The Tides of Bára

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “Keep going!” Oria shouted at him. Sideways across his lap, she looked forward, her profile calm, intent, and still. Chuffta flew just above and to the left of them, guarding their undefended flank. He showed no signs of slowing.

  All right, then. Speaking of leaps of faith.

  They plunged straight for the gates, strong and firm in the shadowed arch. Guards stood to either side, not risking themselves beneath the warhorse’s thundering hooves, but ready to cut them down once they were trapped.

  The torch of Oria’s magic swelled in his breast, heating him from within. Ten horse-lengths away. Nine.

  “If you’re going to do something, do it now!” he shouted.

  Five lengths.

  Three.

  The bar lifted, sailing over the wall and the doors burst outward with a boom and flash, as if struck by lightning. Already under the arch of stone, they thundered through a rain of rocks and rubble. A shard clipped Chuffta’s wing and he screeched, bobbling in the air, but recovering. He shot ahead, a white projectile, into the blue sky above the sere plain beyond.

  Oria gasped and at first Lonen thought it was the wild magic taking its toll. Then he saw what had alarmed her—an old woman pulling a handcart, stopped in the middle of the road that ascended through the soft dunes from the gates of Bára. No way they could go off the paved road, the big horse would flounder in the deep sand and they’d be done for.

  Cueing the stallion, who responded with the ease of his perfect training, Lonen felt the steed’s muscles bunch, spring—and they sailed over the woman’s head, handcart and all—landing on the far side.

  Oria’s whooping laughter flew though the bright sunshine also. A welcome sound.

  A hopeful one.

  ~ 4 ~

  Lonen pressed on, not slowing their pace for some time, though the warhorse grew slick with sweat, his huge lungs working like the bellows of Bára’s glass forges.

  Hot as those blazing forges, too, with the afternoon sun beating mercilessly down on them.

  “The next time I plan an escape from a desert city,” he said aloud, “it’s going to be at night.”

  Oria didn’t reply and he didn’t expect her to. She’d lost consciousness not long after they’d left the walls of Bára behind. Though she sagged against him like a flower wilting without water, he kept talking to her, in case she could hear. For all he knew she hovered near death and he carried her dying body away from the only place that could save her.

  Except that they’d execute her first, he reminded himself. He’d made the only decision he could—no sense revisiting it. Oria always liked to accuse him of eternal optimism in the face of impossible odds. Then so be it, he’d hold on to the hope that she’d recover. Keeping his mind active helped preserve his own sanity and alertness, too. So as they rode onward, he worked the problem.

  He could add to lessons learned that in the future he’d actually plan the escape at all. Had he thought about it, he could have predicted the strong likelihood of things going this badly. Oria had speculated that Yar might know of her ability to wield grien magic—and had warned him the temple held such a thing to be anathema, punishable by death. If he hadn’t been so dazzled by her, so head-in-the-trees at being able to slake a bit of the obsessive lust she stirred in him, he might have taken some steps against the worst-case scenario. Supplies of water, for example. Or those potions Oria’s serving woman had brewed to restore her health after the wedding ceremony—those would have been incredibly handy to have along. Then he might have been able to do something to help her recover from the impacts of this magic.

  The only thing that kept him from despairing that she’d already died was the spark inside his heart where Oria’s flame remained lit, if weak and fluttering. Well, that and Chuffta, who’d long since folded himself into the space between Lonen and Oria, banding the skin of her wrist with his tail, and laying his cheek to hers. At the thought, Chuffta turned his head to angle one green eye at him, the translucent lid closing slowly from the bottom up, then descending again.

  It was almost as if the derkesthai winked at him in reassurance. Lonen would take it that way.

  Once away from the city, they passed very few other travelers. It was always this way, with not many willing—or foolhardy enough—to brave the drifting sands of the alkali desert to make the journey. After they turned off the road and in the direction of Dru, they encountered no one at all.

