The Sword (39 page)

Morganen blotted at the sides of his nose, where the headband on his brow didn't catch the sweat. “Your universe is
very
hard to work magic in. I can only be thankful I'm here, not there, where it would be even harder. Here, at least, I can draw on various sources to augment my power. Over there, it's like moving through…what did you call it last night? That gray, stone-like stuff your people use to build things?”

“Concrete?” Kelly offered.

“That's it.
Con creet
.” He shook his head, leaning back against the worktable beside her. After a moment of watching the clerk punching buttons on a device called a
fone,
some sort of audio communicating device like a scrying mirror for the ear, he glanced at her. “Is there any place or person you want to see, before I close the link?”

Kelly started to shake her head. Then changed her mind. “Yes, there is. You showed me what's left of my house, but we didn't run across anyone who actually knew me,” she stated, thinking only briefly of the burned timbers and bits of metal appliances that had survived the inferno. “Hope. I want to see my friend Hope.”

Morganen stiffened slightly as she spoke, so she explained why, worried he didn't think it was worth the effort to locate Hope. “She was my closest friend in the medieval society, there. All of my old friends back in the Northwest have pretty much forgotten me, and my distant kin and I were never all that close…I should have attended three events in the last month and a half, ones that she would have been at as well; I want to make sure she's all right.”

“You'll have to direct me,” he reminded her, moving away from the worktable and over to the frame of the mirror. He cast a different kind of powder at the mirror, and it stabilized, cutting off the sound but not the view.

“You remember how to get back to the highway from the gun shop?” Kelly asked, staying on the stool, since she still felt a little unsteady from the blood transfer and watching over his shoulder from her perch.

“Yes—this way?”

“No, no, to the left, not the right. To the right is City Hall. There it is, in the distance. Head north—the way you're pointing—and get off two rampways down the road.”

It was odd, navigating by what was essentially a double-width, full-length, wooden-framed, crystal-clear video; at least, that was what it looked like to her as he brushed frame and surface to control the view, now that the surface was solid and he couldn't pass his hand through it. Kelly judged the time of day, the lack of afternoon rush-hour traffic, calculated the passage of the days…and realized what day it was back on the other side of the looking glass.

“Keep going north!” she ordered, as he started to veer the view to the right, following the ramp. “I just realized where Hope is; she's at the fairgrounds. There's a medieval faire going on, if today's the Saturday I think it is.”

“Just tell me where to go,” he agreed amiably, adjusting their heading. “I am at the service of my queen.”

She wrinkled her nose. “There aren't any visitors to impress, anymore.”

“Then I'm at the service of the first of hopefully many more sisters-in-law,” he corrected himself, smiling.

It didn't take long to locate the fairgrounds. The tents on the civic playing field in the distance drew them. So did the line of vehicles heading that way and the people getting out of their cars when the image in the mirror arrived at the site. Not just the ones already out there, clad in medieval garb, from tunics and trews to elaborate Rennaissance wear, but also the ones dressed in T-shirts, and baseball caps, jeans and sunglasses.

It seemed like a lifetime ago, but she remembered those dark, bigoted scowls all too well. The citizens who had harassed her to the point of burning her in her bed were converging on her friends in the Society. Her breath caught in fear as she realized
why
the local bullies were there. “Good grief!
Three
Disasters!”

“What's wrong?” Morganen asked, unsure why people going to a fair would upset her, however oddly dressed half of them were.

“Those are some of the same people who harassed me just for being in the Medieval Society! The ones who thought I was a witch—oh, my god!” Kelly slipped off the stool, eyes wide, as she hurried to Morganen's side.

“
That
looks like a longish version of a gun-thing,” he murmured, focusing the view on the man taking a long metal object out of his pickup truck.

“It's a rifle, and you bet your sweet backside it's a type of gunthing!” Kelly shot back, staring at the scene displayed before them. “This is not good…”

“If they harassed you to the point of burning down your home around you, then they're not here to discuss the weather,” he agreed tightly. “We should
do
something—”

“I'm going back.” Even as she said it, Kelly knew she was crazy. “Get that mirror open again; I'll be right back—I have to go get something.”

“Kelly?” he questioned as she headed for the door. When she looked back at him, he stared at her with troubled eyes the color of her own. “You're leaving us? You're leaving Saber?”

Surprised, Kelly stopped and blinked at him.
She knew.
It was a liberating feeling, a bit shocking, but wonderful enough that she smiled. In fact, she outright grinned. “Not on your life, Morg—be ready to pull me back through at my command, too. I'm
staying
in this realm, when I come back through.”

Nodding, he let her go. With a little smile of his own, as soon as she was out of his workroom, he thought,
Just as I'd hoped she would decide. One down, six more to go
,
before it's my turn.

I must remember to have her point out this friend of hers to me, too.

T
revan was going to be all right. Saber reminded himself over and over of that. Evanor, still guilt-ridden about the only choice he could have made, was tending his younger brother. Koranen was hovering, and Wolfer had gone to lope down to the eastern beach in wolf-form to fetch back the second cart. It was Saber's duty to wake Rydan and inform him of the second Disaster that had happened.

