Lonen's Reign Read online

  Alive, though. Oria shivered at the frisson of fear, despite the growing heat as the sun rose. It would be a hot day. And by the time the sun set, their futures would be decided one way or the other. Time to start recruiting allies before she went after Yar again—and finally took care of him.

  “You have a fever,” Juli said, approaching with the cool, soaked cloth. “Let me—” She gasped as Oria seized her wrist, shuddering in horror at the skin-to-skin contact. Yanking at Oria’s grip like a trapped animal, Juli dropped the cloth, frenzied in her struggle.

  Until Oria sent a calming wave through her old friend. The physical contact allowed her to loosen some of the bonds throttling Juli’s free will. As with Nolan, several magical ties worked in a loop through Juli’s emotions. Not libido with her, but her longing to be loved. A clever knot that tied that need for love into a need to keep her magic contained. If she wanted to love, she had to give sgath. If she wanted to be touched, she had to give sgath. If she wanted to be loved, she must keep all her sgath and give it only as the temple deemed appropriate. Most insidious of all: Juli herself had created this spell and fed its power with her own magic.

  Tempted to sever the vile circle, Oria hesitated, concerned that it might make Juli crazed like Nolan had become. Instead, she offered a suggestion, inserting an alternate idea into the loop. Juli could touch and be touched as she willed. Juli could love and be loved as she decided. Juli’s sgath belonged to her, to circulate as she wished.

  In her grip, Juli stilled her frantic struggles. Then she relaxed, physically and magically, like a tight flower bud suddenly unfurling into a lush blossom. “You’re touching me,” she breathed. “I feel…”

  “You feel,” Oria confirmed, then let Juli go as she got out of the bed. “There’s no time for long explanations—just trust your magic. And don’t believe anything they told you.”

  “Oria, I—what are you doing?”

  Oria finished stripping off her robes. “I’m done with disguises. Where are my mother and Gallia?”

  “In seclusion in the temple. A great deal has happened while you were… away.”

  “I’m sure,” Oria replied grimly, picking up Tania’s mask from the decorative tile beside her bed, the one made for that purpose. Yar hadn’t taken it from her, probably hadn’t even recognized its power. “They’re both in the temple?”

  “Yes. Here, I’ll get new ribbons for your mask and—”

  “No need.” Oria tied the bits of cut ribbons to a belt loop of her fighting leathers, then strode out onto the terrace, calling over her shoulder. “We don’t need to wear them, Juli. They’re for focusing magic, that’s all.”

  She gave herself a moment and no more to look around her rooftop garden, dead now, the jewelbirds fled, all the plants and trees crisped except one struggling jasmine. Even her silk shades and pillows had been left to fade and tatter in the relentless burning sun and hot desert winds, frayed bits flapping in the morning breeze. Like her old self, all of that had been lost.

  Like her new self, what she built from these ruins would be better.

  Resolved, she moved to the stone balustrade, fancying that her hands settled into smooth curves worn there by all the years she’d stood in exactly that spot. As she had then, she stared into the heat shimmer rising in the distance beyond the high walls of the city. No sign of violence, no telltale glitter or the shouts of warriors calling orders. Only the peaceful city, growing busier as the morning waxed on. Opening her senses to the city and its surrounds, she finally and completely used her vantage from the tallest tower in Bára. As she’d hoped, being at this height and back in this place where she’d focused so much attention on her magic magnified her perception.

  Then she really and truly saw.

  “Oria…” Juli had followed her out, sounding bewildered.

  “Shh. Watch. Remove your mask, stretch out your senses, and you’ll understand.”

  Oria didn’t know if the other priestess did as she suggested or not. She cast her attention on the surging sea that was the mass consciousness of Bára. A beast of thousands of faces, hearts beating, bodies working, magic weaving. The temple taught that magic came from life itself, and Oria perceived that clearly now, how all the people, plants, and animals of Bára created the multitudes of sparks the priestesses then distilled into sgath. Without all those living beings, the city would fail—not only because no one would tend the physical aspects of people’s lives, but because the magic that kept a city alive in the midst of this desert would disappear.

