The Sword

by Jean Johnson

  Dominor tipped his head, listening to Evanor’s voice projected solely to him. The others not in sight were either watching the ship or watching the three men left among them through scrying mirrors, back inside the donjon. He nodded to the trio of Mandarites.

  “I believe there is a cart waiting in the eastern courtyard to take you back down to your ship even as we speak. Please, do not take offense at what has happened, Lord Aragol, young sirs. I did say that you should watch what you do and say while you are here,” he added as they reluctantly started moving around the outer wings of the palace to reach the eastern courtyard without reentering the palace itself. “It is another reason why we do not encourage visitors. Most end up accidentally putting their foot in their mouth, by speaking without thinking…and thus most end up eating the dirt that is clinging to said foot.”

  Saber held on to Kelly until the quartet of men were well out of sight and out of hearing range. He had felt her start to quiver at his brother’s parting words. A murmured word, and they were visible once more.

  She was shaking with laughter, not rage. Turning, gasping with the need for silence, she quivered and quaked in his arms, whispering up at him. “Did you see his face? When I pinned it under my heel?” she demanded harshly, her freckled features positively red with mirth. “My god—his face!”

  Tipping his head thoughtfully, Saber had to admit it had been a hilarious sight. But the situation was still a sobering one “Let us just pray that this has dealt with our Disaster. I won’t relax until they’re gone, either.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  You will not believe the bargain I struck!” Dominor called out as the cart came back into the castle and the real inhabitants of Nightfall met him at the gate. It was being driven by a disguised Evanor, not Trevan, who was apparently down at the shore, spying on their guests. The third-born of them preened with a pleased, smug smile as he got down from the driving bench. “With the extra water being processed for the fountains and such, we’ve got a surplus of salt blocks down at the western shore. Salt is something their people cannot process easily, lacking the magic to do it quickly and efficiently—and they have a surplus of oil of comsworg, which I noticed they use to keep their gun-things oiled and their ship-lanterns lit, and which we use in the creation of our lightglobes!

  “I am a consummate diplomat,” the twenty-seven-year-old mage added somewhat arrogantly, striking a pose with his hand splayed on his chest before gesturing at the barrels and keg in question in the bed of the cart behind him. “I have not only smoothed over any ruffled feelings on the ride back to the eastern cove, but I have also arranged to trade thirty blocks of salt for two hogsheads and a keg!”

  “By Jinga, Brother! Considering the price the traders get for our salt, which they’ve been taking for free until now, and the price they charge to ship us the comsworg, that’s incredible, Dom!” Koranen asserted, hazel eyes wide. “That much oil will create…a thousand globes per hogshead, plus the keg—far more than two thousand lightglobes, maybe even as many as twenty-four hundred!” he calculated gleefully out loud, rubbing his hands together. “And since it’s the rarest and most costly ingredient in the artificing process, that means we’ll be making a real profit for a full year! And we don’t even have to do anything to make the salt, other than uncork a fountain or two!”

  “Help me get the barrels off the cart—we’re going to go fetch the blocks immediately,” Dominor added, ordering his brothers with a clap on his twin, Evanor’s, shoulder. “Before they change their minds and ask for all of this back!”

  Kelly frowned; she didn’t know why, but something about the bargain sounded a little odd. She didn’t stop them when they departed, though. If Dominor had managed to smooth things over enough to arrange a trade of goods, that meant the outlanders weren’t going to cause any real trouble, and that was a good thing. Since she didn’t know what comsworg-oil was, let alone how or where it was acquired, it was conceivable these Mandarites considered it as common and therefore cheap as the Greeks of her old world had considered olive oil.

  For all I know, they might consider salt such a rare commodity, they’d be willing to give up their “lamp oil” for the incredibly pure stuff this island’s water system produces daily. Even if their kingdom sits on the edge of the local ocean, salt could still be hard for them to process efficiently. I know it takes a broad, shallow stone beach to successfully sun-dry seawater into salt, without having to burn down all the local forests to boil it off the hard way. Digging into a salt mine might be easier, but first you have to find one.

