by Jean Johnson
Maybe they were battery powered or had the power cables running up through the floor directly into one of the supporting iron feet. But that door upstairs had closed and locked, with no sign of a spring or a machine or anything, not even a remote control, to trigger it. That was creepy to contemplate.
Kelly bit down on her lower lip to keep from crying. She might be bruised half to death, pinned in an uncomfortable mockery of being cradled against a completely unintelligible and thoroughly unfriendly stranger’s chest, but she would fry in h—wrong analogy, she told herself as her eyes stung again. Just a short while ago, if she hadn’t gone completely mad, she had been frying in a living hell—along with everything she had owned, the house she had mortgaged herself to the hilt for, and the business she had struggled for a year to keep going, barely able to pay the bills and keep herself fed in a too-hostile world.
At least the man holding her wasn’t shouting at her or the other man anymore, and he wasn’t hitting her or doing anything else but holding her starved, bruised body. She could only hope that the lack of attention being paid to her was because he and his friend hadn’t thought of doing something even worse to her than she had previously experienced. Like raping her. Kelly didn’t have much energy left to fight either of them off. For breakfast, she had only eaten a potato and half of a cheap, homemade granola bar. She couldn’t always afford lunch and dinner.
She was a pathetic, pajama-clad mess…
Oh, great. Self-pity, she thought as her eyes stung again and her vision blurred. Kelly shut her eyes, but that only squeezed the liquid out; any liquid out of the eye was a tear, which was bad enough. Two of them would mean she was crying. Which she didn’t want to do.
Keeping her eyes shut, Kelly prayed that the man holding her wouldn’t notice, or worse, and that her already unsteady breathing wouldn’t start to hitch with a sob or two, making it irredeemably official. While she had cried at the death of her parents, she had struggled not to cry at the death of her lost office job. Employment could always be found. Or be made.
She had tried not to cry when the harassing had begun, because her tormentors would have loved to see her break down under their vicious, anonymous attacks. She had tried not to cry when the police had brushed off her account of the attack and her reports of harassment. She had tried very hard not to cry at the noose dangling from her porch, because she was determined to make none of these things worth crying over.
It didn’t work. Her breath hitched. She bit her lower lip, then pressed them both tightly together. Her nose sniffled as she drew in a breath. The arms and chest bracing her shifted a little, making her humiliation even worse, because that surely meant he had noticed. Doubly worse, because, as a pale-skinned, freckled redhead, even if only a strawberry blond redhead, crying always made her face blotchy; Kelly was woman enough to hate being blotchy when cradled in the arms of a handsome man, even an unhappy stranger, however frightening her situation was.
The man holding her shifted again, then groaned and muttered. She couldn’t understand a word, but the tone was clear, that universal male one used to say “oh, great, now she’s crying!” or something vaguely like it. The other man murmured something back in a “don’t pay any attention to it” tone—and then something crashed.
She shrieked, eyes flying open, limbs flailing to get her free and away from the frightening, unexpected sound. The man holding her grunted, snarled, and managed to pin her again, this time angled away from him instead of toward him, because of her struggling. She had a view of curved, broken glass that the other man was picking up gingerly from the floor. Something green, dried, and leafy was mixed in with the shards, apparently from a broken jar. The motions of his crouched body were reflected in a rather large, broad cheval mirror not far away.
The man holding her growled something to the other one in a “hurry up, or I’ll drop her deliberately” tone, and the other one returned something in a tone so calmly level, so nonchalant and only half-attentive, she couldn’t guess what the nature of his reply was. If she hadn’t been pinned so effectively, her back against the bigger man’s chest, she would have tried to squirm free. If she weren’t exhausted—physically, mentally, and emotionally—from the turmoil of her life over the past few years and these incomprehensible last few minutes, she might have had the energy to struggle in earnest.
