Jabone's Sword (33 page)

"Well it does seem only fair since she only has the one child and you have so many," Hellibolt said flippantly.

"This isn't funny, Hellibolt. Why else would she take Kasiria with her?"

Hellibolt shrugged. "Perhaps Kasiria wanted to go. That is what the herald reported."

"Well that would be like Kasiria. Probably thinks she will train with the Great Tarius the Black. No, that's just preposterous."

"While Tarius is going to trade her son for your daughter isn't at all?"

"What do I do?" Persius asked.

"Wait for Tarius and Hestia to contact you. Don't borrow trouble, Persius. They don't even know the girl is yours."

"You know that then?"
"Well they didn't last time I saw them," Hellibolt said with a shrug.

"Go and check on her, Hellibolt. Do whatever it is you do and go and check on Kasiria."

"I can't. She is on the water. My powers do not extend that far."

"Have you seen him? This son of Tarius'?"

"Yes, he's quite beautiful, a big strong man with his mother's dark good looks and his father's charm."

"Who is his father then?"

"Master Arvon. He is the product of a cross pairing but he is Tarius's own flesh and blood."

"I envy my own daughter, Hellibolt. Envy this time she is spending with Tarius. I still miss her. No other friend was ever so dear to me; no woman has ever stirred me so."

"The girl's mother came close."

Persius nodded and seemed suddenly far away. "All the women I love are taken from me, Hellibolt. I don't want to lose Kasiria as well. Tell me I won't lose her, Hellibolt. Tell me that she's safe."

But when he turned because silence was his only answer, Hellibolt was gone.

Yri cleaned the girl's wound and redressed it while Jabone watched. The wound looked the same and he said, "She said healing sleep but she's not healing. It's exactly the same."

"Shush Jabone," Jestia said in a whisper, entering the cabin. "She may be able to hear you. I don't know. Healing sleep doesn't heal the injuries it shuts the body down so that it doesn't die until it can be healed. We still need a healer. Her body has to be put back together properly before it can start to heal." Yri nodded at them both being a man of few words and departed. "So does Yri ever smile?" Jestia asked when he was gone.

"Not often," Jabone said with a scowl of his own.

Jestia knelt beside the bed, opened Kasiria's mouth, and forced some liquid from a small vial into it. "This should help. It's supposed to take the place of food, keep the body from eating its own organs."

When Jestia started to get up she was obviously having a little trouble. He rushed to her side and helped her, then looking down at her said, "I'm sorry Jestia."

"For what?"

"Saying what I did about your spell. After all it's the only thing keeping her alive." Jestia stuck the empty vial in her pants pocket looking at him expectantly and he said, "And sorry that I asked you to cast a spell which you obviously cast at great personal cost." She was still looking at him so he sighed and went on. "And sorry that I didn't listen when you told me not to attack, but to wait. You have every right to be mad at me and . . ."

"Oh Jabone, I couldn't be mad at you, not right now." She patted the side of his face playfully and said, "Now if you do it again, I'll kill you."

"Thanks Jestia." He motioned with his head toward Kasiria and Jestia nodded.

"I'll come back in a few hours and do it again." Then she left.

Jabone sat down in a chair by Kasiria's bed. After a few minutes there was a knock on the door jam—because there wasn't a door—and when he looked up young Tarius was standing there. "Is it all right to come in?" he asked in a whisper.

Jabone nodded and Tarius walked in. "I don't think you have to whisper, Tarius, I don't think we can wake her up."

Tarius walked in and sat on the end of Jabone's mothers' bed. "How you doing?" he asked.
Jabone nodded. "Tarius I'm sorry . . . "

"For what?" Tarius laughed. "There wasn't a one of us weren't so mad at those damn cackling Amalites we weren't ready to do the same thing or worse."

"A lot of men, good men, are dead because of my pride."

"And none of us would be alive if it wasn't for you, either. Don't forget that. The night before that in the woods you flat saved our asses."

"Jestia saved us with her bats."

"That alone wouldn't have worked and you know it."

"You my friend." Jabone shook his head. "What happened to you?"