  They don’t have magic to speed up the process either way, so they probably are getting a bargain, I guess…but I still don’t trust them, either way.

  Dominor and Evanor came back up from the western side of the isle in half an hour, driving two carts. When Kelly glanced down into the courtyard and saw the size of the salt blocks, each one the size of a perfectly rectangular, grainy white coffin, the seemingly uneven bargain made a little more sense. Even for mere salt versus whatever that type of oil was, that was a lot of salt. Perhaps the bargain was worth it.

  Turning away from the windows of the great hall, she continued her own assigned chore of picking up all of the illusion-marbles on the ground floor and balcony levels and packing them away in a carefully labeled chest Trevan had found somewhere. The others were going through the castle wings, disabling the illusion-spells set in stones and globes and self-roaming glass marbles, since they no longer needed their castle full of servants and courtiers, nor the great hall to be an audience chamber. Putting away the marbles only required a helping hand, not the magic to dispel the illusions, so that was her job.

  It was kind of fun—weird, but fun—to hold up the marbles to the sunlight coming in from the north and see the tiny image of the “person” each one contained reflected in the curved little spheres. A stray thought struck her as she poured yet another handful of illusory people-marbles into the chest, packing them like peas into a box that would be set on a shelf somewhere until they were needed again. The thought made her choke on a laugh the moment it struck, too.

  Talk about a canned audience!

  Father…I’m worried about the salt,” Sir Kennal stated, as Dominor and Evanor watched several longboats rowing out to pick up the heavy blocks.

  “How so, my son?” Lord Aragol asked, glancing at him.

  “We have no magic to keep it from getting wet and being ruined—this is the purest salt I have ever seen, and I would be loath to take it home green from seawater seeping into our hold…or stained with the tar of our hull,” the elder of the two sons added earnestly.

  The earl arched a brow under the brim of his hat and turned to eye Dominor. “You are a mage—is it within your powers to secure the salt in such a way from contamination, in our hold?”

  “I could do that, yes,” Dominor agreed, pleased at being asked.

  “Then we would be very grateful, Lord Chancellor, if you would come out to our ship and make sure our trade stays as worthwhile as it so far seems.”

  Nodding, Dominor waited with them on the sand for the men to finish getting there. It was a delicate balance that all of them were striving to create, between the need to warn off these men from attacking with their hard-to-stop weapons—that image of the melons exploding, of being pierced even through his tightest shield, would stay with the mage a good, long time—and yet soothing them enough to not attack anyway out of overwhelming fear. Watching the waves of the midmorning, outgoing tide, and the broad expanse of wet tidal sand in the way, he nodded toward the oncoming boats. “I will even secure the salt for the longboats, so that it does not get wet between here and your ship. As you can see, when we behave politely and civilly toward each other, cooperation brings far more rewards than others might think.”

  “Perhaps there is indeed much we could learn from your people,” the earl murmured.

  “Perhaps there is something we can learn from yours as well.”

  It didn’t
take long to load all of the longboats, though they were awkward loads; Dominor’s protective spells on each block kept those waves that sloshed over the gunwales from dousing the salt and the crew, repelling the water back into the bay. And with a touch more of his magic, the salt was lifted up onto the deck without any awkward straining of ropes and nets and the fear of the solid but not impervious blocks shattering against the swaying hull.

  Nor did it take long for him to enspell the hold where the salt would be kept, adding extra layers of protection on top of the spells laid on the blocks themselves. As soon as he was finished, Dominor climbed up the ladderway and emerged on the deck, letting the sailors start lowering the blocks to the cargo hold down below. Lord Aragol positively beamed at him.

