The Tides of Bára

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Something of Oria stirred deep inside him, however, in that place that had come alive following their grueling ritual of a wedding ceremony. A bright place she seemed to occupy, like a candle in a window at night. Normally a slim spark, the sense of her grew, glowing like a torch gaining fire, eating the fuel and getting hotter, burning.

  He’d felt something of it before at the temple, though this was as the sun to the small moon Grienon in its intensity. Was this her magic?

  “Stand down,” she commanded. “You will not block us.”

  “Princess, by order of King Yar, we—”

  “He is no king of mine, nor of yours.” She cut them off, face pale in the murky interior. The low buildings in the shadow of the city wall had no windows to let in the light and air—none of the cross-ventilation of which the Bárans were so proud—like the towers did. More defensible, no doubt. Or the barracks didn’t rate the consideration. “Yar has usurped my throne. I won the contest fairly. But rather than plunge Bára into civil war, I seek to leave peacefully.”

  Had he thought her a bad liar? She’d spun that one skillfully enough.

  “You speak treason,” one guard said, his lips white, eyes widening in horror.

  “She does,” came a deeper voice. The tall form of Captain Ercole came up the dim corridor. “And the punishment for treason is exile. Let them go.”

  The men put down their weapons without argument, stepping aside to let them pass. If nothing else, the Báran guard did have good discipline. Lonen would have snorted in disgust at their painting Oria’s actions as treason if it didn’t allow for their easier escape. The complicated tensions between their Temple—which awarded priesthood to those judged capable of controlling their magic, and thus eligibility for the throne—and the ruling council still gave him headaches. The throne should have been Oria’s. But for arcane Temple rules that ousted her, it would have been.

  She didn’t have a treasonous bone in her body.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Oria said, but the man shook his head, disappointment writ clear on his face.

  “I don’t pretend to understand what’s happening. All I know is what I see before my eyes—a daughter of the royal house, hope of her people, abandoning the city in its hour of need.”

  Though her spine remained straight, chin high, something in Oria sagged. Lonen might have felt it more than he saw it. Chuffta landed on her shoulder, wings folding with a snap, prehensile tail snaking down her arm in a series of coils, glittering like ivory bracelets. Lonen set his hand at her waist to brace her on the other side. A low and vicious verbal blow from Ercole, who’d been one of her strongest supporters. And after Oria had sacrificed so much of herself for Bára. Would they only be happy when she gave up her very life for them?

  Oria held up her hand, stopping him from speaking before he knew he’d been about to voice the thought. “So be it then,” she said quietly, and pushed past Ercole, giving him and the guard the wide berth she needed around the non-magical, the tense set of her face revealing how their harsh emotions must be affecting her. For her sake then, he reined back his own anger and outrage, moving between her and the men.

  “You should know, Captain,” she said over her shoulder, “that I said goodbye to my mother, after forcing our way past the guards at her door who sought to keep her from me. They should not be held to fault for that.” Her tone strongly implied she held Ercole responsible for their safety.

  “Princess,” Ercole called after them. Oria took several more steps before she halted, looking back without fully turning.

  “We’ll guard your back this last time,” Ercole said, with a grave nod. “The least we can do is see you safely into exile. Go swiftly and in peace.”

  She dipped her chin and turned swiftly away, hurrying to keep up with Lonen, not meeting his gaze. It didn’t take long to reach the outbuildings between the guard barracks and the towering wall. Lonen’s stallion stood at the near end of the room, having long since scented his approach.

  “I didn’t know horses were so big,” Oria gasped.

  “My stallion is particularly large. And trained to be aggressive. Stay back until I have him suited up. Keep clear of both his front and back—he bites and kicks.”

  Oria gazed about the slapdash construction, made mainly of cannibalized casks that had seen better days, a slight wrinkle to her pert nose. For his part, Lonen worked quickly, retrieving the stallion’s tack and fitting him with it—a task made no easier by the horse, restive from days of inactivity.

