The Sword

by Jean Johnson

  “Will you help us to discourage them from any attempts at conquest?” Saber asked.

  “It is your problem! I have told you this! Katan wants nothing to do with you!”

  Kelly’s mind leaped into a serendipitous tangent, at that.

  “Then do you give us the rightful authority to deal with this matter in our own fashion?” Kelly asked, earning a brief, questioning look from her husband and his brothers. “Do you relinquish all claim to Nightfall, its troubles, and its triumphs?”

  “Do whatever you want; Nightfall is not a part of Katan, so do not contact the High Council again!” The mage on the other end of the mirror-link cut the connection with an angry swipe of his arm, popping the image in the glazed surface and restoring it to a reflection of Saber’s face.

  “What a bastard,” she muttered.

  “Fear does that to some people,” Morganen reminded her. “It is up to us alone to handle this potential disaster, gentlemen, lady, as the Seer Draganna’s Prophecy foretold—speaking of which, was there any way those invaders from your own history were successfully stopped in their conquest, Kelly?”

  “Greater strength…or an appearance of greater strength,” she added, thinking quickly as an idea unfolded in her mind. “You’re going to be very grateful I insisted on having the grounds tidied.”

  “You have an idea?” Saber asked her.

  “You bet I do. We need to present ourselves as that greater power, too great for them to want to try to blast their way through. Call up the image of that guy in too many clothes,” she ordered him. When he obliged, she pointed to the man’s garments. “See all of that? Do you know what his clothing tells me?”

  “That he has horrid taste in fashion?” Dominor asked.

  “Well, yes, from your viewpoint, maybe; Katani fashions seem to be fairly straightforward, comfortable, and utilitarian. His fashion tells me his culture is obsessed with appearances, at least in its upper echelons. The common sailors are clad simply, efficiently garbed for the labor they constantly do. This man is the expedition leader—a nobleman probably, or perhaps someone of great wealth.

  “He is someone of far greater standing than the rest, great enough to be highly conscious of that difference in their status, or he would have dispensed with at least a few layers for comfort. He also apparently has the backing of this King Gustavo that he claimed the beach in the name of, with the planting of that flag. And the fact that he dresses in so many layers in the appearance-conscious fashion of his social ranking, despite the summer heat and the supposed emptiness of the beach, suggests that he is very status conscious.”

  “Which means that he’ll only defer to someone he thinks is his social superior,” Saber filled in, catching her meaning. “The question is, will a count and countess be considered a strong enough social status?”

  Kelly shook her head. “Higher, just in case he’s as high as a duke, though I don’t think he’s a prince. We should proclaim ourselves something like King and Queen—”

  “I can’t do that!” Saber choked, eyeing her askance. “No one of Katan may claim such a position, without actually being the rightful ruler!”

  “Technically, the Council of Mages did dismiss us from any association with the realm of Katan,” Morganen pointed out helpfully.

  Saber shook his head. “I cannot do it. I cannot proclaim myself a king. Even if it would be the strongest status-point to battle this…person’s arrogance with, I will not do it!”

  “Fine, then; you don’t have to. I call all of you as witness,” Kelly stated, crossing her legs neatly and folding her hands in her lap, straightening her back primly. “I hereby declare myself to be your sovereign Queen. As I am not of Katan, I have no loyalty to Katan, and therefore no compunction against doing so. Neither do I fall under the jurisdiction of Katani law, social strata, tradition, or custom to prevent me from doing so. Furthermore, all of you as well as I myself have witnessed a duly appointed representative of the Katani government relinquish all claim to Nightfall Island, its resources and its occupants, in the name of the Katani government.

  “Therefore, I hereby claim Nightfall Isle and all of its encompassing land, local waters, and many resources as my domain, and its lawful, native inhabitants as my subjects, of which currently number myself, my husband, who shall be my consort, and his seven brothers. Plus the chickens in the henhouse,” she added primly, to be fair. The chickens were horrible creatures with nasty tempers and sharp beaks, but they were members of the brothers’ household. So to speak. “Though they’re more chattel than true citizens. The rest of our ‘population’…we can pretend we’re all living under a protective don’t-see-’em illusion, or something, to explain why these invaders haven’t seen anything, as yet.”

