Oria's Gambit

by Jeffe Kennedy

  She waited. Knowing the temple, the next phase would likely test her sorely.

  “King Lonen,” High Priestess Febe intoned, her voice echoing with ripples of sgath, even as Priest Vico’s grien seized Oria in a fierce mental grip, “take your bride’s hand.”

  Oria braced herself. Oh, this would be bad indeed.

  ~ 8 ~

  Lonen hesitated, startled out of his joy at seeing Oria’s face again—so much more exotically beautiful even than he’d remembered, her eyes an even brighter coppery brown than in his dreams—taken aback by the strange request.

  Much as he’d been hoping to find a way around the restriction against touching Oria’s skin, he believed her that it would be painful for her, even damaging. And surely her temple brethren knew this. The twin masks of the priest and priestess behind the ornate altar both seemed to frown at him. These Bárans couldn’t do anything simply. Everything had to be tied up in magical ritual and other assorted nastiness. Oria should be able to put on a pretty dress, accept his beah before Arill, and then dance the night away in his arms. Before spending the rest of it in his bed.

  Not … whatever it was that loomed ahead of them, putting his short hairs on end.

  Oria solved his dilemma by taking his hand, lacing her slim fingers between his in a grip as fierce as her bones were delicate. A small sound escaped her, she swayed, and Chuffta coiled more of his tail around her other wrist, even wrapping his sinuous neck around hers.

  “Get on with it,” Lonen growled at Febe, grateful his role as rampaging conqueror allowed him to force things along.

  The priestess didn’t like it, her posture full of disapproval, but she similarly joined hands with the priest who’d returned to her side after cutting away Oria’s mask, and he raised his other hand in a gesture Lonen knew well. From the battle mages it had meant a fireball or earthquake soon to come, and he had to throttle back his now-instinctive reach for his axe.

  Instead something strong, yet not entirely painful, grabbed him, darkening his vision until he seemed to be in another place. Almost like a dream, one of those surreal ones when Oria had visited his nights, prowling through his mind and consuming him body and soul. She was there in this place, too, holding his hand and—not exactly smiling at him—but looking deeply into his eyes, her copper gaze bright and sparking like candle flames. Lines of pain bracketed her pretty mouth and he tried to let go of her. She held on as tenaciously as in any of his dreams, when he’d been unable to muster the will to stop her from milking his cock or devouring his heart.

  He was marrying this woman. A woman of foreign ideas and powerful magic. They’d be bound together for the rest of their lives. The yawning chasm of that future opened beneath his feet, black with terrifying and exhilarating possibilities.

  Febe and the mysterious priest appeared in the dream also, golden masks glowing with otherworldly light, their crimson robes dark as old blood. Chuffta seemed to hover nearby, a blaze of white.

  The priest held a shining blade in his hand, a knife made of glass that radiated a light as brightly silver blue as Grienon at full face. Oria turned their joined hands so her wrist faced up and his down. The blade struck, slicing first her fair skin where the blood showed in a delicate blue tracery, then his browner flesh from beneath, a breathtakingly bright pang. She never flinched—perhaps because she could no more move than he could—but her copper eyes darkened, the lines around her mouth deepening with the sharp pain.

  It burned him, both her suffering and the hot flow of blood from his wrist. The priest handed the glass blade to the priestess, and reached out, placing a palm over each of their wounds. Oria screamed, a thin and weak sound, and Lonen tried to reach for her, still unable to move. Then the burn overtook him too, climbing up his arm until it struck his heart like a tree viper’s poison. His turn to shout the agony of it, his heart racing nearly to burst.

  But he couldn’t break from Oria’s gaze, her ever-darkening eyes filling his vision, her blood arcing into his, then flowing back, her heart pounding in staccato beats, humming like the jewelbirds she’d spoken of.

  They’d become so black, her eyes, that they lost every glint of copper, going flat and dull, densely matte. With a chord of terror, he recognized those eyes, that life-sucking gaze. Identical to the Trom that had killed his father and brother.

