The Sword

by Jean Johnson

  “I’ll tell the others. Be careful, Brother.”

  Trevan grinned. “As careful as any cat.”

  Evanor rolled his eyes as he turned away.

  Returning to the roof, Trevan murmured under his breath, rubbed his hands together, and transformed a third time, into his largest eagle form. Waddling over to the bundle set briefly on the stones underfoot, or rather, under claw, he gripped it in his talons gently, spread his wings, and flapped hard. Taking off over the inner parapet battlements, he soared around the palace with his awkward load a few times, until he had gained sufficient height, then soared to the south, to avoid the eyes of the sailors down below as he cleared the illusion-cloaked wall.

  Turning east once more, he soared low over the treetops, until he came close to the edge of the forest that was the beach line. Dropping down under the canopy, he found a broad, thick limb and landed, then carefully transformed again, back to his normal self. The bundle of banner and pole almost fell. Biting back a curse, he grabbed at it, then straddled the limb and listened, peering into the forest floor a ways below.

  Even as he and the limb he was sitting on stopped swaying, a sailor came into view. Without a concern in the world, without doing more than looking around at the underbrush cursorily, the man lifted up his shirt, unfastened his trousers, and relieved himself, balancing against the tree he was watering. Trevan waited until the other man was done, turning his head away from the less than civilized display. He might have a variety of animal shapes he liked to turn himself into, but he was as fastidious as a cat.

  He was also probably the cleanest of the brothers, next to Dominor, whose only actual claim to superiority in that department was that he preferred to dress in richer fabrics more often than Trevan ever bothered with on this isle—to Trevan’s way of thinking, without any women to impress, why should he bother?

  Slipping quietly down the tree, Trevan crept through the underbrush until he was at the tree line, where the bushes were at their thickest to take advantage of the sunlight. That obnoxious red-on-white flag was still there, in front of the three boats drawn onto the sand. The tide was now well out. Some of the sailors were clamming, digging mollusks from the bared tidal sands. The rest seemed to still be off exploring the immediate land. Their poorly dressed leader was sitting in the center boat, his back to the shoreline, drinking from a glass goblet that glinted in the sunlight and eating from a pristine white napkin spread out over his lap, without a care for the world.

  Trevan slipped out noiselessly from between the bushes and strode across the sand. No one noticed him…but then his plain, tan tunic and slightly darker trousers were little different from the clothes most of the others wore. He was far enough away that any of the sailors glancing his way probably thought him just another one of their group.

  Stopping at the flag, he pulled it up and leaned the unwelcome ensemble against his chest, shook out the Nightfall banner, pushed its pole into the hole left by the other one, and fitted the hole in the crosspiece bar over the top of the tapered pole so that it sat levelly on the pole. Trevan then twisted the foreign flag and its short banner pole in his hands, bundling it up quickly. As the silhouette-flag of Nightfall shifted from blue to pale green, shades of yellow, peach golds, pinks, and down into deepening, darkening purples with slow, stately grace, around mountain-forest outline and the eight-point star and crescent moons design, he stepped around the marker and strode up to the middle of the trio of boats.

  Lord Aragol—it couldn’t be any other man, not in that ridiculously fussy outfit—continued to eat his cheese and bread, and sip at his wine. He seemed oblivious to Trevan’s presence, even when the strawberry-blond mage came over to the side of the boat, within the man’s field of view. Sighing, Trevan shook out the flag, with its red fist, red border, and white background, letting it drape plainly in the man’s view. The other man choked on his bread.

  “By the Rights of Man! What is that doing out of the sands, you oaf?” he demanded in whatever language his men and he spoke, making Trevan’s ears twitch as the Ultra-Tongue potion once again translated it for him. The foppish man raised hazel eyes in a glare to Trevan’s face, then frowned slightly, apparently trying to recall if he had ever seen Trevan before.

  Trevan dropped the flag into the boat. “You left your flag on our beach.”

  “Of course I left it there!” the somewhat older man exclaimed roughly, twisting to look at where it had been planted only moments before. “I claimed the whole beach in the king’s name with…it. Where did that come from?”

