The Forests of Dru

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “It’s not a pansy name—a buttercup is another flower entirely—and I don’t see what his being a big horse has to do with it.”

  Lonen leered at her, patting her bottom. “Every woman walks funny after having a big stallion between her legs.”

  She swatted at him. “Get you out of the palace and you turn into a randy boy, all hands and dirty jokes.”

  He grimaced cheerfully at that. “You might have a point there, love. I feel like a new man, getting out of that place. The weight of all those decisions, everyone watching me all the time, wanting things from me, evaluating everything I say and do.” He subsided, rubbing at the scar by his eye, then shrugged it off. “Anyway, come look.”

  “I can’t help seeing,” she said, but she walked to the edge with him and let him draw her against his side. Beyond the extensive meadows below, the forest resumed again, hills rolling in the distance, the trees blurring into a frost of brown merging with the gray sky. Chuffta glided on a thermal rising along the drop, humming his happiness at the lovely glide. “Is all of this Dru?”

  “More or less as far as the eye can see,” he agreed. “Though we don’t draw boundaries as such. Once upon a time the Destrye had no settlements. Our ancestors traveled constantly, carrying their few possessions on their backs, following the game animals through the seasons.”

  “Raiding cities and carrying off foreign women,” she inserted in a dry tone.

  He hugged her and kissed the fur next to her temple. “If they got very, very lucky.”

  She had to laugh, but sobered. “So you traveled all this land, but eventually settled here.”

  “And near the other forts. These fields were Arill’s first, cleared by the goddess’s own hand to feed her children so that we might settle down and follow gentler ways.”

  She cocked her head up at him. He had his hood pushed back, so the frost accumulated on his dark curling hair, the haft of his battle-axe protruding over one shoulder, ever at hand. In this light, his face looked harsh, the scars standing stark in deep lines, as he gazed over the land as one of his fierce ancestors might have. “Enough with the nonsense, Destrye,” she teased. “Surely you don’t believe a goddess actually removed the trees so your ancestors could farm.”

  He glanced down, eyes soft gray with sober affection. “Why not? My powerful sorceress wife could do it.”

  That gave her pause. Lonen watched her with amusement while she struggled for a response. “There are differences between goddesses and sorceresses,” she finally said.

  “Such as?”

  She punched his side, like hitting a wall with her gloved knuckles. “Divinity. Immortality. Unlimited power.”

  “There was a time we believed all of those things about the priests and priestesses of Bára.”

  And the Báran priests and priestesses liked to propagate that reputation, too.

  “Think on this,” he continued when she only hmm’d in thought. “Who’s to say where the original concept of Arill came from? You ask me if I really believe that the goddess removed the trees with her own hands, and I don’t know that I do. But I believe in Arill’s teachings, that they mean something and come from somewhere. Or someone. Maybe some brute of a warrior Destrye carried off the wrong sorceress, fell in desperately in love with her—and who could blame him?—and she agreed to stay with him if he mended his more off-putting ways and didn’t make her chase after deer all her life. Seems clearing a few trees would have been well worth the effort on her part.”

  “More than a few,” Oria pointed out, but found herself measuring the distances, estimating what kind of magical resources it would take. Over time, it might be possible, even for one woman.

  “They wouldn’t have needed to do it all at once,” Lonen said, echoing her thoughts. “They might have added a field at a time. By all accounts, the Destrye were not so many then.”

  Of course, they weren’t so many now, but neither of them spoke those words aloud. “You’ve been thinking about this,” she said instead. “This theory about Arill and sorceresses.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I’m interested to find out if my memory is accurate—and to find out what you think when you see it.”

  “In the fields?”

  “Oh no—we’re not going that way. We could have reached the fields far more quickly by the low road. No, we’re going that way.” He turned her and pointed to where the hills rose higher and more jagged, ending in peaks, sharp against the sky. Fog swirled around them, then parted, a sun she couldn’t see hitting the blinding white snow fields atop them.

  She caught her breath, the bite cold in her lungs. “All the way up there?” she squeaked, making Lonen laugh.

