The Fate of the Tala Read online

  And yet, they seemed to be making it work. They fit in a way I’d never have predicted. Marskal had proved adept at riding Zynda’s dragon form. With her brother Zyr equally determined to take the form—though not yet successful—that would give us two dragon shapeshifters, a considerable edge in the coming war. I hoped we could also count on two more dragons—the permanent variety, not shapeshifters—as allies. We’d need all the help we could get.

  “Your Highnesses.” Marskal bowed, greeting us gravely, and Zynda smiled cheekily with typical Tala irreverence for authority.

  Then she gave me a long look. “How are you feeling, Andi?”

  “Fine,” I said, crisply enough to cut off further conversation. To no avail.

  “She’s exhausted, moody, and her head aches all the time,” Rayfe, the traitor, reported.

  “Is it the pregnancy, the sorcery, or the visions?” Zynda asked me quietly, with frank calm. As my cousin, she shared many of the same sorcerous gifts that Salena’s blood bequeathed our line, though she’d escaped the main burden. Zynda could work some magic, especially if she had the opportunity to prepare spells, but her greatest gifts lay in shapeshifting. All the fun and none of the onus. She did, however, receive occasional glimpses of the future, and understood better than most how wearing they could be.

  “All of it,” I confessed to her in the same tone.

  Rayfe, unabashedly listening, got that look on his face and opened his mouth. Zynda quelled him with a glance, a talent I envied. They’d grown up together, and she was a few years older. He still habitually obeyed her from the days she’d been in charge of corralling the wilder Tala children.

  “Marskal.” Zynda brushed a kiss on his cheek and he smiled at her, slow, warm, and surprisingly sensual for the dour soldier. “Why don’t you tell Rayfe about our recent battle at Ordnung and what we’ve discovered about Deyrr?”

  “What happened?” Rayfe demanded, rounding on the other man. I could almost see his wolf hackles bristling. With the sleek subtlety of long practice, Zynda put her arm through mine and guided us a few steps off to the side, so deftly Rayfe didn’t seem to notice my departure, or the change of subject.

  “How can I help?” she asked, leaning her head against mine.

  Zynda smelled of the flowers of Annfwn, sweet and warm, her unbound hair silky on my arm. Maybe it had to do with her core-deep independence and love of life, but Zynda had a knack for listening without judging. She claimed to be terrible at listening to other people’s problems, but she loved discussing magic. And, of anyone I knew, she came the closest to understanding how foresight and sorcery mucked with your perceptions.

  She’d also had her own encounters with Moranu and knew how demanding our tricky goddess could be. She’d also been working with the shamans since girlhood, a group I’d been leery of. Early on Rayfe had warned me to stay clear of their semi-fanatical ways, but lately I’d begun to wonder if they—and their leader, known only as “Shaman”—might have insight into how I could solicit Moranu’s help.

  I didn’t know much about dealing with a goddess, myself. Uorsin had been an atheist. Or, more accurately, he hadn’t believed in any power greater than himself. He’d propped up Glorianna’s worship as the gentlest and prettiest of practices to keep his people calm and unlikely to look to closely at the true corruption beneath the surface of his rule. My younger sister Ami, universally acclaimed as Glorianna’s avatar since her birth, had done a great deal to purge the Temple of Glorianna and restore Her true observances, mostly centered around love and nurturing. And Ursula looked to the warrior goddess, Danu, who demanded clear-eyed justice.

  Both of my sisters seemed to have drawn much more straightforward goddesses than I had.

  I sighed, taking advantage of Rayfe’s inattention to rub my temple. The rejuvenating effects of the nap had already worn off. “Flashes of the future come at me all the time these days. A constant barrage, and so much of it is…”

  “Horrible,” Zynda finished softly. “I’m getting some, too. Nothing on your scale, so I can only imagine.”

  “Yes. I don’t know why Moranu sends half of them, what I’m supposed to understand from them. And then I’m missing huge things. This morning’s attack on the training ground. Then I didn’t see anything about Harlan and Ursula marrying.” That bothered me a great deal, that I’d entirely missed that. Rayfe hadn’t understood the extent of my shock, and how lonely I’d suddenly felt.

