VirtualHeaven

by Ann Lawrence

“I wouldn’t brag, if I were you, about trapping some poor defenseless animal,” Maggie protested.

  Kered threw back his head and laughed. “Eat or not. Suit yourself.” He tended his catch, spitting it and roasting it over the fire he had built.

  Maggie had to admit her mouth was watering by the time he lifted the meat from the flames.

  “A taste?” He tore a limb from the blue-Goh and held it out.

  Maggie took it. It felt greasy and hot, but she blew on it and tentatively took a small bite. “Delicious, I must admit.” They ate in companionable silence.

  When the meal was finished, they sat staring out at the Sacred Pool. The sky darkened as the Tolemac sun briefly hid behind the clouds. “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “Ancient legend tells a tale that, until my visit to Nilrem’s mountain, I had discounted as unworthy of a warrior’s notice.”

  “Warriors being practical men who have no time for stories?’’

  “Aye.” He grinned, then sobered. “It is told in legend that Leoh’s grandfather threw his sword into this pool.”

  “Why do you refer to him as Leoh’s grandfather. Isn’t he your ancestor, too?”

  “I am not Leoh’s true son. He found me, an abandoned child, and raised me as his own. But we wander from the legend. Leoh’s grandfather had grown weary of war, was disillusioned—’’

  “As are you,” Maggie interrupted.

  “Aye. As am I.” He stoked the fire to a roaring conflagration, then sat cross-legged. “I am weary of many things, but one may not lay down one’s burden because one is fatigued.”

  “I understand.” Maggie moved next to him and placed her hand on his long, lean thigh. “You still haven’t answered my question. How do we get the sword?” He pressed his warm hand over hers.

  “‘Tis said in legend that Ruhtra threw his sword into this sacred pool, proclaiming that he who bore the ancient mark, and only he, could reclaim the sword and with it, Ruhtra’s might. Many have tried to call the sword—and failed.”

  “I heard Nilrem say you had this sign. What is it exactly?’’

  Kered looked off across the water. Slowly, he opened his cloak. Maggie leaned forward to see better. He hesitated, then touched his chest. There, camouflaged by the dark hair, was the faint birthmark she had noticed before.

  “The sacred eight,” he said.

  Maggie reached out and touched the mark—the mark of infinity. No, her father would call it a lazy eight, a great brand for cattle. She thought of what Kered had said about the number of her buttons and the strands she’d soldered into her pendant.

  His skin was otherwise flawless; all marks of his wounds had healed so quickly. The air between them became charged with something unspoken. Lightly, she traced the small birthmark. Her fingers strayed to explore the crisp hair that concealed it. When his chest muscles flexed beneath her fingers, she snatched them away and curled them into a fist in her lap. “How will you be different than the others?”

  He pulled the cloak across his massive chest, donning at the same time a cloak of distance. “I know of no other who has this mark. The legend also states that the man must be worthy. When the time comes, I will be judged, just as the others were.”

  “You must believe in this very strongly,” Maggie said.

  “If believing in a legend will bring peace, I will believe in anything.”

  His vehement reply told her the depth of his desire to believe, yet she was skeptical. “Those aren’t very clear instructions. Can’t you be more specific?” Maggie asked.

  “It is not necessary to have a plan carved in stone. Any good commander knows that one must make use of the local terrain, adjust to fit the immediate circumstances. There are other signs more important than those concerning the sword.”

  “What could possibly be more important at this moment?”

  “Watching to see if your blisters fester.”

  Maggie froze. Her hand went to her throat. She wanted to see his expression because his voice was neutral, but his head was bent, his hair a concealing wall between them.

  “Maybe I’ll heal as swiftly as you. Your skin is perfect again,” she said, enviously. “I’ve never seen anything so marvelous.”

  In answer he grunted a noncommittal, annoying sound.

  Fear and anger mixed. She lost her temper, leaping to her feet. “So, we’re going to just sit here and wait for me to rot?”

  He tugged her gently down and placed his hand over hers, curling his fingers over her tight fist. “There is little left of the salve. You will bathe on the morrow and what is left, I will spread on the worst of the sores.”

