Lonen's Reign Read online

  How very tiresome of him. She’d forgotten over the elapsed months, in her hatred of all Yar had done to the people of Dru and Bára, and intended to do to the Destrye, what a whiny brat he was at heart.

  “Where’s Mother?” she asked.

  “Mother is dead,” Yar replied with careless insouciance. “Your fault, of course, She died of a broken heart. Knowing she’d birthed a monster, and one too cowardly to face the temple’s righteous judgment, was too much for her to bear.”

  “Oh no,” Chuffta moaned. “Not Rhianna. We loved her.”

  “We don’t know it’s true. Even if it is, we’ll mourn later.”

  “She waited for you, right here.” Yar’s voice oozed a manufactured sorrow not even remotely reflected in his emotions. “Day after day while we searched the desert for you, only wanting to bring you home.”

  “Bring me home to be executed, you mean.”

  “It’s not the fault of anyone here that you’re anathema, not even our mother’s. It is your fault that you lied to hide what you knew went against all that’s good and right, and that you attempted to use that twisted, cursed, and demonic ability to steal the throne from Bára’s rightful king. You may be an abomination, but your poor, abandoned mother wanted only to lay your body in the family crypt so she could mourn you properly.”

  “Nothing about me is an abomination,” Oria replied evenly, grateful for Chuffta’s mental reassurance of that, and the love flowing down the marriage bond from Lonen. It was one thing to know in her mind that she wasn’t a monster, and another entirely to feel the truth. It took effort to resist the image Yar attempted to paint, especially when her own guilt gave it fuel. She’d abandoned her mother, the woman who’d not only given her life, but had been her greatest—and sometimes only—champion.

  “But you denied her even that small peace,” Yar talked over her. “She died believing you lost forever.” He’d wound himself up, his wiry body tense under the priest’s robes. His grien—now thick, blue-green ropes of magic, still unable to find purchase in her—flailed about her body like the tentacles of a sea creature a trader had once brought to Bára.

  “Did I—or did you?” Oria retorted. “I think you, at least, knew I was alive and in Dru.”

  “Found my little spy, did you? I wondered.” His grien stabbed at her with sudden, increased force. Enough to sting. If he figured out how she’d changed, he might be able to hurt her in truth.

  Oria set all other concerns aside, studying Yar’s magic. Strong, yes, but all of one flavor. And she couldn’t determine whose sgath he’d filled himself with. It was all Báran sgath, processed and purified until nothing of the individual remained. Where was Gallia?

  “How is it that you’re alive, sweet sister?” Yar asked when she didn’t reply to his accusations. She gave no sign she sensed his invasion, even as he redoubled his efforts to scan her. He was using his magic all wrong—like using a club to slice bread—but a club would smash the bread to mush. “You have no magic left at all.” Yar crowed his discovery, incredulous and gloating.

  “But I do. In fact, I’m more powerful than ever,” Oria replied, very seriously, tempted to lecture him on drawing hasty and false conclusions. “And I can teach our people, so that we need never call on the Trom again. So that we can banish them again entirely.”

  Yar burst out laughing, a manic edge to it. “Silly sister. As you had little training with the temple and none with grien, you won’t know that I can sense these things.” His grien buffeted her once more, clumsy, but painful enough to make her scramble to convert it to another wavelength of magic.

  “When I scan you, there’s nothing at all,” he rambled on, hitting her again, even harder. “Is that what the wild magic did instead of killing you? It stripped you of even that crippled excuse for magical potential that you never used. Now you’re like your barbarian husband. Queen of the Destrye and just as mind-dead as the lot of them. You’re not even a sorceress now. So that’s how you lived.”

  Yar laughed again, grien brightening with renewed confidence. “How our parents used to go on about how you were so special, that your latency meant your power would bloom into something spectacular. Giving you a Familiar even. Did it occur to them to give me a derkesthai? No! Just for super special weakling Oria. And now it turns out they were wrong, and you have nothing. You are nothing. How utterly fitting.”

  “The wild magic is not what we believed, it’s true,” Oria replied, growing weary of his posturing. “Neither are the Trom. Their foul presence lingers here. How recently have you had contact with them?”