  The scene from the council chambers roared back at him, a crystal clear memory—Oria confronting the thing even as Lonen fought Arnon’s restraining grip, trying against all reason to save her, his enemy, from that lethal touch that turned men to boneless pulp. The Trom had caressed her cheek, spoken to her in some tangled tongue. And nothing happened to her.

  She alone had survived the monster’s instantly delivered death.

  Now the thing’s eyes looked back out of her and once again he couldn’t move to reach her. He fought the suffocating clutch of magic. Though he should be terrified of her, his heart didn’t understand that. He fought, not to release her hand, but to bring her closer.

  “Oria!”

  Her name echoed without sound inside his skull.

  And abruptly they were back in that temple room, his knees aching from the stone steps. Oria grasped his hand, fingers still interlaced with his, eyes once again lustrous copper, stared into his, wide with shock.

  “Your bride is yours to do with as you wish.” The voices of the priest and priestess came as if from another realm. There they stood, once again behind the altar—or had they ever truly moved?—speaking the words in unison, some aspect of the magic giving them a strange harmonic. “Her magic is yours to use, her body yours from which to draw succor and heirs.”

  They had to be ritual words because they knew perfectly well Lonen had no ability to access magic. But it confirmed what the Destrye had suspected, long ago on that battlefield when they’d decided to kill the masked sorcerers on the walls, in hopes of stopping the flow of magic to the battle mages. Her magic is yours to use. Though he couldn’t use it as a Báran man would, guilt plucked at him, as he intended to use her just as ruthlessly. To save his people, yes, but he’d treat her as a tool as surely as any of these sorcerers would have. Just in different way. Yours to use.

  Oria’s hand trembled in his, her eyes blank, her face pale. Something nudged at Lonen’s fingers and he started, glancing down to find the pointed tip of Chuffta’s tail wedging gently between their joined hands. Mortified, he yanked them apart. Like a child’s doll suddenly discarded, Oria crumpled to the stone floor. Lonen barely caught her in time, carefully touching her only over the silk, even though one of Chuffta’s wings abruptly spread for balance buffeted his face.

  He sat back, adjusting her so her head pillowed on his thigh, wanting more than anything to smooth back the damp tendrils of coppery hair plastered to her temples, her skin so waxy translucent that the shadowy foramina of her skull showed through. It seemed a terrible omen, this death’s head, so like all the decomposed dead he’d seen over the last years.

  Chuffta crawled gently onto her bosom, using the thumb claws at the bend of his wings to steady his progress. He’d done that before, when Oria lost consciousness outside the gates of the city. Hopefully he’d help her recover this time as well.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Lonen hardened his voice, so as to sound demanding, rather than pleading. Although he could likely drop the charade. They were married and that couldn’t be reversed. The Báran ritual might be cruel, but it did seem to work on a deeper level than a Destrye marriage. Or so he assumed. None had mentioned anything like this following Arill’s ceremony. The permanence of the bond resonated even in his mind-dead skull. Oria lurked in there, a part of him now. Odd, but also reassuring to sense her life force when she looked so very close to death.

  “The Princess Oria is fragile.” The High Priestess assumed a tone of apology, though she seemed nearly gleeful. “Perhaps we should have warned you better, King of the Destrye—your prize may not be long lived. Best to enjoy her while you can.”

 
“Better to read your own histories, Your Highness,” the priest advised, sounding more somber. “The Báran women taken by your kind are like tropical flowers consigned to eternal winter. Princess Oria will never bloom in your harsh land. Take your pleasure of her if you must. We cannot stop you from claiming your right. If she survives the night, however … I ask Your Highness to consider that it would be a kindness to leave her here.” He paid no attention to Febe’s intake of breath, though she otherwise showed little sign of her disapproval. “You have no cause to love Bára, King Lonen,” he continued, “and much reason, perhaps to hate us and Princess Oria along with our people. But she has done you and the Destrye no wrong.”

  “I know that,” Lonen replied, speaking only to the priest. “You are a good and loyal subject to speak for her at this time. I’ll remember you to her.”

