Black Harvest

by M. C. Planck

  A professional joke. What she always said at the end of every movie. Bizarrely, he remembered that they had been waiting on a sequel to some popular show. He couldn’t even recall the premise of the show now. The very concept of caring about imaginary drama seemed hard to credit.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, holding her tight. Memories surged and clashed within him, watching sword fights on the big screen, wielding a sword in a war zone. The sight of fake blood; the smell of real.

  She kissed him again. “Let’s not waste the dream.” After a moment, she pulled back and reached up to his face. “Why is your nose straight? How shallow am I, to change you in my memories?” She ran her hand lightly along his face. Then down to his arms, tapping at his hardened biceps, her eyes crinkling and the edges of her mouth turning up. “So much shallower than I ever realized.”

  “Oh. Right.” He had forgotten. It seemed unfair that he should look like a twenty-year-old when she didn’t. Light headed with anticipation, he cast the regeneration spell and held her while she coughed up her fillings.

  “What the hell was that?” she asked.

  “Look,” he said, grinning like a schoolboy, and led her to the mirror. Treywan had kept it as a status symbol to show how rich he was; Christopher kept it because it served as a useful focus for casting scrying spells.

  She ran her fingers through her freshly shining red hair and stared. “Alright. No roots, even. This dream is picking up.” Unselfconsciously, she pulled at the nightgown and it fell off, crumpling at her feet.

  Christopher caught his breath. All of his conflicted thoughts faded to obscurity, banished by the light in front of him.

  Maggie turned and preened in the mirror. “I haven’t looked like this for twenty years. At least I am an equal opportunity objectifier.” He went over to her, reaching out.

  “Your turn,” she said. It took a little more effort to get him out of his court clothes.

  She stared at him with wide eyes. He had to confess the truth. “I never looked like this before. Life here isn’t comfortable and easy.”

  “Everything good is always hard.” Something else she often said, although in wildly differing contexts. Wearing only a wicked smile, she stepped into his arms again, warm and soft.

  “I have to warn you,” he said as they stumbled together to the bed. “You might be in for a bit of a surprise. The first time, at least.”

  The regeneration spell was always a bit too thorough.

  21

  AU REVOIR

  “Aiieeee!”

  The shriek snapped him awake. He bolted upright, reaching for his sword. It was missing from its usual place. At the far end of the room, a beautiful redheaded woman was standing in front of the mirror, screaming.

  “Maggie,” he said, “please stop screaming.”

  She whirled to face him. “What did you do to me? Who are you really?”

  “It’s okay. I can explain everything. Just calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down,” she snapped, but at a normal volume.

  The door exploded, crashing inward in splinters. Six armored men burst through, swords drawn and shields raised.

  Maggie shrieked again, covering herself with her hands.

  “Oh,” Gregor said. “My apologies. We . . .” The blue knight thought better of continuing. He turned around. “Get out!” he ordered the men who had come in with him. The squad retreated, one of the men gamely trying to lean the largest remaining part of the door upright. It fell over and broke into three pieces.

  Christopher got out of bed. He picked up his cloak and went to wrap it around her.

  She shrank back at his approach, stopping him halfway.

  “Why am I still asleep? I woke up, but I’m still in the dream.”

  The obvious terror on her face stabbed at him. “It’s not a dream.” He hadn’t been thinking. She had to deal with not only transdimensional travel but magic at all once. He had struggled with waking up not in his own bed; his discovery of magic had caused him to demolish a cord of wood.

  “It’s not a dream,” he repeated lamely. “I fell through a gate. This place has magic. It took me five years to get enough power to reach you.” He held out the cloak like a peace offering.

  She took the cloak from him and wrapped herself in it, hiding.

  He winced. “It has been five years, right?” He wasn’t entirely sure time passed at the same rate on both planets.

  She was weeping now. “So long. Why were you gone so long?”

