The Forests of Dru Read online

Something about Her hands though… There was another image of Arill, one he’d always loved, and She hadn’t held the grain and scythe, had She? In that one She’d looked not disappointed, but benevolent. And Her eyes were tawny gold, Her hair fair and fiery.

  A scuffling sound startled him enough that he’d half-drawn the battle-axe out of reflex before he caught himself, resheathed it, and turned. No golems here, he reminded himself. Not yet, the hairs on his neck whispered.

  Priest Robson eyed him with disapproval from under silver-white brows, spider-leg long with age. “I took you to be praying, Your Highness. Have Arill’s children fallen so far back into the old ways that you come before Her armed as if for battle?”

  With some chagrin, he shrugged, the weight of the axe heavy now between his shoulder blades, but the priest’s question resonated oddly with his own forebodings. “I’ve carried it so long, my axe has become another limb. I forget it’s there until I reach for it. So perhaps so, Rhiten. Perhaps I am regressed to our barbaric past.” A careless boy. A reckless boy.

  “Is that why you’ve come here today?” Priest Robson asked, more gently. “It’s no feast day, nor a day for regular observance, but neither have you been to pray to Arill since your return to Dru.”

  “I’ve been ill,” he replied, feeling more than a little defensive. Did everyone want something from him? Of course, he knew the answer to that.

  “And so you have. But the spirit requires healing from despair as much as the body does from injury. You’ve sent for a healer. Why not your spiritual guide, your rhiten?”

  He couldn’t very well say that it hadn’t occurred to him. Or that when it had, it had felt like the lowest of priorities. Instead he met the priest’s keen gaze. “I’m here now.”

  “Then let us pray.”

  “Rhiten, I don’t really have time to—”

  The old man pushed past him and, leaning heavily on his staff, knelt before the altar. He looked over his shoulder with some impatience. “Do you tell Healer Baeltya you have no time for her treatments, to drink her teas? I thought not. Kneel down and clear your mind, boy.”

  Setting aside the pull of restlessness, the urge to get back to Oria, he obeyed old rules and knelt beside the priest, attempting to clear his mind. The memory came back, vividly bright and clear, of kneeling like this in the temple at Bára, preparing to wed Oria. She’d teased him, copper eyes shining with magic and laughter, telling him he was supposed to be meditating.

  “What in Arill does that mean?”

  “Like… praying to your goddess. Silently.”

  “Now what?”

  “Keep doing it. And be quiet.”

  “Why would I keep doing something I already did?”

  “You’re supposed to be contemplating!”

  “Contemplate what? I already made the decision about the step I’m about to take. There’s no sense revisiting it.”

  Like praying to his goddess. Only he’d never much seen the point of that either. The purging rituals, the sacrifices—those made sense and consumed all of his attention with their grueling demands. Strange to look back on that moment, to taste again in his memory that certainty. He had made the decision to wed Oria despite the wide array of reasons not to, and he hadn’t needed to revisit it.

  Yes, her arguments had made logical sense, once he got past the shock at the audacity of her idea, but that hadn’t been why he’d ultimately gone along. Even when he’d questioned his own sanity, even wondered—like his brothers did, he had to admit—what sort of magic she might have used on him, he’d never lost the bone-deep certainty that she was meant to be his wife.

  A gift from Arill.

  Or a punishment from the goddess.

  His, either way. No matter what.

  Casting his eyes up at Arill’s image, it seemed Her smile held only approval, Her gray eyes alight with challenge.

  ~ 7 ~

  “This is a bath?” Oria gazed at the steaming basin of water—no deeper than the first knuckle of her forefinger and the size of her hand—with some dismay. The pot Baeltya used for tea held more fluid.

  The young serving girl with the morning-flower blue eyes twisted her fingers together. “I beg your pardon, my lady, but… yes. The water restrictions—”

  “Surely don’t apply here,” another serving woman interrupted. “Let us bring out one of the queen mother’s tubs and fill it. That’s what Lady Natly—”

  “No.” Oria held up a hand, and not only because she didn’t want to hear what Natly did or didn’t do. That was all she needed to improve her reputation among the Destrye, to prove herself a wastrel as well as the enemy who’d deprived them of their water reserves in the first place. She needed to stop being so thoughtless.

