Oria's Gambit (21 page)

“What are byrebod and monahalgian?”

“Apologies, Your Highness—they are old terms,
with no trade tongue correlations. They mean essentially
presentation as an adult and consecration to the moons,
respectively.”

“I’m pledged to Arill, so there will be no
consecration to the moons for me. What’s involved in the
other?”

Febe’s featureless mask, for all the world
seemed to smirk at him. “For men, it involves a ritual where he
proves his manhood by demonstrating his fortitude, and by sealing a
covenant.”

That didn’t sound bad, but Oria murmured,
“Monahalgian would be easier on you. Surely your goddess will not
mind a small transgression.”

“I am loyal to all of my women, wives and
goddesses,” he muttered back. “Presentation as an adult for me,
then I remain for the coronation.”

“This is most irregular,” Febe protested.
“Are we to become a people who follow only the letter of the law
and not the spirit of it under your reign, Queen Oria?”

Oria didn’t exactly flinch, but the
accusation clearly hit home—something he felt in his own gut—so he
spoke up before she could waver.

“As Bára is mine, so am I hers. It’s fitting
that I present myself to the temple as every boy of the city does
upon reaching his manhood. I consider this a covenant with Bára,
which should be sufficient spirit to satisfy anyone.”

Oria moved ever so slightly closer to him,
relaxing the tautness of the silk sleeve he gripped, conveying her
appreciation with the subtle gesture. Crazy how happy it made him
that he’d pleased her. Though making her happy meant better fortune
for the Destrye. He’d just think of it that way.

“Your Highness.” Priest Vico stepped up.
“While I’m delighted to perform your byrebod, particularly given
the reasons you state, you should be aware that, ah, blood must be
drawn.” He tilted the mask significantly. “To seal the covenant,”
he added, not at all elucidating. “As a, uh, man.”

“All right,” Lonen replied slowly. The Bárans
seemed to love drawing blood for their little rituals. The priest
seemed to be waiting still, and it dawned on him. “Draw the blood
from where?”

“Your … manhood,” the priest answered in
a much lowered voice, as if that added delicacy to it.

Lonen found himself gaping, then looked to
Oria. “You went through this?”

“Women produce their own blood, don’t they?”
She said in a tart voice, clearly discomfited. “You needn’t do
this, Your Highness. Take your leisure and await me.”

Barbarians, the lot of them. But Arill knew
he’d shed plenty of blood. He’d just hoped never to be wounded
there. Still, if the Báran boys could withstand it, a full Destrye
warrior certainly could. Besides, he’d already made a pretty speech
about it and couldn’t very well back pedal on that. “We’ll proceed
as I outlined. Priest Vico will do my byrebod ceremony, followed by
the coronation.”

Priest Vico bowed. “As you will. Follow me,
Your Highness.”

“Queen Oria will come with me.” The High
Priestess turned to lead her away.

“No. The queen doesn’t leave my sight,” Lonen
declared, letting himself growl over it, venting some of the
aggravation over his impending ordeal. “She belongs to me and by my
side she stays.”

Priest Vico coughed and the high priestess
went rigid. “Women do not attend a boy’s byrebod,” she
declared.

“Or vice-versa,” Vico added, not at all
helpfully.

“I would assume that a boy has his byrebod
well before he’s married, yes?” At the priest’s nod, Lonen
continued. “A wife knows everything about her husband and her magic
belongs to him, along with the succor of her body. Of course she
would attend this important ceremony, should they occur in the
reverse order.”

“Most logical,” Oria agreed.

Stymied, Febe bowed—stiffly, of course—and
glided away. “I will await you in the ceremonial hall then, Your
Highnesses.”

Priest Vico gestured them to follow, but
Lonen tugged Oria’s sleeve so she’d hang back.

“They don’t cut off any important bits, do
they?” he whispered to her.

“I wouldn’t know, would I?” she hissed back.
“As I’m not a
boy
.”

“I can’t believe your brothers wouldn’t have
hinted.”

“Unlike you,” she replied in a prim tone,
lifting her chin, “they did not discuss their male parts with all
and sundry.”

“I don’t discuss my cock with all and
sundry—just with you, especially as you’re so interested in
it.”