  Of course, around Bára itself, nothing thrived. When he’d traveled to the walled city only days before, full of violent thoughts of revenge and retribution, only he and the warhorse moving under the harsh blue sky, he’d entertained himself with the fancy that Bára had sucked the life out of everything surrounding her. The magic-wielders inside the walls wore elegant, colorful silks and dined on honey and exotic fruits, but they did so on the backs of the Destrye—draining the lakes of Dru, leaving her people starving or burnt to ashes.

  As desolate as the desert surrounding Bára.

  Now, against all probability, he carried Bára’s greatest treasure in his arms, and his heart was full of bewildered affection for the enemy he’d once thought he’d hated. He hadn’t expected to return to Dru with a foreign sorceress as his wife, but he’d hoped he would ride home with some chance of saving the Destrye from further Trom incursions. The Trom had caused their dragons to burn many of the Destrye’s crops and aqueducts, but Lonen’s people had saved some. If the Trom hadn’t returned in his absence, if Oria could prevent them from returning in the future, he supposed that hope still lived.

  As long as Oria did.

  He slowed the horse to a walk as they neared the Bay of Bára, where the bore tides left scars of salt on the baked soil and fine sand drifted in sere waves, a mockery of the distant sea. No one had pursued them, just as Oria predicted. But, though the sun lowered to the horizon, he’d vastly prefer to cross before resting, rather than be pinned between Bára and the treacherous mud. Just in case.

  Scowling at the sky, he looked for the moons. Sgatha hung low, swallowing the western horizon with her broad, rosy crescent. She’d remain there, in that phase, for weeks yet, finishing her steady, stately progress across the sky before sinking for the winter months. No sign of Grienon at all, which could change at any moment. The smaller, brighter moon rose and set several times a night, whirling through his phases, like a young man never satisfied to sit still for long.

  It made sense to him, that the Bárans associated female magic with Sgatha and male magic with mercurial, intense Grienon. And it bothered him to find any lucidity to the Bárans’ magic.

  Still, he had no idea how to calculate the ebb and flow of the bore tides. He reined the stallion up on a sharp rise overlooking the flat, expansive bay. A thin stream of water ran from what had once been a mighty river through the silt, connecting to the sea some leagues down. The crossing grew only more treacherous nearer the ocean—the Destrye scouts had learned that to their sorrow when they’d first approached Bára.

  The stream running through the middle—all that remained of the once great river that had formed the bay, now no more than a sad trickle that wouldn’t even qualify as a creek in Dru—had carved steep banks into the rocky ground beneath the sand. Occasional paths wended down firmer sections here and there, mostly worn by wildlife, though Lonen pitied any creature relegated to drinking from it. The water ran bitter and so brackish that it had immediately sickened the Destrye who’d tried it. Once the river must have been fresh water, carrying snowmelt and rainfall out of the stone mountains beyond Bára. Now, however, it had dried up along with all the land in the region, cursed by whatever force baked away all their rain. The salts and minerals in the soil saturated the pitiful stream, poisoning what flowed from the hills.

  The bore tides from the sea took care of the rest, infusing the channel with salt water, sometimes several times daily.

  One of his brother Arnon’s clever engineers had charted the flow of the tides when the Destrye army had crossed before. It
had to do with the moons and their phase, and how they combined their forces, male and female, sometimes fighting each other, sometimes working together. And just as difficult for the inexperienced to predict. It was too much to remember. Each time they’d needed to make the crossing Arnon had consulted the complicated charts the engineers had drawn up. Though Sgatha moved slowly and changed faces with similar stateliness, Grienon’s mad dashes across the sky, waxing and waning as he did, collided with her influence. They pushed and pulled the tides up and down the flat river channel. Sometimes the bore tide rushed in with thunderous certainty, flowing well past the crossing. Other times it aborted in mid-surge, turning back to the sea.

  Impossible for Lonen to figure alone.

  When he’d crossed on the way to Bára, he’d taken his chances. He’d been too consumed with anger over Oria’s supposed betrayal to care for his own life. He and his horse had run when they could, then trudged through the deeper silt when they couldn’t—the stallion sinking to his knees in places, even without Lonen’s additional weight, and Lonen to his hips. If the bore tide had caught them in those moments, he certainly would have died. The stallion, with his height, could likely wait out the shallow surge. Lonen had entertained a half-formed plan of climbing to the saddle in hopes of holding his head above water long enough to survive until the waters receded again.

