by Jean Johnson
“Hardly! I had nothing to do with that!” Morganen snorted. It was only when Evanor glared at him—a harsh look that normally did not grace the kindly brother’s face, Kelly noted as she silently observed—that the youngest mage-brother relented. “But . . . I do admit I could have fetched him back. It would not have been easy, but I could have done it.”
“Dammit, Morganen!” Evanor swore harshly. The short-lived outburst seemed to drain most of his rage out of him, leaving him with a frustrated, pleading look. “Why didn’t you bring him back?”
“Because when I heard about the women-hating land of Mandare, and the women-as-mages land of Natallia, their enemy . . . I figured that somewhere overseas,” Morganen explained calmly, filling his goblet with a little more wine, “he’d find a woman who could be his match. As Prophecy demands of him. He certainly wouldn’t find one around here. The timing of it is a delicate process, you see: I knew that, with Kelly and Saber married, Alys would be free to come here and ensnare Wolfer’s heart. Or rather, re-ensnare it. She won it long ago, after all.”
He lifted his cup in a mock-salute as the other brothers fumed. Kelly eyed him warily, herself. Morg had seemed such a young, affable, harmless sort of fellow when she’d first met him. Well, after she’d gotten over her shock at him being a living, breathing mage of course. Now he was revealing how he’d tricked and arranged and plotted. It was a bit unnerving to hear, even if she had benefited from his manipulations.
“And me?” Evanor asked him in a voice somewhere between bottled annoyance and sardonic resignation. “Have you someone lined up for me?”
“I haven’t the slightest clue as to who would make a good wife for you,” Morganen returned calmly. “I don’t even know who would make a good wife for your twin. All any of us can do is monitor the situation.”
“But we cannot do that without a functional mirror. A mirror we could use to bring him home,” Koranen stated, studying his twin as he folded his arms across his blue-clad chest. “Tell me, Morg, did you have anything to do with the cracking of the first one?”
Morganen sipped at his wine. “No. That was a flaw in the materials being used. I had nothing to do with it; I was as surprised as the rest of you.”
“Can you scry for him by some other means?” Trevan asked, pinning his youngest brother with a hard look worthy of an irritated feline.
A hesitation, and the mage replied, “Yes.”
“You can?” Evanor demanded, his brown eyes widening. “Jinga’s Sacred Ass! Why haven’t you told us this before now?”
“Because it’s not for you to interfere with his Destiny!” Morganen retorted crisply. Setting his goblet down, he glared pointedly at the others. “Each of us has a role to play—a role that the Gods predetermined for us! I may not be a Seer, but I have been giving our ‘Song of Destiny’ a lot of thought over the years! As is my foretold place to do so!”
Despite the youthful lines of his face, framed by wisps of his light brown hair, Morganen looked more mature than Saber at that moment, as Kelly observed his mannerisms. Looked, sounded, and acted more mature. Well, maybe only as mature, she amended to herself as she silently looked on. She had suspected for a long time that Morganen knew a lot more about what was happening than he let the others know. Now he was letting them know, and they weren’t very happy about it. She couldn’t blame them, but it was fascinating to watch. Sort of like a controlled nuclear meltdown, or being shown the world is round instead of flat . . .
“But my brother could be in danger!” Evanor protested. “Even if the Mandarites don’t do anything to harm him, he could drown from a storm, or something!”
“Relax, Ev. I’m keeping an eye on him,” Morganen dismissed, picking up his goblet again. “I have set a number of spells on him to protect him from complete disaster, should the need arise.”
“Jinga, you’re arrogant!” Trevan snorted. Morganen sipped at his drink with an air that Kelly thought was probably equal parts affected and genuine unconcern . . . proving he was too arrogant to even argue the point, let alone confirm it. Either that, or he just wanted to irritate his brothers; she couldn’t be sure.
Saber narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Just how powerful are you, Morg, that you can do these things and maintain them from such a distance?”
