The Forests of Dru

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “I would never push you off a tower.” Chuffta sat on the carved wooden footboard, gripping with his talons, head cocked in question. His mind-voice had a hesitant sound. “Or say those things.”

  “I know,” she replied aloud, too frenetic and drained to try for the concentration of replying mentally. She held out a hand to him and he hopped onto the blankets, hop-flying onto her lap, coiling his tail around her wrist and helping to relieve the pressure of the magic and the aftertaste of the nightmare. “It was only a dream.”

  “Not only.”

  “Only?” Lonen echoed Chuffta unintentionally, striding back into the room, carrying a hammered metal cup that glinted in the low light. “That was the goddess of all nightmares.”

  “You’re one to talk,” she muttered.

  Lonen crawled up onto the bed, steadying the cup as he did, then handed it to her, concern creasing his shadowed face. “Yes—thus I know what I’m talking about. Drink this.”

  The liquor, sweet and bright, burned in her throat as the fire had in her dream.

  “It doesn’t really burn like that, breathing fire,” Chuffta noted. “Your throat hurts because you were screaming.”

  “I was screaming?”

  Lonen raked a hand through his hair. “Froze the blood in my veins so the lumps nearly stopped my heart. You took years off my life, love. What in Arill brought that on?”

  The wild magic. Perhaps the conversation had suggested it, or opening her portals to Baeltya had made her more vulnerable. The narrowing of her senses that had allowed her to shut out the wild magic instead of absorbing it was far from a practiced skill or a precise art. She opened her mouth to apologize for waking him, for bringing the guards running, then remembered that, even if it was after midnight, she’d already used up her apology for that day, too. Not sure what else to say, she closed her mouth again.

  “Talk to me, Oria,” Lonen growled. “Let’s not rehash this.”

  “I don’t always know the answers to your questions.” She’d wanted to snap out that reply, but it dribbled wearily.

  “But you know this one. Even I can guess. It’s the wild magic, isn’t it? You’re vulnerable to it no matter what. It invades your sleep, when your guard is down. Just as happened on the journey here.”

  Oria took a long swallow of the liquor. It burned less this time. “I didn’t realize you knew about that.”

  “I knew. I just didn’t say anything.” He slid his fingers through the hair that spilled over her shoulder, tugging a little when he met a tangle. She must have been thrashing in her sleep, too, as well as screaming.

  “I don’t know how you knew.” She met his steady gray gaze.

  “The pair of us, both restless in our dreams—one recognizes the other. I only guessed.” He said so, but her jangling sensitivity to him showed it to be a lie. Not maliciously told, but the visceral truth nevertheless pulsed along the marital bond between them. He knew. Lonen somehow accessed some deeper knowledge about her, something she hadn’t expected from their alliance. Were all temple-joined marriages like this? She didn’t think so. She’d never heard any of the priests and priestesses even in ideal marriages speak of this kind of subconscious knowing. Of course, given how Yar had treated Gallia, who was supposed to be his ideal bride, like a trophy, it would be difficult to imagine him being sensitive to much about her at all. Also, the priests and priestesses weren’t given to spilling any intimate secrets.

  With a nearly physical pang, she abruptly missed her mother with a deep and desperate longing. Rhianna would have answered her questions.

  “Maybe. She didn’t always. And the influence of the Trom is unprecedented, at least in recent memory. Odd how their words invaded your dream.”

  She really hoped Lonen hadn’t witnessed any details of the dream as Chuffta had. Though normally Chuffta didn’t comment on her dreaming thoughts.

  “Because I don’t usually hear them. When you sleep, I hear you in my mind, but without focus. As if you’re very far away. This was different.”

  As if it hadn’t really been a dream at all. Lonen still gazed at her, as if reading her thoughts in her eyes, his fingers wound in her hair, stroking one lock caught between his thumb and forefinger. “Yes, I think the wild magic gave me that … nightmare.” She offered that like a confession.

  He tugged her hair with affection and shrugged as if none of it mattered a great deal. “I think you have no choice,” he put to her, rising and fetching another goblet.

  “No choice?” About him seeing the inside of her head?