  He went back to the wardrobe and got another cloak for himself. “I told you. Life here is not easy.” The castle was always cold, even in summer.

  “Then why did you bring me here? Why didn’t you just come home?”

  The words bit at him. “I couldn’t leave. I just . . . couldn’t. I can send you home, though. Anytime you want to go.”

  “Will you come with me?” She looked up at him, and his will almost dissolved.

  “Not yet. There’s still something I have to do here. But it doesn’t matter. You can come and go as you please.”

  She gave him that look, the one she did when something he said didn’t add up. Accountants were always good at that, keeping track and balancing the books. He loved it about her; it kept him honest. “If it’s so easy, why did it take so long?”

  Hmm. How to explain rank? “I had to gain access to the controls.”

  “Show me.” She turned to where her bedroom had been the night before, which was now the shattered door. “Do it again.”

  He had never been able to pull one over on her. She called bluffs like a fish breathed water. “It needs a day to recharge,” he admitted. “I have to wait . . .” He wasn’t actually sure how long he had to wait. There were no windows in the royal suite, situated as it was deep in the heart of the castle, and he hadn’t invented clocks yet. He was starving, though. They had been in here quite a while. “Dogs, but I’m hungry. Are you hungry? Can we go get something to eat?”

  She frowned at him. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

  As if by magic, Lalania appeared in the doorway, her face staring at the floor. She curtsied low. “If it please you, my lady, I am at your service.”

  Maggie frowned harder, and Christopher shuddered at the bullet he had dodged. Explaining Lalania now would be difficult enough; doing it last night would have been disastrous.

  “Why is that woman speaking Norwegian?” Maggie asked.

  “Oh. Right.” Christopher stepped over to Maggie and reached out his hand. She watched warily but did not retreat this time. He touched her face, casting the spell that granted understanding of all spoken and written speech. He lingered over her lips, remembering the night before.

  “I love you,” he said, in the local language.

  She stared at him. “I understood you. But your mouth didn’t match the words.”

  Another problem. Marcius had granted him command of the language as part of his rank. He wasn’t sure how to do the same for Maggie. On the other hand, the answer would almost certainly be magic, and there was very little magic denied to him now.

  “We’ll fix it later,” he said. “Lala, can you get Maggie some clothes?”

  Lalania tipped her head lower. “With pleasure.” She whistled, and half a dozen serving women tumbled into the room, stumbling over the broken door. They were carrying dresses and shoes and looks of anticipation, eager to meet the woman who had held Christopher’s loyalty for so many years. One of the serving girls was Helga, temporarily demoted from head cook to lady’s maid. He counted himself lucky that Fae was not among them.

  “Please forgive our lack of preparation,” Lalania continued. “Saint Christopher’s service has not accustomed us to the presence of a woman.”

  “He’s no saint,” Maggie said instantly.

  Lalania looked up for the first time, studying Maggie’s face. “My lady, by the terms of our world, he is that and more.”

  “And I’m no lady,” Maggie answere
d. “Why are you talking like that? Norway abolished nobility two hundred years ago.”

  Lalania’s face faltered, and Christopher laughed out loud. Anyone who could make the bard doubt herself was a force to be reckoned with. He would have fallen in love with Maggie all over again except that he had never stopped.

  “They’ve forgotten home,” he said. “I think they must have crossed over a thousand years ago. They didn’t even believe Earth existed.”

  The bard’s gaze snapped back and forth between Christopher and his wife. He felt a pang of guilty sympathy. He and Maggie shared so much context that Lalania could never be anything but an outsider.

  Two men, their heads covered by sacks, inched into the room carrying banners on poles. The serving girls set the banners against the door, making the room private again. The blindfolded men slipped out, guided by helping hands, and Lalania invited Christopher to join them.

  “Allow us to see to the lady’s needs, my lord,” she said demurely.

  He couldn’t think of any reason to object.

