Oria's Gambit

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Oria did too, quietly talking with Juli as she did so. With a pang that he refused to accept as foreboding, he watched her face disappear behind the featureless metal again.

  Lonen worried for her palpably, his concern tugging at her, but she couldn’t reassure him. At this point, she could only grit through. He’d been as gentle as possible with her, but the contact, particularly mouth to mouth, had burned like acid, hollowing her out as surely as if he’d taken his axe to her. If she thought about it too much, she’d become depressed at the unlikelihood of them ever being able to touch with pleasure. A small consideration, perhaps, given the far more daunting obstacles they faced, but one that had become strangely important to her.

  “Yesterday you were certain you could not lie with him at all and you have. Give it time. You’re doing brilliantly well.”

  Grateful for her Familiar, she sent him a loving thought and straightened, moving to Lonen and putting her hand on his padded forearm.

  “I’m so sorry,” he murmured.

  “No apologies,” she reminded him.

  He growled under his breath but subsided when Vico spoke.

  “For the second part, the priestesses will demonstrate their sgath. Please, gather your sgath and offer it to Grienon through me. Would either of you prefer to go first?”

  “I’ll go first,” Oria said, ignoring Lonen’s muttered protest. Yes, she was giving Gallia time to sort herself, but she couldn’t do less. Even though Oria had focused on Lonen’s kiss, trying to ignore the pain of contact in favor of the surprisingly lovely tickle of his beard on her face, the shocking tender heat of his mouth—her sgath had relentlessly revealed how harshly Yar had kissed his new bride. Lonen was likely right that she should treat Gallia as the enemy, but her heart ached for her sister.

  And she was so very weary of having enemies.

  Also, this part at least came easily to her now. Accumulating sgath had never been the problem for her—quite the opposite. Until the night before when she’d completely depleted herself. For the most part, once she’d learned how to see and hold it comfortably, all those lessons on connecting it to a priest fell into place. Breathing in the clean, clear, and familiar magic of Bára, Sgatha’s gift, she let it well up into a serene pool, and presented it to Priest Vico. In the same way, the priestesses of the city had offered their collective sgath to the battle mages.

  Priest Vico sipped from it, then bowed in thanks, and spoke the ritual words. “A powerful gift, indeed. I thank you, priestess, for sharing with this humble priest.”

  Yar seethed, his grien energy sparking and swirling in her mind’s eye. Her own grien wanted to rise to battle it, but she restrained it. Soon enough. He nudged Gallia forward. “Show him. Gallia is the most powerful junior priestess of Lousá. She will make a great queen.”

  Perhaps so, but at that moment her sgath hung in a ragged mist. Oria choked back her sympathy for the woman as she tried to reach for Bára’s unfamiliar magic. It seemed to slip away from her the moment she reached for it, like a skittish kitten uncertain of a stranger and unwilling to be petted just yet. What she did manage to gather, the dark cavities of the journey’s strain devoured as quickly as she built it up. Yar was an idiot to have pushed her so fast. She finally pulled together enough to offer Priest Vico, who thanked her as he had Oria.

  “While Priestess Gallia’s sgath is present, Priestess Oria’s strength of sgath is far greater. This part goes to her and King Lonen.”

  Yar took Gallia’s arm, shaking her slightly as he spoke in an undertone to her. His grien lashed about her, but she appeared unmoved. Enviable hwil.

  “For the third part, the priests will demonstrate their grien,” Vico declared. “Please, focus your grien and release it according to your affinity, but in a way that all might observe, to please Sgatha. Would either of you—”

  “I might as well go.” Yar swaggered as he stepped forward. “As we know how this will end.”

  He raised his hands, his powerful grien streaming out. With careless effort, he drew from the stone of the chasm and the rock spires behind the temple’s towers, sculpting a column, then refining it.

  Into a statue of himself as king.

