Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01]

by The Fire Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  "A mouse!” he growled suddenly. "No, only a man.” "But... you are more than that. You fixed the pattern where our... feet disrupted it. I couldn’t do that.” "No, you couldn’t. But I only did it by my mother’s leave. That’s the problem, you see. I shall ever be some woman’s thrall.”

  That felt very upside-down to Eleanor, though she did not doubt Doyle’s sincerity, at least no more than she mistrusted any Irishman. "But women feel the same way. Everyone wants to be on top”—she blushed furiously as she spoke—"and everyone can’t be at once.” He smiled a little. "The color rises up your throat to your face like a sunrise. Pure and innocent and virginal. My mother has no talent for blushing, and she was never virginal.”

  "Almost a virgin,” Eleanor said, thinking of Sal. "I have known love,” The words were a whisper, almost lost in the hiss of the fire.

  "And honest to a fault.”

  Eleanor shrugged, exhausted from days of running, warmed with ale and stew, her eyelids heavy suddenly. It would be so nice to just tumble into Doyle’s strong arms and sleep. Just give him the sword and forget everything. She hovered in that dream for a few moments. Then her eyes snapped open and she stared into Doyle’s dark face.

  He was watching her with a kind of tenderness that made her heart pound. The expression was unexpected and disconcerting, and she longed for the simple companionship of Wrolf and Silver Heels. Doyle was, what? A man? Demigod? God? Elemental. There was no clear-cut answer to her question, and she knew that whatever the answer was, it was not simple. One moment he was an arrogant boor she could dismiss with ease, the next a charming storyteller who was nearly irresistible.

  "Why should you have the sword?” she asked.

  "To fight the Shadow.”

  "A good answer, if I can believe you.”

  Strangely, this questioning of his veracity did not seem to disturb Doyle. "That is why I want it now. What I’ll do with it when I get it is another matter. Those swords—the four of them, or five—are a terrible thing. They arouse no more bloodlust in a woman than an ax, yet I can hear yours singing to me, and no ax on earth can still the sirens in it for me. If I had the strength, I’d wrest it from you. But I cannot. It is the first time I have been powerless in my life.”

  His candor was disarming, but Eleanor was too accustomed to Irish charm to rise to the bait completely. Instead, like an ancient trout of wisdom, she eyed it suspiciously, suspecting the tempting morsel of having a hook hidden within it. "You don’t look feeble to me.” "You really don’t understand, do you? You aren’t some ignorant mortal any longer. You keep seeing yourself as a child or a girl. But that isn’t meaningful. You have power that could change the face of the world, literally, and you act like... a dairy maid. Where is your pride?”

  "I am not blessed with the kind of pride I think you mean.”

  "Then...you don’t love yourself.”

  Eleanor felt a chord echo within her, a faint ring of memory like the murmur of water over stones. She did love herself now, but it was new knowledge, unassessed and unknown. She realized that of all that had happened to her, her meeting with Sal was the most important. "Why is it we must go contrary to our natures?” "What?”

  "I never wanted adventures, and I still don’t. And I don’t want a black, morose, sober-sides of a husband or a magic sword or anything. And you don’t want a woman you can’t control, and you don’t want responsibility and would probably prefer to stay here and hunt with your pack. Where is Wrolf, by the way? He seems to have vanished.”

  "He’s with the pack.”

  "Now, Baird would just adore running amok with the Sword of Bridget in his great, hammy hand, and of the two of you, I’d probably enjoy his company more in the long run. You and I are both so serious. Why can’t things be logical and tidy?”

  "The Cosmos is not a logical thing. It’s... perverse.” "Almost Irish,” she muttered.

  "We could learn to laugh together, Eleanor.”

  Her heart betrayed her, leaping into her throat like a roebuck. It was such a foolish thing, her need for the sound of merriment. But his offer was like water to the thirsty—irresistible. The cold, unlaughing silences of her childhood were a desert she had marched through to Sal’s oasis of water and laughter. Now he knew or shared her need, and she was tempted almost beyond anything. Caught, in truth.

  "I suppose we ought to try for the sake of the world and all.”

