The Sword

by Jean Johnson

  Forcing herself to breathe through the panic that suddenly clutched at her, she gripped the stone shelf of the sink and stared into her own aquamarine eyes. The light around her slowly faded, as she thought of staying in this realm for the rest of her life. Never again watching a television show, or hearing the radio. Never flying in an airplane, never tasting ice cream…

  Oh, don’t be silly! You have only to tell Evanor about ice cream, and you can bet he’ll try to Sing it out of sugar, cream, eggs, and thin air. And as for flying, if these guys can create horseless, magic-drawn carriages, they can learn how to create floating, flying versions. Or you can always play the missing Wright sister and experiment with crafting hang gliders on your own…assuming Saber doesn’t go all protective and shouting on you, and lock you in the bedroom for even thinking of attempting something so foolishly dangerous. Though at least you should use his magic to protect you, she acknowledged wryly to herself.

  It was nice knowing that she wasn’t on her own, that she didn’t have to completely take care of herself.

  But, to live here—not for a few years, or even several, but for actual decades, until I die here, to know that this place will be my home from this moment on, forever more…

  It wasn’t entirely a panic point. Kelly could picture herself staying at Nightfall with the eight brothers, with Saber as her husband and the others as her marriage-bound kin…but not in permanent exile.

  She needed female companionship. She needed other people to talk to, even as interesting as the eight brothers were. She wanted to go shopping, even if only in a medieval marketplace. To find her own embroidery thread, to select and purchase her own cloth, to pick and choose what foods to eat, rather than whatever the brothers bartered or grew. And she wanted to sell the things she could make, as the brothers sold their own items, to add her contribution to the household.

  That, of course, would have to wait until after the so-called Curse had come and gone. Once it had passed through—and they had survived whatever it was—there shouldn’t be nearly as much of a stigma against women living on this isle as there was right now. She hoped.

  And then there were children. Kelly really wanted a trained midwife when that point came, as it surely would. Otherwise, she wanted to put it off as long as possible. True, there was a part of her that wanted Saber’s children, and in their long talk during the watersnake poisoning, she had learned that Saber wanted children, too. She just didn’t want to be the only female around when she had them.

  Well…I’ll just have to do my damnedest, Doyle-style, to end the exile of the brothers, so that I can travel occasionally to other areas of this odd, fascinating world.

  She had gone all the way out to the eastern beaches several miles away with Saber for a picnic on the sand last week. Semitropical, lush, and pretty though it had been, it wasn’t the same as actually going somewhere else. As in, off this island.

  There was a knock on the outer door. Kelly abruptly realized she was standing in darkness. Squinting through the refreshing room, she reached up, thunked a knuckle on the lightglobe in its bracket on the bathroom wall for some light, and made certain she still looked good in its abrupt, soft white glow. A woman—if she was lucky and found the right man the first time around—only got one wedding day in her lifetime, after all. Even if she had to literally go to another universe to find the right one.

  I hope he’s the right one…

  Her visitor knocked again. Kelly gave herself one last check, making sure her hair looked like it was going to stay in place. Hurrying out, she opened the door on the far side of the bedchamber.

  Trevan and Evanor stepped inside, grinning and eyeing her clothing appreciatively; their own was apparently their best wear, given the neatness of their clothes and the fine quality of the fabric. Some of which she had put trim on in the past month and a half, Kelly recognized with a touch of amusement. Behind them came Koranen and Morganen. The auburn-haired mage stopped, stared at her, and whistled appreciatively at the figure displayed by the careful, tailored cut of her clothes. Behind them stood Dominor.

  “Work-party, O Beauteous One!” Trevan joked. “We’re here to tidy the bridal chamber; Evanor bullied us into it as a last-minute gift.”

  “Lady Kelly, it is my honor to escort you to the carriage, while these louts figure out the difference between the handles and the feathers on their dusters,” Dominor drawled, gesturing toward the stairs beyond. His brothers raspberried him and set to work, stepping around their imminent sister-in-law, as they started casting their magics.

