Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  Brian cut away more branches. He added to the list: dislocated elbow, cuts, scrapes, bruises. Not bad for a rookie, to use the Yank phrase. A quick jerk and the elbow slipped back into joint. It was best to do it while the poor sod was already out and save him the pain.

  He'd have to ask about other damage when the kid woke up. The Summer Country didn't provide portable x-ray machines. Just hands and eyes and ears, the original diagnostic tools. Brian stood up, joint by aching joint, and spotted the familiar worn cloth of his backpack lying in the trail. It held water and bandages.

  Cutting his pants away from the gash in his leg was hard. Wrapping gauze pad and Ace bandage around it was hard. Everything was hard with fingers that fumbled and shook, with joints that refused to work in the proper fashion, with muscles drained of glycogen and ATP and whatever other bloody chemicals the bloody scientists had decreed necessary for coordinated bloody movement.

  When he limped back to David, the boy's eyes were open. He stared up at Brian and slowly blinked, then shook his head.

  "I ran."

  "You came back."

  "I'm a coward."

  "You're a brave man. Running away makes sense. Turning around and coming back is harder than staying to fight in the first place. Now shut up and see if everything still works. Try things gently, one piece at a time."

  A broken branch stabbed the earth right next to David's shoulder and another poked the space between his thighs. Together, they propped up a limb thicker than a man's waist. Chance ruled again. Chance dropped the limb there and chance spared David from being skewered, and chance probably guided his arrows in the first place, both the shaft in the center of the dragon's eye and the later one that had missed Brian by a hand's span.

  David slowly dragged himself out from under the brush-pile. He wiggled fingers and toes and sat up groggily. He groped around his right kneecap and winced. Brian helped him to his feet, and they both found their way to the comforting support of a tree-trunk.

  David stared at the dragon, the monster hulk still twitching fitfully as different parts of it learned that they were dead. To Brian's weary eye, it looked as if the damned thing stretched clear over the horizon.

  "Jesus Christ," David whispered.

  "Himself and all the saints, as well. You killed it."

  "Should I eat its heart or something?"

  "If you want to spend the rest of the day puking, go ahead and try. This isn't Wagner, or some stupid fairy-tale. Dragon-flesh will make you sick."

  They leaned against each other and the tree, with about enough strength left to ruffle a kitten's fur. Brian's vision blurred for an instant, narrowing to a tunnel before clearing, and he wondered vaguely how they were going to rescue Maureen and Jo if they couldn't even walk.

  "Such a touching scene."

  Brian jerked his head around at the words. Black spots swam across his sight at the sudden move.

  It was Sean. Behind him stood the squat ogre shape of Dougal. Brian felt his hand turn numb, and the kukri thumped to the ground. His muscles froze with Sean's holding-spell.

  "You killed my dragon," Dougal said. "That will cost you."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sean just stood there, lazily, next to a shattered tree, as smooth and sleek and darkly elegant as ever in the gray pullover and gray slacks that were nearly a uniform to him and to Fiona. His smile twisted gently at the corners of his mouth, and malice danced like firelight in his eyes.

  Brian's thoughts jumped from Sean to Dougal to David to his kukri lying on the ground. He swore quietly to himself, even inventing a few new phrases when the accumulated vocabulary of fifty years of army life seemed to come up short.

  Even if he broke the holding spell, neither he nor David could lift a finger for another fight. And Dougal was wearing chain mail over leather and carried an ugly clawed mace. Whatever else Brian might think about the misshapen troll, he recognized a competent and vicious fighter.

  Cooling sweat stung Brian's eyes and trickled down his back and forehead. Flies buzzed his head, attracted by the spattered blood and eye-jelly of the dragon, the sweat, and the dirt. He twitched a finger, trying to swat at them, but couldn't move. Somehow, the filthy little buggers bothered him more than the certainty that he was about to die.

  "Darling Fiona's heart will break," Sean drawled. "Poor darling Brian. Killed by a dragon, a blow to the head even as the beast twisted in its death-throes. It must have been a valiant fight between worthy opponents."