  “I should go,” he said. He probably had more paperwork. The stuff piled up faster than horse manure in a stable and was more unpleasant to deal with. Then he realized he wasn’t wearing anything under his cloak.

  “My lord will find another outfit in the next room,” Lalania said. “Ser Gregor can assist you.”

  “Stop calling him that,” Maggie said.

  “Of course, my lady,” Lalania said, curtseying again. “Shall I refer to him by name, at your command?”

  “Call him whatever he told you to,” Maggie replied, clearly sensing a trap. Or perhaps setting one herself.

  Lalania made an apology with her face. “He has a bad habit of introducing himself as Christopher.”

  “That will do, then,” Maggie said. “And you may call me Mary. Not lady. Just Mary. It’s my name. It’s just a name.”

  “If I may be so bold,” Lalania said gently, “nothing is just a name here. Your husband has spent many years understanding our ways. Allow me to help you do the same.”

  Christopher’s stomach rumbled, loudly. “I’ll just . . . go,” he said. He wanted to kiss Maggie again, but that would lead to other things, and those other things required energy, which was gained by food. Hence the compelling lure of breakfast as a step toward the future. Or maybe lunch.

  It was lunch after all. He and Maggie had slept in quite late. She came down to the dining hall like a queen, wearing a gown and flanked by ladies. The crowded room greeted her with a standing ovation, which she bore stoically. When they were seated and served the first course, she spoke carefully.

  “My operating theory is that you have taken me on a Scandinavian holiday retreat in a historic castle, complete with reenactors. What I can’t figure out is how we can afford it.”

  “Nothing about how we got here? You don’t think you’d remember flying to Europe?”

  She grimaced. “I assumed heavy drinking.”

  “The straight nose? The smooth skin?”

  “Swedish massages.”

  He laughed. “That’s way better than mine. I thought I’d been kidnapped and escaped after a bump on the head.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I got into a sword fight. And everything went downhill from there.”

  She looked up at the ceiling, illuminated by dozens of lightstones. “Can I just say that gas lighting completely ruins the illusion?”

  He leaned over and kissed her. It was just supposed to be a brief kiss, a moment of shared contact, an acknowledgment of her acuity, but it lingered. Eventually, the smell of roast beef drew him back to his plate.

  The diners in the rest of the room broke into spontaneous applause again.

  “They’re laying it on a bit thick, aren’t they?” Maggie asked around a mouthful of food. The beef was very good, and they were both famished.

  “They are very happy to see you.”

  “Why?” Piercing, as always.

  “Because I am very happy to see you.” He grinned madly, staring at the side of her face. “Also, a lot of them expect it means a reduction in their taxes.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she muttered. “I mean, that’s what I would say, if I believed this was real.”

  Christopher grinned even more widely. If people thought he’d wrought unbearable changes, wait until a CPA went over their books. They’d be howling at the moon.

  “Oh, right,” he said, remembering. “I remember how to convince you. Just wait until tonight. And then look up. This world doesn’t have a moon, but it has stars. So many stars.”

  She stopped eating long enough to look at him. “You really mean that,” she said quietly.

  “I do,” he said, meaning it all over again. “I’m the one who can’t believe it’s real. I spent so long fighting for this. I can’t believe you’re really here.”

  “I think I can convince you,” she said slyly. “Just wait until tonight.”

  He ate faster.

  Unfortunately, there was the rest of the day to get through. Christopher was the head of state, and as such the acquisition of a wife was a matter of politics. There was a long list of people who would be insulted if they weren’t introduced. He knew it was a long line because it snaked back and forth across the throne room three times. He and Maggie stood because there was only one throne, and Christopher was avoiding sitting in it.

  Saint Kreyllan was the head of the line. He smiled at Maggie and held her hand comfortingly. “I sympathize,” he explained. “I myself am recently returned, to changes I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams.”

  “Or nightmares,” Cardinal Faren muttered.

