Lonen's War (23 page)

“That’s highly debatable,” Oria said without
looking at him. The question applied even more to him. “Though the
Destrye let us off lightly, Bára still faces utter destruction. Do
we have any reserves of water left?”

“Enough to last a few months,” the queen
replied, poking at her salad. “Longer if we stop trading it to our
sister cities, but that will create backlash from them.”

Oria rubbed her temple. “Because of the
goods they trade in return?”

“Food we don’t grow here, yes, but also
because they will see us as weak with no one on the throne, with
our temple so depleted. Why not simply come and take the rest of
our water? They need it as badly as—probably even worse than—we
do.”

Fragments of family dinner conversations
turned around and fit together to make a new pattern. Her father
and Nat boasting of Bára’s power, how the other cities sent wealth
in tribute, that King Tavlor ruled them all, with Nat gleefully
planning to follow in his footsteps.

“It wasn’t just about keeping our people
alive, was it?” Oria laid her hand over her mother’s. “Maybe at
first it was, but then it became about the wealth and power.”

Her mother turned her hand to grip Oria’s.
“Your father was a good man. He only wanted the best for us and for
Bára. We cannot leave our cities, not now, after so many
generations living above the source of magic. If we go outside our
walls for very long, we’ll die. Some of us waste away, effectively
starving. Others, like you…”

Blasted apart by it. Her mother didn’t have
to say it. Yar sat still, finally, absorbing the conversation.

“Then the answer is a strong front,” he
said. “We have water reserves. We have the Trom, which means we
have more power than ever before. We can get more water and force
our sister cities to continue to pay tribute to us.”

“We can’t do that—”

“There is no
we
,” Yar cut Oria off,
popping to his feet. “I will do it because I will be king. Our
mother cannot be queen, not without a mask.”

“The law doesn’t say that.”

“He’s right, Oria.” Her mother withdrew her
hand, patted Oria’s once, then settled it in her lap. “The law may
be silent on the issue, but only because no king or queen has
survived the death of their temple-blessed spouse. I’ve spoken with
High Priestess Febe. She, the temple, Folcwita Lapo, and the rest
of the council no longer consider me to be the queen. The throne of
Bára belongs to a matched, masked husband and wife. As we sit,
there is only one candidate.”

Yar held out his hands, as if expecting
congratulation.

“But Yar cannot be king—he has no wife.”

“I’m one step closer than you are, sister
dear. At least I have a mask. If I cannot find a match here—though
I’m testing a few of the junior priestesses—I’ll command our sister
cities to send theirs for testing. There’s a perfect wife for me
out there somewhere. In the meantime, I’ll act as king.”

“Our sister cities know perfectly well that
you won’t qualify. One of their matched couples will come here and
claim the throne.”

“Not with me as their sole source of
water—thank you for that solution.”

“We have only a few months left!”

He shrugged. “We’ll get more from Dru. I’ll
command the Trom to do it.”

“The treaty prevents us from attacking them
again, Yar. You can’t do that.”

“Oh yes I can.” Yar prowled over to her.
“And it’s all your fault. Your treaty means nothing because
you
had no power to sign.”

Oria glared up at him. He’d always been
precocious, and the baby of the family, so spoiled for both
reasons. But she’d never imagined he’d be so foolish. “You saw the
Trom. What they did to Nat, to so many. They do not serve us.”

“Correction. They do not serve you, but they
do serve me.
I
summoned the Trom, not Nat. That’s why they
didn’t listen to his commands. I realized the answer when I awoke
this morning.”

“Why—what happened?” Oria rose to her feet.
Grien, bright, nearly uncontrolled, rolled off Yar, along with a
kind of triumph twisted together with sheer terror. This was what
had changed from the night before. “Is that why you won’t remove
your mask?”

“Why are you obsessed with me removing my
mask?” Yar snarled, clenching his fists, impotent rage and fear
billowing through his
hwil
. Oria nearly flinched,
anticipating the blow to follow.

“
He’d better not.”
Chuffta’s fierce
thought bolstered her courage.

“What are you hiding behind it, little
brother?” Oria replied, all reasonableness to his tumult.

“If you must know.” Without waiting for a
servant, Yar wrenched the mask from his head, the ribbons leaving
wild tufts of hair in their wake. Oria and her mother both gasped,
Rhianna putting an involuntary hand to her throat, as if choking
back further words.

Yar’s eyes had gone entirely black, like the
Trom’s, matte and without pupils. Horrified, Oria extended a
trembling hand to her brother, not sure how to help but moved to
try. He yanked out of her reach.

“Can you see?” she asked, for want of other
pertinent questions.

“Only with grien, just as I always do with
the mask on. It’s no loss. Especially compared to what I’ve gained.
You! Come tie this on me again.” The servant scuttled over, taking
the mask with shaking fingers.

“When did this happen?” Oria asked.

“I noticed when I awoke this morning, when I
washed, before I donned my mask.”

“Did the Trom do it, touch you in some
way?”

“You know they didn’t. The Trom touched
you
and you’re fine.” Yar oozed bitterness. “I’m the one who
performed the summoning ritual. It should have been me the sacred
one paid attention to. Not my magicless, maskless sister.”

Oh, Yar. “What was involved in the summoning
ritual?” And why had Nat put their brother up to it? But she kept
it to the one question. Not that it did any good, as Yar exploded
out of his seat.

“You look to steal my secrets, my power—but
I won’t let you!” Yar’s unmasked fury poured out and Oria staggered
back from it. Chuffta spread his white wings, wrapping them around
her in a shield as Yar’s grien followed his shout. Green fire shot
out, incinerating the blast.