  He roared with laughter, the huge sound rising to the interlaced roof to echo back to them. "Come along, you little minx. For the sake of the world, indeed.” Then Doyle swung her up in his arms, sword and all, and carried her across the room of colors into the walls beyond the world.

  The plain stretched away on all sides, unfeatured but by low-growing shrubs and a single dolmen silhouetted against the sky. The air was crisp with the smell of heather and the land a crumpled violet coverlet, the bees humming in their work. The sky was the blue of Bridget’s cloak, unmarked by sun or moon, and Eleanor was almost afraid to ask where they were.

  Doyle carried her to the dolmen and set her on the springy turf. To her surprise it was as soft as a feather bed, not scratchy at all, and smelled of strange spices. The lintel of the dolmen loomed over them, several tons of dressed rock, weathered by time yet ageless. She hugged her knees to her chest and tried not to think about the stone above her head or the Irish lovers, Greine and Diarmat, who fled across the land, sleeping each night in a new dolmen.

  He stood over her a moment, his bulk blotting out the sky, and Eleanor yearned for counsel. Sal, or even her mother, would have been a welcome intrusion, for she realized that in her sexual education, she had only gotten to where you put the noses when you kiss. Goose-flesh crawled along her skin, though it was not cold. The air, in fact, was warm and clean and it was the most pleasant thing she could remember since Sal’s mountain. Somewhere out on the plain, a lark and a nightingale raised their voices in an unearthly counterpoint of melody.

  Doyle sat beside her and put an arm around her shoulder, then drew it back, for Bridget’s sword still rested across her back. She untied the cords that bound it and lay it to one side.

  He shook his head. "I think it will always lie between us.”

  "Typical fatalistic Celt,” she snapped.

  "Have you ever been spanked?”

  "No, and I don’t suggest you try it.”

  He ran a broad forefinger along her face from brow to jaw, sending shivers of excitement through her. "Too late. You’re spoilt already.”

  "I had no idea you were so knowledgable.” Eleanor was frightened, not of sex, though that was there, but of the emotions that rose out of physical intimacy. She considered herself too well educated to be scared by cautionary tales from old wives of pain, humiliation, and disgust, but she wished she had something in the way of experience to reassure her.

  "Heather cat,” he rumbled, stroking the nape of her neck. "Admit it, you want everything in neat bundles.”

  "Yes, I suppose I do. And a real bed, too.”

  Doyle ignored her remark, taking her face in both his huge hands. "I am going to kiss you now. I would like it if you could kiss me back.” His blue eyes seemed to bore into her.

  This kiss was not cold and stifling, as the first had been. Instead, it seemed to warm her bones like the rays of the sun. Eleanor did her best to kiss him back and found her pulses moving from walk to trot, then to a slow canter. It was not unpleasant, and she began to relax.

  They undressed, spreading their clothing beneath them on the ground, and Eleanor was gripped with panic. Naked, Doyle seemed a great bear in a man-suit. She could not for the life of her remember why "Snow White and Rose Red” had been her favorite childhood fairy tale.

  He touched her body in the places of passion, and memory dimmed. Eleanor saw in his eyes a hunger, a demand, a need that frightened her. Had her father looked at her mother like that? Was that why her mother always looked burdened and resigned?

  Eleanor did not push him away when he moun
ted her, tenderly and without much discomfort after the initial shock, the tearing thrust that terminated her maidenhood, but she retreated in mind from the whole matter. The sword, Bridget, the Darkness, all could go hang themselves. She had been tricked into surrendering her body, betrayed by a mess of chemicals, but she was suddenly determined never to surrender her self. There was such a need in him that she could never fill, and she decided not to try. He didn’t want her, just the damn sword. She was damned if she was going to take responsibility for seeing he was a good boy with it. After all, she hadn’t asked for any of this, had she?

  Doyle seemed to fill the cosmos, his dark hair brushing her face, his soft lips touching her mouth, his hands pressing her body against him. All the empty places in her were filled with him, like black velvet, so she began to slip into a dark void torn with scarlet lightning. He was going to tear her to pieces.

