The Forests of Dru

by Jeffe Kennedy

  No guilt in him now, he eyed her with some acerbity. “You’re going to pretend Chuffta didn’t relay every word?”

  Ah, the guilt was hers, staining her cheeks with warmth. “You were supposed to stay hidden.”

  “I tried. There are not many places to hide in these enclosed rooms of theirs—and Lonen deliberately looked for me. No one else knew I was there.”

  Lonen was watching her still, knowing in his uncanny way that she conversed mentally with her Familiar. “I asked you to keep him with you.”

  “Clearly you suspected I’d disobey, as Chuffta says you searched him out,” she replied stiffly.

  Lonen massaged the scar. It had healed cleanly, but the way it crossed the path of that other, older scar made the skin around his eye pull. He’d developed a habit of rubbing at it when distracted or in thought. “I requested it of you because I don’t want you unguarded.”

  She shrugged that off, tucking her hands in her sleeves. They were always cold in this wintery place. It might also be a sign of her slow failing without a source of purified sgath. Something else she couldn’t change. “You know perfectly well he doesn’t always listen—and he’s found all sorts of ways in and out of your wooden rooms and passageways.”

  “Oria,” Lonen said in that patient tone that mean he didn’t buy her explanation. “Can we dispense with this? I’ve had enough verbal fencing for the time being.”

  “Yes,” she replied, chagrined. Thoughtless of her. “I’m sorry.”

  He slanted her a crooked smile. “There’s your one apology for the day. Will you sit or are you determined to pace about like Buttercup stuck in a short stall?”

  She huffed a breath at being compared to the massive black warhorse. “I’ll sit, if we can discuss what your brothers said to you.”

  “Deal. Bring your brush and pull the stool over.”

  “My hair doesn’t need brushing.” What it needed—quite desperately—was washing.

  “It soothes us both.”

  Which was true, so she fetched the odd brush he’d arranged for her to have. With a handle and back made of wood, carved into delicate, intricate vines, it fit nicely in the hand. The business end, however, was made from some kind of animal bristles. It seemed fur shouldn’t be so stiff, but these forest pigs Lonen described apparently sported such stuff. Strange as it was, her hair liked it well, and it pulled at the tangles far less than the one she’d left in Bára when they fled. Along with everything but the clothes she’d worn, all now consigned to the rag pile.

  She tried to think of herself as unencumbered, gifted with a clean slate, rather than dependent on Lonen for every little thing.

  Handing him the brush, she sat on the low cushioned stool between his knees, staring into the fire. He undid the knot she’d put it in, then the tie that held her braid and unraveled that. “I think you should leave your hair down,” he commented, not for the first time.

  “It gets in my way,” she replied. Maybe he didn’t notice that it needed washing. Hoping so, she refrained from saying anything about it, lest she lessen his pleasure or dull the moment.

  Gathering the long fall of her hair, he ran the brush through, making a wordless hum of pleasure. Because of her particular limitations, they couldn’t touch physically—not skin to skin—so his solution of indulging himself in touching her hair served as a substitute, however poor. It did relax her, however, and seemed to make him happy. As much as a sexless marriage could. His brothers just had to bring up Natly, Lonen’s former lover. Oria had yet to see the Destrye woman in the flesh, though she’d glimpsed her in Lonen’s mind.

  A bitter irony, though, that Nolan had asssumed Lonen couldn’t pry himself out of bed for luxuriating in sex with her, when they’d never had actual intercourse at all. One of a number of things about her Lonen had not divulged.

  “I notice you let them believe I have my full powers,” she finally said, since he didn’t seem to be planning to speak first.

  He remained silent a bit more. “It’s better if they fear reprisals from you. And I’m confident you will yet regain your magic.”

  “Does nothing dim your optimism?”

  “It’s not optimism,” he replied with hushed ferocity. “It’s necessity. You’re too thin, too pale. We need to find magic for you, and soon.”