A streak of strawberry-topped aquamarine raced across the garden, as he walked along the ramparts. It was Kelly, in a hurry to get somewhere. To get back to Morganen's tower, he realized.
But there's no reason for her to be in such a hurry; there's nothing anyone can do for either Trevan or Dominor, since we don't know that ship well enough to scry into its interior…

Unless his little brother was attempting to pull off a miracle. Informing Rydan could wait; the oddest of the eight of them was sometimes difficult to summon from whatever nook in his tower he hid in to sleep. Rydan was often also unpleasantly uncommunicative when he was summoned during daylight hours.

Hurrying back through Trevan's northeast tower—their injured brother slept like most of the rest of them did in the comforts of the donjon wings, with the only exception their night-loving brother—Saber made it to Morganen's tower and started down inside. He heard his brother calling out a powerful, unfamiliar spell, the words thundering up the stairs toward him, as he descended the last curving flight. The spell was beyond Saber's ability to cast, that was certain.

Only by the miracle of some very strong aether-shielding spells was whatever Morganen was doing
not
affecting the weather outside. It was that strong of a spell. In fact, Saber wouldn't have even
known
about the spell, had he not entered Morganen's heavily shielded tower…and had the door at the bottom of the stairs not been standing open. Reaching the partially open door, he winced back from a flash of light, then peered cautiously around the corner, too much of a mage to abruptly interrupt whatever his brother was doing, in case the enchanting was at a delicate stage.

It didn't appear to be, though. Morganen and Kelly stood in front of his main scrying mirror, the large one that never left this chamber. She had something bundled in her hands, and his brother was eyeing her warily.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Morganen asked his sister-in-law.

“Very sure. Ready?” she asked, looking at him. Neither of them saw Saber at the door off to the side.

“Always. Step on through,” the youngest of them said.

Saber realized the image in the mirror was
not
of a ship, interior or exterior. Was not, from the many odd items in view, of any place in his known realm. Which meant it had to be her realm.

Which meant she was leaving him.

Shock held him still, as his wife stepped through. With her burned pajamas bundled in her hands.

The mirror stopped rippling the moment she was completely through, releasing him from his immobility.
“No!”

“Whoa!” Morganen caught him, as he lunged across the room, reaching for her, trying to catch her. “Saber—
Saber!
”

“You
bastard
!” Saber snarled, knocking his youngest brother away, as he stared at the enspelled mirror and the strawberry-haired woman on the other side. His fists shook with the need to do something, anything to get her back. “How could you let her go?”

Sprawled on the floor, Morganen laughed—laughed! Torn between needing to go after his wife and throttling his brother, Saber glanced anxiously at the former and glared furiously at the latter. His brother sat up and shook his light brown head, still chuckling. “Relax, Saber. She's coming back.”

“What?” Saber looked between the two of them again, the image of his wife on the other side, shouting and raising her bundle, her words faint but audible, and his brother still half-sprawled on the floor. “She's coming
back
?”

“
Yes
. And if you don't mind, I have to be ready to pull her out.” Sighing, glad of his matchmaking efforts, despite the rough way he was “thanked” for them, Morganen pushed back onto his feet, still grinning. “I'm also getting a little tired of being knocked around by you, but I'll forgive you this time.
Again
. Since you love her so much.”

 

K
elly stumbled as she came through, emerging in the middle of the confrontation, between the two lines the Middle Ages Society members and bigoted townsfolk had made. So did the two groups, falling back on both sides with exclamations of shock as she literally came out of nowhere between the two groups. Dizzy once more from running so much right after giving blood, Kelly oriented herself. She spotted her friend Hope, the one she had been looking for…but now was not the time for a reunion, however brief a time she would be here. Whirling to face the other way, she lifted her ruined pajamas high in the air.

“Murderers!”
she shouted, catching everyone's attention with that word. She glared at the townsfolk who had harassed her, summoning up her feelings about what had happened, feelings she had set aside in the challenge of dealing with a new world and its new, strange rules. “It wasn't
enough
for you, was it, to spread all those lies about me, driving away my customers with your baseless, superstitious,
petty
fears!

“Do you
see
these?” Kelly demanded, waving the bundled clothes in her hand. She shook out the top, displaying the seared mark that had burned her ribs, then tossed it down. “Do you see
this
?” she added, shaking out the pajama bottoms, which were much more thoroughly scorched from roughly the top of the knee down. “I was in my
bed
, you
murderers
! Fast asleep, until the roof collapsed in flames
on top of me
!”

Tossing down the second garment, she glared at them, hands on her hips.

“That's right—arson and murder, because you're so gods-be-damned
stupid
enough to believe in superstition, of all things! This is the twenty-first century, well into the Age of Reason, you dumbheads, not the twelfth century!”

She stomped her aquamarine-clad foot, pajamas tossed on the ground and hands planted on her hips. This particular tirade had been inside of her all along, locked down and set aside because there had been no reason to let it out. But with even more vigor than Pandora, she was yanking open the lid here and now, and hers was a box of trouble she was going to aim right at the unmentionables facing off against her medieval society friends.

