by Jean Johnson
“Okay, fine! Maybe that’s the way it works in this universe, but what’s the damned verse that’s got your undershorts in such a wedgie knot?” she shot back.
“My what in a what?” Saber returned. Not because there wasn’t a translation for her last few words, but because he had never heard a woman with her level of educated speech use that sort of terminology before.
“Never mind. I presume you do know your own Curse by heart?” she added mock-sweetly, arms still folded where she sat in the middle of the oversized bed.
Saber glared at her. And recited it.
“The Eldest Son shall bear this weight:
If ever true love he should feel
Disaster shall come at her heel
And Katan will fail to aid
When Sword in sheath is claimed by Maid.”
Kelly blinked. “Oh.” She blushed a little at the blatancy of the last line, but it did sound ominous. And vague, disaster-wise. She dismissed it with a shake of her head. “It’s still a little too nebulous to get all worked up over.”
“Disaster will come to the whole continent,” he argued.
“No, it just says disaster will come, and Katan will not give aid when it arrives,” she pointed out reasonably, settling her arms a little more comfortably. Her stomach was feeling rather empty. “Do you have any food, or am I to be both a prisoner and starved to death, while I’m an uninvited guest in your lovely home, here?”
Saber blinked at her, ignoring the second half of her speech. Testing the weight and shape of her other words, he could find little flaw in her logic, because it fit the words of the verse even more tightly than the other interpretation had for so long, before. He shook his dark gold hair. “Disaster will still come, regardless.”
“Yeah. And your neighbors conveniently shoved you off into exile, so that you’ll be forced to deal with it without the benefit of their aid. Whether or not it was intentional, they deliberately fulfilled that part of the Prophecy by packing you off into isolation in the first place.”
He shook his head. Not to deny her logic, but to clear the cobwebs her logic revealed. “This is unbelievable!”
“Well, that’s the way I see it,” Kelly defended. Then eyed him with just a touch of slyness. “If you really want me to shut up, try sticking some food in my mouth. That usually works, for a little while.”
He looked up at her again, finally catching the new topic, though the old one still tromped through half a lifetime’s beliefs with its blunt-footed logic. “You’re hungry?”
She nodded her head exaggeratedly. “Yes. And in need of the local facilities. Chamber pot, garderobe water closet, bathroom, outhouse, whatever you call it. Unless I’m so much of a prisoner that you want me to ruin what’s left of this bed?”
He scowled at her, jabbing a finger at one of the two doors in the room, the one located directly across from the entrance. “That door leads to the refreshing room. And you are only a prisoner in that I cannot allow you to wander the halls and bring down the Curse on my brothers by making one of them see you long enough to fall in love with you.”
“I take it you don’t have any females allowed in this exile of yours,” she muttered.
“There have only been the eight of us on the whole of this island for the last three years. And now you’re here. One female, eight males. I’m confident your universe is not so strange that you cannot figure out the volatility your presence will cause, if you’re allowed to roam around unsupervised. So you will stay in here and keep yourself out of the way, out of temptation, and out of trouble,” he asserted, rising. “I will come back shortly with some food. It may be a day or two before my youngest brother is ready to send you back near to where he found you. You will stay in here until he is ready to make you leave.”
She snapped a sarcastic salute. “Yes, sir! Anything you say, sir! Roger-Wilco, sir! Permission to drop bomb bay doors and moon you enthusiastically, sir!”
His eyes narrowed, and Kelly realized belatedly that, having drunk the translation potion or whatever the awful white stuff had been, he just might be able to accurately translate her sarcasm. She felt herself start to blush. Hopefully the golden hue of the sunlight shining in through the western windows was hiding some of her embarrassed color.
He eyed her for a moment, then sighed and shook his head—thankfully without responding—and turned to go.