  “This room is made of wood,” Oria said, a question in her voice.

  “Yes. Bára had no stables when we occupied originally, so Ion”—he managed to say his late brother’s name without any special emphasis, proud of himself for the neutral tone—“had this built for the few horses we needed to keep in the city. The rest, of course, stayed with the encamped army. Arill take you, horse! Hold still.” He elbowed the stallion’s shoulder. It would feel like a gnat bite to the massive warhorse, but Oria cried out a protest.

  “Don’t hurt him!”

  Lonen, holding aloft the heavy leather saddle to slide it onto the horse’s back—not easy with the stallion’s shoulder level with the top of his head—scowled at her. Normally several grooms would have helped with this. “He knows better. He’s being a brat because he’s mad at being cooped up all these days and we don’t have time for his dramatics. Oria, no! Don’t go near his—”

  He dropped the saddle and lunged for her, but Oria moved fast when she made up her mind. Recklessly brave—and with much of the same impetuous nature that drove Yar—she stretched up on tiptoe to lay her hands on the horse, bracketing his jaw. Having expected the vicious stallion to bite through her delicate fingers, Lonen checked himself as the horse stilled immediately, then snuffled Oria’s braids and nickered, a sound he’d never heard from the warhorse.

  Chuffta, still on Oria’s shoulder, arched his neck back like a striking snake staying clear, nostrils flaring as he surveyed the stallion with bright-eyed interest.

  “What’s his name?” she asked.

  “He’s a horse—he doesn’t have a name.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Everything that’s alive has a name, if only to itself.”

  “Then ask him.”

  “He doesn’t think that clearly. But there’s something… Something you call him sometimes. He likes it.”

  “We don’t have time for—”

  “If you want him to hold still, I need his name. What is it? I can hear it just on the edge of your thoughts… Aha! Buttercup.”

  “His name is not—”

  “I would hate being cooped up, too, Buttercup,” Oria was murmuring, blithely ignoring him. “You like to run and fight and be free, just like your master, don’t you? But if you’ll be still a few moments longer, we can all go. Won’t you like that, Buttercup? I think you can finish now, Lonen.”

  Shaking himself out of the spell it felt like she cast on him, too, Lonen took advantage of whatever magic she’d wrought to calm the warhorse. He couldn’t help sneaking peeks at her, however, her slim form inclined against the muscled bulk of the big black steed, her white hands like fairy wings against the stallion’s massive jaw that Lonen had seen chomp through far sturdier bones. Though some of her braids had come loose from the elaborate weave hanging in coppery tangles down her back, and her robes were dusty and ragged from the magical duel and their mad flight through the city, she looked beyond beautiful.

  The image reminded him sharply of the first time he saw her, framed by candlelight in a window, looking like something out of an old storybook. Now, as then, the sight stirred something deep in him he’d thought long lost to countless dead and the relentless tread of clawed golem feet.

  Some part of him that still believed that magic brought light and hope, not devastation.

  That happy endings could be real.

  ~ 3 ~

  “Let’s go.” Lonen’s command came gruff, abrupt, and Oria dragged herself from th
e fascinating communion with Buttercup’s thoughts. They weren’t as sharply formed as Chuffta’s, not shaped into words as he could do, but they shared a certain quality. An immediacy. A vividly intense experiencing of life.

  “Is that how I seem?” Chuffta seemed equally bemused by Buttercup.

  “In different way.”

  “Oria!” Lonen raised his voice, making her start. He sat astride Buttercup, bending over and holding out his crooked arm for her. “We’re escaping, remember? Focus, please.”

  “Ercole let us go, and his men are watching our backs,” she replied, releasing Buttercup’s head with reluctance, but keeping a thread of contact to his thoughts so he wouldn’t start dancing around again, threatening to step on her with those hooves the size of her head. Later she’d think about the crushing disappointment in her that had radiated from Ercole. The bitter sense of betrayal that she’d abandon Bára for the Destrye king.

  A daughter of the royal house, hope of her people, abandoning the city in its hour of need.

