Chapter Fourteen
There was no way of telling how much time was passing. Garrison’s wristwatch performed exactly as it had ever since he’d reached Creath. Time was either going by so slowly that the Rolex’s sweep second hand seemed barely to move, or the second hand spun wildly rapidly, so fast that Garrison was certain the movement would break. Or the hands of his watch didn’t move at all and there was an eternity between the soft ticks as he held the watch to his ear and waited and waited.
Goodman sat on the edge of the bed, and he began to talk. “Eran has spells on me. You could never take me with you. Man, I feel uncomfortable talking like this in front of my daughter.” He reached out and took Swan’s hands in his hands, kissed them lightly. “When a man and a woman are together like, well, like when your mother and I made you, honey,” Goodman said, looking only at his daughter, “well, it should feel good for the man and the woman—gosh, I can’t explain this to you! You’re a grown woman.”
“I think Swan understands the idea behind the birds and the bees, Lieutenant,” Garrison volunteered. “You can speak frankly. Honest, it won’t offend her, sir.”
Goodman looked at Garrison, as if for reassurance, then at Erg’Ran. The older man, who was really younger, said, “Your new friend from Earth is right,” and Erg’Ran sounded forced as he squeezed together the two syllables of Goodman’s first name and said, “PeTer.”
Goodman smiled. He had a decent smile, Garrison thought absently, seemed like a decent guy, too, the land of guy who’d gone off to make the world safe for children he hadn’t had yet, knowing that maybe he never would. And here he was, on the edge of nuts, seeing a daughter he’d been taken away from when she was an infant.
And, in a place where time was some sort of weird, unpredictable thing, there wasn’t any time at all to be a father. But Goodman was trying.
There might still be time enough to be a hero, if Garrison read Goodman right and understood the source of Eran’s power as he thought that he did.
“You see, your mother and me,” Goodman finally went on, “we really loved each other in a kind of strange way. I think that’s why she hasn’t killed me, that and the other thing. And your mother’s afraid, very afraid, afraid of loving anybody. To your mom, love is weakness, and she can’t afford to be weak.”
“Sir? The key to her power? Is it—?” Erg’Ran fumbled with his pipe as he spoke, didn’t look into Goodman’s face.
“Yes. I don’t know why. I never did. Once, Eran told me that in the real old times here, long before your Mir came along, when things were really bad, one of the most evil of the evil sorceresses discovered a way into the other realm.” Goodman glanced over at Garrison. “Our Earth, buddy. She came to our Earth, pal, and she took a human man back with her here and she kept him for—well, I’m not gonna say it.”
Garrison nodded his understanding. Under less grim circumstances, Garrison would have asked Goodman if Goodman thought that Judge Crater might have been held prisoner in the next room over. He let it pass.
“It’s like she runs down in her magic, ya know? Well, and she uses me—But, when I found out that she was killing people and destroying whole cities and everything, like some land of Hitler or Tojo or somebody, I told her I wouldn’t, well, that I wouldn’t. Not again. So, Eran started using—” Goodman looked at his daughter. “I don’t like talking about your mom like this, honey.”
“I know that she’s evil, father. When her magical energy declines, she comes to you and being with you increases her magical energy beyond anything otherwise possible here.” Swan’s smile, as she looked into her father’s eyes, was the sweetest thing Alan Garrison had ever seen in his life.
Goodman spoke again. “She—your mother—she used pain and all sorts of stuff to try to make me do what she wants. When she’s really desperate—I don’t think she likes reliving how we met—but she casts one of her spells and makes me think I’m back in that little town outside Paris with Dave Spaulding. Dave was my platoon sergeant. Great guy. Aww!”
“What is it, father?” Swan asked at Goodman’s sudden exclamation.
“Dave was a couple years older than me. He’d be over eighty now, if he’s alive and made it through the war!”
Swan dropped to her knees at her father’s feet, gently touching at the shackles on his wrists. There were no chains in them, but he had worn them, Garrison could tell from the marks, for a very long time.
Goodman started talking again. “Anyway, Eran makes me think I’m back there again and I’m this young guy and she’s this beautiful, exotic girl hot to climb in the sack—sorry, honey.”
“It’s all right, father.”
“And, that’s how she—well, you fellas know what I mean.” Goodman paused for a moment, then continued. “And, afterward, she has all the power she needs to do whatever she wants.”
“Is it your understanding,” Erg’Ran asked quietly, “that this ancient sorceress of whom you speak and Eran are the only two sorceresses who have used a man of your realm thusly?”
Goodman’s shoulders shrugged beneath his robe. “I think so. She never mentioned anything else.”
“Swan is the only child of your union? Correct?” Erg’Ran pressed.
“Yeah. I’m sure of that. Leastwise, I got a wonderful daughter,” Goodman said, touching his daughter’s cheek. Swan kissed his fingertips.
“Would you have any way of knowing if the ancient sorceress had issue by her union with the man of your realm?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Eran would have mentioned it, probably.”
Erg’Ran looked at Garrison, then at Swan. “Do you both understand my meaning?”
Garrison understood it, had started to understand its basic premise—and cooperate with it—as they’d started toward the keep’s upper story where Lieutenant Peter Goodman was held prisoner. When Garrison spoke, he looked at Swan. “If Erg’Ran is implying what I’m inferring, then with you being half of Earth and half of Creath, and having magical energy beyond what you’d had, if you and I were to—”
Swan blushed as she lowered her eyes.
“Hey, fella! Wait just a darn minute there!” Goodman snapped. “You can’t talk that way in front of—”
“I’m certain, Pe’Ter, that Al’An meant no disrespect at all to your daughter,” Erg’Ran declared. “He cares for her deeply. And I mean no disrespect when I say quite truthfully that they would already have been lovers in the most ardent sense of that term had it not been for the prophecy which mandated that your daughter, my niece, remain a virgin until she had found the origin of her seed. And... sir, in finding you, she has found that.”
Alan Garrison looked at Erg’Ran, wanted to say something. He didn’t know what. He could have told Peter Goodman that Creath was just like Earth; if you took advice from your brother-in-law, you could never go wrong. He could turn Goodman on to some great swamp property deals in Florida, too. At last, Garrison thought of what to say and simultaneously said it, without considering the import of his words. “Are Swan and I being used, or about to be?” It came out badly, and especially so since he’d addressed the question to no one in particular.
Swan raised her eyes and looked at him, her glance a dagger in his heart.
