The Sword

by Jean Johnson

  As it was, his wife kept licking him through all of it, keeping him hard. Saber reached for her in the darkness of the room, twisting to get himself properly over her. His attempt didn’t work; she simply pushed him back down. She clambered up his body, hidden in the darkness of the lightglobes she must have extinguished at some point, and positioned herself over him. That allowed her to straddle his hips most indecently as she pushed his shoulders back into the bedding. Taking the initiative very boldly.

  “Gods! You may have been a maiden,” Saber managed to gasp as she sank—sweet gods in heaven!—onto him, “but you are no innocent!”

  Her laughter, rich, full, and feminine, tightened her flesh around him. His hands found her thighs, gripped her hips and buttocks as she moved on him, and he discovered the joys of guiding her in that position, of deliciously, deliriously enduring her leisurely, experimental rhythms. Of feeling her collapse on his chest when her pleasure swept over her in a swift-building wave, igniting his own ecstasy as she tightened around him, crying out.

  Their heavy breathing meshed in the darkness. Stretching up, he felt for one of the garland-wrapped bedposts, found one of the protective pendants, then managed to reach the cool, glassy curve of the lightglobe in its bed-reading bracket. Saber flicked the smooth surface with his fingertip. The faint glow that sprang up illuminated just the two of them, and dimly at that, but it was enough for him to see her. He didn’t want to stop looking at her, this amazing woman his youngest brother had brought into his life.

  “I love you, Kelly,” he murmured, gazing at his sated wife.

  Kelly roused from the temptation of another doze. She didn’t know what to say. She cared for him, she lusted over him, she was more than content to marry him, but she honestly didn’t know if she outright loved him yet. Not the true love he was Destined to feel for her. Guilt made her bury her face against his chest as he stroked her hair. She couldn’t say the words without knowing for sure. She felt that she loved him, but…was she in love with him?

  Her silence wasn’t exactly reassuring, yet he knew she wasn’t asleep. “Kelly?”

  “My heart is yours,” she finally murmured. It certainly wasn’t going to anyone else, so it was about as accurate as she could get, given her inner uncertainty. And she couldn’t just let him say that he loved her, without giving him something truthful in return. She did care a great deal for him and couldn’t imagine being with anyone else like this.

  Perhaps that is the way her people say it, Saber decided as she said nothing more. It wasn’t as if he knew everything about her universe, her people’s culture; certainly she had done several things that were as alien to his Katani-raised ways as a woman could get. Wearing trousers, for one. But he didn’t really mind them, even the more incomprehensible things.

  His thumb rubbed the plain gold band on his third finger, working it around a little. He could feel the beat of her heart against his, where her breasts were crushed by her own weight to his chest, see the pulse in her temple flicker a fraction after each beat against his chest. Still buried inside her intimately, his manhood was reluctant to finish diminishing with his release, reluctant to leave the sheath of her flesh.

  Without his consent, he had fallen for her. In the face of the Curse and its Disaster, he had fallen hard for Kelly Doyle of Earth…wherever that was. Among all of his brothers, most of whom were less surly and less temperamental than he had been at the beginning, most of which surely would have been less awkward in their wooing…she had fallen for him.

  “My heart is yours, too,” he murmured. She burrowed a little closer to him. The night felt warm, especially with the drapes and windows closed and the season now thoroughly into summer. At least, he felt perfectly warm with her draped over him, but she might not feel that way. “Are you cold?”

  She shook her head against his chest and burrowed her fingers under his back, holding him closer.

  Sighing, Saber wrapped his arms around her a little more comfortably and closed his eyes against the dim glow of the globe. He didn’t care if the Disaster was the imminent collapse of the donjon roof supporting this aerie of a bedchamber; he was not about to dislodge her.