  He took the mace from Dougal. "What do you plan to do with the other one, my noble ally? Add him to your collection?"

  "He's a poor trade for my dragon," Dougal growled. "You wouldn't believe how much time and trouble the beast cost me. I don't know where I'll find another."

  "Ah, yes. An endangered species. And I'll bet my dear brother didn't even file an Environmental Impact Statement. He's left you with a lot of damage to repair."

  Brian wrestled with the spell holding him. Power drained away as fast as he gathered it, water pumped into a bucket with no bottom. Where in hell had Sean learned that kind of trick?

  But Brian was too tired and muddle-headed from the fight to really care. His tongue seemed thick in his mouth when he tried to speak, as if he'd swallowed dragon's blood and his throat was swelling up to choke him.

  "Quit gloating and kill me, you scrawny little freak. Or don't you have enough muscle to lift a weapon? Wouldn't you prefer to have Dougal do the sweaty work and keep the nasty gore off your pretty clothes?"

  Get the runt mad enough, he might lose concentration. If he just lost his grip on a single thread of the binding . . . Sean was the dangerous one; Dougal couldn't use that kind of spell.

  "You can't goad me into hurrying." Sean smiled, running words over his tongue as if savoring a fine wine. "I've waited half a century to bash your brains out. A few minutes of triumph are small enough payment for all your insults and interference. Even Fiona doesn't really like you, you know. She just has this genetic experiment she wants to try."

  "So shut up and kill me before I get enough strength back to break your hold and then your bloody little neck."

  "Temper, temper. Wait your turn. I was asking Dougal about your human friend."

  One of the flies landed on Brian's nose, and he hated it more than he hated Sean or Dougal. He couldn't even purse his lips to try to blow it loose. The only reason he could talk at all was Sean's hunger for a chance to taunt him. How could Brian twist that weakness into a weapon?

  He had to keep a hope for Maureen and Jo. David had been blooded now, he ran and then came back again. He wouldn't run a second time. He knew how to fight, and he truly cared. They couldn't both die here.

  "David is a bard. His life is sacred. Let him go or bring the curse down upon you both."

  Dougal clenched his jaw, and then bit off words like chunks of jerked beef dried a touch too long. "I think you're lying. But bard or no, he owes me blood. He owes blood to the land. I can think of ways to get that without killing him. He'll pay."

  Sean's smile broadened. "You interest me. I hope you'll let me watch, even if you don't want help. Things would have been so much tidier if he hadn't killed your dragon. Now I have to get all sweaty, as my brother with the perfect genes so crudely pointed out. He might even splash blood on me, and these pants are wool. My cleaners get so upset if I make them take bloodstains out of wool."

  He lifted the mace.

  "I don't think you want to do that," said a clear soprano voice. Fiona glided out from behind a tree. "Sean, love, I am not pleased with you. Protecting the dragon against your brother's magic--I could overlook that. It made the fight much more interesting." She shook her head. "Killing him yourself? No, I don't think I can allow that, love. He's worth much more to me than you are. Especially once I've prepared him properly."

  Fiona. That explained the drain. It wasn't Sean, or some new skill Dougal had found late in life. Fiona.

  The mace slipped from Sean's hand and thudded to the g
round, barely missing his foot. Sweat beaded his forehead, but Fiona smiled and shook her head again.

  "You're no match for me, love. You never were. Genetics, as you said. Those flaws express themselves in more than just your fertility. Among other things, they make you so predictable."

  She glided across to Brian and ran a finger along his cheek and jaw. "Your brother, now, he's a different matter. Much more entertaining. If he weren't hurt twice over, I don't think you'd have held him. What do you think, Dougal? Wouldn't that be an interesting contest?"

  Dougal grunted.

  "Oh, come now, neighbor mine. You often pit your beasts against each other. What do you think the odds would be? Which way would you bet?"

  The troll grunted again. "Weapons? Sean wouldn't have a chance. Barehanded? Even worse." He paused and narrowed his eyes. "Magic, I don't know. You'd be the best judge of that. I'd guess Brian has more raw power and Sean more subtlety and precision. Brian seems to rely on brute force."