“Look,” Garrison said, addressing everyone in the room as he began again. “Swan and I love each other. I know that’s no different now than it was yesterday. And, tomorrow, we’ll still love each other. If we don’t get out of here quick, all the magical hailstones in Creath won’t keep Eran’s people from getting through that doorway. Your wife, Lieutenant Goodman,” Garrison announced, looking at him, “evidently came up with some spell that prevents the chemicals which comprise the priming compound in my cartridges from interacting. She had your gun, right?”
“My .45, yeah.” Goodman nodded.
“So, my guns are useless. All we’ve got between us and the bad guys in the black cowboy hats, Lieutenant, is a magical hailstorm outside the door and time that’s running out.” Garrison looked at Swan. “If I helped, do you have enough magical energy to get us out of here?”
Swan got up from where she’d knelt at her father’s feet. “I don’t know, Al’An.”
“That’s better than a no,” Garrison said, smiling at her. He turned his eyes to Peter Goodman. “Sir, are you positive that you can’t leave here?”
“Pretty positive, fella.”
“Will it hurt to try?”
“I suppose not.”
“Then, we’ll try, if you’re agreeable.”
Goodman stood up and took his daughter into his arms, but spoke to all in the room. “If what I think you folks are talking about is what I think it is, maybe my daughter has the potential to unseat Eran, to defeat Eran’s power with power of her own. And there’s a sure way to help that and help me at the same time.”
“How?” Garrison said.
“You guys try getting me out of here. If you can’t leave with me and can leave without me, I want a weapon. A dagger’ll do. Get my drift, gentlemen? This can’t go on, and even indirectly, I’m not going to help Eran to destroy my daughter. If you can’t get me out of here and out of Eran’s reach, then I’ll get myself out of Eran’s reach, permanently.”
“Father! No.” Swan gasped, her hands touching gently at Peter Goodman’s face.
“Your father has wisdom and courage,” Erg’Ran told her. “It would appear that many of those fine qualities which I and others find so evident in you, Enchantress, at last reveal their source, their origin.” Erg’Ran placed his clenched fist over his heart. “You have the courage of Mir, sir, and his wisdom as well.”
“I can’t believe this!” Swan declared. “We’re talking so easily about my father taking his own life! That’s insane!”
“Look, honey,” Goodman began, his hands gently holding Swan’s shoulders. “Sometimes, we’ve gotta face reality. If I didn’t realize how beautiful and fine you are, I’d maybe think that you were kind of figuring that you were the one getting hurt. Finally find your father, right? And you can’t spend more than a short while with him. But I realize it’s me you’re trying to protect. Gosh, honey! Being with you would be the swellest thing. No kiddin’! And, maybe your magic can get me out of here. But being trapped here to be an instrument of your mother’s evil isn’t a life. I’ve lived more since you walked through that doorway, Swan, than I have since 1944. You gotta believe me, honey. You’ve just gotta.”
Standing perfectly erect, Swan slowly rested her forehead against her father’s chest and wept.
Alan Garrison looked away, walked to the doorway, opened the door and peered into the passage. The accumulation of hailstones had reached epic proportions, several feet high at the far end of the passage, and at least a foot high in front of the doorways within which the Sword of Koth and the Handmaidens had taken refuge.
Mitan’s hands still orchestrated the flow of ice pellets from within the vortex. Bre’Gaa had his bow partially drawn and an arrow nocked. Gar’Ath, his sword in his right hand, was, at that moment, withdrawing his dagger from the body of the Sword of Koth soldier.
Garrison announced, “It’s Swan’s father, a man from my realm named Peter Goodman. We’ll all be attempting to leave using Swan’s magic. Be as ready as you can be when I give the word.”
“Aye, Champion. It’s a bit cold here, anyway.”
Garrison smiled at Gar’Ath’s flippancy. Alan Garrison had learned the lesson well that those who laughed in the face of deadly danger were either idiots or those comparative few who were brave enough to stand fast despite the fact that they realized their lives were on the line. Gar’Ath was one of the latter.
Garrison stepped back inside.
He was not shocked, but he was moved. In that very instant in which Garrison looked at Swan and her father, he saw Swan withdraw her dagger from its sheath at her belt and hand it to her father, to use if he must. This was courage and love unlike anything which Alan Garrison had ever witnessed.
“You’re the finest woman I’ve ever known,” Peter Goodman declared to his daughter. “I couldn’t be a prouder father, Swan. Let’s see what happens.”
Swan nodded, but did not speak.
Garrison walked toward her. As he passed Goodman, Goodman asked him, “Hey, buddy. You smoke?”
“Yeah. A little.”
“Got a cigarette? I haven’t had a cigarette since 1944.” Alan Garrison smiled, reached into his clothes and pulled out the pack. “Camels, huh?”
“Have the pack.”
“One’ll do me, fella. If I make it out of here, I can bum another one. If I don’t, one’ll be all I’ve got time for.” Swan looked away. But, as she did, her father’s cigarette lit. “Good trick, honey.” Alan Garrison watched Goodman as he brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled. Never had Alan Garrison witnessed someone enjoying a basic physical pleasure more deeply. Goodman held the smoke in his lungs for a very long time, it seemed, then exhaled slowly through his nostrils. “That tastes great! And I went a lot longer than a mile to get it!”
Garrison clapped Goodman on the shoulder, saying, “I like you, Lieutenant.”
“You’re not so bad yourself, son.”
Alan Garrison nodded.
Goodman inhaled again, exhaling smoke as he said, “I think we should do whatever it is we’re going to do, Swan.”
Swan reached out and took her father’s hand in her right hand, Garrison’s hand in her left. Garrison’s flesh tingled, and he felt strange. “If the touch of a single man of Earth can increase my magical energy,” Swan said, “then the touch of two men of Earth, both of whom I love, should be all the greater.”
“Erg’Ran! Get the others!”
“I am doing so already, Champion!” Erg’Ran called back.
“I am still very weak,” Swan informed them. “I looked out my father’s window. What I plan is a wind summoning spell, and that the wind can carry us down safely into the courtyard. From there, I fear, we’ll have to make other plans.”
“That should be good enough,” Garrison said lamely. He hoped it would be, anyway.
Mitan and Gar’Ath entered the chamber, followed a moment later by Bre’Gaa. “He’s a big guy!” Goodman exclaimed, looking at Bre’Gaa. “You’re Gle’Ur’whatsit, right?”
“As you say. And you are the father of the Enchantress. I am honored to meet you.”
“Pretty well-spoken guy,” Goodman said to anyone listening.
