Lonen's War (4 page)

Alva shook her head, smooth mask gleaming.
“Without a husband, I only feed sgath into the common pool. It
feels much like being a vessel that knows not who drinks the water
it pours.”

Suppressing a shudder—something about that
image crawled under her skin in an unpleasant way—Oria didn’t
reply. She had no good reason to think it, but something told her
the return of the army signaled only a pause in the conflict. The
breeze coming in the wide windows carried that scent, of something
carnal, full of rage. It hadn’t gone away. Not far enough.

“
Trust that intuition.”

“Do you sense it, too?” she murmured to
Chuffta.

“
No, silly.
You
are the sorceress
in this relationship. I don’t sense exactly what you do—I only
taste some of it through you. Being sensitive is a gift as well as
a curse. Of course you sense what others do not.”

Of course. From meat-filled scents to the
echoes of restive ancestresses in the very stones of the tower, all
very reasonable and rational to pay attention to.

Chuffta mentally snorted
. “I never called
you rational.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Alva, long accustomed to Oria’s one-sided
conversations, remained quiet, pausing to open the doors to the
salon with a studied sweep of her graceful arms. Shouts broke
through, slapping Oria like a physical blow. She gasped, clutching
the doorframe lest the energy knock her backward.

“
Steady.”
Chuffta hopped up to her
shoulder, only the tip of his tail remaining around her wrist, the
rest winding down her arm like a decorative band, and stroked her
cheek with his angled head.
“Let it pass through.”

“Calm down, please.” Queen Rhianna’s voice
remained mellifluous, but nevertheless carried the tone of maternal
command they all responded to without thought. Even though the
reprimand had been directed at Oria’s brothers, it worked on her,
too, steadying her as much as Chuffta’s stabilizing presence in her
mind.

If only her mother could follow her around
all her life, chiming gentle reminders.

Oria smothered a grimace at the thought and
cooled her expression into a facsimile of serenity.
Hwil
might remain out of her reach for the moment, but she’d mastered
the appearance of it. The smooth golden masks of her family all
turned to face her.

“Forgive us for startling you, Oria. We
arrived earlier than expected,” her father said, holding out his
hands. “You look lovely and peaceful today, flower of my
heart.”

She took his hands and let him draw her into
his strong embrace, inhaling the feel of him. With her parents,
being flesh of their flesh, born of their magical energy, she could
enjoy physical contact without reserve. Always so welcome. He’d
bathed and changed into fresh clothes for their meal, out of the
crimson priest’s robes he and her brothers would have worn into
battle, and into the light, beige ones that better forgave the
midday heat.

In turn, each of her brothers embraced her;
some of their young male excitement buzzing through their
hwil
like a displaced swarm from a broken hive even though
they carefully touched her only over her gown, so she kept the
contact brief. They all treated her as if she might break apart,
which irritated even as she appreciated the consideration her
parents had drummed into them regarding their delicate sister.
Still, there was nothing wrong with her physical body. The
healer-priestesses pronounced her strong as a desert pony.

It was inside that she remained as fragile
as a blown-glass figurine.

“Let us sit.” Queen Rhianna spread her hands
at the table, the waxed wood gleaming gold. They arranged
themselves around it, her father at the head, her mother at the
foot, her eldest brother, Nat, at their father’s right hand, the
second eldest, Ben, at his left. Oria sat at her mother’s right
hand, her younger brother, Yar, across from her. Her mother linked
hands with her, but Ben hovered his palm over hers, symbolically
sparing her the stress of skin-to-skin contact. It impacted her
less from her siblings, but they were different enough from her not
to be in as perfect harmony as her parents.

“We give thanks for the gift of
hwil
,” the king intoned. “Which both protects us from the
power of grien and sgath and allows us to draw from their
blessings, to share with all the world. Here, in this safe place,
we remove our masks and take the sustenance of food and drink with
those we love best.”

