01 - The Compass Rose by Gail Dayton Read Free Book Online

deep oceans, to shift whole mountains and build a hundred cities. It permeated her, deep into each strand of hair, every shred of callused skin on her feet. She screamed, and power poured in through her open mouth. She couldn’t contain it all. She had to rid herself of it somehow. Kallista threw her hands wide, as if throwing lightning from her fingertips, and the magic exploded from her.
    Not in bright sparks, but as a shock wave of darkness, a sort of black mist, roiling out in all directions from where she stood at the epicenter. It settled over the landscape, clinging like some dark dew to everything it touched. And Tibrans began to die.
    Some of them screamed, clawing at their faces as if it burned. Others just dropped in their tracks. Others—she couldn’t see clearly. A few turned and ran when they saw the opaque fog approach, but it moved as fast as the lightning she threw. There was no escape.
    Panicked, Kallista tried to call it back, but the magic refused to answer. Would it kill everything it touched? She looked down at Torchay where he knelt by her side, head bent, saw the dark glitter clinging to the burnished red of his hair. She tried to brush it off, and it melted away like the mist it resembled, leaving nothing behind. Not even dampness.
    Torchay turned his face up to hers, his eyes as wide and frightened as she knew her own must be. “What did you just do?”
     
    In the high mountain pass on the southern edge of the Mother Range, huddled over a feeble fire just at dawn, the trader lifted his head. He sensed something. A new thing, strange and powerful—and oh so seductive. He straightened, searching with all his senses. Was he finally to discover what he had been seeking for so long?
    When it hit him, bowing him backward in a spine-cracking convulsion, he shouted for sheer joy. Incredible power rushed through him, recognizing him, welcoming him, promising him his every dream fulfilled. It left him as quickly as it had come, but this time it left him filled with hope, with eager purpose, rather than anxious desperation.
    No, not this time. This was as like his previous experience as the sun was like the moon. It was promise kept. It pulled at him, compelled him onward, sped his steps. His heart’s desire awaited him, and the faster he traveled, the sooner he would have it.
    He picked himself up from the dirt where he lay, his traveling companions hovering in a fearful circle around him. “Move, you sluggards!” he bellowed. “I want to be on my way before the sun reaches the treetops.”
     
    He hurt. All over, but especially his head. And there was dirt in his mouth. And his mouth was too dry to spit. Stone tried anyway. He succeeded in getting rid of some of it. He wiped his hand on his pants and scraped more of the grit off his tongue with his fingers.
    Where was he? What had happened? They’d made it through the breach, somehow alive and— Khralsh , his head hurt.
    Ocean was gone, incinerated by an Adaran witch. He’d taken his partner, Moon, with him. River, Wolf, Snow—too many to name—had fallen to arrows or worse. But he and Fox had made it through. He was certain of that. They’d crossed into the city, cleared the houses nearest the wall, which were mostly cleared already save for a screeching crone who’d brained him with a broom and died on Fox’s bayonet. They’d reloaded, fired the houses and left them burning to advance to the next street.
    Stone had killed the archer shooting at them from the roof and reloaded, then they’d checked the house. Empty. The dead archer was a woman. That had shocked him, but Fox reminded him she was dead now, paying the price of her blasphemy in the afterlife. They’d clattered back down the stairs and set the place alight. Then…
    He scrubbed a hand across his face. The light hurt his eyes, even though they were still closed. It wasn’t supposed to be light, was it? Wait—yes, the sun had come up. He remembered that. It had just risen over