  She giggled. "True. Who else would try to stun a dragon? We'll have to try it later, when Brian's healed and well broken to the leash."

  Now her fingers caressed Sean's face, brushing a smear of dust from his cheek and then straightening the collar of his sweater. "You didn't think I'd trust you unwatched, sweet twin? The way you so admire your brother? No, love, I am not pleased with you. While Dougal plots ways to punish a bard with impunity, I have to think of what to do with you. I think a touch of poetic justice is in order."

  She started to hum, gently, a tune Brian recognized. "My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, to let the punishment fit the crime . . . ."

  She broke off. "Dougal, love, you do have other guards? It's not like you, to trust everything to a single dragon."

  "I have other guards," he growled. "With such trustworthy neighbors, I'd be a fool not to."

  "Oh, I'm not asking you what they are, or where." She chuckled. "That sort of information is dangerous to both the giver and the gifted. I was just thinking I might leave my beloved Sean in your woods to play a while. Just like Brian."

  She picked up the heavy kukri from the ground and jerked its sheath from Brian's waist. "Exactly like Brian. With nothing but a knife and with his Power blocked. A week, or perhaps a moon or even two. What do you think?"

  Dougal actually smiled. "I think, dear Fiona, it should be entertaining. I hope you won't be upset with me if he gets eaten in the process."

  "Of course not, love. Any blame belongs to darling Sean, for being such a stupid ass."

  She examined the kukri, a vague smile on her face. "Dougal, love, you know so much about weapons. Isn't it considered bad form to sheathe one of these without its steel tasting blood?"

  Dougal blinked. "I didn't know you studied weapons lore. Some believe that, yes."

  "I've studied brother Brian, dear neighbor, everything about him. The strangest things can be a window to the soul."

  The blade caressed Sean's cheek. Brian caught the sudden smell of fear on the breeze and saw the muscles tremble in his half-brother's face as he tried to shrink away.

  "I ought to carve your eyes out, love," she whispered. "I ought to cut off your ears and useless balls and feed them to you. You tried to trick me. You thought you could get away with it, and that is even worse."

  Brian snatched at a glimmer of hope. With Fiona concentrating on the others, maybe he could break free. If she thought he was hurt worse than he really was . . . . He reached out and touched the winds of Power flowing through the Summer Country and jerked back as if he'd tried to grab a live wire.

  She didn't even turn around. "Brian, love, don't try that again, or it will hurt. I've finally got you, and I intend to keep you. You always were such a beautiful child."

  She tipped the kukri up and laid its edge against the soft skin right under Sean's eye. A blink would bring blood, a twitch of her hand would blind him. Brian swallowed convulsively, as if the razor steel touched cold against his own skin.

  "I'd love to do this, sweet twin. But," she sighed, "I may need you again sometime. You can be such a useful snake." She lowered the knife. "Instead, I think I'll let you watch part of my spell-song. It may hurt just as much."

  She turned the blade and slid it along the back of her own wrist, leaving a thread of crimson. One finger dabbed up a drop of her blood and held it to Brian's lips. His jaws opened of their own accord, and his tongue reached out and licked the salty finger clean. The taste burned down his throat and into his belly like a shot of whiskey.

  His right hand reached out for the knife and mirrored her actions, holding his own blood against her matching lipstick. Brian watched the ritual like it was a movie on the screen, his body having no relation to his mind. Fiona had taken over her brother's spell as easily as picking up a book.

  She frowned and turned to Dougal. "You do have that redheaded bitch behind cold iron? She's left her fingerprints all over Brian's lovely soul. This may take a little longer than I thought." Dougal nodded, watching silently.

  Maureen. Brian focused on memories of her face, her gentle hands, her warmth and smell when she was holding him in the innocent acts of nursing. "I love you," he whispered to the memory, raising it as a shield against his sister.

  Humming filled his ears, a gentle vibration against his skin that became music and then a song. Words coiled around his head and blurred his vision until it was filled with Fiona's face, her eyes, her hair. He still held the knife within inches of her heart, but he couldn't have stirred a finger against her will.