  Nodding graciously to the third-eldest, Kelly vacated the room in the company of the dark-clad man, her hand on his forearm. It was a long way down, but the stairwell was well lit. The handrail was decorated with flower-and-leaf garland ropes down both sides. The garlands ended at the bottom, at the doorway into the north wing where the stairs let out, but it was a wonderfully decorative touch that one of the brothers must have added on their way up to her door.

  She and Dominor descended the spiraling steps to the great hall, then out through the eastern wing, through the door in the center of its Y-split, and into the easternmost courtyard. Most of the rest of the castle lay in darkness, but there were lightglobes illuminating their path and the courtyard where they emerged. There were two magic-steered wagons as well, one no doubt for the others to take down, and one to carry her to the chapel.

  The normally utilitarian wagon had been provided with an extra bench covered in cushions and decorated with more flowery garlands. Poles rose up from the four corners, supporting bright-gleaming lightglobes, and more garlands stretched between them, scenting the darkening twilight air. Helping her up into the bed of the wagon, where she was apparently to travel in relative comfort on the cushioned bench, Dominor climbed onto the front bench and picked up the reins. As Saber had done before on their trip to the beach, Dominor pressed the spring-levered pedal on the floor that made the cart go forward and steered with reins that stretched out to a pole that turned the pivoting axle of the front wheels.

  Kelly decided to try to explain rack-and-pinion steering to these men one day, to hopefully get them to switch over to something less hazardous-seeming than the awkward arrangement they currently used. And shock absorbers, she added mentally as the cart rattled over the now completely weeded courtyard flagstones, rumbling out the well-lit gate. Though it would be easier if I had a manual, since I don’t quite understand it myself in any real depth… She could explain how to card-weave far better than she could how to build a car.

  They trundled down the weathered cobblestone path that led to the western shore. Out here were the lightglobes missing from the rest of the donjon palace, mounted on poles sunk into the sides of the road. Like lamps in a fairy-tale drawing, they lit the curves of the aged, stone-paved road, outlining their descent from the swaybacked plateau on which the castle was perched. Kelly could even see where the road twisted and turned ahead of them, by checking for the hints of lights through the trees.

  Dominor kept the cart to a steady, almost agonizingly sedate pace as they descended. When they were not even halfway to their destination, the other cart came rattling along. The men piled in it cheered and hollered, waving as they sped past, hurrying on their way to fill the chapel ahead of them. Kelly had to smile; they were doing their best to give her an impression of a large, boistrous wedding party—whether or not it was intentional—and it touched her.

  Dominor, silent for a little while more, finally spoke up. “I really wish you would teach me that ‘dirt-eating’ trick you pulled on me. It is a style of fighting in your realm, is it not?”

  “It is,” she agreed. “But I’d rather keep my advantage over you. You’re bigger than me, and you can cast magic, which I can’t.” She smoothed the thigh-length hem of her blouse over her lap. “But if you stay nice to me, I’ll consider not teaching it to your wife.”

  “My wife will know better than to try to make me ‘eat dirt.’ She will know her proper plac
e and stay there.”

  Kelly snorted. “And you think she’ll obey your every whim? That’s not a wife! That’s a rug. And you, Dominor of Nightfall, would be bored to tears by her if she were! I have been paying attention, you know. You’re a lot more like Saber than you’d care to admit, in that way. He loves a good fight, and you love a good challenge. So I sincerely hope, Dominor, as your new sister-in-law, that you’re whacked over the head, chained to a dungeon wall, and challenged like never before, by the mere woman it’s your fate to suffer,” she drawled. Then added primly, “And I really do mean that in the nicest way possible.”

  He regarded her a long moment, as the cart trundled down a straight stretch of the path. “I believe you actually do.”

  She snorted again. “You’d be bored with anything less than a struggle. If you’re honest, you’ll admit at least that much to yourself.”

  “You may be right. But my verse suggests that it is I who will do the whacking and the chaining, and so trap my mate. If I ever run across a woman worthy enough,” he added, increasing their speed a little as they came down onto flat terrain, leaving behind the slope they had been rattling gently down. “You may be a challenge for my brother, but you aren’t one for me.”

