Oria's Gambit (27 page)

And she was so very weary of having
enemies.

Also, this part at least came easily to her
now. Accumulating sgath had never been the problem for her—quite
the opposite. Until the night before when she’d completely depleted
herself. For the most part, once she’d learned how to see and hold
it comfortably, all those lessons on connecting it to a priest fell
into place. Breathing in the clean, clear, and familiar magic of
Bára, Sgatha’s gift, she let it well up into a serene pool, and
presented it to Priest Vico. In the same way, the priestesses of
the city had offered their collective sgath to the battle
mages.

Priest Vico sipped from it, then bowed in
thanks, and spoke the ritual words. “A powerful gift, indeed. I
thank you, priestess, for sharing with this humble priest.”

Yar seethed, his grien energy sparking and
swirling in her mind’s eye. Her own grien wanted to rise to battle
it, but she restrained it. Soon enough. He nudged Gallia forward.
“Show him. Gallia is the most powerful junior priestess of Lousá.
She will make a great queen.”

Perhaps so, but at that moment her sgath hung
in a ragged mist. Oria choked back her sympathy for the woman as
she tried to reach for Bára’s unfamiliar magic. It seemed to slip
away from her the moment she reached for it, like a skittish kitten
uncertain of a stranger and unwilling to be petted just yet. What
she did manage to gather, the dark cavities of the journey’s strain
devoured as quickly as she built it up. Yar was an idiot to have
pushed her so fast. She finally pulled together enough to offer
Priest Vico, who thanked her as he had Oria.

“While Priestess Gallia’s sgath is present,
Priestess Oria’s strength of sgath is far greater. This part goes
to her and King Lonen.”

Yar took Gallia’s arm, shaking her slightly
as he spoke in an undertone to her. His grien lashed about her, but
she appeared unmoved. Enviable
hwil
.

“For the third part, the priests will
demonstrate their grien,” Vico declared. “Please, focus your grien
and release it according to your affinity, but in a way that all
might observe, to please Sgatha. Would either of you—”

“I might as well go.” Yar swaggered as he
stepped forward. “As we know how this will end.”

He raised his hands, his powerful grien
streaming out. With careless effort, he drew from the stone of the
chasm and the rock spires behind the temple’s towers, sculpting a
column, then refining it.

Into a statue of himself as king.

Safe in the anonymity of her mask, Oria
rolled her eyes at his hubris. She couldn’t stand by and allow him
to take the throne. That had long been her resolve, but the day’s
events—and seeing how he abused the woman he should cherish—only
reinforced her certainty. Even if they lost this trial, she would
find another way to defeat her brother.

Not only for the Destrye, for Lonen, and for
Bára, but for the good of the world.

Yar twirled and bowed, making an insult of
the demonstration. Priest Vico acknowledged his grien with the
ritual words neutrally enough, but her brother’s accomplishment
spoke volumes. Even among her family, even compared to their father
the king, Yar’s gift had stood out in both its strength and his
skill with it. If only he had something of Lonen’s character, he
might be worthy of such power.

As it was, the prospect of him with the rule
of Bára and full access to the temple secrets soured her gut. She
simply could not fail. The stakes were far too high.

“King Lonen?” the priest invited.

“Why bother?” Yar sounded bored. “He’s a
mind-dead barbarian grunt. He has nothing to demonstrate. I’ve won.
Two out of three.”

“Not true,” Oria answered the challenge.
She’d learned the value of magic well-faked. “The Destrye have
magic of their own and King Lonen will demonstrate it.”

“Oria, no,” Lonen urged in a low voice, his
emotions anything but quiet. “It’s not worth the risk. We’ll find
another way.”

“I’m doing it,” she replied in an even tone.
“Play along or you will have blown it for us before we’ve
begun.”

H
e wanted to fight her on
it, but recognized the utter futility. Perhaps he’d been wrong in
thinking—bragging even—that he possessed more stubbornness.
Obstinacy or will, Oria had cultivated an ability to forge ahead
regardless of the consequences to herself. And now her survival
depended on him making a convincing show of working Destrye
magic.

