He replied without looking at her.
“Maybe
it’s a time for rules to be broken. Perhaps also…”
“What? Perhaps also what?”
“
I hesitate to say too much, but they
might have been wrong about you.”
Chuffta’s mind-voice held
regret and Oria tried not to let it dig at her. She’d long
suspected the same, of course, that she would never don her
mother’s mask, take her place among the least of the temple’s
priestesses, much less as a power of her own. Small and unimportant
problems to have, in the face of such great ones.
With no one left in sight to char, many of
the great lizards peeled off to make lazy circles in the sky. One,
however, landed at the edge of the chasm, snaking its sinuous neck
just as Chuffta would, creating a living bridge across. Something
stirred at the wing joints that had blended in before that. A
person?
“
That is a Trom,”
Chuffta said with
quiet emphasis.
“How do you know—have you seen one
before?”
His trepidation leaked through the long
pause.
“In dreams,”
he finally replied.
“Though I didn’t
know what it was when I dreamed it.”
Oria suppressed a shudder as the Trom stood,
then walked along its steed’s neck bridging the chasm to the palace
side. “Why can they cross now?”
“
The invitation might have been worded as
such, to allow that individual Trom entrance, if no one
else.”
“And what will they—” She broke off with a
strangled croak as the Destrye king first confronted the Trom, then
fell to its touch. Then another man. Lonen aborted an attack he’d
launched, dragging the third man to the side. Faint shouts rose up
from them, audible in the silence of the empty city.
The Trom seemed to ignore them, walking on
and disappearing into the palace.
“We have to go warn my mother, my brothers.”
Oria dragged herself to her feet and made for the inside, Chuffta
spreading his wings for balance at her abrupt movements.
“
How can they not know? Everyone in the
city knows what you know.”
“Then I can’t simply stay up here while they
all die.” She pushed through the outer doors, rapidly descending
through the long spirals.
“
What will it profit for you to die with
them? Remember what happened last time. And you were at peak
strength then. The last collapse weakened you severely.”
“I don’t care. I’m sick to death of being
weak. If I die with them, at least I won’t have to suffer the pain
of outliving them all.”
Chuffta said nothing more, though his
disapproval—and fear for her—wafted through her mind. Or perhaps
that was the smoke from the burning bodies carried by the afternoon
breeze through the tower windows.
It seemed easier to lift the bar at her
tower door this time, though she should have had more trouble,
being weak from her days as an invalid. Perhaps having done it once
before helped. This time no guards at all remained outside, not
even Renzo. Shouts echoed down the hall, from the direction of the
council chambers, and she ran towards them.
Then skidded to a stop.
Renzo lay in a heap, sword drawn, handsome
face crumpled like an overripe fruit. She crouched, reaching out a
tentative hand. Not to test for life, as he couldn’t possibly be
alive. Even with her inexperience, the lack of any animating force
in the abandoned flesh before her was obvious. Rather, she
struggled to understand what had happened to him. No evident wound
and yet…
“
I’ve heard it said that the Trom can
dissolve that which makes bone strong.”
“They chew the bones of their enemies,” she
whispered, remembering how the Destrye king seemed to simply
collapse at the Trom’s touch.
“
Apparently more than a
metaphor.”
Needing to reassure them both, for Chuffta
sounded unsettled, too, she reached up and stroked the silken
scales of his breast, where the powerful wing muscles flexed. The
shouts from the council chambers had faded, though voices harsh
with anger occasionally echoed through, too vague for her to make
out words. No clash of weapons.
Feeling her defenselessness, she took up
Renzo’s sword, easing it from his pulped fingers with the burn of
nausea in her throat. It was heavier than it looked, dragging at
her shoulder and elbow.
“
It’s not too late to go back. You walk
into great danger.”
“I wouldn’t be able to lift the bar into
place again. We’d be trapped up there while the great danger came
after us.” And she wasn’t sure if she could climb all those stairs.
Her body still didn’t feel right, the enervation of her collapse
exacerbating the poor condition brought on by her soft existence.
Another fruit of Bára to be bruised and discarded. Too sweet and
overripe.
