“I don’t like this.” His arms tightened on her. “The last time we were separated…” He trailed off, unwilling to speak those words aloud.
“We came out of it triumphant,” she filled in, reminding him. “Bring the Destrye to Bára, my king. The plan hasn’t changed. I’ll meet you there.”
“You’d better,” he muttered on a growl, just before he caught her mouth with his. The scrape of days-old beard contrasted with the hot, soft texture of his mouth. Arousal flooded her, nearly painful after missing his touch for a week. Her breasts tightened, swollen with need, and all her skin cried out for his, feeling stretched to bursting with neglect.
Lonen cursed against her mouth, his hands everywhere over the leathers. “I can’t touch you in these things. They’re a tease—showing everything and revealing nothing.”
She breathed a voiceless laugh. “Just as well. We can hardly do anything with our people advancing at top speed.” Indeed, the growing sound of the army on the move filled the tunnel, the section behind them rapidly approaching. “And now there’s no time to dally at the oasis. It isn’t the same without you.”
He kissed her again, a final feel to it that she hated, even as she relished it. “I don’t want this to be goodbye,” he said with quiet ferocity.
“It’s not.” She pulled away, taking his hands in hers. “You found me in Bára twice before. Isn’t the third time the magic number?”
He smiled back, though it didn’t reach his eyes, which held quiet despair. His muffled thoughts echoed it, and she didn’t look too closely, lest she begin to weep.
“I love you, Lonen,” she said. “I’ll see you at Bára.”
He dragged her back into his arms, kissing her breathless. “I love you,” he murmured into her ear. “I’ll find you.”
She knew he spoke truly. He would find her. He always had.
Chuffta rose into the night sky, white wings ghostly. The desert air was cool, but not as cold as in Dru. They weren’t far from Bára and her hot days that lingered in the baking sands. Sgatha hung round and rosy full in the sky, Grienon sinking fast to the horizon somewhere behind them. Stars glittered thick, their light bouncing off the still oasis water below. And somewhere below that, the love of her life.
“Lonen could’ve come with us. I’ve carried you both before, plus Baeltya,” Chuffta pointed out.
“I know, but we couldn’t have snuck him into Bára any more easily than we could sneak you in.” The thought of her muscled Destrye warrior trying to pass as one of the effete Báran men had her smiling. “And he can’t abandon his people. He’ll stay with them and lead them until he’s the last man standing.”
“That does sound like Lonen.”
And that was part and parcel of why she loved him. As much as she hated leaving him behind, they were both doing what they must, according to their natures and the responsibilities they’d been born to. She wouldn’t change any of it. She could only hope that they’d triumph in the end.
A short while later, the towers of Bára rose against the horizon. Grienon had made his circuit around the far side of the world and rose again behind the graceful city, a blue-green jewel among the forest of towers. Though the desert sands extended all around like a lightless sea, the windows of the city gleamed with lights here and there, reminding Oria of the lovely rooms those arches and balconies connected to. Somewhere in there was her mother.
She hoped.
And somewhere in there also was Yar, and his wife Gallia, if she’d adapted to the city. Also Priestess Juli, who had waited faithfully on her, along with so many other people who’d populated her childhood. A strange sense of nostalgic familiarity warred in her heart with all the bad memories. The city seemed different now, smaller somehow. She’d seen so much more of the world since she’d fled Bára’s walls. While tall and beautifully built, the towers of Bára couldn’t match the forests and mountains of Dru.
She’d left this place an ignorant child at the mercy of the forces of the world, and now she returned as a queen and mighty sorceress.
“And I’m big,” Chuffta chimed in with smug delight. “Let the high priestess complain about a few songbirds now.”
Oria laughed, and the odd melancholy faded to the background. She had a job to do, two realms to serve, the populations of both counting on her whether they knew it or not. Very likely she still had a certain vulnerability to the emotional miasma of Bára, the place of her birth, and that affected her on a deep level. Mentally reviewing the balance of her magic, she adjusted her senses to allow in only what she wished for the moment, then opened her magical perception to envision Bára that way.
She gasped aloud. Gone was the lightless desert. Instead, Bára seemed to be a glittering island of magical vectors—all spinning and whirling with fabulous resonances—perched atop a sea of deep rose still magic. Bára’s pool of sgath, more ancient and immense that she’d ever imagined. And the walls, the towers, most every building—all shone with blinding blue-green light. The stones of Bára were held together by grien magic, somehow held in an endlessly cycling form, drawing on the pool of sgath.
What would happen if the priestesses of Bára stopped adding to the sgath below the city? Surely those towers would fall one day, then the lower structures, the stone itself crumbling back into the sand from which it was formed. So much made sense suddenly. Of course the temple carefully taught every sorceress she could not live beyond the city walls. In truth, the city itself would not survive if her sorceresses abandoned it. Oh, it wouldn’t fall immediately. Maybe not for years, but eventually the sgath would be depleted, the grien spells would fail, and it would all return to the desert.
Tucking that information away, she picked out a quiet spot, well-shadowed both magically and according to her physical vision. “Drop me over there.” She showed Chuffta mentally. “Then find a chasm and stay hidden until I call. You know what to do, what to look for.”