  “What do you care? I don’t even know why you’re here. Could it be that mind-dead brute of a hunk of barbarian meat tired of you and dumped you back at our doorstep? If you’ve come crawling for forgiveness there’s no tolerance for anathema in my reign.” He redirected his grien, giving up on her entirely, snaking those blue-green tentacles to the stone walls around them, totally unaware that Oria could perceive exactly what he was doing. And showing her what she’d needed to see—he only reached for stone and earth. That had been his talent, but she’d wondered in the intervening months. She, herself, had an affinity for growing things, but her own magic wasn’t limited to that realm. The sorcerer who’d animated the golems had died in the Battle of Bára, so someone had taken his place. She’d thought Yar, perhaps, but clearly not.

  She’d have to look elsewhere—but she had to get past Yar first.

  “The Trom are anathema, not me,” she said, letting him hear the conviction in her voice. “According to temple teaching and our own eyes. You summoned them to attack the Destrye—broaching our treaty—and they devastated the city and Bárans along with our enemy.”

  “You’re still stuck on that? I saved Bára! Sometimes one must cut off a limb to heal the body. Thanks to me, Bára will continue to flourish. I am the hero of this story and you, my mind-dead sister, are the villain.” His grien fingers dug into the stones, tensing on them as a warrior might flex his muscles, giving forewarning of his intent.

  Keeping a wary mental finger on the pulse of his power, Oria tried one more time. “Yar, listen to me. I’ve come here to help you and Bára. We are not enemies.”

  He paused, finally assimilating some clues. Yar had always been bright, but too self-involved to be truly observant. “How did you get into the city anyway? This is what we’ve been seeing. You traitor, you brought the Destrye here. Guards—to me! We’re under attack!”

  And he yanked on the stones around them, chunks flying at Oria. She deflected them, sending them zooming toward Yar instead, and they slammed him to the floor. He crumpled into a heap, his grien collapsing. Had she killed him?

  Stricken she moved closer to check. “Yar?”

  A lightning bolt of grien shot out, striking her hard enough to stun, and she staggered back, head swirling like a sandstorm.

  “Take that, you bitch,” Yar snarled.

  “Another wave of golems incoming, Your Highness,” Alyx reported. Even with the warmth of the light of the stubby candle she carried, the warrior woman looked wan and exhausted. They’d been battling golems nonstop, with barely a pause between assaults. In the eternal night of the tunnels, Lonen had lost all track of time. He had no idea how long it had been since Oria left for Bára.

  Only the pulse of her at the distant end of the marriage bond reassured him that she yet lived. The continued waves of golems, however, bore witness to the reality that Oria had not succeeded in defeating Yar—or whoever continued to create and animate the mindless creatures. Oria was alive, yes, but in what condition?

  Certainly not in any that would let her help them. At this rate, the Destrye would emerge beneath the city only to be finally and permanently decimated. At least they hadn’t been drowned. Yet.

  Grimly, Lonen relayed the order for a fresh battalion to move up, to relieve the group that had just spent hours chopping up the previous wave of golems. The warriors jogged past, iron weapons at the ready. Before long, another wa
ve would pass him going the other direction, carrying the wounded back to the far end of the caravan.

  “How long can we keep this up?” he asked no one in particular.

  Arnon emerged from the gloom ahead, having led the previous defense and yielded to Alby for this one. All the commanders had been taking it in turns. All of them were exhausted.

  “If we make the logical assumption that the golems will continue to assault us according to the established pattern,” Arnon said, “then I estimate they’ll chew through us in another eight assaults.”

  “Oh, well, is that all? We’re fine then,” Lonen replied, resting his battle-axe on the floor of the tunnel and leaning against the wall.

  “The good news is,” Arnon continued as if Lonen hadn’t spoken, “I calculate that we’ve passed under the bore tide flats—at least the tunnels let us avoid that hazard—and if we can keep pressing forward at the same rate, we should reach the underground lake Nolan and his men fell into in fewer than three assaults.”

  Lonen wondered at the kind of hell they found themselves in, where they’d relinquished daylight and counted time in golem assaults. “What kind of army will we have when we get there?”

