Oria's Gambit (12 page)

He was marrying this woman. A woman of
foreign ideas and powerful magic. They’d be bound together for the
rest of their lives. The yawning chasm of that future opened
beneath his feet, black with terrifying and exhilarating
possibilities.

Febe and the mysterious priest appeared in
the dream also, golden masks glowing with otherworldly light, their
crimson robes dark as old blood. Chuffta seemed to hover nearby, a
blaze of white.

The priest held a shining blade in his hand,
a knife made of glass that radiated a light as brightly silver blue
as Grienon at full face. Oria turned their joined hands so her
wrist faced up and his down. The blade struck, slicing first her
fair skin where the blood showed in a delicate blue tracery, then
his browner flesh from beneath, a breathtakingly bright pang. She
never flinched—perhaps because she could no more move than he
could—but her copper eyes darkened, the lines around her mouth
deepening with the sharp pain.

It burned him, both her suffering and the hot
flow of blood from his wrist. The priest handed the glass blade to
the priestess, and reached out, placing a palm over each of their
wounds. Oria screamed, a thin and weak sound, and Lonen tried to
reach for her, still unable to move. Then the burn overtook him
too, climbing up his arm until it struck his heart like a tree
viper’s poison. His turn to shout the agony of it, his heart racing
nearly to burst.

But he couldn’t break from Oria’s gaze, her
ever-darkening eyes filling his vision, her blood arcing into his,
then flowing back, her heart pounding in staccato beats, humming
like the jewelbirds she’d spoken of.

They’d become so black, her eyes, that they
lost every glint of copper, going flat and dull, densely matte.
With a chord of terror, he recognized those eyes, that life-sucking
gaze. Identical to the Trom that had killed his father and
brother.

The scene from the council chambers roared
back at him, a crystal clear memory—Oria confronting the thing even
as Lonen fought Arnon’s restraining grip, trying against all reason
to save her, his enemy, from that lethal touch that turned men to
boneless pulp. The Trom had caressed her cheek, spoken to her in
some tangled tongue. And nothing happened to her.

She alone had survived the monster’s
instantly delivered death.

Now the thing’s eyes looked back out of her
and once again he couldn’t move to reach her. He fought the
suffocating clutch of magic. Though he should be terrified of her,
his heart didn’t understand that. He fought, not to release her
hand, but to bring her closer.

“Oria!”

Her name echoed without sound inside his
skull.

And abruptly they were back in that temple
room, his knees aching from the stone steps. Oria grasped his hand,
fingers still interlaced with his, eyes once again lustrous copper,
stared into his, wide with shock.

“Your bride is yours to do with as you wish.”
The voices of the priest and priestess came as if from another
realm. There they stood, once again behind the altar—or had they
ever truly moved?—speaking the words in unison, some aspect of the
magic giving them a strange harmonic. “Her magic is yours to use,
her body yours from which to draw succor and heirs.”

They had to be ritual words because they knew
perfectly well Lonen had no ability to access magic. But it
confirmed what the Destrye had suspected, long ago on that
battlefield when they’d decided to kill the masked sorcerers on the
walls, in hopes of stopping the flow of magic to the battle mages.
Her magic is yours to use.
Though he couldn’t use it as a
Báran man would, guilt plucked at him, as he intended to use her
just as ruthlessly. To save his people, yes, but he’d treat her as
a tool as surely as any of these sorcerers would have. Just in
different way.
Yours to use.

Oria’s hand trembled in his, her eyes blank,
her face pale. Something nudged at Lonen’s fingers and he started,
glancing down to find the pointed tip of Chuffta’s tail wedging
gently between their joined hands. Mortified, he yanked them apart.
Like a child’s doll suddenly discarded, Oria crumpled to the stone
floor. Lonen barely caught her in time, carefully touching her only
over the silk, even though one of Chuffta’s wings abruptly spread
for balance buffeted his face.

