The Sword

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

SONG OF THE SONS OF DESTINY

I must thank my parents, Deni and Tom, without whom I would not exist. They probably won't ever read this book (it's not their cuppa), but they have encouraged me to write through the years. I definitely need to thank Stormi, AlexandraLynch, and NotSoSaintly, for their talents as beta-editors; these ladies are jewels! And, of course, I would like to thank the Mob of Irate Torch-Wielding Fans, for waving their torches in my direction to encourage me to write faster (and for obeying the local fire safety codes while doing so); Iulia, Marius, and Tibi, for their encouragements from afar; Cindy, for asking me if I had anything original I wanted to submit for publication; and JustJeanette, Piper, Stellarluna, Liz, Nylima, Longtail, Alienor, Okonchristy, Qestral, Seth, HD, Poobah, and Pern, for being my sounding boards. Plus Alienor again, and Jensthe Tubbles Jr., Milady Blue, and Daisy Jarvey for the errata-finding.

…If anyone is interested in joining the Mob of Irate Torch-Wielding Fans (and is eighteen years or older; sorry, but you have to be an adult to join), you can visit us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MolTWF.

Hugs,
Jean

W
hat have you done?”

“Who is this woman?”

“There's a
woman
in here?”

“Why is she here?”

“Dammit, Morg, you
know
the Curse! I don't care if the rest of us have it better, you
know
what Saber's gonna say!”

“Hey, I'm not too eager for my own part of the Curse! But shouldn't we listen to the brat? He
is
the most powerful of us.”

Morganen folded his arms across his chest and waited while the six of his seven brothers finished griping and grumbling. When they were all staring at him expectantly, silently, he finally spoke. The youngest of the eight, he was the most gifted of all their people, and they knew it; what they could do to him physically for this, he could do to them eight times over magically. It was simply his duty—his part of the Curse, after all—to see that, at the proper time and place, the whole thing was set in motion.
And so it begins…

“Koranen, if you'd get your head out of your cinders, you'd notice this woman has been badly burned. Since fire is your expertise, I suggest you start using your powers to heal her. And be circumspect,” he added as his twin eyed the lightly clad female sprawled unconscious at their feet. “She might be your sister-in-law soon. You don't want one of the rest of us beating the
trakk
out of you for impropriety if she turns out to be one of our Destined wives.”

The second youngest, Morganen's older twin, rolled his eyes and knelt by the woman lying in the middle of Morg's workroom. Sparks flickered up from his hands as his fingers began to glow, hovering mere inches over her singed flesh and clothes. Morganen looked away from his twin, up at the others in his workroom.

“As for the rest of you, I suggest we do everything we can to avoid Saber for a little while.”

“Why do you wish to avoid me?”

The remaining, unoccupied five brothers instantly clustered around the youngest two twins, in front of the body on the floor. Doing their best to shield it from their eldest brother's view, even Rydan moved, though he was the slowest to do so.

Saber fixed his eyes on his brothers. Each one was different in coloring, even though all eight had been born in four sets of twins. His steel grey eyes and honey blond hair were different from his twin's golden eyes and brown hair, though Wolfer had the same chest-length locks he bore. The next set of twins, Dominor and Evanor, were as different as night and day, for Dominor had blue eyes and dark brown hair, and Evanor had brown eyes and light blond hair.

The third set were also an unlikely pair: Trevan had coppery-strawberry hair and green eyes; Rydan had blue-black hair and eyes so dark he looked like the night personified…and it was odd that the light-shunning sixth son was there, given the midmorning hour, though he had probably come up through the basement passages linking all of the castle's outer towers to the main keep.

Koranen's rich auburn hair could barely be seen through the tangle of his brothers, his hazel eyes fixed on whatever the others were shielding. The youngest of all the twins, Morganen, stood on the far side of the group, arms folded defiantly across his chest, his light brown hair pulled back in a knot to keep it out of his way. The dark band of cloth keeping his hair out of his aquamarine eyes was visibly damp from whatever major magic working he had somehow managed to cast without Saber noticing. Reminding Saber for a moment that Morg was not a young man to tangle with, even if he was the youngest of the eight of them.