  His intensity took her aback. “Well, I don’t know where I’d get it from. I can barely touch the wild magic before it knocks me unconscious.” And left her burnt to the core. Like trying to light a candle and having a bonfire blow up in her face.

  “I have some ideas. Now that we’re better, we can explore them.”

  “I’m fine. You were winded simply walking down to the dining hall.”

  “You’re not fine,” he said quietly. “You grow more wan by the day. Do you think I can’t see it?”

  She had hoped.

  “Finding you a sustaining source of sgath is critical,” he continued.

  “Preparing for the inevitable incursions of more golems and Trom is critical,” she retorted. “You and I both know Nolan is wrong—they’ll return, and soon. Now that he’s King of Bàra, with almost unlimited power, Yar won’t waste the opportunity.”

  “Do you think he knows about those tunnels?”

  The brush whispered through her hair as she thought, grateful that he allowed the change in conversation topics. Such an extraordinary revelation, the tunnels. “I really don’t know. I didn’t know about them—or that lake—but my father, even my mother, kept their secrets well. There was a great deal I didn’t know before the siege. It’s difficult to say what they might have shared with my brothers. With Yar the youngest and always…” Not easy to pick a single word to encompass Yar’s character flaws. Understanding her pause, having helped her battle her younger brother for the crown, Lonen patted her hip, giving her tacit permission to move past it, too. “Anyway,” she sighed, “I can’t see that they would have shared information that sensitive with him. And if they knew we had a lake beneath Bára, why steal water from Dru?”

  “That occurred to me, too.”

  “Perhaps it was a secret among few that was lost,” Chuffta put in.

  “True. Chuffta points out, rightly so, that the tunnels might have been built long ago to carry the water from your lakes to Bára, and even her sister-cities. The lake might not even have been for storing the water itself, originally.”

  “What do you mean?”

  There had been a time she would have hesitated—no, absolutely refused—to share temple secrets with the Destrye. Moot now, along with so much else of her previous life. “You know how I explained that the coherent source of sgath lies below Bára, and that all her sister-cities have something equivalent?”

  “Though each city is slightly different, which was why Gallia couldn’t access Báran sgath as well as you could.”

  “Not right away, anyway.” Hopefully Yar’s beleaguered new bride had found a way to do so. She had enough trials stacked against her as it was. “But yes, each city is different—so I was taught, and Gallia’s experience bears that out—though I don’t know why that would be. It never occurred to me to wonder how the sgath got there. It always just was.” So much she’d never examined closely enough, determined as she’d been to gain hwil and receive her mask as a priestess. Those goals seemed superficial and … juvenile now. “The priestesses replenished it, but that was a slow trickle compared to the enormity of the sgath stored.”

  “You think it has something to do with the lake?” Lonen broke into her thoughts.

  “Maybe? Sgath is often correlated with water—it accumulates like a pool filling, it’s dark, ever yielding, passive.”

  “Female.”

  “Yes.” She laughed a little at that. They’d both learned that wasn’t necessarily true.

  “And grien, the male magic, is more like fire—active, forceful, bright.”

  “So the metaphor goes, yes.”

  “Then there’s you, who somehow ended up with the abili
ty to wield both.”

  “Against all reason and precedent.”

  “As far as we know and you were told,” Chuffta said. He appeared to be asleep, rounded white belly up before the fire, wings half splayed and rear talons curled in contentment, but his mind-voice remained animated and alert. “I still think there wouldn’t be such a strong prohibition against a woman wielding grien if it weren’t possible. Has it occurred to you that there’s no law against a man using sgath?”

  “Because they can’t—” she began, then stopped herself. Or could they?

  “Exactly.”

  “Of course,” she said aloud, to return to the point, “neither sgath nor grien are actual physical forces, so all of these descriptions are only analogies.”

  “But they exist in the world and affect physical things, so they must be physical.”

  She contemplated that. “I didn’t realize you were such a philosopher.”

  “I’m not. Really we should put this to Arnon. He’s the one who understands physics and such. He’s the one who got us across the Bay of Bára by charting the bore tides and the influence of the moons’ phases on them. Since you associate sgath with Sgatha and grien with Grienon, maybe he’ll have ideas on how the moons affect the magic flows, too.”

