by Jean Johnson
That made her stagger right into Saber. He caught her to keep both of them from being knocked over. She yelled something and whirled on him, thumping and tugging and doing something as she hollered that yanked him right off his feet and flung him roughly over her hip and onto the floor, as if he weighed less than a sack of flour.
A different noise broke through her unintelligible yells. Morganen, shoulders quaking, cheeks reddening, laughed breathlessly hard at the sight of his brother sprawled and stunned on the floor. Flushing from something entirely other than laughter, Saber shoved himself upright, ignoring the woman as he stalked his brother.
A shouted demand cut through Saber’s determination to make his brother pay for laughing at his unexpected humiliation. Both men turned toward the cause of the unwarranted mirth. She was yanking down her scorched tunic and rattling off a babble of completely foreign words.
Saber looked at his shorter brother, frowning in confusion. “She doesn’t speak Katani?”
Letting out a sigh, mouth still tempted to twitch up at the corners, Morganen shook his head. “Nor any language I know of. I saw her peril while I was scrying in distant realms—Jinga! Quick, catch her!”
Saber spun around in time to see the woman edging toward the workroom door. She saw that her movement had been spotted and whirled for the hall beyond. “Catch her?”
“Catch her!” Morganen repeated. “I’ll have to give her a translation potion, and I obviously can’t do it with a moving target!”
Letting out a sound of disgust, Saber loped after the woman. Visions of chaining the woman in the dungeon of the ancient palace they resided in danced through his head, as he spotted a bare foot scrabbling up the staircase at the end of the hall. Racing up the stairs after her, he saw her dart off at the first landing and followed, pleased with her mistake.
The eight brothers’ workrooms were placed in the outer wall towers, in case one of the magically gifted brothers did something that might do a lot of damage. The only doors out of each tower were the two letting out onto the curved walls that stretched between the towers and the hidden doors that led to underground passages. This particular level simply let out into a short hall that bisected the tower and gave access to four wedge-shaped storage rooms. All of which were locked, as some of the things Morganen created were too dangerous to come across casually, even by his well-trained brothers.
Saber watched her yank on the handles to the third and fourth doors at the other end of the hallway, then whip around and face him, aquamarine eyes wide in that panic-paled face. She rattled off something in her native tongue that was probably the equivalent to “Don’t come any closer!” One hand was thrust out to ward him off. He flinched, expecting her to hurl magic, but she only hurled more foreign words and shook her finger at him, backing up.
There was nowhere to go, though. Even the window behind her in the far wall of the tower was only a narrow, recessed arrow-loop. Big enough to illuminate the hall and its doors with daylight, and to put one of her slender arms through, but not large enough for the rest of her body. Continuing his advance, Saber watched her warn him futilely again, then position her body and hands in a funny stance—like she was ready for a fistfight, sort of, but with her knees bent and her fingers flattened. A strange stance, but graceful. He tried not to notice the way it accented her hip and waist, or the curve of her nearest calf underneath her faded trousers.
He was tired of her incomprehensible shouting and irritated by her unwelcome presence. “Come. I will take you downstairs and have my brother deal with you.” Thrusting out his hand, Saber waited for her to take it. She eyed it warily, only shifting her stance a little for better balance. He gestured with his hand, impatient with her very presence. “Come! Or I will throw you in the dungeon regardless of whether you can speak!”
His half-shouted demand made her flinch. And attack. She thrust his hand aside, kicked him in one knee, as he quickly shifted both together to protect his groin—and flipped him again! A preposterous idea, when she was a full half-foot shorter than him and couldn’t weigh three-quarters of what he did…but Saber still found himself sprawled on the stone-lined floor. Twisting onto his side, he saw her running for the door back to the stairs, escaping again. He threw out his hand.
“Sh’kadeth!”
The door to the hallway slammed shut in her face and locked with an audible snick under his spell-wrought command. The woman gasped and jerked back before she ran into the aged wooden surface, then backed up slowly, whispering something with a tone of deep fear.