Not that Kelly knew where she could have run to. One simply didn’t go from a bed in the middle of a burning, collapsing inferno of a house to a medieval castle chamber that looked like some kind of magician’s lair. Not in a sane and sensible world. Not in her world, at any rate. She wasn’t crying anymore—being held so awkwardly seemed to cure her of the urge—but she did have to sniff a couple of times, as the unshed tears in her eyes finished draining into her nose. No doubt her skin was awfully blotchy by now, too.
And why am I thinking about my skin tone, when I’m god knows where, with a pair of men doing god knows what?
The other man finished taking care of the mess made by the dropped jar or whatever, then carefully used the few leaves that hadn’t touched the floor in the accident, throwing them with a pair of glass tweezers into a large ceramic goblet that he had been muttering over and filling with other odd things. That goblet was now full of something muddy colored; it puffed a funny, opalescent mushroom cloud when the leaves disappeared below the liquid that rested just under the brim. Kelly stared; she’d never seen that particular trick before.
Shifting away from the workbench he was standing at, the second man carried the goblet toward her, slowed, eyed the man holding her, and shook his head disgustedly. He glared pointedly at the larger, somewhat older man who was holding her and rattled off a string of instructions that got her more or less righted in the bigger man’s arms. Into a drinking position.
Eyeing that cup very warily, Kelly had visions of assorted date-rape drugs dancing in her head. When he held it up to her mouth, she shook her head hard, sealing her lips tightly. The man holding the goblet, his light brown hair drawn back in an odd style for a man, in a bun-knot at the back of his head, sighed and muttered something to the man holding her, the one with chest-length, lighter, honey-golden hair.
They argued back and forth a few moments, not very long, then the man holding her allowed the younger one—his brother, Kelly realized, or at least his cousin, taking into account the similarities in their features—to tip the cup to his own lips. This close, cradled upright in his arms again, she could see that he really was drinking the liquid, not just pretending.
She also caught his grimace, as the cup was pulled away, before its milky white contents had been more than half drunk. The younger man holding the goblet nudged his brother’s arm sharply, and the muscular one holding her approximated a smile and an “mmm!” sound, as if trying to convince her it tasted good.
“Yeah. Right,” she muttered under her breath, then watched as the man holding her winced, tipping his head. He frowned down at her as the wince eased, and shocked her, by speaking in perfectly understandable English.
“What did you say?”
Her eyes flew wide, aquamarine staring up at still-frowning gray. Kelly eyed him. “What did you say?”
He didn’t reply to her. Instead he looked over at the other man and shrugged, asserting sarcastically, “At least we know it works. Thanks for not poisoning me. This time.”
The man holding the chased gold goblet shook his head and smiled, muttering something that, from his rueful expression, sounded like “I can’t understand a word you just said, remember?” But one of the two men in the room knew what was going on, and that was good enough for her. In fact, she recovered enough of a burst of energy to demand that very fact.
“What the hell is going on? Where am I? How did I get here? Who the hell are you? And put me down this minute, buster!” She kicked her feet for emphasis, since her arms were still tightly pinned to her sides.
The other two exchanged words in that other, incomprehensible language, arguing a b
it more, then the one holding her looked down at her as she kicked again. “He says you’re supposed to drink the damned potion—and if you bite me again, I’ll bite your whole gods-be-damned head off!”
“You attacked me, so you deserved it!” she shot back, struggling in his grip, though she was losing strength once again, as the momentary adrenaline caused by finally being understood faded out. “And I’m not drinking anything I don’t know about!”
“It’s a translation potion, you little idiot!” the man holding her all but roared, glaring down at her with steel-gray eyes. “How else would I be able to tell you you’re an idiot?”
The other man asserted something as she struggled, energized by his roar. She still didn’t understand a word. Or how the thick, now white “potion” could translate a damned thing. It had to be a trick!
“Put me down!”
