Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01]

by The Fire Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  "Leave?”

  "Yes, you know, put one foot in front of the other.”

  "But why? Do you not wish to free Albion from bondage?”

  "Sure, as soon as I figure out how not to rain on poor fellows like Baird. I think five or six years in meditation on Mt. Cona valla will do the trick. If it was good enough for St. Kevin, it ought to suit me fine.”

  "You jest.”

  "Yes, I do. I doubt I can master my demons in under a decade.”

  "There is a great temptation to... spank you, Eleanor.”

  "And I would like to box your ears so hard you couldn’t hear for a month. Look, this is just not going to work at all. You bring out the very worst in me. You want the sword. Take it. It’s yours, or Baird’s or anyone’s but mine. I don’t want all this power—and I don’t think I’m up to the job. Bridget should have picked someone else. Here, take it.”

  Eleanor shoved the cloak-wrapped bundle toward him. He did not move to take it. "No. Without you, it is just dead metal. Eleanor, I need you.”

  The siren call of Daniel Hope played in her mind. She tried desperately to form words of denial, but none came. Those fetters of obligation, so recently dissolved, returned, so she almost felt chains around her. Why should three small and probably insincere words have the power to reduce her to a cringing child?

  Then she looked at his face, the ice-blue eyes, the sensuous mouth hidden in the beard, and knew he meant it, and that the admission had cost him greatly. The tears brimmed in her eyes as she acknowledged her own defeat. "Damn you to freezing hell, Doyle.”

  He drew her against him, stroking her tangled hair and murmuring comforting nonsense. He did not understand why she wept, only that it was from pain, not joy. He remembered the light in her eyes under the dolmen and the way her firm jaw softened in sleep, and he could hardly bear her tears. Doyle felt weak and inadequate, yet filled with a kind of warmth he had never experienced. There was no name for it yet, for the thing was too new and young. So he tucked Eleanor into his lap and rocked her like a child until the sobs faded and only the hissing of the fire pit broke the silence.

  XIII

  Eleanor slept fitfully. It was her usual pre-travel anxiety, a thing she got before every trip with her father, or even such a trivial event as spending the night with a school friend. She had mentally gone over the list of her few possessions, each one precious to her, especially those gifts of Sal’s, a dozen times, and the litany had lulled her into a frowning doze. Doyle lay beside her enjoying the undisturbed slumber of those who are not given to worry about forgotten socks or toothbrushes.

  Three days—or what seemed that amount of time— since Eleanor’s arrival at the House of Orphiana, and the next morning they would start their return to beleaguered Albion. Yet something was not right. She mumbled her list in her sleep again.

  Finally, she said, "Wrolf!” And a great hand covered her mouth while another yanked her head back by the long, dark hair. Eleanor stared into Baird’s grinning face as he dragged her away from her bed. She slapped at him futilely, bit at his hand, but he clipped her smartly under the jaw and everything went gray in her head.

  When she regained consciousness, Eleanor found herself in what appeared to be a seraglio. The room was huge and colorful, the walls bright with graceful gazelles and leopards against smooth limestone, the ceiling upheld by columns decorated with arabesques of red or blue against luminescent white, the floor a rippling stream made of blue and white tiles. A fountain played in the center of the room, not of water but of light, the colors changing and flashing with each cascade.

  Eleanor moved and heard a faint jingle. She found she was chained, wrist and ankle, to a curious bed, a contraption of posters and pillows she would have found amusing if she had not been confined to it. The posters were carved with a series of explicit and unlikely figures engaged in sexual acrobatics, while the pillows appeared to have escaped from a work of Japanese pornography. She almost laughed and noticed the gag.

  Baird appeared, garbed like a caliph, grinning and gloating. "I always get my way,” he began with simple smugness. "Do not struggle. It is quite useless. You are mine now. Doyle will never find you, and if he does, I will kill you. It was very stupid of you to think you could defeat me.”

  Eleanor knew with a stomach-wrenching certainty that he was going to rape her. Or try to. Her "magicks” were too new and untrained to be effective yet, and Baird was alert to Bridget’s fire and Sal’s acid dew.

