Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01]

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

  Eleanor, that was not what I had in mind.

  The words inside her head made her turn, and there, where the man had been, was a familiar beast of armored sides and crocodilian head. It was all I could manage.

  If Mother could only see you now! the dragon replied, pulling the fire sword from its brightly colored sheath. You are a surprising woman, dear one.

  She had no time to savor the words, for the canine companions of the Reavers burst through the trees. They huddled into a snarling, cowering bunch in the face of their strange opponents. Doyle swung the sword into the dogs, and a severed head made a bloody arc as it parted company with its owner.

  Then the Reavers appeared, bears and boars, and Eleanor spat her venom into the snouts of the first arrivals. There was a scream, half-beast, half-human, as they collapsed, losing their animal forms and becoming writhing men trampled under the hooves and claws of their fellows. The dogs apparently decided the fight was not to their liking, for several darted away into the trees, only to confront Wrolf. Doyle hacked at a pair of bears as she slid her sinuous body around them to strike again at the piggy eyes of a tusked beast.

  Slither, strike, slither, strike. Eleanor felt nothing but the power of death in her. Around her were screams; under her scaled body the warm, wet gush of blood from broken arteries. Then, suddenly, they were gone, and there was silence.

  She swayed, tongue flicking, seeking some forgotten thing. All her mind contained was a fearless pride. Eleanor.

  She turned the hooded head and peered down into a face. It had a name she could not recall. Change back, Eleanor. The words had no meaning. Damn the woman, and damn me for a fool. How am I going to get her back?

  Eleanor "saw” a woman in her serpentine mind— naked and clothed in stars, bearing the moon on a staff, beautiful and powerful. She had never seen this light-clad female before, and yet there was something about her. Swaying, vision blurred. The earth rushed up to meet her.

  Eleanor opened her eyes and found Wrolf’s pink tongue lapping her cheek. She hugged his rough mane and sat up. "What happened?” She glanced around at the carnage in the glade and shuddered.

  Doyle, cleaning the sword, replied, "I suppose you are the first cobra in history to faint. Next time will you please try for something with a better brain?”

  "There won’t be any next time.” Then she remembered the lovely woman she had seen just before she collapsed. "Who was that, Doyle?”

  "What?”

  "I saw—”

  "That, my silly, was you. The way I remember you after the Red Hats.” He paused and rubbed his hands on some dried pine needles. "Why won’t there be a next time? You act as if shape-changing were indecent.”

  Eleanor gestured at the remains of the Reavers. "It is.” She didn’t add how lost she felt inside and how she feared losing herself, as the folk of the beast hunt did.

  "No, it is not. It is just a thing one can do. You never really stop being what you are. It’s a disguise to wear over the disguise of the body. The spirit always remains the same.”

  She glared at him and put her clothes back on. Doyle returned a bland look, which made her long to hit him, put the sword in its sheath, and prepared to move on.

  They crossed the Grampion Mountains and entered the Highlands proper, and found a land that seemed even more empty of people than the lowlands. Eleanor, who had been to Scotland several times in her own time, thought she had never seen so beautiful, or so peaceful, a place. Where, she wondered, were the squabbling clans in their muted plaids, so much lovelier than the harsh color combinations of modern tartan, with the strident cry of war pipes echoing from hill to hill? But there were only hills, more hills, and the azure beauty of the lochs. Salmon and trout almost bounded out of rippling streams to provide them a change from grouse and woodcock, and prickly gooseberries hung on their bushes like bunches of grapes.

  For a time, she managed to forget the quest and the Darkness over Albion, to ignore the constant presence of the rowan-wood staff in her hand with the moon’s faces on its head and the bright blue cloak that hung from her shoulders, for it was too warm in the day for the wool one, and a bit cool to go without. Bridget, Sal, and Orphiana became an uneasy dream, the lost Heir a fugitive shade. All that was real was Doyle, silent for the most part, and the lupine good humor of the wolf.

  But finally the land turned harsh and rocky, and the wind had a salty tang to it. They stood on high cliffs, and the ocean churned as it continued its relentless attempt to eat the land. Huge waves burst against the rocks, and the wind sent the foam into their faces.