None of his seven brothers spoke, though Saber could sense Koranen doing something beyond that tangle of lower limbs. What it was, he couldn't tell…but something stuck out just a little beyond Evanor's calf. Something out of the ordinary. Saber glanced down and focused on it.

It was a foot. A small, bare foot. With a shapely, if soot-smeared, ankle. Not a bony one.

It was not a male foot.

His brothers were attempting to hide a woman from him, when women were strictly forbidden on Nightfall Isle.

It didn't take much effort to figure out how she had arrived on the island that the eight of them alone occupied. Since exiling the brothers to the isle, none of the mainlanders would even think of sending a woman, let alone allowing one to come here. Which left his youngest, sweat-sheened brother as the most likely culprit for her presence. If she couldn't arrive easily by physical means, then she had to have arrived by magical ones…and Morganen was the most powerful mage among them. He could easily cast some sort of transportational spell without Saber noticing.

And they were in Morganen's tower, after all.

“Morganen.” Saber held the eyes of his youngest brother, kindhearted but reckless, in his opinion. Dangerously reckless. “Send her back.
Now
.”

“I cannot.”

“I don't care what you think you can or cannot do—” Saber broke off in frustration.

Their siblings stood in the way, trapped awkwardly between the youngest and the eldest. Even the stoic, normally expressionless Rydan looked a little uncomfortable, as Morganen replied, “She will burn to death, if I do. Shall I send her back, only to hear her screams echoing through time and space for my effort? She has lost her home and her livelihood to her enemies, Saber. She has no family to go to, no one to turn to, no sanctuary to hide in but here.”

Saber threw his hand at the brother-shrouded figure on the ground. “Her presence could threaten the end of Katani civilization! Isn't it enough that we have been condemned simply for being born the Eight Brothers? Do you want more? Should I kill myself so the Song cannot come true, just so you can have a woman living on this island?”

None of the others answered him. No one dared look at him, whose verse in the Song was the most threatening. Save Morganen, who dared quite a lot, sometimes.

“Would you condemn her out of your fears as surely as the others have condemned us out of theirs?” the youngest countered calmly, if pointedly.

“Send her back,” Saber growled, disliking the comparison. “For her
own
safety.”

“She will die.”

“Send her elsewhere, then!”

“She has nowhere else to go, right now. Like us. At least, not until I can scry for a safe place to send her.”

Saber wasn't a cruel man. He could smell the odor of soot and char in the air. He also knew his second youngest brother was finishing the healing of the damage that distant fire had done. And he knew his youngest sibling wouldn't have risked the Curse of the Eight for anything less than a life-or-death need for the woman in question. “Then keep her away from me. She may stay,
temporarily
…but
only
if you find a place for her to go. Quickly. And keep her out of view of the merchant ships!”

The others scattered, none wanting to claim responsibility. Even Koranen fled a few moments later, as soon as his work was done. Leaving Saber alone in the stone-lined workroom with the unmovable Morganen. And the woman.

He really didn't want to look at her, though he did anyway. It was his duty as the eldest to know all of the dangers to their family and do what he could to remove or to minimize them. Having a woman on the island wasn't exactly minimizing their difficulties. Dangerous though it was, Saber needed to know exactly what he and his brothers had to face, ever since they had been exiled to Nightfall three years ago…when the meddlesome Morganen's powers had come into full strength and sealed the interpretation of the Curse of the Eight on all of their heads, by the will of the High Council of Mages of Katan.

Reluctantly, warily, Saber glanced down again; this time, there was no one between him and the figure on the floor to block his view of her. The woman was breathing unsteadily, as if caught in a nightmare. Here and there, her skin was flushed pink from Koranen's healing efforts. One set of fingers was curled in a fist near her head, and her strawberry blond hair still looked a little singed in places.

She was clad in loose, striped trousers, light blue and white, with some kind of matching, buttoned tunic that covered her from throat to wrists. It, too, was singed and blackened, and bits of her skin showed through, mainly the reddish-pink patches that would fade back to freckled pale like the rest of her flesh in barely a week or two. Koranen had done his usual good job of healing her burns, from the look of things. Nothing indecent was exposed, but she was restless, and there was a patch of striped fabric missing on her ribs that threatened to shift higher with each twitch.