  "'S tú mo choill, coill, coill," she whispered, singing the chorus of her spell-song.

  "'S tú mo choill gaineach ban.

  "'S tú mo ghiolla dubh ar luaimh.

  "Os ar ucht tú 'bheith slan."

  Brian heard the words in an obscure out-island dialect and their meaning whispered in his brain: "You're my love, love, love, you're my loved one so fair . . . ." He lost the thread of the song, but the words mattered little anyway. They merely held his ears and set his will apart from his body, sleeping.

  What mattered was her voice singing, her perfect clear voice with a faint touch of fuzz to it like a warm kitten. What mattered were her glance and hands and body caressing him, dancing close around him. He bathed in the light of her face, the warmth of her touch, the intoxicating fragrance of her smell.

  The knife left his hand and found its sheath. She tucked it in Sean's belt and turned her back on it, and Brian wanted to cry out to warn her of her danger but she never asked. The smell of her filled his nostrils and woke fire in him and banished pain into another world.

  "Don't even think about it, Sean," she sang, the words woven into her melody. "If you try for the knife it will turn in your hand and cut your liver out."

  Her dance continued, close and intimate around him, as erotic through her clothing as if she danced nude. Every touch burned as though it left sparks of phosphorous behind, eating into his skin, and yet the pain of the burning felt like ecstasy.

  Fiona loved him. He loved Fiona. She ran fingers through his hair and soothed away the scrapes and bruises like a mother's kiss, she ran her palms down his thighs and sealed the slash left by the dragon's claw, she gently wrapped her arms around him and the pain of his ribs vanished as if it had never been.

  "Dougal, love," she whispered, "if you think you can do that without my noticing, then go ahead and try. You've had reason enough to fear me, all these years."

  Brian wondered what she'd sensed, how Dougal had tried to manipulate his land and beasts to fight her. She never even looked at Sean and Dougal behind her. Such a wonderful witch, she was, to see so clearly all around her. So powerful and lovely. The strength she had, to hold three men while she enspelled a fourth. Why had he ever denied his love for her?

  Her touch slipped away from Brian, and he ached with longing. Her singing told him all was well; this parting would be short before they came together in her bed. Her will was joy to him. If she wished him to wait, he'd wait forever.
/>
  "Dougal, love, you really ought to learn this. It's much more efficient than your training methods, and it will work on man or beast."

  "My way works." His voice seemed as rough and crude as sharp crushed stone after the honey wine of Fiona's song.

  "Ah," she whispered, with a beautiful smile, "but it will be days before you can taste your bride, and you can never truly trust her. In spite of all your skill, sometimes the falcon does not return to your fist. Of course, I know that's part of the thrill for you."

  "Falcons are animals," Dougal answered. "They have small brains and little understanding. I've never lost a person yet."

  "Yet," she repeated, with a pause full of comment. "Yet. You've never tried to work Blood as powerful as hers or Brian's. This is no glamour I'm casting on him. Once I'm through weaving this fabric, darling Brian will never want to escape from me. Even casting the clay from a new-dug grave between us wouldn't set him free."

  Dougal shook his head. "Once you're through?"

  "Oh, there are a few more rituals to observe. I thought we'd finish in private, if you don't mind. Poor Sean would have a stroke if I forced him to watch."

  She turned to her twin. "Sean, love, you are bound to this forest until I give you leave. Your touch on the Power is bound. Think sweetly on me and on betrayal until we meet again."

  She waved him away. He turned as stiffly as Punch retreating from the Judy puppet, jerking his steps along the path, his hand on the knife but powerless to draw it or to turn. Fiona turned her back on Sean, dismissing him with a shrug. She eyed David, still leaning helpless against the oak.

  "And what do you think about the things you've seen, young human innocent? You've walked from the streets of gritty reality into the pages of myth, you've slain a dragon against all odds and been captured by the evil sorcerer, you've seen betrayal and seduction and wait now for your doom to be spoken on your head. Such a poor fate for a hero out of myth. Such a puzzle we all must seem, to your virgin mind." She laughed, a harsh sound seeming to mix contempt for all of them together, and then waved negation.