“Nat and Ben were but young boys when you were conceived. I knew right away that you would be a girl, the daughter I longed for, and more—I sensed that you might perhaps inherit the secret legacy of our family.”
“The secret legacy?” she echoed.
“What my great-grandmother possessed, called ponen.”
“That’s the word the Trom used with me—I asked you about it.”
“I remember. I wasn’t ready then to explain it to you.”
“Why now?”
“Circumstances have forced my hand. Yar is not ready to be king. He is far too proud and impetuous. The city guard agrees. They fear we’ll be conquered by one or more of our sister cities if Yar takes the throne of Bára.”
“Then you’ll fight him for it—remain queen.”
“Not me.” Her mother flashed her a wry smile. “You.”
Oria nearly stopped in her tracks, then had to hasten to catch up. “Are you saying you can help me find hwil?”
“Not exactly,” she temporized, “but I can help you get your mask, which at least puts you and Yar on even footing.”
“But…how?”
“Ponen,” her mother said, as if it answered Oria’s question, “is an ancient word, known primarily to the priestesses of our family, and recorded in only a few place. From the tales passed down, it’s no easy burden to bear—as you’ve experienced in your life thus far. All of the women with ponen, however, had derkesthai to help them withstand the power of their affinities.”
“What are my affinities?” Her question echoed with hollow immediacy, signaling the end of their journey. Indeed, the amorphous shadows of the center well showed blacker. They’d hit bottom.
“That is still your journey to discover.”
Wonderful. It had been too much to hope that she might finally know that much. At least her mother hadn’t advised her to meditate on it.
“Meditation is a useful exercise. You gain benefit from it when you exercise the self-discipline to truly quiet your mind.”
“Yes, well, I gain benefit climbing up and down all these stairs, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it.”
“What is Chuffta advising you?”
“To meditate, as always.”
“No, I’m merely pointing out its benefits.”
Her mother paused before an ironbound door set into a stone arch. The cool, sweet, and intense magic so characteristic to Rhianna swelled, swirled, and the door swung outward. Oria raised her brows at the nontraditional use of sgath. “Would High Priestess Febe approve?”
“The temple may govern most modern-day magical law,” her mother replied crisply, striding through the doorway and into a dark hall, “but magic itself predates the temple. So does our family.”
“And yet you allowed them to strip you of your mask.”
Her mother faltered and Oria regretted the words. “I’m sorry, I—”
“No. You’re right. I let them take my mask because according to temple law I no longer deserve it. However there are other, higher laws. The sorceresses of our line have had good reason to subject ourselves to the discipline the temple teaches. That is something for you to remember always. This knowledge is powerful—and can go badly if entrusted to the unstable.”
The door behind them swung closed, plunging them into utter darkness. A breath of air against her face told Oria the other door had opened. That was why Oria shivered, not at the echo of Febe’s words.
“Coming? If you’re afraid, say so now, because it will only worsen.” Her mother’s voice held a hint of impatience.
“I can’t see.” Oria bit back the bitter words that begged to follow. No hwil, no ability to control her magic, no seeing in the dark. Or from behind a mask.
“I apologize.” Her mother sounded chagrined, her hand touching Oria’s sleeve, then guiding her to wrap her fingers around her mother’s elbow. “Take my arm.”
“I can’t see either.” The irritation in Chuffta’s mind-voice perversely cheered her.
It bolstered her on the strange journey through pitch darkness, trusting to her mother’s guidance. She kept wanting to put a hand out before her, to stop anything from smashing into her face, but it felt like that would be cowardly.
“There are no lamps or sconces in this section or I’d light them. I’d never before considered this a barrier to one who cannot see without eyes,” her mother continued, apologetic, yet also thoughtful. “There are various guards set to prevent this knowledge from the wrong hands, and this must be one.”
“Are you sure mine are the right hands then?” Oria joked.