Determined to be more than that, she headed
to the council chambers, skirting the crumpled bodies—both Destrye
and Báran—strewn about like the discarded skin and gristle from one
of Chuffta’s carnivorous meals. Nobody guarded the council doors,
not even the ceremonial guard who’d remained there day and night
all her life. The sucking sensation of crashing loss pulled at her,
leaving her as boneless as all those dead.
Time enough to grieve later, if she
survived.
She straightened her spine, imagining it
lined with steel the Trom could not dissolve, and edged into the
room.
And got her first close look at the
Trom.
Not benevolent in appearance by any stretch,
the Trom looked like the reverse of the kills it left in its wake,
as if it took their bones to make its own, then coated them with a
layer of finely scaled skin.
It stood before Nat, who wore his mask and
robes—and their father’s crown. The sight shouldn’t have made her
angry, but it did. War must change all the rules, for none of the
Báran or temple laws provided for Nat to be crowned king. Yar stood
at his right shoulder. Both of them simmered with grien, drawing
from the pool that must have been slowly rebuilding as High
Priestess Febe put the junior priestesses to work. Nat seemed to be
speaking to the Trom in low tones, gesturing to the group of
Destrye.
She picked out Lonen easily—not for his
double-headed axe this time, for he was barehanded—but because he
was staring at her with a hard, even mean, expression. Perhaps the
face of a man who had just watched his father and brother fall
boneless to the ground in less than a heartbeat. He stood at the
forefront of his men, not bloodied as he’d been the day of
surrender, but no less intimidating for that. He pointed at her—no,
at the sword she carried—then at the floor.
Feeling stupid as well as weak, she gripped
the sword tighter, as if he could take it away from her from across
the room. Even though her arm muscles already wept with fatigue so
much that she’d love nothing better than to cast it away.
Nat’s raised voice carried across the room.
“I command you! Kill them all, now.”
The Trom’s reply slithered across the
polished stones, like dry husks rubbed together, reverberating on a
mental and emotional level that sawed across her raw sensibilities.
“The Trom do not answer to you.”
“I am King of Bára and I summoned you for
this purpose,” Nat proclaimed in ringing tones that nevertheless
evoked his teenage arguments with their father. He’d never done
well being thwarted, had always been too prideful and easily
frustrated.
“You are not the Summoner,” the Trom
replied, without heat or interest.
“Princess Oria.” The hissed whisper dragged
her attention away. Lonen and his men had edged closer. She turned,
struggling to point the heavy sword at him. He shook his head at
her. “Drop the sword. It won’t hurt you if you’re not a
threat.”
Uncertain, she surveyed him. “Do you think
it’s a trick?” she asked Chuffta.
“
It could be. But none of the Destrye
hold weapons, so they must believe it to be true.”
“Do as I command as King of Bára or face the
consequences!” Nat’s voice grew louder, along with the palpably
building tension of contained magic and incipient violence,
buffeting Oria like the hot desert winds that brought late summer
sandstorms.
“Oria! What in Grienon are you doing out of
your tower?” Yar had spotted her and sounded overexcited, his voice
cracking with it. “Get over here now.”
“Be careful,” Lonen said, no longer
bothering to whisper, holding her gaze, his own urgent. “If you
offer threat of any kind or point a weapon at that thing, it kills
with a touch. Blades pass right through it—even wielded by someone
who knows how to hold one correctly.”
“Oria! Attend me,” Nat thundered.
Something changed in the tenor of magic in
the room. The Trom looked at her now, matte-black eyes boring into
her from even that distance. “Oria,” it said. “Princess Ponen.”
Her own roiling energy, still boiling over
with all those death agonies, surged within her at the Trom’s
words. Swelling up the way grien was said to, an irresistible force
that yearned for release. If only she knew how. The Trom stepped
away from Nat and Yar, turning in her direction. It lifted a hand
that seemed to have no palm, only long, articulated fingers, like
the desert spiders with bodies so small they seemed to be all leg.
A kind of greeting? No more emotion showed in its still face than
in the golden masks of the temple. With a start of near revulsion,
Oria realized those masks must be modeled on Trom faces.