Shoving to his feet, Saber stalked up to her silently, swung her around, and threw her over his shoulder as she screeched in shock, anger, and fear. Her fists thumped on his back as he waved his hand past the door handle, disabling the spell and swinging the panel open again. When she hit him again—hard enough to make him wince, since she thumped her double-clasped hands right on his spine—Saber smacked her on her backside, where it stuck up by his chin, ignoring how thoroughly curved and feminine his target was.
Her hollering snapped into a gasp of outrage, and she yelled something else, hitting him harder. He smacked her again with the flat of his hand as he descended the steps, yelling back himself, “Behave!”
I can’t believe Morganen has done this to me. This woman is going straight back t—
“—Yeoww!! By Jinga!”
Her teeth had somehow managed to sink into the muscles of his back, making him almost miss the last step. She let go long enough to draw in a breath and yell at him some more in her strange tongue as he stumbled. Saber yanked her off his shoulder the moment he had his balance back and was safe on the ground floor. Shoving the staggering woman against the far wall, he pinned her there, growling in a way that would make his twin, Wolfer, proud. She tried to knee him as she struggled; he fixed that problem by pinning her thighs and hips to the wall with his own. Drawing in a breath, Saber prepared to blast her with an angry invective.
The fear in those wide blue green eyes stopped him. Sure, she struggled and yelled at him, but she didn’t dare move her lower body. Only her arms struggled where he had her wrists pinned to the stone wall. If she had moved anything lower, Saber realized he would have grown quite hard from the friction and given her a real reason to harbor the feminine fears he could read in her eyes.
It also made him realize that she was bone-thin, maybe even fragile, despite the tough way she had managed to fight. His knee was still throbbing from that strong, well-placed kick…but her wrists felt like too much pressure might make them snap. Holding her tightly enough to still her struggles made him feel like a bully. Just for going after her without trying to calm her down, snapping orders at her, and grabbing her like a thoughtless brute.
It wasn’t a pleasant set of impressions. It was made even less pleasant by the way her eyes gleamed, then threatened to water with tears, how her struggles had more or less stopped and been replaced by trembling. Cursing—glad she didn’t yet understand any of the less than gentlemanly words he used—Saber pulled back from her, uncomfortable with the remorse he felt.
She wasn’t a complete waterpot, though; the woman immediately jerked on her wrists to get herself free. He lost one wrist and almost the other one, as she lunged to the side in her attempt to escape. Swearing again, he yanked her back by her fingertips and the edge of her tunic, which ripped by a whole fingerlength at the nearer armhole. Saber flung her over his shoulder again as soon as he had her jerked back within better reach. Making her yelp, then moan.
Now he felt like a heel, one with a major headache coming on. That headache was clearly labeled Meddling Youngest Brother. When the petite, strawberry-blond hellcat bit him again, Saber spanked her one more time. He did, however, duck slightly as he moved along the hall, to make sure, in her struggles to right herself with an indignant shout and more kicking of her legs, she didn’t whack her head on the door frame as they passed through.
“Put her in the octagram. And make sure she stays there!” his young
est sibling ordered, not even looking their way as Saber came back into his workroom with his uncooperative burden.
Grumbling under his breath—wincing as she bit him again, then thumped that spot with a fist for good measure—Saber strode over to the large expanse of white marble inlaid in the center of the light gray granite flagstones tiling the floor. The octagonal figure had nothing to hold her in place, though. “I’ll put a confining spell on her.”
His brother shook his head, not even bothering to look Saber’s way as he flipped through several books, looking for the right spell. “Please don’t; the energies would only get in the way. This is not a language in the lexicon, Saber; it is not a matter of casting a transposition spell between our language and hers as we can do with all of the other languages known by the Katani. Her language is not known by anyone in this world, as far as I have been able to ascertain.
“No…” Morganen mused as much to himself as to his eldest brother. “It will have to be a very complex piece of translational magic, so that she will be able to understand us, and we her. Ultra Tongue, I think. Most of the other spells in my library rely on the languages being a lot more native than hers.”