It fell flat, however, because her mother didn’t immediately reply. Finally she said, “I’ll be honest with you—I don’t know. That’s another reason I hadn’t yet shown you this path. I hoped you’d find hwil first and then I could have been more certain you’d survive this. That’s why we do this now, brutal though it may be.”
“Do…what?”
“Face the test. If you survive, you’ll understand.”
“What do I do?”
Her mother softened, took her hands. “Oh, my brilliant daughter, if I could tell you, I would. But I am not ponen. I honestly do not know what you’ll have to do to pass.”
“Oh.” Had she ever felt so small and afraid?
“But I do know that if you’re not brave enough now, you won’t have another chance. You’re out of time, Oria. We are out of time. I wish it wasn’t so, but it is what it is. You don’t have to do this, but if you want to gain your mask in time, this is the path. Just…follow your instincts.”
She wasn’t brave enough. It made her angry that the cowardice sabotaged her.
“And if I fail, I’ll die?” she asked.
“Yes.” Her mother’s voice echoed hollow in the dark. “Or you might as well be, as when you broke, sleeping the rest of your life away. Don’t do this if it’s not important to you. You can find another life, a quiet one, perhaps in one of our sister cities.”
It sounded possible. Grim, and unlikely to last long, with Yar taking them back to war, and the Trom promising visits.
“Oria…” Her mother sounded hesitant. “I don’t say this to sway your decision, but I believe you can do this. The magic is in you, powerful and consuming. You used it to repel Yar when he attacked you, and to bring me out of the pits of grief. This is your birthright, if you’re strong enough to claim it.”
She took a steadying breath. She might not be strong enough, but she wanted to be.
“You can be. Look how much you’ve done these last days.”
“Thank you.” She scratched his scaled breast.
“Chuffta must stay here, however.”
“What—why? You said he helps me with the ponen.”
“Exactly. And this you must do alone or not at all.”
Chuffta had promised never to leave her.
“And I won’t. I’ll be with you, in your thoughts, in your heart.”
With care, she unwound Chuffta’s tail from its loops around her arm. He leaned his head against her temple. “If I don’t survive sane, promise me you’ll return to your family.”
“No promises, other than that I’ll wait for you always.”
“All right,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I’m ready.”
Her mother’s magic built again, like water filling a tub, and a faint blue glow glimmered ahead. Growing stronger, it outlined yet another doorway.
With an indigo blaze it opened, searing Oria’s eyes and mind. She felt suddenly supremely unable to rise to the task. Was that a shape within?
It was one thing to face her own death in the abstract, to offer surrender to the Destrye prince, knowing she might be struck down. Oddly, the memory of Lonen’s granite gaze steadied her. He wouldn’t be afraid. Or rather, he might feel fear—she’d sensed plenty of it in him—but he hadn’t let that stop him. She could do no less.
She stepped over the threshold.
Freezing blue seized her with agonizing br
illiance, and she flailed, without reason or purchase. A bony hand caressed her cheek as the Trom had done, another rising to join it on the other side, framing her face. Something stared into her. Black, unwinking eyes, full of intelligence and entirely lacking in compassion.
She writhed mentally, her body no longer her own.
“Who?”
A mind-voice like Chuffta’s, yet entirely unlike. Unforgiving, uncaring. It asked the question she couldn’t answer.
And yet she did give an answer, her deepest heart opening like a night-blooming blossom to the fruit bats that plundered their nectar. It all poured out of her, the jealousy of her proficient brothers, all the bitter restlessness, the shame of failure and inadequacy, the rancor of her thoughts echoing in the walls of her tower, the bitterness of breaking her word to Lonen—and the eroding fear that he’d blame her if Yar sent the Trom after the Destrye.
It shouldn’t be so important, but the possibility of losing his good opinion festered in her heart and poured out to this alien consciousness’s indifferent scrutiny. All those princesses before her, also trapped by their own inability to rise above, to live up to their vows.