Her gasp of outrage took the edge off his
nerves—and hers, he hoped—Chuffta’s eyes glittering at him with
what had to be amusement. The priest led him into a small chapel
room, similar to the one they’d been married in the evening before.
This one, however, looked entirely dedicated to Grienon, with
representations of the small, dynamic moon in all his phases.

Priest Vico cleared his throat. “Normally,
Your Highness, a boy is accompanied by his father, who has
explained the ritual in advance. Or, failing that, another male
relative.”

“Just tell me what to do, man,” Lonen
answered. “Let’s get it over with so we can move on.”

“All right.” He cleared his throat again.
“Perhaps Queen Oria might wish to turn away and cover her
ears?”

“Oh, for Sgatha’s sake,” she snapped, “I can
muffle my eyes and ears and sgath will still show me—” She broke
off abruptly, her mask swiveling to the sky beyond the stone temple
ceiling. “No,” she whispered, putting a hand to Chuffta’s tail
wrapped around her wrist.

“What?” Lonen asked. Then grabbed her sleeve
when she only shook her head. “What is it?”

A sound broke through his words. He knew that
sound, like the dull roar of a bonfire. The giant fire-breathing
draconic cousins to the derkesthai, mounts of the Trom.

“Too late,” Oria said, her voice hard,
echoing against the metal mask.

He wasn’t sure if she meant for him, or for
them all.

“M
aybe that’s a riderless
dragon roaring. Or could it be Yar returning?” Lonen asked her,
unstrapping the battle axe from his back.

“I don’t think it’s either.” She didn’t sense
Yar anywhere near the city. But that densely powerful black sun her
sgath revealed was familiar. She hadn’t been skilled enough before
to get so much detail about their magical signature, but she
recognized them just the same. “Yar may be behind this, however.
They have not returned since you left, but I think the Trom are
here now.”

“
They are here, yes.”
Chuffta’s mind
voice shivered with trepidation. Very little frightened the
derkesthai, but his larger cousins certainly seemed to.

“The High Priestess,” Priest Vico said, fear
leaking through the
hwil
. “Febe would have summoned them,
rather than give you the crown.”

Oria stared at him in stunned surprise. “She
is the summoner?”

His mask bobbed. “She and Yar both, as priest
and priestess. I, myself, do not possess enough grien for the task
She worked with him to do it.”

“You could have warned me.” Anger burned in
her. Along with the terror. The feeling of that thing touching her.
Those matte black eyes staring into her heart and finding a
mirroring darkness.
Princess Ponen.

“I wanted to, but we were sworn to tell only
the king or queen. Since you’re effectively queen now…” he trailed
off, voice weakening.

Wonderful. Oria spun to the doors, hissing
when Lonen brushed the skin of her hand before he clamped his own
on her forearm over her sleeve. “Sorry for that. Clumsy of me, but
you’re not racing out there.”

She struggled back the near overwhelming
surge of his emotional energy that the brief touch sent rocketing
through her nervous system. An intense stew of terror, love, battle
rage, despair, determination, hope, and more than she could sort
even with the luxury of hours, not moments.

“What choice do I have?” She tried to pull
away, but he held on, his touch burning through the layers of silk.
“You’re hurting me.”

He let go, but moved his big body between her
and the doorway. “I’m not letting you confront those
creatures.”

“You know what they’ll do! You’ve seen it
with your own eyes. I can’t let them kill my people just to get to
me.” All those piles of lifeless flesh… she couldn’t bear for it to
happen again.

“How do you know they won’t kill you too?”
Lonen shimmered large in her sgath, full of furious
frustration.

“They won’t. Or can’t. You saw that too. I’m
something to them. I don’t know what, but they won’t kill me. I
have to confront them.”

He seethed with conflict, the image slamming
into her of him picking her up and carrying her off to some safe
bower. “If you’re going, I go with you.”

“Lonen—they
can
kill
you
. Don’t
make me stand by while you’re turned nothing but boneless heap
before my eyes.”

“I won’t attack. They don’t kill if we show
no aggression.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Just as you can’t be sure that they won’t
kill you this time.”

Stymied, she fumed at him. “Please stay here.
I’m asking this of you.”