  Something in her rose to meet the threat. The burning brand in her body must be contained and quenched. Eleanor felt her "self” meld with her body, matching him in passion until they crested almost as one, the dam smashed to pieces* and they huddled together, weeping like tired children.

  Doyle rested his head on her breast, fingers idly plucking the damp hair between her limbs, while Eleanor stroked his head and cursed herself for containing him. Now there was no way out. She was committed, as Sal and Bridget had probably known she would be, to the tasks, not out of duty, but from some other need she had no name for. As the postcoital depression caught her in its toils, she wondered how anyone could mistake passion for love. There must be some mystery in it. Doyle was right. She wanted all her answers in neat packages. Then she slept.

  "Doyle, where is this place?” They were curled up together, warmly awake and beginning to be hungry, if the rumble from his abdomen was anything to judge by.

  "In my mother’s house, of course. Don’t claw me, little cat. This plain... is a favorite place of mine, but I do not know a name for it. I just like it.”

  "Oh. What happened to the other swords that got made?”

  "Are you always so curious after coupling? No, you would not know. One lies, they say, in a heart of stone, another in the sea. One is now a tree, and the last invisible. Only the sword of flames is... accessible. Why?” "Because I don’t know the story.” She sat up and drew her shift on. "How old are you?”

  "I have no idea. The years don’t make much matter in my mother’s house.”

  They crossed the plain and returned to the strange room of interlaces to find Baird in noisy argument with his mother. "That sword and the woman are rightfully mine. I will get them, too. Doyle is a boring dullard. You didn’t even give me a chance to show her how cunning I am. And Doyle cheated. He got born first. He always gets born first.”

  "If you were the only man on earth, I doubt she would have you,” Orphiana snapped, shifting her body and sending ripples through the pattern.

  "That doesn’t matter. She could use frequent beatings.”

  "She would be no easier to control than I, dear son.” "Why not? She’s mortal. Please, Mother, just let me kill Doyle and have her. She’d learn to like me better than Doyle. Other Bairds have gotten to.”

  "How many times have I told you not to gossip with the water devils? Of all the Bairds I have ever borne, you are the worst. Get it into your impenetrable skull, Eleanor is not for you, never was, and never could be.” "You hidebound old snake! Why does everything always have to be the same every single time? Why should I sit here and wait for that whey-faced sourpuss of a girl to appear, the one I always get. Doyle is going off with the sword and the woman while I have to stay here and listen to you. No, no, no.”

  The great golden man swung around quickly, leapt the interlaced floor in a huge bound, and seized Eleanor in his arms. Baird slapped her smartly across the head, so that her ears rang, then closed his hands around her throat, pressing his thumbs against her windpipe. "Tell Doyle you want me, or I’ll snap your neck like a splinter.”

  Eleanor was cold with terror, and Doyle made no move to aid her. She did not understand the rivalry between the brothers, but she hated it intensely. She sagged in Baird’s grasp, weak with surprise. Oddly, no anger came to her, none of Bridget’s fire. Instead, she felt a great sadness because she knew that she could never conceivably care for Baird, that although she did not yet love Doyle, she might in time. But Baird was too much like a graduate student of her father’s, a charming, handsome young man who quite literally stole his thesis from another girl, and who had been petulantly irritated, not repentant, when caught. His opinion was that the girl should have been happy to give up her academic future for him; hadn’t he paid attention to her? Daniel had been livid, of course.

  She wished Baird would just wash away, for he contaminated the earth in a way. Like the lord of Nunnally Castle, he would always be spoiled and irresponsible, and that made her sad.

  Huge, wet drops began to fall from the interlaced ceiling, splattering down on Baird’s golden arms and vaporizing with an angry hiss. Wounds opened where the drops fell, and he released her with a huge howl. He raised a ham-fist, Eleanor ducked, and his punch slammed into the wall behind her.

  "Bitch! 1 will not be denied. You will be mine if I have to tear the house apart to have you.”

