“Thanks, Daria. Technically I wouldn’t die, but any magic I spend fighting the cold takes away from what I can use to heal myself.”
“So that’s how it works,” she mused.
“What about Gudrin?” I asked.
“Oh, she’s busy showing off how tough she is,” Daria explained. “Probably bite my head off if I said she might need a rest. She’ll either march the whole way on her own feet, or pass out and have to be carried. The rest of us are making bets on whether she can make it.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve known women like that before. I didn’t know you had them here.”
“I suppose there are prideful tomboys everywhere. But don’t let me distract you from your healing.”
I nodded, and went back to work.
A while later I was vaguely aware of Daria getting up, to be replaced by a smaller and considerably curvier form.
“Embla?” I asked.
“That’s me, boss.” She pressed her soft breasts against my side, and laid her head on my shoulder with a sigh.
“I’m so tired,” she murmured. “Is it alright if I take a little nap?”
“Sure. I can’t talk anyway, the healing takes too much concentration.”
“M’kay.” Her eyes closed, and she was out like a light.
Replacing all the soft tissue I’d lost was a pain, and I left the task of restoring the replacement muscle tissue to proper condition for later. Then I had to rebuild my knee. It was a good thing I had a working one to copy there, but even so it gave me some trouble. It seemed that my elemental sorcery was a lot better at dealing with biochemistry than mechanical problems, and I spent quite some time puzzling over the repair before I realized that I hadn’t quite put the bones back together correctly. Fun.
I was working on fixing that mistake when I was distracted by shouting.
It was still dark, but now there were two wolf girls piled in with me. Embla was still curled up against my side, though her eyes were open. Gudrin was draped across our legs, completely dead to the world. But through the blowing snow I could make out the looming shape of my tower overhead.
“Looks like we made it,” Embla said softly. “I guess I’d better get up before the sentries manage to get the gate open. Cerise might not be happy to see me like this.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” I agreed. “Although I think Avilla might be the one to worry about.”
Her eyes widened. “Good point. Cerise will just beat me a little and make me submit if she thinks I’m trespassing. Avilla might turn me into a maid.”
She sat up before I could ask what she’d meant by that, and leaned over to shake Gudrin roughly. The two of them disembarked while I was still struggling to sit up, and then the postern gate was creaking open.
That was an idea I’d copied from Earth’s medieval castles. A small door set into one of the leaves of the main gate, just big enough for men to pass through one at a time. Opening it was a lot less risky than unbarring the main gate, not to mention faster.
I could make out a bit of a commotion inside as Gronir conferred with the sentries on watch, and then the wolfen started to enter one by one. I gingerly eased myself off the pallet, since it was too wide to fit through the door. My left leg supported my weight, although the knee joint was pretty stiff. But there wasn’t enough left of my right foot to walk on. How was I going to do this? Make a crutch, maybe?
Daria stepped up to slip my arm over her shoulders, and helped me up.
“You don’t have to do everything with magic,” she chided gently. “We’re happy to help, Daniel.”
“Thanks, Daria. The door is going to be a little tricky, though.”
“We’ll manage.”
She helped me hobble over to it, and we found Gronir waiting there for us. The two of them got me through the narrow opening, and then Daria resumed her place. I managed a few more steps to get clear of the door, and paused to enjoy a breath of air that wasn’t bitingly cold.
“Daniel!”
A black-haired missile flew across the room towards me, and I braced myself for a painful impact. But Embla stepped in the way with her hands out.
“Wait! Careful, Cerise. He’s hurt pretty bad.”
Cerise paused to glare at her, but then her eyes went to my missing arm and she gasped.
“Daniel? Oh crap, you got fucked up bad. What happened?”
“I had a little disagreement with one of Jormungandr’s grandsons,” I told her.
“Damn. Sea serpents are supposed to be really tough.”
“Our wizard sent him packing,” Daria said lightly.
