All right, then.” He laced his fingers with hers. “Let's go find him. Which way?” He looked around, seemed to pick a direction at random, and pointed. “That way? Or over there?” He pointed back over his shoulder.

“Torchay, you can't come with me. You're not a naitan."

“You're no’ leaving me behind.” He started to fold his arms and realized he held her hand. He folded one arm and held on as if he feared she'd leave him if he let go. He was right.

But what would happen to him if she left him here?

“Torchay, no. You have to go back."

He shook his head. Goddess, he could be so stubborn. “No’ without you."

“You have no business going where I'm going. You couldn't get back."

“Can't get back now. I tried.” He shrugged as if it didn't matter in the least. “I'm fairly certain it's impossible unless you take me. Doesn't matter. You're no’ going anywhere without me. After sixteen years, I think you'd have learned that much. Besides, if I have no business going there, neither have you."

“But—” She turned away from him, needing to find what would fill that hollow burning.

“Stone's
gone,
Kallista. I know it hurts. I know losing the link to the lad must have been worse than anything I can imagine. But you can't fix it this way. You'll only bollix things up worse."

“You don't
understand
.” Kallista tried to twist her hand free, but he held on tight, somehow stronger in this misty landscape than he'd ever been in the flesh.

Wasn't that wrong? She was the naitan. She should be the stronger, especially here.

“Maybe I don't,” he admitted. “But I think there's a few things you're not understanding yourself. What about the promise you made Stone? To get his boy back
no matter what?
If you're wandering around here in the mists, who's going to do that?

“We've learned a few things as well, while you've been off wandering. Sky's not the only one. And they're not bondservants. They're slaves.” His words fell like stones on her flesh.

“If you don't care about your promises, what about your ilian? What about your children? Do you want to leave Lorynda and Rozite without any blood parents at all? If you stay, I stay, remember? Are you really that selfish?"

His scorn ripped her open.
Goddess,
was that what she'd been? Selfish? So wrapped up in her own pain that she'd forgotten everything and everyone else?

Kallista looked down at her dreamself, at the gash above her heart pouring blood-red pain out to stain the mist. “I'm afraid,” she sobbed. “It hurt so much to lose Stone, to feel that link snap. I couldn't bear to lose any of the rest of you."

“So you'll leave us behind to suffer instead?” His scorn didn't lessen. Couldn't he see her bleeding?

But when she looked at Torchay, she saw he was bleeding too. From two wounds, not just one, both of them heart-deep.

“Goddess,
no
.” She pressed her hands over his heart, carrying his along when he refused to let her go, trying to stop the bleeding. She didn't think he would actually bleed out here in the dreamscape. The blood wasn't real. It was a representation of their pain. But you never knew.

Events on the dreamplane sometimes had an effect in the physical world. You never knew which events, or what the effect would be.

“Why two?” Kallista had to know. “Why are you bleeding twice?"

“This one's Stone.” Torchay touched her hand to it, his eyes locked on hers. “And this one's you."

“Oh, Goddess.” Kallista moaned, sagging against him, still trying without success to stop the gushing flow. “I didn't know. I didn't think—"

“No, you didn't."

“I can't stop it. I can't heal it.” Again and again she tried to call magic, to set it to mending what was broken. And every time, she failed.

“I don't think magic can heal this sort of pain.” Torchay brought her in close against him, matching wound to wound, so that their pain flowed into each other. “At least, not that kind of magic. I think love's the only thing that can do it. Love's the most magical thing there is."

And as Torchay's pain, his love flowed into her through the awful gash in her dreamself, it began—just a bit—to fill up that burning emptiness inside her.

“I have been so stupid. Can you all forgive me?"

“Yes, you have been. But I should have expected it, you do stupidity so often and so well.” He was grinning at her when she looked up at him. “As for forgiving, I suppose I have to, don't I? Since I'm in love with you and all. You'll have to go back and ask the others, though. Aisse is likely to smack you first, before she does, she's that mad at you."

