Lonen's War (26 page)

“Indeed, remarkable as it may seem, none can
find fault with your
hwil
.” Febe sounded sour, a bitter
complement to the irritated—and suspicious—energy she emanated.

As well she should, as Oria no more had
achieved
hwil
, whatever it truly felt like, than ever. But
she faked it perfectly well. Nothing the priests and priestesses
had attempted to shake her composure had rattled her. At least, not
that she showed. It rankled deeply that, for all their pride in
their personal magic, the masked ones could not truly see into her
heart. As her mother had predicted, once Oria came out the other
side of the harrowing test of scrutiny in the heart of magic,
nothing less could frighten or upset her.

After that, passing the simple tests of
hwil
proved quite simple. In fact, those challenges had been
easy enough, after the horrors of the Destrye Wars, that she could
have passed them before, had it ever occurred to her to lie about
achieving
hwil
.

How many priests and priestesses of Bára and
her sister cities had hit upon that solution? In her most cynical
moments, Oria suspected most of them, perhaps all. She hadn’t met
anyone who didn’t leak emotional energy. Over the past weeks,
practicing with her mother and Chuffta, she’d refined her ability
to sort through what she sensed—and to release it again.

Both sgath and grien flowed in her. Ponen.
Not something for anyone else to know, however.

“But the final test resides in the mask
itself.” The High Priestess took up a golden mask, newly minted,
from a stand on the altar. She anointed it with oils, holding it up
to the assembled priests and priestesses, who took up a low chant.
“Rhianna.”

Her mother moved behind Oria where she knelt
on the hard stone before the altar. She kept calm and unmoving as
Febe pressed the metal mask to her face. It burned her skin, hot
from the candle flames and warmed oils it had rested in, but Oria
didn’t allow herself to flinch. Her mother took up the first of the
three sets of ribbons, weaving them through Oria’s elaborate braids
and tying them tightly.

“Show us you possess the second sight,” Febe
demanded, her hope that Oria would fail coming through quite
clearly. The chanting rose in volume, climbing to deafening levels,
to prevent an aspirant from using sound to navigate. Oria stood,
walked around the altar, opened the door behind it and stepped
inside.

The others followed her, their chanting a
drumbeat that accelerated her heart rate. To unsettle her also,
then. It would take more than that to distract her.

“
Because you are more powerful than all
of them,”
Chuffta said, sounding both smug and proud.

“
Shh. You’ll make me fall.”
She
enjoyed focusing the thought at him, though—something else that had
become easier with the thick walls of resistance removed.

Men and women saw the obstacle course
differently, her mother had explained, though she only knew how she
perceived it. Using sgath, the narrow beams stood out to a magic
user from the background. Apparently her father had confided to
Rhianna that the men used grien much the way bats did, bouncing the
magic off surfaces to detect the edges and pitfalls. It went
against temple law for him to have told her that, or for her mother
to have told her any of it, but it seemed any number of rules had
fallen by the wayside in her mother’s—and other
allies’—determination to see Oria on the throne of Bára.

Careful to use no grien those present might
detect, Oria let the sgath flow and walked confidently along the
narrow path, careful not to shuffle or appear to feel her way.
Though the room was brightly lit enough for the shine to leak
around the edges of her mask, the way the metal curved close to her
skull kept her from seeing the beams she walked along. The
route—which changed for each supplicant—twisted and turned,
changing angles, but still fell short of the ones her mother and
Juli, the junior priestess assigned to Oria, had designed with
diabolical mischief for her to practice on.

She still had bruises from falling. But
they’d been worth it, for this moment.

At last, she stepped off the end that
narrowed to a needle-thin point, showing her mastery by not
breaking it. And that was all. To advance to higher levels in the
temple, she’d need to demonstrate sgath, but that would be for the
future.

The priests and priestesses surrounded her,
kissing their masks to hers in ritual congratulation, the clinks
like the chiming of wineglasses. Chuffta landed on her shoulder.
His physical presence still worked to bolster and balance her,
though she managed more of that on her own, through understanding
the interplay of sgath and grien through her being. He tapped her
mask with his nose.

“
I bet I could melt it if I tried,”
he remarked.

She tweaked his tail.
“You’d be sad when
I blasted you with my amazing magical abilities.”

He snorted mentally, with which she ruefully
had to agree. So far she hadn’t been able to do much with the grien
besides use it as a release valve. No thunder, no fireballs, no
earth-moving. Of course, as her mother wryly noted, most men
learned their affinities from other wielders of grien. Oria
wouldn’t be asking for lessons in that, so she’d have to figure it
out on her own.

The story of her life, it seemed.

She felt her mother’s aura before Rhianna’s
soothing embrace surrounded her. With a sigh, she leaned her masked
face against her mother’s shoulder. “It seems odd for me to have
the mask and you to be barefaced,” she said.

“I don’t mind,” her mother murmured. “Those
things get cursed hot.”

Oria huffed a laugh at that, though she
already believed it. She’d look forward to those cool, herbed face
cloths now.

“Now,” her mother said, releasing her, “to
deal with the council. And Yar.”

“I don’t like that we have no idea what
he—and the rest of them—have been up to these last weeks. If only I
could have gotten my mask sooner.”

Yar had walled her out of all discussions.
Neither she nor her mother had been able to find out many details
about the city’s water reserves or communications with their sister
cities—and without masks to allow them entrance as representatives
of the temple, they were banned from the council meetings. Folcwita
Lapo had turned Oria down with ill-concealed glee when she’d asked
to be admitted as a citizen. She hadn’t sensed the Trom, but the
giant derkesthai glided in lazy circles in the thermals high above
Bára, from time to time.