  “Hmm. They made the decision quickly, within the space of a few hours. You know how it is when people make sudden choices, especially ones out of character for them. Those decisions can alter the flow of the future in ways impossible to foresee.”

  “Even for a goddess?”

  Zynda smiled, laughing low in her throat. “If the goddesses could control what people decide, I’m sure this world would be far more orderly.”

  “True. But I still feel like I should be able to use this foresight more effectively, particularly with events like this that divert the stream of the future so dramatically. I’ve been spending so much time and effort studying the future, following out all the thousands and millions of branching possibilities that—”

  “Hold a moment.” Zynda turned to face me, her eyes like Rayfe’s, a blue as deep as the center of the ocean. “That sort of pursuit is incredibly draining. No wonder you’re tired. No one can sustain that kind of effort.”

  “Salena could do it,” I countered. “Somehow, she saw all the way to this future, probably beyond, and planned for events accurately. If she did it, I should be able to.”

  Zynda didn’t argue, or tell me something soothing. Instead she looked thoughtful, lips pursed in a considering moue. “So, let’s say she did. And I could point out some things I think she predicted incorrectly, but let’s say for the sake of argument that Salena saw all of this and planned for it. Andi, she’d have studied the currents of time over years and years. She had decades to do that, and she did it as an experienced sorceress in the fullness of her power, before she left Annfwn. That’s a considerably different project than you, a young woman with not even two years of practice, trying to do the same thing over the course of a few months.”

  “We don’t have decades, or years—or even weeks.” I said it with sober intensity, and she stilled, giving me a keen look.

  “How long do you think?”

  Casting a surreptitious glance at Rayfe, I rubbed my temple again, though it did little to ease the ache. “Days, maybe. We’re almost out of time to prepare. Worse, I think Deyrr has even more of a jump on us. I tried the working you taught me to blast that warthog this morning and it just… dissipated. And I was pulling the Heart, so I should’ve had plenty of magic behind it.”

  She sharpened at that, perplexed and concerned. “I wondered why you didn’t try that.”

  “Did. Failed.”

  “What about your new trick? Where you sever the animating spirits from the creature’s bodies.”

  I grimaced. “I didn’t try that. I was out of time, running low on personal resources—and that really kicks me hard every time—and… I really worry about the repercussions of doing it.”

  Zynda was nodding. “I know what you mean. But if the sorcery I showed you didn’t work, we’re facing a big problem.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I bit out.

  Shaking off the grim mood, she smiled with good cheer. “Any time you want someone to point out the obvious, I’m your girl.”

  “I’m wondering,” I ventured, and she sobered at what she saw in my face, “if you would arrange for me to speak with Shaman.”

  She raised her brows, eyes widening. “Of course I could—and will if you’re serious—but… Shaman is not a comfortable person to converse with.”

  “I need advice on interpreting Moranu’s will.”

  Blowing out a breath, she nodded. “Well, Shaman is the one to ask. But I have to warn you that Shaman will extract a high price.”

  “Higher than losing all t
he world to Deyrr?”

  Her lips twisted in wry acknowledgment. “Point taken. Just be prepared to be raked over the coals. You might come away feeling pretty bruised.”

  “I already have a husband for that.”

  Zynda glanced with me to be sure Rayfe hadn’t overheard, and she guided me another few steps away. The man had the ears of a wolf. “The pregnancy is hard on him.”

  “And here I thought I was doing all the work in that arena.” I realized how ungenerous I sounded, and scrubbed my hands over my face. “I take that back. I know it’s hard on him, on all of you, to have to look at this.” I smoothed a hand over my hard belly, the baby inside moving in response.

  Zynda watched in fascination. “May I?”

  “Yes.” Unexpectedly, tears sprang to my eyes, one leaking clear. What a wreck I was. “I would love to share this with someone.”