“Paganism is a
religion
, you prejudiced bastards, and it's perfectly legal to be practiced.
Guaranteed by the Constitution
, you gun-toting morons! The same gods-be-damned Constitution that gives you the right to
carry
those guns—and
what
were you going to do with them, today?” she demanded, striding toward one of the three cradling a rifle in the front line. “Were you going to try to kill someone
else
, today? Huh? Murder is the only thing against the law that I have seen happening here. And you asinines not only
attempted
it on me, you came here today to try it again!”

She turned and paced down the line, as the man she had faced down had the grace to look ashamed, awkwardly shifting his rifle out of the way. Kelly wasn't done.

“These people are historians! You've got people re-creating the Battle of the Bulge, and Gettysburg, and World War II—
these
people re-create battles like Agincourt, and the days of William the Conqueror, and the War of the Roses!

“Do you accuse a man in a re-created, gray Confederate uniform of owning slaves in this day and age?—
Do
you?” she demanded, far more imperiously than she had acted as a queen. Turning as she strode back, she pointed at some of the people she knew. “
He's
a computer programmer!
She's
a waitress!
That
one's a doctor! A
doctor
! He's a podiatrist, a specialist in
foot
injuries, for God's sake! There aren't any witches here—witches don't
exist
in this world!”

“Then how did
he
get here, and you, too, and how did you survive that fire, if not by witchcraft?” one of the other gun-carrying men demanded as the others gasped and stepped back again. He held his rifle in one hand and pointed with the other. She looked where his finger jabbed.

Saber stood there, between the two lines of people. Glaring at the row of townfolk and doing his best to ignore the oddities of his wife's world. He had appeared in his sleeveless aquamarine overtunic, the muscles of his arms bulged rather impressively where they were folded across his chest. Saber knew he looked impressive, because some of the men facing his wife and her friends flinched when he twitched those muscles. It was good, because he wanted these barbarians to know he was here to protect his wife.

His words were slow, hard-chosen against the sluggish aether around him, but he managed to make the Ultra-Tongue spell work well enough to be understood. “
She
is not a ‘witch'…but
I
am. Someone among you tried to kill my wife,” he added on a growl. “I think that someone is
here
.” Unfolding his arms, he spread them, voice rising with each hard-changed word.
“Coshak medakh valsa cro-deh, inswat meerdah tekla var-deh! Pensih comri Verita-meh, Veritagis, sumol des-reh!!”

The very air crackled with the force of the energy he was shoving through it. His hand slashed out, and the people in front of him reflexively ducked—but they couldn't avoid it. Not when his brother was feeding him power from their own world to supplement his own. Sometimes it paid to be one of the Eight Brothers of Prophecy.

Three people started to glow, luminescent yellow. Two of the rifle-wielders and one more who had come with them.
“There!”
Saber shouted, pointing at the trio. “
There
are your fire-makers, your arsonists—your would-be
murderers
!”

One man had dropped his gun, he was so busy whirling around and around, brushing and scrubbing and slapping at the glow that radiated from his clothes and skin. The other two simply took off, so fast that one left his baseball cap behind, and the other discarded his rifle as surely as the first of them had. The others who had accompanied them in the mindless fervor of an impending riot quickly scattered as well. The first one to glow stopped trying to get rid of the light, ignored his van, and fled on foot. Hollering about the demons of hell, or something like that, as he ran off.

Saber bent over, bracing his hands on his knees as he breathed hard from the effort of casting magic in this world; it was a truly bizarre realm, in more ways than just the visible ones. Kelly hurried over to his side, pleasing him with the concern in her aquamarine eyes. “Saber! Are you all right?”

He nodded, waited a moment, then straightened again and wiped at his face. “It is not easy to cast even a simple truth-finding spell, in this world of yours.”

“Well, I'll be glad to get back to
ours
,” she agreed under her breath, glancing back at the other half. Most of the society members were still in shock from their very odd display. Some had backed off, and a few had even started running for the far side of the fairgrounds, just as the mob of prejudiced townsfolk had. Only one ran
to
them. Her friend Hope.

“Kelly! You're alive! You're all right!”

“Hope!” Kelly caught her dark-haired friend and they embraced hard. “I've been wanting to get ahold of you—”

Hope pulled back and thumped her in the arm, her brown eyes glistening with emotion. “Where have you
been
all this time? I couldn't even find you!”

Some of the others were coming forward now, exclaiming over the odd show. Kelly quickly drew Saber to her side and cobbled together an explanation she hoped would pass. “Everyone, this is Dr. Nightfall; he's a scientist working for the government. He's been helping me put together evidence against the arsonists who almost claimed my life, because of their highly misinformed prejudice against the society. We didn't get enough to take them to court, but we're pretty sure those three men did it—that whole light show was just a trick of pre-dusting them with a photoluminescent powder while they were mixed into the crowd. Exposure to enough oxygen over time makes it glow strongly like that.”

“But,
how
did the two of you appear here, out of thin air?” the doctor she had pointed out, demanded.