“You’ll let me listen with you though, yes?” Her Familiar sounded anxious, as he so rarely did, and she sent him a soothing thought.
“Yes. And you’ll be only moments away by wing. You’ll know if I need you. Watch for the Trom dragons and tell me if you see them. Let me know if—when you see Lonen and the army, too.”
“I know, I know. I remember. They’re still on the move, fighting more golems.” Chuffta set her down on the soft dunes on the moonless side of the city. Now the walls reared above her, seeming not so small at all. “I liked being able to ride on your shoulder and miss it at times like this.”
“I miss it, too,” she replied, deciding not to remind him this time that it had been his idea to be big. Unstrapping her bag and herself from his harness, she climbed down his leg, then got out the red robes she’d brought from the palace and shrugged them on over her leathers. She’d restored the priestess robes to pristine condition with her magic, and added ribbons to Tania’s mask. The mask glowed with magic like the heart of a sun, and she had to make sure not to look at it directly. Fortunately, she’d discovered, once she tied on the mask, the contact with her skin dropped it out of her magical perception. It became one with her own magic, an unexpected benefit. For the moment, she left it dangling from her belt.
Reaching up to Chuffta’s lowered head, she hugged his jaw, clinging to him for courage. “Now go. Once you’re away, I’ll enter the city.”
“I’ll be with you.”
He leapt into the sky, dusting her with some sand, but not as much as he might have even a week before. He’d gotten quite skilled with flying at his new size in a short time.
His white form receded into the night, like another moon, if moons were that color. Then he vanished, and she could no longer make him out. She turned and trudged over the dunes toward the walls. It wasn’t easy going, with the soft sand sliding away and dragging her down. If only she could’ve had Chuffta set her down closer—but that would have jeopardized them both.
She made it to the wall soon enough, though her leg muscles ached
from the unusual exercise. She made her way along it to one of the smaller side gates. Putting a hand against the barrier, she extended her magical senses through it, perceiving what lay on the other side. No one was about, as she’d hoped. These side gates opened into back lots and alleys, for loading supplies, and were barricaded most of the time. The main gates would be constantly guarded, but not these sealed ones. Part and parcel of Báran arrogance, she supposed. No one without magic could open these gates, and no one with magic would be outside the city wanting in.
She untied Tania’s mask from her sash, where it had dangled by the ribbons, and donned it, taking the time to weave the ribbons through her braids, tying them decoratively as if her lady’s maid had done it. The metal felt warm and strangely close against her face. Eyeless, the mask made a shield against the world she found stifling after living free with Destrye.
It murmured dark things to her, but she understood it now, the way it sought to gather magic and focus it into her, and she mastered it, harnessing the artifact to do her will.
It took only a whisper of grien to undo the magically sealed locks, a bit more to clear away the sand blown against the door. She wedged it open just enough for her to slip through, then closed it again, mentally resealing the lock.
And Oria stood inside Bára, the exile returned.
~ 13 ~
Inside the walls, the familiar feel of home enveloped her. She’d always known—had always been told—that Bára and her sister cities had been built to create a perfect place for sgath and grien to exist in balance. Outside the walls, wild magic would erode the very life of a sorceress.
As with everything she’d been taught, those lessons contained a seed of truth, but had strayed so far from the fullness of truth as to make them into outright lies. Yes, the walls of Bára had been woven with spells that filtered out the magic of the greater world, creating an oasis of apparent peace within. With her expanded senses and understanding of magic, however, Oria understood that the sense of coherence came from homogeneity. All magic but one kind—which the Bárans and their ilk called “sgath”—had been screened out.
That process, along with the efforts of Bára’s sorceress population, created the vast pool of magic beneath the city. But, like the Destrye in the tunnels for a week, accustomed to darkness and weak candlelight, then blinded by the sun, living with only one kind of magic had made the Bárans painfully sensitive to any other kind. The men in Bára, trained to draw on magic only from Bára or their sorceress companions, benefited from this system.
The women, however… They’d been made into prisoners, captive livestock bred and trained to feed magic to the sorcerers. No wonder the men used grien so easily. They’d essentially had their magic chewed up by the walls and the women, then fed to them like milk produced by a cow.
The realization filled Oria with cold rage.
“Rage is good, as long as it stays cold,” Chuffta advised. “You’re not so good at breathing fire.”
The superior tone in his mind-voice made her smile—and did help restore perspective. She was here to do a job, and she would focus on that. Time enough later, when she was recognized as Queen of Bára, to make changes, both here and in her sister cities.
So many changes she would make.
For the moment, she tucked her hands inside the wide sleeves of her crimson priestess robes and strolled out onto the smooth stones of the paved city paths. The eyeless mask prevented her from seeing the city as she had for most of her life, but her magical perception revealed far more. She understood now how wearing the mask could become a crutch for a priestess. Without the competition of physical vision, even a poorly skilled practitioner could more easily focus on only magical sight. It was hardly the badge of honor that Bárans regarded it as, however. Did a sorcerer or sorceress with real power need to advertise it via something as basic as seeing without physical vision?