“Of course he did.” Cerise tried to match her nonchalance, but her eyes were troubled. She glanced down at my mangled foot, and back at my missing arm. “Here, let’s get you upstairs.”
She nudged Daria away, and bent to pick me up in her arms. It must have looked kind of silly, since I was a good six inches taller than her. But with the supernatural strength she’d gained in Lanrest my weight was no problem for her.
She carried me up to the atrium, and headed for the elevator while the wolfen all broke off towards the stairs. It occurred to me that I wasn’t even sure where their quarters in the new keep were. Too much happening to keep track of all the details.
Cerise was silent as the elevator carried us up to the landing outside our quarters. The door was open, and Beri was there looking curiously out into the dimly lit atrium. She went a little pale when she saw me.
“Milord?”
“I’ll get better,” I reassured her. I sure was saying that a lot.
Avilla’s reaction wasn’t any better. She came out of the kitchen as we entered, wearing a nightgown and carrying a tray loaded with cups of hot tea and a plate of cookies. She nearly dropped it when she saw me. Then she quickly set it aside, and rushed to examine my injuries while Cerise laid me out on a dining room table that hadn’t been there when I left.
“I’ll be alright, Avilla,” I told her. “Really, I’ve already healed the worst of it. The arm might take some time to replace, but I can do it.”
“It was worse than this?” She asked worriedly. “How bad was it?”
She was already pulling away the ragged remnants of my clothes, and frowned at the pink new skin that covered most of my left side.
“Pretty bad,” I admitted reluctantly. “I got caught in a sea serpent’s mouth, and had to try something new to get out. Conjured a bunch of molten metal in its mouth, and we were underwater at the time. The explosion blew its jaw off, but it was also enough to take my shield down.”
“Why would a conjuration like that make an explosion?” Cerise asked curiously. “It seems like the water would just dampen the flame aspect of the spell.”
Avilla carefully inspected my injuries while I tried to explain the physics of extreme pressures and temperatures to Cerise. At some point Tina showed up to assist her, and the two fussed over me while Beri fetched things for them. They cleaned and dressed my remaining wounds, and carefully bandaged the stump of my arm.
“Sorry, Daniel,” Cerise finally said. “I think this is getting a little too esoteric for me. I sort of get the part about turning water into steam too fast, and how it has to go somewhere. But all this stuff about atoms and the heart of the world and unleashing the weight of continents is just going over my head. I’ve heard of atoms, but I thought that theory was disproved? Anyway, maybe we could try again when you’ve got time for a long conversation, and start at the beginning?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “I’m probably not explaining it well anyway. I’m exhausted, and I’ve got a splitting headache.”
“You’ve been channeling too much magic,” Avilla said with a frown. “Are you healed enough to take off this amulet safely?”
“I think so. Avilla? Why do you look so upset?”
She bit her lip, and lifted the amulet off my neck. Then she turned it to show where the braided copper strands it hung from had been half-melted in the blast. Only a single s
trand was intact.
“If that had broken…”
She sniffed, and I suddenly realized she was holding back tears.
“Daniel, we almost lost you. You can’t heal yourself if you’re unconscious, and there’s no one else who can… who can… Daniel, you’ve got to stop doing this! Please.”
I pulled her close, and hugged her as best I could with only one arm. She choked, buried her head in my chest, and started to cry.
Cerise took a close look at the amulet, and frowned. “She’s got a point, Daniel. Did you have a backup plan?”
I patted Avilla on the back, and shook my head with a sigh. “No. I wasn’t expecting to run into anything like that. If we’d been on land I probably would have just run, to be honest. But we were stuck in the middle of the river, and it was just too fast. I was thinking I’d keep it busy long enough for Gronir’s crew to disengage, and then pull out myself if I needed to. But it smashed up the ice and trapped me underwater, and my shield wasn’t going to hold up for long against blows from something that big.”
“Milord? Is the tower safe?” Tina asked diffidently.