“At least we’ll know soon.” Her mother
patted her arm. “You’ve done all you could.”

Perhaps so. But that still might not be
enough.

“H
ow long until we have the
final sections in place?” Lonen shaded his eyes against the angled
autumn sun, to better see the lay of the aqueducts through the
distance.

“We’ll do the stretch to connect to Dru
itself last.” Arnon pointed at the direction it would take. “It
might mean hauling water all winter, but you wanted to prioritize
crop irrigation, and the sections to the farthest fields will be
done in the next few days. Even manually carrying water from the
finished aqueducts to those, the time savings has allowed us to
grow a respectable harvest, enough to last through the winter.
You’ve done it, King Lonen.”

“We did it. All the Destrye. And thank Arill
for the unseasonably warm weather.”

Arnon cast a judicious eye at the landscape.
“Except for the danger of fire. Everything we haven’t watered is
tinder dry.”

“Perhaps we should be watering more things
then,” Natly spoke up. “There’s plenty of it now, after all.” She
pointed at the staged aqueduct platforms, painstakingly built into
the foothills, funneling water in a series of manmade waterfalls to
the ripening crops of fast-growing alfalfa.

Arnon didn’t glance at Natly but his
shoulder muscles bunched. Lonen suppressed the absurd urge to
apologize for her, especially knowing how much Arnon disapproved of
their engagement. He also—more ruthlessly—cut off the disloyal
thought that Oria wouldn’t have said something so foolish. Not only
unfair to Natly but probably untrue. He’d known Natly for years and
Oria for two conversations. If Natly could still surprise him, Oria
would likely obliterate his idealism.

“It looks good,” he told Arnon, putting a
hand on his brother’s shoulder, belatedly aware it was his father’s
gesture.

Arnon, however, didn’t seem to notice. He
folded his arms, surveying the construction with a faint smile of
pride. “It should work.”

With his gaze on the scaffolding of
waterfalls, Lonen frowned at what he’d thought were clouds
gathering over the peaks, as they did most afternoons in the heat
of autumn, though they rarely produced rain as they had in years
past.

Not clouds, perhaps but…smoke? He traced the
line of it behind low hills, where the harvested grains were
stored. Fear crawled down his spine. As if called, a messenger came
sprinting up.

“King Lonen!” The messenger barely gasped
the words on the last of his breath as he ran up, then dropped to
his knees. The scent of char wafted from him and instant dread
curdled Lonen’s gut.

All these days and weeks of working, he’d
anticipated this moment. Much as he’d tried to focus on the
positive, to count the blessings rather than the curses, a vague
foreboding had plagued him. Not unlike the nearly nightly dreams of
Oria casting black magic spells, ripping him asunder—obvious
metaphors for his fears of what the Bárans might yet do to the
Destrye.

Without hearing the words, Lonen knew.

“Dragons…searing…eating the dead…” The
messenger heaved out the news in toxic clumps. “The grain silos,
everything, burning.”

Beside him, Arnon cursed viciously. “It’s
not possible!”

But it was. Worse, it had been inevitable,
if the nightmares were to be believed.

Now none of that mattered. A greasy chill
rolled over him, as if the mummified thing had already dissolved
his bones.

“How long ago and are they still there?”
Lonen demanded, willing the man to breathe.

“Just past noon. Sire, I—” The man broke off
on a strangled scream as the shadow of a dragon passed across the
platform where they stood, Natly’s cry of unmitigated horror as
chill as the shadow. Without thinking, Lonen thrust her behind him.
In the same movement, he drew the iron axe he’d never quite lost
the habit of carrying. She’d teased him about that, too, that he
kept the ugly thing ever with him, when he should be wearing his
father’s shining sword of Destrye kingship. Call it superstition,
but he’d felt better with his battle-axe at hand. Besides that, he
couldn’t face the finality of his father’s passing by taking up the
sword of office.

The dragon swooped past again, low enough
for the creature on its neck to look them over, raising a hand as
it had in the council chambers at Bára. A strange greeting from a
soulless creature. Arnon stood at his shoulder, iron sword in hand,
and it comforted Lonen that his brother shared his preference for
the ugly weapons.

The dragon wheeled away again, followed by a
phalanx of others, smoke drifting in their wake.

Like locusts settling on a verdant farm,
they set down and the Trom riders began filling those endlessly
thirsty barrels of water from the freely flowing aqueducts.

“You can’t go alone.” Arnon sounded very reasonable,
but his face showed the strain of worry. “It’s suicide.”

“If it is, taking more Destrye with me will
only get more warriors killed. This way I risk only myself.”

“I don’t want to be king,” Arnon ground out,
jaw tight, as he paced. “Don’t make me have to be king.”

Lonen waited until his brother made the
circuit of the room and had to stop before him or dodge around.
When Arnon seemed about to do just that, Lonen grasped him by the
shoulders. “The treaty was between me and Princess Oria. If she
violated the terms, then she owes me a follow up on her
promises.”

“
If
she violated the terms?” Arnon
threw up his hands, breaking his brother’s grip. “Of course she
did! The Bárans are without honor of any kind. How many times must
she break her word to you before you see her for the evil, greedy
sorceress she is?”

“I don’t like it either,” Natly put in. She
sat at the table, hands clasped around a hammered metal goblet of
wine. If Lonen were a thoughtful lover, he would have brought her
one of those delicate transparent vessels Oria used. A pretty gift
for the faithful woman who’d waited for him at home. Natly had
finally stopped crying, but her face showed the ravages of her
hysterical tears. “Have I won you back from the Hall of Warriors
only to lose you again? This Báran sorceress could take your love
for me and twist it backwards.”