Lonen brought up the rear, riding over the
last drawbridge through the gates of the city at the end of the
column. Odd to see wooden buildings and leafy trees instead of
stone balconies and towers, people with dark hair instead of light.
The slapdash, panicked construction around Arill’s temple had only
deteriorated during the period of abandonment, but it had been
ramshackle to begin with. One hastily assembled dwelling piled on
top of another, the city was a hodgepodge of materials and
design—except for Arill’s centuries-old temple and the adjacent
palace of governance—and nothing like Bára with her meticulously
arranged and airy towers.
Still, the similarities shone through. The
defeated Bárans had also been determined to cheer the smallest
victory. The two peoples had chewed on each other’s livers, it
seemed, both cities crippled husks of what they’d once been, simply
in different aspects.
Who had won what?
A woman broke from the throng, running up to
him, long dark hair streaming like the tears running down her
lovely face. Natly.
Though he was filthy, soiled in body and
soul, Lonen dismounted, making his startled horse sidestep, and
caught Natly up in his arms. She was both sobbing and laughing, her
words incoherent. He held her close, inhaling the scent of qinn
spices, the warmth of home. This. This was what he’d fought for,
what so many died to protect. What his father and brothers had
given their lives to rebuild. Through the exhaustion, a thin ray of
hope wormed its way through. He’d made it home. Alive and mostly
well.
Natly framed his face with her long fingers,
her once elegantly jeweled nails short and broken. “You’re king
now,” she managed to say, her gray eyes full of tears. “And
returning victorious. I’m so proud of you. I love you so much,
Lonen.”
He kissed her, mostly to stop himself from
saying this was no victory. All that time he’d waited for her to
say those words, to be proud to be his woman—and now she said it
because he’d simply managed to survive where others had not. And by
committing unspeakable acts. “It still feels like dream. A long and
terrible one.”
“For me, too,” she said, kissing him again
and again. “But it’s over now.”
“Yes.” Her mouth strange against his after
so long apart. He threaded his chapped and dirty fingers through
her black curling hair, grounding himself in Natly. His lover with
dark eyes, not copper, who smelled of qinn and possessed no uncanny
magics. She would make a good queen for the Destrye. “It’s over
now,” he echoed her, wishing he felt that in his heart. Over her
shoulder, a movement caught his eye.
Arnon stepped forward with Salaya, her hair
shorn short in grief, holding the hands of her young sons, who’d
never see their father Ion again. Natly made a sound of protest,
clinging to him tightly when he tried to disentangle himself. “I
have to talk to Salaya,” he told her, and Natly also looked over
her shoulder, thrusting her lip out in a bit of a pout that he’d
always found so sexy.
“Do you have to? Talk to her later. Come
with me and I’ll bathe you.” Natly scratched the back of his neck
with her nails, a trick that had always made him crazy for her. But
the devastation in Salaya’s face, the haunted look in her eyes that
reminded him strangely of Oria, cooled any desire he might have
felt.
Gently, he unwound Natly’s hands from his
neck and kissed her nose. “Go prepare the bath. And food if you can
find any—I’m starving. I’ll talk to Salaya and meet you
shortly.”
“You’ll have to make it quick, Brother,”
Arnon said, gaze dipping over Natly and away. “I have a list as
long as my arm of things for you to deal with as soon as
possible.”
“He’s only just arrived home.” Natly put her
fists on her voluptuous hips. “Surely a conquering war hero—our new
king!—deserves a bit of rest and celebrating.”
Arnon shook his head wearily, squinting at
the sky. “He’ll be king of nothing if we don’t figure out how to
feed everyone. The first frost is only weeks away and it seems
wolves scattered the herds we left behind. Not to mention we
drained our water supplies when we left and the nearest source is
at least a day’s journey. We’ve brought some in, but it’s slow
going and not enough to keep up with everyone returning. Plus
there’s squabbles over housing and accusations of theft that have
already caused several fights resulting in injuries.”
“You’re full of good news, aren’t you?”
Lonen scrubbed hands through his hair, slick with oil and dirt.