  She jerked her hand away and jumped up again to pace back and forth before the fire. His words gave her no sense of time, no idea of how soon they might continue on and so eventually return to Nilrem’s mountain. She desperately wanted to go home. Each day, her growing fascination with the warrior made going on more difficult and made staying distant from him less likely. Her desperation made her voice sharp. “The weather is deteriorating, Ker. We must do something.”

  “We must wait to see if your blisters fester.”

  Maggie tried to be calm. Her skin felt cool and the itching had vanished. He had acted quickly and loaded the salve on with a heavy hand—a warm, caring hand. It was unfair to take out her anxieties and anger on him. “You know, I’m wearing a sacred eight, too,” she pointed out. “Maybe this sword will come to me.”

  He laughed. The sound was rich and deep and even more annoying than his inarticulate grunts.

  “What’s so funny? If the sword is to return to someone with your sacred number, why not me?”

  “If I, a man at the seventh level of awareness, cannot call forth the sword, then by all my ancestors’ graves, you will surely fail, too. Ruhtra’s sword would not be called from the depths by a female slave. Only a mighty and worthy warrior may command the waters,” he said, heartily amused, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Hm, is that so?” she asked. “We’ll just see about that, won’t we?”

  Maggie ran to the water’s edge. She did not need to see him to know he had come on silent feet to stand behind her. Like another sense, her body knew when he was near.

  Maggie looked about. The landscape was soothingly similar to home with its rolling hills and silvery pool. Yet a red sun burned in a lavender sky streaked with dark clouds. A giant horse cropped grass nearby. How could it get any stranger? Could anything be more fantastic?

  “A challenge, Maggie?” His words were soft and edged with sarcasm.

  “Sure. I’ve always loved a challenge.” She swept an arm out in a grand gesture. “Command the waters.”

  Kered grinned, then turned to face the pool. With a reverence Maggie suspected was not feigned, he pressed his palm over the mark on his chest and spoke. “I, the Esteemed Warrior Kered, command the sword from the depths.” The water lay placid and unmoving.

  Maggie laughed at the absurdity of the situation, holding her pendant in her fist. “I, the Esteemed Metalsmith Maggie O’Brien, command the sword from the depths.”

  As if on cue, a wind rose. Maggie reached across the space that separated them and gripped Kered’s fingers. They stared across the secretive pool. A long rumble like the march of a phantom army rolled down the hills and a shiver of fear raised goose bumps on Maggie’s arms. “What was that?” she whispered.

  Kered gathered Maggie against his chest, drawing his cloak about her shoulders. “Just the herald of a storm. A helm wind. They come quickly across the fells. Look.” He pointed to the hilltops where angry purple clouds raced the wind to hide the sun.

  Maggie shivered in his embrace. In time to the beat of his heart beneath her cheek, the thunder rolled. The scent of him, his warmth, made her burrow closer to him.

  The sky opened and a torrent of rain lashed them. Windsong rose on his hind legs, then pawed the dirt in a fevered protest, tugging on his tether.

  “The pool,” Kered cried, pulling away from he
r. Together they turned and watched as the sudden hail of raindrops pelted the glassy surface of the water, churning it into a seething, roiling mass, throwing waves to lap their feet.

  Maggie had to shout to be heard above the cacophony of thunder. “What’s happening?”

  Kered did not answer.

  She had ceased to exist for him.

  He withdrew his hand, his fingers sliding unfeeling from hers. The rain plastered his hair to his head. He threw off his cloak and stood bare-chested before the questing waves. The blue cloak disappeared, sucked under the water and swept away.

  The indigo clouds blackened the sky, blotting out the last rays of the red sun, casting them into artificial night. Maggie shrieked as a sudden bolt of lightning lit the hills, throwing Kered into sharp relief against the silver pool. Her words stuck in her throat, for he looked like a pagan god commanding the water. Without the strength of his hand, she felt small and inconsequential. She grabbed her pendant to anchor herself. The brilliant display of nature only underscored her puny stature in his world.