  “You’ve been thinking about this.”

  “Long hours abed lend themselves to contemplation, even for those of us not much inclined to philosophy.” He sounded drily humorous. A welcome sound. He’d once had an irrepressible sense of humor, even at the worst of moments. His extended convalescence had managed to drain him of that as nothing else had. Convalescence and worry for her.

  “I’m thinking Arnon will not be inclined to discuss how to replenish the magic that frightens the Destrye so badly.”

  Lonen’s turn to be quiet, sifting her hair through his fingers. “He’ll come around,” he said finally. “Nolan’s been at him, that’s all.”

  She bit her lip on asking, then gave voice to her most salient fear. “Will Nolan truly challenge you to a duel for the throne?”

  Lonen grunted noncommittally.

  “A real answer, please.”

  “Only Arill knows. It would be extraordinary, but we live in extraordinary times.”

  “Is it a duel to the death?” she asked quietly, as if saying it softly would give the words less power to evoke the reality.

  “One can’t have defeated kings hanging about to rally the disaffected.”

  “So that’s a yes.”

  “The whole duel is theoretical.”

  “But possible—even likely,” she insisted.

  “A fine turnabout that would be for us, yes? First your duel for the throne of Bára, then mine for Dru.”

  “Hopefully yours would turn out better than mine,” she muttered.

  “Hey.” He set the brush aside and coaxed her to turn to face him, touching her only over the thick fur robe she wore. It both kept her warm and cushioned her from casual contact. Lonen settled his hands on her hips. “You won your duel in spectacular fashion. You defeated Yar handily—it’s not your fault the temple intervened and called your use of grien anathema. You’re a sorceress of rare and amazing ability. I haven’t forgotten it and neither should you.”

  “Was a sorceress, of unreliable, untrained, and unpredictable ability,” she corrected. “I appreciate the support, Lonen, and I won’t pretend that when you say such things, it doesn’t turn my head, but you can’t—”

  “Oh yes? Tell me how I turn your head,” he murmured, his mood shifting into languid desire, as he tangled his fingers in the hair falling over her shoulder, and leaned in to breathe against her cheek. “If it’s anything like how you affect me, it must be dizzying indeed.”

  “It is.” Well and truly dizzying, exacerbated by being so close to him. With her portals so tightly closed, she didn’t feel his thoughts and emotions nearly as easily, not unless he projected strongly or they were very close. Skin to skin opened up all the channels from another person into her—to an unbearable degree that strained her to the point of collapse and coma if sustained too long, almost like contact with wild magic—but skin a whisper apart from hers sent the feel of him into her on a manageable level, much as his warm and spicy scent filled her head.

  The anger his brothers had stirred up brooded dark in the background, but above that swirled a potent mix of affection, admiration, and pure lust. His masculine exuberance had drawn her to him from the beginning, even back then, when it overwhelmed her ability to vent the energy again. With his slow return to health, each day immersed her in more of the vital wash of his presence. Though she welcomed that as a sign of his recovery, it also made it more and more difficult for her to contain her own longing for him.

  “Lonen…”

  “Yes, love?”

  “Stop.” She tried to pull back but his hand wrapped in her hair anchored here there. “We can’t do this.”

  He lifted his head, studying her face. “Because you don’t feel up to it?”

  “No, that’s not it.” That was the thing. She really did feel more or less fine. Kind of out-of-body sometimes, but not terrible. Wan. That described it well. “We just can’t—”

  “We’re doing it,” he murmured. “So it must be that we can. You’re so lovely in the firelight, Oria. The flames make your hair shine like a copper drum hit by the golden light of sunset. You look good in my furs, too. Perhaps you have ensorcelled me, as the least glimpse of you makes me want to chuck all of this nonsense and run back to the oasis. Maybe I should never have made us leave.”

