by Jean Johnson
It was her turn. Kelly steadied herself with a breath, unnerved at this public confession of his love for her; she wasn’t sure if she loved him that deeply yet. Loved him, yes, but…that much? It’s just bridal nerves…I’m sure if I’d had the chance to talk with Hope, she’d be calming and encouraging me… With another deep breath, she pledged her own part in the ceremony.
“I pledge myself to you, Saber, my lord, my friend, and my companion. My…heart I give to you, as surely as I have given my hand, for I want it to go to no other. I have nothing else but my skills and my knowledge to give to you, but I wrap them in my trust and tie them with the faith I place in you to be a good husband.” Her lips quirked up on one side. The words sounded right, so she let her sense of humor show. “And I will bully your family in the same spirit you would bully me: in their best interests, and only for their own good.” His own mouth twitched a little. “Saber, I am yours and only yours from this day forth.”
Yes, this feels right…
A gentle tug of his hand, and she rounded the end of the altar between them, joining him within the eight-sided circle. Their mouths met, as Wolfer finished the ceremony for them. “Witness and rejoice!” his twin called out, from outside the circle of rectangular, carved stones. “The family that is now Nightfall is made stronger and greater this night!”
“Rejoice!” the others shouted, lifting their fists. “Rejoice! Rejoice!”
“You can stop kissing her now,” Morganen prodded a few moments later, when the newlyweds remained locked together as the cheering died. “Uh, Saber? Kelly?”
Koranen, more blunt than his twin, strode forward, planting his hands on the nearest altar stone and giving the newlyweds a firm look. “Excuse us, dear Brother, but we did not go to all the trouble of fixing up your bedchamber just to have the two of you go at it like rabbits right here in the chapel!”
Kelly broke off with a laugh, while Saber gave his brother a dirty look over the top of her head. Neither of them let go their embrace of the other. The second youngest of the twins slapped the stone slab in front of him.
“Get out here so we can congratulate you two!”
Grinning, both of them came out of the sanctified circle so that hugs and wishes of good luck could be exchanged. Dominor brought forward a pair of thin, golden curves. Saber put one around Kelly’s neck, then urged her to put the other around his, wedding torcs with identically unique patterns stamped in the metal to show they were wed to each other, their names twined together in the elegant lines of Katani script. Then they were hustled back out to the flower-decked carriage, and Dominor once more took the driving bench.
The others, save for Rydan, hurried on ahead of them in the second wagon to finish assembling the small wedding feast meant to follow the ceremony. As they started forward at an again stately pace, compared with the rush of the other horseless vehicle, Kelly glanced back. Lights were already winking out one by one, inside the chapel. She could also see the garlands exploding silently in a rain of greenery and petals, a rain of flora that vanished even as it reached the floor.
“So that’s how they did all those flowers. Magic.”
Saber raised his brow and peered behind them, glancing through the chapel door getting farther and farther away from them. “Oh. That. You honestly didn’t think my brothers would actually weave several days’ worth of real flowers together? Most of that’s just an illusion.”
“But, I did smell some flowers…” Kelly half pointed out, half asked.
“There probably were a few,” Saber agreed, tucking her a little closer into the curve of his arm. “Rydan will dispose of them so that the traders, when they come again to display their wares, will never know we were married in there; they usually display their wares in the salt warehouse in the compound where the water is purified, but sometimes they visit the chapel for prayers and a place to sleep—they are rightfully wary about being on Nightfall Isle, given the many attacks that have plagued us.
“Rydan will clean the hall of our presence during the night so that their sleeping place holds nothing to rouse their suspicions. Then he will darken all of the globes on his way back up the hill and teleport them back to all of the brackets and stands they came from. He’ll be fast enough to join us in time for the feast, don’t worry.”
“That particular brother of yours is certainly an odd one,” Kelly observed.
“Tell me about it,” Dominor muttered from his seat on the bench, steering them up the gently sloping, zigzagging road. One more glance behind, and Kelly saw that already the lights on the poles leading back to the chapel were winking out.
