And got her first close look at the Trom.
Not benevolent in appearance by any stretch, the Trom looked like the reverse of the kills it left in its wake, as if it took their bones to make its own, then coated them with a layer of finely scaled skin.
It stood before Nat, who wore his mask and robes—and their father’s crown. The sight shouldn’t have made her angry, but it did. War must change all the rules, for none of the Báran or temple laws provided for Nat to be crowned king. Yar stood at his right shoulder. Both of them simmered with grien, drawing from the pool that must have been slowly rebuilding as High Priestess Febe put the junior priestesses to work. Nat seemed to be speaking to the Trom in low tones, gesturing to the group of Destrye.
She picked out Lonen easily—not for his double-headed axe this time, for he was barehanded—but because he was staring at her with a hard, even mean, expression. Perhaps the face of a man who had just watched his father and brother fall boneless to the ground in less than a heartbeat. He stood at the forefront of his men, not bloodied as he’d been the day of surrender, but no less intimidating for that. He pointed at her—no, at the sword she carried—then at the floor.
Feeling stupid as well as weak, she gripped the sword tighter, as if he could take it away from her from across the room. Even though her arm muscles already wept with fatigue so much that she’d love nothing better than to cast it away.
Nat’s raised voice carried across the room. “I command you! Kill them all, now.”
The Trom’s reply slithered across the polished stones, like dry husks rubbed together, reverberating on a mental and emotional level that sawed across her raw sensibilities. “The Trom do not answer to you.”
“I am King of Bára and I summoned you for this purpose,” Nat proclaimed in ringing tones that nevertheless evoked his teenage arguments with their father. He’d never done well being thwarted, had always been too prideful and easily frustrated.
“You are not the Summoner,” the Trom replied, without heat or interest.
“Princess Oria.” The hissed whisper dragged her attention away. Lonen and his men had edged closer. She turned, struggling to point the heavy sword at him. He shook his head at her. “Drop the sword. It won’t hurt you if you’re not a threat.”
Uncertain, she surveyed him. “Do you think it’s a trick?” she asked Chuffta.
“It could be. But none of the Destrye hold weapons, so they must believe it to be true.”
“Do as I command as King of Bára or face the consequences!” Nat’s voice grew louder, along with the palpably building tension of contained magic and incipient violence, buffeting Oria like the hot desert winds that brought late summer sandstorms.
“Oria! What in Grienon are you doing out of your tower?” Yar had spotted her and sounded overexcited, his voice cracking with it. “Get over here now.”
“Be careful,” Lonen said, no longer bothering to whisper, holding her gaze, his own urgent. “If you offer threat of any kind or point a weapon at that thing, it kills with a touch. Blades pass right through it—even wielded by someone who knows how to hold one correctly.”
“Oria! Attend me,” Nat thundered.
Something changed in the tenor of magic in the room. The Trom looked at her now, matte-black eyes boring into her from even that distance. “Oria,” it said. “Princess Ponen.”
Her own roiling energy, still boiling over with all those death agonies, surged within her at the Trom’s words. Swelling up the way grien was said to, an irresistible force that yearned for release. If only she knew how. The Trom stepped away from Nat and Yar, turning in her direction. It lifted a hand that seemed to have no palm, only long, articulated fingers, like the desert spiders with bodies so small they seemed to be all leg. A kind of greeting? No more emotion showed in its still face than in the golden masks of the temple. With a start of near revulsion, Oria realized those masks must be modeled on Trom faces.
“Put down the sword, Oria.” Lonen sounded less commanding than imploring. He might be her enemy, but she didn’t think he wished for her death. A great deal of emotion surged through the room, liberally mixing with the barely leashed magical energy, but his stood out from the rest, something leafy, cool, and ancient to it. Not violence and anger—not toward her, anyway—but grief and keen-edged fear.
Following intuition and because her arm muscles begged for it, she bent her knees and laid the heavy sword on the floor. Lonen had seen through her on that—she wouldn’t be able to swing it anyway. Straightening, she faced the Trom, refusing to be cowed by its remote, alien visage. “Greetings, Trom. Why do you slaughter the very people who asked for your aid?”