  “You’re not thoughtless. This is all new to you.”

  “And you are too generous with me.”

  “Because I love you. I suggest rolling in hot sand—that cleans my hide nicely.”

  “Leaving your scales dry and peeling. You’ll be in need of oil.”

  “I am itchy,” her Familiar admitted, and she felt another pang for having neglected him.

  Time to take more control of her situation. Her hand still in the air, the serving women eyeing her with breath held and faces anxious, she studied their glossy curls, shining with volume and vitality. Surely the palace ladies had ways of washing their hair, if only to keep the vermin out. The very thought of insects breeding in her hair made her skin crawl as if a Trom had touched her.

  “I would pick them out for you.”

  “Ah…Thanks. How about we save that for a last resort?” Out loud, she asked, “How do you all cleanse your hair?”

  The ladies exchanged nervous glances. “Us? Or the noble women?” the blue-eyed girl ventured.

  “Both. Either, since it seems there’s a difference.”

  The girl gestured to the bowl. “The noble ladies use a cloth and bowl, as such.”

  “Even to wash their hair?”

  She giggled, more nervous than anything. “We do that in spring, traveling to the lakes when they’ve thawed. Or some women of the outer buildings have been gathering snow and melting it.”

  “In winter we use powders to soak up the excess oils,” another put in, eyeing Oria’s hair with some doubt. Even with it knotted up again, she could feel it heavy with the sweats of sleep and sickness. The wiry and curly hair of the Destrye women clearly withstood far more oils than her mass of fine, straight strands. They had no mirrors, it seemed—she recalled Lonen’s fascination with hers back in Bára—so she could only imagine how awful she must look. It made no sense to dress her up to dine in the fine clothes and furs being industriously sewn for her, when the person inside the pretty garments stank with filth. How she longed for the steaming baths of Bára.

  “Perhaps I should cut my hair short, like Salaya,” she suggested, nearly taking a step back when they exclaimed in horror.

  “Begging your pardon, my lady,” the blue-eyed girl said. “Lady Salaya’s hair is shorn out of mourning for her husband’s death. If you were to do such a thing…”

  Ah. It would appear that she considered Lonen dead. Even though the popular opinion seemed to be that they weren’t truly husband and wife. It would be nice if the Destrye would make up their minds about that.

  “If you don’t do the bowl and cloth method, what do you do?”

  “The aswae in Arill’s Temple,” blue eyes replied, ignoring the others, including the senior servant who tried to shush her. “But it’s public and all the common women go there. The more refined ladies bathe in private.”

  “How does it work—what is an aswae?”

  “It’s a wooden room with benches. And they build up the fire very hot. We rub oil on our hair and skin, then scrape it off again. The sweat from our bodies makes it quite cleansing.”

  “Sounds delightful.”

  “You would like that.” But she agreed that the prospect of being warm enough to sweat was enticing indeed. “All right. Wil
l you take me there?”

  The other serving women looked aghast and fell to muttering among themselves, but blue-eyes nodded, her chin firm. “I will. And I’ll tend you myself. Let me find you something to wear.”

  While Oria waited, she wandered about the chambers, sipping her tea and eavesdropping on the Destrye women as they conversed. From what she could pick out, several seemed to find Oria’s proposed visit to the aswae quite scandalous while others shrugged it off.

  The helpful serving girl returned with a plain gown of thick material. “It’s not a lady’s dress,” she explained, “but decent for a trip to the aswae, if you don’t mind.” Oria did not mind a bit. The outing had begun to feel like an adventure—and a welcome respite from the crowding of her sanctuary. Wearing the gown, an additional cloak and her fur slippers, she held up a hand to Chuffta, who glided down from his perch on the ceiling beam, to land on her shoulder. He looped his tail around her throat, more out of affection than anything else, as the thick cloak gave him excellent purchase, and delicately poked his nose at her hair.

  “I don’t see any vermin,” he commented.