It was just as well. There’s no telling when the unknown mage plaguing us with mekhadadaks and other beasts would seek to attack this place again, even if we’ve repainted in the interim. No sense in lighting up the island like a beacon for any curious sailors to spy upon, either.
“Why are you grinning like that?” Saber asked her a moment later, studying her in the light of the globes that hung from the wagon and those they passed that were still lighting their path.
“What? Oh—I just finally figured out how to say ‘mekhadadak,’ that’s all.” Smug, pleased she was finally beginning to fit into her odd new homeworld, Kelly scooted a little closer to him, rested her head on his shoulder, and enjoyed the leisurely nighttime wagon ride back up to their home.
FOURTEEN
After the food had been eaten, and after his brothers told several stories and jokes about her groom, and the cloth-and-garland-draped table had been cleared, they opened gifts. Some of the customs of the Katani were the same as those back home, it seemed; the first gifts to be exchanged were between the bride and groom. Kelly was glad she had made what she did. When Saber opened the box she had put everything into, he widened his eyes and carefully lifted out the two most important components.
It contained a largish rectangle of the finest white silk she had been able to find and a roll of paper. The silk was partially embroidered already, though more in outline stitches than anything else. She had already begun his eyes, from nose to brows in intricate detail, with tiny stitches of silk that had managed to capture the mottling of gray for each of his irises. Saber stood and unrolled the paper, quickly spreading it out on the table for the others to see.
The other men exclaimed softly in admiration. It was a delicately shaded charcoal sketch of his upper body, his hair flowing from the crown of his head down to his shoulders. There was no sense of color, since she had been working literally with a sliver of burned wood from the kitchen hearth, but she had smudged it carefully with her fingertips to give it some illusion of depth and shading.
“This is incredible…You will embroider this image of me?” he asked, glancing at the skeins of embroidery thread in the box, then at her.
“When I have all of the colors and the amounts that I need,” she admitted. “My best talent has always been embroidery. I’m sorry I’ve only barely begun…”
“No—do not be sorry,” he ordered her, blinking a little, clearly touched by her gift. Rolling up the paper, he tucked it and the cloth back into the chest, which was the one he had first brought to her with sewing materials inside, back when they hadn’t gotten along. He sat back down, then blinked again and looked at her, deeply touched. “Only the finest artists have ever crafted the portraits of the Corvis family line, and always before, it was only done in paint.
“You will embroider my whole family, when you are done with this portrait of me. You and I together, when this is finished, then my brothers in turn. And your work will hang prominently in this very hall,” Saber asserted, blinking twice.
For once, Kelly didn’t mind his autocratic tone; those tears he was blinking back were proof that he was deeply moved. Saber stood again to fetch his own present from a table set off to the side, brought in to keep the gifts out of the way of the feast the brothers had assembled for the newlyweds. Dominor leaned in from her left and murmured into her ear, while his eldest brother was
gone.
“Saber was to have been painted as the thirtieth Count of Corvis by the great artist Fenlor of Daubney himself, who painted the current Council of Mages. The artist had even begun the preliminary sketches, when the Council decreed us the Sons of Destiny and exiled us from our home. Unless a miracle occurs,” he continued quietly in her ear, “we will never see our father’s portrait again, nor his mother’s, her mother’s, her father’s…none of the counts and countesses who governed our ancestral lands. And we would have no hope of seeing our own portraits hanging here on this exiled island, forbidden to have lengthy visits from others as we are. So your gift touches him more than you know.”
“Stop whispering in my wife’s ear,” Saber mock-growled, as he came back. Dominor smiled and leaned back.
“Someone has to tell her about the time you mooned the Duchess of Elvenor when she was passing by in her carriage,” Dominor covered with a deliberately lazy drawl.
“I was eleven years old!” Saber protested, as Kelly giggled, imagining the scene. He sat back down and held out a cloth-wrapped package balanced on top of a bread-loaf sized wooden box. “Ignore the idiot. These are for you.”