His father and brothers must be howling with
laughter as they watched from the Hall of Warriors. At least he
provided entertainment for them. A Destrye pretending to be a
sorcerer. If the poets didn’t write ballads proclaiming him a fool
for taking a Báran sorceress to wife, they surely would for this
fiasco.

With no idea what he’d do—he should have
realized Oria would insist on this reckless strategy and planned
ahead—he unstrapped his battle axe and began swinging it in the
basic training cycle, chanting a nonsense rhyme of Destrye
children, which would hopefully sound like a magical incantation.
More fodder for that future ballad.

“Heya naya, frahm frahm frinny. Naya heya,
frinnah say say.”

He repeated it, moving the axe from hand to
hand, adding in foot stomping as if he danced to Destrye drums. The
sweep of Oria’s magic filtered through him, tingling as it had when
she’d teased his cock with it, but passing through and to the
laughable edifice Yar had created. It creaked and shivered, then
burst with vines, twining and trailing with rapid growth. Huge
indigo flower buds swelled, then burst in blossom. The vines turned
woody, encasing and obscuring the sculpture’s lines until it was
unrecognizable.

Drawing the line there, lest Oria take it in
her head to do more and even further risk exposing herself, Lonen
set down his axe and wiped his brow.

Priest Vico regarded him, surprise in the
lines of his shoulders. “Bára will benefit from nature magic such
as yours, King Lonen. I’ve never seen its like, not even in the
temple annals. The Destrye appear to have secrets of their own.
Both men have demonstrated the application of magic. While Prince
Yar’s grien is more powerful and he demonstrated more refined skill
with it, King Lonen’s is unique and much needed in this time of
privation. This part goes to—”

“Wait.” Yar held up a hand, regal command in
his voice, all trace of the arrogant boy gone. “Oria, forfeit. Do
it now or I will speak the truth of this.”

Dread coiled in Lonen’s stomach. Yar did
know, as Oria had feared, and he would use that knowledge to win.
So be it. At least her brother had shown some filial compassion and
given her an out.

“I have no intention of forfeiting,” Oria
replied, equally cool, devastating Lonen with the words. “The
contest will be won fairly or not at all.”

“Don’t make me do this.” Yar actually sounded
human again. A boy not ready for the pressures he’d shouldered. “I
don’t want your death. Forfeit.”

Priest Vico looked between them. “Her
death?”

“Last chance, Oria. Forfeit or die.”

Lonen turned to Oria, mentally urging her to
do it with everything in him, speaking as loudly as he dared.
“We’ll find another way, Oria. It’s not worth it. Take the out.
Forfeit.”

“Is that what you would do?” she replied
under her breath. “You who stormed the walls of Bára by yourself? I
think not. I refuse to be a coward.”

No time to argue he’d not been entirely
alone. “It’s not cowardice to retreat in the face of doom, to leave
the field of battle to fight another day. You can’t fight him if
you’re dead.”

“He can’t prove anything,” she insisted.
“It’s a bluff.”

He couldn’t take the chance. Not with her
life and not with the future of his people hanging in the balance.
“I’m sorry to do this, but I can’t let you risk this.”

“Don’t you dare!” she snarled, her magic
whipping at him.

He ignored her, raising his voice. “We
forfeit.”

But Priest Vico shook his head. “The contest
is between Prince Yar and Princess Oria. Only they can forfeit. Do
you wish to forfeit, Princess?”

“No. Pronounce your determination.”

“Very well, the contest goes to Queen Oria
and her consort King Lonen. May you reign in—”

“Remember that you forced my hand, Oria,” Yar
cut through. “The grien is hers.” The words thudded flat into
sudden, shocked silence.

Priest Vico visibly floundered. “The… the
what you say?”