He’d last bathed in Bára and it didn’t seem as if he’d have another
one any time soon. It would be unconscionable with their supplies
so low.
“A fine welcome home for the King of the
Destrye,” Natly hissed.
Arnon only shrugged with a wry smile. “The
good news is that we’re alive to come home. The rest of it is
pretty bad. We’ve got a lot of work to make it livable again.”
Looking at his city made of wood, however
ugly, Lonen let the weight of responsibility settle on him, heavy
as Salaya’s imploring gaze. He owed so much to his father’s legacy,
to Ion’s forsaken family, and to Nolan’s unrealized dreams, along
with all the lives cut short, Destrye and Báran. He’d find a way to
rebuild. His people needed him.
They needed a good king and he’d be that. Or
die trying.
W
rapped in a cloak of
night, Oria followed her mother to a place she’d never known
existed, much less been to. Still within the city and somewhere
beneath both the palace and the temple, they descended a set of
stairs that seemed to be the mirror of the ones to her tower,
spiraling around a dark pit that echoed with odd whispers, winding
into the earth, possibly as deep as the chasms that cracked through
Bára. Climbing these again, plus those to the height of her tower,
might very well kill her.
Something to worry about later.
For the time being, feeling crushed beneath
the earth occupied most of her attention.
“
It’s no different than being in a
cave.”
Chuffta chirped the observation far too happily.
“I
used to live in a cave. Cool in the hot weather, cozy when the
chill winds blow. You’d like it.”
“So far I am
not
liking it,” she
muttered at her Familiar.
Her mother glanced over with a wry smile. “I
found Chuffta in a cave. Is he telling you that?”
Surprised that her mother mentioned it, Oria
latched onto the question. “Yes. Will you tell me about that? How
did you find him and why? How did you convince him to come with you
if you can’t hear him now?”
“He can hear me, though, can’t he?”
“
Of course. I’m not stupid.”
“I will tell you,” Rhianna continued, “as we
still have farther to go, no one to overhear, and all of this is a
piece of what I wish to show you. Perhaps I should have told you
more to begin with, but that’s sand long since blown away.”
Though she privately agreed, Oria kept
silent, lest she stem this flow of long-awaited answers.
“Nat and Ben were but young boys when you
were conceived. I knew right away that you would be a girl, the
daughter I longed for, and more—I sensed that you might perhaps
inherit the secret legacy of our family.”
“The secret legacy?” she echoed.
“What my great-grandmother possessed, called
ponen
.”
“That’s the word the Trom used with me—I
asked you about it.”
“I remember. I wasn’t ready then to explain
it to you.”
“Why now?”
“Circumstances have forced my hand. Yar is
not ready to be king. He is far too proud and impetuous. The city
guard agrees. They fear we’ll be conquered by one or more of our
sister cities if Yar takes the throne of Bára.”
“Then you’ll fight him for it—remain
queen.”
“Not me.” Her mother flashed her a wry
smile. “You.”
Oria nearly stopped in her tracks, then had
to hasten to catch up. “Are you saying you can help me find
hwil
?”
“Not exactly,” she temporized, “but I can
help you get your mask, which at least puts you and Yar on even
footing.”
“But…how?”
“
Ponen
,” her mother said, as if it
answered Oria’s question, “is an ancient word, known primarily to
the priestesses of our family, and recorded in only a few place.
From the tales passed down, it’s no easy burden to bear—as you’ve
experienced in your life thus far. All of the women with ponen,
however, had derkesthai to help them withstand the power of their
affinities.”
“What are my affinities?” Her question
echoed with hollow immediacy, signaling the end of their journey.
Indeed, the amorphous shadows of the center well showed blacker.
They’d hit bottom.
“That is still your journey to
discover.”
Wonderful. It had been too much to hope that
she might finally know that much. At least her mother hadn’t
advised her to meditate on it.
“
Meditation is a useful exercise. You
gain benefit from it when you exercise the self-discipline to truly
quiet your mind.”
“Yes, well, I gain benefit climbing up and
down all these stairs, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it.”
“What is Chuffta advising you?”