  High Priestess Febe remained where she was, but the priest came around to hold a hand over Oria, murmuring something that sounded like a prayer. Chuffta didn’t bridle at the man, so Lonen trusted he only helped, not harmed. Indeed, Oria’s face, while it didn’t exactly regain color, at least looked a bit more like she belonged to the land of the living and not as if her spirit lingered in whatever witchy realm they’d traveled to for the wedding ritual.

  “Take her to her tower,” the priest murmured. “Priestess Juli will be there as her attendant and will know what to do for her.” With a last wiggle of his fingers, he nodded to Lonen and left.

  Taking the advice to heart, Lonen strapped his axe onto his back, careful not to jostle Oria unnecessarily, then gathered his unconscious wife into his arms, keeping the silk robes between his hands and her slight body. Chuffta took wing to make it easier for him. As the time before, it struck him how little she weighed, like a jewelbird herself, all brilliantly colored feathers over hollow bones.

  “We need to stop doing this,” he muttered at her, rising to his feet. He braced himself for Chuffta’s piercing talons as the derkesthai landed on his shoulder, prehensile tail snaking out to coil gently around Oria’s throat, the slim white column exposed by her laxly tipped back head. He’d have to get padded shoulders for his garments, too, as it seemed the Familiar would become a fixture in his life.

  High Priestess Febe stood before him, golden mask remote. “Take your bride and go.” She set Oria’s mask, still on the little tile they’d put it on, onto Oria’s breast.

  “I intend to.” Though if Febe assumed he’d leave Bára immediately, she’d be in for a surprise. One he’d enjoy. Forcing her to call Oria queen would be a well-earned triumph. “Shouldn’t you tie the mask on her again, if I’m the only one to see her face forever more?”

  The priestess checked a small movement, then inclined her head. “Those words are a formality, not meant to apply to other close family or temple ceremonies, but as you say, Your Highness.” She retrieved a covered box, opening the colorful lid to show a spool of golden ribbons within. With deft, practiced movements, she cut away the threads of the ribbons still attached to Oria’s mask at three points—the temple, cheek and jaw—then attached new ones, moving behind and around Oria, weaving the ribbons into her braids.

  “It seems like it would be easier to simply untie them than to cut them every time and have to fetch new ones,” he commented, as the process took some time.

  “You understand nothing of magic, Destrye,” the High Priestess replied in an absorbed tone, without rancor, but something of that otherworldly hum to it. “Which may well be your future undoing. You trifle with powers beyond your reckoning. If you want my advice, take your prize and go back to Dru. Against all odds you have achieved a short victory over your betters. Savor that, yes, in the tradition of your ancestors, but do not linger. Bára will only bring you grief. In your land you might have something of a pleasurable life as King of the Destrye. But you will never be King of Bára.”

  “Am I to believe that’s some sort of magical prophecy?” He allowed a sneer, and for his deep dislike of this woman to rise up. Hopefully she’d detect it in him as Oria would.

  Finished, the High Priestess stepped back and laced her fingers together over her belly. “You would be wise to recognize it as such, Your Highness, but from what I’ve witnessed, wisdom is not a virtue Grienon bestowed upon you.”

  Perhaps not. Nolan had been universally acknowledged as the most intelligent of King Archimago’s sons, and he’d died first. Ion had been the most courageous, the heir and all that the Destrye could wish for in their next king, and he’d died too, gone in an instant. Lonen might never make a wise or noble king, but he was what the Destrye had. Arnon would serve, in the event of Lonen’s demise, but his younger brother would make an even more reluctant king, far happier with his building plans, designs, and aqueducts.

  But, though he might lack wisdom, Lonen knew a snow job when he saw one. The future belonged to those who took it by the throat and made it what they wanted it to be. Oria knew that, too.

  “With all respect to your office, High Priestess,” he said, allowing a feral grin to bare his teeth, “you can consign your supposed prophecies—and your wretched advice—to the nearest chasm.”

  Turning his back on the woman, he carried Oria up to her tower.