“No. I said that you don’t leave my side and
I meant it.” He touched her masked cheek and managed a lopsided
smile. “At least this keeps the priest’s knife away from my jewels
a little longer.”

She shook her head, amazed he’d made her
laugh under such dire circumstances. “I can’t believe you were
going to let him do that in the first place.”

“Nothing gets between me and a goal. I told
you that.”

Yes, he had. And what Lonen said, he
meant—and made happen. She could use that.

“Then remember this,” she said, leaning as
close to him as she dared, keeping his full attention. “You’ve said
over and over that you’re going to find a way to bed me.”

Desire rode high in his gamut of emotional
energy, though he responded evenly enough. “What are you getting
at?”

“You’d better keep that in mind, because
that’s a goal and if you let the Trom kill you, it’ll never happen.
Think on that.”

His stunned and grudgingly admiring amusement
did a great deal to take the edge off her nerves. She began to
understand why he enjoyed teasing her. He kept himself in front of
her as she walked, a pace ahead with his signature big, bold
strides as they hurried out the front doors of the temple. He
carried his battle-axe two-handed, a black hole of a barrier before
her.

“Leave the axe behind,” she urged.

He didn’t hitch even momentarily, but his
incredulity swamped her. “Not even if Arill Herself asked me.”

She had to run to do it—Chuffta half
spreading his wings to keep balance on her shoulder—but she managed
to draw level with him, grabbing onto his leather-clad arm, glad of
his thicker Destrye clothes that buffered some of the impact from
her impetuous move. He glanced down at her in some surprise, all of
him softening, and he slowed somewhat. “Don’t fret. I learned my
lesson, too. As long as I’m not aggressive towards it, I should be
fine.”

“Last time you insisted that
I
put
down
my
sword!”

“Because you could hardly lift the cursed
thing,” he retorted grimly. “I don’t know what in Arill you were
thinking. If we survive all this, I’m going to teach you to use a
weapon your own size.”

“I don’t need a weapon. I’m a sorceress.
Magic is all I need.”

“Then this would be an excellent time to use
it.” He came to a halt, swiftly sheathing his axe on his back. Not
one, but three Trom stood at the bridge to the temple. The sight of
them turned her stomach, their magic like Chuffta’s, but as much
greater in intensity as the dragons were to him in size, nearly
blinding her sgath with the radiance of it.

She’d been too mind-blind to see it before,
their charismatic immensity. To the physical eye, they looked like
desiccated husks of humans, skin as dry as old leaves stretched
over bones, like corpses left to dry in the desert. As if to make
up for all they lacked in robust humanity, concentrated magic
filled them out on the non-physical plane. It extended inward also,
each of them seeming to carry a black star of contained power and
paradoxically infinite magic.

It made them hard to look at, the way their
magic moved both out and in, as if they existed in multiple places
at once, giving her a vague sense of nausea and dislocation.

“
I did not see it before, either, but I do
through you now. Most … disconcerting.”

“
What does it mean?”

“
Nothing good.”

“Steady, Oria,” Lonen said as she swayed on
her feet, briefly cupping the back of her head over her braids. A
fleeting touch that nevertheless heartened her. “I’m taking cues
from you now.”

Of course he handed her the decision-making
power when she had no idea what to do. The Trom saved her from
deciding, however.

“Queen Ponen,” the one in front greeted her
with its mouthless voice that emanated from its entire being. “It
gladdens us to see you’ve taken not one, but several steps farther
down your path.”

She hated to contemplate what that might
mean. “Bára greets you. We did not expect you to return.”

The Trom couldn’t smile, of course, and yet
it seemed to. Much in the same way that expressions sometimes
conveyed themselves from the masked priests and priestesses. She
suppressed a shudder and Lonen shifted towards her, his desire to
wrap her in his arms palpable. It helped, oddly enough.

“We come when summoned. Though it’s true it
was not your call we answered. Someday you will call to us and your
understanding will deepen.”

No doubt that day would come—had to, if she
planned to wrest control of them from Yar and Febe—but she dreaded
discovering what that deeper understanding boded for her. No sign
of either of those summoners, cowards that they were, so she took
the situation in hand. “None stands here who summoned you, so you
may leave again.”