“Oria!” Nat surged forward, halting abruptly when the Trom pivoted its head to gaze at him. Though her brother wore the mask, nerves showed in the lines of his body. Behind him, Yar clutched white-knuckled hands together. The flavors of their barely restrained grien coiled and lashed. They planned to unleash something huge. “Don’t presume to question our distinguished guest. Go back to your tower. I command you, as your king.”
She nearly spat at that, mouth full of bitter grief that Nat would presume to command her, only days after their father’s death, knowing as they both did that he could not have been truly crowned. All of it a ruse. He meant for her to move away from the Destrye, who faced certain death as soon as she did. A demise they richly deserved, so she should not interfere. She couldn’t stop herself from glancing back at Lonen, though, not sure what she expected, but still feeling somehow as if she were abandoning him. If nothing else, she’d be breaking her word. He was still staring at her with a kind of ferocity unique to the Destrye, his eyes gritty and bleak as unpolished granite.
“I think it wise to move out of the line of fire.” Chuffta sounded unusually subdued.
She made herself look away but did not leave the room. Instead she joined the group of masked junior priestesses, a brace of city guards protecting them. At least they’d learned that lesson. The Destrye warriors might have sheathed their weapons, but they looked as if they could kill with their hairy, brutish hands.
“Kill the Destrye, Trom,” Nat said clearly. “It’s why you were summoned.”
The Trom had been watching Oria all this time, with skin-crawling focus. But at Nat’s command, it swiveled its attention, not to the Destrye, but to Nat. “That may be why the Summoner called us, but it’s not why we are here,” it said, voice scratching over Oria’s consciousness like a dull knife.
“Then we shall compel you.” Nat raised his hands, magic pouring from the priestesses to him and Yar, who echoed their brother’s movement. “In the name of Grienon, I command you to—”
As he spoke, as the magic sprang from his hands, the Trom lifted a languid hand on an impossibly long arm and caressed her brother’s cheek.
He sagged, crumpled, and fell in a heap.
~ 16 ~
If Lonen expected Oria to scream—or perhaps faint again—at the sight of her brother’s abrupt demise, she surprised him. She seemed vastly changed from the girl he’d glimpsed, candlelit in the window, or the young woman who’d ridden bravely to offer her city’s surrender.
The last days had honed her. She’d lost weight, though she could hardly afford to lose any, her cheekbones and jaw line stark under her pale skin, copper eyes overbright in violet-shadowed sockets, her formerly shining hair braided back and dark with oils. As if she hadn’t washed it in some time. As if she’d been abed all this time.
He should keep his attention on that foul creature the Bárans had so foolishly summoned, but his gaze kept going back to Oria, the white lizardling fierce on her shoulder, tail wrapped down the arm of her gray gown like a shimmering series of bracelets.
She didn’t scream or faint. Instead she impossibly—showing incredible foolishness, not bravery—thrust herself in front of her remaining brother, taking his hands by the wrists, forcing them down. And turning her back on the monster.
He hadn’t realized he’d steppe
d forward, fists clenched, until he became aware of Arnon’s strong forearm around his throat. “My turn to save you,” his brother hissed in his ear. “Don’t be an idiot. She makes her own grave.”
The last years of Lonen’s life had become a study in helplessness. His inability to stop the increasing golem rampages. The final, agonizing decision to send the women and children away, to abandon their home to the enemy’s raids. That goodbye to Natly, certain he’d never see her again. The devastating losses of their forces. Nolan gone. His father dead. Ion, too.
Each death had carved another chunk out of him, as if every one of them took a piece of Lonen away to the Hall of Warriors. It seemed a man couldn’t survive being gutted so many times, which explained why he felt so empty, so beyond the ability to feel anything.
And yet the sight of that slender, exhausted girl putting herself between her brother and a monster who killed with a caress filled him with a desperation that demanded action.