Taking them, Kelly opened the cloth sack. It held a silver coronet, much like his own, beaded lightly around the upper and lower edges and therefore quite plain, but perfect in its own way. Gingerly, she tried it on her head. For a moment, the circlet felt too loose, then it resized to fit her head perfectly.
“You are the Countess-in-Exile of Corvis,” Saber reminded her at her uncertain look, fingers still touching the circlet. “And the Lady of Nightfall Isle. You are allowed to wear one, now.”
“Of course, we have no actual use for coronets, when everyone here already knows who and what you are,” Koranen added with a shrug.
“And you’ve already proven you’ll take nothing less than absolute respect from the rest of us,” Dominor added dryly.
“You’re never going to stop jabbing at me for making you eat dirt, are you?” Kelly asked, taking the coronet off and setting it aside.
“Not until you teach me how to do it, too. Which you will,” Dominor asserted, eyeing her firmly.
“Not on your magic-wielding life! Kung fu is the only way I’ll ever have an advantage over the rest of you,” Kelly retorted, turning to her next present.
The tiny brass catch on the lid of the box was a little stiff, but she got it open and eased the lid up. Inside, resting in a nest of wadded black velvet, was the most beautiful knife she had ever seen. It had a straight, longish, slightly tapered blade with two blood grooves to strengthen and lighten the steel, and an intricately interwoven mesh of tiny steel wires on the grip of the hilt. An eight-point star was etched into the crosspiece, and the pommel and crosspiece points were set with clear, polished crystal spheres.
“Ohhh…this is beautiful, Saber! You made this?”
“For you,” he added. And caught her hand as she started to reach for it. “The blade is enspelled for eight times the sharpness against all flesh but your own. So be careful when wielding it around me,” he added with a little smile. “It is also enspelled against breaking from eight times the pressure it would have as a normal blade, and it is enspelled—”
“Let me guess, eight times for something else utterly magical?” she interjected dryly.
Saber shook his head. “No. It is enspelled to come to your hand when you call it. So you must name it, the first time you touch it. Yours will be the first hand to ever touch it…and, I can tell you, crafting an enchanted weapon without touching it is not an easy thing to do. Name-called weapons are very rare, and very precious. So long as you can speak its name, it will always come to you. No matter what situation you may be caught in.”
“So I have to ‘name’ it?” Kelly asked in clarification, shaking her head slightly in incomprehension. Just when she thought she was getting used to the oddities of this world. She knew of businesses that would kill for the ability to invest this kind of automatic-return feature into their products. Remote controls, key chains, purses, and wallets…
Wolfer nodded in confirmation from Saber’s other side, glancing at the blade in the box. “Each of us has our own name-called weapon, birthing-day presents from Saber. Take it in your hand and say exactly what you would call it—something you would not normally say, lest you find yourself accidentally carrying it every time you say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ or ‘if you would be so kind’…”
She mock-shoved him with her elbow, just a little nudge; he grinned at her, golden eyes gleaming. Returning her attention to the box and its contents, Kelly thought about it. “Well, I’ve always been a bit of a Tolkien fan—not fanatic about it, mind you, but I’ve liked his stories, especially the book The Hobbit. So, I dub thee”—she paused, grasped the hilt, tightening her hand as it tingled against her skin, lifting it free of the box—“‘Son of Sting!’”
The weapon flared in her fingers from hilt to blade, tingling almost painfully sharp for an instant, before fading in the next moment to a normal, regular-feeling knife.
“‘Son of Sting’?” Koranen asked, glancing around the table with a scoffing look. “What in Jinga’s Name does that mean? It sounds like an insect with an overinflated ego!”
Shrugging, Kelly lifted the longish dagger in her hand. “There was a story where a hob—uh, one of the characters in the book came across a magic dagger, much like this one, that had certain powers he discovered after fighting off a group of enemies. He ‘stung’ them with the small blade, since it was not a full sword, but fought them off successfully anyway with it, and thus named his weapon ‘Sting.’ And since I liked the story, and I’m not very likely to say ‘Son’ and ‘of’ and ‘Sting’ all in the same sentence, all in a row, not unless I mean to say it…that’s what I’ve named it.”
