The Tides of Bára

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “Is that so?” came a cool voice from behind her. “I’m quite certain she holds us in Her hand already. Take your foul hands off my brother, sorceress, before I cut them off.”

  ~ 18 ~

  Lonen grappled to identify that voice, to make his vision, grown dark and blurred, work for him, give him the truth. Or rather, to refute what his ears told him.

  It couldn’t be. His brother had died, months and months before. Swallowed up by the earth on the battlefield outside Bára.

  Hadn’t he?

  “Nolan?” Perhaps his brother was a figment come to carry him to the Hall of Warriors. He’d been there before, with Ion. But no—that had been their father, King Archimago. And then it hadn’t been real at all, because it had been Oria arriving to save him.

  A man shouldn’t have to grapple with so many death visions.

  And now she’d done it again, saving him at great cost to herself. They would have words about this. If she survived.

  “Yes, brother,” Nolan was saying. “I’m glad you haven’t forgotten me in your… conquests. Unhand him, sorceress. And undo whatever twisted magic you work upon him, or I shall simply shoot you and cheerfully bear the consequences of killing a woman.”

  Oria, of course, determinedly ignored him. Or couldn’t hear—her mouth was set in a flat line as she emptied her life energy into him. Her eyes had gone opaque, the copper shadowing to a matte black that alarmed him.

  “Stand down,” he ordered. Enough of his strength had returned that he lifted her palms from his body, now he managed to change his grip to touch her over the silk sleeves. “She’s helping me.”

  Astonished silence greeted that declaration. If only he could see their faces. If only he could stand and explain rationally. He squeezed Oria’s wrists with no response from her. She might not even be aware of what was going on. “Oria. Love. Stop. Close your portals. We’re rescued. Save some sgath for the journey.”

  Something flickered in her face. Then Chuffta landed beside him, wrapping his tail around the bare skin of her wrists.

  A shout of alarm from the men. “A monster! Kill that thing!”

  “No! As King of the Destrye, I forbid you.” He managed to lever himself up—something that had been impossible before, so she had indeed worked a miracle—and pulled Oria against him, angling his shoulder to deflect any attack on the derkesthai. A good thing, too, as several of the Destrye, including Nolan, had arrows trained on them, points wavering now.

  His brother. Thinner, worn, and wan. His dreamer’s smile gone hard and ruthless, his once elegant beard a wild tangle. But alive.

  “Nolan,” he breathed.

  “King?” Nolan raised a dubious brow. There was the incisive intelligence, the wit that could load a single word with ten thousand questions—and make you feel you couldn’t answer any of them. Belatedly, Lonen realized that Nolan, as his elder, should be king instead. That he likely didn’t know of their father and Ion’s deaths.

  “A great deal has happened,” he offered, a weak explanation, but how to deliver such news, all at once? “And we thought you were dead.”

  “I nearly was.” Nolan’s face was set in grim lines. “We all were. Sucked into the earth by the foul magic of the Bárans, our enemy—one of whom, if I’m not mistaken, you now hold to your breast. Is she your captive?”

  He nearly said yes. It would be much easier and get them past difficult explanations. But one look at her wide, unseeing eyes as she lay against him, hands curled against her breast, covered in gore from saving his life, decided him. He’d made her a vow. Several of them, and he’d never dishonor her by even temporarily granting her a lesser status among the Destrye.

  “She is my wife,” he said, as ringingly as he could, having only just been snatched back from the path to the Hall of Warriors. “And thus your Queen. You will all treat her with the appropriate respect and deference.”

  Nolan’s piercing blue stare didn’t waver, nor did his stern expression alter. He’d always had an intense gaze, but one softened with laughter. At least, he had before the golem wars. Had he changed gradually over time and Lonen hadn’t noticed—or just since the earth opened up and ate him? In the end it didn’t matter.

  They all had changed irrevocably.

  “You don’t wear the wreath or Father’s sword,” Nolan noted. Not in challenge, more in the manner of a man wrestling with new information.

