Oria adjusted the fur-wrapped bundle of the sleeping Chuffta. One of Vycayla’s many assistants had contrived the sling from the ones women used for carrying recently delivered infants home again. It looped over her shoulders and kept him safely cuddled against her under her fur cloak, while leaving her hands free.
And, thanks to the successful negotiation with Lonen, she now had the mask to use at her discretion—though for now she kept it safely wrapped in its own bag. Time enough to answer its dark siren call. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? That she could bide her time before tasting the powerful rush of that magic again. Her arguments had been sound and logical or she wouldn’t have been able to convince Lonen. He was far more rational than she was, especially about the mask.
She had to learn to use it. So much better this way, that Lonen had agreed.
He stood off to the side, speaking with Vycayla, so Oria checked on Chuffta—for the umpteenth time—parting the furs to peek at him. He did look so much better. Vycayla had splinted his wings and stitched up the bites, bandaging him in places. She’d worked her healing magic on him, too, so that he wasn’t even bruised. He might be only sleeping, if not for the utter lack of his presence in her mind.
She couldn’t think about that too closely, as scrutinizing that aching empty hole sent flutters of panic through her. The evening before, when she’d found herself alone—and acutely lonely—she’d distracted herself with the mask. Then, when Lonen took it from her, she’d distracted herself with him. Fortunately sex with Lonen worked nearly as well, almost as hypnotically seductive as the mask’s magic.
“Farewell, Oria,” Vycayla called. “Swift journeys and may Arill bless your endeavors.”
Oria lifted a gloved hand in acknowledgement. It was a graceful and generous thing to say, but Oria couldn’t yet shed the fury over Vycayla callously suggesting she replace Chuffta with another derkesthai. She’d nearly suggested Vycayla replace her dead son with another, but had bit back those cruel words.
Vycayla didn’t understand. None of the Destrye could, really, and Oria had to remind herself of that reality. Even in Bára, no one else had been paired with a derkesthai Familiar in generations, not since Oria’s great-grandmother. Oria only received Chuffta because her mother had journeyed to a colony when Oria turned seven. Queen Rhianna had recognized Oria’s unusual sensitivity to magic and had known her precocious daughter would need a Familiar to help her through the difficult trials life would hold for her—as Rhianna’s own grandmother had.
Oria frowned to herself, thinking back as Lonen embraced Vycayla. Queen Rhianna had said something more before Oria and Lonen fled Bára, something about how Oria would need Chuffta’s help in other ways—much as Lonen had said when he lied to his mother about the duel.
Maybe it hadn’t been such an untruth. Of everyone around her, Lonen understood her relationship with—and dependence on—Chuffta better than anyone. That was part of why she’d made the concession on him controlling the mask, because her husband did love her. He was risking reclaiming his throne to help her with Chuffta, after all.
She’d simply have to give her utmost to do the same for him. They would make it back in time, he’d win the duel, and then she’d give everything she had to securing Dru and the Destrye for him. Even if it killed her.
Using the mask very well might, but it would be worth it. That part she wouldn’t tell him, however.
Lonen mounted behind her. “Buttercup looks sound. How’s he feeling?”
She patted the warhorse’s shoulder and he pranced in place. “Like a foal again, he says.”
Lonen laughed. “I thought he doesn’t use words.”
“He doesn’t. I’m approximating the translation.” She glanced over her shoulder at him, always happy to hear his laughter. So she caught his change of expression as he focused past her.
Turning to see what struck him so, she took in the six women in battle gear like Lonen had worn back in the attack on Bára, riding horses laden with packs and weapons. The one leading, with black curling hair in braids on each side of her head, and snapping dark eyes, bowed in the saddle. “Your Highnesses.”
“What is this, Alyx?” Lonen asked.
“We’re your escort and honor guard,” she replied very seriously. “Lest you be outnumbered by the wildlife again,” she added, a cheeky sparkle in her eyes.
“You humble me,” he said in a dry tone.