  But Arill had watched over him and they’d crossed without incident.

  Carrying his precious burden, however, he could not cavalierly trust to luck—or Arill—again. Not twice in a row. Arill might cast her blessings according to her own wishes, but she rarely showered them twice in the same way. The man who hoped for the exact same extraordinary blessing was nothing more than a fool.

  He rarely wished for Arnon’s gift with math—and patience for calculating the arc of the moons’ passage, confirming the numbers with his engineers—but it would be convenient to trust in a skill at this point. Maybe two hours left before the sun set. Enough time to make the crossing, even if they got bogged down and had to go slowly. Far better than chancing it with less light, when he might not be able to spot the treacherous sinkholes. He glanced down at Oria, as if she might have suddenly recovered, offering some magical solution to the problem, as she had with the truly spectacular exploding open of the city gates.

  She’d said she had no idea what affinity her grien had, as she’d only recently discovered she possessed it and, as a woman, had naturally not been trained to use it. The Báran sorcerers used their magic in particular ways. Yar moved and molded stone. Others he’d seen in battle hurled fireballs or opened chasms in the earth. Or bringing golems to life.

  Oria, though—so far, besides blasting open the doors or smacking him with her grien, she’d brought blooming, fruiting life to dying plants. And grown vines out of stone at the trial. She’d also communicated with his horse, holding him still with a thought. Perhaps it wasn’t unreasonable to think she could hold back the tides.

  But her eyes remained stubbornly closed. The tracery of blue veins in her eyelids deepened to purple shadows around her eyes, her complexion like the thin, translucent skin between the concentric layers of a pungent root vegetable.

  She was dying in his arms. And he could do nothing to save her. Just as he’d been unable save Nolan from dying on the battlefield, or his father and Ion crumpling to boneless jelly before his eyes at the Trom’s lethal caress.

  And if they failed to return, he wouldn’t be able to prevent the Trom from destroying the Destrye utterly. The outcome that nearly everyone he loved had given their lives to prevent.

  Chuffta rustled his wings, catching Lonen’s attention. This time the derkesthai’s gaze held challenge. The dragonlet opened its narrow mouth, showing several rows of sharp teeth, lips drawing back as if in a grin—and a narrow lick of green flame shot out, singeing the skin on his hand that held the warhorse’s reins.

  “Hey!” The stallion jumped at his pained exclamation, lifting his head from his resting droop. Oria’s Familiar simply stared at him, unapologetic. “Yeah, yeah. Okay,” Lonen muttered. “No more self-pity.”

  They might as well just go for it and trust in Arill to keep generous. She had been thus far, after all.

  A distant roar rumbled through the air, shaking the ground beneath their feet with enough force to make the stallion dance in place. It sounded like a storm advancing at high speed, racing toward them. Grienon popped above the horizon, sailing through the sky, his blue-white face bright and full. As if drawn by a string, the bore tide followed.

  It arrived in a wall of deceptive froth, bright as the down of the geese the Destrye plucked for warm comforters, but with a crashing force that sent dust and silt flying upward, darkening the sky and turning the lowering sun bloodred. Within breaths the water filled the wide channel, brim to brim with tossing waves that quickly settled into a smooth, serene bay.

  Not unlike the lakes of Dru.

  And he and the horse had spent many a time swimming—both in training and play.

  Without giving himself a chance to hesitate longer, taking the event as a gift from Arill, he said to Chuffta. “Better take wing, man.” Oria’s Familiar disentangled himself from her and pushed into the sky with whuffing wing beats. Lonen signaled the warhorse to go. As unquestioningly as Buttercup had run for the closed doors of the gates of Bára, the stallion leapt.