  She set gentle hands on my belly, some of her dragon magic coiling through my light gown and skin, cooling and fresh as a sea breeze. The baby moved again, and Zynda glanced up sharply, expression effervescent with delight. “That’s incredible. He feels strong and healthy.”

  “Yes, thank Moranu, he does.”

  “You knew?”

  “I’ve known he’s a boy for a while now, yes.”

  “Does he?” Zynda tipped her head in Rayfe’s direction.

  I lowered my voice even more. “No. He would have to be willing to have a conversation about the baby, instead of referring to my ‘condition,’ for me to impart that information.” I didn’t want to revisit the fight I’d had with Rayfe, and it felt somehow shameful to admit to her that he’d moved out of my bed. It especially felt inane to complain about that in the same breath as discussing our coming destruction at the hands of Deyrr and Dasnaria. But Zynda had raised a brow at me, amusement quirking her lips, clearly expecting more explanation. So I added, in a very low voice, “I know it’s hard for him, but he won’t even look at me, much less touch me.”

  She smoothed her hands over my hard belly, the touch rejuvenating. The absence of magic her dragon form gave her brought a cool release of pressure. I’d felt it when she was in that form, of course, as I’d been the first beneficiary of her stabilizing magic, but that hadn’t been with her touching me like this. And so interesting that it emanated from her even in human form.

  “You think you understand, but you can’t. Not really,” she murmured. “And that’s nothing against you. I’ve tried to explain this to Marskal, too, and though he’s a lovely, sensitive man, he doesn’t quite get it. I’m not sure anyone who didn’t grow up here could really understand. It grinds you down over time, the grief, and the pain. Losing child after child after child, and along with them not only our futures, but our mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends. Sharing that sorrow and fear almost makes it worse, because the losses start to accumulate over time. One death you can spread out over many in a family and in the community. Everyone can carry a little piece of the sorrow. A few deaths and each person carries more, but it’s still distributed. After decades and generations of death, we have more dead to mourn than living to shoulder the loss.”

  She looked up at me again, her deep blue eyes reflecting the bottomless grief of thousands. “Seeing you, like this, carrying our next king—and with him so many hopes we haven’t dared to nurture—it adds that much more weight to an already unbearable load. As King of the Tala, Rayfe will feel it more than anyone, even if it wasn’t you, his beloved, at risk.”

  I blinked back tears at her words. I wanted to believe I was his beloved still. “Do you think I should’ve sequestered myself, if I could have?” I braced myself for her reply. If Zynda said yes, then I didn’t know what I’d do.

  “Absolutely not,” she replied immediately, and to my intense relief. “It’s a horrible custom. All that’s accomplished is shoving our suffering into a corner where it festers. Just give him a little room to be awful. It’s taking everything in him just to hold himself together.”

  I took a shaky breath. “Thank you. That helps.”

  Her smile turned wry, and she lowered her voice. “I’ll count on you to return the favor, because I’m not going to sequester myself either, even if Marskal could stand to let me, which he never would.”

  My breath stilled and I put my hands over hers. “Zynda. You’re…?”

  She nodded and gripped my hands, making an exaggerated face of shock and terror, like the little white-faced monkeys in the fruit trees.

  “How didn’t I sense this?”

  “Don’t look like that. You haven’t lost your sorcerous edge. I’m using the dragon magic to mask it. I’ve only told Marskal, and now you.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “So much,” she whispered. “But we have to keep going, despite the fear, yes?”

  “Yes.” I squeezed her hands, beyond glad to share this with her. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I think that’s best. You know how the Tala are, so superstitious.” She winked saucily.

  I laughed, smothering the sound with a cough, but Rayfe glanced sharply at me, then quickly away. He nodded at something Marskal said.

  “What’s this about a battle at Ordnung?” I asked Zynda. “Ursula’s missive didn’t mention that.”

  “No, she didn’t want to put it in writing. That’s part of why she’s traveled here. They should be here soon.”

  “Yes,” I replied, looking through the Gate of Annfwn to the road winding into the forest beyond. “Momentarily, in fact. I felt them cross the border several hours ago, and now they’re just a short way up the road.”

