The Sword

by Jean Johnson

  “It also explains,” Trevan agreed, lingering to hear his brother’s words, “why those wyvern were peering into the rooms instead of attacking us more directly, to do a secondhand scry for the mage—one can also scry through the eyes of a largish animal, if one has the right spell for it, and enough power to not only master the will and resistance of the creature for long enough, but also the strength to do so over such a long distance,” he added in explanation to Kelly. “The larger and smarter the animal, the more likely it’ll still follow orders over a long distance.

  “But it’s a risky matter, because the size of Gates needed to send such large creatures over such a long distance makes it more likely that the Council of Mages will notice what is going on and put an end to it. These beasts being sent our way are forbidden for anyone, outside of the government, to create or possess in times of peace, for wartime breeding purposes.”

  “Wasting the energy to hunt us with larger beasts certainly proves we angered our foe by cleaning the castle and thwarting his or her scrying,” Saber mused, pulling out Kelly’s chair for her.

  The chair had been added next to his on his side of the large, eight-sided table they had built for their own use when they had been exiled to the isle. It struck him for a moment that there was enough room at each of the eight sides for two people to sit, not just one brother each…enough room on each of the eight sides for a husband and a wife to sit, come to think of it. Morganen had directed the size of the table during its making. Not Trevan, who was the one most talented at furniture making. Saber was going to have to talk to his youngest brother, before Morg’s matchmaking tendencies got out of hand…or rather, now that the situation had definitely gotten out of hand.

  Strawberry blond hair swung into his vision, as his bride-to-be sat down, drawing his eyes to her. Kelly of Doyle, seated beside him, was but the first of the Prophesied brides awaiting him and his brothers. Or maybe I won’t have a talk with him…

  “You think he’s been angered that much?” Kelly asked, reasoning it out for herself. “As opposed to his normal level of insane rage, I suppose? Was that triple attack the most powerful, so far? Wyvern, watersnake, and demon-thing?”

  “Yes,” Wolfer rumbled, taking his own seat. “Normally he or she sends only one type of creature at a time. Once in a while, there will be two types of beast to worry about, but not often. They are expensive to create, breed, and maintain, especially when done with the need to keep their existence absolutely secret. So we have clearly angered our foe, that he would waste so much of his or her power and resources in attacking us.”

  “I’m not surprised he or she would be so chary with the beasts,” Morganen asserted, as his twin and Evanor came out of the hall that led to the kitchens with the last platters of food, and Dominor descended into the hall to join them. “The Council of Mages has a policy of severely discouraging the breeding of such monsters; if the war-monsters have killed anyone, either through accidental escape or deliberately being set, the sentence is automatically death.

  “This mage would have to maintain a secret compound somewhere, housing and breeding the beasts, but not a very large one, else it would have long since been discovered. And he or she would send the fast-breeding things, such as the mekhadadaks, to plague us the most—as often as one out of every two or three attacks, in other words,” he added to Kelly. Making her shiver. “In some ways I think it a miracle we’ve survived this long, but somehow we have, and with only a few close calls. Such as your own bout with the watersnakes.”

  Kelly shook her head as she picked up her fork. “I don’t see what the eight of you are harping about where I’m concerned—frankly, you’re already plagued with a major Disaster!”

  “We will track down this would-be murderer. Eventually, following the traces of his or her own power,” Wolfer rumbled with the surety of a basalt mountain. Implacable and impossible to deter from its position. “When we do, we will kill our attacker. It is that simple.”

  “Our foe must be extremely powerful, though,” Dominor admitted—and that was something, that the most arrogant of the brothers would admit such a thing about someone else. “Even Morganen cannot find the source of these sendings.”

  Morganen shrugged at the damned-with-faint praise. “I do work on it, whenever I have the chance to trace the energies through the aether right after an attack. But it would be better, I think, to concentrate on making that special paint first and redo every wall inside the castle with it immediately. It does make more sense that our foe uses a painting for scrying rather than memory or a mirror. It is far more likely for them to have a painting of this castle than to have come to this rarely visited isle prior to our exile.