  “It’s not so far as it appears.”

  “Is it as cold as it appears?”

  “Yes, but not much colder than here. We’ll stop for the night along the way and I’ll keep you warm.”

  At least she wouldn’t have to meet his mother on that very day. A small reprieve, but she’d take it. She returned her gaze to the fields. “Then down there is where the Trom attacked. That house burning was incidental. They did it on their way over the ridge—along with the crops and the aqueducts.” Not fences then, but elevated wooden ditches to carry water to the fields. Refocusing her attention, she made out the paths of flame, where the edges of the forest had trees starkly black from fire, rather than winter. The pattern without the snow would be easier to see, but now that she aligned the view with what she’d glimpsed in Lonen’s memories, the scene made more sense.

  In her mind’s eye, a stark black shape swooped over the fields, now golden with ripe grain. So easily fired, they leapt into gouts of flame, dark smoke billowing. The dragon sliced through it all, serene, graceful, and lethal. The figure on its back, a dark spider form, seemed to turn and look at her, matte eyes seeing deep into her mind.

  We come when summoned. Don’t forget.

  She shook the vision away with an effort. They come when summoned. “What was their goal?”

  “They burned our late harvest, and the aqueducts that brought water from the higher lakes.” With his pointing finger, he traced for her where the aqueduct had ascended stepwise up a hill not far away. “The attack left us without that last crop and squelched any possibility of irrigating for a winter crop, even had the winter been not so cold. In the spring we’ll have to do that much more work to rebuild the aqueducts. And that’s if they don’t come back to do it again. Which I think we both know they will.”

  She let him talk, though she knew all of that, had seen it. A memory drawn from what she’d glimpsed in Lonen’s mind, one reconstructed from stories, or presentiment of the future? She didn’t know. Some of all of that, perhaps. She let him lift her onto Buttercup’s back. “But I still don’t see what they hoped to achieve.”

  “Isn’t that enough?” Lonen asked in that wry tone, vaulting up behind her. “Would you have had them burn the palace and Arill’s Temple, too?”

  “That would have made sense,” she retorted. “If they wanted to destroy you utterly, that would have been a relatively simple step to doing so. Burn all the aqueducts—they made an easy visual line to follow. Instead, they did this patchwork attack—burn some aqueducts and not others. Burn that house but not the rest of the farm.”

  “What are you thinking their reasoning was?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand the Trom, or the nature of the beasts they ride. They seem to do things for their own reasons.”

  “I thought they followed Yar’s commands.” Lonen urged Buttercup back up the road, and Chuffta shot overhead, an alabaster arrow. He said the flying kept him warmer than riding, but he’d be tiring soon enough and wanting to nap inside her furry cloak.

  “Ostensibly they’re supposed to,” she mused, considering. “Though I don’t know the mechanics of the summoning spell. The summoner—or summoners, as I think it takes both a male and female—command the loyalty of the Trom who respond, but I’m not sure how absolute that
authority is. But even if we agree that Yar asked the Trom to come here to burn the fields and aqueducts, what purpose did that serve?”

  “They did take water away.”

  “Which is a high priority for him. It means both life for Bára and power for him. But he could have had them collect the water without burning the crops. It would have been smarter not to burn the aqueducts and let you all do the work to make the water easily accessible.”

  “You’re welcome.” He sounded grim, so she patted his thigh pressed against hers, his muscle tightening in response.

  “Not to be crass, but I’m trying to view it as he would.”

  “Understood. But it could be that the Trom simply like to burn things. When they arrived in Bára to save the city and drive us out, they killed Bárans and Destrye alike with their dragon fire.”

  “That’s true.” She shuddered at the horrible memory. “The Trom don’t explain themselves. I was only told that they exact the price they wish to in exchange for their aid.”

  “So maybe they did it as a side bonus to grabbing some water for Yar. Burning us out here was fun for them.” Lonen sounded neutral, but his old anger brooded dark beneath.

  “Fire is fun,” Chuffta commented. “It’s hot and bright.”