Garrison reminded himself that Peter Goodman was a product of another generation, a time in which people were labeled and categorized by their appearance even more than they were in succeeding generations. At any event, this was neither the time nor the place to discuss such philosophical and social concerns.
Swan released Garrison’s and her father’s hands. She walked to the window. “Al’An. Please hold me.”
Garrison snatched up his Golden Shield of IBF and walked over to stand behind Swan, putting his arms around her, the shield on his back.
He felt a gentle tremor through his body as Swan made the window glass disappear. Swan addressed them all. “If I am able to summon the wind, it will envelop us and lift us from here. Do not fight its force, but be one with it.” In the next instant, Garrison felt the draining sensation which he had felt before, but this time more intensely. There was a sudden coolness on his right cheek, and a freshness to the air that he had not felt before.
Looking beyond Swan into what appeared to be a post-dawn sky of cool, deep blue, Garrison witnessed clouds, stirring oddly, moving progressively more rapidly even as he watched them. Tiny wisps of Swan’s hair, which had worked their way loose from her waist-length braid, teased his face.
Goodman said, “Time to lose the cigarette.”
Erg’Ran urged, “Stay close together, my friends.” The window opening’s height suddenly concerned Garrison, and he tried gauging whether or not he’d have to duck his head. Unable to tell, and realizing that so much depended upon the height at which the wind would move them, he abandoned the thought. He’d duck if he had to.
The clouds Garrison had been watching were moving with astonishing rapidity. Garrison felt air circulating rapidly around him, around all of them as they waited, huddled near the open window. He glanced across the chamber and toward the doorway. Ice still lay everywhere beyond the doorway and along the passage, but it would not keep the Sword of Koth and the Handmaidens back much longer.
The wind whistled now, strong but somehow not violent.
Swan’s hands stroked the magical energy in the air with a gentle grace, unlike the violence there had been in her hand movements when she conducted the wind which had carried their ships away from the cyclonic wave.
Garrison felt—heard—what, under normal circumstances, he would have attributed as a vagrant wind gust. But, it was something more, something else. He felt his body and Swan’s being gently lifted from the chamber’s stone floor, the moving air surrounding him imbued with a physical substance unlike anything that he had ever experienced or imagined.
They were moving, closer to the window, rising, higher off the floor. Garrison looked at Goodman. The wind carried Swan’s father as well. Garrison almost sighed with relief.
The wind on which they rode rotated ever so slightly, and Erg’Ran was the nearest to the window as the wind lifted them through. Garrison, despite the exhaustion against which he fought, almost laughed. The skirts of Erg’Ran s monkish robe were suddenly thrown up by the wind, exposing the older man’s bare white legs beneath. By the wildest stretch of imagination, Erg’Ran’s image wasn’t even remotely similar to that of Marilyn Monroe standing over a subway air vent.
Mitan was the next through, her greatcape swirling above her, an impish smile on her wide, sensuous mouth. She held Gar’Ath’s hand, his hair caught up in the wind, masking his face for an eyeblink. But, as he turned, Garrison saw Gar’Ath’s eyes on Mitan, and they too smiled.
Bre’Gaa, the next through the window and into the open air, howled with laughter, shouting, “I am like a mainsail of the Storm Raider! The wind fills me! Ha!”
Garrison felt his own body being drawn through the window, and he made the mistake of looking down. “Holy shit!” Nothing was below him, save for the cobblestones of Barad’Il’Koth’s courtyard, and those were at least a hundred and fifty feet straight down.
Garrison’s arms were still folded around Swan; in the next eyeblink, she was through the opening, her cloak floating around her like a superhero’s cape, her braid caught in the wind as well.
Looking back toward the window, Alan Garrison saw Peter Goodman, his body about to be drawn through the opening, mere millimeters from it. There was a bright burst of yellow light, the same flashbulb effect there had been when Swan broke her mother’s spell at the doorway into the chamber. But the light did not dissipate this time, and Peter Goodman was violently hurtled back from it, broken out of the gentle grasp of the wind.
“No-o-o-o!” Swan shrieked in anguish, the wind falling away from around them.
“Your father wouldn’t want you to die!” Garrison shouted to Swan as they began to tumble downwards. Garrison still held her, their bodies turning and twisting, plummeting toward the cobblestones below.
The wind which had abandoned them rushed around them, lifted them higher and higher, higher than they had been before. Garrison saw within the chamber, through the open window, the barrier of light still there. But, beyond the light, Garrison saw Lieutenant Peter Goodman.
And, Garrison saw Moc’Dar, racing into the chamber, a wedge of Sword of Koth and Handmaidens in his wake. One of Moc’Dar’s men reached for Peter Goodman; and, there was the flash of dagger steel in Goodman’s hands, blood spray as Swan’s father severed the Sword of Koth’s carotid artery.
Lieutenant Peter Goodman stepped back, looked through the window opening and made that kind of rakish, devil-may-care salute that soldiers always saved for civilians, then blew a kiss with his left hand as his right hand drove his daughter’s dagger into his heart.
Swan saw it. Her body went rigid, then limp in Alan Garrison’s arms. Again, they began to tumble downward, to their fate all but abandoned by the capricious wind. Garrison heard Erg’Ran’s voice shouting, “Mitan! Only you can save us now!”
Swan was either dead or unconscious.
Their bodies spiraled downward. Garrison caught a glimpse of Mitan, her hands flicking outward, her body suddenly upright. Still clutching Swan against him, Garrison tumbled past Mitan, the cobblestone courtyard slamming toward them.
In an eyeblink, the motion of their bodies stopped, Garrison’s stomach ceasing its downward motion a nanosecond later, the remnants of the meal which he had consumed before leaving for Barad’Il’Koth fighting upwards into his throat.
Garrison looked at Swan, her body like a rag doll’s, but her eyelids fluttered.
Garrison breathed, swallowed.
They hung suspended in the air, the wind erratic, but supporting them. Fifty feet or so below, a handful of Horde of Koth regulars were spilling into the courtyard. Soon, there would be more.
Garrison looked toward Mitan.
Her hands moved erratically; Garrison could feel their motion in the wind which surrounded them.
Garrison looked down again. Below, another two or three Horde of Koth had entered the courtyard, and one of them at least held a bow.
A few seconds later, an arrow vectored toward them.
“Mitan! You’ve gotta get us down!” Garrison shouted.
“I don’t know how!” Mitan cried back, desperation clear in her voice.
Garrison looked down at Swan, her eyelids fluttering again. She was incredibly beautiful, beyond any hope he had ever had of a woman who would be in his arms, his. “Swan. Swan?”