  Safe in the anonymity of her mask, Oria rolled her eyes at his hubris. She couldn’t stand by and allow him to take the throne. That had long been her resolve, but the day’s events—and seeing how he abused the woman he should cherish—only reinforced her certainty. Even if they lost this trial, she would find another way to defeat her brother.

  Not only for the Destrye, for Lonen, and for Bára, but for the good of the world.

  Yar twirled and bowed, making an insult of the demonstration. Priest Vico acknowledged his grien with the ritual words neutrally enough, but her brother’s accomplishment spoke volumes. Even among her family, even compared to their father the king, Yar’s gift had stood out in both its strength and his skill with it. If only he had something of Lonen’s character, he might be worthy of such power.

  As it was, the prospect of him with the rule of Bára and full access to the temple secrets soured her gut. She simply could not fail. The stakes were far too high.

  “King Lonen?” the priest invited.

  “Why bother?” Yar sounded bored. “He’s a mind-dead barbarian grunt. He has nothing to demonstrate. I’ve won. Two out of three.”

  “Not true,” Oria answered the challenge. She’d learned the value of magic well-faked. “The Destrye have magic of their own and King Lonen will demonstrate it.”

  “Oria, no,” Lonen urged in a low voice, his emotions anything but quiet. “It’s not worth the risk. We’ll find another way.”

  “I’m doing it,” she replied in an even tone. “Play along or you will have blown it for us before we’ve begun.”

  ~ 21 ~

  He wanted to fight her on it, but recognized the utter futility. Perhaps he’d been wrong in thinking—bragging even—that he possessed more stubbornness. Obstinacy or will, Oria had cultivated an ability to forge ahead regardless of the consequences to herself. And now her survival depended on him making a convincing show of working Destrye magic.

  His father and brothers must be howling with laughter as they watched from the Hall of Warriors. At least he provided entertainment for them. A Destrye pretending to be a sorcerer. If the poets didn’t write ballads proclaiming him a fool for taking a Báran sorceress to wife, they surely would for this fiasco.

  With no idea what he’d do—he should have realized Oria would insist on this reckless strategy and planned ahead—he unstrapped his battle axe and began swinging it in the basic training cycle, chanting a nonsense rhyme of Destrye children, which would hopefully sound like a magical incantation. More fodder for that future ballad.

  “Heya naya, frahm frahm frinny. Naya heya, frinnah say say.”

  He repeated it, moving the axe from hand to hand, adding in foot stomping as if he danced to Destrye drums. The sweep of Oria’s magic filtered through him, tingling as it had when she’d teased his cock with it, but passing through and to the laughable edifice Yar had created. It creaked and shivered, then burst with vines, twining and trailing with rapid growth. Huge indigo flower buds swelled, then burst in blossom. The vines turned woody, encasing and obscuring the sculpture’s lines until it was unrecognizable.

  Drawing the line there, lest Oria take it in her head to do more and even further risk exposing herself, Lonen set down his axe and wiped his brow.

  Priest Vico regarded him, surprise in the lines of his shoulders. “Bára will benefit from nature magic such as yours, King Lonen. I’ve never seen its like, not even in the temple annals. The Destrye appear to have secrets of their own. Both men have demonstrated the application of magic. While Prince Yar’s grien is more powerful and he demonstrated more refined skill with it, King Lonen’s is unique and much needed in this time of privation. This part goes to—”

  “Wait.” Yar held up a hand, regal command in his voice, all trace of the arrogant boy gone. “Oria, f
orfeit. Do it now or I will speak the truth of this.”

  Dread coiled in Lonen’s stomach. Yar did know, as Oria had feared, and he would use that knowledge to win. So be it. At least her brother had shown some filial compassion and given her an out.

  “I have no intention of forfeiting,” Oria replied, equally cool, devastating Lonen with the words. “The contest will be won fairly or not at all.”

  “Don’t make me do this.” Yar actually sounded human again. A boy not ready for the pressures he’d shouldered. “I don’t want your death. Forfeit.”