  Eleanor sank down and turned her back to the sea, pulling the wool cloak around her. Bridget had said, "Go to the North Wind to find the Heir,” and she knew that while the Land of the North Wind had several locations, depending on which mythology one dealt with, the British one was the islands above Scotland: the Orkneys and the Shetlands. Hyperboria, home of Conan the Barbarian, was one she rather liked, but her mind went back to a favorite book of her youth, George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind. Why she had cherished that particular piece of Victorian morbidity had never been clear to her, and she thought perhaps it was the wonderful illustrations, especially the one of the young hero, Diamond, nestled in the black tresses of the beautiful North Wind as they flew above the spires of London. Sal, she realized, might have posed for the paintings.

  But the North Wind was death, and Eleanor felt all the fears she had suppressed for the past week come rushing back like a flight of ravens, black wings brushing her mind. She looked at Doyle, who was building a fire of driftwood in the meager shelter of some protruding rocks, and Wrolf, nosing at the burrow of some subterranean animal, and she suppressed an insane desire to scream. If anything happened to them— She pressed the thought away, got up and joined Doyle, lighting the twisted wood into a cheerful blaze with the fire of her hands.

  "Do you have any clever ideas about where we go from here?” she asked.

  "Ask Wrolf. He’s the guide.” Doyle spitted a couple of pigeons on a stick and held them over the fire.

  "Well, Wrolf,” she said with a cheerfulness she was far from feeling, "how do you feel about a lovely tour of the scenic Orkney Islands? There can’t be more than twenty of them, and we should be able to complete the search in, oh, a year or two.” Eleanor knew quite well she had perhaps five days to find the Heir, but she felt as if it would be simpler to find a needle in a haystack.

  Wrolf whined and shook his great head. "He means yes to the Orkneys, and no to the rest,” Doyle said.

  "I know. And how should we get there? A boat would help, but there don’t seem to be any growing around here, or wings. Actually, I wouldn’t really want to take a boat out on that.”

  "No, I thought we would swim.”

  "Swim!” Eleanor’s voice squeaked.

  "Of course. I think you’d make a very pretty dolphin.” Doyle had on his teasing but serious face.

  Eleanor was torn by his suggestion, for she had a tremendous affection for those playful sea mammals and had often wished, when she had visited marine parks, that she could climb in and frolic with them. But it meant shape-changing, and while their march across the Highlands had given her some time to become more comfortable with the idea, the idea of being a dolphin was too attractive. I’m not sure I’d. want to come back.

  She rubbed the back of her neck with a chilled hand. "I think an orca would be better,” she said finally.

  Doyle roared his hearty laugh. "There is such a fierce heart under that sweet chest. Cobras and killer whales. I wonder you haven’t become a she-wolf and run off with Wrolf there.”

  She ruffled the wolf’s mane and smiled at him.

  "No. I’m already mated for life.”

  Doyle caught her against his chest with such vigor, he nearly knocked the breath out of her, and he kissed her as if he had just invented the gesture. Food, fire, and the damp wind forgotten, they came together on the hard sands. Her cries blew away like the call of so
me strange seabird, and they clung to one another for a long time after the passion was past. Later they supped on almost-burned pigeon and fell into exhausted sleep under the pale summer sky.

  XXI

  They stood naked in the roiling sea, their garments tied in bundles across their backs. The water was untouched by the warmth of summer, but Eleanor was chilled by more than that.

  "Doyle, what the devil do I do with my staff?” Eleanor wondered why she hadn’t thought of that sooner.

  "Make a wand of it. Or cut off the head and take that. You can make a new body for it.” He was impatient.

  Eleanor stared at the object that had been given her by Sam, and which had come to mean so much. She remembered Gandalf arguing with the doorkeeper at Rohan to keep his staff and understood the reluctance to part with such a thing. Then she closed her eyes, ignored the rude hands of the sea lapping at her thighs, and tried to apply the many lessons Doyle had forced on her over the months. When she opened them, the staff was a baton perhaps eighteen inches long.

  "Put it in my bundle,” she said, teeth chattering.