  “You still sense the border crossings, even without the barrier in place?” she asked, face alight with curiosity.

  “I do. I can even sense you in dragon form,” I added, just to see how she’d take it. As I suspected, she frowned, not angry, but annoyed.

  “Dragon form is anti-magic. You shouldn’t be able to feel me.”

  “I can feel mossbacks cross the border and they aren’t magic,” I pointed out.

  “But they simply lack magic. Dragons absorb and nullify magic.”

  “I can feel Kiraka, too. You both feel like…kind of a deep hole that moves.”

  She studied me. “Hmm.”

  “Don’t be annoyed. You dragons can’t have all the power. It’s only fair for us sorceresses to have a few tricks on our side.” I impulsively squeezed her narrow wrists. “Thank you for listening.” I raised my voice. “Our guests arrive.”

  Ursula’s entourage came in to view, rounding the bend between the giant trees that also served as homes for the Tala whose First Forms made them more comfortable among leaves than stones. They passed through the gate, the spells I’d installed there reporting that they were who they appeared to be. At least that sorcery worked fine. I had a similar passive scan on all the borders of Annfwn, which is why I could sense Zynda’s movements. It created a slight drain on me, but anytime someone entered Annfwn, I wanted to know about it.

  Unfortunately the sleeper spies seemed to have been planted before I took those precautions. Or, more concerning, the high priestess cloaked their movements using the same tricks she employed to hide n’Andana from my sight.

  Ursula’s steely gaze fixed on me as they approached, and I studied her in turn. She looked healthier than a month or so before. She’d regained some of the vitality she’d lost to her near-mortal wound and looked strong, lean as her sword, and just as sharp. She’d also gained a calm radiance, an almost joyful aura. Harlan, smiling at me from his horse, had the same look. I was happy for them, I truly was. Still, Harlan was such a nurturing sort, I knew he’d never shy from touching Ursula. I managed to avoid looking in Rayfe’s direction, though I sensed him studying me.

  “Good Danu, Andi,” Ursula exclaimed, swinging off her horse. “You’ve gotten enormous in the last few weeks.”

  “Thank you, Essla. What a delightful compliment,” I replied drily. “Always lovely to see you, too.”

  “Don’t you h
ave a while to go?” she asked, eyeing my belly with a measuring gaze.

  “Yes, though Tala gestate at a different pace. The mixed blood makes it more difficult to predict.” My actual delivery date depended on many factors. As did the outcome. I couldn’t bear to follow those visions too closely. And I had more important futures to chart.

  “Ami wasn’t this big at this stage, and she had twins.” Ursula frowned at me. “Is everything all right?”

  “Why?” Rayfe inserted sharply. “Andromeda’s condition is… Is it… unusual?”

  I managed not to roll my eyes. Now he’d discuss my ‘condition’ with my sister, but he still minced words? Give him a little room to be awful. It’s taking everything in him just to hold himself together. I took a steadying breath, nodding at Jepp and Kral. She lithely leapt from her horse, scanning the area with her sharp dark eyes, while he and Harlan dismounted more slowly. Harlan and Kral moved lightly for big men, and for mossbacks, gathering up the horses’ reins and handing them off to our waiting Tala grooms.

  “I only know how Ami looked,” Ursula was saying to Rayfe, both of them frowning at me. “What do your healers say?”

  “Standing right here,” I reminded them. “Available to answer questions directly posed to me.”

  They both ignored me. Zynda, at least, flashed me a sympathetic grimace, before she drifted after Marskal to say hello to the others.

  “Healer Vanka has grave reservations,” Rayfe replied to Ursula. “It’s not good for Andromeda to be under so much strain.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Ursula nodded, gray eyes clouding with worry as she considered. “I’ve been concerned that she’s overextending herself.”

  “Very much so.” Rayfe returned the nod and they exchanged looks of stern resolve, two commanders making battlefield decisions. Just my luck that the one thing my husband and older sister could agree on was bossing me around. I’d had about all of this day that I could take. “She was wounded battling the Deyrr creatures just this morning.”