As soon as the other door was closed behind him, she scrambled to get out of the bed and go to the bathroom. Her limbs were shaky from exhaustion and hunger, her head a little dizzy in that way that told her she’d run out of calories once again. Potatoes, peanut butter, week-old discount bread, granola, and tuna fish did not an adequate diet make. Cheap and affordable, with what little she had been able to sell in the past few months, but very inadequate.
Thank god I bought multivitamins, expensive though they always are… It didn’t guarantee her continued good health here in this realm, of course. Her multivitamins were probably a bunch of little charred lumps inside a melted, black plastic puddle anyway. Unattainable even if she could have reached across time and space.
Kelly made it to the door Saber had indicated and pulled it cautiously open. There were more cobwebs and dust inside. There were even some bugs. Wincing, she picked her way into the smallish bathroom, brushing the cobwebs away as she tentatively explored. The window was small but glazed, so she pushed it open to get some fresh air in the stuffy, musty room and looked around the “refreshing room” as the grimy glass gave way to fading sunlight.
What was really remarkable was that the place had running water. The local version of a toilet wasn’t a sinkhole in the side of the castle like an outhouse or garderobe; it was made from a light blue glazed porcelain, had a bowl of water and what looked like an old-fashioned pull-chain tank up on the wall. Instead of an oval, preformed plastic seat like she was used to, it was a gently rounded, broad section of smooth-polished wood with a rounded but almost rectangular hole in the center. It was also hinged to flip up for cleaning, a familiar touch in such a bizarre setting.
Kelly whacked the seat twice with her fist to scare off any bugs that might be lurking underneath, then faced the sink to give them time to scuttle away. There was a basin with a little shelf that splashed water into its drain like an artificial waterfall, bubbling up from where a stone shelf was carved out from the wall. Above it was a glass mirror, slightly spotty with the tarnish of age and almost too dusty for her to even see her silhouette.
The handle to the side of that miniature waterfall, when she tested it, was a lever that turned the water cold or hot, but did nothing to stop the flow. Actually, it just changed the water from warmish to cool. If the faucet-waterfall was broken, the local equivalent of a hot water tank had probably been running too long to continue to heat the water.
Or rather, if it’s a spell, the spell’s gone weak with age, she added to herself. God, if this really is a universe full of magic, real, operational magic, then it’s probably the latter. I doubt they have very much in the way of actual technology here, when the local wizard could whip something up approximately as good as a machine shop or a factory could, and for probably roughly the same equivalent price in gold coins, or whatever these people use for their money.
Kelly realized that the light was fading.
She whacked the seat one last time, used the facilities, pulled on the chain, and washed her hands with a hard-dried bar of soap that rested on the shelf next to the basin. There was even a strip of cloth hanging from a bar under the window to wipe her hands on, though it was dusty like everything else. Using it would probably only smear dirt across her skin. She moved to take it off, shake it out, and use it anyway; everything else was filthy.
Something blackish and roughly the size of her spread hand, but with far more limbs than she had fingers, and far too much body-bulk to be a spider, scuttled up over the window ledge and stared at her with four malevolent, pupil-less, dark red eyes.
Saber heard
the scream and burst through the door to the dome suite, barely managing to balance the silver platter he had found and turned into a tray. A second after he rushed into the master chamber, the door on the far wall yanked open and a strawberry-haired blur sprinted out. She spotted him as he set the tray on the nearest flat surface, and all but tackled him. Shrieking, she throttled his biceps and babbled something that resolved itself into:
“Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it!!!”
Saber clapped his hand over her mouth, shutting her up long enough to get a word in edgewise, then removed his palm again when she calmed down somewhat after a moment. “Did you see a bug?”
“No, I saw a spider! A freaking big spider!” she added, releasing his arm long enough to hold up her hands. At the amused smile curving his mouth—he had a really nice smile, when he finally had the gall to show one—she scowled and whacked him in the arm. “I can handle the small ones! This one was as big as my—”
She broke off and screamed again, trying to climb his left arm, eyes fixed on the floor in front of the door she had left open. Saber saw it, too, big, black, and scuttling their way, confirming the impending dread her interrupted description had sparked in him.