  “The wreath is in my saddlebags,” Lonen replied, feeling his weariness now that the battle energy faded. Oria was a limp weight against him. Arill curse her for her foolhardiness. “The sword I left with Arnon, in case I did not return.”

  Nolan dipped his chin, not sending a man to check for the wreath as Lonen half expected. “So Ion and Father are dead then,” he said, as if noting that the day grew warm. He finally unnocked his arrow and tipped it to his forehead in a salute. “Long live the king,” added in a wry tone.

  Lonen winced. “Brother, no one had any inkling that you lived. Had I any idea—”

  But Nolan shook his head to stop him, tucked his arrow back in the quiver, shouldered his bow and set his men to work with hand signals too quick to follow. “My tale is a long one and it seems yours is, also. There will be time to talk. When my king is not half dead. And my queen,” he added, in a tone so neutral it shouted his disapproval. “I assume you’re headed home? I hope you’re headed home. If so, let us take care of you and get you there.”

  “Yes.” Almost unable to believe they’d actually make it, he dropped his head back to the comforting moss he’d expected to be his grave. “Thank you. Please take us home.”

  “I’m going to save you the trouble of wondering by telling you up front that we’re safe in Dru,” came Chuffta’s mind-voice, both gentle and dry with amusement. “And welcome back.”

  Oria opened her eyes to a large, round room so strange she immediately appreciated her Familiar’s warning. She lay in one bed among many, all narrow and evenly spaced at intervals, like spokes in a wheel. A few were occupied, sounds of sleeping and misery wafting to her as birdsong once had. In the center, the massive trunk of what appeared to be a living tree rose up and through the roof. Enormous limbs arched, holding up a ceiling that seemed to be both made of wood and made to look like limbs. The illusion made her frown, trying to discern where the tree ended and the man-made structure began. Cracks of light shone through here and there, with glimpses of what might be a gray sky. Not the deep flint gray of Lonen’s eyes, but a chill off-white. Actual leaves, large as her hand and in astonishing shades of amber, scarlet, and gold, grew from the limbs. Or fell from them. As she watched, one released its grip with an almost audible sigh, then spun in lazy spirals to land light as a butterfly on the fur covering her.

  Chuffta, lying curled up against her side, nosed the leaf. It must be dying, to be that color and have fallen so. The thought filled her with formless sorrow. Her nose was cold, so she snuggled deeper under the cozy fur as best she could with the lassitude of her body. Perhaps she’d stay in bed forever.

  “A cycle only, one more pronounced here. The leaves die and fall off during winter, but grow again in spring.”

  “How do you know that?” Her mental tone sounded reasonably firm, which was a good sign. But she couldn’t feel much of anything at all, not even that connection to Lonen she’d mercilessly exploited, which was likely a very bad sign. She didn’t remember the gray mist at all, and wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. So many questions to ask Chuffta—how she got to Dru, where was Buttercup, if Lonen had died, why she wasn’t dead—but she took refuge for a few moments longer in a simple question about leaves and seasons.

  Cycles only. Should that make death less sad?

  “Derkesthai stories,” Chuffta replied, his soft tone matching her melancholy mood. Or just fitting himself to it, the same way he fit under her arm against the curve of her body.

  “So many of those.”

  “This is true. We don’t have piles of books like yo
u do, nor do we build cities to live in, so we pass the time telling stories of other places.”

  “And one of those places was Dru?”

  “I’m not sure.” He sounded as if he’d been contemplating it. “It’s cold here—do you feel it? We Derkesthai wouldn’t like to be long outside shelter. And, of course, we don’t have the same place names that you do, unless one of us has been a Familiar there.”

  She nearly asked him to tell her more, about those other Familiars, though he tended to give her sketchy tales about them for some reason. Asking for stories would be continuing to avoid facing the hard truths, however, and she’d spent far too much of her life staying protected and remote from those.

  “Tell me quick—did Lonen die?”

  “No!” Chuffta sounded surprised. “I would have told you right away if that were so.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have. You would have waited until you thought I was strong enough to handle the news.” The rush of relief at hearing Lonen lived made her a little giddy. Maybe she would leave this bed someday.