“Does it matter?” Morganen asked his eldest, lighter-haired brother rhetorically, arching one of his brows. “Either you won’t believe me, and will pester me for the truth . . . or you will start expecting things of me that maybe—just maybe—I’m not strong enough to do. It should be enough for the rest of you to know that I’m keeping an eye on our missing brother, and that I’ll do what I can to make sure he’s relatively safe.”
“He’d be safest here,” Evanor argued heatedly. “Let his prophesied woman come to him! I don’t want my twin in the hands of those mechanically obsessed, misogynistic brutes!”
“Have you considered the fact that the Mandarites will most likely return?” Morganen countered calmly, unsettling the others. “They tried to claim Nightfall Isle for their own. They stole our brother out from under us, and if they give it some thought, they will subsequently wonder why we didn’t follow them with a whole fleet of the ships we supposedly have. Dom was our ‘Lord Chancellor’ after all,” he reminded them, dipping his head toward Kelly, their self-styled Queen. “They’ll eventually come to think that we’re too weak for pursuit. And so there is another reason for letting him travel to Mandare, not just a search for his pre-Destined wife.”
“What reason?” Saber challenged him skeptically.
“Reconnaissance. We need information. This is a nation Katan knows nothing about,” Morganen reminded them. “I’ve consulted with some of my contacts on the continent. Katan knows something about the Natallians; we’ve even had some sporadic trade with them in the past. But then there was a civil war about sixty years ago; many of our own ships were attacked, and trade tapered off within a dozen years, because the waters of their coastline were too strife-riddled. They still are, by all accounts.”
“All the more reason to get him out of there!” Evanor protested.
Morganen shook his head. “I have spells to guard against that. Besides, this land of Mandare is relatively new. They probably don’t have the industry or the resources that their enemy does. Dominor has been kidnapped because he is a powerful male mage; they’ll most likely want him to serve them willingly, since that would be the most beneficial situation for them.”
“Which means they’ll be trying to seduce him into working for them,” Kelly concluded for him. The other brothers glanced at her as she expanded on her comment. For a moment, it looked like half of them had forgotten her presence. “It would be beneficial in terms of reconnaissance, for him. They’ll be telling him all about their strengths in order to impress him and convince him to follow along with their plans for him, and in the meantime, Dominor is smart enough to figure out their weaknesses based on what they’re not going to tell him, combined with his own observations.”
“Exactly. He’s really the best man for the job,” Morganen observed, pausing to drain the last of the wine from his blue-glazed goblet. “He’s sophisticated enough to lure them into believing he’s interested in whatever they have to say—once the offense of being kidnapped has been smoothed over—and subtle enough to hide his true feelings on the matter until he’s in a position of advantage and power over them.”
“And once he comes back, we can use that information to smooth over diplomatic relations with Katan, as well as protect ourselves,” Kelly continued, surprising even Morganen with her offer. She shrugged. “What? I’m fully aware that your former homeland doesn’t like the thought of women coming to the isle. I’m also aware they’ll throw up a fuss over my claiming it as a sovereignty after they tossed it along with the lot of you in the proverbial wastebasket. By sharing information about a potential enemy, we might make them think more kindly about us. It’s called diplomacy.”
“Let’s hold th
at as an option for later,” Saber replied. “Such as after we get our brother back.”
“I still don’t agree with your allowing him to be kidnapped, Morganen,” Evanor grumbled, visibly unhappy. “If you can keep an eye on Dominor from this far away, then you could’ve just scryed and spied on the Mandarites directly, yourself!”
“Evanor, your twin’s segment of the ‘Song of the Sons of Destiny’ suggests very strongly that his fated future wife will come to him as a sort of battle of wills. A battle of the sexes,” Morganen added, emphasizing that last word. “Surely even you can agree that the most obvious place for him to start looking for her is in a pair of lands where the genders are at war with each other?”
That made the fourth-born brother subside. Unhappily, but quietly. Fingering his own goblet, Evanor didn’t come up with a reply. Kelly, on the other hand, found herself biting her knuckle against the urge to snort. She didn’t quite succeed.
Her husband eyed her askance. “What?”
Extracting her knuckle, she smirked at him. “And you thought our courtship was a battle royale . . .”