“Koddah!” A thrust of his hand and a dagger of solidified energy shot down at the thing. It stabbed, and the creature exploded, as the energy released with a meaty pop!…but there were more coming their way, running on way too many legs, as they scuttled through the open refreshing room door; from his angle, he could see they were pouring in from the window she must have opened. Mekhadadaks. Jinga’s Tits!
Swearing under his breath, Saber grabbed the woman around the waist and beat a fast retreat. She wrapped her legs around his hips, clinging to him as he raced down the stairs, banging the door shut behind them for protection. Skidding at the bottom, he spiraled down the steps of the north wing and burst out onto the upper balcony edging the great hall. His brother wasn’t physically there, though. “Evanor! Evanor!”
“Yes?” that smooth tenor sang back from somewhere else in the castle, without actually being shouted or echoed down the halls, answering his own sung-out cry. “I’m just about to set out our dinner. Did I forget the silverware for the tray?”
“Sing everyone into the north courtyard—now!” Saber shouted, knowing his brother would hear him, reaching the next set of stairs and taking them two and three at a time, as the woman, Kelly, clung to him. One of his arms held her close while the other flung itself out to keep his balance. “And I mean everyone!”
It was a long descent, and a long race for the nearest door, but quickly enough, he bolted outside with his burden, into a courtyard whose paving stones were being pushed apart by weeds. Yet more proof that the eight of them had neglected the whole place in far too many ways. He stopped in the center of the broad courtyard, turned this way and that to check for any more signs of an invasion, then finally stood still, breathing hard and holding Kelly of Doyle in place, as she clung to his hips and chest.
“Either you hate big spiders even more than I do, or that was something I don’t think I really want to know about,” she muttered, still clinging to him, supported by both of his arms as well as her own arms and legs.
“It wasn’t a spider.” Saber heard the others coming and realized she was still clinging to him. An inch or two lower, and she would be clinging very intimately to him. His body stirred with uncomfortable interest at the thought, as did his irritation; any more of this, and he’d risk becoming decidedly interested in her. Something he couldn’t allow to happen. “You can get off me now.”
Kelly scrambled to get down, yanking her pajama top down, as the charred hole below her right breast threatened to creep up. Her reply was defensive, to cover her embarrassment. “Well, you’re the one who grabbed me and ran!”
“Be quiet,” he ordered her, waiting impatiently for his brothers to show.
They all came, Morganen and six more she hadn’t met. Formally, that was. Kelly had an impression she’d seen at least some of them in the jumbled images that had seemed only a nightmare at the time, but which had probably been a part of her hour of rescue from being burned alive. Patiently, the man next to her waited until they were all in the center of the courtyard, eyeing the pair of them in the slowly dimming twilight. As soon as the others were within hearing range, Saber addressed them.
“We have another mekhadadak infestation, this time starting in the master chamber above the hall,” he informed them bluntly. “Gods know if they’re anywhere else, too. We’ll have to do a full sweep.”
FOUR
Some of the others swore, or started to swear. A couple of them eyed the woman in their midst and elbowed their fellow siblings to shut them up. No two looked exactly alike, although according to Saber, they were supposed to all be pairs of twins. A bit of squinting in the fading light allowed Kelly to pick out the shapes of noses and brows and chins. She discovered they all had a very similar cast in their facial features, though hair and eye colors varied from twin to twin.
Well, at least they’re trying to be gentlemanly and polite in their language around me, Kelly thought, wondering at the same time what a mekha-whatchamacallit infestation was and how bad it could possibly be. Just my luck to uncover the nest personally.
“Morg, do you have a piece of chalk?” Saber asked one of his brothers.