  “I put it there. In our queen’s name,” Trevan added, folding his arms across his chest, amused by the man’s gaping stare.

  The other man whipped his broad-hatted head back around, the soft, fluffy feather tucked in it almost snapping in half with the speed of his turn.

  “Her Majesty does not care to have foreigners prancing around on our soil, picking our fruit without her permission. She especially doesn’t like foreigners claiming our land. I give you a friendly suggestion, stranger. Do not try her patience with such impolite gestures again.”

  The other man stood in the beached boat, making it rock slightly in the sand as he sneered at Trevan through his goatee. “You do your whole gender a disgraceful disservice, obeying Queen Maegan so subserviently—like a whipped dog with your tail chained between your legs!”

  “Queen who?” Trevan asked, feeling his fur figuratively fluff at the crude language of this fop-man. “I serve Her Majesty, Queen Kelly, she who rules all of Nightfall. Which is the whole of this land you stand uninvited upon.” He gave the man in his foppish, sweat-inducing attire a contemptuous look. “We will be observing you for a while. If you can prove yourselves civilized enough, you might be granted an audience in Her Majesty’s court.”

  “Insolence! I am Lord Kemblin Aragol, Earl of the Western Marches of the Independence of Mandare, and representative of the king!” He put his hand on his sword-hilt.

  “You could claim yourself the king of the whole universe, and I would not care. Leave your arrogance behind you, stranger, when you step foot on Her Majesty’s shore.” Turning, Trevan strode past the Nightfall banner, which had begun to lighten from midnight to sky blue again, resuming its sunset shift of colors, and headed back up the beach. Behind him, the lord yelled at his companions to go after him, capture and bring the stranger among them back. Unfortunately for the now red-faced stranger, they were all too far away to hear him clearly; by the time they had started in earnest up the beach after the copper-haired man, Trevan had already slipped into the trees.

  A glance around, a quick shift into a small, winged form, and he flew up among the other birds perching and flitting in the canopy. It amused him to watch the men, when they finally reached the spot he had vanished from, beat through the bushes, fruitlessly trying to find him.

  I have no idea what words were exchanged with Trevan, but obviously this foppish man has a bit of a temper,” Kelly murmured, staring into the mirrored surface Dominor had activated and demonstrated for her. She touched the cool glass of the mirror, pushing and sliding with her fingertip, and the image focused in even tighter on the yelling leader of the landing party.

  The man grimaced, and she caught a glimpse of puffy gums, a sign of scurvy; it was caused by a lack of fresh fruit and thus a lack of vitamin C in the diet. It wasn’t uncommon in the old sailing ship days of her old world, long before her own time and the advent of modern nutrition and medicine. A stroke of the frame and the image backed off, panning around to view the sailors giving futile chase of Trevan. She tapped and backed along one side of the oval, focusing in on some of them next. It was kind of fun, using magic like it was some kind of high-tech surveillance system. She just wished she could have overheard Trevan’s conversation with the man.

  “Your Majesty, the eastern wing of the donjon has been polished and peopled and awaits only the addition of sound and the activation of the illusions,” Dominor announced dryly, Koranen approaching with
him. “If you would be so kind as to stand for a few moments, we’ll move the table out of view and arrange the donjon hall to look like a proper throne room.”

  “I think the solar above the kitchen would make a nice dining room—if you can get the table in there,” she added as she stood. It was a broad table, too large to fit through most of the normalsized doors in the castle.

  “It comes apart in four pieces,” Koranen reassured her, moving to disassemble it, tools already in his hands.

  “Let’s put the ‘throne’ over there, first, against the northwest windows,” Dominor ordered his brother, and they picked up Kelly and Saber’s marriage-seat and carried it there. Kelly took herself and the mirror over in that direction, sitting down on the double-wide seat as soon as it was in place.

