The Fate of the Tala Read online

  “Because I made it up. Whatever the concept would be.”

  “She doesn’t say what Hestar’s reasons were?”

  “She doesn’t want to speculate in writing, in case the emperor is operating without the Temple of Deyrr’s knowledge. Instead they’re all traveling here to discuss in person, rather than risk a message being intercepted.”

  “I see. And ‘they’ are all traveling to Annfwn… who?”

  I glanced at the letter. “Ursula, Harlan, Jepp, Kral, likely additional entourage—via horseback. Zynda and Marskal are already back in Annfwn, of course, as they helped drive off the attack on the training arena and also brought this letter, along with others.”

  “You have a knack for deprioritizing critical information,” Rayfe grumbled, eyeing me. “You could have told me that we’re expecting visitors. When will they be here?”

  I set my teeth. “I’m telling you now, mere moments after I discovered the information myself, and by this evening.”

  “That’s hardly convenient timing,” he mused with considerable annoyance. “We’re overcrowded as it is and are already hosting several armies of hers.”

  “Reinforcements,” I reminded him. “Sent to assist us.”

  “So far they’ve been a nuisance. Were they any help to you today? I bet not.” He answered his own question before I could. “Besides, Ursula can’t just stomp over the border any time she likes.”

  I waved the letter at him. “She did give us forewarning, and she is our High Queen, I might remind you. She can visit any of her subsidiary kingdoms with or without notice.”

  “The hell you say,” he growled, sounding like his wolf First Form.

  “I do say. I’ll add that, with this ‘formalization’ of their relationship, Harlan could be considered High King, and your liege.”

  Rayfe gave me a black look. “Not funny, Andromeda.”

  “You’re right, and it’s not important.” I rather doubted Ursula and Harlan would go that far. He’d been content to be her consort and had no interest in ruling, not like my husband who had a tendency to want to control everything. I sometimes wondered at the fate that had tied us together as mates, with me so slippery about being controlled by anything. “What is relevant here is that, whatever Harlan’s status, this marriage has shifted things. If the Dasnarians were waiting on this treaty and decide not to accept the altered terms, then they’re ready to attack as soon as the barrier fails and—”

  “What do you mean, as soon as it fails?” Rayfe pounced on my words, eyes flashing with feral emotion. “I knew it. Moranu take you, Andromeda—sustaining the barrier is too much of a strain on you with everything else. You’re spreading yourself too thin. In your condition, you simply cannot—”

  “Stop right there,” I replied with considerable ire, my temper fraying in sync with his. I knew exactly what he’d been about to say, not because I could read his mind, which I tried not to do without permission, but because we’d had this exact conversation so many times I could rehearse it in my sleep. “I misspoke. If the barrier fails, it will be because the high priestess of Deyrr is a more experienced and effective sorceress than I am. Which she is.” After that morning’s encounter with her, I couldn’t delude myself about that any longer. I sighed and cast the letter aside, giving into the throbbing headache and rubbing my temples. “I’m just not the sorceress my mother was. I can’t—”

  “Andromeda.” Rayfe knelt in front of my chair, gently clasping my wrists and easing my hands down to my lap, lacing his long fingers with mine. I regretted betraying my fear, but at least Rayfe was touching me. I savored the feel of his skin on mine like a drink of cool water in the Aeron desert. “Salena was powerful, yes,” he said, searching my eyes. “And no one knows better than I do how hard it is to follow in her footsteps—but you have the Star and the Heart. And you’ve grown so much in your sorcery since you came to Annfwn.”

  “For a part-blood raised among mossbacks,” I said with a wry smile. “Maybe if I’d grown up in Annfwn, I could’ve overcome the mixed heritage, but learning too late—”

  “Not too late.” Rayfe replied, releasing my hands to thread his fingers through my hair, combing the wild tumble back from around my face. The sea air of Annfwn brought out curl I’d never had growing up at Castle Ordnung, in the mountainous foothills of Mohraya. I’d grown to like leaving it loose in the Tala style, but that meant it tangled and tumbled of its own accord. I leaned into his touch with such intense gratitude I could’ve wept from it.