Oria folded her hands in her lap while
servants stepped forward with dainty silver knives, one for each
royal, and cut the knotted ribbons of their masks. Her family held
the masks in place, then removed them as one, setting them
reverently on the mats to their left, placed there for that express
purpose. They accepted damp cloths, perfumed with menthol herbs, to
cool their flushed faces. Alva gave a cloth to Oria also, a
long-established courtesy to include the royal children who’d not
yet taken their masks.

They meant well, but the rest of her family
actually
needed
the cloths. So instead of playing the game
of wiping away nonexistent sweat in exaggerated gestures as she had
growing up, Oria set hers aside, making a deliberate effort to let
go of the feeling of being excluded. Chuffta sent her an
affectionate thought. Giving back the cloths, her family relaxed
and smiled at one another, her favorite part of the ritual. Though
she knew their faces well, it warmed her heart to see them again.
The king accepted a flask of wine and poured for them all, the
servants bringing them first to the queen, then to Oria, and then
to her brothers in reverse age order.

She held her glass until her father raised
his. “To my beautiful family.”

Not to victory, as she’d anticipated. The
wine, kept chilled on ice in the cellars even through the hottest
season, tasted lightly sweet as the fragrance of day-blooming
flowers, but the faint scent of roasting meat drifted through her
head nonetheless. Her father and brothers all smelled on the
surface like the honeyed soap the men preferred, and yet it seemed
the smell of carnage clung to them, tingeing the flavor of the wine
with the bitterness of char. Oria swallowed back against it.

“What news of the battle then?” she asked as
the servants brought out the first course, a cold berry cream
soup.

Her brothers all glanced at their father,
though Yar gave her a cheeky grin first, clearly pleased with
himself. King Tav’s expression remained calm, revealing nothing.
“Always so impatient, my gifted daughter.”

A mild reproof, but one that stung. Yes,
yes—if she had
hwil
, she wouldn’t have prompted them for
information. Still, they all knew she struggled with impatience, so
it didn’t need reiterating. Oria blew out a retort without speaking
it and focused on her soup. Delicious, a perfect complement to the
wine. But not enough to distract her from the undercurrents beneath
the apparently peaceful meal. Her brothers might have silenced
their voices, but their emotions ran high. Their bright energy
tugged at her, eroding her hard-won calm like a receding tide
dragging at the sandy shore.

Her father let the silence stretch out and
finally Oria set down her glass spoon so carefully that it made no
sound. “I can feel that things aren’t right and it’s getting to me.
Would you please tell me what happened before I have to excuse
myself?”

Her mother gave her an approving smile. Much
as Oria hated confessing to crumbling control, she’d finally agreed
that was better than melting down because she wouldn’t admit to
it.

“Tav,” Rhianna said, “there’s no need to
push her. Not today.”

Her father’s eyes rested on his wife with
burning warmth, a slight smile breaking the calm of his visage. He
gestured to his man to remove the soup. “As always, you are wise.
This, then, is what occurred. The Destrye had indeed made their way
to within leagues of the city and seemed determined to storm the
walls.”

“
Unfortunate,”
Chuffta commented, the
irony settling her thrill of fear. Her mother, naturally, showed no
reaction, but it seemed not all the dismay belonged to Oria.

“But we were victorious!” Yar burst through,
that cocky grin cracking his unfortunately still-pimpled cheeks.
“We halved their numbers and sent them scrambling. They were still
retreating this morning. Let the cowardly barbarians run with their
tails between their legs!”

“And us harrying them with golems all the
way,” Ben added with a thin smile of triumph. Of all her brothers,
Ben had been the oldest when he took the mask. Not as old as Oria
was now, but they’d at least shared the struggle to find
hwil
that Nat and Yar had escaped. Privately Oria thought
the trial had tempered him, made him less impetuous than her other
brothers—and that he’d be a better heir than Nat because of it.

Nat…he had a meanness to him. She’d stopped
mentioning it because everyone told her that older brothers always
give grief to their little sisters. Chuffta didn’t like him either,
which validated her unease.

“
I don’t have a good reason, though,”
Chuffta mused.
“He reminds me of those sand mites that get under
the scales.”