  The climb, of course, took forever. Fortunately, during their time in the temple the sun had set and Sgatha risen, shedding her soft rose light. Which meant they’d been in there for hours. Another reason to dislike magic—it distorted the senses. But the night breezes cooled the air, blowing in the open arched windows that riddled Oria’s tower, making it look more like lacework than stone from below. Chuffta had thankfully resumed his station on Oria’s breast, watching her face with devotion worthy of any hunting hound.

  By the time he reached the summit of the endlessly spiraling stairs, Lonen gave thanks that he’d ignored Natly’s protestations that manual labor was beneath the dignity of a king. All those trenches dug, beams lifted, and sacks of seed hauled given him the endurance for the climb. Even Oria’s slight body felt like the heaviest bag of grain, his legs wobbly with effort when he finally reached the top stair.

  He stood there stupidly a moment—his brain almost unable to grasp that the unending ascent had, in fact, ended—uncertain of his next move. The ceremony had perhaps taxed him far more than he had felt at the time. He almost envied Oria her deep sleep.

  “King Lonen.” A crimson-robed, golden-masked priestess appeared before him as if by magic. “Bring her in here. What happened to the princess?”

  He followed her, impossibly weary, through the high-ceilinged hall that lead to Oria’s rooftop garden. Instead of going straight through, however, the priestess turned into a branching corridor, opening a set of doors into an airy chamber, bright and ethereal as Oria herself. The woman drew gauzy curtains aside from a bed unlike any he’d seen. He lowered Oria onto it, feeling absurdly like some hero out of a tale.

  Only in those the hero rescued the princess, rather than being the cause of her injuries.

  “Are you Juli?”

  “Yes, Your Highness.” She curtseyed to him with grave ceremony. Something, however, about the red curls escaping her braids to form a sprightly halo around her mask made him think she wasn’t always so decorous.

  “The wedding ceremony,” he told her. “It required us to hold hands. Oria suffered from my touch and collapsed immediately after. She hasn’t been conscious since. The priest said you would know how to help her.”

  “Yes, Your Highness. I’ll do what I can.” She set to gathering supplies, working with deft efficiency. “You are wed then—the binding worked?”

  He hadn’t been aware there was any question of that. “According to High Priestess Febe, yes. Is there something I should know?”

  Juli shrugged, a graceful gesture like a dancer’s. “Surely Your Highness understands that Bárans don’t wed foreigners. So, no, there was no certainty, even though Princess Oria believed her own magic would be enough to seal the bond, and give her access to the relationship you hold with you
r people.”

  “I’m a king crowned on the battlefield. There’s nothing magical about that.” Feeling worse than useless, he sat in a chair that looked too spindly to hold his weight. It creaked perilously, but held. For the time being.

  “All life holds magic,” Juli replied, brewing some potion with meticulous measurements. “Only of different potencies. Here in Bára, we’ve condensed and refined it to our purpose. In Dru, you have trees as tall as our towers, isn’t it true, Your Highness?”

  “Some of them nearly so, yes.”

  “And yet they come from a seed I could fit in the palm of my hand. How is that not magical? Here now, Master Chuffta, scoot a bit so I can reach her.” The Familiar obliged with a rustle of wings and Juli used a small silver knife to cut the ribbons on Oria’s mask. With an attitude of reverence, she set the molded gold thing on a tile next to the bed, clearly kept there for exactly that purpose. Strange people, the Bárans, with their masks and wasteful practices.

  He watched Juli tip the fluid between Oria’s lips, feeding it to her in delicate sips, all the while careful not to touch her. “Your touch harms her also?”

  Juli nodded, the curls springing like coiled lamplight. “Not as much as yours, Your Highness—no insult intended—because I am first Báran and second highly trained in hwil, which is why I was chosen to attend her. But she’s been pushed past her breaking point, so I won’t add to the strain.”

  “What is hwil?” Might as well seek to extend his knowledge while he sat about being useless to his wife. And possibly to the Destrye. If Oria didn’t recover, all of this would be for naught. He didn’t know what he could do then, except perhaps to go home and at least die with them.

  Not a pleasant option.

  “It’s a core teaching of our temple,” Juli was explaining. “It means achieving a peaceful state of mind that allows us to contain our emotional energies. My excellent hwil makes me a restful person for her to be around.”