  “Did you just insult me?” Kelly asked mock-suspiciously, lifting her fingers in an ear-pinching pose, mock-warning him with the gesture.

  “I mean you aren’t the woman for me. The point is useless, anyway,” he added with a sigh, for once losing some of the posturing in his voice, exchanging it for a somewhat more thoughtful tone. “Unless Morganen makes a habit of plucking women from other realms—which is forbidden with good reason by the Council, as it can upset the balance of the multiverse—the odds of another woman reaching this isle are extremely slim.

  “The odds of one of us successfully returning unnoticed and unhindered to the mainland long enough to find a wife there…are also very, very small. Trevan can change his shape into a bird form, but even I doubt he could fly far enough and fast enough to escape pursuit—going there wouldn’t be the problem. The problem would be surviving long enough to return. We are bound by laws forbidding us from teleporting anyone to the island, you see, even if the distance weren’t too far,” he explained. “Nor can we open a Gate, a sort of small-scale, mirror-based Portal. Nor operate any flying carts.

  “All we can do is change our shapes…and only Trevan and Wolfer can do that.” He smirked for a moment. “Wolfer is afraid of heights…so his going bears small odds, indeed.”

  “They couldn’t be so impossibly small as Morganen seeing me burning in my bed and rescuing me from certain death. In a realm that doesn’t believe in real magic, mind you,” Kelly added as they rattled over a bridge and came into a globe-lit clearing, in front of a vine-draped marble building not quite swallowed by the jungle around them.

  Rydan was just finishing the lighting of the last lightglobe. He lowered the knocking pole in his hands and leaned it against the side of the building, where it disappeared into the leaves of the vines. As Dominor stopped the cart, the black-haired, black-clad brother mounted the steps at the entrance to the octagonal building, vanishing into the interior without looking their way. Somehow, though, Kelly got the impression that he was very aware of every detail of her arrival.

  Dominor helped her down as Wolfer descended the steps, handsome in stripes of velvety gold and brown. The largest of the eight by an inch in height and maybe two in breadth, he gave her a graceful bow and held out his hand, rumbling in that deep voice of his. “We decided that the twin of the brother kneeling to his Destiny should have the honor of presenting the bride, as you have no kin of your own to stand at your side. If you will allow it.”

  Nodding, suddenly nervous again, Kelly placed her palm in his, letting him tuck it into his, preparing them to mount the steps. She cast about for something, anything to take her mind off of her nerves and the panic she felt at what she was doing, so unbelievably far from home, far from even the memory of her long-gone parents, who would have done anything to be there on her wedding day. The bracelet on his wrist caught her attention.

  “Wolfer? A question…”

  He looked down at her. The only attempt made to tame his wild brown hair had been a leather band that crossed his brow and held most of it back from his face. In the light of the globes around them, surrounded mostly by nature, he looked about as untamable as his name suggested. His deep voice, however, was as gentle as he looked fierce. “Yes?”

  “What is that bracelet on your wrist?”

  He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Are you having second thoughts?”

  “Well, I am nervous, but I’m trying to distract myself.”

  He grunted, nodding his head slightly in comprehension. A gesture of his wrist, and the thin binding of braided, dark blond hair gleamed with golden highlights under the light of the globes set around the chapel doors. Noticing her attention, Wolfer explained simply, “It was a gift.”

  “From Saber? Is it his hair?” she asked, since it was about the same color.

  “No…from a friend. And a sort of cousin, removed once or twice by marriage—not a blood kin, but a close friend and former neighbor. Her name is Alys.” A muscle worked in his jawline for a moment, then he managed a smile. “I was very angry when we were ordered to leave Corvis. She gave it to me and asked that I wear it and remember her, to remind me whenever I got the urge to smash things again, that there was at least one person on the mainland who still cared about all of us.