  Saber closed his eyes. He knew she was strange, this woman from another realm, but this was too much. “Kelly…you can’t do that.”

  “She just did, Brother, and none here will gainsay her,” Morganen commiserated with a pat on the eldest’s shoulder. “None on the mainland, either, will protest at our secession, now that the Disaster has come and they have learned of it. Personally, I think it’s a great idea,” he added with a shrug. “I mean, we’ve got a woman who knows something of these outlanders’ weaponry and ways, and a castle that is also a palace—an impressive palace, especially now that it’s been cleaned up—and we’ve got enough of an advanced warning to whip up enough illusions to populate the place with servants and such before they find and breech our walls of illusions, shields, and stones.

  “Congratulations on your incipient kingdom, Your Majesty,” the youngest of them added with a flourished bow to his sister-in-law. “I place my skills and knowledge at your royal disposal.”

  “And I,” Trevan agreed, smirking at the idea.

  “Count me in,” Koranen added, grinning.

  “I’d rather bow to you, who can make me eat dirt in the blink of an eye, than allow anyone dressed like that to try and claim this island,” Dominor asserted. “I respect your fashion sense far more than his.”

  That made Kelly smile. “Why thank you, Dom; that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  He smiled back slyly. “Don’t worry; I’m certain it was accidental.”

  “I relish the idea of kicking these men off the island,” Wolfer stated. “But if their weaponry is as difficult to stop as Kelly thinks, this will not be an easy task. As you said—though I resent the animal you used—one must sometimes say ‘nice jonja’ while reaching for your stoutest spear.”

  “What if the Council finds all of this out?” Saber pointed out to his crazy, strawberry-haired wife.

  “They gave up all claim to us, and thus to Nightfall,” she pointed out. Then caught his hand where it had fisted on this thigh. “Saber, I can as easily undeclare myself queen as I can declare it. The only reason why a person is made a king or a queen in the first place is because it is declared and acknowledged as so by the populace that king or queen rules over. People rule only by consent of the people around them, whether actively by choice, or apathetically through a disinterest in changing tradition.”

  “Saber, if she declares herself our queen and we agree to it as her ‘subjects,’ she is a queen,” Morganen agreed. “She’s right in that the declaration and the consent are all you need to be one. This isn’t shattered Aiar, after all. And personally, I don’t mind. If it’s temporary.”

  “Only on the occasional weekends, holidays, and whenever we have visitors,” Kelly quipped, dismissing their concerns with a flip of her free hand. She rubbed Saber’s hand with the other one. “It’s a status thing, nothing more.”

  “I cannot declare myself King,” he reminded her, beginning to give in at least a little on the idea.

  Kelly smiled. Slow, sly, and feminine. “Honey, any man who can do what you can do in the bedroom, is automatically a king. At least, in my humble opinion.”

  The others laughed and slapped Saber on the back, as the eldest of the eight brothers blush
ed.

  “Remind me to give you a royal spanking when we get back up there,” Saber growled out of the corner of his tight-grinning mouth, glancing up at the ceiling to indicate their chamber.

  She patted his knee. “That’s nice, dear—but don’t tease and make promises you don’t intend to keep.”

  He hooked her around the waist, hauled her up against him, and silenced her with his mouth.

  Koranen rapped his knuckles twice on the top of Saber’s head, interrupting their kiss. “Shut off that blinding lightglobe of passion, Brother! We have business to attend to, remember?”

  Saber did remember. He released Kelly—slowly, because his body refused to accept an abrupt withdrawal of her heady, responsive mouth—and organized his thoughts, dragging them from her tease about wanting him to spank her when they were alone back to the problem at hand. “That flag on the beach…if this were a real kingdom, concealed or no, someone would have noticed it by now. We should remove it immediately. To wait would only imply we are slack, unobservant and lazy…and that is not the kind of behavior that impresses.”