  Before she could frame a tart reply, the serving girl, eyes wide and shocked, blurted out, “You don’t mean to bring your pet!”

  Several women fell silent, some shooting glares at the girl, as if to admonish her for impertinence, the others avidly interested. “Yes,” Oria replied, finding it easy to remain serene on this one. “Chuffta needs cleansing and oiling, too. And he loves the heat.”

  “All right,” the girl replied, shrugging for the vagaries of crazy noble ladies. “It’s not like they’d dare criticize you, anyway.”

  Not to her face, that was.

  The girl led the way out the door and into a corridor. Like all the rooms Oria had seen thus far, the hall was built entirely of wood, long strips of it fitted together along the long sides, arching up from a flat floor, then bending overhead to form a point. The colors shifted in a subtle spectrum from dark to light and back again, like a rainbow of brown. Oria trailed her fingers along it, the texture not like wood or bark at all, but smooth as sueded silk. They must do something to it, to make it feel so fine. Smaller pieces in various shapes and colors made up the flooring, the swirling pattern giving her a curious sense of swaying branches.

  Destrye guards that had been outside the doors now followed after, not speaking to her but also not commenting to each other as the serving women might have. Alby had no doubt gone with Lonen, as he always did.

  “What is your name?” she asked the girl. None of the serving women had offered their names, although she wasn’t sure if they observed some sort of protocol, believed she wouldn’t be interested, or had some other reason.

  “Pilaryh,” she replied without hesitation.

  “Why didn’t you offer your name earlier?”

  “We weren’t sure of your customs. Báran ways are strange.” She cast a glance at Oria, the blue of her thickly lashed eyes a vivid contrast with her golden skin and burnished dark curls. They were very nearly the same height, which made Pilaryh short for a Destrye.

  “Báran custom is that you should call me Oria,” she said. No matter that wasn’t strictly true. She tired of hearing the deliberate omission of honorifics. Not that she blamed the serving women. They all found themselves in a snarl.

  Pilaryh led them over a sort of bridge that Oria vaguely recalled from Lonen’s rescue of her from the healing ward at the temple. Tacked-down hides covered large holes cut at regular intervals in the walls. One had come loose, flapping in a chill breeze, so Oria paused, lifting the corner.

  “That should be fixed,” Pilaryh noted. “In the summer the Bridge of Seofe is open to the warm breezes and the view is quite nice. But this time of year it’s too cold.”

  “May I look anyway?”

  Pilaryh cocked her head, giving her a funny look. “I’m pretty sure you get to do whatever you want, my… Oria.” She gestured to the guards. “Remove this hide so the sorceress may look out.”

  One man stepped up and made short work of it, standing back and holding the hide while Oria stood in the open frame, the chill pouring in. On her shoulder, Chuffta lifted his nose, scenting the breeze. He’d been in and out, taking in the sights, telling her some of what he’d seen, but he had a peculiar perspective at times. And though she loved the cloistered warmth of Lonen’s chambers, she’d greatly missed the vistas she’d lived with all her life.

  Now it seemed she stood high among branches. Naked of leaves, they twined like black snakes against a gray sky, rattling against each other with thin-boned murmurs. On one side of the bridge, a graceful construction of wood surrounded the largest tree she’d ever seen. It wove in and out, echoing the lines of the branches and limbs. Arill’s Temple. At the other end, where they’d come from, an uglier structure squatted. Made of heavy wood, it looked like the fortress the palace was. The warrior counterpart to the elegant, airy goddess.

  All along its walls, below the bridge, at the base of the temple and radiating out in every direction, more wooden buildings sprawled. These were not made with any design or the most basic nod to decoration. None seemed to be square. Even the simpler cubes weren’t perfectly aligned, and they often branched into triangular wings or sprouted narrow passages. They piled on top of each other, the ceiling of one the apparent floor of another.

  A haphazard series of catwalks and ladders allowed people to move among them, which they did. Children with dark curling hair ran shrieking up and down the passages, sometimes leaping from one level to the next, making Oria catch her breath in dismay. They seemed to be partly helping, partly getting into trouble among the adults who worked on the topmost roofs, which sported slanting boards that shunted snow into troughs. The people looked to be gathering it up and giving to others to carry away. To be melted, no doubt, as Pilaryh had mentioned.