  “She could not do anything to prevent our exile, but she still cared.” His memories seemed to warm his smile. “She was a crazy little thing, four or five years younger than Saber and me, half timid, half bold, as if she had to goad herself into tagging along with us against her fears of our young and manly outrageousness—well, when she was young, she was bold,” he corrected, urging Kelly to head for the steps once more. His smile slipped. “Something changed within her.

  “She started to be more and more timid and withdrawn as she grew older…and her boldness stopped being the kind that would have her climb trees with us and became the kind that would bring her to see us at all. But…she cared about me. So I keep my pledge; I wear her hair in this braid on my wrist, and I think of her with fondness once in a while. I also think of her in those moments when I would otherwise unthinkingly unleash my rage. She didn’t like it much when people were angry.”

  Kelly couldn’t think of a thing to say to that. She wanted to ask him if he wished he could see the young woman again, but he guided her up the steps and into the chapel.

  The simplicity of the building pleased her, when she glanced at it. It had just one doorway, but it had many thin, high-stretching, glazed windows that during the day would let in shafts of colored light to turn the white marble walls all sorts of luminescent shades. The interior too, was garlanded, and she guessed the ropes of flowers and leaves had to have been woven by magic, because they obviously would have otherwise taken a lot of time.

  There were eight altars spaced around the center, one centered in front of the entrance, and one centered in front of each bank of windows in the other seven walls. Proof once again that these people were culturally crazy for the number eight. The other six brothers were spaced around the outside of the altars, either consciously or unconsciously echoing that pattern. Saber, however, waited within the eight blocks of white stone.

  There had been more than enough cloth and trim to make him trousers, gathered shirt, and tunic in the same aquamarine he had given her. With his dark gold hair bound across the brow in the same way as most of his brothers wore theirs, albeit with a thin band of silver instead of leather or ribbon, he was breathtakingly handsome to her. Just looking at him, tall and proud, his gray eyes fastened only on her, Kelly felt her nervousness sliding away. Whatever she felt for him, it was like nothing she’d felt before.

  Breathless…I feel breathless, she acknowledged, staring at him. Like I’m at zero-g, in that moment right before the ro
ller coaster takes that first, great, big fall…and I’ve always loved that feeling…

  She stopped with Wolfer just on the far side of the first altar from Saber.

  “Gods and gathered witnesses,” Wolfer rumbled, taking Kelly’s hand and raising it slightly. “I present to you Kelly of the family Doyle, and Lord Saber of the family Nightfall, the Count of Corvis-in-exile. They come before you now to clasp hands over the eight altars of the gods in solemn marriage vow. Witness their pledge this night.”

  Stepping forward, Kelly held out her hand, meeting the palm that reached for her own. Evanor had coached her on the proper ceremony during the long hours they had spent sewing together. “I, Kelly of Doyle, take Saber of Nightfall as my husband.”

  “I, Saber of Nightfall, take Kelly of Doyle as my wife,” Saber returned, fighting the urge to tremble at her touch.

  They had hesitated so long outside, he had grown nervous that she had changed her mind. His own nerves at what was coming, both the need to be gentle her first time, and the unknown of whatever might happen the moment they did come together, had eased at the sight of her, at the advance of her into the chapel. At the touch of her hand and the firm vow of her words. Their eyes met over the altar, he nodded slightly, and they recited their vows together, turning and pacing around the circle of altars, flanking both sizes of the carved marble blocks.

  “In Sorrow and Joy…

  In Trouble and Peace

  In Illness and Health

  Trading Anger for Love

  In Poverty and Wealth

  Through each Day and Year

  Turning Weakness to Strength

  Making Wrong into Right!”

  They passed over the altars as they spoke, circling back around to the one they had started over, completing the circle. Saber gripped her hand a little tighter and gave his half of their oath.

  “I pledge myself to you, my lady, my true love, my partner. I give my life to you, my power to you, my heart to you, and my trust to you. You are my wife, and my Countess-in-exile, for I know you will care for my family and watch over them, and lead them as surely and well as they now follow me. All that I have, I give into your hands. All that I am, I lay at your feet, for I am yours, Kelly, and only yours from this day forth.”