“Fine. I’ll pin her here with a spell just long enough to go get a table or a chair or something…and a bunch of chains,” Saber added half under his breath.
“Jinga’s sacred ass!” Morganen exclaimed harshly, whirling on his brother, slapping the book in his hands shut with a bang for emphasis. The sharp sound made the woman pinned over his brother’s shoulder flinch. “Are you really that insensitive and cruel? She’s frightened, Saber! Scared out of her wits, utterly alone in completely unfamiliar territory, unable to communicate, completely unaware of how she was rescued from a death worse than fate, and you’re thinking of chaining her? Oh, that’s really compassionate, Brother!
“Why don’t you just grab your sword while you’re at it and shove it through her gut, saving her the trouble of having a stroke or a heart attack!” Normally the Mage, as the youngest of the eight sons was nicknamed, was a kind-spoken soul. But when he was riled, his tongue could cut sharper than his eldest brother’s sword. Morganen scowled at his flinching eldest kin. “She’s a woman alone in a castle with eight men, with no idea how she got here, bruised and battered and in less than decent clothes by most cultural standards—and certainly with no idea of what we’re going to do with her! If the others weren’t all cowards and hadn’t fled, I would rather have someone more sensitive hold her in place. But no, I have to deal with you!”
Saber bristled at that. “I am the eldest brother! You will not talk to me in that manner!”
“Then stand there, hold her, and comfort her; don’t scare her!” his brother shot back. “It isn’t going to kill you—or trigger your gods-be-damned Destiny—to show a little understanding and kindness for a few gods-be-damned moments!” Yanking his book open, he turned his back on the pair of them, muttering harshly under his breath in a less than arcane manner.
The woman, still slung over his shoulder, panting from fear and from her exertions, bit him again.
Swearing, Saber yanked her down from his shoulder. To keep her knees from going for his groin, he pinned her squirming legs in the curve of his arm. To keep her arms from thumping him, he confined them to her ribs with his other arm—but he was not actually cradling her to his chest, dammit! It was self-defense, that was all!
Of course, he didn’t want to break her arms and legs, so he had to hold her somewhat gently, but still firmly enough to keep her from squirming free. She certainly tried. Pressing her face up against his shoulder to keep her from squirming out of his grasp got him another bite in the nearest piece of flesh. His chest. Growling from the pain and the aggravation he was suffering, Saber glared down at her. She shrank back in his arms, eyes on his bared teeth, her aquamarine eyes wide and wary, but the jut of her chin belligerent and defensive.
“Oh, that sounds reassuring,” his brother drawled sarcastically, attention still buried in his spellbooks. “Stop growling at her!”
“What, do you want me to sing her a gods-be-damned lullaby? I could be holding the destruction of Katan in my hands, Morg! You think I’m happy about this? No women!” he enunciated. Then had to do his best to keep the woman who wasn’t supposed to be there from getting away, struggling hard again at the raising of his voice. “As soon as you’re done with this damned spell, you start looking for someplace—anyplace—for her to go!”
“I’ll find the right place for her to go, have no fear. After I’ve cast the right translation spell, and after she’s had a chance to get her bearings and rest.”
“In the dungeon,” Saber muttered, as she tried to pinch him with the hand wedged closest to his chest.
“Saber! Just hold her still,” Morganen ordered him, giving his eldest sibling a dirty look. “It’ll take a little while longer.”
“If she draws my blood, I’ll—ow!—bind her in chains and throw her into the sea myself, to watch her drown! Stop biting me!”
Morganen, his back to his brother, knew in exactly which book to look—not the one in his hands, of course—and carefully hid his smile. About five more minutes should have both of them calm enough, five past that to continue to “look” for the spell, and five more to gather the necessary ingredients… Half an hour or so of ensuring their proximity to each other, if he stretched things out a little during the brewing process. If he was careful not to smile where his clearly irritated brother could see it. He wasn’t a fool, after all.