Alyx sobered. “With all due respect, my king, my queen,” she nodded to Oria, seeming to mean it, “we’re all volunteers, committed to seeing you healthy and ruling Dru, no matter what you may face.”
“I suppose you do have a personal stake,” he observed.
They inclined their heads. “That’s how it should be, yes?” Alyx replied. “We give our all to support the crown that supports us and who we are.”
Wondering what prompted all that—and the women’s emotions, riding so high and full of fervor, she sensed it from that distance—and raised a brow at Lonen.
“I’ll explain later,” he muttered. “Then let’s be off. The wolves await!”
Having the women warriors along turned out to be both a blessing and a hindrance. Lonen relaxed some of his tense vigilance, no longer solely in charge of their safety. Oria couldn’t openly handle the mask, knowing without discussing it that Lonen preferred to keep the existence of the mask, and their possession of it, a secret. They couldn’t banter with each other, but also they couldn’t argue.
And Oria could discreetly experiment with grien without Lonen interrogating her.
Communing with the mask reminded her in some ways of touching the vast pool of sgath the priestesses had generated back in Bára. Oria had grown up in constant contact with it, so that sgath had been familiar, even soothing. Each of Bára’s sister cities had their own reserves of sgath, pulled from the wild magic and made coherent by the meditative efforts of that city’s priestesses. Oria had been forced to flee before ascending to the ranks where the arcane process was taught, but it involved the application of hwil, to remove the taint of emotion, of the violence of nature, to purify the magic for consumption by the priests.
Naturally, Oria knew even less about how the men wielded their grien magic. They took in the sgath—unable to produce it on their own—and transformed it into active magic according to their own skills and natural talents. Each priest employed his grien magic in a preferred modality, whether manifesting earthquakes or fireballs.
Or creating golems to attack their neighbors.
As a woman, Oria shouldn’t have been able to manifest grien. When the temple discovered she could, even though she’d legitimately beaten her brother Yar in her own duel for the throne, they’d declared her a monster, anathema, and exiled her.
However, as Chuffta had pointed out, why would the temple outlaw something that wasn’t possible? Clearly a woman could wield grien magic, like a man could, because Oria did. Whoever had created that law must’ve known of the possibility, but considered the ability a dangerous one. Even more than summoning the devastatingly powerful and destructive Trom, as Yar had done. Difficult to believe, as that summoning corrupted Yar visibly from his first attempt.
She shivered at the memory of Yar’s eyes turning matte black like the Trom’s. He’d tried to hide them behind his priest’s mask, but she’d seen them. Just as she’d seen herself in nightmares, with the same inhuman gaze.
That wouldn’t happen to her, though, as she’d never summon the vile Trom—or touch that magic in any way. Oria was different, and she’d trust to that difference to protect her. Or did that difference doom her? Her mother had asked the derkesthai for a volunteer to be her daughter’s Familiar because of her unusual nature. The Trom had known something about her, calling her Ponen, an old word that meant potential, her mother had explained. But potential for what?
Corruption, certainly. The mask held that, too. When she’d first touched it, back at the tomb, the magic stored in the artifact had felt inert, motionless as a frozen river. But like ice melting in proximity to warmth, the mask’s magic had thawed over the last day in her possession. More and more it seemed to reach out to her, begging to be used.
Wanting to be worn.
She would only wear it as a last resort, however. Not only because Lonen would loathe seeing it on her—and very possibly do something extreme, like try to destroy it. She also wasn’t sure what it would do to her to actually wear it. No, she’d save it for the point of no return, because every instinct in her screamed that once she took that step, there would be no coming back from it.
You’ve taken not one, but several steps farther down your path, the Trom had said to her in a dream so real she’d nearly suffocated before Lonen managed to wake her. That warning no doubt reinforced the fatalistic sense that she wouldn’t come back from this course of action.
One thing was certain: she had only herself in this. No one could teach her. She’d have to learn through trial—and hope the errors didn’t destroy her.