He sat back, adjusting her so her head
pillowed on his thigh, wanting more than anything to smooth back
the damp tendrils of coppery hair plastered to her temples, her
skin so waxy translucent that the shadowy foramina of her skull
showed through. It seemed a terrible omen, this death’s head, so
like all the decomposed dead he’d seen over the last years.

Chuffta crawled gently onto her bosom, using
the thumb claws at the bend of his wings to steady his progress.
He’d done that before, when Oria lost consciousness outside the
gates of the city. Hopefully he’d help her recover this time as
well.

“What’s wrong with her?” Lonen hardened his
voice, so as to sound demanding, rather than pleading. Although he
could likely drop the charade. They were married and that couldn’t
be reversed. The Báran ritual might be cruel, but it did seem to
work on a deeper level than a Destrye marriage. Or so he assumed.
None had mentioned anything like this following Arill’s ceremony.
The permanence of the bond resonated even in his mind-dead skull.
Oria lurked in there, a part of him now. Odd, but also reassuring
to sense her life force when she looked so very close to death.

“The Princess Oria is fragile.” The High
Priestess assumed a tone of apology, though she seemed nearly
gleeful. “Perhaps we should have warned you better, King of the
Destrye—your prize may not be long lived. Best to enjoy her while
you can.”

“Better to read your own histories, Your
Highness,” the priest advised, sounding more somber. “The Báran
women taken by your kind are like tropical flowers consigned to
eternal winter. Princess Oria will never bloom in your harsh land.
Take your pleasure of her if you must. We cannot stop you from
claiming your right. If she survives the night, however … I
ask Your Highness to consider that it would be a kindness to leave
her here.” He paid no attention to Febe’s intake of breath, though
she otherwise showed little sign of her disapproval. “You have no
cause to love Bára, King Lonen,” he continued, “and much reason,
perhaps to hate us and Princess Oria along with our people. But she
has done you and the Destrye no wrong.”

“I know that,” Lonen replied, speaking only
to the priest. “You are a good and loyal subject to speak for her
at this time. I’ll remember you to her.”

High Priestess Febe remained where she was,
but the priest came around to hold a hand over Oria, murmuring
something that sounded like a prayer. Chuffta didn’t bridle at the
man, so Lonen trusted he only helped, not harmed. Indeed, Oria’s
face, while it didn’t exactly regain color, at least looked a bit
more like she belonged to the land of the living and not as if her
spirit lingered in whatever witchy realm they’d traveled to for the
wedding ritual.

“Take her to her tower,” the priest murmured.
“Priestess Juli will be there as her attendant and will know what
to do for her.” With a last wiggle of his fingers, he nodded to
Lonen and left.

Taking the advice to heart, Lonen strapped
his axe onto his back, careful not to jostle Oria unnecessarily,
then gathered his unconscious wife into his arms, keeping the silk
robes between his hands and her slight body. Chuffta took wing to
make it easier for him. As the time before, it struck him how
little she weighed, like a jewelbird herself, all brilliantly
colored feathers over hollow bones.

“We need to stop doing this,” he muttered at
her, rising to his feet. He braced himself for Chuffta’s piercing
talons as the derkesthai landed on his shoulder, prehensile tail
snaking out to coil gently around Oria’s throat, the slim white
column exposed by her laxly tipped back head. He’d have to get
padded shoulders for his garments, too, as it seemed the Familiar
would become a fixture in his life.

High Priestess Febe stood before him, golden
mask remote. “Take your bride and go.” She set Oria’s mask, still
on the little tile they’d put it on, onto Oria’s breast.

“I intend to.” Though if Febe assumed he’d
leave Bára immediately, she’d be in for a surprise. One he’d enjoy.
Forcing her to call Oria queen would be a well-earned triumph.
“Shouldn’t you tie the mask on her again, if I’m the only one to
see her face forever more?”