  Lonen shook his head, black curls springing with the movement, escaping the tie-back. Frustrated exasperation from him. He thrust his angled forearm at her as if she hadn’t noticed it the first time. She eyed both it and the daunting distance to Buttercup’s back. Was she meant to climb him like a tower?

  “Can’t you hear the fighting? Yar has guards loyal to him and they’ve obviously engaged Ercole’s.” Lonen bit out the words. “Ercole will do what he can, but we have to get out of Bára immediately. Take my hand. Now.”

  She didn’t mean to back up, but the slap of his harsh emotions took her by surprise. He was a man of action and she thwarted him doing what he needed to—getting her safely away so she could help rescue his people. She understood that.

  But a desperately cowardly part of herself shouted in alarm that as soon as she took his arm, this part of her life would end forever. She’d be on a Destrye warhorse, plunging through the gates of Bára and into the wild magic of the outer world. Despite the information her mother had whispered to her, Oria wasn’t at all sure she could implement the advice. It would take time and practice to hone those skills.

  Until then, it would be as it had been before, when she’d stepped through the gates and it had felt as if a tower had dropped onto her head, breaking open her skull and dashing her brains to the stones. The memory of that pain froze her, and she wasn’t brave enough to face it.

  That and the days of gray fog, the wandering through nothingness, neither dead nor alive.

  She might not emerge from it sane, if she emerged at all. What if she spent the rest of her days with her body an empty husk and her consciousness forever trapped in that formless realm?

  Execution, at least, would be quick.

  “It shouldn’t be so bad this time. You’re more skilled, stronger, and in better mental and emotional condition. The time before you were already stretched thin enough to break before you stepped through the gates.”

  “I know… but this won’t end. There won’t be any going back inside to my tower to rest and recover. I’ll have no refuge. It will batter me until I break.”

  Her head spun with it, and cold sweat dripped down her back. Outside the walls, under the huge sky with nowhere to hide, she might fall off the edge of the world, with nothing to cling to.

  “Oria.” Lonen ground out her name. “If you don’t take my arm right now, I’m going to—”

  “Don’t shout at me!” she shrieked, though she knew, in the rational part of her mind, that he hadn’t been.

  With a curse, he slid off of Buttercup and seized her.

  Not to toss her over the saddle as she expected. But to wrap her in his arms and pull her close against him. Chuffta took off from her shoulder and Lonen cupped her head in one big hand, carefully touching only her hair, and held her cheek against his chest, murmuring soothing words at her, not seeming to care that she stood there rigidly, arms straight down her sides to clenched fists.

  “Oria, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  He wrapped her, too, in soothing, reassuring affection, imagining a cozy bed with furs and a crackling fireplace; outside freezing cold. The scene changed to a platform in a tree, with the cool green rustling leaves of summer all around. It helped, even given the strange array of images, and she found herself able to take a breath again.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she said against him. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “You panicked,” he replied. “If I’d been thinking, I would have realized.” He lifted his head, body tensing. She heard it now, too. Shouting in the distance and a clatter of swords. But he didn’t move.

  “We have to go,” she said, but she didn’t move either.

  “Can you?” He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her away from him. “Look at me, Oria.”

  Not understanding why it was so difficult, she raised her eyes to meet his flinty gray gaze. Behind him, Chuffta perched on Buttercup’s saddle, watching her. Lonen studied her, too, assessing, nearly seeing into her heart as the Trom had. “I don’t know why I’m so afraid,” she whispered, as if not giving full voice to the fear would make it less real.

  “Because you’re a smart woman. The outer world, leaving Bára, it all holds real danger for you. Fear gives us warning. We listen to it and make decisions accordingly.”

  The shouting grew closer and his fingers tensed on her shoulders. But he kept up the soothing images. In his vision the leaves of the tree parted to show a distant lake, blue as the sky, still and serene. “The outer world holds beauty, too. And here you face certain death.”

  “Okay,” she said on a thin breath.