It was Evanor who laughed the hardest at that, breaking the tension around the room. With the meal more or less over, the others rose and began departing. Only Morganen noticed how the darkest-haired brother slipped silently out of the dining room, though it was Rydan’s turn to clear the dishes as his evening chore. Saying nothing—the youngest of them could only guess at their oddest sibling’s motives—Morganen cleared the table in his stead. He could always ask the taciturn mage later where he’d gone and what he’d done.
And, if nothing else, Rydan would at the very least owe him a future chore.
FIFTEEN
He found her on the dock, legs dangling over the edge of the jetty, several yards above the waves of a low tide.
She’d thought about attempting to fly due west toward the mainland in the owl shape that had brought her down here, and then transforming into her river-otter shape for the remainder of the swim, but she wasn’t too sure about the currents. They had been stronger than anticipated during her arrival, and she knew they curled back out to sea again at some point after sweeping past Nightfall in their journey south.
Besides, there really wasn’t anywhere for her to go. The only friend she had outside of the brothers and a handful of her uncle’s servants was Cari of The Trenching Wench. As much as she enjoyed lovemaking with Wolfer, she didn’t think she’d enjoy it nearly enough with anyone else. Not enough to enjoy making a living at it, at least.
Still, when the tall figure padded quietly up to her, paused, then lowered himself to dangle his own booted feet over the waves, Alys knew that the man beside her had forgiven her for her role in her uncle’s atrocities; if he hadn’t, she didn’t think he would have done something so friendly as seat himself beside her.
That it was Rydan, however—and not Wolfer—was a little startling. Even unnerving. Alys didn’t quite understand him, and frankly never had. A sidelong glance at his pale skin, lit only by scattered starlight and the slightly thickened sliver of Sister Moon peeking out through the clouds off to the west, showed he wasn’t angry. Enigmatic, but not angry.
As a young boy, he’d been energetic like his brothers, yet a tad moody. Not sullen—not always—but moody in the sense that his emotions flitted more strongly and rapidly through him than they had through his siblings. As he’d grown into puberty, she recalled him becoming more and more moody in the sullen sense, and then becoming withdrawn. Gradually, he had ceased being enthusiastic about joining the others in their activities, withdrawing even from his twin, Trevan, at times.
Now he was a night-dwelling enigma. She couldn’t tell what was going through his mind as he sat next to her on the edge of the stone-and-wood pier. The only thing Alys knew for certain was that somehow he understood the choices she’d been forced to make, and the fact that her regrets were honest ones. All this, without a word being spoken between them.
His presence was oddly calming. Even when Sister Moon disappeared behind a thicker bank of clouds near the horizon, leaving them in near-darkness, she didn’t feel threatened by him. There was no doubt in her mind that he could be quite scary if he put his mind to it. Possibly even more terrifying than her uncle; he just had that sort of air about him. But . . . he was gentle toward her. The corner of her mouth quirked up. If you can count ignoring me most of the time as part of being “gentle” . . .
“Give him time.”
Alys jumped a little. She hadn’t expected Rydan to speak. “Erm . . . Wolfer?”
A soft sound escaped him. It could’ve been a snort, with a little more effort behind it. “Who else?”
“O-Okay ...” she agreed. They sat there for a little while, and she kicked her feet, trying to figure out what that meant. “How much time?”
“Another hour, maybe two. I’ll talk to him, if you like.” At her startled look, he glanced over at her. Alys silently wished the moon would come back, because it was hard to tell if that really was a smile curving his mouth; the night was that dark around them. “Knock some sense into him.”
“I didn’t want to help my uncle,” she asserted quickly. “I just didn’t have much choice . . .”
“I know.”
They sat for a little while more, listening to the waves lapping at the dock and the beach around them. Alys cleared her throat, kicking her feet again. “He scares me, you know.”
“Wolfer?”
“Broger,” she clarified. Then amended quickly, “Well, Wolfer does, too. But more because I’m afraid of disappointing him to the point where he’ll just hate me, and . . . and won’t love me anymore. Uncle . . . terrifies me. And I don’t know how to stop him. I don’t know how anyone can.”