Swan’s body moved almost imperceptibly against him. Tears flowed from her eyes as her lids raised. “My father, Al’An!”
“I know,” he whispered. Then Garrison looked up. There were Sword of Koth in the open window above them. It wouldn’t be long before one of them got the brilliant idea to go find his bow and arrow set and have some fun at target practice.
Another arrow whizzed up from below as Garrison looked toward the courtyard. Like the first, the wind blew it off course and it fell away.
“Swan?”
“I can’t, Al’An.”
“Your father died for you, not because of you, died so that you could live and wouldn’t have to die. You know that. Mitan’s keeping us up here, but she can’t control the wind to bring us down. You have to, or we’ll all die.”
Swan turned her face away, but nodded slowly. Her arms, which had hung limply at her sides, rose, and her hands seized the wind. “Release, Mitan!” Swan cried out.
There was a faintly perceptible drop in wind pressure, then it rose, evened out, and—slowly—they started downward.
More Horde of Koth were venturing into the courtyard. There were at least three archers. As if Swan read his mind, she said quickly, “I have very little energy remaining. The wind will repel their arrows, but once we are—”
“But once we’re on the ground it’s up to us,” Garrison finished for her. “I know.”
They were nearly to the cobblestoned surface of the courtyard, more Horde of Koth in view. The archers fired repeatedly, but the wind swept their arrows away. Garrison had an idea. “Mitan! When we land—when we are down—can you hold the windspell for a few eyeblinks, then release it?”
“She can,” Swan answered for her, Swan’s voice terribly enfeebled sounding.
“You can do it, Mitan!” Garrison called out.
“I will!” Mitan answered.
The ground rose to meet them, but the instant before their feet touched the cobblestones, Bre’Gaa twisted his body in the air and lunged, hurtling himself onto three Horde of Koth troopers, bowling them over.
Gar’Ath leaped forward, sword flashing.
Swan, her voice barely audible, whispered, “I release the wind.”
“Mitan! Now! Take it!”
The wind nearly died, then rose, Mitan controlling it again.
Alan Garrison swept Swan up into his arms, his sword held uselessly in his right hand. Erg’Ran stumbled, but only to one knee, his peg leg slipping from beneath him.
Mitan s control of the wind was, oddly, better for their purposes, the errant gusts making archery marksmanship even more difficult. As Bre’Gaa and Gar’Ath hacked their way forward, they brought down one archer, then another and another, then the last of those already into the courtyard.
Two Horde of Koth troopers charged Garrison.
The wind evaporated as Mitan shouted, “I release the wind!” In the next instant, her sword drawn, Mitan had interposed herself between Garrison and his two attackers. “Get her out of here, Champion!”
“We’ll need horses.” Garrison ran as best he could, his own strength all but gone, his legs and arms feeling simultaneously limp, yet stiff and unbending. His eyes flickered right to left as he crossed the cobbled courtyard, cursing himself for not learning the outline of Barad’Il’Koth better before coming here, searching for anything that looked like stable doors.
Near the courtyard’s farthest end his search ended.
With the last of his energy, Garrison ran toward the spot, nearly collapsing as he neared the stable doors. When he looked back, Mitan had dispatched the two Horde of Koth she’d fought for him, and Erg’Ran was half the length of the courtyard back, heading for the stables as well.
Garrison sagged to his knees, Swan still in his arms. He heard Erg’Ran’s voice shouting something, but couldn’t make it out. Blackness washed over him as he fell forward.
“I was draining him of his life, wasn’t I? Just by touching him?”
Erg’Ran looked at her and answered, “I’m afraid so, Enchantress.”
Swan wanted to reach out to Al’An, but dared not. “How soon will—”
“He should recover rapidly. He must. In eyeblinks, we must be gone.”
Swan tried to stand, to go to Erg’Ran and help him as he saddled horses. She could not stand, yet. “I have no magic to give, uncle.”
“Your magic is not the reason that we love you, Enchantress. Rest.”
She drew her sword, managed to get to her knees. If her mother’s soldiers entered the stable, she would die fighting them, fighting for her lover, her uncle, her friends—the memory of her father. “Erg’Ran?”
“Yes, Enchantress,” he huffed from behind her.
“You believe that because I am half of the other realm that, if Al’An and I—”
Her uncle mercifully interrupted her. “Speaking bluntly, Enchantress, not as your subject—which I will always be—but as your uncle, it is my belief that if you and your Champion become as one in love, because your seed is of his realm, you will possess magical power greater than your mother possesses, greater than even she can imagine possible.”
“I did not want it to be this way. I love Al’An, uncle.”
The voice Swan heard from beside her chilled her. “I know that you do. And if you’ll have me, I want you forever.” So quickly that she felt faint, Swan turned her head toward the voice. Al’An sat up from the stable floor where Erg’Ran had left him after dragging them inside. “I heard what you said, and what Erg’Ran said. I’ve wanted to be your lover since the moment I set eyes on you.” Al’An smiled that wonderful smile Swan so much loved. “It’s a rare opportunity, to save a world and have paradise in your arms while you do it.”
“Al’An,” she sighed, almost touching him.
He edged up to his knees. “Let me catch my strength a little,” Al’An implored, smiling again. Shakily, he rose to his feet. “I can help, Erg’Ran.”
“Then by all means do so, Champion.”
Swan glanced back. Four horses were already saddled. How she so longed for them to need seven mounts instead of six only. Tears filled her eyes again, but at least strength was returning to her. Through the crack between the stable doors, as she looked toward the courtyard again, she saw Mitan, Gar’Ath and Bre’Gaa, more than two score of the Horde at their heels as they ran. “Hurry!”
“This is the last of the mounts, Enchantress!” Erg’Ran advised her.
Al’An asked her, “Can you still light a fire?”
“I think I have the magical energy for that,” Swan replied.
“Good! Then once we’re mounted, I want you to light my cigarette.” She thought that this seemed an odd time to smoke. Al’An told Erg’Ran, “And I want you, as soon as you’re mounted, to get ready to shag the rest of these horses out those doors the moment I say so. Right?”
“Aye, Champion! At your command, then.”
The doors flew open, Mitan first, Bre’Gaa and Gar’Ath right behind her.
“Mount up, guys! We’re getting out of here,” Al’An ordered, climbing into the saddle.
Bre’Gaa helped Swan to her feet, lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all, placing her astride one of the six horses. The animal was dark brown with an almost black mane and tail. Swan freed her cloak from the saddle’s cantle, drawing the garment around her, cold in her weariness.