  “I think we should replace it with a flag of our own,” Kelly offered. “Morganen, do you have any of that paint left from when we redid the walls? Or even better, can you replicate the same thing in cloth quickly?”

  “Now that I know what I’m doing, yes—very quickly,” Morganen agreed. “The slow part for me is figuring out how to achieve the effect; once the enspelling methods are known, it goes very quickly with each repetition.” He grinned. “Especially when power isn’t a problem, for me.”

  “Excellent,” she praised. “Since this is Nightfall, the name of our castle, island, and kingdom, I suggest a lovely, color-shifting flag depicting a black silhouette of the land. Trees, mountains, that sort of thing. With stars and a crescent moon in white—two crescent moons, sorry—in a ‘sky’ that changes from sunset shades to midnight blue and back. Compared to their normal cloth flag down there, a plain red fist on a white background, it should be quite stunning and impressive, I think.”

  “It can be done easily enough, I think, with the special paint applied on black cloth. Ev, care to help me construct a counter-claiming banner?”

  “I want to know if I’m going to get a fancy title bestowed on me by our queen, there,” the singer-mage drawled before budging. “Seeing as how I do all of the real work around here…”

  “I hereby declare you Lord Chamberlain, with duties including the smooth running of this castle palace,” Kelly promptly agreed. “Which you already do so well.”

  “I want a title, too!” Koranen asserted quickly.

  “Lord Secretary, since you seem to insist on wanting us to keep on topic and on schedule,” Kelly teased him.

  “And me?” Wolfer rumbled, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Lord Protector, head of palace defense,” Kelly decided, since he was the biggest.

  “That’s my job,” Saber growled.

  “Sorry. Okay, Wolfer, you’re…Master of the Hunt, and Captain of the Armies, Saber’s first officer. Saber, you’re General of the Armies and Lord Protector of my person, as well as Consort. Um, Dominor, you’re my Lord Chancellor and Master of Ceremonies; Morganen, as the best of all the brothers, you’re obviously my Court Mage; Trevan…”

  “Stable boy? Scullery maid?” he teased. “Your abject slave?”

  “I’d name you Lord Rogue, if I could get away with it,” Kelly muttered dryly as Saber glared at his brother, slipping his arm around his wife possessively. She elbowed the eldest of them. “Help me out, here, Saber. What does he do, anyway?”

  Trevan winced and clapped his hand dramatically to his chest, mock-wounded.

  “When he isn’t gainfully employed crafting something with magic, and usually working in wood, he changes his shape, sometimes into a bird, sometimes into a cat and goes roaming through the forest, as Wolfer often does in canine form. They are the hunters of the family…though my twin is often more reliable,” Saber added, digging at his younger brother in retaliation for teasing Kelly in front of him.

  “You could be my chief of intelligence, then—for I’ve never known a cat to not be curious and not want to find out everything, and in a stealthy way at that.” At the brothers’ blank looks, she picked out a more medieval-sounding title, something they were more likely to be familiar with. “Um…you will be my official Lord Vizier, Trevan, for your title, and so advise me on all the things going on outside these walls. And Rydan can be Lord of the Night, since, well, he is.

  “Now,” Kelly continued briskly. “Morganen, Evanor, go work on the flag; make several of them, since we’ll need a few to fly from the towers and such, and to hang here in the hall. I doubt we’ll be able to make them go away without a display of wealth and power. The rest of you, we’ll need to make sure the palace is looking perfect, since we’ll probably have to bring them inside the walls at least once to impress them. And we’ll have to change this hall into a grand audience hall.”

  “I’ll take care of tidying the castle from the east courtyard to here, to begin with,” Dominor offered as the two left to work on the flag. “That’s the most direct path they’ll be led along. We can also use your marriage-bench for the throne, since it’s fancy enough. Once that’s done, I’ll set to work on making illusions of courtiers for our ‘guests’ to interact with, once they get into the castle and into this hall, since it would look odd to have an otherwise empty palace—you can’t have a throne room without courtiers attending the throne, after all,” he added dryly.