  She hadn’t changed yet, but the moment it was decided to meet with their uninvited visitors, she would don her aquamarine silk wedding clothes as her most impressive garb. Tucking up her green-covered legs on the broad seat, she played with the mirror a little bit more, observing the visitors by sight if not also by sound, since that was something she could do with the mirror while the others used their magic to speed the various other tasks. If she spotted something that needed someone’s attention, Kelly knew all she had to do was sing out Evanor’s name.

  Evanor came in and hung from the upper levels the long Nightfall banners he and Morganen had made, then disappeared again to start adding his specialty of sound to the illusions Dominor, Koranen, and now Morganen and Evanor were making and fine-tuning somewhere else in the castle-like palace.

  Lunch was served in the salon just off the north balcony. It was made by Saber, of all people. That was the moment Kelly discovered her husband liked his food spicy. Of course, she discovered the fact after taking a healthy bite of the chili-like stew he had made. Two seconds later, she grabbed swiftly for a hunk of bread to neutralize the peppers and a glass of water to drown the rest of the fire turning her freckled face red. Saber only grinned at her as she wiped at her watering eyes, and leaned in close.

  “And I thought you could handle anything…hot in your mouth,” he murmured into her ear, sliding his fingers between her trousered thighs. Right up against the warmth of her core. Much better than a skirt, he decided then and there, since the folds of a skirt would not have given him such ready access.

  She flushed again, and not from the spices in the stew. Setting her cup down, she dropped her hand straight to his lap and cupped him intimately in retaliation for that. “You mean, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen?”

  “Do you two mind? I don’t need to see that! Not while we’re eating lunch,” Wolfer demanded, his spoon halfway to his mouth, his brow arching as he eyed the two of them. Wolfer, on Saber’s right, could see past the edge of the cloth-draped table with his peripheral vision, seeing clearly what the two of them were doing. So could Dominor, for that matter, seated on Kelly’s left.

  Both of them removed their hands. Both of them blushed. Both of them returned to their meal, and both of them managed to focus on the conversation of how to go about handling the visitors on their eastern shore.

  A bit of debate, and it was decided to wait until morning, after finishing their preparations and briefing Rydan when he awoke, before making the next move. Which would be to send a “delegation” from the castle, if the visitors didn’t finish taking on scavenged provisions and leave when the tide went out toward midnight again. No one thought that outcome likely, though it would have been nice. Not with the Prophesied Disaster looming.

  As soon as the meal was over and the others had begun clearing the table, Saber grabbed Kelly by the hand and dragged her out of the new dining chamber. Hustling her to the nearest stairs and up them, he got them up to their chamber, slammed the door behind them, and yanked her up against him, bracing his back against the stout wood. There they stood for just a handful of seconds, panting from the fast climb up all of those stairs, then Saber hauled her even closer and kissed her.

  She met the demands of his mouth willingly, heatedly, hungrily writhing against his body. His fingers dug into her backside, lifting her up against him. Breaking off their kiss, Kelly wriggled down his body, avoiding the hands that tried to pull her back up, and dragged down his trousers with an impatient tug at the laces to loosen them. With the garment tangled at his knees, she took him in her mouth and showed him what a hot mouthful really meant to her.

  Saber banged his head back against the door behind him. The pain helped; he was determined to not climax, not this way, not when his whole body begged to be buried inside her own for that. Not just when deliciously tortured by her mouth. Shuddering as she cupped his sack, gently fondled the spheres inside his flesh, he gripped her hair, then her head, and pushed her away. Sinking to the floor, dragging her with him, he yanked impatiently at her own pants and undershorts, loosening them with her help.

  Shifting onto her bared backside, she shoved the clothing down over her knees, lifting her feet—and Saber pressed her back, her cloth-imprisoned limbs hooked over his chest, as he stretched out over her, probed with his need, and entered her slick center in one sure thrust. There was a moment of stretching pain for her, from the angle and the sudden, filling depth of his demanding member in her only recently breached body, but it was nothing compared to the sweet friction that was the glide of his flesh into hers. He sucked in a breath as she cried out tightly and convulsed around him in an instant release, arms bracing his body above the curled angle of hers. Thrusting over and over into her quaking depths, seeking and yet delaying his own completion, he bit his lower lip as she did hers, and determinedly drove her back up and over the edge of insanity once more. When he fell with her, it was with a shout of her name, as her hips squirmed up into his.