  Then she remembered Moria Keriy, a half-mad old woman with a wealth of tales tucked away in a fading mind. She had lived in a cottage redolent of onions and goats, and resembled nothing so much as a classic witch with white wispy hair, a face of seams and wrinkles, a back bent with spinal arthritis. For some reason, she had taken an aversion to Daniel, so Eleanor had gone to gather the stories before the old woman died and took them into her soddy grave. Nothing irritated Daniel more than folk slipping off before he’d vacuumed their minds!

  Moria had larded her adventures with the fairies, for she claimed to have been born in 1689 and spent three hundred years dancing with the Sidhe under Tara—with advice on such diverse matters as how to treat a scald and how to avoid rape.

  Eleanor had never previously had occasion to try Moria’s method—invented, she claimed, by a Sidhe named Maeve when trapped by saucy Jack Paggett up at Rafter’s Glen—but she decided she really didn’t have any other available options.

  Eleanor closed her eyes and tried the "spell,” attempting not to recall the blurred figure of a woman in stone, which stood in that glen and which was the result of Maeve’s solution. Moria had never felt the need to tidy up any inconsistencies in her tales. Turning Baird into a rock seemed a nicer solution than some she had, but Eleanor was adamantly determined not to let him win.

  Cold. Her bones felt like iron, her flesh was flint. Heavy. Leaden. Crack! One of the posts she was chained to snapped, and Eleanor yanked her arm free.

  Baird goggled, then leapt on her as she tore at the gag. Her movements were slow, her fingers stiff, but she drew her arm back to flail at him with the dangling chain. It landed harmlessly on his back.

  Baird ripped at her clothing as she tried to get the gag away. Eleanor wondered what effect stone teeth would have on his immortal flesh. He tore her filmy trousers away and stared in horror.

  "You... bitch!” he screamed.

  Eleanor looked down and discovered her legs were green, swirly stone, and her privates were as smooth as a Greek Venus. The girl with malachite pussy, she thought irreverently.

  The bed collapsed under their weights, and Baird rolled off onto the tiled floor. Eleanor pulled her chains free and rose with slow majesty. "Ah, that this too, too solid flesh would melt.” How do I reverse this process? I can always get a job in a horror movie, I suppose. I wish I were in Cleveland!

  "Baird, go hump a dolmen.” Her voice was like a gravel fall, rough and grating.

  He stood up blazing, literally. The brilliance of his body was like the noon sun, and he advanced again. "I will have you, woman, and you will wish you had come to me willingly.”

  Baird was dazzling, and it was painful to look at him, even through eyes of stone. She longed to freeze his torrid essence out of existence, then realized that this was as impossible as falling up. For an instant, she knew who he was, who Doyle was, then it was gone, and she faced a man with the sun inside him, determined to rule her or destroy her in the bargain.

  Eleanor turned her eyes away from him, seeking some exit. The pillars! Interlaced with arabesques! She stepped back, seeking some familiar pattern that might bring her to the house of the Earth Serpent. Doyle had shown her enough for her to know that the ways of that multidimensional place were not simple.

  Moving with ponderous strides, Eleanor backed away, leaving huge holes in the floor. Then she saw a twist of decoration, a vinelike motif she recognized. She hurried to it, as much as a living statue could, and thrust herself into the pattern as Baird howled behi
nd her. "No!”

  Then she dropped onto the interlaced floor of Orphiana’s room with a thump, and sprawled there, too heavy to stir. Doyle rose from his place by the fire and came toward her.

  "You’ve just caused a dozen earthquakes, falling on my pattern that way,” snarled the Earth Serpent.

  "It isn’t my fault Baird is an idiot, Mother-in-law.” "Be still! Your voice hurts! Doyle, change her back.” "Gladly, Mother.” He crouched beside her, a strange expression, which might have been tenderness, in his eyes, and placed his hand upon her breast. "What a curious mixture you have made yourself. Onyx breasts and moonstone nipples. I liked you better as you were before. Ah, but you did not change so much. Your heart is not of stone.”

  Eleanor felt the terrible heaviness fade from her bones. She sat up wearily, glanced at Doyle, and shrugged. "I guess you couldn’t... have come after me.” "That does not mean I did not wish to.”