  “Our gratitude cannot be expressed enough! Come—I insist on giving you a drink in thanks for your aid, Lord Chancellor!” He clasped his arm around Dominor’s taller, broader shoulders and steered him toward one of the aft upper cabins. “I have been saving in my cabin a bottle of the Western Marches’ finest vintage—two hundred and seventy-three-year-old glassip, as smooth as a virgin’s skin,” he added, waxing eloquent with a slow, lascivious sweep of his hand. “I’ll wager you haven’t tasted the like in your life! It’s in this cabin up here…”

  The earl’s sons were already in there ahead of them; the elder was finishing the pouring of four goblets of an amber liquid from a dusty, brown-glass bottle. “I opened the bottle to let the glassip breathe, Father, just as you said to—Lord Chancellor, we are indeed grateful for the trade of the salt; comsworg is a common oil-berry where we come from, but our climate is too damp to efficiently evaporate seawater in saltpan bays, save in the height of summer. We cannot rely on shipments from the desert lands to the north, with our sea-trade under threat from our enemies. Nor can we purchase the kind dug out of the ground to the east, for that is all Natallian land.”

  He held out a goblet to Dominor, then passed one to his father, nudged his brother with one, and took one himself.

  “To prosperity and independence,” Sir Kennal stated, raising his cup.

  “To the acceptance of our apologies for our ill behavior,” Sir Edour added, at a nudge from his brother.

  “To the aid you represent,” Lord Aragol added, lifting his own. “It is our custom, Lord Chancellor, to make a toast when drinking the first sip of glassip.”

  “Then to the peaceful exchanges our two peoples may have in the future,” Dominor agreed, lifting his own. They all tipped their cups back together.

  It was a smooth liquor, he discovered. With a dark mint aftertaste that didn’t quite bite, but blended in smoothly. It wasn’t until he had drunk several swallows more, chatting with the men and finding out that their sea voyage would likely take a full five weeks with good weather and steady winds to complete, that he realized the under-taste was indeed vaguely familiar.

  Intrigued, Dominor drank a little more. Corvis lands had produced a liquor from a combination of berries, grain, and a certain herb that was a connoisseur’s drink; he had managed to bring along a full case of the bottles in their exile, with the self-imposed vow to drink only one carafe a year. This liqueur was even better than the nostalgia-sweetened Corvis brandy he carefully hoarded. He drained the cup as the brothers teased each other about how seasick they had been at the beginning of their voyage, tasting the dregs where the minty flavor seemed a little stronger, a little more bitter, a little surer in its identity—

  Falomel powder. His blue eyes snapped wide. It rendered mages unconscious, their powers useless for hours. Cursing, he tossed aside the cup and lunged for the door. Or tried to. He got one leg into place before the doctored drink caught up with the rest of him. Arms outstretched, he hit the floor ignominiously. Mouth struggling, throat flexing to call out his twin’s name, to alert the others, he succumbed all too quickly to the cold and the dark cloaking him, struggling to berate himself for drinking the traitorous libation of their Disaster-borne foe.

  On the shore, Evanor frowned. Is that ship…yes, the sails are being unfurled… He watched a little bit longer, waiting for a longboat to be lowered and his twin to come ashore. The anchor’s going up! Standing up on the wagon, he shaded his eyes—the ship was moving! The sails, filling with the northerly breeze, were moving the Mandarite ship away from the shore!

  “Dominor!” He focused his will, focused his voice, determined to reach his twin. “Dominor, can you hear me?”

  Nothing. No reply. He could tell his twin was still alive, at least. There was a resonance between them, tied from the moment they had first shared their mother’s womb, and sensitized by Evanor’s affinity for all sorts of vibrations…but he could tell nothing more.

  “Dominor!” Whirling when he still got no answer, he called out to the trees. “Trevan! They’re kidnapping Dominor!”

  Moments later, a golden eagle burst from the trees. It shrieked and beat hard after the ship, while Evanor waited impatiently on the sand. He watched the eagle soar closer, watched it dip down toward the ship when it got out there. Five seconds later, a gunshot echoed back to him, just as a shape wobbled over the rail and down, dropping into the water.

  Evanor knew the view of what was happening traveled faster than its sounds, and realized what that sound and that sight meant. Heart in his throat, Evanor leaped out of the cart he was sitting on. Hitting the ground at a run, he raced toward the waterline. He splashed into the water, uncaring of the waves, trying to get close enough to do something, anything, to stop what was happening to his two brothers.