“Well, stone is at least an order of magnitude harder to break than ice, and even the thinnest parts of the outer wall are ten feet thick. Plus the structural enchantment holding it all together, and that’s got a hell of an energy pool behind it given the size of this place. So breaching the walls would be quite a trick, and all that stone on the lower floors means it’s too stable to topple and too heavy to move.”
She looked at me blankly.
“Yes, Tina, we’re safe. A sea serpent big enough to attack the tower would be so huge it wouldn’t fit in the river.”
She smiled in relief. “Oh, okay. See, Miss Avilla? We’ll be alright.”
“Will we? Daniel, you’ve got to stop being so reckless. Please? I can’t stand seeing you come home so badly hurt all the time. What will we do if… if one day you don’t…”
Cerise nodded gravely. “We’re all counting on you here, Daniel. We won’t last long without you.”
“I know,” I admitted. “You’re right, I need to start being more careful. Especially given this business about the Unraveler coming to town.”
“Who?”
So I explained what the sea serpent had told me. Needless to say, this didn’t reassure anyone.
“Should we be getting ready to move on?” Avilla asked worriedly. “I started working on claiming the kitchen today, but it isn’t too late to back out.”
“That depends. Do any of you know what happened to the Conclave earlier today?”
“Word is the weather working was sabotaged,” Cerise informed me. “The spell went haywire and knocked out most of the circle that was working on it, and then some kind of magical beast got into the ritual chamber and killed a bunch of them. It sounds like they lost five or six wizards, and they’re really pissed about it. I don’t think we’re under suspicion, since you were out of town at the time. But tomorrow’s meeting is supposed to be a council of war now, and they sent a message telling us to make sure and be there.”
“So the Conclave is going to be hunting for enemy agents? That makes sense. Anything else happen while I was gone?”
“Carl and Mara came by to visit,” Avilla said. “Cerise wants to recruit her for the coven.”
“Don’t you? She’s a real hottie,” Cerise responded.
Avilla gave her a weak smile. “Lech. Yes, she could be a good candidate if we’re staying. She’s powerful, and a lot more hot-blooded than she wants to admit. I want to feel her out some more before we tell her anything, and maybe see if we can seduce her. That’s always a good test of open-mindedness.”
Tina blushed, and looked away.
“I got Carl talking about who’s in the Conclave,” Cerise added. “There’s a couple of other options worth looking into when we have the chance.”
“So you two are still set on expanding to five members?” I asked.
Cerise nodded. “Yeah. Three just isn’t enough for the kind of world we’re living in now. We need access to the high rituals, and that means at least four elements and a warder. But thanks to you we don’t need to pad out our numbers with extra people just to be able to raise more power. So we can stick with five, instead of going to seven or thirteen.”
“Well, I’ve got some more news there,” I told her. Then I turned to Tina.
“Tina, I need to talk about secret things now. You can stay if you want, but you can’t tell anyone about what you hear if you do. Alright?”
The shy girl clasped her hands beneath her massive bosom, and turned her wide eyes on me. “You trust me to hear your secrets, milord? But you haven’t even bound me yet.”
I chuckled. “Tina, Cerise made up that story about magic sex bindings to sound scary. It isn’t true.”
“Oh,” she said disappointedly. “Darn. I was looking forward to that.”
Beri chuckled, and hugged her friend. “I’m sure the master can put some kind of sexy dark magic on you if you really want him to, Tina.”
She blushed. “You think so? I don’t want to be any trouble.”
I mussed her hair. “Silly girl. It’s cute the way you start squirming in your seat whenever the subject comes up. Tell you what. Think about what excites you about it, and let me know. Or if that’s too embarrassing, talk to Beri or Cerise about it. I’ve been promising you a special day anyway, so we can make that part of it.”
Her blush turned bright red, and she stared at the floor. “T-thank you, milord.”
“Sure. Now, do you want to stay?”