  They were sitting together, their departure delayed by Baird’s abduction, in a sort of mellow silence. Eleanor clicked at her knitting and Doyle cleaned the leather of his jerkin. It was domestic and companionable.

  "Doyle,” she asked, "are we married, or just sleeping together?”

  "Is it important?”

  "I don’t know. I think, if I ever thought about marriage, I sort of had my heart set on a long white dress and a veil and all. Or at least a judge reading the words. Though I don’t think I would have promised to obey.” Doyle looked bemused and stroked his beard. "No, you wouldn’t say that, I guess. Still, I see the need of a ceremony to dignify the matter. I cannot conjure you a gown or judge, but perhaps Orphiana could be convinced to say a few words.”

  The Earth Serpent seemed to drouse by the fire, and

  her head jerked up at the sound of her name. She fixed her son and daughter-in-law with a glittering gaze. "This is a new turn.”

  "Would you, ma’am?” Eleanor was respectful.

  "My words will bind and seal you, you know.”

  "You mean I can’t divorce the lout if I change my mind?”

  "Such loverlike words,” Doyle muttered. "First she says let’s marry, then she calls me names.”

  "It would be for as long as you live,” Orphiana continued. Eleanor caught an odd note in the old snake’s voice, one she could not identify.

  "Yes, I know. But I think I want it anyhow.”

  "And you, Doyle?”

  "Yes. I think it would comfort me to know that my fractious woman here would give me such a vow.” "Very well.” Orphiana shifted her body. "Vow then that you shall be true to one another as long as life runs in your veins, that you will aid each the other, and that you will take no other partners except by mutual consent.”

  Eleanor was a little startled by that last, but if Doyle agreed, she would at least be sure he wouldn’t dally with some farm girl. "I promise,” she answered slowly.

  "And so I vow, as long as breath remains in my lungs.”

  The morning they left the house of the Earth Serpent was cold and windy. Eleanor stepped out smartly, almost eagerly, to be away from her contentious in-laws, and Wrolf frolicked beside her. His days of dalliance with Doyle’s pack had done him no apparent damage, and their reunion had been joyous. She wondered a little, remembering wolves to be monogamous and life mates at that, at what had transpired between Wrolf and the silver-pelted sirens who had accompanied Doyle on his hunts, for he had once told her he kept no males in his pack. Wrolf remained the soul of discretion.

  It was almost as if they were beginning their adventures again, except for the somewhat disturbing presence of Doyle. Eleanor realized as she glanced at her companion that she mistrusted everything—her own emotions, this stranger/spouse, and even the machinations of the goddess. It must be something about the air, she decided, recalling her father’s oft-repeated saying: "There’s nuthin’ like the clime of Erin to make a skeptic a’ you.”

  The rain began, a steady sprinkle that hardly impeded progress but eventually soaked through clothing. Doyle seemed to be heedless of it, but Eleanor was less than happy with the situation. There was also the fact that she was somewhat uncomfortable traveling with him, for it suddenly seemed to be his adventure, and she appeared relegated to the role of spear carrier. It did not matter that she had never desired the quest and had undertaken it from a sense of duty. Eleanor had come to value her newfound independence and almost resented the reality that they must work together, for she had little doubt that he would make all the decisions and that she would agree out of a kind of reflex. So, having worked herself into a black mood, aided by the now increasing precipitation, she silently cursed her late father, Doyle, males in general, and the unheeding cosmos for inventing such troublesome beasts as men.

  Eleanor pressed the point of her rowan-wood stave into the peaty ground with more vigor than was needed, and pits of sod spattered on her cloak. Doyle walked ahead of her, his back as straight as a plank, the sword of Bridget in its sheath carried across his broad shoulders, with only the hilt with its large jewel sticking up under the neck opening of his red cloak. She realized that this meant he must have a steady trickle of cold rain down his back, and grinned. Doyle was right. The sword would always lie between them. She included the unnamed smith who had forged the weapon to slay Orphiana in her litany of spleen, then made an effort to cast off her doldrums.

  "May one ask where we are going?”

  "To Albion,” Doyle grunted.

  "I know that. But... how?”

  "You’ll see.”