  They plunged into the water, sinking briefly before the horse struck upward, swimming in mighty strokes. They could not have stood on the bottom and hoped to hold their heads above water. Never before had the water been deep enough to allow the horse to swim freely. If the water receded before they made it across, they would be mired in the fresh silt, possibly drowned in sinkholes. If they fell from the horse’s back, the stroking hooves would drag him and Oria under—a force even the most powerful swimmer would be hard pressed to escape.

  He wouldn’t let any of that happen. He held on with all his might, giving the warhorse his head, trusting in his training as Lonen had so many times, and concentrating on holding Oria’s face well clear of water. The initial dive had drenched her, but her chest rose and fell with regular breaths, if shallow ones.

  They surged on through the ephemeral sea.

  The crossing seemed to take forever. The sun lowered to the horizon; Chuffta flew overhead, a white sentinel in a red sky; Oria remained unmoving as death in his arms. And the stallion swam on, his breathing growing labored, shudders wracking his great body. Lonen could have swum on his own, but he had no way to ensure Oria wouldn’t drown, so he watched his great steed’s strength weaken, until he feared the warhorse would fail entirely.

  Silently he encouraged the horse, praying to Arill with everything in him, in a way he seldom ever did with any serious intent. He didn’t know how Oria had spoken to the stallion mind to mind—and he was only a mind-dead Destrye—but he focused on the brain between the pointed ears, imagining cool lakes and green mountain pastures for the steed, just as he’d learned to project those soothing places for Oria. Did it really matter that he called the animal by a name? Of course Oria would have had to pick that name out of his head. Buttercup, the teasing name he’d used to taunt the colt when he’d been an impatient, much younger man—and carelessly cruel as young men could be.

  “That all you got in you, Buttercup?” he’d said. “I should turn you out with the fillies, Buttercup.” Buttercup. Was it possible the young horse had heard and understood, perhaps thinking that his actual name? And here the warhorse had carried him so valiantly all these years. Lonen could have given him a name of strength, like Aloeus, Shajae, or Draevvon. But he hadn’t. He’d called him a scathing nickname and then nothing at all. Something you call him sometimes. He likes it.

  Well, then.

  “Good job, Buttercup.” He coughed a little, his throat full of salt and grit. But the warhorse seemed to prick up his ears, perhaps swim a little harder, so he tried again. “Buttercup, if you get us safely across and home, I’ll never coop you up in a s
hack again. You can run as you please, stuff yourself with hay and cover all the pretty mares that catch your eye.”

  The verdant fantasy sucked him in, too, and he indulged in imagining taking Oria to such a place. His favorite lake. They would picnic on the shore while Buttercup grazed and Chuffta fished in the glassy waters. He’d teach Oria to swim and then caress her soft, naked skin, making love to her in the water and again on the bank. She’d look glorious on the green grass, her hair spread beneath her like a blanket of hammered copper, outshining the sun.

  A thumping shocked him out of the dream. Again. Jarring him so he had to tighten his grip on Oria, hoping her soaked silk robes wouldn’t convey more of his damaging touch to her skin.

  Thump. Thump thump. Thump.

  Buttercup’s hooves hitting the bottom.

  Lonen peered through the deepening dusk, spotting the steep rise of the far bank, a darker silhouette against the deep violet sky. The warhorse’s hooves hit with more regularity now, struggling to find purchase on the shifting surface. To save the last of the stallion’s lagging strength, Lonen swung a leg over and slid off his back. Water briefly closed over his head, but he pushed up off the bottom, holding Oria high in his arms as he treaded water. Buttercup floundered to the shallows and climbed onto a flat rock, standing there, blowing out water, nose nearly touching the ground.

  Lonen found purchase with his boots, his own legs unsteady, but he managed to stand, beyond thankful that the warhorse had found a solid section of the bank. He was tempted to lay Oria down on the broad, flat rock, just so he could rest a moment. After just a bit of rest, he could continue.

  Something white hovered before him, twin green stars glowing. Chuffta. The Familiar gazed steadily at him, then his tail snaked down to curl around Lonen’s arm, tugging him forward.

  Right—it would be foolhardy to stay where they were. The waters had receded considerably, which meant the tide could return at any moment, according to its capricious schedule, and wash them all away.