“Always,” the one she recognized admitted, though his long, light brown hair was now down out of its knot, and the headband was gone. He dug a small white rock from one of the pouches hanging on his belt and tossed it at his brother. Saber squatted and sketched out a near-perfect circle on the surface of the largest uncracked flagstone around them, marking almost to the edge of the weeds bordering the stone. Straightening, he picked Kelly up by the ribs and set her in the middle of the smallish circle before she realized his intent.
“You will stay right here and not move until I give you leave to. Su-bah makadi deh,” he added as he pulled his hands away. He lifted a chalk-smeared finger and pointed at her. “Do not move.”
“What did you do?” Kelly asked warily, glad it was a warm evening. She tugged her pajama top down a little more, then folded her arms across her breasts to hide them further. Most of the other seared spots were mid-thigh or lower, and there was that rip he’d made earlier under her armpit, but that one over her ribs was embarrassingly close to revealing something she didn’t want revealed. She might be borderline starvation-thin, but her endowments weren’t all that starved-looking.
“You are in a repellent shield. So long as you stay within the circle, you will be perfectly safe.”
“What’s a mekha…mekhuda—?”
“A mekhadadak is a carrion-eater, and more,” one of the other brothers informed her, the most blond-haired of the eight men. “Nasty things, too.”
“They were designed over a thousand years ago to eat the bodies of the fallen in a massive war—ecologically sound cleanup,” the one clad in lightweight, dark-dyed velvet added wryly.
“But some twisted bast—uh, impolite person of a mage,” a slender third corrected, as a fourth elbowed him sharply in the ribs, the largest one of the eight with a massive, muscled figure, “—remade some of them to seek out the living, not just the dead, and eat them. They are very efficient eaters.”
“We have enemies who would see us dead, and not just exiled,” Saber added grimly. “Though thankfully few of them. One of those enemies must have conjured a nest of them into the castle…but since we don’t go into every one of the hundreds of rooms here, they apparently haven’t been drawn out by our movements until now.”
Kelly thought about being attacked while she had been using the facilities and blanched a little. “Ah.”
“If she faints, I’m not catching her,” one of the brothers muttered, about as surly sounding as Saber had already proven he could get. This one had midnight black hair and a somewhat leaner figure. He didn’t even deign to look her way, this darkest-haired bro
ther.
“I’m not going to faint!” Kelly snapped, shoving her hair back from her face, then quickly refolding her arms again as several of them eyed the bare flesh of her abdomen, which had been exposed by the action. “I take it you’re going to use some kind of magic to drive them out of the castle, and if I stay exactly where I am, they won’t be able to get at me while you’re getting them out?”
“No, we’re going to drive them to the center of the castle and kill them there,” Saber corrected. He started to give the order to spread out to begin the spell-wrought driving, then eyed her. “And every other insect, spider, rodent, snake, and bug inside the actual palace, though we should leave the necessary beasts in the gardens alone.”
His gruff addition made her arch a brow. “Thank you, Saber. That’s very considerate of you.”
It was growing darker and getting harder to tell if that was a slight flush on his cheeks, or if it was just a trick of the fading light. “We’re behind in our spring cleaning,” he growled, obviously not wanting her to think he was being kind. He turned his attention back to his brothers. “Spread out, each man to his tower. We’ll link first to set a repeller spell on the outer wall to keep anything from the outside getting in, then work our way toward the center. Drive everything into the great hall, and do not forget to assert yourself everywhere. Just in case. Open doors and so forth. Koranen, you can flame them when we get there.”
“Why can’t Morg do it?” the auburn-haired brother asked, puzzled.
“Because I’m tired, and he knows it,” Morganen returned. “I have enough strength left to drive a bunch of bugs out of our home, but not enough to dispose of them today.”
“And if I burn down the Hall, and with it, the whole castle?” his auburn-haired twin shot back.
“Then I’ll take it out of your hide,” Saber retorted. “Okay, everyone, spread out. And be wary when you open each door.”