Oria stared up into her brother’s gold mask, saying something low and urgent. Lonen’s heart thudded in his empty chest as the monster raised its hand.
Closed the distance easily.
Drifted to touch her bright hair.
“No!” he shouted, the cry choked off by his brother’s stranglehold.
Oria turned, still holding her brother’s wrists, and flinched back at the spidery fingers hovering so near her cheek. Her cur of a brother wrenched free, backing up several hasty steps, and Lonen’s heart shredded into panic as the thing made contact. Traced her high cheekbone, followed the line of her jaw. Brushed one deadly finger over her full lower lip.
And she remained standing.
The thing spoke to her in some incomprehensible language. It had a voice like an old warrior Lonen had known as a boy, a man who’d taken a sword wound to the throat. He’d lived, but spoke in a rasp, a cawing whisper.
“Nothing else.” Her clear voice rang through the room without wavering. “Except to go, all of you. And do not return.”
The thing caressed her cheek again, and she surely restrained a shudder, her slim frame tight as a drawn bow string, as it spoke to her again, at some length.
With that languid, unhurried, and jointless movement, the thing turned and strode away, out of the chamber. All in the room watched it go, silent, frozen in place, as if afraid even a loud breath might attract it back again.
Then erupted in chaos.
Prince Yar shouted something incoherent at Oria, then dove on the late king’s pulped body. The princess reeled a bit, but caught herself, bolstered by the masked priestess with corkscrew red curls, who carefully supported Oria by the shoulders, saying something in her ear that made Oria nod sorrowfully as she gazed at her brother. The city guard advanced on Lonen and his pitifully small force of Destrye, who quickly scrambled for their discarded weapons. They were few in number—only the handful of warriors who’d been occupying the palace itself and guarding King Archimago, and who’d managed to evade the monster’s touch. An amazingly simple strategy, to lower weapons and not attack the thing. It seemed to ignore everyone otherwise.
Except for Oria. Who alone had survived the thing’s touch. Two exceptions at once.
“We have to recover Father and Ion,” Arnon was saying in his ear. At least he’d released his throttling hold. Lonen supposed he should be grateful for it, but he burned with resentment—and an odd sense of betrayal. So many dead to that thing’s foul touch, and nearly Oria, too. Not that he cared for her fate exactly, but it grated that she’d protected her brother instead of the other way around. Even now her brother paid more attention to a dead man than his living sister.
Or, rather, to the crown.
“Lonen!” Arnon urged.
“Their bodies are going nowhere,” Lonen replied, his voice surprisingly even, given all that churned inside him. “Let’s turn our attention on those still living—with the goal of keeping them that way.”
Prince Yar stood, the heavy jeweled crown of Bára in his hands. “I am king now,” he proclaimed.
“You are not.” Oria overrode his words before he finished, making the boy turn to her in shock. If Lonen could have seen his face, the young prince would be gaping slack-jawed, an image that amused him greatly.
“Then who is in charge, Princess Oria?” Folcwita Lapo demanded.
“There are laws—both secular and prescribed by the temple—that decide such things, Folcwita. You know this as well as I.”
“We are at war.” Lapo thrust an angry hand at the Destrye. “We are invaded, occupied!”
Oria’s chin held a stubborn tilt. “And yet we are not animals. We choose a ruler by writ of law.”
“Surely, you don’t think to claim the crown.” Yar was still holding it, his voice full of anger. “You have no mask and are too frail to be—”
“Not me,” she cut him off. “Our mother, Queen Rhianna holds the right to rule. At least in the interim, until protocols are followed.”
“Oria, she…” The priestess who’d supported Oria trailed off, with a cagey glance at Lonen and his men. Following her gaze, Oria pressed two fingers to her temple, looking pained.
“Why are you holding blades at each other? Haven’t you all had enough of death today?” Her voice wavered. “We need to get people out there to restore order to the city. Some of the burned may yet be helped. Others in hiding should be told it’s safe to emerge. Why is no one thinking of these things?”