TWO
She was tired, she was bruised, and she was thoroughly pinned to the large stranger’s chest. Trapped in a madman’s arms, trapped in a madman’s house—trapped in a world gone mad—Kelly Doyle finally gave up trying to get free. Neither of the two men seemed to speak plain English, and she had given up trying to remember any of her old high school French, so she couldn’t try to see if they spoke that language, either. Of course, they didn’t sound like they were speaking French, or Spanish, or German, or any language she recognized. So she lay there, squeezed to borderline bruising, panting and trying desperately not to cry, in the arms of the unnervingly good-looking, overly muscular stranger who was holding her.
It wasn’t easy. Some people had bad days. She was having a bad decade. First had come the death of her parents in a collision with a drunk driver, leaving her almost penniless three years before. Then had come the offer of a great job, which had forced her to move away from all of her friends and family, halfway across the country. Then the company employing her had gone bankrupt, and all the employees had been let go a year and a half ago.
So she had tried to profit from her hobbies. She could sew, embroider, and make lace, and had made pillows, framed wall hangings, quilts, rag dolls, and clothing, ranging in style from modern to medieval. The Middle Ages Society had been the one place in her new location and new life where she could make friends quickly through shared interests. Even if the local members started out as complete strangers, she had made a few friends. Such as her closest friend, Hope, who had made Kelly feel more than welcome in the local branch of re-creation enthusiasts.
Her association with the medieval society in the tiny Midwest town had meant being associated with paganism and witchcraft and all sorts of other completely erroneous, bigoted assumptions, even though the Middle Ages Society was actually designed for historical education only.
Anonymous hate mail had started arriving in Kelly’s mailbox. And then those notes had been tacked to her door. Whispers around town had driven most of her trade down to what the tourists brought in. And, one evening, someone had shoved her into a wall, while she was walking home from the movie theater. She had whirled on her attacker and fought him off, glad that her parents had enrolled her in kung fu when she was younger. The man had worn a mask and had run away.
When she reported the incident to the police, they suggested she had deliberately done something to draw her attacker’s attention. They had sided with the gener
al attitude of the others in the town, preventing her from getting any real help against the persecution mounting against her, and had dismissed her claim to attend to “more important” crimes. In a town where the most excitement was the occasional drunk or shoplifter eating fruit without paying for it at the grocery store, they had dismissed and ignored her complaints.
For a little while, Kelly had hoped that her going to the police had warned off whomever was tormenting her. Then new notes had started coming. And along with them, photocopies of old textbook pages, reciting the history of women who had been accused of witchcraft—hung in England and the colonies, burned in Scotland and France.
She had stepped outside one morning to find a hangman’s noose dangling from her porch roof. She had gone outside to sweep off the porch and open the living room-dining room section that she had converted into a shop for her business. The noose had a note pinned to it, demanding in cutout newspaper letters that “the Witch” leave, Or Else. Angry, she had taken the note to the police, but they hadn’t done anything beyond eyeing it and pointing out that it neither mentioned her name specifically nor identified what “Or Else” actually meant.
“Or Else” turned out to be waking in bed to burning hot pain a week later, with her house in flames around her. And then, while her lungs had scorched, as her flesh had seared, as the pain had grown unbearable, the flames too high to see any way out of the inferno—something had shaken the world upside down, rattled it around, dumped it out with a jerk…and she had awakened and found herself here. She must have fainted the first time, because Kelly remembered herself screaming from pain, shock, and fear, until a blackness had swept through her, blanking out everything for a little while.
Something beyond her comprehension had happened while she had been unconscious, however. Because though her clothing was still singed, her skin was just barely pink rather than blistered and burning. Now she was in something that had the look and feel of a castle, in the arms of a man wearing breeches and a sleeveless tunic who was arguing with a similarly clad man, all in a room that was lit by glowing white balls caught in claw-tipped iron poles set around the perimeter of the room. Those lights were suspended in their claw-cages in such a way that she could not see the cords that could provide power for their translucent white light…