She nodded firmly. “If it pleases you, milord. I probably won’t understand everything, but… well, everyone I have left is in this room. I don’t want to be left out.”
“Fair enough.”
“Ah, and me, milord?” Beri asked delicately.
“You would be Hecate’s newest acolyte, right?”
Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly.
Cerise chuckled. “You’ll have to do better than that if you want to hide it, Beri. What gave it away, Daniel?”
“Hecate visited me while I was away,” I announced.
That got everyone’s attention in a hurry.
“We had a long conversation,” I went on. “I’ve agreed to work with her, to try to save what we can from Fimbulwinter. She isn’t going to abandon Europe to the monsters, so neither are we.”
“So we’re staying?” Avilla asked.
“Yes. Kozalin is the best place we’re going to find to make a stand. The plan is for me to turn this keep into a fortress nothing short of a god could break into, and then offer refuge to groups that she wants to make deals with. Not just humans, either. Depending on how things go we could get faerie, dwarves, nature spirits, maybe even a minor demigod or two. I told her I’ll take in anyone who’s willing to accept my leadership and cooperate with humans.”
“I wonder what the prince will think of that?” Cerise mused.
“We aren’t necessarily going to tell him,” I pointed out. “The bigger I make this place the harder it’s going to get for outsiders to keep track of what’s going on inside. But I’ve got plans for much better weapons, for our troops and the keep as well as ourselves, so if we do this right it won’t matter. By the time anyone has a chance to find out and get upset about it we’ll be in a position to hold off any attack.”
“Does that mean you’re going to stay home for a while?” Avilla asked hopefully.
“Yes. I hate to admit it, but you’re right. I’ve come close to dying way too many times in the last few weeks, and I need to make sure that stops happening. I can’t spend all my time hiding indoors, but I don’t plan to leave the city again until I’m prepared to fight a dragon if necessary.”
“You can do that?” Beri asked wonderingly.
“Not easily, but I’ve got some ideas. We’ll have to see if they work out.”
Avilla hugged me. “Thank you, Daniel. You have no idea how worried I’ve bee
n.”
To my surprise, Cerise joined the hug. “Yeah, me too. You’ve kind of been growing on me, you know?”
“Thanks, girls. I know what you mean.”
They held the pose for a long moment, and I found myself wondering at how lucky I was. How did I end up with two beautiful, smart, powerful, sensuous young women? Granted, they were in love with each other, not me. But the longer we spent together, the more convinced I was that they weren’t just vamping me to make sure I’d take care of them. There were too many little gestures of real affection for that.
Good thing, too. It was really hard not to fall for a woman like Avilla when she was waking me up with a blowjob before breakfast. Or Cerise, when she was carving a bloody path through a horde of goblins to stand at my side. It was a good thing they were a package deal, because I’d have a hell of a time picking one of them over the other.
“Are there any other shocking revelations?” Avilla asked.
I shook my head.
“Good. It’s time for bed.”
“Yeah,” Cerise agreed. “Hey, Daniel, you’re going to like our new bed. It has plenty of room for everyone. Honeydew even spelled the mattress and pillows to be all soft, like the ones at her granny’s house.”
Avilla smiled gently. “I was getting tired of sleeping on straw. Tina, go ahead and bar the door again, will you? Then you and Beri can turn in for the night. Beri, at first light I want you to warn Oskar and Marcus about the threat to the town. They can take what precautions seem sensible, but the wizard is not to be disturbed until midmorning. He’s overdue for a good rest.”
The two of them helped me off to the master bedroom. There was now a huge four-poster bed there, even bigger than the king-size bed I’d had back home. A wardrobe and nightstand had also appeared from somewhere, although the room was big enough that there was still quite a bit of empty space. Presumably Avilla had plans for that, but I didn’t have the energy to wonder about it. My head barely touched the pillow before I was asleep.
Chapter 8
I was surprised what a relief it was to spend a day taking it easy.
Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) Page 11