She smiled a little at that and found Nat
watching her with cold eyes, as if he somehow knew she discussed
him. “Don’t be afraid, baby sister,” he said. “Unfortunate that
you’re too fragile to leave your tower more often than a few times
a year, but we’re here to protect you. Those meat-headed warriors
ran away, squealing like little girls.”

“They did!” Yar crowed, clearly delighted.
“And now we’ll be able to return to the business of finding our
ideal wives. I bet I find mine first. Pretty Priestess Jania seems
likely.”

“You don’t even know what she looks like
under her mask,” Nat scoffed.

“I can see the shape of her body well
enough. Besides, her face doesn’t matter. It’s the matching of
sgath and grien that does.” Yar rubbed his palms together. “So far
we match.”

“You wish you could find a temple-blessed
marriage,” Ben muttered, a bitterness to it. From what Oria
gathered, his testing and courtship went as slowly as his
qualifying for the mask had. Though he didn’t discuss such things
with her. “You’ll be beyond lucky to find a priestess who can
barely tolerate your touch.”

“He does, because he wants to tup someone
besides—”

“And if the Destrye don’t continue to
retreat?” Queen Rhianna interrupted Nat.

“Well, they will,” Nat replied, with a
confident nod. “Why wouldn’t they? We decimated them.”

Their father waved off his half-eaten salad,
leaned his elbows on the table in its place, steepled his fingers,
and met his wife’s gaze. Their magical connection clicked into
place, the cycle of their regard flowed between them, warming Oria
like the rising sun on a frosty morning. Like her father’s embrace
and the cool calm of her mother’s presence, the perfectly balanced
partnership between her parents grounded Oria more than all the
meditation and mental discipline lessons.

“If they don’t, we will have to take other
steps,” the king said slowly, speaking only to the queen. “Tell the
priestesses to build all the sgath possible. We may need it.”

L
onen led his men across
the sand, which swirled like so much soft shadow with Sgatha not
yet risen to shed her rosy light and Grienon—in the sky as he
nearly always was—falling into his darkest phase, then to slowly
wax to full white in the next few hours.

The sleeping city loomed ahead, shrouded in
dim lights and traces of fog rolling off the ocean in the chill
night air. How it could be so cold at night when the days blazed so
hot made no sense. Thankful for his black fur cloak, both for the
warmth and the way it helped him blend into the night, Lonen pulled
the hood closer around his face, paying close attention to his
footing.

They’d waited for this night, this hour,
charting the moons for the best shrouding darkness. The golems
moved by night as well as by day—as Ayden the Great had discovered
to his sorrow and Dru’s triumph—but low light confused their
vision. It had been a considered gamble, waiting so long, giving
the Báran sorcerers time to replenish the golem ranks the Destrye
had painstakingly hacked their way through. Of course, the entire
war had been a calculated risk, betting the potential future of
their people against their certain destruction. Not much of a
choice in the end, put in those terms.

So far events had played as predicted. The
Destrye had fully decamped and marched away from Bára for days at a
time, allowing just enough golems to pursue unharmed to convey back
to their masters that the rout continued in full force. The army
withdrew to the far hills, which at least held enough game to
replenish their food supplies, though far less than even Dru’s
declining forests.

When the moons’ phases allowed, Lonen and
Arnon had peeled off with small troops, seeing them through the
silent lines of their pursuers, then releasing the men under
trusted lieutenants to creep back to Bára’s environs in secret.
Lonen and Arnon then returned to the main force to ostentatiously
march again the next day.

None of their scholars could be sure how
intelligent the golems were, if they could recognize the faces or
scents of the human leaders, but it didn’t pay to be careless.
Lonen’s hunting dogs knew him from his brothers—why wouldn’t the
golem hounds belonging to the Báran sorcerers?

In this way they left behind pieces of the
Destrye forces, like the goddess Arill scattering seeds across the
land, orchards growing in her wake. Except the Destrye seeded the
Bárans’ destruction, carefully building over days and weeks.