Lonen's War (10 page)

Even the wild dark hair that hung to his
shoulders was matted with blood, indistinguishable from the black
fur vest he wore, which left tanned arms as bare as his thighs. He
bled from a half-dozen wounds and seemed not to notice. It must be
abhorrence that transfixed her, that made it so difficult to look
away from the play of corded muscle as he sheathed that enormous
axe.

And now he expected her to go with him
through gates she’d never passed through in her entire life.

“
You likely cannot withstand it. You are
already close to collapse.”

“I’ve been ‘close to collapse’ for hours and
hours,” she muttered at Chuffta. “So far it hasn’t happened.”

“
That doesn’t mean it won’t. You’ve been
able to forestall it through strength of will, but even you will
reach a breaking point—and it will be all that much worse for
pushing yourself so far.”

“This is not helpful advice.”

She’d tried to keep her lip movements small,
but Lonen frowned at her, black suspicion on his face and angry
revulsion pouring off him like the stench of a decaying animal. It
made her stomach lurch. Several of his men made hand signs at her,
hate and fear oozing from them.

“Cease stalling,” Lonen sneered at her. “Do
we have a deal or not?”

“I cannot go through the gates with you. I
can stay just inside the doors and—”

He cut off her words with a chopping hand
and furious glare. “Then I can only conclude you are without honor
and mean to betray your word. Do your men wait outside the gates to
slaughter us the moment we step out? Perhaps the earth will open
beneath our feet or a wall of fire will immolate us? No deal,
Princess
.”

Oria sighed. “There is no such plan, but I
understand your fear.”

“Fear?” He visibly bristled. “I am not
afraid. I am a warrior of the Destrye, a prince and my father’s
son. I am simply not a fool to be tricked so easily.”

Instead of retorting that she could sense
his fear as palpably as the sun on her skin—and that it made her
want to empty her guts except she hadn’t eaten in so long that
nothing sat in her stomach—she nodded in resignation. “I shall go
through the gate with you.”

“
Oria, don’t do this.”

She didn’t reply to Chuffta, partly because
there was nothing to say and partly to forestall more of that
glowering hatred from the Destrye. Not that she cared what he
thought of her, but the toxic energy dragged at her fragile control
more than any other variety. In a better frame of mind, she might
appreciate how much she’d learned about her own capacity to endure
various energies in the past hours.

“Renzo, would you help me down?” She held
out a gloved hand to him, not trusting her legs to hold, especially
in the heavy court gown meant for sitting and looking impressive,
not walking. With a mental grumble, Chuffta climbed to her
shoulder, winding his long tail around her waist.

“Princess, I can’t let you walk among armed
enemy soldiers with no protection,” Renzo whispered, harsh and
adamant, as he handed her down.

She dipped her chin at him, doing her best
to ignore the way the ground squished beneath her silk slippers,
moisture soaking in along with the violently fractured energy shed
by the dying. Perhaps she’d reached a similar saturation point,
where she simply couldn’t hold any more energy, so it ran off an
overflowing roof cistern in a good monsoon year. That would be
helpful. Chuffta snorted his opinion of that in the recesses of her
mind.

“My man comes with me, to guard my back,”
she said, hoping she sounded firm.

Lonen acknowledged that with a grim twist of
his lips. “Mine, too, then.” Another man, equally shaggy and
blood-soaked stepped to his side.

“They need to form an aisle,” Renzo murmured
to her, “and lay down their weapons.”

Lonen overheard the quiet words. “Not
happening.”

“You can’t ask Princess Oria to walk a
gauntlet of the enemy,” Renzo snarled at him.

“If they wanted to cut me down, they could
have already,” Oria said in a mild tone, letting Lonen overhear
that, too. She held his gaze with her chin high. “My people are
largely dead, our defenses falling around us. One more death would
hardly matter.” She’d surprised him with that, enough to abate his
fury, the relief like a cool evening breeze after a sweltering
afternoon. “I shall walk your gauntlet.”

He eyed her, gaze slipping to Chuffta.
“Leave the dragonlet behind.”

A laugh escaped her, shocking and raw.
Mostly at her Familiar’s indignant and inarticulate reaction. She
shook her head. “Not happening.” It gave her some satisfaction,
too, to throw his words back at him.

They locked eyes and wills. His, densely
fringed with black lashes, were a dark gray, like the granite their
sister-city to the north, Arvda, sent in trade. Surprisingly
lovely, they would have made him look feminine but for the angry
line of a recent scar that dragged from his forehead, skipped his
eye, and continued down his cheek. Nearly missed losing that eye to
whatever had sliced at him, something thin and sharp by the look of
it.

“Every moment we waste allows more of both
our people to die,” she said softly. “Chuffta remains with me or I
don’t go. Give your men the order to let us through and I’ll give
the order to open the gates.”

With a grim nod, he turned to face the gate,
standing on the side of her away from her Familiar.

“
Dragonlet,”
Chuffta fumed.

She ignored him, knowing perfectly well that
he was attempting to distract her from the trial of stepping beyond
the boundary walls of her world. She didn’t understand how it
worked—yet another temple secret that would be shared only if she
fully realized
hwil
—but something about them buffered the
wild energy of the larger world just as her tower did. No sensitive
who hadn’t taken the mask even came close to the gate, much less
set foot outside.

All she had to do was get through the next
minutes and remain conscious long enough to get the message through
to stop the fighting and get word to her brothers. Hopefully at
that point at least one of them lived and could take over.

“
And plan your funeral,”
came
Chuffta’s sour thought. His worry came through clearly or she might
have been annoyed.

“Don’t put attention on a result you do not
want,” she told him. Then, before Lonen could say anything or make
that sign against evil, she called out in a louder voice, “Open the
gate!”