  “About confronting the wild magic,” he said. “Even if you went ahead with this unlikely plan to lure golems through the tunnels so you could steal their sgath, the wild magic will continue to work on you any time your defenses are down. You have no choice but to learn to manage it somehow.”

  “Or learn to improve my subconscious controls so they stay in place when I sleep.” That seemed far more feasible.

  “You have a plan for that?” He drank deeply, head thrown back to drain the liquor, the column of his throat strong beneath his neat beard.

  “You know I don’t.”

  He smiled slightly, a quirk of shadow in the flickering firelight. “We proceed with the plan then. We cannot ignore the wild magic, so we’ll have to face it.”

  She didn’t at all like the sound of that. “You mean I will.”

  “No, we will. We’re in this together.”

  She had no immediate argument. Not a coherent one. “We already agreed that we’d talk about it more tomorrow.”

  Tossing aside the empty goblet and taking hers, Lonen slid under the furs again, snugging her against him. “We can talk all you like, love—within the deadline we already agreed to—but it seems there will be no escaping this truth.” Despite his uncompromising words and tone, his touch soothed, his empathy for her fears shimmered in her heart, a shining and solid comfort.

  “You’re always so sure things will turn out well,” she accused, but drowsiness—and the warmth of his nearness—softened her words.

  “One day you’ll accept that I’m always right.” He kissed her hair.

  Rather than arguing, or giving him the satisfaction of agreeing, she focused on shutting her portals tight, before let herself fall back to sleep. The morning would be soon enough to examine the walls of the trap she found herself in.

  As if they’d broken a seal on the oasis of Lonen’s chambers with a three-part ritual—Lonen going out to dine with his brothers, admitting Baeltya, and the inrush of guards brought by her night terrors—with the advent of daylight, the outside world began pouring in. And much like the cracks in her mental and emotional portals let in the wild magic, the Destrye brought chaos of all levels with them.

  The morning began serenely enough. Lonen was already up when she awoke, doing some stretching and strengthening exercises before the fire, which she took as a good sign. Baeltya soon arrived, along with a hearty breakfast of stewed fruit and grains. More healing treatments and a nap in the chair by the fire fast gave way to a thorough invasion of her sanctuary. Women of all stations, it seemed, arrived with various supplies and implements—dresses, clothes, grooming aids, advice—all of which seemed to be more excuses to look her over with their critical dark eyes.

  Lonen, the traitor, abandoned her with a kiss to the top of her head and a whisper to have courage. The way he kept his expression deliberately neutral, though his mouth crooked at the corners suspiciously, told her all she needed to know about how seriously he took the female attack. Since he went to be briefed on the situation facing Dru, she supposed her own troubles paled in comparison.

  Still, it was her first real encounter with the women of the Destrye court, and she knew full well these situations were quicksand of their own variety.

  Even Chuffta fled the center of the scene, taking a perch on a high beam and watching with a keen-eyed gaze, making laconic comments in her mind, which she studiously ignored. Lonen might insist that the Destrye co
nducted themselves far less formally than Bárans, and he’d be largely correct, but the female politics seemed uncannily akin to the undercurrents of temple jockeying for power and position, all under the serene guise of hwil.

  These women, however, made no pretense of any sort of emotional control. At first they whispered and murmured to each other, but once they determined that Oria couldn’t follow the twisty Destrye dialect, they spoke more boldly, chattering amongst themselves and occasionally erupting into passionate arguments—once over the difference between two spools of thread, to all appearances. For her part, Oria took the opportunity to observe their ways, while concentrating on sustaining her own hwil that also served to keep her portals tightly closed.

  They were careful, at least, in not touching her. The seamstresses laid their measuring tapes over her light bed gown. Lonen, or Baeltya, had passed the word and they observed the protocol scrupulously, whatever they might believe to be the reason for it. Several maids staggered in heaped with furs, leathers, and some heavier materials that gleamed with deep color, and the seamstresses fell into animated discussion that seemed to involve how best to use the fur as lining.