  Doyle stared at her a second, took it gingerly between two fingers, and slipped it into her burden. "It carries quite a charge,” he commented.

  "I know. I am a baggage and an inconvenience.” Her heart seemed to squeeze in her chest as she realized the lines she was misquoting and those that followed them:

  You are a baggage and an inconvenience

  And I shall be loath to forego one

  Day of you

  Even to my ultimate friendly death.

  Eleanor silently cursed her excellent memory, the as yet unborn playwright, and her overactive imagination. She forced her feet off the stony seabed and waded out behind the bulk of Doyle’s broad shoulders.

  The change was less difficult than she expected. Her body just seemed to streamline, and suddenly she was cutting through the waves. The power of her form was incredible, and she snapped the great jaws with their cruel teeth at a bit of flotsam. It crunched, and she pushed it away with the round tongue.

  Something butted her side, and she turned a great walleye to observe the now otter-form Wrolf. Come on. Doyle, a dolphin, leapt along and chattered. She followed the flat shape of her wolf-otter into the icy waters of the sea.

  Eleanor found, as she moved along, she heard the thoughts of both her companions. Wrolf’s were focused on an image of a shoreline, and Doyle’s were mildly scatological. This amused her, remembering that before the dolphin had become sacred to the rationalist Apollo, he had been favored by the loving Aphrodite. But for the most part, she ignored the vagrant mental whispers and concentrated on getting the most out of being a killer whale. She dove and watched shoals of herring scurry away and, rising to the surface, honked her laughter.

  But occasionally she caught a sense of sadness in the thoughts of her companions, and she wondered if they had noticed her own fears and feeling of doom. The images grew more frequent, until she was almost glad when she spotted the shoreline Wrolf carried in his mind. She was a little reluctant to shed her wondrous shape but relieved to be unable to "hear” any further thoughts.

  The long day was fading as they waded onto a rocky shore, and the cold hit her like a blow. Eleanor loosed the soaking bundle from her back and ran in place, mindless of sharp stones under bare feet until the blood rushed in her head and she was a little warmer. Then she unfastened the dripping mess of cloth and pulled out the starry cape, which was dry. She hugged it to her shivering body.

  "I think I hate adventures,” she told Doyle.

  "But think of the wonderful stories you will have to tell the child.”

  "He probably won’t believe me, even if Wrolf stands up as godfather.” She felt a sudden panic. "Doyle— shape-changing! What if the baby—”

  "Comes out with a cobra’s body and a whale’s head? Goose! He had his essence the moment he was conceived.” He gave her a rough hug and patted her head. "Such a one for borrowing trouble. Don’t imagine problems. The cosmos will provide all you need.”

  "I can always depend on you for comfort,” she said, rubbing her head against his chest.

  They found shelter and laid out their clothes. Doyle gathered wood, and Eleanor lit a fire and warmed herself while he found a rabbit too stupid or trusting to know its peril. It screamed when it died, and Eleanor wondered at herself, that a few short months had shorn away any sentimentality about soft, furry animals. She no longer regarded regular baths as a necessity, the bitter climate of Albion having given her a few too many chilly and undesired ones, and clean clothes and the splendor of warm blankets now seemed a vague dream. Coffee, however, still lingered in her mind like a boozer’s memory of alcohol.

  "Essence,” she whispered. Eleanor grinned, got out the willow cup, and went looking for a source of water. She finally found a trickling stream and filled the cup.

  She returned from the stream and settled down next to the fire. Doyle had skinned the rabbit and was spitting it. Eleanor heated the water with a flaming finger, then concentrated on coffee. She conjured the rich smell, the bitter-kind taste, the dark richness of it. She opened her eyes and looked at a swirling bowl of blackness. The scent of it curled up on fingers of steam.

  Tentatively, she sipped. Yes, it was coffee, though not the pleasant bitterness she had hoped for. It was strong, very strong, and had the taste of boiled java from a greasy spoon. Eleanor did not care and drank with the pleasure of a true caffeine addict.

  "Smells nice. What is it?”

  "Coffee. Want to taste?” She held it out.

  Doyle sipped, made a face, and spat it out. "Gah! You actually like that?”