  “Are you sure? I’ll hold you, but you have to try not to struggle against me if you panic again. I need a hand free to defend us against attackers, too.”

  The sounds of pitched fighting grew closer. He was right and she begged the unreasoning part of her to listen. To stay in Bára was to die. Whatever happened outside, not matter how painful, at least she had a chance to live.

  “I’m sure. Let’s go.” Before she succumbed to panic again.

  With a quick smile, he let her go and vaulted up the saddle again with admirable ease. Chuffta took wing to make room. Tamping down her trepidation, she reached to grasp his muscled forearm.

  “Put your foot on mine,” he instructed, all calm radiating from him. He lifted her as she bent her knee, helping her reach, then swooping her the rest of the way onto his lap before she realized it. Nestling her across his strong thighs, he wrapped one arm around her waist, holding her tightly against him, and drew his axe with the other. “You’d think Ion would have built more than one exit. One thing is certain, we’re not going back out the door and into that melee.”

  “What will we do?”

  He grinned down at her. “Nice thing about wood is, it breaks.” His thighs flexed and he shouted a command.

  Buttercup didn’t move.

  A hint of alarm leaked through Lonen’s studied calm. He tightened his thighs again, giving the command, but Buttercup still didn’t move. “What in Arill?” he growled.

  “Oh! Sorry.” Belatedly she thought to remove her mental hold on the stallion and the warhorse leapt forward, jolting them. Lonen kept his seat though, holding her secure.

  “Hang tight!” he shouted, and she wrapped her arms around his waist. Buttercup galloped headlong for the far wall. They would crash into it. What in the name of Sgatha was he—

  At the last moment, Buttercup reared up onto his hind legs, front hooves cracking against the wood, sending splinters flying. In the same arc of movement, he leapt through the opening into bright daylight, Lonen ducking over her to protect their heads. His cheek grazed her ear, sending a hiss of destabilizing and painful energy through her. She breathed it out, knowing it would only grow worse.

  He only hoped the city gates would be open. They should be at this time of day. Unless Yar had ordered them closed against Oria’s escape. They’d delayed far too long, cutt
ing it much too close. He should have run straight for his horse to begin with. Preferably with Oria unconscious.

  At least then she wouldn’t have had time to contemplate the enormous, tremendously difficult step—and leap of faith in him—that she took by leaving her home.

  He’d seen Oria under many pressures before. She’d surrendered the city to him, white with strain and dread. He’d seen her furious, grieving, shedding tears of frustration and despair. He’d even seen her waxy pale with overload to the point of collapse.

  But he’d never seen her panicked like she was now, her pupils mere pinpricks so the copper disks of her eyes appeared huge in her face gone ghostly as the dead, her voice a thin screech of utter terror.

  He’d make it up to her. Somehow, someday.

  If he could get her out of Bára.

  The warhorse galloped headlong for the gates. Bárans of all stripes crowded the narrow streets. Common folk going about their business, a cluster of healers haggling at a stall, even a priest or priestess, androgynous in the gold mask and shapeless crimson robes. Some flung themselves out of the way, and the well-trained horse neatly dodged those who didn’t. As Lonen urged him for even more speed, the rested—and restive—stallion readily complied, his footing never slipping even on the tight turns around towers, avoiding the deep chasms that snaked through the city. Time enough later to conserve their resources. If the gates stood open, they needed to get through as fast as possible. If not…

  Well, Lonen had experience with those doors—and the huge bar that barricaded them that could be moved only by magic. No mortal warhorse, not even one of his stallion’s fearsome strength, could hope to batter them down.

  The swung onto the main road that led to the gates, the horse’s hooves hitting the paving stones with a clatter and people—merchants, guards, and passersby alike—scattering with screams of shock and terror.

  The gates had been closed. No welcoming daylight. The enormous bar in place.

  He cursed, viciously. For all he’d hoped Arill rested her hand on their escape, the goddess could be a fickle bitch and dearly loved to punish him for his many sins.