  Priest Vico looked between them. “Her death?”

  “Last chance, Oria. Forfeit or die.”

  Lonen turned to Oria, mentally urging her to do it with everything in him, speaking as loudly as he dared. “We’ll find another way, Oria. It’s not worth it. Take the out. Forfeit.”

  “Is that what you would do?” she replied under her breath. “You who stormed the walls of Bára by yourself? I think not. I refuse to be a coward.”

  No time to argue he’d not been entirely alone. “It’s not cowardice to retreat in the face of doom, to leave the field of battle to fight another day. You can’t fight him if you’re dead.”

  “He can’t prove anything,” she insisted. “It’s a bluff.”

  He couldn’t take the chance. Not with her life and not with the future of his people hanging in the balance. “I’m sorry to do this, but I can’t let you risk this.”

  “Don’t you dare!” she snarled, her magic whipping at him.

  He ignored her, raising his voice. “We forfeit.”

  But Priest Vico shook his head. “The contest is between Prince Yar and Princess Oria. Only they can forfeit. Do you wish to forfeit, Princess?”

  “No. Pronounce your determination.”

  “Very well, the contest goes to Queen Oria and her consort King Lonen. May you reign in—”

  “Remember that you forced my hand, Oria,” Yar cut through. “The grien is hers.” The words thudded flat into sudden, shocked silence.

  Priest Vico visibly floundered. “The… the what you say?”

  “The grien. It’s hers. She’s an abomination and should be executed as such. High Priestess Febe knew it and Oria killed her to keep the secret. Oria used it against me before today and like a sentimental fool I protected her and did not report it to the temple. I take full responsibility for my lapse.”

  “Ridiculous,” Oria sneered. “No woman can use grien. It’s not an abomination; it’s an impossibility.”

  “Examine her,” Yar told the priest. “If you look closely, you can see it in her. I can see it now. Revolting and against nature, but there.”

  Oria stiffened as Priest Vico approached her. “Forgive me, Princess, but temple law compels me to be certain that such an anomaly has not occurred.”

  Her previous confidence bled away, leaving fear behind. Much of it came from Lonen and she abruptly regretted her foolhardy bravado. If she failed this examination, she’d fail again to keep her word to aid the Destrye—and this time through her own actions.

  All because she simply could not force herself to swallow her pride and forfeit to Yar.

  “Can you help me?” she sent to Chuffta, fully aware she grasped at sand already blown away.

  “I don’t know how I can.” His mind-voice sounded afraid also. “Be still and serene as possible. Focus on sgath, bring that aspect up as strong as you can.”

  She did her best, silencing the frantic whispers of her oversensitized nerves that hadn’t at all settled from the stress of the compatibility test. Beating frantically against her ribs, her heart thrummed like a trapped jewelbird. Though Lonen tried to drown his emotions behind the image of that serene lake, his worry threaded toward her. She couldn’t think about him.

  Except that if she died, he’d at least be free to marry Natly and have a normal wife he could bed. No, that thought didn’t help because she wasn’t that generous. Lonen was her husband and she wanted to live, to keep him and see that lake for herself, to learn to swim in it.

  Besides, without her Yar’s Trom would kill them all. She had to win this. She was on the side of the good and right. Surely that meant something.

  It wasn’t fair that they’d lose because she couldn’t conceal a simple bit of magic. The silence stretched on. Then Priest Vico’s astonishment and deep regret flooded her senses.

  “Former priestess Oria,” he said at last, his voice hushed and hoarse. “You are disqualified from this contest. I must ask that you surrender your mask.”

  Gallia made a sound and Oria appreciated her new sister’s sympathy. Or perhaps it was revulsion. In the end, it likely didn’t matter. She tried to think of a solution, a defense, some way to extract herself from this, but came up with nothing nothing nothing.