  "If you ever touch me again, I’ll tear your heart out through your throat, hack it into pieces, and feed it to my wolf.” Eleanor felt her face flush with a sudden rage, fury at Doyle for not raising a hand to protect her, and at Baird for being a conceited brat. "You are a coward. I despise you.” She turned her back on him as the strange moisture continued to fall on Baird, making fresh stigmata on his arms and face. She glared at Doyle. "Is this the kind of partnership I get to look forward to? Wrolf would have been more useful.” Then she picked her way across the room to the fire."You are a dreadful mother,” she told Orphiana, determined not to omit any of the odd family.

  Baird howled and ran into one of the interlaced walls, pursued by the strange cloud of moisture that dripped on him. Eleanor hunkered down, puzzled over the cloud, and picked up her personal belongings which he had scattered—the cup and spoon, the precious book, her knitting. Doyle again did his vanishing act and reappeared with two steaming bowls of porridge, sweet with honey and dotted with plump raisins.

  They ate in thoughtful, if somewhat grumpy, silence, with only the hissing of the fire to break it. Finally Doyle said, "You really must learn to control your mag-icks, Eleanor.”

  "What?”

  "That rain you made on Baird—”

  "/ made? Me?” She stared at him in amazement, then burst into giggles. "I have always wanted to rain on someone’s parade.”

  "It is not funny,” Doyle replied solemnly. "You can’t kill Baird or me, but you could damage him, and then what would happen?”

  "I have no idea. You have the script. I am just ad-libbing as best I can.” She gave him a sour look. "What should I have done, let him hit me? Or maybe you enjoy watching him beat up women.”

  "Stop it! I should have put more honey in your breakfast to sweeten your disposition. Of course I don’t like it. But I can’t touch Baird in this house.”

  "And he knew that and took advantage of it. What is this 'magicks’ stuff?”

  "You have powers, Eleanor, unexpected ones. The Bride Fire I understand, for the holder of that sword would hardly be without it. But I beg you, be careful of it now. You are changed, and it is much more potent. But you have other gifts, it seems, including the power to command water into this house. This is a place of earth, girl. You did not get that power from Bridget.” Eleanor leaned back, clasping her hands on one bent knee and balancing on her buttocks. She thought about everything that had happened and had been said and realized that somehow her sojourn with the Goddess of the Willows had escaped the notice of Orphiana. This was odd, for the old snake commanded earth, and Sal’s holding under Silbury appeared to be on earth.

  Either Sal was somehow hidden from Orphiana or the snake woman was preten
ding to ignorance for her own reasons. Galloping paranoia seemed imminent, so Eleanor tried to quell it, aware that everyone’s motives but her own were suspect. Doyle and Baird wanted the sword, Orphiana wanted peace, and Sal and Bridget wanted—what?—worshipers perhaps.

  The gifts, like Bridget’s fire and the acid rain she had showered on Baird, puzzled her. They appeared without warning when she was threatened, but she seemed to have no control over them. How could she know her "magicks” if they popped up only under stress?

  As a child, Eleanor had exhibited a violent temper. When she was ten, she had broken a playmate’s collarbone in a fit of fury, and after that she had trained herself to be passive and cool. She thought a great many sharp remarks, but she rarely spoke them.

  Now it felt as if the unruly and headstrong child had reemerged with horns and a tail. The sense of being shoved around, used, and manipulated returned, for Eleanor was fully aware that Sal had buried messages in her mind that arose at need. Of all those she had met, the Willow Goddess was the one she least resented. Perhaps it was an illusion, but she felt that Sal had seen her as a person, not a tool. She agreed with Or-phiana’s assessment of Bridget as a hasty person.

  What she wanted most at that moment was to be back in her silly, frilly, adolescent bedroom v/ith no fabulous sword, no great dark man, no quest. Let someone else be invested with strange powers, and let sleeping demons lie. She remembered Frodo promising to go to Mordor, though he did not know the way, and thought him a fool. And failing all of those things, she wanted a hot bath, a cup of coffee, and a real bed.

  Reducing her needs from the impossible to the ridiculous restored her sense of humor a little. "I don’t know what you mean, as usual. In fact, I am heartily sick of this whole mess. Everyone talks in riddles and looks at me with a sneer when I ask for a straight answer. You can play your little games to your heart’s content. Just bring Wrolf out from where you’ve hidden him and I’ll leave.”