  “I’ll strengthen the donjon defenses,” Saber asserted. “And I can manage adequate illusions of guards on the outer walls and castle parapets, even to the point of them actually defending our home, if necessary.”

  “I’ll help handle the majority of the illusions, since I’m really good at them. Illusions are rarely more than light, and light is a part of fire,” Koranen explained to his sister-in-law. “I can also tie some of the illusions into the lightglobes, since I made most of them, so that those images that can stay in one room won’t need as much constant, direct supervision from a mage. Though I’ll need Evanor’s help when he’s done with the flags, to make convincing sounds—the spells from that music box he made might be able to help.”

  “I’ll make illusions of animals—of more animals than just the official citizen-chickens,” Wolfer amended with a touch of deep-rumbled amusement. “And servants to work in the gardens, and outdoors.”

  “And I’ll go keep an eye on our Disaster-visitors,” Trevan agreed.

  “Don’t be seen. And don’t get caught,” Saber ordered him.

  “I can’t believe I have to say this,” Kelly muttered, rising from their double seat, as the others started to scatter around her, “but, I have to find something to wear!”

  EIGHTEEN

  Crouched high in a nearby tree, Trevan waited in one of his favorite feline forms, listening with ears that occasionally twitched from the Ultra-Tongue spell. The group of five sailors had finally reached the end of the road, which now stopped at the base of a virtually sheer cliff face, instead of the stone-covered postern gate of the castle. The sight of the large rock wall, curving gradually to either side, puzzled the newcomers.

  There was a break in the tree line between the “cliff” and the forest, one too wide to try and jump from tree to parapet, or in this case, cliff top. That much, the eight brothers had diligently kept clear, in order to find and eradicate any monsters sent their way from beyond the castle walls during their former, weekly plagues. Now, only the illusion of moss and the occasional tendril of vine that he had placed there marred the age-weathered, slightly rugged surface he had created, rugged enough to be real, but too devoid of handholds to try to climb.

  The sailors were arguing.

  “It can’t just end,” one with a full beard argued with the others, as Trevan listened with Ultra-Tongue ears. “I say it’s an illusion of some kind. Why else would anyone put a paved roadway between the
beach and a cliff wall, without a reason for having a road? We haven’t found that reason, and that’s because this wall is surely an illusion!”

  “We have only one illusion-dispeller with us, and that’s back on board the ship. Lord Aragol isn’t about to let it out of his sight,” one of the thinner, tallish men returned.

  A broader-shouldered, bare-chested one ran his hand over the cliff face. “It feels real—if it’s an illusion, it’s a very powerful one.”

  “Rights of Man forbid we’ve come on another land of women mages,” the fourth one spat.

  Interesting way to put it, Trevan thought.

  “Trevan, the first flag is complete; would you like the honor of reasserting Her Majesty’s claim to this island?” Evanor sang into his ears alone, in that almost-annoying way his next-eldest brother had. “I’ll meet you on the eastern parapet.”

  Trevan flicked his ears, mrraowled under his breath, and transformed. Coppery-striped housecat shifted to a golden-red hawk. Launching himself from the branch, he flapped through the trees, soared over the cliff that was a wall, and angled just slightly to land on the roof of the tower that looked like a pinnacle of rock from outside. Transforming as soon as he had waddled bird-style into the stairwell, he tripped lightly down the steps, just in time to meet Evanor coming up from below with a cloth-wrapped staff.

  “We made it banner-style,” Evanor stated. “You have only to plant the pole and hang the crosspiece. And be careful.”

  “Or what, get myself killed on my very first day as a lord vizier?” he quipped, taking the bundle from his brother. Shaking his head, Trevan turned serious. “I overheard them speak of something they call an illusion-dispeller. They have only one, which is in the position of their leader, a Lord Aragol. The fop, I think. They also have something against female mages, and possibly against women in general, from the tone of the man who spoke…though I do not yet know why.”