She wanted out with fierce ambition. Not to be forever subject to her little brother, to forswear herself because she didn’t have the strength to back up her promises. She wanted to live. To live and burn brightly. She would find a way to save Bára.
The determination rose in her, strong and vital, much like the frustrated impatience that had always plagued her. It wanted to burst free, to release and whip about, as it had when she faced off with Yar. And yes, as she’d felt trying to reach her mother. Not only absorbing and calming, but also pushing out, striking and hooking.
This is who I am.
“Ponen,” the being whispered. “Ponen Trom. You are of us and we of you. Welcome.”
~ 25 ~
“What we need,” Arnon said, sitting down with a rolled-up parchment and an excited mien, “is a better, faster way of getting water to the crops, if we have any hope of one more harvest before winter.”
“The king is still eating his supper,” Natly informed him, grabbing the wooden wine carafe before Arnon could and pouring more for Lonen, and then for herself.
A measly meal it had been, too. Lonen almost wished for Bára’s odd array of plants and grains over the stringy meat from an aged animal he didn’t want to try to identify. He even had a yen for that cheese of Oria’s, with that tangy-sweet honey complementing the smoky rancid flavor—a contrary combination that shouldn’t appeal but somehow lingered in his mind. Much as the woman did.
“The king is done eating,” he said, schooling his face not to return Arnon’s amused grin. Natly had a short temper for such teasing and Arnon seemed to be entertained by poking at her. One would think they’d have other things to worry about, with all the problems on their plates—besides sparse and unappealing food—but apparently not. “Better and faster water to the crops would be excellent, but how?”
Arnon pushed aside the plates, Natly protesting at his lack of manners, and spread out the parchment. “Aqueducts,” he proclaimed.
Lonen studied the neat drawing. There was Arill’s temple in the center, the squares of residences surrounding it and the palace, then the rings of moats—all circumnavigated by lines that reminded him of the old network of paths that had once connected the cabins and compounds. Indeed, several followed along historic roadways that led to the settlements farther down the valley, where the forests had been cleared to make fields for farming.
For the past weeks since he’d returned to Dru, Lonen had thought about food night and day—how much they needed, how little they had, even with the greatly reduced population, how they could grow, barter, or buy more. Livestock needed grain to eat, too. Slaughtering them all for meat instead of feeding them apparently wouldn’t work because then they wouldn’t have enough to make calves, kids, and what-have-yous in the spring. Even chickens needed grain to lay eggs—both for eating and hatching to grow into more chickens. The formerly abundant game in the forests had moved with the water sources, so the hunters came back empty-handed or with squirrels and rabbits that made for watery stews. The fisheries had dried up with the drained lakes. They were exploring harvesting fish from the sea, though the tides made that a daunting and dangerous effort.
Lonen had learned more than he’d ever wanted to about animal husbandry and population dynamics, not to mention farming practices which turned out to be far more complicated than planting seeds and cutting down the plants when they were ready. It made him weary to contemplate the mountain of obstacles facing them. By contrast, mowing down golems with his axe seemed far simpler.
Perhaps one reason why men turned to war when farming failed. A sobering thought.
“What am I looking at?”
“See, with Lake Scandamalion more than half empty”—Arnon indicated on the map the closest remaining body of fresh water a day’s journey away—“we need to access the more distant lakes or we’ll just be facing the same problem again before we know it. But that would take a lot of bodies and time, hauling water from that far—bodies we need in the fields or here in the city, patching up the treasure boxes for winter.”
He and Arnon had taken to referring to the ramshackle collection of falling-down construction that made up the refugee houses clustered around the temple—and now outside the moats, too—as treasure boxes, for their own lackluster creations when they’d been boys. With cold weather looming and what little resources the Destrye still possessed concentrated around the city, people stayed, throwing up whatever shelter they could manage. Or fighting with their neighbors to take theirs.
“So we dig…ditches?”