Gar’Ath held Mitan’s mount’s bridle as she stepped up into the saddle, her long legs holding fast to the animal.
“There are gates and a drawbridge,” Gar’Ath advised, his own lean frame swinging up into the saddle with perfect ease.
“Good point,” Al’An announced. “There’s likely a gatekeeper?”
“Aye, Champion, I would imagine so.”
“We’ll find a way to make him cooperate. Trust me,” Al’An told him.
Swan reined back on her mount. It was skittish, likely used to a greater weight than her own in its saddle.
Al’An had a cigarette in his mouth. Without thinking, Swan lit it.
“The rest of these horses—let’s shag ’em out of here before they get barbecued!” Al’An ordered.
The concept of barbecue took an eyeblink or so to comprehend, but Swan suddenly realized why Al’An wanted the lit cigarette. Al’An’s pockets bulged with straw from the floor, and bales of straw and hay were stacked high along the far rear wall of the stone building and on either side. The structure itself might not burn, but inside it would become a raging inferno.
Mitan swung low from her saddle, tugging the stall ropes open. Gar’Ath used the edge of his sword to sever more of the ropes, then its flat against the rumps of the animals as they started out. Erg’Ran, sword in hand, did the same, urging the animals through the open doors and into the courtyard.
There were more than a hundred horses here, and Swan, barely able to stay astride, smote herself for her weakness, for being unable to help herd them through the stable entrance.
Al’An took a long coil of rope from where it was racked on a peg protruding from a supporting column, then rode along the center of the stable, toward the far rear of the structure. Loosed horses stampeded wildly around him. Swan was barely able to restrain her own mount; its instinct was to follow the others of its kind.
Her eyes turned back to Al’An. He had reached the rear of the stable, but was barely discernible, the stable’s darkness and shadow consuming him.
Then, suddenly, there was a bright light.
A burning brand flew from Al’An’s right hand, into the center of the tallest stack of baled straw, near its base. Another flew into the stacked hay to Al’An’s right, then another into the hay at his left.
There was a long, thin arc of orange light as Al’An’s cigarette snapped from his fingers, into the straw near his horse’s feet. “Let’s get out of here!” Al’An commanded.
Horses streaked past her in a stream which seemed unending, their eyes wild with fear of the flames, nostrils flared against the already foul-smelling air. Erg’Ran, Gar’Ath and Mitan, riding in their midst, urged the creatures onward, shouting at them, waving their swords in the air.
“I will stay beside you, lady,” Bre’Gaa told her. “If you should perchance fall from your mount, be assured that I will catch you, Enchantress.”
“Noble Captain, I am in your debt,” Swan responded.
“Then, let us away, Enchantress!” Bre’Gaa slapped the flat of his sword against her horse s rump and the beast beneath her vaulted forward.
Smoke already wafted along the length of the stable, the fire seeking the greater volume of air at the open doors. Her eyes starting to tear from the smoke, Swan clutched the reins and a knot of her horse’s mane in her hand. Bending low over the animal’s neck, she struck the flat of her sword as Bre’Gaa had done, her mount picking up speed, racing into the courtyard.
Ahead of her ran almost a hundred horses, the cacophonous din of their hooves against the cobblestones pulsing inside her head, thrumming maddeningly.
Swan looked back. Al’An rode hard, his sword raised high, his ebon mount, galloping toward the doorway, its hooves chucking great clods of debris from the stable floor.
“The gates are this way!” Erg’Ran shouted, wheeling his horse, the animal rearing magnificently. Despite Erg’Ran’s peg leg and advancing age, her uncle and mentor sat a horse wonderfully and still cut a marvelous figure in the saddle.
The gates and the drawbridge—it was raised—lay to the far end of the courtyard. More than two score Horde of Koth, phalanx-like, interposed themselves between the stable and the sealed gap in the castle wall. As Al’An’s mount cleared the stable doors, Swan noticed for the first time that something was being dragged behind it, at the end of a rope.
Al’An’s horse reined back, only half-reared, hind legs deeply bent, its off-front leg fully extended, the other raised, pawing at the air. Al’An shouted to Swan, “Can you light this?” He gestured behind him with his sword.
Swan’s eyes scanned along the length of rope to its end. There was a bale of hay knotted there. Swan lit the hay, sagging a little in her saddle as she did so from the use of magical energy. Al’An saluted her with his sword, dug in his heels and the black mare under him sprang forward. The bale of hay spewed burning sparks everywhere in its wake, the already startled horses whinnying with fear and galloping madly in all directions across the courtyard. Most of the animals stormed toward the Horde of Koth’s line.
Erg’Ran and Gar’Ath were the first to come against the foemen. With Erg’Ran’s and Gar’Ath’s swords hacking and slashing from saddle height, the Horde of Koth gave way before the onslaught of tempered steel in determined hands. Their disorganized retreat quickly transformed into a startled rout. They ran in obvious panic from the steel-shod hooves of the terrified horses storming toward them.
Low over his horse’s mane, his sword held straight-armed before him like a lance, Al’An tore through the melee, toward the raised drawbridge. An officer in the Horde, brave but foolish, ran toward Al’An, intercepting him. As the officer slashed with his sword, Al’An s blade described a long, graceful arc. Steel met flesh. The Horde officer’s hand and the sword it held flew from his arm in a great spray of blood. Al’An charged onward.
Al’An reached the gate, reining back, his horse skidding and nearly falling to the cobblestone. Alan sprang from the saddle, with a single motion of his sword severing the rope with which he’d dragged the burning hay.
Arrows began to rain down from windows and niches interspersed along the height of the keep. Captain Bre’Gaa, riding beside Swan, shouted to her, “We must be gone from here! Soon, there will be no hope but to stand our ground and fight to the death!”
Far to their right, Mitan, still ahorse, returned fire with her longbow.
Swan looked from Captain Bre’Gaa to Al’An. Gar’Ath and Erg’Ran were nearing him at the raised drawbridge. Al’An’s mount began to veer off, but Gar’Ath intercepted it, catching its reins. Al’An, sword sheathed, was climbing the wall along the bar studded ladder toward the gatekeepers niche, the ladder set into the wall as the watchman’s only access to his nook. Peering down from the stall, Swan saw the man, and as he looked he brought a crossbow to bear. “He will kill Al’An!” Swan virtually screamed to Captain Bre’Gaa.
“Not this day, Enchantress!” Bre’Gaa drew his mount to an abrupt stop, nearly wrestling it into motionlessness. In an eyeblink, his bow was in his hands and he bent it to set the string. In the next eyeblink, he had an arrow nocked and fired.