Lucky for them that Priest Vico had enough
magical ability to do that much, with Priestess Febe feeding him
from her still vast reserves. It seemed a grave miscalculation to
Oria to have left the city without sufficient sorcerers to even
open the gates again. Why had the king committed
all
of the
most powerful to the battle? It didn’t bear thinking of at the
moment, but if she survived and didn’t end up a Destrye prisoner,
she resolved to learn more about strategy.

She’d wasted a lot of time pretending to
meditate and chasing elusive
hwil
that she could have spent
studying useful knowledge.

Magic streamed in a thin swirl past her,
then burgeoned, touching the massive doors. Without a sound, they
slowly opened, admitting the roar of battle that had been muffled
before.

Frenetic, fragmented energy slammed into her
like a physical assault.

Chuffta loomed large in her mind, soaking up
what he could, but she swayed on her feet. A hand grasped her
wrist, where the lace cuff bared her skin, burning with raw,
undisciplined energy, scorching her unmercifully.

“Princess Oria?” Lonen peered at her, much
too close.

“Don’t touch me.” The request came out
ragged, nearly begging him, and he snatched his hand away, eyes
firing with renewed offense and fury. She turned away from it,
feeling top-heavy and bottom-light, a festival cake piled too high.
The doors opened enough to show a raft of Bára guard just outside.
They turned, swords and spears ready.

“Stand down,” Oria commanded, fastening her
gaze on one she recognized. “Lieutenant. We have a temporary
truce.”

The men sagged, their exhaustion and despair
swamping into a kind of dreadful relief that blackened the edges of
her vision.

“Bring my brothers—or the highest in command
who’s still alive. I’ve offered surrender in exchange for cessation
of hostilities.” She got all of Captain Ercole’s words out, though
it seemed she heard them from a vast distance, down a long tunnel.
“Someone needs to take over negotiations.”

She pushed the final instruction through the
onrushing black. Then succumbed as it crashed over her and washed
her away, Chuffta’s mind-voice a wail in the distance.

“
Oria!”

Lonen caught Oria as she fell, an instinctive grab
he would have stifled if he’d had a beat more to recall her hissed
directive not to sully her with his touch—and to consider her
reptilian defender. As it was, she passed out so precipitously, as
if that last word uttered took her final breath, that he nearly
didn’t catch her before she hit the paved road. The dragon creature
took wing.

Bemused to find himself holding her as he
would a Destrye bride, but dressed in white, he kept one wary eye
on the man Oria had called lieutenant and the other on the
dragonlet circling his head. He’d throw the princess to the ground
if either of them attacked. He owed her nothing, not even this
courtesy. Except…

Except she’d said she couldn’t exit the gate
and he’d insisted on it. Perhaps it hadn’t been a trick or missish
timidity. What did he know of magic? He’d thought of her as a
puffed-up, spitting cat before—holding her this way now, she seemed
like one soaked that turned out to be skin and bones beneath a
wealth of fur. She weighed practically nothing and most of that had
to be the gown.

He nearly did drop her when talons sank into
his shoulder. “Gah!”

Bright green dragon eyes stared fiercely
into his. “I’m not hurting her, curse you, beast,” he hissed.
Amazingly the thing seemed to understand because the wicked points
retracted some. Not entirely, but less painful. The thing’s long
tail curled up like a snake about to strike, then wrapped around
the bare skin on Oria’s forearm, a slight strip of creamy flesh,
slightly darker than her glove and sleeve.

A moan sighed out of her, a faint hint of
color returning to her death-pallid cheeks.

“Let me take her from you,” her guard said.
“She’ll do better inside the gates.”

Lonen hesitated. They could cut him down
without her, but a Destrye didn’t use a woman as a shield. No more
than he already had, to his chagrin. Hopefully her faint didn’t
indicate she carried a disease.

He held her out and the dragonlet hopped
from his shoulder onto Oria’s chest, folding its legs and wings to
curl up there, gaze intent on her face, evincing an unnatural
intelligence and affection that made his skin crawl. As her man
took the princess away, Lonen noted how her formerly pristine gown
bore blood smudges in the shape of his arms and hands, the shadow
of his grip like an injury. The crimson, both bright and drying, on
her white dress looked like a bad omen.

But for her people or his, he didn’t
know.

Possibly both.

T
o Lonen’s vast relief, his
father and Ion soon arrived at the gates, the Báran guard parting
for their passage with hard faces but lowered weapons. Much as
Lonen wanted to embrace them and pound their backs in the great
good consolation at seeing them still alive, he held himself back.
And told himself Arnon must be out commanding the Destrye forces,
in case of treachery, not fallen in battle.

Before they could converse, another two men
arrived wearing the crimson robes and eyeless golden masks of Báran
sorcerers.

They ranged into sides. King Archimago and
Ion flanking Lonen, and the two sorcerers standing shoulder to
shoulder across from them. How could they see to walk in those
masks? A silence stretched between them, neither side willing to
concede by speaking first.

“Where is the Princess Oria?” one of them
finally demanded, the metal mask making his voice echo like the
ghosts of campfire tales. “We were told she was here, outside the
gates, but she clearly isn’t. We won’t fall for the tricks of
barbarian scum.”

Lonen clamped down on a childish quiver of
fear. It was only a man wearing a golden mask, nothing
supernatural. And one with his magic fled, bled out undefended
during the night on the high walls above. Anger surged through
Lonen that this man hid behind a mask, flinging insults when they’d
been the ones who’d forced Lonen to commit the unthinkable, the
murder of women.

King Archimago turned to him. “I understand
a princess of this city gave formal surrender and we are to
negotiate terms.”