  All those years Oria had lived on her tower, this had been what sustained and overwhelmed her. If only she’d known…

  But she knew now, and that was key. Casting her mind on the surface, she dove through the currents, looking for the ones she wanted, following the scarlet, crimson, and rosy threads of priestess magic to their concentrated sources. Deep within the temple, all the priestesses had gathered with Rhianna and Gallia—in their prison cells. A part of Oria raged at the prettified term, “seclusion.” Of all the sorceresses, only she and Juli weren’t in that group, chanting and meditating, channeling sgath…

  Ah. Channeling sgath to fuel the golem army. A small river to feed that. A larger one went to something else.

  Even as Oria moved to cut off the sgath to the golems that blockaded the Destrye, another part of her mind followed the larger channel, back to a group of sorcerers. She recognized a few of them, Vico and Yar among them.

  And she knew the spell they wrought.

  She turned her thoughts into a blade, severing that spell, choking off the magic that fed it. Under her mental grip, it surged, bulged, and tore itself free with a clang that shook the earth, her tower swaying, and that resonated painfully on every magical level.

  Juli felt to her knees, clapping her hands over her ears, as if she could block out a physical sound. Oria, her balance refined from sticking to Chuffta’s back through his aerial acrobatics, rode out the waves of reaction, scanning the skies.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  One by one, the Trom dragons popped into existence, the rending of reality sending shudders through several realms. The dragons roared, their flame bright even against the sunlit sky. On their backs, the Trom riders were black motes, sucking in all light. Beneath the net of her mind, the consciousness of the city shuddered, as thousands of minds quailed in utter terror.

  Too late.

  “Chuffta!” she called.

  “We’re on our way!”

  He must mean all the derkesthai. Oria whirled on Juli, who crouched on hands and knees, mask still in place. “Go find Captain Ercole. Tell him I’m here and I’ve brought the Destrye, that he should open the city gates to them. Then go to the temple and tell my mother and Gallia the same thing. Let them out so they can help.”

  “Help… what?” Juli panted, disoriented and confused. Oria pulled the priestess to her feet, using her magic to sever the ribbons of Juli’s mask so it clattered to the stones. Juli cried out, clapping her hands to her face. Oria pried them away just as Chuffta landed on the terrace in a gust of wind and sand, great talons clutching the stone balustrade. Eyes wide in a pallid face that hadn’t seen the sun in years, a pretty, girlish face Oria had never seen, Juli gaped at Chuffta.

  “Is… Is that?”

  “My Familiar, Chuffta,” Oria agreed. “You remember him.”

  Chuffta lowered his triangular chin, giving Juli his version of a smile. “This terrace is much smaller than it used to be.”

  “No, you’re much bigger.” Giving Juli a little shake, she nudged her mentally, too. “Listen. I have to go turn the Trom and their dragons away from the city. Tell Gallia that I said for them to stop channeling sgath to the sorcerers. Tell her that I’m returning the favor she did me.”

  “But the Destrye will attack,” Juli babbled.

  “I am Queen of the Destrye. We’re here to save Bára,” Oria told her. She stabbed a finger at the sky. “Yar summoned the Trom because he doesn’t care who he crushes
to keep his grip on the city.”

  Juli gulped, realization dawning on her face, though hard to say if it would be enough. “What if the Trom land? Their least touch is death.”

  “No, it’s not.” Deliberately, Oria laid a hand on Juli’s pale cheek. “Could I do this before? That’s right.” She nodded at Juli’s widening gaze, her brown eyes that Oria had never seen so pretty with their tawny flecks. “I can control the touch now. That’s all the Trom do. They’re just like us, with a different magic. Control what happens if they try to touch you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Juli nearly wailed.

  “Trust me. You know me. Release the others. Stop feeding the sorcerers sgath. The Destrye are here to help. Let them. As soon as I can, I’ll join you at the temple.” Impulsively, she kissed Juli’s cheek, and released her.

  “Let’s go.” With a running start, Oria leapt onto Chuffta’s leg and climbed up the rope harness she quickly wove onto him from her dead garden.