  SIXTEEN

  He was already inside her when he awoke—or, given that she was still draped over his chest with his arms still locked around her, he had likely never slipped out—so Saber didn’t have to do very much to ease the deep, hard hunger that had awakened him every morning since first finding his release by himself. Before that moment, if he were honest with himself. It had started the time he had pinned her against the wall in Morganen’s tower, since he had first reluctantly admitted he lusted for the woman still sleeping peacefully on his chest. Unlocking the hands clasped over her back, he slipped them down to her hips and pulled her gently down onto him just a little bit more, filling her fully instead of just partway.

  She made an indistinct sound against his chest, wriggling a little against him, and he eased her up and tugged her back down, gliding into her slick core with moisture left over from the pleasures of their gloriously late night. Kelly mumbled again, digging her chin into his chest in the effort to bury her face there, as if he were a pillow. He hitched up in three demanding, upward thrusts…and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes jerk open in three ever-widening stages. When he relaxed his grip on her backside, her lids slid down again, as he slid part of the way out of her body, sliding back into the limpness of sleep.

  That was interesting.

  He did it again. She reacted the same, wide, wider, widening…and then drooping. Smiling, Saber arched his back, sliding himself out to the very tip, to the point just before he might fall out of her. She mumbled and sighed, a sound that was almost a whimper, and wriggled her hips, threatening to free him. Gripping her pelvis, he pulled her down firmly as he thrust up strong, burrowing into her hard and deep and full.

  Instant orgasm. Kelly gasped and convulsed, coming awake in more ways than one. He jerked into her again, finding and spilling his pleasure in the tightening of her own as she writhed and gasped. Both of them slumped and breathed hard.

  Looking up at the canopy over the bed, Saber felt his racing heart slow down as his eyes focused on a drifting, dancing dust mote. His brothers, in preparing the chamber for their wedding night, had tactfully drawn all of the curtains, though no other point in the castle was as high as their room above the donjon roof. Or rather, they had almost drawn all the curtains. A shaft of sunlight was streaming in from the northeast, from behind and to one side of their heads, proving that dawn had already come and gone. From the angle of the light, in fact, it was probably even several hours into midmorning.

  The roof hadn’t collapsed. No mekhadadaks had chewed on the furniture in their frustration at being unable to get past his brothers’ amulets. No demonlings were buzzing around the rooms, looking for things to destroy. The donjon hadn’t burned down around them.

  Feeling good, Saber lifted his head a little, lazily following the trail of sunlit dust particles with mild curiosity, while his wife—blessed gods, his wife—mumbled and snuggled closer. No Disaster had occurred, now that Sword was sheathed in Maid. And most satisfactorily sheathed, at that. Beyond satisfactorily. He smirked to himself. In fact, he felt about as liquid gold as that shaft of light. Idly, Saber followed it with his gaze.

  The sunlight, just a narrow little shaft worming its way through a gap in the curtains, terminated on her heel, making it glow pink and gold, with little pale brown freckles around the anklebones and tendon.

  Her heel.

  “Jinga,” he swore, and rolled her off of him, pulling out of her with acute physical regret. She groused something under her breath as she dropped onto the bed, and woke up enough to brace herself on her arm, while he examined that patch of sunlight, careful to avoid getting caught in it. The ray of light was now on the bed, not on her foot, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. He caught her ankle, but the briefly sun-touched limb was no different than the other one, now that
the sun was off of it.

  “What are you doing?” Kelly grumped.

  “Your heel,” he explained, but only that far.

  That made her frown in confusion. “My what?”

  The sunlight—it has to be the sunlight, or something about it. Gingerly, he waved his fingers through the light. Nothing happened. It felt warm and glowed on his skin, like regular sunshine should. Climbing out of the bed, feeling muscles twinge that hadn’t been exercised in more than three years before their glorious wedding night, Saber stepped around the end of the bed and swept aside the blue and green linen curtains that had replaced the old, grimy, red velvet ones.

  Sunlight flooded the room in a broad shaft. Kelly grunted and buried her head under the nearest feather-stuffed pillow. Her body ached. She knew the only thing that would make it feel better was exercise; she even wanted to exercise it in the same way that made it ache, and exercise it some more. She just craved a little more sleep first to make up for her late-night adventures, and to give her enough strength to have some more marital fun. She didn’t know what had gotten into Saber, but if he didn’t come back to the bed and make love to her again, that was his loss. It was either sex or sleep, and if she didn’t get one, she was going to claim the other.