“I’ll put you down when you drink the gods-be-damned potion, woman!” he roared back. His younger brother, or cousin, or whatever, roared at him, too, a string of vituperative-sounding, liquid syllables. The bully holding her backed down. Scowled as he did so, but backed down. And muttered at her, “Just drink the damned potion, and then you can yell at him all you want. He’s the one who brought you here.”
She eyed him. She eyed the other, younger man holding the potion. She eyed the goblet. She eyed the man holding her again. Maybe it wasn’t a drug of some kind—he didn’t seem to have been changed or altered by it. Kelly was weakened by her ordeals, but her sense of humor asserted itself for a moment through her exhaustion.
If he’s still grumpy and aggravating after drinking it, it has to be perfectly safe. I think I’d be more suspicious if it had suddenly turned him kitten-sweet. So, in a way the other one picked the right guy to serve it to, if his intent was reassuring me of its contents…
Mouth quirking up on one side just a little, she sighed. “Fine. I’ll drink the damned potion. But if you do anything to me I don’t want you to, I’ll bite off parts of you no woman should ever have to threaten to destroy. And that’s not a threat,” she added as he frowned in confusion, blinked, and finally got her meaning with a bronzing flush on his lightly tanned cheeks. “That’s a fact. So you’d better set me free right after I drink the damned stuff!”
He grunted, ignoring her threat with a nod to the other man. The cup came up to her lips. She resisted a moment, sniffing cautiously. It smelled like dandelion milk, with that greenish, bitterish aroma that spoke of lawns and summer days, and the never-ending battle between parents trying to eradicate the weed and kids nibbling on the stems and blowing on the tufted seeds to make a wish.
A cautious dip of her tongue into the liquid tingled her taste buds. It tasted even worse than the bitter dandelion juice she remembered vaguely from her childhood, because it tasted like someone had dumped in a tablespoon of pepper sauce and a hefty squirt of lemon juice, and maybe even some dishwashing soap. There was no sign of the leaf the other man had used, or any of the other ingredients she had glimpsed being added to the previously muddy brew. She could just see the smooth, milky white, bitter glop inside the white-glazed cup.
The goblet tipped a little more, forcing her to drink or be drowned. Gulping it down quickly, she struggled not to gag at the repellent combination of tastes. When the last of the thick liquid had been delivered, but for the amount coating the interior, the younger man removed the cup from her lips. He waited until she swallowed the last of it, working her tongue with a grimace to get the thick, coating of liquid off of it, then he spoke to her.
“Do you understand me now?”
A dizzying disorientation struck her ears, her head, and her mouth. Tingling on her tongue. Her ears buzzed for a moment, then everything settled and was still. “What?”
“I said, do you understand me now?” the younger of the two repeated.
And Kelly knew, watching his lips move, that he wasn’t speaking in English. That unnerved her more than being shaken out of her version of reality and dropped into this one, and even more than waking up with the whole house on fire. “Y-yes, I—”
The man holding her dropped her. Not completely without care, since he dropped her legs first, but he barely allowed any time for her to settle her feet and get her balance before letting go of her upper half. “Good,” the slightly taller, loose-haired one asserted darkly. “Keep her away from me.”
He turned and strode away.
Kelly, torn between the two of them, turned to the nearer one for an explanation. “How the hell am I speaking…whatever this language is?”
“Magic,” the younger one with the goblet replied, with a casual shrug. Taking it for granted she would understand, or rather, accept the reply.
She had to accept his explanation. Nothing else made sense, not the change in location, the way they could speak her language so suddenly, and then she theirs…she just couldn’t take it. Not on top of everything else that had happened to her.
“Ma—” she got as far as saying. Unfortunately, Kelly Doyle didn’t finish the rest. She was too busy dropping in a dead faint, the second one in less than an hour, and the second one of her life.
Jinga’s Balls!”
Saber stopped a yard beyond the workroom doorway and called back to his brother. “Watch your language! I may not want her here, but she is a woman!”
“Saber, could you please come back in here and pick her up again?”