  “Able-bodied warriors? About a third of what we started out with,” Alyx replied somberly.

  Wonderful.

  “We never planned to take Bára by might,” Arnon reminded them. “We did that once before—and only because Lonen figured out how to knock their sorcerers out of action, particularly the one setting the golems on us—and we pretty near decimated our army doing that.”

  “I don’t think bashing our heads against waves of golems counts as guile, either,” Alyx commented, dabbing her fingers at a freshly bleeding slice across her cheek. “What did we plan to take Bára with again? I know we gave up on surprise.”

  “Stealth,” Arnon supplied, gesturing at the enclosing tunnel.

  “Oh right. I keep forgetting we’re not actually mole people,” Alyx replied wryly.

  “We just need to keep ourselves in optimal form until word arrives from Oria,” Lonen told them, not for the first time. “Once defeats Yar, she’ll stop whoever is driving the golems at us. The city guard was always sympathetic to her rule. She’ll be able to persuade at least some to open the gates.”

  “And if she doesn’t?” Arnon demanded. “It won’t do us much good to have crept here all this way if we emerge outside the city walls with the gates barred.”

  “She will. And, if not, we took the walls with the gates barred before. We’ll just do it again,” Lonen asserted.

  Arnon and Alyx exchanged a speaking look. They’d developed a friendship through this campaign. It wasn’t clear if their relationship was of the brothers-in-arms variety or something more intimate. Not that it mattered, but on the rare occasions Lonen found the energy, he amused himself by contemplating the latter. Unfortunately, his first impulse then was to share his speculations with Oria, which killed any lightness of heart.

  “Lonen,” Arnon said gently, “if Oria hasn’t succeeded by now, then we have to face that—”

  “She’s alive,” Lonen said, cutting him off.

  “We believe you,” Alyx supplied in the same tone. “But clearly she hasn’t been able to—”

  A tremor shook the earth, dirt, sand and small rocks rattling down from the tunnel roof. A bore tide, thundering above? No… something else. As if, for a moment, reality dislocated itself. The derkesthai perched on Arnon and Alyx’s shoulders spread their wings, giving eerie screeching cries that had the two humans covering their ears and cringing.

  “What in Arill is wrong?” Alyx shouted.

  Arnon met Lonen’s gaze. They both knew that feeling, had experienced it before. If Oria had been with them, she likely could have described the color of the magic wave that had just passed through.

  “Nothing to do with the goddess.” Arnon told her through gritted teeth, pressing his lips together as if he might puke. He remembered that day, too, when their father and brother died. “That happened before when…” He trailed off, unwilling to say the words.

  “When the Trom arrived,” Lonen finished for him. With renewed energy, he shouldered his axe. “Alyx, pass down the alert. Everyone who can lift a weapon to the fore. Enough of them chewing through us. We’re punching through.”

  She saluted, mounted her horse, and galloped downt the tunnel, her derkesthai messenger winging ahead to clear the way. Lonen reached for Buttercup, who stamped with delight, sensing his master’s change of temperament—and the opportunity to engage in the fight at last. Thus far, they’d been forced by the tunnel dimensions to face the golems on foot. That would change now. Shouts echoed down the tunnel, the clash of battle engaged ahead, the chants of battalions on the move from behind.

  “Lonen!” Arnon said, not for the first time. “Are you mad? Even if we can ‘punch through’ those waves of golems, what we will we do? You can’t face the Trom.”

  “No, but Oria can.” And she’d be facing them all alone if he didn’t get there in time.

  Arnon kept his grip on Buttercup’s cheek strap, a dangerous and bold obstinacy in the face of the warhorse’s mighty impatience to be off. “Then let Oria do it,” Arnon said, very reasonably, except that he shouted the words.

  “We promised her,” Lonen replied, leaning over to speak clearly into his brother’s face. “I promised her. The Destrye army and the derkesthai squadrons must be ready when Oria signals us, to convene on the city at the same time.

  “And if Oria has been taken out of the equation?” Arnon asked soberly. “Without her we can’t communicate well enough with the derkesthai to coordinate strategy. Without her magic, we can’t defeat the sorcerers. We learned that to our sorrow last time.”