  “But now our enemy has a clear, wyvern-gained view of the exterior of the donjon and similarly clear glimpses into the interior. Painting the inner walls won’t work alone. We should probably change our exterior walls as well.”

  “I am loath to change the exterior blatantly. Especially using the same changing paint as we would use on the interior; it would be easier for them to study and learn the pattern if it were on the outside walls,” Saber stated, shaking his head. “I would rather have something more subtle…something different. Not as blatant. I certainly don’t want the traders coming and noticing the changes in the distance and talking about them. But I don’t know what.”

  “Camouflage,” Kelly said suddenly, making Wolfer eye her as he passed a basket of rolls.

  “Camo-what?” the second eldest asked.

  Kelly smiled. It was about time someone else did a terminology double take! “Camouflage is a word in my native language that basically means ‘to obscure or conceal through a blending with one’s surroundings.’ If we paint the outer walls of the castle in patterns like the jungle, it will blend into its surroundings and make it difficult for creatures like the wyverns to fly out here, spot the castle quickly, and attack before anyone knows they are here. They’ll be busy hunting around looking for it, giving us more time to see them and ready ourselves for a counterattack.”

  The third-eldest sighed. “I must agree. Painting over the gardens, courtyards, and all the glass of the windows would be too difficult, and the shapes of the buildings would still stand out too easily,” Dominor pointed out, making his own offering to the others. “But an illusion, cast over the whole of the castle grounds, added to and augmenting the warning-and-warding spells we have already cast over everything, that might work.”

  “A combination of the two would work best,” Saber stated. “Dominor, work on the illusion; you’re the best enchanter we have. If you set it in an object, we can fix it to the storm-vane on the peak of this hall, and it will be able to spread out like a dome, allowing us to see everything on the island from within as it actually appears, but still be able to hide the castle from those beyond its walls. Set it to work effectively both from a distance and from close up, and from either the ground or the air…and make it so that those who are given verbal permission from one of us to enter the compound can actually see the entrance gates and such when they do draw near.

  “I would like to be able to find our home from an approach on the ground, but some camouflage at ground-level would still be helpful. Morganen, work on your paint. Try to see if you can make it last a good few decades with only minor touch-up spells. I have reason to hope it will not take much longer to find our foe, now that he or she grows more agitated at being thwarted, and thus potentially more careless. But others may think to do the same later on, if word ever gets out that there is now a woman in our hall.

  “I will not have Lady Kelly harmed.”

  “She is our sister, Saber,” Morganen returned, answering the unspoken order in his eldest brother’s words. The calm, clear intent behind his words was echoed in the faces of the others around them, even Rydan’s. “We will protect her with our very lives.”

  With the focus of the protective looks around her, Kelly felt a warmth spread through her, from the middle of her chest out
. These eight men—real “witches,” not just the imagined kind—had welcomed her into their hearts as well as their home. Something many of the folk of a certain Midwest town back on Earth had not. This odd world was now more of a home to her than her old one, in that regard.

  She cared for Saber and liked his brothers, even if there weren’t any other females for company right now. She liked her life here, with nothing but time to stitch and knit and sew, to talk and laugh with men who put up with her occasionally strawberry-haired, tart-worded temper and assertive will. There was even time to look for a history book or two, or maybe a primer on the basics of how magic worked in this wonderful, strange, increasingly less-bizarre world.

  Kelly made up her mind. She felt like she was in love, though she didn’t know for certain just yet—never having been in love before—but she would marry Saber. Marry him, and rescue him from whatever overblown Disaster all of these otherwise big and strong men feared so much, and do her best to live happily ever after. Doyles weren’t stupid, after all.

  THIRTEEN

  “We cannot get married today.”