“Put down the sword, Oria.” Lonen sounded
less commanding than imploring. He might be her enemy, but she
didn’t think he wished for her death. A great deal of emotion
surged through the room, liberally mixing with the barely leashed
magical energy, but his stood out from the rest, something leafy,
cool, and ancient to it. Not violence and anger—not toward her,
anyway—but grief and keen-edged fear.
Following intuition and because her arm
muscles begged for it, she bent her knees and laid the heavy sword
on the floor. Lonen had seen through her on that—she wouldn’t be
able to swing it anyway. Straightening, she faced the Trom,
refusing to be cowed by its remote, alien visage. “Greetings, Trom.
Why do you slaughter the very people who asked for your aid?”
“Oria!” Nat surged forward, halting abruptly
when the Trom pivoted its head to gaze at him. Though her brother
wore the mask, nerves showed in the lines of his body. Behind him,
Yar clutched white-knuckled hands together. The flavors of their
barely restrained grien coiled and lashed. They planned to unleash
something huge. “Don’t presume to question our distinguished guest.
Go back to your tower. I command you, as your king.”
She nearly spat at that, mouth full of
bitter grief that Nat would presume to command her, only days after
their father’s death, knowing as they both did that he could not
have been truly crowned. All of it a ruse. He meant for her to move
away from the Destrye, who faced certain death as soon as she did.
A demise they richly deserved, so she should not interfere. She
couldn’t stop herself from glancing back at Lonen, though, not sure
what she expected, but still feeling somehow as if she were
abandoning him. If nothing else, she’d be breaking her word. He was
still staring at her with a kind of ferocity unique to the Destrye,
his eyes gritty and bleak as unpolished granite.
“
I think it wise to move out of the line
of fire.”
Chuffta sounded unusually subdued.
She made herself look away but did not leave
the room. Instead she joined the group of masked junior
priestesses, a brace of city guards protecting them. At least
they’d learned that lesson. The Destrye warriors might have
sheathed their weapons, but they looked as if they could kill with
their hairy, brutish hands.
“Kill the Destrye, Trom,” Nat said clearly.
“It’s why you were summoned.”
The Trom had been watching Oria all this
time, with skin-crawling focus. But at Nat’s command, it swiveled
its attention, not to the Destrye, but to Nat. “That may be why the
Summoner called us, but it’s not why we are here,” it said, voice
scratching over Oria’s consciousness like a dull knife.
“Then we shall compel you.” Nat raised his
hands, magic pouring from the priestesses to him and Yar, who
echoed their brother’s movement. “In the name of Grienon, I command
you to—”
As he spoke, as the magic sprang from his
hands, the Trom lifted a languid hand on an impossibly long arm and
caressed her brother’s cheek.
He sagged, crumpled, and fell in a heap.
I
f Lonen expected Oria to
scream—or perhaps faint again—at the sight of her brother’s abrupt
demise, she surprised him. She seemed vastly changed from the girl
he’d glimpsed, candlelit in the window, or the young woman who’d
ridden bravely to offer her city’s surrender.
The last days had honed her. She’d lost
weight, though she could hardly afford to lose any, her cheekbones
and jaw line stark under her pale skin, copper eyes overbright in
violet-shadowed sockets, her formerly shining hair braided back and
dark with oils. As if she hadn’t washed it in some time. As if
she’d been abed all this time.
He should keep his attention on that foul
creature the Bárans had so foolishly summoned, but his gaze kept
going back to Oria, the white lizardling fierce on her shoulder,
tail wrapped down the arm of her gray gown like a shimmering series
of bracelets.
She didn’t scream or faint. Instead she
impossibly—showing incredible foolishness, not bravery—thrust
herself in front of her remaining brother, taking his hands by the
wrists, forcing them down. And turning her back on the monster.
He hadn’t realized he’d stepped forward,
fists clenched, until he became aware of Arnon’s strong forearm
around his throat. “My turn to save you,” his brother hissed in his
ear. “Don’t be an idiot. She makes her own grave.”