  “Oria!” Juli called, face stark with uncertainty.

  “If you love Bára, do as I ask. Go set the priestesses free. Use your magic. Use it for Bára.”

  Another dragon swooped over them and Oria ducked reflexively, then saw it was also white. The derkesthai king, with a rider on his back… Baeltya. The healer waved, then pointed at the sky. Chuffta leapt into the air to follow, the derkesthai of all sizes massing behind them in their patterns, turning the sky as white as if the snows of Dru had come to Bára.

  They surged up in formation, ready to engage in battle.

  “Anything from the Destrye?” she asked, reinforcing her straps and gathering the rivers of magic from her home city and the wild magic beyond.

  “They are closer, but not yet through. Maybe Juli will get the others to stop Yar and whoever is sending the golems.”

  Maybe. Torn, Oria cast about again for that river of magic feeding the golems, but the presence of the Trom had disrupted everything. Instead of a living sea, the magic of the city jumbled in chaos, the streams of it warping and bending around the infinite deep holes that were the Trom.

  “She’ll have to. Let’s go knock these monsters out of the sky.”

  ~ 15 ~

  Lonen swung his iron axe with grim determination, ignoring the sweat dripping from his soaked hair into his eyes. The three golems charging him dropped with the single blow—and four more took their place. Emotionless, thoughtless, the monster creatures advanced in relentless, silent waves, tearing with long, saber-sharp claws, rending his flesh with crystalline-fanged mouths if they got near enough.

  Far too often, the mindless creatures got near enough, and Lonen knew he’d grown as slick with his own blood as sweat, though he felt none of the wounds. The tunnel had widened as it approached the lake and chasm, and Buttercup waded in water up to his hocks at times. That meant the other warriors, like Alyx at his off side, were in up to their thighs. It made the endless advance that much more grueling.

  At least they had light. Not direct sunlight, but daylight filtering down from somewhere ahead. They were so close.

  Any moment now, Oria would stop the sorcerer animating these things, and they would fall into motionless heaps. He fantasized it so clearly he sometimes thought—in the nonstop fugue of killing—that it had happened already.

  But no.

  No, the golems kept coming and coming.

  If Oria was alive—he knew she was alive. He could feel her, couldn’t he? Sometimes he wasn’t sure he felt anything but the strain of his muscles, the pumping of his heart, the endless sweep, chop, advance, sweep, chop—but if Oria was alive, she’d stop the golems. Any moment now they’d fall into motionless heaps.

  How many of Arnon’s assault waves had this been? Probably the metric had fallen apart with Lonen’s decision to make a hard push. No doubt Arnon could chart it, how the force of the Destrye army disrupted the regular waves of golem assaults, compressing them into one unending mass, like life in the tunnels, like the passage of time, squeezed into agonizingly slow progress…

  A shout from ahead. Then a roar of dragons, echoing from high above. Lonen renewed his vigorous swinging, mowing down the golems like the farmers did the ripened stalks of grain. If only he could feed his people from fallen golem parts.

  And then… the golems collapsed. Just as he’d imagined countless times in the last exhausting hours. They simply froze mid-movement, then crumpled, bobbing up again to float away like soap bubbles and catch in eddies. Oria had done it!

  Buttercup lifted his head, trumpeting a challenge, and charged forward, sending golem bodies surging away on the waves. The Destrye roared also, in one voice, a wave of warriors brandishing weapons as they sought the daylight.

  As promised, the derkesthai had been busy while they waited, tumbling rock and tamping the dirt into a ramp leading out of the chasm. Lonen and Buttercup galloped to lead the vanguard, his captains on their warhorses raising flags to gather their contingents.

  They rode up and out of the tunnels, rising through the crack of the chasm into full day. Above, a fierce battle rumbled and thundered through the sky like the summer storms of Lonen’s boyhood. Green flame crackled like lightning, and the dragons and derkesthai roared with earth-rattling challenges.

