A Magic King (35 page)

"It'd be a bit hard to run a kingdom from that position."

"Kingdom be damned. All I want is you." With that he tugged her into his arms, his hold tight and possessive.

She leaned forward, kissing both his eyelids, first the right, then the left. "Good night, sweet one."

He cracked an eyelid, his expression sleepy and confused. "What was that?"

She grinned. "Just something my Mom used to do every night before I went to sleep."

"It's nice," he whispered, his eyes drifting closed, his breathing already deepened into the heavy rhythm of sleep. Jane smiled, settling against his side, happy to remain locked in his arms, their limbs intertwined, listening to the steady beat of his heart.

She slept. And dreamed.

* * *

Jane wandered through a park on a perfect spring day. Overhead, a set of Air Force planes flew past in beautiful symmetry. It was one of those rare Saturdays when there were no emergencies at the University to demand her attention. She strolled leisurely, happy to watch the children play and the lovers exchange amorous looks.

As if summoned from her secret longings, she looked up and saw Daken. He wore jeans slung low on his hips and a t-shirt that emphasized his hard, masculine torso. She practically flew into his arms, and he swung her around before giving her one of his mind-numbing kisses. When he finally raised his head, she could see his happiness. Gone were the hard edges of anger and exhaustion. His worry lines were erased, and he looked carefree and young as she'd never seen him before.

Evening came, and they still strolled, holding hands while they played happily in the twilight mists.

It happened so quickly. She was teasing him, laughing as he tried to squeeze his large frame into a child's slide. Then suddenly a gun pressed against her temple. Behind her ringed the dark, menacing figures of a gang, their eyes identical pinpoints of hatred.

Daken came down from the slide, jumping from the top to face the lethal group holding her captive. She was terrified for herself and for him. Daken launched himself at the nearest thug, while Jane's scream froze in her throat. They fought like mad dogs while she watched in frozen horror.

But soon she began to relax. As the fighting continued, she watched in amazement as Daken dodged and parried blows like a born fighter. He practically danced in front of them, dropping gang members like a child knocking over plastic toys. He was more than a match for all of the dark menacing figures. Even without his sword, he was quick to dispatch them, easily turning them from hulking figures to terrified boys who ran from him.

The last one to remain was the one who held her captive, gun still against her forehead. Daken didn't have to do more than snarl at the already nervous boy. Just as quickly as it began, the restraining arms slipped away, leaving her once again alone with Daken. The only reminder of the fight was the dull gleam of the gun dropped at her feet.

Jane wanted to step around it to fly into Daken's arms, but he bent down, eagerly taking the weapon into his own hands.

"No!" she screamed, but he didn't hear her. He played with the gun, familiarizing himself with the feel and weight of the weapon. She could see the wonder in his eyes, the dreams of glorious battles and military power that would rock the world.

She ran to him, hanging on his arm as she tried to stop him. But he wouldn't hear her, didn't listen to her warnings.

As she watched, he cocked the pistol and fired. It was meant to be a testing shot, fired at a tree not an enemy, but the explosion rocked the earth. Instead of a simple bullet hitting a target, she saw a nuclear explosion. It burst onto the horizon, a gigantic flare of red and gold covered by a seething, roiling mass of black smoke.

All around her, the children screamed as the force of the explosion blasted them into nothingness. Buildings crumpled and disintegrated. Living, green plants withered in an instant. And then she saw Daken, his eyes wide with the horror of what he'd done. She saw him age before her eyes, the tiny lines expanding on his face as the heat of the explosion ate away at his flesh. Then all that was left was his grinning skeleton before it too dissolved into dust.

And all she could hear above the roaring of the wind was the incessant, ever present screams of the children.

* * *

Daken woke to a terrible keening shooting through his body and his soul. He sat bolt upright, instinctively wrapping an arm around Jane while the other reached for his sword. It wasn't until he gathered more of his wits that he realized the source of the sound.

It was Jane in the grips of some horrible dream. She was wailing with the same insane agony he'd once seen in a farming woman who came home to find her home burning and her family dead by the Tarveen. It gave him chills then. It turned his blood to ice now.

He tried to soothe her. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight as he spoke an unending stream of comfort and love. But she was beyond hearing, beyond even the gift of his healing. So he waited, gripping her as tightly as she clung to him, praying the fit would pass soon.

"Jane. Sweet Jane, it was just a dream. Jane, please. It was only a dream."

Slowly her wails subsided, and she buried her face in his chest. He stroked her hair, feeling the curls coil about his fingers.

"Shhh, now. It was only a dream."

"No." His chest was wet where she pressed against him, and he felt her quiver, her whole body shaking with the force of her denial.

"It's over. It was just a bad dream."

"No, it wasn't. It was real. Oh God, it was so real."

"That's the way of dreams, love. Shhh. It's over."

"No!" She shoved away from him. With her hair matting in the tears on her face and her eyes still stark with terror, Jane looked like the wildwomen who sometimes wandered onto his lands. "No," she repeated shaking her head. "It was a warning. A warning to me. Oh God, I was considering it." She covered her mouth trying to suppress the hysterical laugh spilling out of her. "Necessary force. I was actually thinking about it."

"Thinking about what?" He captured her hands, easing them together and holding them still between his palms. She stared down at what he was doing, her eyes widening as her smaller hands disappeared beneath his.

She pulled away from him, wrapping her arms around herself like a woman holding in an explosion.

"Talk to me, Jane!" This was impossible for him. He was a man of action, a man used to dealing with the weapons of war and of political might. Even as a healer, he acted against infections, destroying them with his own strength.