The mask did give Oria the anonymity she needed, and she passed citizens and guards with serene equanimity, acknowledging their bows and greetings with a gracious incline of her head—and continuing on her important business.
Whatever a Báran priestess might be doing, it was always important.
In the same way, she strolled over Ing’s Chasm and into the palace without challenge. Yar had built a new bridge of stone over the chasm. She recognized his magic instantly, able to observe how he’d woven the stone together with his grien. If she wanted to spend the time, she could likely trace every bit of stone and sand back to where he’d pulled it from. Each bit retained a thread to where it had been before, and where and what it had been before that. Levels upon levels, strands infinitely woven together to create physical reality. Fascinating—and potentially overwhelming.
And nothing she had time for.
Especially because, as she crossed the bridge and entered the palace, the matte black taint of the Trom impacted her senses. Not present, exactly, not at that precise moment, but they’d left their essence behind, as obvious as muddy footprints on the white and gold polished marble floors. She hadn’t been practiced enough when she’d encountered the Trom before to differentiate the strength of their recent presence from the more distant kind, so she couldn’t pinpoint how old this trace might be.
What would she perceive now when she encountered the Trom again? She’d have to brace herself for that, because even in her formerly dulled state, they had seemed to her like black suns of magic, drawing light inward instead of radiating it. It could be they did that with all magical wavelengths, devouring everything around them.
Somehow, knowing that they’d once been as human as she—and that she carried the potential to become what they were—gave her such a chill of terror that her thoughts began to fragment. What if she became that? The peril loomed beneath her like Ing’s Chasm, lightless and bottomless.
“You would never become them, if only because I won’t let you,” Chuffta assured her with stalwart arrogance.
“I’m holding you to that.” Once again, her Familiar’s steadying presence helped her regain her sense of self and perspective. She wished she could have him on her shoulder.
“It seems to me that if you were a truly great sorceress, and you made me big, you could also make me small again.”
“But what if I accidentally left out important bits?” She asked in her most innoncent mind-voice.
He was silent a moment. “You’re right. It’s not worth the danger.”
Suppressing a giggle, feeling much lighter, she made her way to her mother’s receiving rooms. When Oria was last in Bára, Queen Rhianna hadn’t returned to the bedchamber she’d shared with Oria’s father. After his untimely death, and how that loss tore Rhianna’s mind in half, the queen hadn’t been able to face their shared space. Time might have healed that wound, but Oria’s instincts said otherwise. Her mother would be sleeping sitting up, staring out the window, perhaps, watching for people who’d never returned to her.
That was, if her mother still lived. Oria could help Rhianna now—show her that she hadn’t lost half of herself at all—if only her mother hadn’t given up. Though that would have to wait for later. For the moment, Oria had no doubt that Yar would use their mother as a hostage against Oria’s good behavior. Better to secure Rhianna first, before Oria challenged Yar and took out his council.
The lack of guards posted outside the Báran Queen Mother’s receiving rooms made it easier for Oria to slip inside without being noticed but boded ill for her hopes. Indeed, as Oria passed from one room to the next, she found them all unlit and still with the quiet air of disuse. She’d have to keep looking.
Oria paused a moment by her mother’s chair, gazing out the unglassed window that looked out over the city walls and beyond to the desert. A cool breeze wafted in from the distant sea, smelling of brine and moisture—and forewarning of dawn approaching. Oria had stood in that window and seen Lonen for the first time, astonished into freezing like prey at the sight of the muscled barbarian striking down the pries
tesses guarding the walls of Bára.
So much had happened since then, and yet here Oria stood in the same place, almost as if she’d never left.
“Who are you?” A voice asked behind her, making her whirl with a gasp of startlement as her heart skipped a beat. She should’ve sensed another person in the room.
A priest in golden mask and crimson robes stepped into the rosy moonlight streaming in the window. A sorcerer, who’d shielded himself from her senses. Even after all this time, she knew that voice.
“Answer my question, priestess,” Yar commanded with lofty impatience. “Who are you and why are you here?” His grien snaked out, blue-green fingers to probe her, which she deflected easily. Would he notice that she did?
Why was he here in their mother’s rooms and where was Yar’s wife, Gallia? Oria couldn’t sense the priestess anywhere nearby, but she also hadn’t known her long, and the last time they’d seen each other, Gallia’s sgath had been weakened by moving to a new city. Even laboring under that terrible sapping of her native magic—a sensation Oria knew all too well—Gallia had helped them to escape. Oria owed her a life, and she knew exactly how to help her if the priestess from Lousá would be willing to learn.
“Are you even a priestess?” Yar’s voice climbed with offense. “It’s a crime punishable by death to wear a mask not ritually given to you.”
“Hello Yar,” Oria said, her voice remarkably steady.
He stilled, grien tentacles of power renewing their attempt to penetrate her mind and body. To no avail, as she sent them spinning into nothing.
“Oria.” Yar spoke her name like he’d found a venomous snake in the room. “How are you here? And masquerading as a priestess. I’ll remind you, Oria, that’s still a crime punishable by execution. But, then, you already have a death sentence on your head for being an abomination, don’t you? You only escaped it because we knew you’d die outside the walls. You were supposed to die!”
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