  Apparently Lonen intended to see her warmly clothed, a tremendous relief. The ladies had returned her fur robe to her and one indicated a metal pot of something hot warmed over a candle flame encased in a metal-screened box. Oria nodded and the girl, younger than the others, with eyes of a blue that reminded Oria of the flowers that bloomed only in the first cool of morning, poured her a mug. Oria sat by the fire, cupping it in her hands to warm them. The pot was of a hammered coppery metal that caught the light, making her blush to recall the times Lonen had brushed her hair, praising the sheen and color. The liquid seemed to be a brew of fragrant flowers and perhaps a spicy bark. It warmed her from the inside out, leaving behind a sense of bright well-being, which made her wonder if it came from Baeltya.

  Like jewelbirds when a raptor flies over, the chattering women fell suddenly silent, bowing their heads as a tall woman entered the room. She wasn’t particularly richly dressed, but she carried herself like a high priestess or queen. Unlike the other women, she wore her hair short against her scalp, the curls in black whorls against her lighter skin. Without the elaborate fall of coiled hair like the others, her deep blue eyes stood out large under arched dark brows. They held a solemnity echoed by her full lips, both bracketed by etched lines of grief.

  She studied Oria with bold appraisal, not acknowledging the silent women around her. Oria fought the urge to rise to her feet, or even make obeisance. Lonen had been quite clear that he expected her to conduct herself as the Queen of the Destrye. The battle would not be that easy, of course, but if Oria had learned little else, she knew that faking the appearance of station took one a great deal of the way to actually having it. So she stared back at the woman, her own face a mask of perfect hwil, raising her brows ever so slightly in inquiry, as her mother would do. The woman seemed to wait for something more and Oria mentally cursed Lonen for insisting there were no particular protocols to learn.

  Men could be so obtuse.

  “Human males,” Chuffta corrected with a hint of a sniff. “I am most perceptive.”

  “Can you read anything from her?”

  “She is very sad. And angry. Also, surprised by you.”

  Oria had no opportunity to follow that up, because the woman spoke, her voice surprisingly deep. “I am Salaya,” she said, in Common Tongue.

  “I am Oria,” she replied, using the same phrasing and intonation. Lonen likely would have wanted her to add “Queen of the Destrye,” but that felt like too much of a declaration of war with this hard-eyed woman. Who was she? Salaya. She didn’t recall hearing the name spoken. At least she wasn’t Natly, but Salaya’s unfriendly demeanor didn’t bode much better.

  Salaya said nothing more, but neither did Oria offer anything further. Something else she knew—how to wait out a high priestess who hoped for the least lapse in hwil to pounce upon as further proof of Oria’s deep unsuitability. If Salaya thought to intimidate with brooding silence then she’d be in for further surprises. Oria had withstood worse.

  “You’re a bit of a thing,” Salaya finally said. “I imagine I could break you in two with my bare hands.”

  Oria smiled thinly. “If you managed to lay hands on me.”

  “Ah, yes. You’re a sorceress, they say. And, I imagine, like all your people, willing to deal death with a crook of your little finger, and no thought to the consequences.”

  “Have I done so?” Oria asked in her mildest tone. Honey to trap the stinging insect. “It seems to me that I, personally, have done nothing to be treated as the enemy.”

  “We don’t know, do we? Such things are done from behind golden masks and high walls. Perhaps you were the one to strike down my husband.” Salaya’s voice vibrated with rage and her hands shook until she clenched them into fists at her sides. The other women looked askance, pretending not to hear, to be busying themselves with their tasks. But every ear was riveted to the exchange—and if the Destrye were remotely like Bárans, everyone ready to spread the gossip as soon as they left the room. If Oria wanted to establish a fearsome reputation among these people, this would be the time. And yet, something in Salaya’s mien spoke profoundly of abject grief. They’d all lost so much.

  “I’ve never struck down any man,” she said, willing the Destrye woman to hear the honesty of her words. After all, Oria had only ever killed a woman. “Who was your husband?”

  “As if you don’t know,” Salaya spat.

  Oria held up her open palms. “I honestly don’t. I am new to your realm and have been ill.”

  Salaya’s mouth turned in disgust. “Yes. Ill and weak. A sad and sorry excuse for a queen. Had Ion lived, he would have succeeded his father and my sons would inherit the throne. Strong boys from a real Destrye woman. Now we are to accept you instead.” She popped open her fists in a spray of fingers that dismissed the likelihood of such a scenario, adding a word in Destrye that communicated her derision.