Yar’s turn now to fall back with a thin
scream as his robes caught fire. His valet rushed forward to put
out the flames, but he pushed the man away with an incoherent roar,
patting them out himself, featureless face fixed on Oria. “How can
you do that?” he whispered, hoarse. Frightened. “You shouldn’t be
able to do that.” Then he ran from the room, the valet in his
wake.

Oria met her mother’s stunned gaze. The
queen had both hands around her throat, horror in her brown
eyes.

“What did I do?” Oria asked her mother,
though the queen didn’t answer. “It was Chuffta who breathed
flame.”

“
But you dissipated Yar’s grien. You
neutralized it.”

She sank into the chair, pressing fingertips
to her temples. Out of habit, though, because her head didn’t hurt
for once. It should. That amount of fury should have sent her
screaming to the shadows.

“
This is what I mean—you stopped
it.”

“How?”

“
I don’t know. But it would be most
useful to find out.”

“As much as I knew this might be,” her
mother said slowly, the quiet words slipping past her hands, “I
never truly believed. And here we are.”

“That what might be?” Frustration roiled up.
“Ponen?”

Her mother closed her eyes, nodded ever so
slightly.

“Explain this to me, Mother. I need to
know.”

Queen Rhianna nodded again with more
conviction, finally dropping her hands. For the first time since
her husband died, something of her powerful sgath welled up. “Yes.
I have things to show you. Perhaps there is yet another way out of
this mud trap.”

Oria could only hope. Though through no
fault of her own, she had still broken her oath—and she would do
everything in her power never to be forsworn again.

W
ith relief, Lonen left the
Báran desert behind him. It had taken days of slow travel to reach
the dry scrublands, which then gave way to the cactus- and
evergreen-studded border country, populated by neither Destrye nor
Bárans. Much as he wanted to ride ahead with the faster scouts, he
sent Arnon instead and kept himself to the back of their decamping
army, moving with the slowest of the injured.

Ion might have made a different choice, but
their father wouldn’t have abandoned their many injured and Lonen
hoped to be something of the king Archimago had been. If nothing
else, he owed his father that, and the Destrye his father and
brothers had died to save. They’d be remembered with honor,
certainly. Already the musicians and poets among the warriors
called him the Savior of the Battle of Bára. Several tales of the
various battles with the Bárans—including increasingly more lurid
descriptions of the golems, dragons, and Trom—were passing up and
down the caravan of men and wagons and circling the campfires at
night.

None of them mentioned Oria or her
dragonlet, which suited Lonen just fine. The strange princess
continued to plague his thoughts in worrisome ways, sometimes
walking through his dreams, her hair copper fire, gaze full of some
question. Sometimes her eyes were the bright green of the lizard’s,
her teeth the same sharp fangs as she hissed. Once she flew at him,
white leathery wings capturing him and holding him still while she
feasted on his liver, murmuring love words all the while, her avid
mouth then fastening on his cock, milking him until he
ruptured.

He woke from that nightmare in a cold sweat,
his seed ignominiously filling the furs as it hadn’t done since
he’d been a randy adolescent. Too long away from women, from his
lovely Natly. It seemed a king shouldn’t be subject to such human
frailty. He’d never expected to wear the Destrye crown, so he
hadn’t imagined exactly what it would be. Shinier and more noble,
somehow. Without the disturbingly sexual dreams of a foreign
sorceress or the persistent runs of the campaign trail.

Or the endless consultations on every
matter, great or small.

The slow pace gave him time, at least, to
learn the tasks of being a king, which seemed to be mainly making
one decision after another, few of them compelling—a mountain of
gravel, like the sands of Oria’s desert, relentlessly piling into
dunes. He longed to switch places with Arnon, to be riding fast and
furiously to reunite with the rest of their people. The greatest
irony of becoming king was learning that he’d lost a freedom he’d
never fully appreciated—and would never have again.

By the time Lonen and the tail end of the returning
warriors and litters of the injured sighted the forests of Dru that
filled the deep and wide valley between the Snowy Peaks, they’d
received word of those who’d been on the Trail of New Hope. The
good news was that the refugees had turned around and traveled back
to their homeland also, in another long caravan, spearheaded by the
strong, followed by a long, straggling tail of the weak and
wounded.

The bad news was that the women, children,
and elderly had run afoul of more golems, suffering additional
losses. Indeed, said the scouts who reported to him in the squalor
of his inherited tent, much worse for wear from the long campaign,
had the golems not inexplicably fallen dead one night, the refugees
would have been decimated.

As it was, less than half those who’d set
out returned to their emptied city. They turned out to welcome the
final dregs of the Destrye army. They lined the road and
drawbridges over the moats surrounding Dru, cheering with the
forced enthusiasm of traumatized survivors, pitiful in their
reduced numbers.

Once the Destrye had lived in cabins
scattered throughout the lush deciduous forest of trees that
towered as high as Bára’s many towers. Some Destrye preferred to
live alone, others in small family groups occupying one cabin,
still others in extended families and communities in compounds of
connected buildings. None had walls like Bára. Networks of roads
had connected them, allowing for travel and commerce—all feeding
into the broad, main road that led to Arill’s temple.

Some holdouts lived in those outlying cabins
and communities still, but the bulk of Destrye had fled their homes
following the golem incursions, building new homes to cluster under
Arill’s sheltering wings. King Archimago had devoted considerable
resources to digging wide, deep moats around the burgeoning city,
filling them first with sharpened wood spikes, then iron ones to
foil the golems. Those moats looked like a child’s ditch compared
to the chasms of Bára.

Never once had it occurred to them to build
walls.