Kallista pressed a hand over her own wound, and this time managed to seal it up, rather like pressing layers of soft clay together. It still oozed a bit, but it stayed shut. Torchay's injuries sealed up the same way, when he helped.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

He shrugged. “I couldn't let you go off alone, could I? I'm your bodyguard."

She tugged at a lock of his hair, laughing. “I think this could be considered beyond the call of duty."

Then she turned away to study the featureless dreamscape. Her smile faded. She didn't recognize anything. There was nothing for her
to
recognize.

“I don't know if I can find the way back,” she said after several long moments of frantic searching.

“You'd better. I certainly can't. I don't know how I got here to start with."

“Weren't you dreaming?” Kallista started walking, sending up a quiet prayer for guidance.

“No. I was making love to you.” Torchay held her hand as he stalked beside her, bristling with protectiveness even here.

“And you ... jumped?” She cocked an eyebrow at him.

He shrugged, then stopped, pulling her around to face him. “You know the way back,” he said. “Of course you know the way. Stone's gone, and I'm
here,
but you've got six other links. You've cut them off, but they're still there. All you have to do is grab hold, the way you caught me. They'll lead us home."

Goddess,
how unbelievably stupid and selfish she'd been. The pain of her loss was no excuse. They'd all suffered the same loss. She'd been too wrapped up in her own misery to see it.

“Do you think the children will forgive me?” Kallista said in a small, contrite voice.

“Ah.” Torchay looked worried as he shook his head. “That one's going to be tricky. You may have to work for it, before they decide to trust that you'll not abandon them again."

“But we have to get back first.” She blew out a breath and held on tight to Torchay as she
reached
for her other links.

She'd squeezed them down so tight and so thin that she was almost afraid to touch them, for fear they'd tear and flutter away like spider webs on the breeze. She breathed on the links. They shuddered, but held, warming under her breath. Carefully, she opened the painful constriction and moaned as the cramped ache eased.

Half her pain had been self-inflicted, caused when she'd cut herself off from her iliasti. Yet more stupidity.

“Hold on.” Kallista tightened her grip on Torchay's dream hand and grasped the links in her other as they plumped with magic, grew strong and resilient. Kallista pulled hard on them.

She didn't draw magic through them, but rather used them to guide her, Torchay flying behind her across the measureless distance of the dreamscape. Twice, she had to wrap magic around Torchay's self when he threatened to leave bits of it behind, but eventually, finally, she saw the opening in the dreamfog.

They were lying on their backs, she and Torchay, naked and helpless in the bed she shared with Obed. Their ilian had gathered as Leyja and Keldrey worked frantically over Torchay.

“What did you do?” Kallista glanced at him, alarmed.

“I told you. I have no idea. I just—came after you."

“Well, get back down there where you belong. Right now.” She gave him a hard shove and followed him down to make sure.

He didn't seem to quite know how to put himself ... back into himself.

“Like this.” Kallista followed the umbilical that tied her to her body, flowing into it as if she'd never been away. She opened her eyes to see Keldrey's backside cantilevered over her as he breathed for Torchay.

What was wrong with him? She reached out to touch.

“Somebody stop her before she hurts him again,” Keldrey growled, rising to give Leyja room to work.

Obed caught Kallista's hand and pulled her gently away.

“Wait.” She struggled to sit up. “What's going on? What's wrong with Torchay?"

Everyone turned to stare at her, except Keldrey who bent to give Torchay another breath. Obed spun her in his arms and grabbed her face between his hands, searching her eyes as if scarcely able to believe what he saw. “Kallista?"

She smiled. “Yes, love, I'm back. I'm sorry I left you.” But she didn't have time now to indulge in weepy reunions or extended hugs. She pulled herself out of Obed's embrace.

“What's wrong with Torchay?” Kallista crawled around Keldrey to Torchay's head and brushed his hair off his high forehead.

“You're the naitan, you tell us.” Keldrey paused to give another breath. “We thought he was getting through to you. Then he collapsed."