Tarius laughed. He didn't have to ask what Jabone meant. "How many times did Tarius the Black beat me down and scream at me 'I will punish your aggression!' and I just thought she was just trying to keep me down so that I wouldn't ever be as great as her. And she told me, didn't she, that I wasn't as strong as everyone else and I needed to use my speed and see my size not as a liability, but use it as an asset. That just made me want to prove I was as strong and big as everyone else all the more. My younger sister was bigger than me and stronger and better at everything than I was, and I always felt like I had something to prove. And then . . . Well your madra and Dustan taught me something without even trying. They taught me how to tell stories, wonderful stories that everyone wants to listen to. I finally felt like I was really good at something, better at something than most were, and certainly better than Ufalla who can hardly tell a joke. That was the start of it, but that alone wouldn't have done it.

"Something amazing happened, Jabone. The earth gave way under my feet and I went in that swollen creek and I didn't just almost die as you all think. I died. As I was churning around in the muddy water with my airways full of water I thought, 'Gods and spiders it's cold in here.'"

He got a chuckle from Jabone so he smiled then got serious and continued his story. "And then I actually saw my sister throwing her cloak and her gambeson off and coming in after me. I saw you guys pull us out of the water and I saw her breathe into me and pound my chest. Then I thought, 'The Great Leader breathed her own breath into me to bring me into the world and now my sister's going to breathe her breath into me to bring me back.' I realized how special that made me." He laughed and shrugged. "And then I was back, and I thought about it a lot the next couple of days. I wasn't doing anything wrong, nothing rash, nothing bold. The earth just gave way. I couldn't catch myself and that was it. I almost died, my sister almost died saving me, and if a simple chance event can kill you how much more trying to do something you know you can't really do in the first place? I started to really hear everything your madra had been telling me all those years. My father . . . great stories are told of him and wonderful songs are sung as tribute to his deeds and yet he never did anything but stand in your mother's huge shadow taking up her slack, and everything about him is to be admired. Your madra always told me, sometimes so loudly my ears rang that, 'The war is not won by great feats it is won by living and killing the enemy one at a time,' and that drove me crazy. I just didn't get it, but now I do. It's like now I know just exactly what she meant, everything that she meant, everything she told me, everything my father did, it all makes sense now.

"Jabone, if I had not fallen in that creek, then I probably would have died on the end of a spear or on the edge of a sword in either one of those battles because I just would have been trying so hard to prove something instead of just staying alive and killing my enemies one at a time."

Jabone nodded.

"And Jabone, maybe something good will come of this too," Tarius said looking with meaning at Kasiria.

Jabone looked at Kasiria. "My brother, what good could come of this?"

"Well for one thing when she wakes up she'll be in the Kartik, where it's always warm, never dreary, and the food is always good."

Jabone smiled. That was the first time anyone had said "when she wakes up." He nodded his head silently and fought back his tears. "Tarius, Jestia says she might be able to hear, to think, and if she can I can't bear to think of her lying there having nothing to think on but the horror of battle. Could you tell her a story?"

"Girls like love stories, and I think we're all fed up with battle." Tarius seemed to think about it a minute then nodded, stood up, and as if he was telling the tale to a huge audience in a crowded tavern he launched into his tale. "I tell the tale of the great lovers Kasiria and Jabone. Now it was at this time that Jabone did decide to leave his parents' home and travel with his friends Ufalla, Jestia, and Tarius, not Tarius the Black mind you but a lesser-known, very good looking hero by that same name . . . "

* * *

Tarius the Black stood on the bow of the ship looking out at the sea before them and wishing there was a bit more wind for the sails. She took her eyeglass and looked out at the open water just because she liked to see what she could see.

"I see a whale, Jena, do you want to see?" She turned to her, handing her the eyeglass and pointed. "Over there."

Jena looked, then said with a smile, "Yes I see it." She took the eye glass away from her eye and looked at Tarius. "Just once you could at least pretend like I had snuck up on you."

"Oh but my great love I always know where you are."

She wrapped her arms around Jena and kissed the top of her head. "You saved our son, Jena."