  This was Prince Ion’s widow then. The moment came back to Oria, in horrific detail as if she’d witnessed it from much closer than from atop her high tower. The dragon landing at the edge of Ing’s Chasm, snaking its sinuous neck just as Chuffta would, creating a living bridge across. The Trom rider stirring at the wing joints, then walking along its steed’s neck over the chasm to the palace side. The Destrye king—Lonen’s father—confronting it, then falling to its lethal touch. Ion had been the other man, leaping to defend the king and crumpling also, his sword and strength useless against the Trom’s ancient magic.

  “I am very sorry,” she told Salaya, in all sincerity. “I saw Prince Ion fall. He died bravely, defending King Archimago. But it was not a Báran who killed him; it was one of the Trom. I can only say that it happened very fast. He would not have felt pain.”

  “Ion would have relished pain!” Salaya hissed, but she’d lost some of her fire. “These Trom, the same who flew on dragons to burn our crops—you also claim they kill with only a touch?”

  “Did not your own warriors bring back the tales?”

  Two of the women murmured in a far corner and Salaya threw them a glare. Absurdly it pleased Oria to share some of the widow’s ire with others. “Warriors,” Salaya scoffed. “They tell us what they think we wish to hear. They send us off on a fool’s journey to find a new home and then spin stories of fantastic magics, hollow victories, and painless death.”

  “The Trom are real.” Oria took up her mug of tea, now cooled. “And their touch is death. Fast, painless, and unstoppable. I’m very sorry for the deaths they dealt your people.”

  “They kill with a simple touch, you confirm it.” Salaya’s gaze held a speculative gleam. “And His Highness has declared that none may touch you. Perhaps you are one of these monsters.”

  Interesting, if convoluted, logic. And yet some truth in it unsettled Oria. No one seemed to be sure where the Trom came from—or the answer lay in
the temple texts she’d barely missed being able to access—but they were human-like, if not actually human. Their magic, too, bore some resemblance to what the Báran priests and priestesses used. Her sgath vision had shown their magical presence as a densely powerful black sun, both familiar and not. Some visceral part of her had recognized it. Just as they’d recognized her. The Trom had touched her and it had done nothing beyond making her skin crawl in revulsion. Those matte black eyes, as in the nightmare, had stared into her heart and found a mirroring darkness. Queen Ponen, it had called her. Someday you will call to us and your understanding will deepen.

  Much as she craved answers to the questions that burned at her, she dreaded that such a day might come.

  “His Highness makes commands for his own reasons,” Oria replied. “I did not kill Prince Ion, nor am I one of the Trom.”

  Salaya’s fingers twitched and she took a half-step forward. “Prove yourself then. I’ll touch your skin and find out for myself what sort of poison you ooze.”

  “You have sons, Salaya,” Oria cut into the woman’s fugue with words sharp as any blade. “Would you leave them motherless, also?”

  Salaya paused, lips trembling then firming, and she swallowed something down. “I… My boys are so young.”

  It seemed like a non-sequitur, but Oria somehow followed. She nodded. “The children are innocent of all crimes. We owe it to them to bring them up as best we know how. Your sons need you.”

  “They should have been princes.” Salaya sounded almost pleading. She reminded Oria forcefully of her own mother, the labyrinthine drag of grief and helpless anger at events beyond anyone’s control.

  “They are still princes,” Oria said firmly, belatedly realizing this might not be true according to Destrye law—or Lonen’s current policy. Though if Lonen wanted her on board with his rule, then he’d have to let her in on discussions and information. She supposed getting actual clothes so she could leave his bedchamber would be the first step. What had Lonen said to her though, back on her rooftop terrace when she first proposed this crazy plan for a marriage of alliance between them? My older brother left two sons behind when he ascended to the Hall of Warriors. By Destrye law, the crown passes to my father’s children first, before going to the next generation. But if I have no sons and Arnon persists in his refusal to be my heir, then Ion’s sons would be next in line. All right then. “They are still princes,” she repeated, “and Dru needs all its heroes. Look how much has already turned upside down. Who knows what the future may bring?”