Saber turned around, stalked back to the door, and leaned inside. “No,” he started to assert. And saw the reason why his brother had made the request. The woman was crumpled on the stone floor once again. His brother was leaning back against the worktable a couple of yards away, all but sitting on the worn stone surface and looking a little pale as well as sheened with sweat, which concerned Saber. “What happened?”
“She fainted. And I’m not feeling too good myself, either.”
Concern blanketed his irritation. Morganen was his brother after all, however irritating sometimes. “What is it?”
“Oh, nothing much…just two major spellcastings in one day, if you hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t easy, rescuing her from that fire so far away,” Morganen added, pinching his brow to avert the reaction-headache he was getting. “And then brewing and casting the Ultra Tongue, which just happens to be the hardest linguistics magic of all.”
Saber could see that his brother did look wan. But he didn’t want to be any more involved than he’d already been. “I am not going to stand around, holding her all day!”
Morganen set the goblet on the worktable next to him. Sometimes his eldest brother could be a real pain in the potion. “Just pick her up, carry her to one of the empty guest rooms, and put her on a bed. Then tell someone to watch over her. I’d do it myself, but I think I’m going to have to sit here a little while longer. And don’t forget to remind the others not to do anything with her…since you’re so good at that.”
Saber gave his youngest sibling a dark look, but strode forward and crouched to pick up the woman again. For a moment her lashes fluttered, as he shifted her into his arms, giving him a glimpse of dazed blue green eyes, then she was limp and unresponsive again. He didn’t have to hold her as tightly this time, but he did hold her close. She was a limp, uncooperative bundle, after all.
A bundle of skin and bones, he thought as he mounted the steps two levels, muttered a spell to open the door, and close it again behind him, then headed along the protective outer wall that sheltered the grounds of the castle-like structure to the ramp that would let him walk into the nearest wing of the donjon. One with very little flesh on her. She looks pale and worn. Starved.
He didn’t want to wonder what kind of circumstances could drive her to such straits. Enemies, his brother had said. Her home and her livelihood lost to her enemies, suggesting the fire had been set deliberately…with her still asleep in the building, suggesting a murderous attack in the middle of the night. His arms cradled her a little closer unconsciously, as he traveled along the wing that was a pa
rt of two wings halfway out from the donjon at the center, and which joined into a single length the closer he got to the center and the great hall.
We may have lost our rightful home, and with it the right to call ourselves sons of the Corvis line, exiled instead to Nightfall Isle…but at least we have a roof over our heads. And our livelihood is now played out in fish and game, birds and fruits, and the occasional magical item exchanged for goods brought from the mainland by those who exiled us. Which is not much different from the estate food and livestock and the magical items we had been making and selling beforehand, so I suppose we have not really lost our livelihood…
No, I will not feel pity, or anything else for this woman, he asserted to himself. He was the eldest son, after all, and the ancient Prophecy warned against an interest within him for bedding any chaste woman. To feel anything at all for the fairer sex risked the unnamed disaster that was fated to strike all of the continent of Katan.
Carrying her along the eastern hall of the cross-like outer wings of the donjon, Saber passed into the great, octagonal hall at the center of the ancient keep and turned to the right. From the floor a couple levels below, Evanor’s silky tenor voice could be heard chanting some rhythmic song, pure and uplifting, more brilliant than the shafts of sunlight pouring through the stained glass windows set in the ordinal corners of the main building.
Skirting the chamber along the upper balcony, he entered the north wing and mounted the nearest set of stairs. There was only one room that was really far enough away from all of the brothers, for they had spread out throughout the sprawling keep and its outer wall towers, in finding each one’s ideal bedchamber suite. The room he headed for now was the one they had dubbed the lord’s chamber back when they had first been exiled here. That chamber was located directly above the vaulted ceiling of the great hall, well out of the normal path of anyone traveling through the wings of the mostly abandoned palace. The sheer remoteness of it would help keep her out of temptation’s way.