At least, not before she destroyed Yar.
Thinking back through all she knew about magic—male and female—and what she’d learned about using her own, she slipped one finger inside the bag, not touching the polished metal directly, but over the layers Lonen had wrapped it in. Missing nothing, Lonen threaded his arm inside her cloak, winding it securely around her waist—not for support so much as to remind her that he’d been paying attention would be watching her closely.
Fine. Spinning her resentment into gratitude would be an exercise, like transmuting sgath into grien.
Before, when she’d opened herself to the mask’s magic, it had overwhelmed her, like the bore tides of Bára, coming in an unstoppable rush, so fast that a horse couldn’t outrun the drowning waves. That would be the first step, to manage the flow and control it. Even if that seemed as unlikely as standing before a tidal wave and holding up her hands, asking it politely to stay back.
Intention mattered. Her mother had always said that, as had her teachers. What people believe becomes real. Don’t put attention on a result you do not want.
So instead of seeing the mask’s magic as an irresistible wave, she pictured it as a slow trickle, a soothing sip of water from a cup. Carefully, she drank from the mental glass.
“Ouch!” Oria batted at Lonen’s hand, pinching a fold of skin at her hip painfully.
“Had to bring you back,” he explained in a rough voice, changing his grip to a soothing caress over the likely bruised skin.
“By pinching me?”
“You didn’t answer when I spoke to you and I didn’t want to alert our companions that anything was amiss,” he explained quietly in her ear.
Up ahead, Alyx led the way, scanning the forest while two other women behind her chatted amiably. Another pair rode behind Buttercup, with the sixth woman at the rear.
Oria sighed. “I see your point. How long was I unresponsive?”
“That I could discern, about fifteen minutes.”
And it had felt like only seconds to her. All right then, a drop of water, rather than a sip. “I’ll see if I can sample a smaller amount of the magic.”
“Oria…”
“Lonen. Look, no blood.” She showed him her face, smiling.
He sighed heavily, his chest rising and falling against her back. “Point taken. Go ahead. But I don’t like this.”
“You’ll like it when Dru and the Destrye are safe.”
“Not without you,” he muttered, but said nothing more, so she let it go.
Once again, she opened her magical senses to the mask, but this time imagining tasting the smallest drop, like the jewelbirds delicately sampling the blossoms on her rooftop back in Bára, before the garden dried up and blew away. At the same time, she did her best to keep awareness of the physical world around her. The low conversation of the women warriors, the crunch of horse hooves on the snow, the scent of mountain air and the soap Lonen had used, his arm warm and strong around her waist and Chuffta a soft weight in the sling around her neck. She kept her eyes closed, the better to focus on the image of sipping that sweet magical nectar—neither sgath nor wild magic, but something else entirely, nourishing and invigorating.
It filled her with a vitality she hadn’t felt since leaving Bára—and very carefully she closed off contact again. “How was that?” she asked.
“I didn’t notice anything,” Lonen replied carefully. “I didn’t try to talk to you, but you didn’t go inert either, like you did before.”
“Good.” Excellent, really. “Now I’m going to try something.”
“What will you do?” he sounded wary.
She didn’t know. “I want to see if I can do something with it.”
“Grien magic?”
“Yes—and no. The mask magic isn’t exactly sgath, so I’m thinking the active aspect won’t be exactly grien. Does that make sense?”
She felt him nod slowly. “Sure.”
Something in his tone made her laugh. “You mean, as much as anything to do with Báran magic makes sense?”
He shifted around her, his breath warm against her temple. “You make sense, my sexy sorceress. That’s all that matters.” Then he murmured several naughty suggestions for how she might use her magic.
Blushing, she cast a glance at the women riding in front of them, though she and Lonen had been speaking too quietly for them to overhear. It said something, that she worried more about them hearing Lonen’s flirtations than their discussion of magic.