  Trusting to Buttercup, Lonen studied the two biggest white dragons. Chuffta and the Great One, especially from this distance, looked much the same. Both bore a rider. He couldn’t make out which was which. Though both seemed locked in lethal battles of aerial acrobatics and flame that seemed certain to end in disaster.

  “Lonen!” Arnon rode up hard on his flank. “The gates aren’t open.”

  Lonen wrenched his gaze from the sky and focused on the ground. His job was to get the Destrye in the gates to secure Bára. “Then we’ll open them.”

  Setting up the signal, he turned his army to once again—and for the final time—take the city of Bára.

  At Chuffta’s mental alert, Oria seized a moment to look down. The Destrye poured up out of the chasm outside the walls of Bára like ants swarming a fallen beast. The city, however, wasn’t prone. The towers stood tall and graceful, remote behind her walls, proudly peaceful—and with gates firmly shut, no sign of activity within, turning a deliberate blind eye to the battle raging outside.

  The Báran way of dealing with everything, apparently. But that would change.

  As Chuffta dipped in a deep sideways tilt to come about, Oria spotted Lonen, easily distinguishable by Buttercup’s black bulk. The warhorse climbed a small outcropping with ease, and Lonen looked to be shouting orders, using his massive double-headed, battle-axe to point the way. Her heart eased. She’d known he lived, via the marriage bond and the reports of the derkesthai, but seeing him hale and vital reassured her on another level. She could swear he looked up just then, the arrow of his distant gaze slamming into her, and the bond between them thrummed. Smiling, she pumped a fist, though she knew he likely couldn’t see her well.

  “Duck!” Chuffta’s mental shout came at the same moment he folded wings and dove, a roar of green flame singeing overhead and heating the already crackling air. The dragon dove after them, the Trom on its back briefly parallel to her as Chuffta pulled up again to avoid hitting ground.

  It sat astride its mount with no apparent apparatus to keep it there, clinging like spiders can to any surface with ease. And it stared right at her. Calm and without expression on its smooth face, it gazed at her as if they’d met in an elegant salon instead of plunging through the air on flaming dragons. The matte black eyes dominated its spherical skull, draining away the visible light as well as all the magic around them. Oria considered hitting it with her magic, but instinct stopped her.

  “Careful.” The Great One blazed fire at another Trom and its dragon, herding them away from the city. “You might not be able to detach again.”

  The last thing she wanted was to create a connection to that monster, one that might doom her to be leashed to it forever if she couldn’t break away again.
r />   For the first time, however, she saw for herself what the derkesthai king had told her: how the Trom looked like her own people, slim and long limbed, with fine bones. The way its skin clung to its skeleton made the Trom seem so alien and insectile, but in that face, those pits of eyes… Oria glimpsed the sorcerer it had once been.

  Or sorceress.

  Chuffta peeled off, ending the moment as he evaded a crash, and Oria—caught momentarily unware, reached for the straps to steady herself, hand brushing Tania’s mask as she did. The thing nearly burned her, so hot and bright.

  Images flooded her—of Bára, recognizable, but different. A Bára with no walls, perched on a great river, with trees! Feathery branches flowering, the lovely trees arched over the placid water, creating cool shade. In those memories, Oria knew how that shade felt, the deliciously refreshing feel of the water. And overlaying all of it, magic—wild and tamed—weaving and flowing together in balance and harmonious life.

  Then a patchwork rush of images: A new moon appearing in the sky, bright blue-green that whirled madly past every few hours. The sun burning hot in a cloudless sky. The river becoming smaller, the trees wilting, then crisping. Desperate efforts to manipulate magic, to affect the weather itself. The walls rising around Bára as the riverbed became desert.

  The mask. Oria had named it for her aunt Tania, a woman she’d never known, as the ancient sorceress who’d been buried with the mask hadn’t had a name inscribed on her tomb.

  So powerful. So ambitious and determined, Oria’s mother had told her long ago, before she fled Bára. Don’t be like her, Oria. Find an ideal husband and channel your magic through him. Don’t try to do it alone. Don’t be like Tania. Promise me.

  But Oria didn’t have the ideal husband they’d intended for her. She channeled her own magic—and she wasn’t alone.