  Waves rose and rushed to the shore, spewed foam across him, and still he stood like a statue, unaware of nature’s fury.

  “Ker! Kered!” She urgently cried his name. Great waves swirled about his thighs and dragged at the hem of the shirt she wore. “You’ll be killed,” she shrieked, wading to her armpits to save him somehow.

  Another blue-white bolt struck a nearby tree, sending Windsong into a screaming frenzy. A wall of water advanced. She squeezed the pendant like a religious amulet and offered up a prayer. She dragged at Kered’s waist.

  When the wave hit, she lost her grip, her nails scraping across his body.

  She fell and tumbled backward. Like a child knocked from her raft at the shore, she rolled with the wave, grazing her knees and scraping her hands in an effort to stand in the water. Finally, exhausted, she collapsed on the shore, gasping.

  Something hard and cold dug into her side. She rolled over. A wave slapped her in the face. She coughed and blinked to clear her sight. There, lying beneath her, was a long sword, half-buried in the mud. She straddled it, grasped the hilt, and dragged it above the frothing waves to make sure it wasn’t again snatched to a watery grave.

  In an instant the wind died. The water slipped to oily smoothness. “Ker,” she called, turning back and wading to where he stood. When he didn’t respond to his name, she slapped his arm, stinging her palm against his rock-hard musculature.

  Like a bear waking from hibernation, he turned and shook his head. Water sluiced in silver streams down his half-naked body.

  “Maggie,” he said, articulating her name as if his tongue was thick in his mouth. “Maggie?”

  She threw herself into his arms, hugging his cold, wet body. “I found the sword!” She searched his face, seeing confusion in his eyes.

  He raised a shaky hand and swept the wet tangles of hair from her brow and cupped her face. “You found the sword?” he said, his voice dazed.

  “Come,” she said, tugging him along. He went like a sleepwalker, stumbling after her. She knelt at his feet and stroked her fingers along the sword’s long hilt. At the crosspiece, a hollow sphere was formed by eight entwining strands of silver. Nestled in the center sat a brilliant turquoise stone. “See, it’s just like my pendant.” She held her necklace up for his approval, seeking some sign that he understood. His face was deeply etched with uncertainty and anger.

  “It cannot be,” he said, standing before the gleaming blade that lay like a gift at the shore’s edge. “It cannot be.” He swept up the sword and raised it high. The red sun burst from the clouds, bathing them in a cone of light, unearthly and hot.

  The light bounced off the blade as it had done in the opening sequence of the Tolemac Wars game. Maggie choked back a cry of fear. “The waves knocked me over. When I tried to get up, there it was, under me.” She desperately tried to explain. “The legend is true,” she finished in whisper.

  “True?” he said in a deceptively calm voice. “The legend said the sword would come to he who bore the sign.”

  Maggie floundered for words. She saw the anger in his face and heard it in his voice. “It did, it did,” she finally said. “It came to me. I’m wearing the sign, don’t you see?”

  His hand went to the mark on his chest and he rubbed his palm there as if it itched. “I see what I see.” He thrust the sword deep into the sand. The sun gleamed on the shining hilt as he stormed away.

  Chapter Eleven

  Again and again she saw the gleaming blade rise, the tip cut open his chest, the blood flow down his body. His torturer would use the sacred sword. She struggled awake, cold and cramped, curled alone by a fire that offered no comfort or warmth.

  Kered stood by Windsong, readying the horse for the day’s ride. Maggie struggled to her feet, pushing her hair from her eyes, panic streaking through her. The words bubbled out of her mouth without restraint. “Throw it back. Throw the sword back,” she begged.

  Kered turned to her in astonishment. “You have obtained the blade, where others have failed, generation after generation, and you wish that I throw it back?”

  “Yes,” she cried. “I had a dream. Someone will hurt you. He’ll use the sword on you.” Her skin burned anew wherever he had applied the salve.

  He placed the sacred sword on the ground and grasped her arms. Like a summer storm, his temper had blown up and then blown over. His hands were gentle, his tone soothing. “Fear not. A dream is not reality.”

