The Sword (3 page)

“You attacked me, so you deserved it!” she shot back, struggling in his grip, though she was losing strength once again, as the momentary adrenaline caused by finally being understood faded out. “And I'm not drinking anything I don't know about!”

“It's a
translation
potion, you little idiot!” the man holding her all but roared, glaring down at her with steel-gray eyes. “How else would I be able to tell you you're an idiot?”

The other man asserted something as she struggled, energized by his roar. She still didn't understand a word. Or how the thick, now white “potion” could translate a damned thing. It had to be a trick!

“Put me down!”

“I'll put you down when you drink the gods-be-damned potion, woman!” he roared back. His younger brother, or cousin, or whatever, roared at him, too, a string of vituperative-sounding, liquid syllables. The bully holding her backed down. Scowled as he did so, but backed down. And muttered at her, “Just drink the damned potion, and then you can yell at
him
all you want.
He's
the one who brought you here.”

She eyed him. She eyed the other, younger man holding the potion. She eyed the goblet. She eyed the man holding her again. Maybe it wasn't a drug of some kind—
he
didn't seem to have been changed or altered by it. Kelly was weakened by her ordeals, but her sense of humor asserted itself for a moment through her exhaustion.

If he's still grumpy and aggravating after drinking it, it
has
to be perfectly safe. I think I'd be more suspicious if it had suddenly turned him kitten-sweet. So, in a way the other one picked the right guy to serve it to, if his intent was reassuring me of its contents…

Mouth quirking up on one side just a little, she sighed. “
Fine.
I'll drink the damned potion. But if you do anything to me I don't want you to, I'll bite off parts of you no woman should ever have to threaten to destroy. And that's
not
a threat,” she added as he frowned in confusion, blinked, and finally got her meaning with a bronzing flush on his lightly tanned cheeks. “That's a
fact.
So you'd better set me free right after I drink the damned stuff!”

He grunted, ignoring her threat with a nod to the other man. The cup came up to her lips. She resisted a moment, sniffing cautiously. It smelled like dandelion milk, with that greenish, bitterish aroma that spoke of lawns and summer days, and the never-ending battle between parents trying to eradicate the weed and kids nibbling on the stems and blowing on the tufted seeds to make a wish.

A cautious dip of her tongue into the liquid tingled her taste buds. It tasted even worse than the bitter dandelion juice she remembered vaguely from her childhood, because it tasted like someone had dumped in a tablespoon of pepper sauce and a hefty squirt of lemon juice, and maybe even some dishwashing soap. There was no sign of the leaf the other man had used, or any of the other ingredients she had glimpsed being added to the previously muddy brew. She could just see the smooth, milky white, bitter glop inside the white-glazed cup.

The goblet tipped a little more, forcing her to drink or be drowned. Gulping it down quickly, she struggled not to gag at the repellent combination of tastes. When the last of the thick liquid had been delivered, but for the amount coating the interior, the younger man removed the cup from her lips. He waited until she swallowed the last of it, working her tongue with a grimace to get the thick, coating of liquid off of it, then he spoke to her.

“Do you understand me now?”

A dizzying disorientation struck her ears, her head, and her mouth. Tingling on her tongue. Her ears buzzed for a moment, then everything settled and was still. “What?”

“I said, do you understand me now?” the younger of the two repeated.

And Kelly
knew
, watching his lips move, that he wasn't speaking in English. That unnerved her more than being shaken out of her version of reality and dropped into this one, and even more than waking up with the whole house on fire. “Y-yes, I—”

The man holding her dropped her. Not completely without care, since he dropped her legs first, but he barely allowed any time for her to settle her feet and get her balance before letting go of her upper half. “Good,” the slightly taller, loose-haired one asserted darkly. “Keep her away from me.”

He turned and strode away.

Kelly, torn between the two of them, turned to the nearer one for an explanation. “How the hell am I speaking…whatever this language is?”

“Magic,” the younger one with the goblet replied, with a casual shrug. Taking it for granted she would understand, or rather, accept the reply.

She had to accept his explanation. Nothing else made sense, not the change in location, the way they could speak her language so suddenly, and then she theirs…she just couldn't
take
it. Not on top of everything else that had happened to her.

“Ma—” she got as far as saying. Unfortunately, Kelly Doyle didn't finish the rest. She was too busy dropping in a dead faint, the second one in less than an hour, and the second one of her life.

 

J
inga's Balls!”

Saber stopped a yard beyond the workroom doorway and called back to his brother. “Watch your language! I may not want her here, but she
is
a woman!”

“Saber, could you please come back in here and pick her up again?”

Saber turned around, stalked back to the door, and leaned inside. “No,” he started to assert. And saw the reason why his brother had made the request. The woman was crumpled on the stone floor once again. His brother was leaning back against the worktable a couple of yards away, all but sitting on the worn stone surface and looking a little pale as well as sheened with sweat, which concerned Saber. “What happened?”

“She fainted. And I'm not feeling too good myself, either.”

Concern blanketed his irritation. Morganen was his brother after all, however irritating sometimes. “What is it?”

“Oh, nothing much…just two
major
spellcastings in one day, if you hadn't noticed. It wasn't easy, rescuing her from that fire so far away,” Morganen added, pinching his brow to avert the reaction-headache he was getting. “And then brewing and casting the Ultra Tongue, which just happens to be the hardest linguistics magic of all.”

Saber could see that his brother did look wan. But he didn't want to be any more involved than he'd already been. “I am not going to stand around, holding her all day!”