Saber eased the blade from her fingers and set it on the table, out of arm’s reach. “Give it a try, then.”
“Do I do anything special with my hand?” she asked, eyeing the dagger on the table. “Is it going to fly at me and stab me accidentally if I don’t catch it on the first try?”
He cupped her wrist and held it out for her. “Just relax your hand.”
“Relax my hand,” she repeated dubiously.
“And say the magic words.”
Kelly laughed at that. She quickly covered her mouth with her other hand, mastered her giggles, and relaxed the wrist dangling beyond his gentle fingers. “‘Son of Sting!’”
Instantly, and indeed it was instantly, the blade was firmly clasped in her grip. No flash of light, no flying blade, though there was a soft pop, as if the air had slapped in its displacement. And her fingers were automatically wrapped securely around the hilt, through no effort of her own. Saber lifted her wrist and kissed the back of her hand. “There, see? Now you can finally do magic of your own. You can summon your blade to your hand on command.”
“Gee, I thought I already could,” she retorted slyly. All eight of the men seated around her looked at each other blankly, at that comment, missing the innuendo completely. Kelly grinned wickedly. “I’ll show you what I mean later, Saber the ‘Sword.’”
As Saber flushed in comprehension, his brothers roared with laughter, finally getting it, too. Grinning, his twin rose to get his own gift to the two of them. Coming back, Wolfer dropped the large paper-wrapped package in front of them on the table, amber eyes still gleaming with humor. “This is for both of you.”
Kelly quickly tucked her dagger back into its box, pushed it, her embroidery chest, and the coronet to the center of the table and glanced up at Saber. He nodded, and she opened the paper carefully so that it could be conserved and reused later, since there was only so much of it that she had seen in all of the castle. It was a large bundle, requiring a large piece of paper…for a luxurious fur quilt.
She knew many furs just by sight and touch already, because they were often used in medieval garb. Of course, she preferred her own furs to be like rabbit fur, the kind that came
from something that could be eaten or otherwise hunted for more than mere sport. This pelt had the golden-reddish glow of fox fur, yet clearly wasn’t, for it was shorter than fox fur usually was. It was also as thick and plush as mink, even though it wasn’t.
Running her hand over the surface proved it was as soft as rabbit fur, but much thicker. It was also, she discovered by running her fingers along the wool-backed quilt, made of four large pieces, trimmed square, not the many small pieces that would be made from mink, fox, or rabbit. “What is it?”
“It’s a blanket,” Wolfer growled, a touch of insult coloring his deep voice. “As any fool can see.”
“I could see that, Wolfer—what kind of fur is it?” Kelly clarified.
“Jonja fur.” At the questioning looks from his brothers, he shrugged. “I hunted many of them before we left the mainland, and these four pelts are a blend of both of your hair colors.”
“Thank you, Brother,” Saber murmured. Then smiled. “Though I do not care to have you thinking of us lying underneath it, after this point.”
Wolfer’s grin was wolfish. “It is meant to be lain on top of, so that all the soft fur is against one’s skin—but that is not an image I care to cultivate in my mind, thank you. I had to share a crib with your ugly hide when you were a baby, remember?” He shuddered exaggeratedly. “I’ll already take that image to my grave—you as an adult? Gods avert!”
Kelly laughed as he pretended to shudder again. “It’s a wonderful gift, Wolfer. Thank you.”
Dominor brought over his gifts, as the next eldest. “One for you, Sister-Who-Makes-Me-Eat-Dirt. I shall never wed, because I shall never find any woman in this universe who can do that to me again…for which I thank all the gods in existence. And one for you, Brother-Who-Yells-Too-Much. May she make you eat dirt once in a while…and may he deafen you for making him eat dirt once in a while.”