  “My queen, you’re not giving yourself enough credit for all you’ve accomplished.”

  “I try to give myself credit.” I weighed my next words. I’d needed this, needed to be able to talk to him, to trust in him, my one true confidant. His consuming fears for me, for our unborn child, had pushed me into a position of protecting his feelings—which meant I’d stopped confiding my own fears. “But I also have to face the truth. We can’t afford to underestimate the severity of this situation or to ignore my limitations. From what Karyn discovered during her time as a captive, the high priestess is ancient, with centuries to build her skills. With her god walking the earth again, accessing that magic could make her as powerful as a goddess.” My breath hitched in my chest, cold sweat dripping down my spine despite the tropical warmth of the day. “I’m so afraid that I’m not sorceress enough to battle that.”

  “You have Moranu guiding you, and She is surely greater than any Dasnarian demigod,” Rayfe scoffed with a smile.

  I tried to give an answering smile, but I felt the wobble. Moranu thrust visions upon me, but the goddess didn’t seem to actually help me in any way. Of course, being the goddess of changeability and trickery, Her version of assistance could look like anything. Regardless, I couldn’t count on divine intervention to make up for my lacks.

  Sometimes I wondered if even my mother, the famously powerful and long-seeing Salena, would’ve been sorceress enough to win this war. In my more bitter moments, I speculated that the complex plotting that had resulted in our current predicament had been partly to foist the responsibility for this fight onto her daughters entirely because she knew she couldn’t do it. It felt like a disloyal thought, and yet…

  “You’re not alone in this,” Rayfe said, gently and firmly, probably sensing my deep uncertainty. His fingers stroked through my hair, then gently cupped my head, while he kissed me, sweet and lingering. “We’re all in this fight together,” he murmured against my lips.

  “Thank you,” I said with fervent gratitude. I’d needed to hear that from him as much as I’d needed to be held like this. I sank into the kiss, drinking him in, my irritation and anxiety falling away if only for the moment. I wished our lives could be entirely this, that I could enjoy the beauty of Annfwn and the touch of my husband, anticipate the birth of our child with joy. I wished the timing of this pregnancy wasn’t so terrible. Everyone had seemed so sure I wouldn’t conceive easily, and then—even if I did—that I wouldn’t carry the child long, with all the shapeshifting and magic-working. It had been easy to be lulled by that fatalistic certainty. And then, even with Zynda’s draconic ability to stabilize magic, this pregnancy could still go terribly wrong. No matter what I did.

  The Tala had been suffering for decades or longer with the devastating rates of miscarriages, birth defects and infant mortality. So much so that the Tala superstitiously didn’t refer to pregnancy or babies, studiously averting their gazes from my obviously swollen belly. Rayfe was a perfect example: he hovered, incandescent with anticipation over the prospect of being a father, and also refrained from mentioning the child, simply referring to the pregnancy as my ‘condition,’ as if it were some sort of skin disease.

  I needed the physical release of sex, and I missed the intimacy with Rayfe, missed the physical expression of his love. So I leaned into the kiss, deepening it, sliding my hands under his shirt to touch his hot skin and the lean muscles of his shoulders. “Please, Rayfe,” I murmured, opening my mind so he’d feel m
y desire. “I need you.”

  He pulled away, however, changing the kiss to a chaste peck, then removed my hands from under his shirt and set them in my lap with a soothing pat that had me balling them into fists. “You know we can’t, Andromeda. I won’t do anything to jeopardize your health.”

  “Healer Kelleah says there’s no danger if we’re careful, that it would even be good for me.”

  His expression shuttering into obstinate refusal, he shook his head, as he stood and moved away. “That’s not Healer Vanka’s opinion, as you know. Besides, it’s not traditional to—”

  “Oh, blast Tala tradition! We’re already going against it with me not going into seclusion.” I took one look at the uncertainty in his eyes, caught the leaked edge of a thought. “Or have you changed your mind about that?”

  “Andromeda…” His fear welled up in a palpable wave, chill, damp and fetid. “It’s not safe here. The cliff city will be the focus of the worst battles. You’ve said as much. Maybe you should go upcoast. Just until… after.”