  Oria didn’t relay the troubling comment to Lonen, hiding even from her Familiar how much it unsettled her to contemplate his similarities to the giant and deadly Trom dragons.

  ~ 12 ~

  They arrived at the chapel by midafternoon—sooner than his memories had predicted. It was only the pair of them, though, on a single horse. When he’d traveled this way in the past, it had always been with a mixed group, on steeds nowhere close to Buttercup’s caliber. Their excursions back then had always been for pleasure, too, with much stopping along the way to picnic, climb trees, and take in the views.

  Back before the golems came.

  The chapel seemed smaller than in his memory, too, as if it had also shrunk along with the distance. Unlike most Destrye dwellings, this had been built of stone, the uneven rocks collected or hewn from the mountainside and painstakingly fitted together. Now that he saw it again, what he’d remembered as a fanciful design reminded him of Bára. Not in a way he could pin to specific details, but in the feel of it. As if it had been created to please someone with that aesthetic. Perhaps that boded well for the rest of what he thought he remembered about the place.

  He dismounted, and Oria pushed back her hood, surveying the small chapel. The sun had finally broken through the overcast, and the rays hit her hair, radiating off the shining copper like a fire of the most benevolent kind. Her eyes, nearly as bright, held doubt, however, at the sight of the unprepossessing buildings. No indication she found it familiar. “We’re stopping here?”

  “For the night, yes.”

  Chuffta poked his narrow white head through the parting of her cloak, only the vivid green of his gaze a break in the alabaster on ivory shades. Oria smiled slightly, her expression changing as she conversed mentally with the dragonlet. Then she focused on Lonen again, the smile warming. “Chuffta says he sees a chimney in the cabin at the back and wonders if we’ll need firewood.” She arched her coppery brows in rueful amusement.

  “There might be some stockpiled,” he said to Chuffta. “But I’m guessing it’s been a while since anyone has visited the place. We may need to chop more. How are you at chasing rodents, Chuffta man?”

  Chuffta emerged fully, cocking his head with interest and shaking out his wings, nearly clipping Oria in the face with one. She was already choking on her reaction. “Rodents?” She squeaked out.

  “They tend to nest in warm places like this,” he told her in apology as he lifted her down.

  “It doesn’t look warm.”

  “Relatively speaking. We’ll get a fire going and roust them out.”

  She nodded absently, face rapt as she turned in a slow circle. She felt it. He’d been certain she would. Okay, he hadn’t been certain. Hopeful. “This is a good place,” she murmured, almost to herself.

  “Full of coherent sgath?”

  Her face smoothed into that neutral mask. Her priestess face. Then her eyes fired again, full of keen intensity. “Not exactly. But something.” She tipped her head back, following the spear of the straight, dark trunks to the blue sky, then closed her eyes, turning again and holding out her arms as she did. The parting of her white cloak over the scarlet gown beneath was like the sun breaking through the clouds all over again. She paused, facing away from the chapel to where the ground fell away to the gorge below, the peaks and lowering sun beyond.

  Like Arill herself, some reverent part of him whispered.

  Her eyes snapped open, startling him, they burned so incandescently in her winter-white face. “Is it safe here?” she asked.

  “In what way?” he hedged, uncertain where she was going with this.

  “I’d like to go deeper into the woods. By myself. To meditate.” The smile she gave him at that was both self-conscious and teasing for his own dislike of the practice.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  But she shook her head. “I need to be alone. If that’s okay with you,” she added, with a touch of hesitation.

  “Of course it’s okay with me.” He ran a hand over her shining hair, savoring the satin feel of it. It would give him time to set things up. “Take Chuffta with you.”

  “You need him for firewood. And rodent chasing,” she added archly.

  “I know how to chase out rodents.”

  “Yes, but you have him all interested now. I’ll take him with me so he can see where I settle, then he can check back on me. I have a couple of hours of light left, yes?” She glanced uncertainly at the sun, which hovered over the far peaks.

  He pointed for her. “It will set there, so yes, a couple of hours. Will it take that long?”