  Squinting into the sunlight at the window, Saber shaded his eyes with his hand. The sun still didn’t seem to be the source of the Prophesied Disaster, so he blinked and lowered his gaze to the rest of the palace castle. The courtyards and gardens, the eastern wing and outer wall, all looked normal. The jungle beyond seemed ordinary, with the usual handful of birds flying among the treetops, the rippling canopy of green echoing the terraced hills hidden beneath, sloping out and down to the eastern bay in the distance.

  Nothing looked out of the ordinary; not even the dark-and-white blot of a large sailing ship in the distance disturbed the tranquility of the morning-blue ocean—

  “Ship!”

  Kelly grunted.

  “Ship!” Saber whirled, looked about for his clothes, then reached over the low headboard of the bed and grabbed the pillow from her head. “Ship!”

  So she was to be denied both sex and sleep. Propping herself up, Kelly glared at him. “What about the damned ship?”

  “Kelly, it’s the quarter moon! And it’s coming from the east—the east! Get up! Evanor!” he sang out, crossing to the chest of drawers his brothers had brought up from the bedchamber he was abandoning in favor of this larger, better one his wife had already claimed.

  “Good morning!” his unseen, distant brother caroled back cheerfully, projecting to both of them, judging by the way Kelly grunted again and reburied her head under the pillows, clamping the nearest one over her ears. “Shall I finally bring up a tray of breakfast for you two? It won’t take a trice to reheat it, after all…”

  “Shut up, Ev!” Saber ordered, yanking on trousers and a sleeveless tunic in shades of green, colors that would blend well with the forest. His brothers had already brought his wardrobe and chests up, arranging them to share space with Kelly’s belongings. “There’s a large ship on the horizon, heading for the eastern harbor…and it’s the wrong time and direction for traders. And I noticed it only after I saw the sun on my wife’s heel!”

  Kelly blinked herself more fully awake at that, sliding out from under the pillow and off of the bed. “You mean that’s my Disaster? My Disaster is a ship on the horizon?—What kind of a Disaster is that?” she demanded, tossing her head. “‘Hi, we’ve got scurvy, and if you don’t give us all your lemons, we’ll run you through’?”

  Saber smacked her lightly on the nearest buttock as he passed her. “Get dressed—wear green, so you’ll blend into the jungle. We may have to confront them, and I certainly don’t want them making it all the way into the castle.”

  Kelly wondered if he even realized he had assumed she would be coming with him and his brothers; it was a far cry from the overprotective demand that she remain behind she would have otherwise expected from him. I’m going to have to reward him for that, she decided, though she wasn’t sure yet if she would tell him why. It was more fun keeping men on their toes, guessing what went on in a woman’s mind.

  “Everyone’s assembling in the great hall, save Rydan, of course,” Evanor announced on the heels of his order. “I’ll bring you your breakfast there; Morg’s bringing his best scrying mirror, to try to see who and what our visitors are.”

  “Good.” Saber finished tugging on his calf-length boots and cast about for his belt. A scrap of exotically sewn lace lay draped over the tooled leather; it reminded him with a rush of blood to his groin how she had looked while barely clad in it, last night. Straightening, his belt in one hand and the highly abbreviated undertrousers in the other, he looked around for its owner.

  She was lacing herself into a half-length corset with efficient, quick yanks to tighten the undergarment. Given that it was all she was wearing at the moment, he felt his blood quicken at the sight of her mostly bared curves for one moment, proud that he had such a desirable, beautiful wife. Even if her heel had led him to discover their now looming, unknown, Prophesied Disaster.

  Tossing the undergarment onto the bed, he buckled the belt around his hips then watched her pull on more normal, Katani-style undershorts after the corset had been knotted in place. Within another minute, she was clad in loose green trousers, a slightly darker, sleeveless tunic like his own, and one of the pairs of leather slippers his twin had made for her earlier, in a utilitarian light brown. Finding her belt, Saber tossed it at her. He remembered to rap twice on the lightglobe by the bed to conserve its energy, and hurried her out of their chamber.