Against his will, Saber moved closer. He watched that brow furrow, that strawberry mouth tighten, could see those fingers whiten as her muscles twitched and tensed. She was lean, not overly curvaceous…and she was beautiful, despite the fading burns and soot and the odd clothes on her body.

Morganen watched his brother, careful to conceal any signs of satisfaction from his expression and posture; he was younger than the rest of them, but no fool. Any moment now, the temporary sleep spell he had placed on the hysterical woman—her screams had summoned his other brothers, and belatedly their eldest—would wear off. Any second now, she would wake up and start their Destined fates rolling.

Her brow pinched, her teeth sinking into her lower lip.

“Is she in pain?” Saber murmured, as she twitched and whimpered, unable to help himself.

“She was badly burned,” Morganen confided, equally quiet. “Her home was collapsing around her; she was trapped in her bedroom, awakened too late in the fire to save herself. Part of the roof collapsed on her; that was what woke her up, I think. I do not think she has any broken bones, but my twin only had time to heal the damage done by the flames; not her bruises, nor her memories. Just the burns she has suffered, though that is more than enough, for now. His skill with burns is something all of us have been thankful for at one point or another, living with him.”

“Why is she not awake now?” Saber demanded under his breath, looking up at his brother from where he had crouched near the woman. Careful to not speak too loud.

Morganen didn't let any of his satisfaction show. Three years without a woman, and his twenty-nine-year-old brother was drawn to her even more than any of the other siblings. Morganen had studied this woman long and carefully to make certain she would be perfect for Saber. “I think she is still caught up in the nightmare of her near-death. Such a trauma requires comforting, to ease its pain.”

Saber snorted and rose. “She can comfort hersel—”

The woman jerked and screamed even as Saber moved, scrabbling to get herself at least somewhat upright. She ended up twisting onto her knees, slapping at her flesh, at her hair and clothes, screaming repeatedly…The harsh yells trailed off quickly, as her eyes finally registered the real world around her, not the nightmarish one she had apparently been reliving.

Her breath caught as she stared at the border of white marble and light, at the granite stone floor under her palms, the stone walls lined with glass-fronted stone shelves that were stuffed with books. She turned to look around her. At the sight of Morganen less than a body-length from her, she shrieked again, throwing herself back and away from the unexpected, too-close apparition, and scrambled to her feet.

That made her stagger right into Saber. He caught her to keep both of them from being knocked over. She yelled something and whirled on him, thumping and tugging and doing
something
as she hollered that yanked him right off his feet and flung him roughly over her hip and onto the floor, as if he weighed less than a sack of flour.

A different noise broke through her unintelligible yells. Morganen, shoulders quaking, cheeks reddening, laughed breathlessly hard at the sight of his brother sprawled and stunned on the floor. Flushing from something entirely other than laughter, Saber shoved himself upright, ignoring the woman as he stalked his brother.

A shouted demand cut through Saber's determination to make his brother pay for laughing at his unexpected humiliation. Both men turned toward the cause of the unwarranted mirth. She was yanking down her scorched tunic and rattling off a babble of completely foreign words.

Saber looked at his shorter brother, frowning in confusion. “She doesn't speak Katani?”

Letting out a sigh, mouth still tempted to twitch up at the corners, Morganen shook his head. “Nor any language I know of. I saw her peril while I was scrying in distant realms—Jinga! Quick, catch her!”

Saber spun around in time to see the woman edging toward the workroom door. She saw that her movement had been spotted and whirled for the hall beyond. “Catch her?”

“
Catch
her!” Morganen repeated. “I'll have to give her a translation potion, and I obviously can't do it with a moving target!”

Letting out a sound of disgust, Saber loped after the woman. Visions of chaining the woman in the dungeon of the ancient palace they resided in danced through his head, as he spotted a bare foot scrabbling up the staircase at the end of the hall. Racing up the stairs after her, he saw her dart off at the first landing and followed, pleased with her mistake.