  Untangling themselves somewhat, breathing heavily, they curled up together on the floor, limp and sated. A few minutes later, when his body felt capable of assembling liquified bones and muscles back into working order again, Saber scooped her up and waddled over to the bed, since his breeches were now tangled around his calves.

  Kelly kicked her own clothing-restrained legs and laughed.

  “Does something amuse you?” he panted, getting to the edge of the bed and dropping her on it.

  She bounced on her backside and kicked her feet again in explanation, giggling. He grabbed her feet, slipped off her slippers, tickled and nibbled on her toes while she squirmed and giggled, then threw her pants away and spread her legs. Tugging off his own footwear and garments, he dropped to his knees beside the bed, dragged her hips to the edge, and buried his tongue in her slick center with a wriggle. She shrieked and giggled, throwing her feet up, then parting her knees willingly, moaning. He raced his lips across her tender, slick flesh, nipping and suckling mercilessly, until she was forced to grip his hair and drag him away from there.

  “Please—please—” Kelly panted, tugging him up over her. “Take me!”

  He wanted to. But not like that. Disentangling her fingers from his locks, he climbed onto the bed and sprawled on his back, tugging her into squirming after him. With his hands on her waist, her hips, he got her over him. “Ride me…”

  He broke off with a moan when she scrambled over his hips, grabbed his shaft without preamble, and sank onto him rather impatiently. Gripping her hips hard, Saber helped rock her down onto him in that exotic way she had taken him in the night. Until her insistence on a slow pace wasn’t enough for him. Pulling his wife close, he rolled them over and showed Kelly exactly who was the ruler in their bedroom, with each of his masterful thrusts. At least, until she tightened deliberately around him, squeezing rhythmically.

  Pleasure was the true ruler, at least in this particular corner of the donjon.

  Happy and a little disheveled, they returned to the great hall a while later. Transformed completely, it was now filled with people, making both of them slow and stare as they walked out of the stairwell at the ground floor. Men clad in tunics and shirts, some sleevele
ss, some sleeved; women clad in Katani-style gowns and in variations of the trouser-and-shell-skirt garment Kelly had created; all turned and bowed politely to the two of them as they walked onto a length of red velvet laid down for carpeting. Kelly recognized it belatedly as the curtains that used to hang in the chamber over their heads, washed free of the grime of ages and spell-stitched together into a long runner for their feet to tread upon.

  Long banners that slowly changed in sunset colors hung down each of the eight ceiling-supporting pillars, from the highest balcony railing overhead to just brushing the floor, lengths of black muslin treated with Morganen’s color-changing paint. And to the right, angled in front of the stained glass windows under the balcony area, was an actual dais. A platform that stood just high enough to place a seated head level with a standing one, and just big enough for the massive, carved chair to safely perch. Trevan—or someone—had been busy; the loveseat had been gilded over and pillowed with yet more of the pilfered aquamarine silk.

  Dominor stood next to that dais, talking with a woman clad in a violet and cream version of Kelly’s aquamarine clothes, which were currently still upstairs. When the two of them followed the runner to the middle of the room, they discovered it was laid out in four runners, not just one. In addition to the lengths stretching from archway to archway, there was one more runner leading to the dais. The five aisles ran between the wedge-shaped sections of people occupying the hall, who were murmuring around them quietly.

  As Saber and Kelly approached, Dominor broke off the conversation and smiled at them.

  “Your Majesty, Brother, this is the Lady Felisa of Novella, a barony not too far north of Corvis lands. Lady Felisa, these are Her Majesty, Kelly of Nightfall, and her Consort, Lord Saber of Nightfall.”

  The woman dipped a little curtsy, knees together and bowing her dark-haired head, streaked faintly with gray at one temple. “Your Majesty, Your Highness. It is a pleasure to see you again, Lord Saber.”