  “I suppose there’s truth in that,” Chuffta admitted, his mind-voice colored with some chagrin. “Something I hadn’t considered, since I didn’t have to give you such dire news.”

  “Then tell me the rest. What aren’t you saying? He’s still sick from his injuries.”

  “The both of you, yes. Lonen’s brother Prince Nolan managed to get you both to Dru. You’re in their capital city—which is nothing like Bára, by the way—in their Temple of Arill, which is where their healers also are. From their thoughts, I gather that Lonen is somewhere else, his chambers perhaps, with the healers going to him.”

  “Nolan. I remember him arriving as I was healing Lonen.”

  “And interrupted you. Both good and bad, as you didn’t finish, but you also lived. That was a great risk you took, Oria.”

  She gazed up at the ceiling. It hadn’t felt like a risk. It had felt like the necessary thing to do. But her magic gauge read severely low, matching the enervation of her body. Her system seemed both exhausted and overloaded at once, as if she’d been buffeted by a sandstorm for hours, leaving her both flayed and without reserves.

  “Has he been to see me?” She asked that instead of what she really wanted to know, which was where they stood with each other.

  “No. I haven’t seen him since we arrived and they brought you here, but it seems he’s been quite ill. I’m not sure he could have, even if…” Chuffta aborted that line of thought. “Once you’re better, you can go see him. Something to look forward to.”

  “Do you even know if he’ll get better? You haven’t gone to look. Maybe he’s died and you don’t know, and—” Galvanized, she pushed at the fur blankets.

  “Please.” Chuffta’s voice oozed scorn. “You know as well as I do that he lives. Look inside yourself. And naturally I didn’t go look. I wasn’t leaving you alone here.”

  Guilt pierced her. “Have you eaten at all? Oh, Chuffta.”

  “I can last a while without food. The cold helps.” He sounded so sour about it that she might have laughed, if she hadn’t been so upset.

  “I see our patient is awake.” The feminine voice saved her the excoriating reply that burned in her mind. Chuffta probably heard it anyway. The woman moved into her range of vision—the first female Destrye she’d seen—and snagged the beautiful dying leaf, tossing it toward the floor. With dark, curling hair barely tamed by a deep green veil, the woman possessed strong features like Lonen’s, with the same hard chin, though her nose was more hawklike. “How are you feeling?” she asked. The inevitable question.

  “I am …” How to answer this foreign woman who understood nothing of her particular ailment? “I am well enough, considering. Thank you for caring for me.”

  The woman’s lips thinned and she felt Oria’s brow with the back of her hand. Oria flinched as the touch seared like hot water on burned skin, clenching her jaw to keep from whimpering. Under the fur, Chuffta’s tail wound around her wrist in soothing coils. “Arill does not permit that we turn away those in need, no matter who they might be,” the woman replied.

  Oria kept herself from stiffening at the hostility coming from the healer. No honorifics, either. Not that she’d banked heavily on being queen in Dru, but being a beggar for life-sustaining care would make for a ghastly future. Far better to have given her life saving Lonen.

  “I don’t know what to do for you,” the woman continued, going to a basin to wash her hands. “You have no fever, no wounds, no apparent illness, and yet you’ve slept for nearly a week.” She made it sound like sheer laziness. “Prince Nolan reports that you remained unconscious for the journey before that, too. If I may speak frankly, we did not expect you to ever awake. If not for the King’s strict orders, we would have ceased care and let you die peacefully.”

  “I would not have let them do that.”

  She stroked Chuffta’s tail in fervent gratitude, very clear on why he’d refused to leave her. “Then Lonen has been awake?” she asked.

  “His Highness,” the woman emphasized, “has been gravely ill. I realize that you were in his company, and we have followed his instructions regarding you as relayed by Prince Nolan, but that does not entitle you to information about the king.” Her tone—and the aftertaste of her thoughts and emotions from the brief contact—made it clear the woman thought Oria’s care had been wasted effort.

  “How is he—is he recovering from his wounds?”