  Eleanor kicked him firmly in the bottom with a mucky boot. "Listen, you overgrown ape, I didn’t walk across half of England and brave the Irish Sea in winter to tag along after you saying 'Yes, Master, no, Master.’”

  Doyle swung around and caught her by the shoulders. "Listen, minx, you’ll do it my way or no way at

  all.”

  They glared at each other, and Wrolf growled and raised his hackles. "You don’t like me very much, do you?” Eleanor asked her question while tracing the square line of his jaw with her fingertips. His look turned her bones to water, but she was not going to let him know it.

  "No, I don’t. I told you in the beginning, I had no joy in exchanging one distaff for another.”

  "Then we might as well turn back right now and get a divorce—only we cannot, can we—because it isn’t going to work. You resent me because without me that sword is just dead metal, and I resent you because I had to surrender it to you. Let’s toss the thing into the sea or stick it into Queen Mab’s tomb and let Albion die. I can meet you halfway, Doyle, but I can’t do the accommodating for both of us.”

  "Damn you for an iron mistress!” Doyle gave her a look compounded of lust and chagrin. "I have no gift for cooperation, child.”

  "Then you had damned well learn!”

  Doyle put his arm over her shoulders, and they began to walk again. "Do you know, it is impossible to truly defeat a woman? Just when you think you have her neatly fenced up, she changes shape and pops up outside your enclosure. It isn’t fair.”

  "No one ever promised you fair,” Eleanor answered, struck by his comment as it related to her parents. The truth of it gave her a new insight into her mother, and she had another twist of guilt. Had she simply vanished, or was that other Alianora taking her place? She sincerely hoped that the hasty Bridget had not caused her mother any worry, but she had no confidence in that hope.

  "No, they did not. I just keep hoping. And I hate it when you are right. I... well, Baird is surely going to try to stop us, and I didn’t wish to worry you.”

  "Don’t be considerate when my ignorance could be fatal,” she snapped.

  "He would not hurt you, not really.”

  "Baird said he would kill me if he could not have me.”

  "You really don’t know, or understand, do you, Eleanor?”

  "Know what? If I had tuppence for everything I don’t know, or even don’t know about this quest, I could buy a magic carpet to fly us out of this rain. The Bahamas
, now, or Tahiti. We’ve never had a honeymoon.”

  "Your mind is full of such fair irrelevancies. The fate of the world hangs in the balance, and you are dreaming.”

  "Oh, pooh! The world is always on the edge of disaster. Yes, I know this world is different because I have it in my hands—sort of. But to return to your question, no, I don’t know or understand. Every fact I gather just raises more questions. And I never seem to get a straight answer. I am trying very hard not to sit down and fold my arms and refuse to move until I understand the situation, believe me. I keep telling myself that tomorrow, or the day after, I will understand. I never do. Even Sal didn’t tell me what I wanted to know.”

  "And what do you wish to know?”

  "Everything,” Eleanor replied with maddening simplicity.

  "Then I cannot help you. I don’t know everything. And besides, there isn’t time.” He sounded a little sad under his light tone, and she gave him a sharp look.

  "No, there is never enough time,” she agreed. "All right, where are we headed?”

  "That I will not tell you, for Baird has overlong ears.” "Is that why he’s so short of brains?”

  "You’ve a tongue dipped in venom, woman.”

  "And you wanted a sweet, fair-headed lass who would never gainsay you.”

  "Perhaps. You have a bit too much of my mother in you for comfort.”

  "And you remind me of my father in all the less desirable ways. Do we ever get to be ourselves instead of a... reflection of the other person’s experiences?”

  "In time, we might.” Again, the slight melancholy of his tone made her look at him. His profile gave her no clues to his thoughts, so she admired the clean line of wide brow and long nose above the sensuous mouth hidden by beard and mustache. "I would have wanted a more restful woman, I think, for I am a man who likes his comforts.”

  "Oh? Am I that... uncomfortable?”

  "Challenging more than uncomfortable,” he answered. "I wondered, when I took you, that you were still a virgin. You are... like trumpets and tocsin ringing in the night. An invitation to rape and violence.” "Me?” Eleanor gave a nervous laugh, remembering the lord of Nunnally Castle, and Baird. "How? Why? I don’t mean... to be a tease or... anything.”