The priestess checked a small movement, then
inclined her head. “Those words are a formality, not meant to apply
to other close family or temple ceremonies, but as you say, Your
Highness.” She retrieved a covered box, opening the colorful lid to
show a spool of golden ribbons within. With deft, practiced
movements, she cut away the threads of the ribbons still attached
to Oria’s mask at three points—the temple, cheek and jaw—then
attached new ones, moving behind and around Oria, weaving the
ribbons into her braids.

“It seems like it would be easier to simply
untie them than to cut them every time and have to fetch new ones,”
he commented, as the process took some time.

“You understand nothing of magic, Destrye,”
the High Priestess replied in an absorbed tone, without rancor, but
something of that otherworldly hum to it. “Which may well be your
future undoing. You trifle with powers beyond your reckoning. If
you want my advice, take your prize and go back to Dru. Against all
odds you have achieved a short victory over your betters. Savor
that, yes, in the tradition of your ancestors, but do not linger.
Bára will only bring you grief. In your land you might have
something of a pleasurable life as King of the Destrye. But you
will never be King of Bára.”

“Am I to believe that’s some sort of magical
prophecy?” He allowed a sneer, and for his deep dislike of this
woman to rise up. Hopefully she’d detect it in him as Oria
would.

Finished, the High Priestess stepped back and
laced her fingers together over her belly. “You would be wise to
recognize it as such, Your Highness, but from what I’ve witnessed,
wisdom is not a virtue Grienon bestowed upon you.”

Perhaps not. Nolan had been universally
acknowledged as the most intelligent of King Archimago’s sons, and
he’d died first. Ion had been the most courageous, the heir and all
that the Destrye could wish for in their next king, and he’d died
too, gone in an instant. Lonen might never make a wise or noble
king, but he was what the Destrye had. Arnon would serve, in the
event of Lonen’s demise, but his younger brother would make an even
more reluctant king, far happier with his building plans, designs,
and aqueducts.

But, though he might lack wisdom, Lonen knew
a snow job when he saw one. The future belonged to those who took
it by the throat and made it what they wanted it to be. Oria knew
that, too.

“With all respect to your office, High
Priestess,” he said, allowing a feral grin to bare his teeth, “you
can consign your supposed prophecies—and your wretched advice—to
the nearest chasm.”

Turning his back on the woman, he carried
Oria up to her tower.

The climb, of course, took forever. Fortunately,
during their time in the temple the sun had set and Sgatha risen,
shedding her soft rose light. Which meant they’d been in there for
hours. Another reason to dislike magic—it distorted the senses. But
the night breezes cooled the air, blowing in the open arched
windows that riddled Oria’s tower, making it look more like
lacework than stone from below. Chuffta had thankfully resumed his
station on Oria’s breast, watching her face with devotion worthy of
any hunting hound.

By the time he reached the summit of the
endlessly spiraling stairs, Lonen gave thanks that he’d ignored
Natly’s protestations that manual labor was beneath the dignity of
a king. All those trenches dug, beams lifted, and sacks of seed
hauled given him the endurance for the climb. Even Oria’s slight
body felt like the heaviest bag of grain, his legs wobbly with
effort when he finally reached the top stair.

He stood there stupidly a moment—his brain
almost unable to grasp that the unending ascent had, in fact,
ended—uncertain of his next move. The ceremony had perhaps taxed
him far more than he had felt at the time. He almost envied Oria
her deep sleep.

“King Lonen.” A crimson-robed, golden-masked
priestess appeared before him as if by magic. “Bring her in here.
What happened to the princess?”

He followed her, impossibly weary, through
the high-ceilinged hall that lead to Oria’s rooftop garden. Instead
of going straight through, however, the priestess turned into a
branching corridor, opening a set of doors into an airy chamber,
bright and ethereal as Oria herself. The woman drew gauzy curtains
aside from a bed unlike any he’d seen. He lowered Oria onto it,
feeling absurdly like some hero out of a tale.