  “That’s not the business of a foul magic-user.”

  “I will see him.” She tried moving, but the room spun in lazy circles.

  “You need to eat.”

  “That’s not possible. When His Highness has recovered, you may apply for an audience through the regular channels. If the king wishes to grant you an audience, he will send for you.” She made that sound highly unlikely.

  Oria summoned all her will—all the effort she’d expended over the long years to master hwil, to overcome the debilitating effects of magic on her being, and the casual scorn of those physically stronger—and levered herself up, sitting as straight as possible. They’d dressed her in some sort of high-necked, long-sleeved sleeping gown, and put curious knitted things on her feet. She welcomed them because with the fur pushed aside the chill of the room made her shiver. Chuffta hopped onto her shoulder, spreading his wings and looping his tail down her arm.

  Pulling her best regal attitude, Oria leveled the woman with a stare. “I’ve been patient with you, healer, because I appreciate your care, however grudgingly rendered. However, I am King Lonen’s wife, duly married, and thus your queen. You will address me as such, and you will escort me to see my husband with no further delay.”

  “Husband,” the woman spat. “We’ve seen no evidence of any such marriage and plenty to suspect you laid a spell on our king to force him to bring you here. You will not be allowed to cause him further damage. If you’re well enough to get up, then you will be escorted into the forest to live or die as Arill intends.”

  “Is that how it stands? If you fear my power so much, then I wonder you aren’t more wary of what I’ll do to you for thwarting me. Shall I demonstrate?”

  The woman took an actual step back, making a sign Oria remembered from the Destrye warriors at the gates of Bára when she surrendered the city. A warding off of ill luck, if she wasn’t mistaken. The way the woman avoided looking directly at Chuffta confirmed it.

  “They tried to make me leave, so I burned them until they stopped.” He sounded most pleased with himself, so Oria made a show of scratching his jaw. If she couldn’t have respect, she’d take fear.

  “Go find where Lonen is. Maybe you can lead me there if she won’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’ll be all right for a few minutes while you look.”

  Chuffta winged off with an unnecessary but gratifying flourish of green flame, then slipped through the edge of a shade covering one of the windows. The healer moved, opening her mouth, lik
ely to call guards.

  “Don’t make me cast a spell on you,” Oria said in quiet, firm warning.

  The healer gasped, one hand going to her throat. “Arill will protect me!”

  “Will She? Did your goddess protect you when the golems came?”

  She sputtered in fear and fury. “You—you cannot—”

  “I absolutely can. More than that, I will. Don’t trifle with a sorceress of Bára. And you will address me as ‘Your Highness.’”

  The healer, though she paled, narrowed her eyes in scorn and opened her mouth to retort.

  A bellow cut through whatever the healer had been about to say. A ringing demand that echoed against the wooden ceilings. Even with the distortion, Oria’s heart leapt at the familiar voice. And the relief that she wouldn’t have to make good on her bluff. Chuffta had been right about the food. Trying to stand and walk might have had her in an ignominious heap on the floor.

  The healer leapt into motion, green veil flying as she dashed across the wide room to the door as it slammed open, somehow managing to both block the entry and bow at the same time. “Your Highness! You should not be out of—”

  “Where is Oria?” Lonen snarled. Never had she been so happy to hear his bad-tempered growl.

  “This is the woman’s ward, by Arill’s command, and even you—”

  “I’ll answer to the goddess, but I will see my wife. Where is she?”

  “Lonen—I’m here,” Oria called, sick with relief. Or from lack of food. No, mostly that he’d come for her. That he hadn’t abandoned her. He pushed into the room, one hand pressed to his bad side, Chuffta perched on his good shoulder. Then paused, totally arrested.

  ~ 19 ~

  “Oria,” he breathed. “Arill take it—I thought you’d died and they hid the news from me.”

  “No.” Her voice caught with emotion. He’d been so ill—still gaunt with it and wearing some sort of hastily donned robe—but he strode toward her with a semblance of his old vitality. Just seeing him felt like—how had he put it? Like water in the desert. “I only just awoke or I would have—”