“No—this is better. Jordan brought this idea to me, from Arill’s teachings. We build big troughs, essentially, on stilts and let the water roll downhill from, say, the Seven Lakes here, all the way to where we need it.” He traced his finger along the lines to the farmlands, then another to the city.
A rill of excitement burned through Lonen’s fatigue. “We build them out of wood?”
“Exactly! A good thing that the sun here doesn’t scorch as it does in Bára, or we’d have to put a cover on it.” Arnon frowned at the plans. “Otherwise there’d be none left by the time it reached its destination.”
“And good that we have no golems or fire-breathing dragons to combat,” Lonen added, meaning it as a joke, though it fell flat, Arnon wincing at the reminder.
“You and those tales of magic and dragons,” Natly teased, slipping her arm through his. “I never know what to believe anymore. Warrior’s stories, where the battles grow bolder and more glorious with each telling.”
Out of habit, Lonen covered her hand with his, smiling down at her as she expected. She’d begun to look more like her old self, before the Trail of New Hope. No longer careworn, her nails once again sparkled with jewels, her hair elaborately coiled and gleaming with oil rather than hanging down her back in tangles. The people needed hope and to look up to them, she insisted, so they used water to bathe at least weekly. She wanted to look the part of Queen of the Destrye, to make him proud, though they’d made no plans to marry. She’d mentioned the midwinter celebration as the perfect time. As that would be well after any further efforts could be made to supplement the late harvest, Lonen hadn’t objected outright.
Actually, he hadn’t said anything either way. He’d teased her about marrying him long before the Battle of Bára, and she’d always put him off. Now she behaved as if they’d been engaged all along.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to marry Natly, but it felt like a moot point if they were all bound to starve. She didn’t understand his reticence to make plans, though, and to press the issue she’d stopped warming his bed after the first few nights. She claimed his nightmares kept her awake, with his thrashing about and yelling, but she’d made it clear that a wedding date would be sufficient to entice her back. Lonen, however, was frankly relieved to sleep alone, and no
t only because so many of those dreams that drove Natly away involved Oria.
Guilt and a level of mortification chewed at him, that his fascination with the sorceress continued to plague him, making him imagine the scent of night-blooming lilies even with Natly’s qinn filling his head, with her supple body pleasuring his. It made him irritable, which Natly put down to the pressures of kingship. But her pride in him, and the delighted plans she made to become queen, rankled more than the sand dunes of decisions that piled up daily. She hadn’t been so enthusiastic to wed him before he was king.
Something that proved as impossible as Oria to forget.
“How long to build it?” he asked Arnon.
“That depends. There’s a number of options and decisions to make on prioritizing.”
Of course there were. “All right, walk me through it.”
“You’re not staying up all night talking again,” Natly protested. When Arnon made a choking noise and Lonen raised a brow at her, she folded her arms, pushing up her luscious bosom. “You need your rest. And I thought perhaps we could…spend some time together.”
She looked so disappointed that Lonen regretted his uncharitable thoughts. Of course the nightmares bothered her. She needed her sleep, too. He cupped her cheek and kissed her, inhaling the qinn to remind himself that Natly was the woman he craved. Was supposed to crave. “Perhaps tomorrow night. If we’re to build these aqueducts to irrigate the late-season harvest in time to keep our plantings from dying, Arnon is right that we need to start right away. You go to bed.”
“All right.” She pushed out that lower lip and gazed at him through lush black lashes. “But you know where to find me. Don’t keep him up all night.” She pointed a jeweled nail at Arnon and flounced off.
Lonen watched the sway of her hips that once so beguiled him, missing that feeling and disliking the creeping realization that Natly would make a terrible queen. She was nothing like Oria, who would have wanted to learn about the aqueducts. Which he needed to focus on, as thoughts of Oria being his queen instead of Natly were not only impossibly distracting, but impossible, full stop. He studied the aqueduct lines that went to the farmlands. A longer distance, but more critical than getting more water to a people already accustomed to rationing. “So, if we build these first, then would—”
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