“We need to use this opportunity to evict the Destrye from Bára once and for all,” Prince Yar said to her back, his snarl unfortunately a bit too much of a whine.
“We promised a truce and broke it,” Oria said to Yar, but she looked at Lonen. “Will the Destrye accept a renewed truce, at least for the next few hours, so we may all tend our dead and wounded? I realize you have no reason to trust my word a second time, but it’s all I have to offer. I shall remain here to see that it’s kept.” She threw a significant glare at the folcwita.
Yar and Arnon both burst into protest—a strange pair of bedfellows there—but Oria held Lonen’s gaze. She kept her spine straight and chin high, both proud and humble at once. Her eyes held a special plea, as if she somehow asked this of him personally. He who’d risked himself to implore her to drop that ridiculously large sword she so obviously had no skill or strength to wield. Despite the hollowness of grief, the image of her straining to carry, much less lift the thing and point it, nearly had him smiling.
Even so, she seemed to be one of the only sane one of her entire tribe. Which was saying something, given she went everywhere with that white dragonlet that she seemed to believe understood her when she spoke.
He found himself inclining his head, a slow nod of acceptance that had his brother rounding on him. Tempting to knock Arnon upside the head with the haft of his axe, to silence him. But they needed every able-bodied man the Destrye could muster. Until they assessed the casualties, it could be that the balance had changed enough for the Bárans overpower the Destrye forces inside the walls. A daunting thought, even though the Bárans weren’t warriors.
“Princess Oria, you have no authority to—” Folcwita Lapo started.
“In my mother’s absence, I do. And I’m older than you, Yar.”
“You wear no mask, Oria,” the prince grated.
“And you have no wife,” she retorted, then turned back to Lonen. “I’m asking for a few hours.”
“You have them,” he found himself saying.
“Lonen, you—”
“I’m older than you, Arnon.” Lonen nearly smiled to be echoing Oria. It hit him like a physical blow that, with Ion and Nolan dead, along with King Archimago, that he—the dream-filled third son—would have to assume the Destrye crown. If they ever got out of this cursed walled city. “Let us tend to our people, Princess Oria. A truce until we can convene here again at sundown? I promise that any Destrye who lifts a weapon in violence to one of your people will die by my own hand.”
“I promise the sam
e, that any Báran who attacks a Destrye will be tossed into Ing’s Chasm. Blades down, gentlemen, please.” Oria seemed to sway a little on her feet, recovered herself. “Let the Destrye go about their business and us to ours.”
Her guard bowed to her, sheathing their weapons. With another nod to his unlikely savior, Lonen returned his axe to its place on his back, mustered his men, and went to see about dealing with yet more dead.
~ 17 ~
Oria waited for Lonen and his warriors to clear the room, then succumbed to Chuffta’s chiding—and the sapping weakness in her limbs—and sank into a chair at the council table, cradling her throbbing head in her hands.
Nat dead, too. Only her mother and Yar left of their family. Her mother acting crazy, bereft of her mask and hwil, and Yar… What was this infection of power madness that had overtaken them? Her father had raised her brothers to be ambitious, true, and prepared them to rule. And Yar had been ever the most impetuous of them all, but everyone had laughed at that, saying he’d grow out of it. She’d never imagined her brothers would be so quick to claim the crown, especially with them so untried. Of course, never in her worst imaginings had she imagined such a vacuum on the throne of Bára.
Even so, everyone knew no one not stabilized by a marriage bond could rule Bára, or any of her sister cities.
“Perhaps that is the problem,” Chuffta pointed out.
“Good point,” she murmured to her Familiar, watching Yar and Folcwita Lapo argue, Nat’s crumpled corpse at their feet. Somewhere in the mad jumble of emotions sandblasting her there had to be grief for her brother’s death, but for the moment she couldn’t find it. She’d passed into some state of callousness where she felt everything and nothing at once. High Priestess Febe entered the room, pausing to take in the scene. Her mask, naturally, gave nothing away, but she seemed unsurprised. Aha, it turned out anger still ran strongly in her heart. Oria called Febe over.
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