  Saber’s words woke her up quickly, cutting Kelly off in mid-yawn. She stepped back from the door she had opened to him, giving him room to step inside, unmindful of how beautiful she looked to him, sleep-rumpled in that sleeveless chemise she used for a nightgown. “What do you mean, we can’t get married today?”

  “The supply boats are here. They’re a day early. They usually camp in the temple, one of the few buildings still standing from the old city that used to be down there, so we cannot use it to wed in,” he murmured, tugging her close to drop an apologetic kiss on her brow. “They must not see you, or else they would seek to remove you from the isle. One way or another.”

  “I can’t wait until the damned Disaster gets here, and it’s done and gone,” she muttered into his chest. “Then we can send them all a letter, telling them they don’t have anything left to fear and to just let us be.”

  He kissed the top of her head, pressing his lips to the light reddish-gold locks that were shorter than his own. Most of the women he remembered from three years before liked to grow theirs as long as was possible, but not his Kelly. He ached with wanting for her, but then he was usually hard when thinking about or standing around her, these days.

  Her safety came first, though. This feeling was a long cry from the first ungentlemanly impulses he had gone through when he had met her—wanting to get rid of her in a variety of vaguely plotted, nefarious ways. But then, I was a fool, when she first arrived. A stubborn, insensitive fool. “Better that we wait until they are gone and wed the day after tomorrow. They will depart with the last ebb of the dawn tide, tomorrow, but we should wait just a little longer all the same, to be certain they are well away.”

  She didn’t like it and felt a touch of irrational irritability, but sighed and nodded and snuggled deeper into his arms…and then felt it. That first warning wave of pain, first dull, then sharp, then dull and hard. Which she hadn’t felt for roughly a month. “Um, Saber?”

  “Mm-hmm?” he managed, breathing in her feminine scent with a pleasure that was going to have to be delayed two more nights, unfortunately.

  “Make that five days from now.”

  He stiffened. “What?”

  “I, um, can’t…you know,” she hedged. “Not for another five or six days. And go ask Evanor to brew me up a strong cup of that cramp-easing tea he and Morganen came up with. I’m going to need it today. And tomorrow. And probably the day after that…”

  “Oh.”

  She chuckled at the disappointment in his tone, the slump of his shoulders as he comprehended and flushed, and gave him a little squeeze. “Poor baby.”

  “I am not a baby!”

  Kelly prepared herself for her wedding. Bathed and perfumed in a light rubbing of Saber’s favorite scents for her, she drew on her new underclothes. She had found a use for the hearts-within-hearts patterned lace she had found and experimented with. Carefully stitched together, the two-inch-wide, soft silk lace formed a bra any bride would be proud to wear on her wedding day…and matching bikini underwear. She smiled as she fastened the hook-and-eye closures on the front of her carefully fitted bra; Saber had bent the tiny fasteners for her out of thin steel wire, uncertain why she wanted such odd-shaped, minuscule things.

  He’s going to have fun playing with them, I think, when he finally gets to see why they were made!

  She missed not having a bachelorette party, or even just her friend Hope to attend her as she got ready, but Kelly was glad she hadn’t heard a bachelor party going on for her groom last night, either. Not that she would’ve had to worry about strippers or anything, but still…

  The newly repainted room slowly shifted in shades of blue and white around her, swirls of “clouds” gradually patterning their way across the formerly white walls. That was the result of Morganen’s experiment into anti-scrying wall art. Kelly adjusted the underwear and reached for the first piece of her best-dress, aquamarine silk clothes, as the sun finished setting outside, leaving the painted walls to look like a parody of daylight, though the paint did not actually glow.

  For Rydan’s sake, they were holding an early evening wedding instead of a daylight one. Somewhere out there, the others were readying the chapel, and the horseless cart that would carry her down the long, winding road that led to the chapel, where she would be wed Katani-style.