  A bit more of my confidence eroded away, rocks falling into a turbulent sea. “Not long ago you said that if I left you’d come after me, because you didn’t want to be apart from me, ever.”

  He wouldn’t meet my eyes, his mouth turning in an unhappy line. “I just… I hate seeing you injured.”

  Needing to get a grip on myself, I got up and went to the window. I leaned out, letting the sea breeze cool my skin, aware of the tight skin of my stomach pressing into the stone ledge. The baby squirmed at the pressure, and I laid a hand there. I turned to face Rayfe. “The baby is moving. Why don’t you come feel?”

  I was breaking our tacit rules by saying the words, by asking this of him, but we couldn’t keep going this way. Our marriage was crumbling under the pressures of this pregnancy and the looming war.

  Rayfe didn’t exactly step back, but he withdrew from me mentally, staying where he was, gaze focused over my shoulder. “Andromeda…Please don’t ask that of me.”

  “Rayfe.”

  “Yes?” He kept carefully looking past me. I blew out an exasperated breath. “It’s not bad luck.”

  Now he looked at me, a hint of panic in his dark blue eyes. “I never said it was. The Tala just have certain customs. And… reasons for them.”

  For a wild and lawless people, the Tala’s superstitious observation of those customs bordered on obsessive. I blew out a breath, trying to be reasonable and not let my heartbreak show. “I can’t go upcoast and sequester myself. What’s coming will happen before our baby is born.”

  He flinched at the words, but I plowed on.

  “I have to be here—yes, at the focal point of the war—because that’s my duty. Not just as the Queen of the Tala, but to serve my mother’s legacy. I have a responsibility to that, and to all the world.”

  “I know.” But he looked angry and miserable. “I do know that. Of course you should be here. You’re needed. We can’t win this war without you.”

  I flinched inside at the slice of those words. Nothing about him wanting to be with me. He would be happier, I realized, if he could put me and this pregnancy out of his mind. I turned so he wouldn’t see how he’d hurt me, and looked out the window again at the sparkling turquoise sea, the busy crowds and colorful awnings of the bustling cliff city below. So many happy lives, so many people counting on me. “I know,” I said. “Annfwn needs me.”

  It had been one of the first things he ever said to me. A courtship—if you could call his relentless pursuit of me by any such gentle word—and marriage driven by vows my mother made long before I was even conceived. I’d been born with the Mark of the Tala, and because of that, I’d been destined to wed their king. Neither of us had chosen the other. We’d made a reasonably good marriage, considering that we’d both been forced into it by forces much greater than ourselves.

  I didn’t regret those choices. The relentless cascade of events since provided one verification after another that I’d followed the path Salena had foreseen, that Moranu herded me into. I was what I was destined to be. Queen of Annfwn. Sorceress. Guardian of all that Deyrr wished to devour.

  None of those roles required that I have a happy marriage. Salena hadn’t had one. Her marriage to my father had so soured that she’d gone insane and he’d finally murdered her. When I wed Rayfe, I’d wondered if that would be my path, too. For a while it seemed I’d escaped that curse. Now it seemed a very possible future. Some days I wondered if my sanity might be crumbling at the edges.

  I found myself desperately envious of Ursula. She’d married Harlan, her grand passion, out of defiance to the fates. Ursula, who’d always put the throne and duty first. How bitter to find myself the obedient daughter, the one who’d caved to duty and sacrifice. I loved the husband my marriage of state had brought. I loved Rayfe with a desperate, sinking, and heartbreaking passion. Which only made this rupturing chasm between us carve more deeply.

  “Andromeda.” He spoke from closer behind me. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded. Annfwn needs you, yes, but… You know that I need you, too.”

  I swallowed against the tears. “I miss having you touch me.”

  “I touch you. We kissed, only a few minutes ago.” He set careful hands on my shoulders, warm on my bare arms. “I’m touching you now.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I managed to say, and my voice wobbled.

  “Don’t sound like that. I just meant that we shouldn’t… We cannot afford to take chances. The price is too high. Sequestering is not an option, but we should consider observing a certain… distance.”