But this was a wound of the mind. Jane was half crazed, still teetering on the edge of hysteria, and he could do nothing but sit on his knees and watch, trying to talk to her as he would a spooked horse.

"Jane..." he reached out, but she flinched away from his touch.

"I want to give it to you," she said. "You know that, don't you? I want to."

"Give me what?" He brushed away a wild curl blocking her left eye. She spoke in riddles, shaking from some terror, and all he could think about was how beautiful she was. She held her head defiantly against her nightmare. Her eyes flashed like firelight reflected in amber. And her words, though still trembling under the curse of her dream, her words were passionate with firmly held beliefs.

"I want to give you the guns, Daken. I really do."

He tilted his head, not understanding why this was so awful. "So give them to me."

"I love you, and you want the guns that I can make for you. I want to do this because it would save your lands and your people. I want to give them to you because they mean so much to you."

Daken caressed her arms, stroking the tremors from her body as he would rub down a horse. "Then you can give them to me."

She wrenched away from him. "No, I can't! This world has enough weapons. Swords and spells, you don't need guns."

Daken rested his palms on his knees, calmly watching her agitated movements as she paced the small confines of her room. "The Tarveen are faster than swords," he said softly. "And there are too few mages. Guns would make the difference. They would cut the bastards down before the scream left their throat."

She rounded on him, her arms arcing wildly about her face. "And that's good? You're talking about wiping out an entire race—"

"They're not human, Jane. They're monsters."

"Bull shit. If they can organize raids, then they're human. And they have as much right to live as you do."

Daken drew himself up, his anger rising. "So I should let them be, allow them to destroy our crops, burn our buildings, and rip into the flesh of my people like evil scavenging birds?"

"No! But you don't know what evil lurks in a gun."

Daken pushed off of the bed, standing up in order to tower over her in his anger. He gave no more thought to his nakedness now than he did hers. "Guns are weapons. Simple tools. Evil can no more lurk in a weapon than it can in a block of wood."

Jane shook her head, not intimidated by his greater size. "You don't understand. You have spells and swords. What can a child do with those? It takes strength and skill to use a blade without hurting yourself. It takes maturity and self-discipline to work magic."

Daken nodded, not understanding the direction of her thoughts. "That is part of learning how to use a weapon."

"But don't you see? Any child can use a gun. Just point and pull the trigger. A monkey can do it. And children. Think of the boys you know. Would you give them the power to kill?"

Daken fell silent. He didn't need her words to prompt him. He'd already thought of the boys in his castle. Every one of them was flushed with the heady power of burgeoning manhood. Every one was hot for battle, hungry for the trappings of a man. Then he remembered his own youth and winced. He recalled the idiotic battles, the raging emotions, the carelessness of a mind that hadn't yet realized his every action had far-reaching consequences.

No. He would not give the easy power to kill to young men, much less children. "I thought there was some skill to be mastered. Perhaps a focusing that fires the gun."

Beside him, Jane sighed, a defeated sound that came to him in the first blush of dawn. "No. There's nothing like that. You live in a world of magic, you think in terms of magic. But there was none of that in my time. It was all machines. Push a lever and a door opens. Pull a trigger and you kill someone. It's that easy."

He sat down heavily on the edge of her bed still struggling with the concept. "Surely they are hard to make. We could control who carried them..."

"They're easy to manufacture, Daken. Any blacksmith could do it."

He lifted his gaze to her. "Then they are indeed a dangerous weapon. I will be very careful with mine. We will only use it when absolutely necessary."

"No!" She again began her agitated pacing. "You can't take away knowledge. Once your men feel the ease with which they can kill their enemies, the power such a weapon holds, they won't want to go back. You won't want to either."

"To fight the Tarveen as we have been, with swords and a spell here or there," he spread his arms in a gesture of futility, "it will be a long, agonizing fight. Many of my people will die."

"Then don't fight at all."

Daken pushed away from the bed, suddenly tired of all this arguing. "Blood of the Father, Jane, we've been over this before." He turned to her, feeling the weight of his kingship as he'd never felt it before. "I wish I could show you what they've done. The homes that have been destroyed. The bodies." He shuddered, then he drew himself up to his full regal height. "I cannot talk peace with the Tarveen. Not after what they've done. My people won't allow it. And I won't consider it."

Jane turned to him, her eyes like liquid mahogany as they pleaded with them. "Your people want the raids to end. They want to live in peace. They don't care how you achieve it—"

"Of course they do," he snapped, reaching down to pull on his breeches.

Jane sighed, also beginning to dress, though he could tell by her silence that her thoughts were far away. Then, when she did speak, she didn't offer him answers, but posed even more questions. "Daken, what do the Tarveen want most in the world?"

'To murder my people and rampage my lands."

"Nonsense. They did that because Kyree stole their holy book."

"What?" Daken whipped around feeling like his stomach had just been kicked in.

Jane looked up. She had one foot raised in preparation for donning her leggings, but at his startled exclamation, she slowly lowered it to the ground. "I assumed you knew."

"How would I know about Kyree and a cursed Tarveen holy book?"

"Are you telling me you have so little contact with these people you didn't even know that?"

"Contact? We have nothing of them except their blood lust. What did that bastard Kyree do?"

"He stole a holy book from them. Its loss incensed them so much they became vicious and brutal against your people."

Daken dismissed her words with a wave of his hands. "They've always been vicious and brutal." But his thoughts still churned with this new information. "It is true, about a year ago they became like beasts foaming at the mouth for blood."