Swan’s eyes tracked the arrow, unconsciously second-sighting in flight, seeing the arrow in infinite detail, the black and grey pattern of its fletching, the grain of its shaft, the keen honing of its broad steel head. Swan blinked and drew in her breath as a scream when the arrow struck the gatekeeper. The arrow penetrated through the bridge of the man’s nose and continued into the right cheek below the eye and into the mouth.
When she opened her eyes, she witnessed the gatekeeper tumbling forward from his niche, nearly striking Al’An with his body.
“That is the way the Gle’Ur’Gya are taught to shoot as children, Enchantress! Ha!”
And they were riding again, toward the drawbridge.
Gar’Ath had drawn his bow, in preparation of assisting Al’An, Swan knew, but put it away. He fell to working his body against the great iron studded bar set across the gates, its weight clearly immense.
Swan and her Gle’Ur’Gya shepherd reached the gates, Captain Bre’Gaa handing her the reins of his mount and saying, “If you would, lady.”
Captain Bre’Gaa sprang from the saddle and was beside Gar’Ath in the next eyeblink. Effortlessly, it seemed, he set his enormous hands to the bar and shouldered it upward and out of its braces. As if the bar weighed nothing at all, Captain Bre’Gaa flung the bar into the courtyard. When Swan looked back, she saw that he had not wasted his strength. The bar had struck and bowled over three Horde of Koth swordsmen who had returned to the fight.
Swan looked up, Al’An clambering from the dowel rungs and into the compartment lately left by the gatekeeper. Could Al’An discern the workings of the mechanism by means of which the drawbridge was raised and lowered?
As Captain Bre’Gaa and Gar’Ath swung open the gates, there was an earsplitting crack, and the drawbridge began to fall. Mitan rode up, as the drawbridge crashed into the open position, the moat beyond the gates spanned at last.
Gar’Ath snatched back his reins from Erg’Ran who held both his and Al’An’s mount in check, then vaulted into the saddle.
When Swan looked back into the courtyard once more, Sword of Koth and Horde of Koth were pouring from within the keep itself and the barracks structures within the walls. Many of the errant horses were being taken in charge. Small knots of men were being rallied.
Arrows struck into the gates, ricocheted harmlessly against the stone of the walls. One buried its head in Captain Bre’Gaa’s saddle. He tore it free as he remounted, then retook his reins. “We must flee, Enchantress! Ride now!”
From above them, Al’An’s hands clinging to a rope, she heard Al’An cry out, “Stay near the drawbridge! I’ll need magic once more, Swan!”
Feebly, Swan nodded to him. She knew what he had in mind.
Captain Bre’Gaa virtually led her horse, coaxing it onto the drawbridge. Mitan, Gar’Ath and Erg’Ran positioned themselves in the gate opening, steel ready.
Swan looked up. Where was Al’An? She saw him again. “Oh!” Swan exclaimed. “No!” Al’An stood on the uppermost of the rungs just outside the niche, hands firmly grasping a rope. In an eyeblink, his body flew downward through the air, and Swan almost screamed. Al’An’s feet struck the wall, but he pushed himself away. He came against the wall again, then shinnied down the rope, jumping from it while still some distance from the ground. Al’An landed in a crouch, one hand touching the flagstones. Then he was up and running in an eyeblink.
The next thing that Swan saw was something unlike anything she had ever seen before. Al’An angled his run toward the rear end of his horse and, as he neared it, he jumped, his hands to the horses rump. He sailed over his hands and into the saddle.
Al’An looked at her with a big grin. “Buckaroo Fishman, the cowboy legend, escaped Geronimo and a renegade Apache war party down Bisbee, Arizona way using that mount. I’ll tell you the story, sometime. Let’s ride!”
Onto the drawbridge, their horses’ hooves reverberated against the wooden boards. Al’An shouted to her, “When we’ve all gotten across, can you set the bridge afire?”
“I think I can.”
Al’An called out over his shoulder, “Gar’Ath! Mitan! Erg’Ran! Hurry!”
Captain Bre’Gaa reined in beside her a short distance beyond the end of the drawbridge and Swan looked back. A score of the Horde were ahorse and charging across the courtyard, Gar’Ath, Mitan and Erg’Ran turning their horses onto the drawbridge and riding, death snapping at their heels.
Hoofbeats thundered across the drawbridge, making Swan’s mount uneasy. Captain Bre’Gaa took its reins, held them fast.
Erg’Ran was first across, Mitan and Gar’Ath, side by side, just behind him.
“Not yet!” Al’An cautioned Swan.
Three Horde of Koth horsemen, swords drawn, were on the drawbridge, three more behind them, another two behind the three. “Be ready, darling. Lots of flames, huh? Ready—now!”
Feeling herself completely drain as she made the magic, Swan set the bridge afire with the very last of her energy, then collapsed, darkness engulfing her, the crackle of flames and the screams of men and animals echoing and re-echoing ceaselessly within her...
Alan Garrison didn’t know about the habits of real frontier heroes like Buckaroo Fishman, but the movie and television cowboys always found a grove of cottonwoods where they could make camp. It was invariably just outside of town, but secluded nonetheless.
If cottonwoods grew on Creath, Garrison hadn’t seen any, nor was he certain he’d know a Cottonwood tree if he tripped over one. Virtually nothing at all seemed to grow in Edge Land. But there was a high, rocky area in the foothills to the north of the plain of Barad’Il’Koth, and beyond it lay a barren valley. There were several passes immediately identifiable, ways in and out of the valley, so there was little chance they’d be boxed in by enemy troops except in significant force of numbers.
And Swan very urgently required rest and recuperation.
Their expropriated horses grazed poorly in the almost nonexistent vegetation. Mitan tried making grain appear magically, but her vortex kept collapsing before anything more than a few specks of dust materialized.
Mitan did make fire appear, and in the fire Bre’Gaa and Gar’Ath hardened the tips of wooden shafts they’d cut with Erg’Ran’s axe and whittled to shape with their daggers, these for use as throwing spears. The supply of arrows was dangerously low should there be an assault against them in any force.
Erg’Ran kept vigil beside Swan, who seemed half asleep, half in coma. Alan Garrison kept watch from a rock pinnacle at the edge of the little valley, and was pleased as he saw Mitan striding toward him. “Greetings, Champion!”
“Any change in Swan?”
“Our Enchantress still rests, and Erg’Ran is with her, tending her. Could you use some company, Champion?”