  "Well, it is a trifle strong,” she replied, extending her hand. "But I’ve never magicked coffee before. Give me a few days, and I’ll make a drink fit for the gods.” "You can take all eternity for all I care. Why couldn’t you turn your gift to something fit—like beer?”

  "Because I didn’t think of it.” The bitter brew had warmed her and lifted her spirits. "Besides, it’s cold for beer. I have an idea.”

  She grabbed her cooking pot and trotted off into the pale night. Wrolf looked after her, then turned his face to Doyle. "I know. I don’t understand women, either,” the man said, and turned his attention to the rabbit.

  Eleanor returned with a pot of water and, realizing that her mistake on the coffee had been to begin with boiling water, first set herself the task of duplicating the feat of the Wedding Feast at Cana. Several minutes of hard work got her a raw burgundy, so young it was almost in diapers. Doyle watched curiously while she muttered over the pot. "Allspice, cinnamon, cloves.” Then she heated it a little, tasting carefully, and finally produced a mulled wine that was drinkable if not an oenophile’s delight. She offered Doyle some and was rewarded with a smile. "Now, that’s tasty,” he said.

  They drank together and ate the rabbit, becoming first a little silly, then amorous. Eleanor felt her nipples harden under his touch and drew him into her with joy. Their coupling was first gentle, then frantic, and when she opened her eyes to look into his face, the aurora borealis shimmered in the pale sky like a ghostly crown above his head. Then they slept, drunken and love-sated, through the brief night of Midsummer’s Eve.

  Dawn was chill and rosy across the island as Eleanor woke. She pulled on a still damp tunic and collected more driftwood, allowing Doyle to continue sleeping. He was, she noticed, a tidy sleeper, neither sprawling nor allowing his mouth to gap. She washed the dregs of mulled wine out of her pot and wondered if she could conjure oatmeal.

  Doyle woke suddenly, as if from some snatch of dark dreaming, gave a grunt, and stumbled away to relieve himself. She stared fondly at the broad, furred back and gave her yet flat stomach a small self-satisfied pat. It was going to be a glorious day, and she felt she was the happiest woman alive.

  Breakfasted and gear repacked, they headed for the interior of the island, following Wrolf, still a bit ruddy about the chops from his repast. The rocky shore gave
way to stony terrain where meager topsoil supported the brief season of a few straggling heather plants and a tough, aggressive grass with knife-sharp blades. The ground rose steeply toward a spine of hills, which seemed to bisect the island.

  Wrolf brought them to what seemed to be a natural amphitheater, a shallow bowl shadowed by small cliffs. A hole gaped in one wall, but Eleanor hardly noticed it. Beside the opening was a pillar of light, and within it stood a long-boned man of perhaps twenty, with the beaky features and red-gold hair that characterized many of the Plantagenet line. He seemed frozen in sleep.

  Eleanor approached the pillar and touched it. It resisted penetration despite its fragile appearance, and she turned to ask Doyle what to do. A cough made her look at the cave mouth, and she saw a pair of gleaming and unfriendly eyes. A moment later, a huge boar ambled out and glared disdainfully at her.

  It was so enormous, she could hardly take it in, for her five feet seven inches barely came to the top of one stubby leg. The curving tusks were as thick as a man’s body at their base, and she backed away quickly, although the beast showed no inclination to do more than snort and paw the sterile earth a little.

  Doyle removed the sword from its gay sheath and walked toward the boar as she retreated. His face had no expression, and Eleanor felt herself chill. She knew that look, though she could not say why, and it frightened her.

  The boar gave a contemptuous grunt and lowered its great head. Doyle moved to one side with a mobile grace strange in so large a man and brought the sword down on one shoulder. The beast screamed in rage and turned on stubby legs, but Doyle kept moving around, leading it in a tight circle that kept him out of range of the terrible tusks. The thick hide broached under repeated slashes, and blood began to color the leg and the earth.

  Eleanor raised her staff to summon some aid and found Wrolf’s mouth firmly around her wrist. He clamped sharp teeth until she loosed her grip. "This is his fight?” The wolf gave a yelp she interpreted in the affirmative. She glared at the animal a second, then turned her attention back to the strange, unequal battle.