“To meditate, as always.”
“
No, I’m merely pointing out its
benefits.”
Her mother paused before an ironbound door
set into a stone arch. The cool, sweet, and intense magic so
characteristic to Rhianna swelled, swirled, and the door swung
outward. Oria raised her brows at the nontraditional use of sgath.
“Would High Priestess Febe approve?”
“The temple may govern most modern-day
magical law,” her mother replied crisply, striding through the
doorway and into a dark hall, “but magic itself predates the
temple. So does our family.”
“And yet you allowed them to strip you of
your mask.”
Her mother faltered and Oria regretted the
words. “I’m sorry, I—”
“No. You’re right. I let them take my mask
because according to temple law I no longer deserve it. However
there are other, higher laws. The sorceresses of our line have had
good reason to subject ourselves to the discipline the temple
teaches. That is something for you to remember always. This
knowledge is powerful—and can go badly if entrusted to the
unstable.”
The door behind them swung closed, plunging
them into utter darkness. A breath of air against her face told
Oria the other door had opened. That was why Oria shivered, not at
the echo of Febe’s words.
“Coming? If you’re afraid, say so now,
because it will only worsen.” Her mother’s voice held a hint of
impatience.
“I can’t see.” Oria bit back the bitter
words that begged to follow. No
hwil
, no ability to control
her magic, no seeing in the dark. Or from behind a mask.
“I apologize.” Her mother sounded chagrined,
her hand touching Oria’s sleeve, then guiding her to wrap her
fingers around her mother’s elbow. “Take my arm.”
“
I can’t see either.”
The irritation
in Chuffta’s mind-voice perversely cheered her.
It bolstered her on the strange journey
through pitch darkness, trusting to her mother’s guidance. She kept
wanting to put a hand out before her, to stop anything from
smashing into her face, but it felt like that would be
cowardly.
“There are no lamps or sconces in this
section or I’d light them. I’d never before considered this a
barrier to one who cannot see without eyes,” her mother continued,
apologetic, yet also thoughtful. “There are various guards set to
prevent this knowledge from the wrong hands, and this must be
one.”
“Are you sure mine are the right hands
then?” Oria joked.
It fell flat, however, because her mother
didn’t immediately reply. Finally she said, “I’ll be honest with
you—I don’t know. That’s another reason I hadn’t yet shown you this
path. I hoped you’d find
hwil
first and then I could have
been more certain you’d survive this. That’s why we do this now,
brutal though it may be.”
“Do…what?”
“Face the test. If you survive, you’ll
understand.”
“What do I do?”
Her mother softened, took her hands. “Oh, my
brilliant daughter, if I could tell you, I would. But I am not
ponen. I honestly do not know what you’ll have to do to pass.”
“Oh.” Had she ever felt so small and
afraid?
“But I do know that if you’re not brave
enough now, you won’t have another chance. You’re out of time,
Oria.
We
are out of time. I wish it wasn’t so, but it is
what it is. You don’t have to do this, but if you want to gain your
mask in time, this is the path. Just…follow your instincts.”
She wasn’t brave enough. It made her angry
that the cowardice sabotaged her.
“And if I fail, I’ll die?” she asked.
“Yes.” Her mother’s voice echoed hollow in
the dark. “Or you might as well be, as when you broke, sleeping the
rest of your life away. Don’t do this if it’s not important to you.
You can find another life, a quiet one, perhaps in one of our
sister cities.”
It sounded possible. Grim, and unlikely to
last long, with Yar taking them back to war, and the Trom promising
visits.
“Oria…” Her mother sounded hesitant. “I
don’t say this to sway your decision, but I believe you can do
this. The magic is in you, powerful and consuming. You used it to
repel Yar when he attacked you, and to bring me out of the pits of
grief. This is your birthright, if you’re strong enough to claim
it.”
She took a steadying breath. She might not
be strong enough, but she wanted to be.
“
You can be. Look how much you’ve done
these last days.”
“Thank you.” She scratched his scaled
breast.
“Chuffta must stay here, however.”
“What—why? You said he helps me with the
ponen.”