  With fingers as numb as her brain, she fumbled at the ribbons, grateful when Lonen stepped up to undo the knots for her, his bedrock strength as steady as ever. Juli took the mask, her sgath curling in comforting tendrils. Vico accepted it from her and turned his back decisively on Oria.

  “King Yar and Queen Gallia, may you reign in peace,” he declared.

  Yar’s grien rocketed in bolts of triumph, lashing out to shiver over the stone statue of himself, fragments of stone sifting down and taking her leaves and blossoms with them. The cleaned stone stood starkly clean when he’d finished, its sterility an apt foreshadowing of their futures.

  “I only regret that my first action as king will be my sister’s execution.” He almost managed to sound sorry about it. “It’s your fault, Oria, for driving me to this.”

  “An ill omen to begin a new era,” Priest Vico noted, without emotion, his hwil perfect.

  “Is it?” Yar rounded on the priest, his voice and grien turned snarling. “You dare criticize me? I say it’s a good omen. We begin my reign on a fresh page, with Bára cleansed anew of the abominations perpetuated on our fair city. I will make Bára great again!”

  “Be careful, kingling,” Lonen ground out from just behind her shoulder. “You are still my subject, Bára belongs to Dru as Princess Oria belongs to me. I am the final law here and you will not gainsay me or I will bring devastation down upon you and destroy your city, great or not.”

  Oria nearly protested, but Lonen put a firm hand on her shoulder, and she subsided. He’d given her room to do what she thought best and she’d failed him. She owed him whatever steps he wished to take now.

  “Your words are but sand on the breeze,” Yar returned. “You have no idea of the power I wield, Destrye. Run home to your pitiful forests and ruined crops. Plant more. I’ll simply burn them again. I care not for your fate.”

  With a snarl of rage, Lonen stepped around her, axe at the ready. Yar met it with a blast of grien that made the Destrye stagger. Snapping out of her fog of stunned grief, Oria put herself between them, creating a wall of grien of her own to protect them.

  Yar clenched his fists and howled in frustration. “Gallia! Feed me sgath. We cannot allow this renegade abomination to escape.” He reached for her, but Gallia stepped back, releasing the sgath she’d replenished in the interim, sending it to Oria through a path so subtle only another woman would be able to detect it.

  “I’m sorry, my husband,” she answered in a thready voice, as if terribly weakened. “I hate to fail you, but I have nothing to offer. I cannot help.”

  Yar rounded on her, fist upraised, but she knelt in apology. Her mind-voice whispered into Oria’s, astonishing her. “Run, sister. Take your life and go. Survive outside the walls. Bára and Lousá await your return.”

  “That’s our cue.” Even as Lonen spoke the words, he swept Oria up, tossing her over his shoulder and taking off at a run, axe still in hand. Had she been able to appreciate the irony of it, she would have laughed at the image they must make. Straight out of the illustrations. Except for Chuffta faithfully winging behind them, fierce and ready to burn anyone who tried to stop them.

  “But where will we go?” she gasped, th
e words stuttering out with his pounding strides. Even in his haste, he carefully didn’t touch her skin. Survive outside the walls. Bára and Lousá await your return. Was it possible? Did she have any choice?

  “Anywhere but this place,” he snapped back. “Just hold the cursed wall so he can’t follow. You do your part, I’ll do mine.”

  It was, she supposed, what they’d agreed to all along.

  Look for the next book in this series – The Tides of Bára – coming September, 2016

  About Jeffe Kennedy

  Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook.

  Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves starting in May 2014 and book 1, The Mark of the Tala, received a starred Library Journal review was nominated for the RT Book of the Year while the sequel, The Tears of the Rose was nominated for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2014 and the third book, The Talon of the Hawk, won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2015. Two more books will follow in this world, beginning with The Pages of the Mind May 2016. A fifth series, the erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, started with Going Under, and was followed by Under His Touch and Under Contract.

  She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

  Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular SFF Seven blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Connor Goldsmith of Fuse Literary.