  Her eyes sparkled and her face held a vivid anticipation he hadn’t seen in her for quite some time. “It might.” She nodded, as if confirming to herself. “Very likely. But Chuffta can rouse me if you need me.”

  “Sounds good.” Wishing he could kiss her, he cupped her head and hugged her to him. “You won’t get cold?”

  She stepped back and pulled up her hood, tucking back the fire of her hair until none of it showed, tugging the alabaster fringes so they hung long around her face. “In my lovely cloak? Never.”

  Answering her soundless summons, Chuffta bolted from above, folding his wings to land neatly on her shoulder, talons digging into the pad he’d had them sew into it. She walked away, the dappled cloak dragging over the snow, blurring her footprints, the derkesthai a slightly more iridescent shape in the panorama of white, punctuated only by the sacred black sentinels of the trees.

  The scene struck him as spooky and magical at once, sending that numinous shiver through him that he’d first felt upon spying her in a window in Bára.

  “Oria?” he called after her, and she turned, adding fire to the frozen landscape again with her copper eyes. “I’ll be here waiting.”

  Her lips curved in a gentle smile. “I love you, too, Destrye.”

  As he’d suspected, what little wood had been stockpiled had been scattered by wildlife during years of neglect. He found some dry pieces to start a fire with, however, buried under the snow in the lee of the cabin. Carrying it inside, he found the interior dusty, but thankfully unmolested.

  Arill’s followers built her waystations with care.

  He laid fires in both the chapel and cabin, but waited on Chuffta to start them, as the little firebug enjoyed that so. Taking advantage in the interim, he opened all the doors to the cabin and attached chapel, removing the hides from the windows to shake them out, and allowing the cold mountain air to sweep through and clear out the stale.

  He was tacking up the hides again—in spring, once the crops were planted, he’d have to send someone up here to replace them with newer, more supple ones, as these had grown brittle with cold and age—when Chuffta returned. Not for the
first time, he wished he could talk to the derkesthai as Oria could, and ask after her. But what would he ask? Obviously she was fine, or her Familiar wouldn’t be acting so relaxed. “She’s a big girl,” he muttered to himself. “And she survived just fine before you came along, buddy.”

  Chuffta flew up to him, hovering, and gave him a long look, then bobbed his head in that way that always made Lonen think he was winking at him. “Fires are laid, Chuffta man, if you’d like to do the honors.”

  With an enthusiastic spurt of green flame, the derkesthai shot over to the cabin fireplace, using quite a bit more than necessary to send the logs into an instant blaze. Lonen braced, half expecting the flames to escape the stones and attack the wood of the walls, but it settled back quick enough. Chuffta looked over his shoulder, as if to chide him for his lack of faith.

  “In the chapel, too,” he said, pointing through the doorway. At least that was all stone, so the fire-breathing dragonlet could go unsupervised. While Chuffta took care of that, Lonen found bedding in the chests made of insect-resistant wood, which had kept everything at least unchewed, and aired those out too.

  Then he and Chuffta went to gather more wood. He’d brought a smaller axe, so he didn’t have to shame his armsmaster’s memory by using his weapon. He’d already rubbed down Buttercup and installed him in the attached stable, where the warhorse happily munched some oats he’d also brought along.

  Journeying with supplies made everything worlds better.

  He kept half an eye on the sun, feeling a bit like a fretful old nanny, but also cautious of becoming complacent. There was safe and there was safe. More predators than golems and Trom haunted these hills, especially in the crepuscular hours.

  He made himself wait until the sun just touched the peak it would set behind, and was opening his mouth to ask Chuffta to check on Oria, when the purpling shadows between the trees shifted. Pale violet blurred into white—and she emerged.

  She had her head bowed, in contemplation still or watching her footing, so he couldn’t see her face past the furry fringe. Following impulse, he went to her and picked her up, holding her tight against him, his face pressed to her hood. She laughed, a bell-like melody he recalled from her garden in Bára, one he hadn’t heard since. Magic ran through it, as if her happiness and pleasure grew out of her store of sgath, which perhaps it did.