  “It is! It is. I know it. You must throw it back.”

  He captured her face in his hands. “Maggie. I do not know from whence you have come, but hear me. I will not throw back the sword. Your pendant, your appearance at the conjunction—it is fated. If I am to suffer from the sword…then so be it.”

  “My Gran—” Maggie began to cry.

  “Gran?” He used his thumbs to smooth away her tears.

  “Yes, my grandmother, from beyond the ice fields, she taught me to respect a dream. Its meaning may not always be evident at first, but still, we must respect it. Someone—” she choked on the words, “someone will torture you with the sword.”

  He drew her close into the circle of his warmth. “This grandmother of yours sounds wise. But still, we may not alter the future. What is meant to be, will be.”

  Maggie pushed him away, refusing solace. “You’re wrong! We can alter the future. Destroy the sword. Fling it to the deepest part of the pool.”

  He exerted his greater strength, forcing her to come close, his hands soothing, sweeping back her hair, tracing the lines of her cheeks.

  “Maggie, you must understand. If peace does not come to the borders of Tolemac soon, many will die. Children will starve. How can I weigh a danger to myself against sure death to others?” He released her and turned his back, returning to the saddling of Windsong. “‘Tis the children I will not betray. There are those who consider the children of Selaw expendable. The get of vermin. Of no account in the calculation of power and control. Had Leoh not taken me in, I might have been one of those children.

  “When I bear the sword to the council, it will empower me with Ruhtra’s legendary might. I can change the fate of the Selaw children. There is no other path.” In a fluid movement of sinuous strength, he hoisted her into the saddle. “You called the sword from the Sacred Pool. What is done, is done.”

  Maggie gripped his strong hands, and tears flowed over her cheeks and fell on his fingers. She shook her head. She was powerless to make him understand and powerless, she knew deep inside, to change his mind or his fate.

  “What next?”

  Her voice was dull, lacking inflection. It had been that way now for hours. Kered pulled on the horse’s reins, then slipped from the saddle. He offered her his hands, and she fell heavily into them.

  “Come, we have ridden long and hard. Let us rest here.”

  “Here?” she asked, but her voice told him she did not care.

  He kept one eye on her as he bu
ilt the fire. She chewed the bread he offered her and drank from the water gourd. At one point, she rose and went off into the darkness, and he half-stood to accompany her, fearful of what she might meet in the night, but changed his mind. Perhaps she wanted to be alone. They were in a peaceful heathland. Little except a stray sheep would startle her.

  When she returned, she came to him and curled in his arms. It had become their custom for him to remain on guard, his back to a tree, and for her to lie in his arms.

  A bad habit. One to tempt the most resolute of men.

  Her breasts now rested against his forearm, her breathing slow and deep. He wondered what he could do to raise her spirits. This dream she had described did not really trouble him. When his time came, it would come. There was little to do about it. He was trained by the finest, knew his strength, knew his abilities. Few could best him.

  Maggie stretched and turned in his arms. He stroked her hair. His lust rose to taunt him, regular as the rising of the moons. He stamped it down just as often. Each time seemed to take more effort until finally, he shifted her from his arms, placed her on his cloak, and turned his back to her. Still she robbed him of concentration. She rolled against his back, hugging his waist.

  Better to keep watch from a distance. With great difficulty, he disentangled himself from her arms without waking her, rose, and stood by the fire. He noted the position of the moons, close to the horizon. The sun rising was not far off. He hunkered down, poked the fire’s embers until they glowed with renewed life, and began to plan their next day.

  The cup of Liarg was said to lie in the depths of a cave on the Isle of N’Olava. They had little hope of reaching the island or entering the cave without combat. Maggie’s weapon would perhaps speed their way, yet she had said it could not be brought back to power should it run out. He crouched at her side, reached over, and pulled the gun from her belt.

  Kered stroked the gun made of a substance he did not recognize. He studied Maggie’s face—beauty and courage combined. She had not run from the dragon. No, she had come to rescue him. She had made no comment about her blisters after her first horrified reaction. She was not vain.