Morganen set the goblet on the worktable next to him. Sometimes his eldest brother could be a real pain in the potion. “Just pick her up, carry her to one of the empty guest rooms, and put her on a bed. Then tell someone to watch over her. I'd do it myself, but I think I'm going to have to sit here a little while longer. And don't forget to remind the others not to do anything with her…since you're so good at that.”

Saber gave his youngest sibling a dark look, but strode forward and crouched to pick up the woman again. For a moment her lashes fluttered, as he shifted her into his arms, giving him a glimpse of dazed blue green eyes, then she was limp and unresponsive again. He didn't have to hold her as tightly this time, but he did hold her close. She was a limp, uncooperative bundle, after all.

A bundle of skin and bones,
he thought as he mounted the steps two levels, muttered a spell to open the door, and close it again behind him, then headed along the protective outer wall that sheltered the grounds of the castle-like structure to the ramp that would let him walk into the nearest wing of the donjon.
One with very little flesh on her. She looks pale and worn. Starved.

He didn't want to wonder what kind of circumstances could drive her to such straits. Enemies, his brother had said. Her home and her livelihood lost to her enemies, suggesting the fire had been set deliberately…with her still asleep in the building, suggesting a murderous attack in the middle of the night. His arms cradled her a little closer unconsciously, as he traveled along the wing that was a part of two wings halfway out from the donjon at the center, and which joined into a single length the closer he got to the center and the great hall.

We may have lost our rightful home, and with it the right to call ourselves sons of the Corvis line, exiled instead to Nightfall Isle…but at least we have a roof over our heads. And our livelihood is now played out in fish and game, birds and fruits, and the occasional magical item exchanged for goods brought from the mainland by those who exiled us. Which is not much different from the estate food and livestock and the magical items we had been making and selling beforehand, so I suppose we have not really lost our livelihood…

No, I will
not
feel pity, or anything else for this woman
, he asserted to himself. He was the eldest son, after all, and the ancient Prophecy warned against an interest within him for bedding any chaste woman. To feel anything at all for the fairer sex risked the unnamed disaster that was fated to strike all of the continent of Katan.

Carrying her along the eastern hall of the cross-like outer wings of the donjon, Saber passed into the great, octagonal hall at the center of the ancient keep and turned to the right. From the floor a couple levels below, Evanor's silky tenor voice could be heard chanting some rhythmic song, pure and uplifting, more brilliant than the shafts of sunlight pouring through the stained glass windows set in the ordinal corners of the main building.

Skirting the chamber along the upper balcony, he entered the north wing and mounted the nearest set of stairs. There was only one room that was really far enough away from all of the brothers, for they had spread out throughout the sprawling keep and its outer wall towers, in finding each one's ideal bedchamber suite. The room he headed for now was the one they had dubbed the lord's chamber back when they had first been exiled here. That chamber was located directly above the vaulted ceiling of the great hall, well out of the normal path of anyone traveling through the wings of the mostly abandoned palace. The sheer remoteness of it would help keep her out of temptation's way.

She really weighed too little for her size; she needed to put on at least another twenty pounds, maybe thirty before she would look good. Saber tried not to think about it once he realized that, but it was like being told to not think about pink bears. One inevitably thought about rose-tinted ursinoids.

Mounting the steps that followed the curve of the vaulted ceiling when he reached the next floor, he headed up to the door and used a spare fingertip to press on the lever, nudging it open with his shoulder. It didn't budge very far, though it wasn't locked. An awkward swirl of his hand, his arms still burdened with the woman's weight, and an application of magical force opened the stiff, edge-warped panel.

Cobwebs hung here and there in the chamber, for the room had been pretty much untouched since they had explored it upon their arrival three years ago, and the whole keep had been abandoned for twenty or thirty years before that. No one lived on Nightfall Isle anymore, unless they were a royal or noble family in exile. Just like their own exile.

Naturally, no one had bothered to clean anything when the brothers had been all but tied up, carted across the Inner Sea, and dumped on the western shore with a pile of their belongings. And none of them had really bothered to clean up much of the castle since their arrival, including this remote, highest chamber. Even the bedding on the broad bed before him was visibly dusty.

Too dusty to set her on. Even if Koranen had done something to heal her lungs from any smoke inhalation or searing from her ordeal with fire, they would still be tender. Reaching the bench chest at the foot of the large poster bed, Saber balanced the limp woman on his arm and braced knee and concentrated.

A slow sweep of his hand, a mutter under his breath of one of the spells he and his brothers admittedly used less frequently than they probably should, and the dust and cobwebs slowly stripped away from the bedding. The neglected feather mattress, matching pillows, and woolen blankets fluffed as the spell drew dust out of their interiors, too, pulling it out and pushing it aside in a thickening wall of brownish gray.

Saber had plenty of power in his magic, more than many on the mainland of Katan, but his was more oriented toward the spells of war, offensive and defensive magics, not housekeeping ones. Still, their mother had taught a number of household cantrips to all eight of her sons the moment their powers had manifested. It had been her way of assigning punishments to her rambunctious sons.

It took concentration to open the nearest window on that side of the room and “sweep” the cloud of grime out, without dropping the woman, but he managed. Then, because he vaguely remembered women being squeamish about such things—namely, their mother, Annia, who had passed away nine years ago, when her youngest set of twins had been only fourteen and he and his twin were twenty—he added a rodent-insect-spider-repelling spell. Enough of those squeaked and chittered and buzzed out the window to make even his skin crawl a little, though at least none were dangerous. A fact for which Saber was thankful; they'd had plenty of other, not-so-pleasant infestations to contend with over the past three years as it was.