“We’re strong enough to destroy him,” he reassured her quietly, shifting as if to get up.
Alys reached out and touched his arm, stopping him. “No, you’re not.”
His arm shifted out from under her fingers, reminding her that, as Rydan had grown older, he had liked less and less being touched by anyone. She lowered her hand. He didn’t seem to take offense, despite the subtle removal. Indeed, the moon peeked out from the clouds just enough to show that one side of his mouth had curved up. “I could’ve destroyed him when I was sixteen, little one. I’ve only grown stronger . . . and I have several brothers to back me up.”
“Are you strong enough to stop his magics from flinging a Death Curse back upon you?” she challenged him sharply as he started to rise again. He paused and frowned at her, crouching next to her on the edge of the pier.
“A Death Curse?” Rydan asked, staring at her. The moonlight brightened further, allowing her to see his frown of confusion.
“He wove spells around himself. Anyone who kills him, or even attempts to kill him, will have a Death Curse flung back upon them. Especially if they use magic,” Alys told him. “He bragged about it to me when one of his rivals sent an assassin. The man tried to knife him in the back . . . and found himself torn to shreds by the magic protecting my uncle. He said that ‘neither spell nor sword from an enemy’s hand can cut me down without destroying the source of my harm.’ ” She shivered, crossing her forearms over her chest. “I fear what would happen in a direct confrontation with him.
“I even thought about siccing his own beasts upon him, thinking the magic would retaliate against them, not me . . . but they’re enchanted against that. And he . . . he drew upon my energies while he was recovering from the knife wound. Not just me, but from Uncle Donnock and Cousin Barol, too—his own son—though mostly from me.” Her left arm twisted behind her back, pressing against the spot where her uncle had been stabbed. “I suffered phantom pains for almost a month, though his wound seemed to heal in a matter of days.”
Rydan pushed upright, then looked down at her, studying her in the moonlight. “If this is true . . .”
Her fingers rubbed the silver diamond embedded in her sternum through the fabric of her tunic. “I wish it weren’t.
I don’t dare get . . . get pregnant while he still lives. I fear he might have some spells laid upon me to draw power from the flesh of my flesh, as it were, as well as my own flesh directly. The protective spells Morganen and I came up with protect me from the effects of his magic.” Glumly, she stared out at the glimmering surface of the sea. “I despair sometimes of ever being free . . . Truly free, I mean.”
“I know.”
They stayed like that in the moonlight, Alys sitting on the edge of the dock, Rydan standing next to her like a dark sentinel, both of them quiet. A short while later, as Sister Moon descended closer to the horizon, he turned and padded away. After a moment, Alys craned her head over her shoulder to watch him go . . . but when she looked, he was gone. Not even his footsteps could be heard anymore.
Nothing disturbed the dark quiet of the shore behind her. She was alone. And somehow, I’m not surprised he can disappear into darkness, as if he were a shadow himself . . .
Facing forward, she stared across the sea again, lost in her less-than-happy thoughts.
You’re an ass.”
Wolfer jumped and whirled around, fingers slipping off the braided hair tied around his wrist. His eyes sought the source of the insult, finding it in the pale hands and face of the sixth-born Corvis son. Once again, his younger brother had managed to sneak up on him. “I hate it when you do that.”
Rydan’s mouth curved in one of his rare smiles. “I know. And you’re still an ass.”
“I know.” He did know it. Wolfer had retreated to the jungle while he was trying to deal with his rage, but the jungle reminded him of her, of his lessons in teaching her how to change her shape . . . and how to enjoy their bodies together. So he had retreated farther still, to the chapel where his twin had been wed not that long ago. The garlands of flowers had long since been stripped from the columns, leaving the polished granite and inlaid marble bare. Half of the chamber lay in deep shadows; the rest was lit by the pallid silvery-blue light of Brother Moon, which was peeking over the edge of the mountain range to the east, and the last wisps of Sister Moon’s equally pale light off to the west. He had hoped to redecorate the modest temple for his own wedding, but now he wasn’t sure when that might be.