  “How much more distance do you want? Do you want me to move into the spare bedchamber?” I asked, throwing it out as a challenge.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said to my vast relief. He squeezed my arms and dropped his hands. “I’ll move into it. This was your mother’s bedchamber. It should be yours.”

  I only nodded, unable to trust my voice with the tears welling up. More the fool I for making the suggestion. Never ask a question unless you’re prepared to hear an answer you don’t like.

  I hadn’t seen this coming either.

  ~ 4 ~

  Rayfe summoned servants immediately, and they began moving his things into the other bedchamber with daunting speed. To save myself from the depressing sight—and to restrain my acid comments on how relieved he must be not to have to share a bed with me any longer—I retired to the bathing room. There I soaked in a hot bath, getting the last of the blood and ichor off me, and even washed my hair the old-fashioned way. No sense using energy to shapeshift any more often than necessary at this point, and soaking helped relax muscles gone tight from the battles—physical, metaphysical, and emotional. I even fell asleep for a bit, which did make me feel better, Moranu take it all.

  “You look nice,” Rayfe said when we met in the sitting room between our bedchambers. He cleared his throat awkwardly.

  “Thank you,” I replied, just as painfully polite.

  He studied me, his thoughts shielded, and he seemed to be searching for something else to say.

  “Shall we walk down to the gate and greet our guests there?” I suggested, when he hesitated too long.

  “Good idea,” he agreed with obvious relief, and offered me his arm. I rested my hand on his forearm, a formal gesture, but the physical contact nevertheless had me wanting more. I managed not to beg him to pay attention to me again. And I somehow held back all the hurt feelings, bottling them up deep inside.

  Instead, we conversed about matters of government as we walked, mostly updating each other on news from the last few days. We returned the greetings of the people we passed, stopped here and there to receive reports and make decisions. Two co-rulers moving through their realm. There was nothing wrong with that.

  There was everything wrong with it. And, as with all the doom crashing toward the present moment, I seemed unable to alter the raging river of it as it carved an ever deeper channel.

  We reached the Gate of Annfwn,
which we’d had built at the point where the now broad and smooth trade road to the other twelve kingdoms entered the civilized portion of Annfwn. Truly, by the time anyone crested Odfell’s Pass, they were in Annfwn proper. The Tala who chose to live in those high peaks and forested hills enjoyed dwellings far less recognizable to mossbacks, whereas the cliff city and many structures along the coast were similar enough to make the non-Tala more or less comfortable.

  We called it a “gate,” but it was more of an arch. Wizard artisans had grown it in place, coaxing the wood into the elaborate patterns that emblemized the Tala—a mélange of animal shapes morphing seamlessly from one to another. With no flanking walls or physical door to close off the archway, the gate served a symbolic purpose for most. I’d worked with the artisans however, layering in magic connected to the Heart like hooks deep in the wood. With minimal effort I could “lock” the gate, preventing anyone from passing through or around it.

  Rayfe and I had designed the gate together, and it worked in both directions. Most of the Tala believed I’d use it to prevent incursions from the other twelve kingdoms, in case anyone became impatient—or rapaciously greedy—for the food and other goods we exported to the more impoverished realms on the other side of the mountains. And I could and would do that, if it became necessary.

  That would be far future, however, not the immediate one. I worried far more about Dasnaria and Deyrr overwhelming Annfwn, and then overrunning the lands past us. We would not be the threshold they crossed to take over the remaining twelve. That was something Rayfe still didn’t understand about me. I was a child of two worlds, whether he saw it that way or not, and the people of the other twelve kingdoms were mine to protect as well.

  Zynda, back in human form, and Marskal were waiting for us at the gate. I’d known Marskal since my girlhood at Ordnung, since he’d served at the castle in Ursula’s elite guard, the Hawks. A quiet man with a somber mien, who came from a large farming family, he’d always seemed a conservative sort to me. So it still bemused me that he’d fallen in love with—and won the heart of—Zynda, our most talented shapeshifter, and a woman quintessentially Tala in her wild, independent spirit.