"You saved our son, I just had a dream," Jena said. She pushed back from Tarius then. "Tarius, have you seen the trinket our son wears around his neck?"

"You mean the one he thinks is copper and which is really the finest gold? Aye I've seen it."

"And do you know where he got it?"

"As well as you do. You saw his cuff on her arm. They have made the exchange and the girl gave it to him."

"Tarius," Jena said with venom, "do you know what that thing is?"

"Of course I do. I was in the country of your birth, for four years. I worked for the king. I know what it is. The only thing that should be important to us is that it means that our son loves that girl," Tarius said simply.

"Do you know who that girl is. Tarius, whose child she is?"

"She is bound to our son, so she is our child," Tarius said.

"Dammit. Tarius! You know what I mean. Do you know who her father is?"
"Yes, I know," Tarius said with a hiss. "I had noticed she looked very familiar to me and when I saw the medallion with the king's seal around our son's neck I knew."

"Our son can not be with his daughter," Jena said emphatically.

"If I know our son he has already been with her many times," Tarius said with a smile.

"I won't allow it," Jena said angrily.

Tarius was a little taken aback. "Jena! I can't believe that you of all people would tell our son who he can and can not love."

"You forgave Persius, Tarius. I do not, I will not and . . . "

"The girl is not her father any more than our son is us. You know our son, Jena, you know him better than I do. Would he have fallen so completely in love with this girl if she wasn't something very special?"

"He doesn't know who she is, Tarius. She didn't tell him who she was. Why didn't she? He loves her, but how do we know that she loves him?"

"Because she is the Katabull, Jena. I don't know how one of Persius's children came to be the Katabull, but she is. And since she is the Katabull how could she help but to love our son for he is the most magnificent boy in the whole of the Katabull Nation . . . Come here." She drew Jena into her arms and looked down into her face. "The girl may not live, Jena. She probably won't live, and that being the case just let our son have this time with her. We don't need to tell him who her father is. If she lives and she wants to tell him then so be it. If she really loves him, don't you think it would be the last thing she'd want to tell him?"

Jena nodded.

Tarius laughed.

"What?" Jena asked. She looked to where Tarius was pointing and saw Jestia and Ufalla standing against the bow kissing. It wasn't just a friendly kiss either because it didn't look like it was going to end any time soon.

"Hestia's going to crap herself," Tarius said.

* * *

Jestia had talked her into an empty cabin again. She was shoving her against the wall and had her hand down Ufalla's pants too fast for Ufalla to protest, and then Jestia was touching her and all thought of protesting flew out a porthole. Later they were sprawled all over each other on one of the top bunks, naked and just talking.
Ufalla was laughing. "What are you saying exactly Jestia?"

"That every time we do it I get more powerful, that's all."

"Let me get this straight. You think that every time we make love your power increases?" Ufalla laughed, shaking her head in disbelief.

"I'm serious," Jestia said. "Think about it. I couldn't cast invisible shield and now well I'll bet I could do it right now if I wanted, and that healing sleep spell? I never in a million years should have been able to do that one and it seems to be working. It knocked me all the way down but now, right now, I feel fine, and I can feel my power growing."

All hint of humor left Ufalla's face. "He never should have made you do that spell, it was too dangerous for you."

"Would you get your hairs out of a knot? It isn't that big a deal."

"It is to me," Ufalla said.

"Ufalla, don't be mad at Jabone. I didn't tell anyone the spell was dangerous for me, and he's got enough to worry about without you being mad at him. You don't know how he feels, but I do." She moved a stray straind of hair out of Ufalla's face and kissed her gently on the lips. "I know exactly what he's going through because I thought I was going to lose you, too. I was just as sure you were going to die as he must have been. You're his best friend, Ufalla, he needs you now." She smiled wickedly. "Well not right now."

"Jestia, if you really are getting more powerful every time we do it then you're going to explode."

"Do you want to help me rebuild my powers or not?"

"Well if I must, I must."

* * *

Tarius went looking for the witch and wasn't too surprised to look into one of the cabins and see clothes discarded all over the floor and two pairs of feet hanging off a top bunk.