Hadn't he got back into his body? Kallista didn't know, could see only reality. No, the dreamworld was reality too, just a different kind of reality. She couldn't see it now. But—she could see through Joh's eyes and her own at the same time. Why couldn't she see the physical and metaphysical the same way?

Kallista drew magic. She closed her eyes tight and opened them while leaving her eyelids closed. And there he was, hovering half an armslength above his body. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Floating?” Torchay rearranged himself to sit cross-legged in midair.

“I'm compressing his chest,” Leyja said. “To keep his heart beating."

“Not you.” Kallista waved a negating hand at Leyja. “Torchay."

“He's here?” Obed shivered as he looked around the room.

“Where?” Joh brightened, his looking eager and curious. He found every new thing fascinating.

“There.” Kallista gestured toward her beloved's incorporeal self. “What—” She opened her eyes and peered with all her vision at him. “Did you cut yourself completely free of your body? Why in the world—"

“I told you, I wasn't letting you go anywhere without me.” He shrugged, which made him bob up and down. “And I didn't know what in blazes I was doing."

“No, don't stop,” Kallista said when it seemed Leyja would cease her laboring. “We have to keep him going till we can get him ... reattached."

“We'll keep going till you say stop.” Keldrey took over the chest compressions. “However long it takes."

“Next time,” Kallista scolded Torchay, “don't take everything with you when you
jump
, or whatever it was you did. Leave something behind so you can find your way back."

“I had you to bring me back.” Torchay arched an eyebrow at her. “Now, are you going to finish the job or no'?"

“Saints, you can't do anything for yourself, can you?” With a sigh and a weary, teasing shake of her head, Kallista called magic, reveling in the sensation as it flowed through the links to her. Without Stone, it was sluggish and resistant, like drawing mud from a well rather than water, but it came.

She reached
through
Torchay's body and out again to capture a foot-shaped bit and haul it into his well-loved, familiar body. It took a bit more magic to sweep all of him out of the dreamscape and back inside his physical self, but once there, he stuck nicely. Magic wasn't needed to keep him in place.

“Wait,” she said. “Before you leave this place completely—
watch
. Learn.” And she showed him how to make a safe shift into the dreamworld, so that he could find his way back to a body that only slept. “I hope you don't have to do it again, but if you do, I want you to know how. I want you safe. I love you."

“I love you.” The words were spoken in his familiar raspy tenor as he opened his eyes to look at her.

Leyja and Keldrey scrambled out of the way before he raised onto an elbow and looked around at the rest of their iliasti. “Well. That was quite an adventure."

“What happened to you?” Joh asked.

Aisse climbed onto the bed to hug Kallista. Then she broke it off, clouted Kallista on the head, and hugged her again.

Kallista's vision, still as much in the dreamworld as in the physical, could see their weeping wounds bleeding into each other, beginning to fill up the empty space left when Stone was torn from them. She hugged Aisse tight, then reached for Fox, climbing over Torchay's legs to get to him.

Fox pressed his face against her. “Did you see Stone?"

“No.” Kallista kissed his cheek, his eyes. “I think if we had, we couldn't have come back. He's gone too far for any of us to reach. But he's waiting for us, when our turns come—a long,
long
time from now."

Fox's laugh cracked, but it was a laugh. He pushed her toward Viyelle for more hugs, more kisses. Finally, she had hugged each one of her iliasti and was nestled again in Torchay's arms. Obed's dark eyes burned into her, with happiness and envy both. She could feel it hissing through the link, but she didn't know what to do about it. She was getting tired of the jealousy, so she ignored it.

Everyone crowded onto the bed while Torchay told the tale of his adventures. Then they had to explain to Kallista about the runaway-slave-turned-thief who had dropped into the family courtyard out of a tree and had now apparently vanished back up that tree into the darkness from which he'd come.

Leyja cursed and stomped around a bit when that was discovered, but finally admitted there was nothing to be done about it now, and if the thief returned, they'd know he was sincere in his offer. Maybe. Leyja seemed reluctant to trust anything having to do with this thief.