“The grien. It’s hers. She’s an abomination
and should be executed as such. High Priestess Febe knew it and
Oria killed her to keep the secret. Oria used it against me before
today and like a sentimental fool I protected her and did not
report it to the temple. I take full responsibility for my
lapse.”

“Ridiculous,” Oria sneered. “No woman can use
grien. It’s not an abomination; it’s an impossibility.”

“Examine her,” Yar told the priest. “If you
look closely, you can see it in her. I can see it now. Revolting
and against nature, but there.”

Oria stiffened as Priest Vico approached her.
“Forgive me, Princess, but temple law compels me to be certain that
such an anomaly has not occurred.”

Her previous confidence bled away, leaving fear
behind. Much of it came from Lonen and she abruptly regretted her
foolhardy bravado. If she failed this examination, she’d fail again
to keep her word to aid the Destrye—and this time through her own
actions.

All because she simply could not force
herself to swallow her pride and forfeit to Yar.

“
Can you help me?” she sent to Chuffta,
fully aware she grasped at sand already blown away.

“
I don’t know how I can.”
His
mind-voice sounded afraid also.
“Be still and serene as
possible. Focus on sgath, bring that aspect up as strong as you
can.”

She did her best, silencing the frantic
whispers of her oversensitized nerves that hadn’t at all settled
from the stress of the compatibility test. Beating frantically
against her ribs, her heart thrummed like a trapped jewelbird.
Though Lonen tried to drown his emotions behind the image of that
serene lake, his worry threaded toward her. She couldn’t think
about him.

Except that if she died, he’d at least be
free to marry Natly and have a normal wife he could bed. No, that
thought didn’t help because she wasn’t that generous. Lonen was her
husband and she wanted to live, to keep him and see that lake for
herself, to learn to swim in it.

Besides, without her Yar’s Trom would kill
them all. She had to win this. She was on the side of the good and
right. Surely that meant something.

It wasn’t fair that they’d lose because she
couldn’t conceal a simple bit of magic. The silence stretched on.
Then Priest Vico’s astonishment and deep regret flooded her
senses.

“Former priestess Oria,” he said at last, his
voice hushed and hoarse. “You are disqualified from this contest. I
must ask that you surrender your mask.”

Gallia made a sound and Oria appreciated her
new sister’s sympathy. Or perhaps it was revulsion. In the end, it
likely didn’t matter. She tried to think of a solution, a defense,
some way to extract herself from this, but came up with nothing
nothing nothing.

With fingers as numb as her brain, she
fumbled at the ribbons, grateful when Lonen stepped up to undo the
knots for her, his bedrock strength as steady as ever. Juli took
the mask, her sgath curling in comforting tendrils. Vico accepted
it from her and turned his back decisively on Oria.

“King Yar and Queen Gallia, may you reign in
peace,” he declared.

Yar’s grien rocketed in bolts of triumph,
lashing out to shiver over the stone statue of himself, fragments
of stone sifting down and taking her leaves and blossoms with them.
The cleaned stone stood starkly clean when he’d finished, its
sterility an apt foreshadowing of their futures.

“I only regret that my first action as king
will be my sister’s execution.” He almost managed to sound sorry
about it. “It’s your fault, Oria, for driving me to this.”

“An ill omen to begin a new era,” Priest Vico
noted, without emotion, his
hwil
perfect.

“Is it?” Yar rounded on the priest, his voice
and grien turned snarling. “You dare criticize me? I say it’s a
good omen. We begin my reign on a fresh page, with Bára cleansed
anew of the abominations perpetuated on our fair city. I will make
Bára great again!”

“Be careful, kingling,” Lonen ground out from
just behind her shoulder. “You are still my subject, Bára belongs
to Dru as Princess Oria belongs to me. I am the final law here and
you will not gainsay me or I will bring devastation down upon you
and destroy your city, great or not.”

Oria nearly protested, but Lonen put a firm
hand on her shoulder, and she subsided. He’d given her room to do
what she thought best and she’d failed him. She owed him whatever
steps he wished to take now.