  Snow and ice. She’d imagined it more beautiful than this. Not grimy and packed down. It didn’t look like anything one would want to drink.

  “It’s prettier when it’s fresh. It snowed several days ago and not since. When it’s fresh, it looks like sand, drifting and smooth.” Chuffta showed her an image of it.

  The conglomeration of the Destrye city rose and fell in waves. She could see it as not unlike sand dunes, with a ridge at the distant edge, the buildings there high enough she couldn’t see past them, though here and there, breaks between revealed some sort of a deep pit beyond.

  “What is that?” She pointed, edging aside for Pilaryh to see.

  “The moat.” Pilaryh darted her a glance. “You know—full of sharp spikes, to stop the golems.”

  Ah. Oria stepped back, allowing the guard to reattach the hide, almost sorry that she’d looked. She had not imagined the exuberant, free-ranging Destrye living so crowded together, in such unlovely conditions. What had she expected, though?

  “I think they did not always live this way, that may be why you expected otherwise.”

  That could be, though she hesitated to ask Pilaryh about it. That was how the city looked—like the place a hunted and terrified people might hunker down in to fend off an implacable enemy. Not planned.

  The temple itself further confirmed that supposition, with its lovely, arching halls and attention to beauty. Everywhere she looked, some detail adorned the least nook. Leaf and branch designs trailed along lintels. Fruits and sheaves of grain decorated wall panels. Tapestries in vivid colors showed vast meadows and forests of with animals of all types. Branches and twigs from the tree that formed the core of the temple poked through seamlessly, a few still sporting fiery leaves. Here and there, dried leaves scuttled across the wooden floors in the wind of their passage, and Oria recalled how one had fallen onto her in a lazy spiral when she’d first awakened. How the head healer, Talya, had taken it up and set it in a bin.

  Picking up one of the dry leaves, she examined it. Larger than her head, it looked unlike the smaller leaves of the trees in her rooftop garden. Rather than a central spine,
this one had veins that rayed out like the fingers of a hand to pointed edges. It contained no color—not living green nor the dying oranges. Instead it had gone beige, nearly the color of the dirty snow outside, thinner than the most delicate glass vessel the master forgers of Bára could produce, and it gave off a scent like Baeltya’s tea. She brushed her fingers over the sandy surface, producing a sound like she’d touched the finest of scrolls.

  “My lady?” Pilaryh asked, a puzzled line between her thick brows.

  “It’s beautiful,” Oria said, a kind of an explanation.

  “It’s a leaf.”

  And thus ordinary to a woman who grew up surrounded by these massive trees. They were the counterpoint to that squalid jumble of huts. Holding the leaf, closing her eyes, it seemed Oria could almost sense it out there—a sort of holy silence where the forest breathed softer than sand whisking against glass. A verdant, ancient magic, the quiet unheard heartbeat behind the yammering tangle of wild magic.

  She inhaled, taking it in, savoring. It didn’t flood her, not like the chaos of the wild magic, nor did it surge in great waves like the sgath below Bára. It infiltrated, another kind of satiation, quenching a deep thirst. Swallowing the unexpected gift, she held it in her heart and belly, keeping it safe.

  “Oria?”

  Oria opened her eyes to find Pilaryh and the two guardsmen all watching her with suspicion and concern. One guard fingered the hilt of his sword.

  “You were standing there meditating for a while. I think you confused them.”

  “Did you feel it—the forest song?” Abruptly she recalled that delirious moment in the water at the oasis when she’d listened to the enchanting sound of the stars brushing against each other as they danced across the sky. She’d forgotten it mostly, as one did with dreams, checking them off mentally as not real and therefore not worth remembering. But now…

  “Would you… like to keep the leaf?” Pilaryh asked gently, the way one would mollify a temperamental child. Or a crazy sorceress.

  “Can I?” She did want to keep it. Perhaps work with it to reach for that holy sensation again.