  Agonizing minutes later, a shape bobbed toward him, a seal with reddish fur. Blood seeped from its back and shoulder. Evanor grabbed Trevan, supporting the gasping creature, even as it shifted with bared teeth and a barely caught-back moan of pain. He looked at the wound, as bloodied fur became bloodied cloth, and peered into Trevan’s pain-glazed eyes…then looked up at the ship, as the wind caught its sails in full, carrying it away along with the still-receding tide.

  Cursing, the fourth-born brother splashed back toward the shore, hauling his younger brother through the waist-high water. There was no telling how bad the wound was, or what kind of damage the gun-weapon could do—only their new sister, Kelly, could tell them what needed to be done to heal Trevan’s injury.

  It hurt with every heavily burdened step he took, abandoning his abducted twin.

  Kelly! Trevan has been shot by a gun-thing!”

  Kelly gasped and dropped the banner she had been taking down. It fluttered to the floor far below, causing Koranen to shout and cover his head, running under the balcony for protection as the wooden bar across the top of the long, color-shifting cloth sailed straight at him.

  “Watch what you’re doing!” he yelled up at her, even as the wooden rod clattered hard on the stone floor.

  “Trevan’s been shot!” she shouted back, abandoning the balcony railing in a sprint for the eastern courtyard. Of course, Evanor wasn’t there yet, and she paced worriedly as the others gathered, summoned by Koranen.

  Minutes later, Evanor and one of the carts rattled into the courtyard, sliding as he locked the wheels just long enough to stop. Jumping down, he grabbed Saber. “They took Dominor! They did something to him—they lured him onto their ship,” Evanor restarted with a shake of his head as the others exclaimed. Kelly was already climbing into the bed of the wagon, as he told them what had happened. “They made a fuss about the salt getting contaminated by the algae in seawater, or by the tar in their ship hull and the bilgewater, so he went with them to secure their hold with his magic—and then they set sail with him! When I couldn’t rouse him, Trevan gave chase, and they shot him with their gun-thing!”

  Kelly, examining the wound in Trevan’s chest, had to look away after only a moment. She blanched at the mess of the injury, the rhythmic spurting of the blood from a torn artery. Pressing her hand over the wound to apply pressure made her aware of the warmth of the blood seeping free. She had to lean over the side of the wagon cart, breathing hard
, as Koranen took over for her. Injuries greater than scratches and scrapes always made her feel ill, and the feel of the blood trying to escape against her hand was not something she ever wanted to experience again. At least the strawberry-copper haired man was unconscious, so he wasn’t suffering much at the moment.

  Morganen caught her shoulder, shook her. “Kelly! Focus! You know what this weapon does—how do we treat it?”

  She compressed her lips, drew in a deep breath, and pulled her wits together. Doyles didn’t throw up at the sight of a little—okay, a lot—of blood. “I have to check to see if the bullet lodged in his body, or if it passed through.” Bracing herself, she turned and carefully rolled Trevan over, just enough to look under the backside of his right chest and shoulder. He had lost a lot of blood, too, on that side. Sucking in a breath, she whirled away and leaned over the edge of the cart. “I am not going to be sick. I am not going to be sick…”

  “Easy,” Saber murmured, moving up and cradling her head against his chest. His own memories of battle were probably just as unpleasant. What he could see of the wound suggested it was even nastier than an arrow-made wound.

  “I’ll…I’ll be all right. I’m certain it passed through…but it could have pierced his lung. I think it nicked a major vein; he’s losing…a lot of blood.” She pushed away from her husband, braced herself again, and pressed her fingers to that still, pale throat. The pulse wasn’t overly strong…but neither was it so weak she couldn’t find it right off; he hadn’t lost that much blood. Yet. That thought steadied her nerves a little. “The back of his shoulder’s a mess, but with the bullet gone, you can use whatever magic you would for a bad stab from a sword or a spear—”

  “That’s all we need to know, Sister,” Morganen informed her, patting her shoulder. “Saber, get her out of the cart so we have some room to enspell.”