  “Your husband came to us a poor petitioner. We took pity on him and the trouble he caused. And now we kneel to his throne, gladly, for all the good he has wrought. If I struggle with the transformation, how much more must you. And yet I see here the same man who once sat at my fire, begging me to send him home. A task beyond my considerable power; indeed, I thought it impossible.” The Saint shook his head in gentle amazement.

  Maggie nodded and squeezed the Saint’s hand. Christopher put his arm around her shoulders and stopped himself from kissing her again.

  Karl was next. “Sire, your sword,” he said, holding out the scabbarded katana.

  Christopher had forgotten to put it on that morning. He took it and draped the baldric over his shoulder. Only when he was finished did he notice Maggie staring at him.

  “Why are you doing that?” she asked, her voice strained.

  Karl answered before he could. “It is a badge of his office, a symbol of his god, and a tool of his profession.”

  “A tool?” she said, turning to face Karl. “Does he use it often?”

  “As often as necessary, which is necessarily often. No throne is held without violence.”

  Christopher would have objected, but he was too surprised by Karl’s sudden eloquence.

  Maggie was shocked as well but by the content of the words rather than their form. “Are you saying he has hurt people? Even killed them?”

  “Karl,” Christopher got out, before being cut off.

  “Thousands have passed under his blade; tens of thousands more have died at his command. It is why he rules. It is why we obey.” The young man’s face was as unsparing as stone, oblivious to Maggie’s obvious distress.

  “Maggie,” Christopher tried again, equally futilely.

  “You are saying he is a murderer.”

  Karl looked at her with something uncomfortably close to contempt. “Every one of those lives was a dagger aimed at my child’s throat. The world is better that they are dead.”

  “Is this true?” she said, turning back to Christopher with wet eyes.

  “Yes,” he had to say, unwilling to elaborate. The full truth was so much worse.

  Lalania stepped forward from where she had been lurking. Always ready to leap out of the shadows with a well-timed thrust. “It is the way of our world, Lady Mary. Here we fi
ght or die. I have gleaned, from what little Christopher has said of your home, that it is not so there.”

  Saint Krellyan had not moved far. Now he added his support. “So much of what you did and said makes more sense now, Christopher.” He spread his hands pleadingly to Maggie. “I myself have held the spear and killed to survive, as has every young man in this realm. None of us is innocent. Until you arrived, we could not even conceive of such innocence.”

  “Not just the men,” Lalania said. “I do not wear my blade merely for show. This is our world; it is what it is. What you need to know is that Christopher has done more to change it than any other in history.”

  Maggie was surrounded on every side by a wall of thorns. Christopher wanted to hold her, but he was the sharpest vine of all.

  “It’s a lot to take in,” she said after a moment.

  Lalania nodded in concession. “Yet do not forget the reward. Half the men standing before you have already died; they live again only because of the power your husband gained. Our realm was oppressed by bad men and worse monsters, now vanquished because of that power. Our future no longer ends in an abattoir because of the creatures your husband has slain.”

  The bard might have indeed laid it on a bit thick. Maggie’s face changed from existential dread to more immediate concerns. She seemed to notice for the first time how attractive the young blonde was. Lalania had worn her elven chainmail, perhaps to compete with all the armored men, and it really did fit like a glove.

  “Okay,” Maggie said. Christopher knew it wasn’t surrender, just a truce; but it wasn’t defeat either. There was an accounting yet to be had. Fortunately, he could trust her to add up the balance fairly.

  They got through the rest of the evening without further incident. Maggie seemed to relax after they worked their way through the armed nobles and were reduced to important but weaponless commoners. One of whom turned out to be a recent visitor to the throne room although under different circumstances. Throd Mockmorten was apparently not only a wife-beater but also a guild-master. The man was no less lumpy and no better dressed than before, but he bowed his large frame with genuine humility. “A good wife is a treasure beyond measure,” he said as he tipped forward, “and a well-married man is beyond wealthy.”