  Kelly wiped her mouth with her napkin and peered past Saber’s arm. He had barely touched his food, so she pinched him, making him glance back and scowl at her. His eyes followed her imperiously pointing finger, and he shifted his dark look to the scrambled eggs on his plate. They had come from the fowl yard in one of the gardens, one of the only two sources of domesticated food on the island, the other being the chickens that had lain the eggs themselves. If he could demand that she eat more when needed, she could bully him about the same thing, too.

  Sighing, Saber sat forward and picked up his fork, digging into the rest of his half-forgotten breakfast. Kelly arched back behind his shoulders and managed to catch a glimpse of the oval mirror braced at an angle in Morganen’s hands, seated in Wolfer’s usual chair so that the two newlyweds could eat on their shared seat and still view the goings-on. Which were finally beginning to get interesting. The ship had finally sailed all the way into the broad bay and had furled its sails, drifting forward under mere momentum.

  “They’re dropping anchor,” Morganen muttered a moment later.

  “It’s a very strange-looking ship…” Trevan murmured. He squinted and peered past Wolfer’s shoulder, who was standing with him on that side of their youngest sibling. “By Kata! There’s a naked woman bound in chains to the front of that ship! But…it can’t be! I can see the people on the rigging, and they’re very tiny in comparison, and that woman is huge.”

  “Let me see,” Kelly asserted. She tried to lean past Saber’s broad back, then elbowed him into picking up his plate and leaning back so she could lean over his lap while he ate. The ship looked something like a Spanish brigantine in the outline of its hull, to her…except the sails were more like the kind found on a Chinese junk, braced by thin lines that stuck out on either side every few yards, suggesting sail-stiffening poles. She lowered her gaze to the front, where the naked lady was chained to the ramming spar. And smiled. “Ah. That’s a figurehead, nothing more.”

  “A what?” Morganen asked, tapping the surface of the mirror that at the moment wasn’t a mirror, somehow focusing the image in tighter on that part of the foreign ship.

  “It’s a special kind of carving; they’re put on ships under the ramming spar partially to strengthen it, partially to decorate the ship, and partially—at least in my universe’s past—to provide the idea of spiritual �
��eyes.’ It’s meant to represent whatever friendly spirits might have a vested interest in the ship and its crew, to protect it against less-friendly forces.

  “We may not have actual magic like you do, but we do have superstition, and the faith of believing in it.” She studied the ship a little longer, then spoke again. “This ship looks like a mishmash of styles of ship building that are a couple centuries old, by my era’s standards…but it’s not exactly like any specific style from my world’s history.”

  “We mark our ship hulls with magic sigils to guard them against foundering on reefs and sandbars,” Saber stated, pushing her down slightly over his lap so he could put his emptied plate back on the table. He leaned over her, sipping on his mug of juice, and studied the image over the top of her still sleep-tousled head. “You say you’re familiar with the different parts, or at least their styles?”

  “Yes, more or less…” she agreed, distracted slightly by the way her side, pressed to his lap as she peered over his youngest brother’s elbow, could feel the warm bulge there.

  “Do you know what those little wooden squares are for?” he asked, pointing at the single row of shutters below the main deck rails, but above the round, glazed portholes. “Their portholes farther down are round and glazed much as ours are, but I see no use for having a shuttered window that would surely leak.”

  “Those aren’t windows. I think…I think they’re gun ports.”

  “What ports?” Dominor asked from where he stood behind Morganen’s back.

  “Cannons, to be more precise, but still a type of gun—a technological device in my world that, using a naturally explosive combination of ignitable powders, hurls an object along a tightly fitted, metal aiming tube at a target. Cannons are big, heavy, dangerous, early types of guns. They hurl lead balls as big as your fist, sometimes even as big as your head, usually too fast for you to see before it hits you…and too fast to readily dodge, even if you do.