Garrison smiled and nodded. Mitan scampered up along the rocks as nimbly as would a mountain goat. Despite the triteness of the comparison, it was the first thought which crossed his mind as he observed her. On the other hand, he reflected, she was much nicer looking.
When she reached the pinnacle where Garrison was perched—it had taken him three times longer to climb it and he’d been out of breath when he reached the summit—Mitan dropped down to her knees beside him, resting her sword across her thighs. As she drew her cloak over her bare legs, she remarked, “You love her, I know.”
“Yes, and very much. More than I could ever weigh, measure or calculate, actually.”
“That’s good,” Mitan volunteered, smiling. She raised her arms, her hands beginning to tinker with her very pretty, well-past-shoulder-length dark brown hair. Garrison found it curious that, despite the considerable length of her hair, her lover’s hair was even longer. “Sorry I’m so bad at magic,” Mitan said, laughing. “I guess I should have been born male.”
“Gar’Ath would have been pretty upset about that.”
Mitan laughed again. “Yes, he would have, wouldn’t he?” Mitan cleared her throat. She was beginning to braid her hair, after a second or so, the braid started, bringing it over her left shoulder, working the interweaving of her tresses with casual deliberateness, seeming to derive a certain languorous enjoyment from the task. Her eyes focused on something—likely nothing—far away, Mitan said, “I spoke with Erg’Ran.”
“And?”
“It is within your power to restore the Enchantress, and also to enable her to defeat the Queen Sorceress.”
Garrison hunched his shoulders inside his jacket, happy for the sweater which Swan had magically knitted for him. There was a stiff, chill breeze. “I think I can speak for Swan as well as myself when I say that affairs of the heart can be choreographed to death. At least where I come from, people don’t really—” Garrison cut himself off.
“Why did you stop saying what you were saying, Champion?”
“It sounded stupid.”
“May I ask you a question, Champion?”
“Sure, Mitan.”
“Where you come from, is there virtue in letting what is good be destroyed needlessly, Champion?” Garrison just looked at her. “Well, it seems to me that since you love the Enchantress and the Enchantress loves you and it was clear to all who observed the two of you together—aboard ship and elsewhere—that you could not wait to be together, well—”
“Well?”
“The Enchantress was to find the origin of her seed, remaining a virgin until she had done so. That is the prophecy. Now, it seems to me, that it is time for the rest of the prophecy to be fulfilled.”
Garrison took a cigarette from his pack, looked away, then looked back. The pack was refilled. He tried his Zippo lighter, but it had been soaked one too many times for there to be any viable fuel remaining. Garrison looked at the cigarette and then at Mitan. “How’s about a light?”
Garrison’s cigarette lit.
“My one big magical ability! The simplest thing!”
“Just because you’re no magical whiz,” Garrison reminded her, “doesn’t mean you’re any less of a woman, Mitan; you’re manipulating me quite well, indeed.”
“Manipulating?” Mitan asked with a coy smile.
“Yes,” Garrison replied. “Manipulating. When we went to Bre’Gaa’s ship, the Storm Raider, for the first time, you didn’t have to dress as though you were going to Cinderella’s ball. You were already driving Gar’Ath crazy looking at you when you were dressed as you are now in your fantasy woman warrior outfit. So, the beautiful princess look was just enough to push him over the edge. You did him a favor, compelled him to overcome his inherent shyness so that the result which you both desired would be attained. Manipulating. Perfectly normal. Men want to be manipulated by women, at least smart men. Men are frequently more direct, whereas women will more often approach a problem from the side. Whereas brute force or intimidation might achieve a certain result, that same result or an even better one might be achieved with guile. Trust to your femininity, Mitan, regardless of your magic; your womanliness hasn’t failed you.”
Garrison stood up.
“Where are you going, Champion?”
Alan Garrison smiled down at Mitan. “Where am I going! Really! Ha!”
“Yes! Where are you going?”
Alan Garrison merely shook his head. He started the long—for him—climb down from the pinnacle; paradoxically, Garrison realized that he was ascending to a new stage in his life rather than descending at all, committing himself to the love which had forever and would forever change his life...
The courtyard was filled with men and horses. On a balcony far above in the highest tower of the keep, the Queen Sorceress stood, watching. Moc’Dar feared that, at any moment, his Mistress General might choose to transmute him once again into the cursed creature he had been before. On lower balconies, the Handmaidens, in groups of six, waited, ready to perform their Queen Sorceress’s bidding.
The odor of the incinerated remains of the drawbridge and the even worse smells from the gutted stable somehow still permeated the courtyard, despite a bitterly cold wind which swept over the walls. Had Eran summoned it? Moc’Dar shivered.
To his knowledge, the Queen Sorceress, Mistress General had used no magic yet. Even the drawbridge was being rebuilt by hand. Within a very little time, it would be completed enough that it was half its original width and his forces could storm across it in pursuit.
Moc’Dar stood in his stirrups and called out to the Sword of Koth and Horde troopers, most of them already ahorse. “There is a limited distance which the traitorous Swan and her vile accomplices could have traveled. It was clear that she had little magical energy remaining to her. We must find her before her magical energy is restored or can be enhanced. Any man who fails to give me his all will answer to me with his life. My personal future depends on the outcome of our endeavors. Should I fail, death would be welcome. Remember this as you ride the pursuit, as you hunt the quarry. And, remember, too, that we are to return the Virgin Enchantress and her Champion from the other realm to our Mistress General unless such proves impossible. The old Erg’Ran, as well. Should we be unable to bring them back alive, we shall lay their rotting corpses at the feet of the Queen Sorceress and beg her forgiveness!”
Moc’Dar looked toward the high balcony. Eran would have heard. Did she approve? Moc’Dar looked once more to his black-clad warriors, then to the drawbridge. It was completed enough, he decided. To a lieutenant at his side, he ordered, “Take six Horde of Koth, and order them to ride at full gallop by twos across the drawbridge. If it does not fail beneath their weight, we take the field in the next eyeblink.”
“Yes, Captain Moc’Dar!” The lieutenant raised his clenched fist over his chest. “You! And you and you and you! And you two, also! By twos, at full gallop, cross the drawbridge now!”
The six men, already ahorse, wheeled their mounts toward the drawbridge, the horses around them whinnying loudly, pawing the courtyard surface. Twenty-four hooves thundered across the cobblestones.
The first two were across, the second two, then the final pair of riders.
The partially completed drawbridge held.
Moc’Dar stood in his stirrups again, shouting, “Woe beyond pain, suffering greater than death to the foes of the Queen Sorceress! We ride to victory!”