  Lonen shook his head, refusing that possibility. It didn’t bear thinking of—and planning around it would change nothing. “I can’t control what the derkesthai will do, and I can’t help Oria right now, but I can have the Destrye warriors where we’d said we’d be. We won’t fail in this.”

  With that, he gave Buttercup his head. Arnon, cursing, stepped out of the way just in time. Lonen galloped at top speed down the tunnel, bent low over Buttercup’s neck so his head would clear the tunnel roof atop the warhorse’s towering height. His blood coursed with battle fury and he gave over control to it, letting it flow down the bond to Oria, signaling and fueling her, too.

  Enough with measured progress. To hell with this waiting game. Time to engage the enemy, bust out of these cursed tunnels, and finish this war.

  And pray to Arill that Oria would meet him on the other side.

  ~ 14 ~

  “Your Highness, won’t you drink some juice?”

  Oria stirred, blinking her eyes, her lids heavy as she opened them to see Juli—her distinctive hair curling around her gold, eyeless mask as she hovered with the proferred glass of juice—and Oria groaned mentally.

  Stupid. So stupid of her to have let down her guard, not to have killed Yar when she had the chance. She could’ve struck him down, and she’d foolishly hesitated.

  “Not foolish or stupid. You are not a predator, and he’s your younger brother,” Chuffta said. “Killing isn’t easy when you haven’t practiced.”

  “True. Thank you.”

  Oria sat up and took the glass, happy enough for the drink restore her wits and cleanse her dry mouth. It was her favorite kind of juice. Or, rather, it used to be. Now she understood it had been pressed from a fruit carefully nourished with the water stolen from Dru. The sweetness was a lie, covering the bitter origins.

  “It’s good to see you again, Juli,” Oria said with great sincerity, surprising herself with the rush of emotion.

  “Oh, Oria,” Juli murmured, sliding her hands into her sleeves, the perfect image of calm composure that the Bárans called hwil. “We’ve missed you so. No—don’t move. His Highness King Yar unleashed his grien on you and you’re gravely injured.”

  No, she wasn’t—but how odd that Juli couldn�
�t perceive it. Looking at the priestess she’d known for so long with her altered perceptions, Oria understood how Juli alone had been able to touch and tend Oria all those years. Juli had her magic so tightly balled up, along with her emotions, that she almost seemed to be not there, on the magical level. The priestess had become the perfect vessel they’d made her into—a funnel for sgath and nothing more—and for the first time Oria wondered what had been done to her to warp and distort her healthy self.

  Feigning the injury Juli expected, Oria lay back, expanding her senses. It had only been a couple of hours, she thought, if that. Nice that Yar had summoned Juli to tend Oria, who he no doubt assumed—in his vast arrogance and the habits of a shared childhood—to be no threat. He’d even tucked her in her old tower rooms instead of a cell, falling into the old patterns of thinking she’d be days up there, recovering.

  Not realizing that he’d put her in the perfect position to take over the city.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Chuffta, while Juli prepared one of her herbal solutions. So funny that the Bárans considered themselves the height of civilized sophistication and sorcery, but the barbarian Destrye were the ones with truly effective healing magic. One of the first things she wanted to do for Bára would be to bring a few of Arill’s healers here.

  “The Destrye are still fighting through the golems in the tunnels. We’re waiting for them to come out,” he replied promptly, though she got an impression that he was preoccupied.

  “Can’t you help?”

  “The small ones are helping, but—”

  “Would you like us to simply blow flame down the tunnel and melt them all at once?” The derkesthai king boomed the question in her mind. “That would be easiest, but you didn’t like the idea before.”

  “No, please don’t.” She mentally tucked her tongue in her cheek. “I trust you both to do as you judge best.”

  “Hmpf.” The Great One’s mental snort had a breath of flame to it. Chuffta simply sent his love and turned his attention away again. Before he did, she caught the impression of a deep chasm, a lightless lake—and hordes of golems climbing over mounds of their twitching and broken brethren. Oria sent him her love back. She sent some to Lonen, too. As always, however, he was less defined—just a burning fire of battle rage.