  The memory of that peaceful place—and the magical buffer that had allowed them to touch—made her ache with nostalgia, and more. If only she hadn’t been too ill from the wild magic for them to truly be together. “Don’t joke about that—it’s not at all funny.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t think I’m joking. The need for you burns in me stronger than anything else. Make love with me, sorceress.”

  She laughed breathlessly. “You’re impossible. We can’t do any more than this.”

  “This much is good, but we can do more. Remember?” He lifted the hair he held and kissed it stroking the locks along his cheek above his neat beard. “This is me, kissing you, caressing your skin, making you tremble.”

  She did tremble, going as hot and wet as when he’d said such words to her when they consummated their marriage. I would be kissing you now. I’d start with light ones, like butterfly wings on your lips, lulling you in until you felt safe enough to open your mouth … Your lips wet and plump and pink from meeting mine … By now you’d have opened your mouth to me. My tongue would be inside you, tangling with yours. The memory he deliberately evoked shredded her recalcitrance. “Lonen…”

  “Ah, I love it when you say my name that way,” he murmured, sliding the other hand that had lingered on her hip up to cup her breast through the fur robe, pinching her hardening nipple. The fur lining that had been so plush a moment ago became torturously stimulating. “This is my mouth on you, warm and soft, then my teeth, nipping so you squirm.”

  She did squirm. “Stop this. We can’t.”

  “We can. We are.” He projected an image of it, parting her robe to bare her breasts, his dark head bending over her, mouth teasing her nipples. She pressed her thighs tight together against the ache, putting her hands in his hair just as he envisioned, careful not to touch his scalp, but tugging away the leather tie he favored—the one he’d once left behind in Bára and she’d kept for him—so his curls flowed free in her grasp.

  “You’re avoiding the conversation about the duel,” she managed as he used his grip on her hair to tug her head back, exposing her throat along with the breast he wasn’t tormenting.

  “Please, Arill, yes,” he answered. “Spread your pretty thighs for me, love.”

  “We shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She couldn’t remember.

  Then the door opened in the outer chamber. “Your Highness?” A
voice she didn’t know called out.

  ~ 3 ~

  With another gasp—not of the lovely sensual variety, either—Oria jumped up and drew her robe back together, retying the heavy sash. “That’s why,” she hissed.

  Lonen’s grey eyes glittered, silvery with arousal and amusement. “I am the king. All we have to do is tell her to go away.”

  “You can tell me to go, Your Highness,” a woman said from the bedchamber doorway, her expression neutral, but lively curiosity in her eyes as she surveyed Oria, “but if I don’t report back that you let me treat you, Prince Nolan will have Head Healer Talya in here. I understand you don’t want that. Otherwise I wouldn’t have interrupted.”

  “You’re not interrupting,” Oria replied, hoping her face didn’t look as hot as it felt. Imagine if she’d capitulated and let Lonen continue. Worse if he’d taken it in his head to tie her to prevent accidental skin-to-skin contact—and for their mutual pleasure, as he’d discovered how well that worked for her, with those long-held and ill-advised fantasies of capture by her barbarian warrior. Yes, her face was likely bright red. She turned her back on the healer to hold her hands out to the fire, discovering Chuffta had slipped out at some point.

  “I’m nearby, but if you’re not going to play with your mate, I’ll come back. Your fire is the nicest.”

  Because Lonen had Alby bringing wood by the armful and the servants keeping it extra hot, for her and her Familiar both. Chuffta had wanted to mind the fire himself, but Lonen ruled that out as unwise—given the derkesthai’s tendency to become obsessed with bigger and brighter—and also technically difficult, as the heavy metal screen that kept sparks from leaping out was beyond Chuffta’s power to move. The possibility that the screen could be left ajar gave all the Destrye horrors. Indeed, the stone that lined the fireplaces was the only she’d seen in the otherwise wood-built palace. Lonen compensated by tasking the servants to keep the blaze burning hot at all times. A thoughtful and considerate man.

  “I’m closeted with my wife,” that considerate man was grumping at the healer. “There’s no pressing reason to treat me right at this moment.”