  As fun as it was to dress medievally, she liked wearing pants for the freedom of movement. Though her assistant, Evanor, had been uncertain about the decidedly un-Katani design, she had first sketched on a piece of yellowed paper, then measured, cut, and directed him where to sew on the aquamarine silk, transforming it into a multipiece garment of her own design.

  First, she pulled on the pants, cut on the bias to fit smoothly over her hips and tapered just a little to show off her legs. She had put on some weight, in the past few months. Her legs looked a lot better, with just a little more curve to them. She laced the front in a flap-backed version, which was very like the brothers’ style of trousers, since Evanor was familiar with how to stitch the eyelets and plackets. Next she donned her blouse, pulling on the loosely gathered garment until the neckline draped down over her shoulders.

  Over that, she fastened a girdle-like skirt, gathered into a yoke at her waist. The hem was uneven, falling back in a diagonal cut from the middle of her thighs, almost but not quite sweeping the floor at her heels. Next came a bodice-vest that laced up the front and covered her bra straps.

  Her back-draped skirt and the gathered blouse were both edged with more of the heart-patterned lace, stitched along the hemlines, cuffs, and gathered, lightly ruffled neckline, the delicate white contrasting nicely with the blue-green of the silk. The trousers, vest, and waist-yoke of the skirt were trimmed with a flat-woven ribbon, pattered with white, touches of emerald green, sapphire blue, and thread-of-gold, outlining the cut of the waist-length, fitted bodice vest at the low-scooping neckline, sleeve holes, lacings and waist, and down the sides and cuffs of her pants. And Wolfer, who had the best touch with leather of the eight brothers, had made her a pair of new ankle-high boots that he had somehow managed to dye the same aquamarine shade, plus promises of more pairs of slippers to replace the aged ones she was making do with for now.

  Slipping on a pair of ankle-high socks knitted from fine thread in her spare time, her only new pair at the moment, she stepped into the boots, stamping her feet a little to make certain they fit comfortably. They fit perfectly, proof that Wolfer was good at making shoes, much better than the mass-produced shoe manufacturers of her old life. Then again, she admitted silently, smiling, he has magic of his own to make a perfect shoe. He doesn’t even need shoe-making elves from a fairy tale! The thought amused her.

  When she was dressed, Kelly hurried into the refreshing room to peer into the mirror and try to do something with her hair. Unlike a lot of redheads, her hair was perfectly straight. It insisted on staying perfectly
straight, in fact, and only picked up the slightest curve at the very ends. Perms had fallen out in less than a month during her experimental teenage years. Hot curling irons didn’t work. Her hair laughed in the face of mousse, gel, and hair spray, even when combined in countertop-cluttering hordes marshaled against her light reddish-golden locks. Thankfully, Saber didn’t seem to notice the lack. Or didn’t care.

  Picking up the silver-backed brush he had given her, she stroked its stiff animal bristles through her hair. If she couldn’t do anything with it, she could at the very least smooth it. Dampening the silver comb with a quick splash of water from the fall-faucet, she ran it through her hair, then used the brush to smooth the dampness into a sleek, shoulder-length, brushed-back style that exposed the lightly freckled planes of her face.

  Kelly frowned at her face. She supposed she had a nice forehead, and a slightly pert nose, one with a little bump toward the tip that made her look tart and assertive sometimes. Her cheekbones were nice, her chin okay, her lips just borderline full, and naturally rose pink. Her lashes weren’t as thick as Saber’s, but then a lot of guys had better lashes than most women did.

  Her brows had never needed plucking, which was nice, and she didn’t miss makeup, but she wished that just once Saber had told her she was beautiful to him. Of course, he had stared at her several times as if she were, but he had never actually said anything.

  I guess I’ll have to beat it out of him, she thought on a sigh. Then chuckled at her reflection, smiling at the thought of mixing wits with the equally strong-willed man over the next few…next several…Oh, god. I think I’m having a bridal-nerves attack…