And yet… he provided a sort of balance to her efforts. The earthiness of Lonen’s strong body wrapped around her, along with the vivid images of what they could do together, helped to ground her in the face of the out-of-body disconnectedness the mask’s magic created. It helped anchor her in that flood of enticing power. Maybe he’d been right to push her to share this experimentation with him—though he couldn’t possibly have predicted this.
“I was thinking something more applicable to, say, dueling or battling the Trom,” she informed him tartly, wriggling to back him off.
Lonen laughed amiably and gave her room. “I like my idea better, but go ahead. Just try not to startle the horses.”
Wouldn’t that be wonderful? She could panic their little caravan and send them in all directions, possibly off the precipice to their deaths. Biting her lip, she hummed in uncertainty.
“Don’t worry so much,” Lonen said in her ear. “I was just lightening the mood. These are all well-trained horses that won’t panic easily. And it’s good for you to learn to project magic away from your own people, right? Think of it as an exercise in that kind of control, too.”
She nodded, somewhat reassured, though not completely. It would be ideal to practice where she couldn’t hurt anyone, but then all of her attempts to use her magic—all her life—had been fraught with difficulty. She would never have the ideal situation she’d once dreamed of, some perfect day when she’d have easy mastery of hwil, receive her own mask certifying her as a real priestess, and then be admitted to some vast trove of information that would enable her to know everything and resolve all her doubts forever.
It had been a childish idea of what being a priestess would be like. Somewhere along the way—starting with the realization that no one understood what hwil should feel like any better than she did—she’d begun to understand that the powerful sorcerers and sorceresses of Bára were making things up as they went along. No one lived free of doubts and no one possessed all the answers.
Magic came from the world around them, a force as powerful as drought or blizzards or bore tides… or packs of wolves. Maybe it wasn’t reasonable to think about controlling the world, forcing it into obedience. Yar saw things that way, and she would do everything not to follow his example. She might instead work with nature, coaxing it along and directing the course of things.
The sorcerers had loved to use grien in loud and destructive ways—but they were men and that fit with how they did most everything. She hadn’t grown up with three brothers not understanding that much.
Oria had used her own grien in various ways back in Bára, when she’d been replete with magic—blasting doors open and creating a physical “touch” that affected Lonen. Thus his salacious suggestions. But she’d also brought blooming, fruiting life to dying plants. And grown vines out of stone at the trials. She could communicate with Buttercup and sense thoughts and emotions from people. And Lonen had said she’d made the forest inhale, then blown the wolves over.
“Oria?” Lonen stroked her arm.
“Yes.”
“Just checking.”
She laughed. “Thinking, not disappearing.” She focused on the trees lining the path, how they felt to her. Back in Arill City, she’d held a leaf and sensed the life force in it, its connectedness to the tree it had fallen from, and to the trees that had been its neighbors, the forest overall. Holding that feeling in her mind, she poured a bit of magic into it, imagining a tree up ahead shrugging off its blanket of snow.
Unfortunately, she did startle the horses. At least, Alyx’s steed jumped, then danced sideways, ears pointed at the tree that suddenly dropped snow, whoomfing down and sending sparkles of ice through the air.
All of the fighters had their weapons in hand and pointed at the tree and the area around it, warily searching for the cause of the disturbance. All except Lonen, who laughed silently behind her, shaking as he muffled the sound.
When their escort decided no imminent danger presented itself, they moved on. “Well done,” Lonen murmured. “It will be very useful to dump snow on the heads of our enemies.”
“Don’t sweep sand at me,” she hissed back. “I wanted something small.”
“I know, love. I’m just teasing.”
“I know.” And she smiled, well pleased with herself. It had worked just as she’d envisioned. A small feat, yes, but also neatly controlled—nearly unprecedented for her. Shaking the tree had only required a bit of magic, too, so she needn’t sip more. That would be her protocol for herself: maintain her magical stores without overloading, and apply active magic with precision.
She began to believe they might triumph after all.