Moc’Dar glanced up to the highest balcony again. Had Eran nodded her approval? Or was it merely the wind toying with her hair?
Moc’Dar wrestled his animal toward the drawbridge and dug in his spurs, crossing the courtyard onto the drawbridge, across it, onto the trail, the full might of the Sword of Koth and two companies of the Horde in his wake...
Eran stepped from the balcony, listening as the click of her boot heels replaced the hammering of hooves, letting her cloak fall from her otherwise naked body beneath.
Pe’Ter was dead of his own hand. In the eyeblink as she learned this, her heart was filled with two emotions: loss, and disgust. That she felt a genuine sense of loss at the death of the only male whom she could truly have considered a husband, the father of the only child she had ever borne, consumed her with self-loathing.
That Moc’Dar had failed to prevent Pe’Ter’s death and Swan’s escape filled her with disgust for his blithering incompetence. Moc’Dar came within an eyeblink of feeling the full force of her wrath, but she stayed her impulse.
Perhaps such newfound restraint accompanied the realization that her magical energy needed to be used very wisely now that Pe’Ter would be forever unavailable; and, that Moc’Dar’s very incompetence might serve her best purpose, affording her a new source of that special energy which she so craved.
In preparation for such contingency and in order to minimize the frivolous use of her magical energy, Eran strode across her apartment to the bell pull beside one of the tapestries and tugged it. The bell would summon those six Handmaidens of Koth who sometimes attended her personal needs.
Now, Eran would cause herself to be dressed in perfect finery, to look her most alluring, most sensual and beautiful.
There might, after all, soon be a new other realm man to plunder her willing body...
“Some little of the Enchantress’s magical energy returns to her, Champion, but so slowly. When one has drained oneself as my niece has done, it is to be expected. There are tales told from the days before the coming of Mir of sorceresses who died in battle with one another, not at the other’s hand, but by so depleting their magical energy that there was no longer the sufficient strength to live. There is magical energy within us all, you see, even those who do not know that they possess it. When this final reserve is exhausted, there can be nothing left but death, because the magical energy and the energy of life are one and the same. We are all the better for the Enchantress’s being young and strong.”
Alan Garrison sat on a rock beside Erg’Ran, a cold wind blowing from the north. “How much longer before we can travel?”
“Within a day we could risk it, Champion. What are you thinking?”
Garrison stared down at his hands. He’d bloodied them here, and would bloody them again if he lived. The battle with Swan’s mother was just beginning. “I’m thinking that since Swan’s father is dead, and her mother is someone none of us could just sit down and chat with, you’re the logical one.”
“For what, Champion?” Erg’Ran was packing the bowl of his pipe.
Garrison rubbed his hand over the stubble of his beard. “Well, I kind of feel I should, uh—I want your blessing to ask your niece to marry me. However you do things like that here.”
Erg’Ran struck flint to steel, smiling over the bowl of his pipe as he did so. “Blessing?”
“You know, that it’s okay by you.”
“And what if I said no? Would you not entreat for her hand? Would you love Swan any the less, or she love you the less?”
“That’s not it. Of course, we’d still love each other, and I’d still ask her to marry me.”
“Then,” Erg’Ran persisted, “this request which you make of me is merely formality?”
“Yes. But, still, I’d like you to give us your blessing.”
“Whatever that means to you, Champion, you have it.”
Garrison nodded. Staring down at his hands, he said, “One other thing.”
Erg’Ran looked back at him quizzically through the smoke curling up from his pipe.
“Could you stop calling me Champion and start calling me Alan? Or, even Al’An?”
Erg’Ran smiled. “I will consider that, Champion.” Garrison nodded his head, stood up, and started up into the rocks where Swan had been resting. He cleared his throat, threw his shoulders back. Alan Garrison was a little nervous. He had, after all, never proposed marriage to anyone before, nor had he ever dreamt that, assuming that the girl in question accepted, his next question would be about making love together immediately so that they could save a world. It sounded like a desperation play pickup line, really, the kind of thing a guy said after “Wanna boogie, mama?” failed miserably...
Al’An was walking up the slope toward her, and it required no magical ability to know why.
Swan had never imagined that what she knew was about to transpire would come about in such a way. She had always pictured it that she would give herself to the man of her dreams only after a wedding in some flower-dotted grove where Ka’B’Oo trees grew and beautiful white horses awaited to bear them to some happy place. And she would never be dressed as she was now, in a man’s cloak, jerkin and stockings. For her wedding, she would wear a dress of magnificent white lace; for the moment when she surrendered her most special physical intimacy, she would wear some soft, wondrous linen gown that he, in turn, would take gently from her body, replacing its texture against her with a feeling she had never felt before.
Tears filled Swan’s eyes, happiness that the moment she so longed for with Al’An was about to arrive and that she still lived to share it with him, and sadness that this terrible conflict with her mother, the Queen Sorceress, had dashed the last of her hopes.
“Swan.”
She was able to sit up a little, propping herself on one elbow. “Al’An.”
“Will you be my wife and take me as your lover?” As he spoke the words which quickened her heart, Al’An dropped to one knee before her. She put her hand in his. “I love you more than I ever thought it would be possible to love anyone. From the moment I saw you, it was—I don’t know how to say it, Swan.”
“Yes.”
“I mean, you’re so incredible. The magic and all, that’s just fine, but it’s you I love. I wouldn’t care if—”
“Yes,” Swan said again. “Yes, I will marry you, Al’An, but only if you still feel that I should after you bring the magic into me and I possess greater magic than my mother. And, yes, I will take you as my lover in this very moment, and you will be the only lover that I shall ever take. This I swear by the courage of Mir.”
Al’An took her into his arms and crushed her lips beneath his own, his mouth devouring hers, their tongues touching. Swan felt her body go rigid in that very eyeblink, then soften beyond any softness she had known.
Al’An’s hands swept over her, and his strength filled her with delicious weakness. Her head fell back and his hands loosened her hair, his lips caressing her throat, her cheek, his hands moving over her again.
Swan raised her hands to Al’An’s face, her arms embracing his head, drawing it close against her. His hands were at her waist, moving upward along her body. A chill went through her and her body was closer to his than before, molded to every contour of his body, the strength of his arms wonderfully crushing her, his mouth smothering her.
The black jerkin unlaced beneath his hands, as did the neck of her white blouse. His hands touched her where no hands but her own had touched her since infancy, his fingers exploring gently within the linen of her camisole.
In the eyeblink that his hand brushed against her left breast and her nipple hardened to his touch, Swan cried softly and touched her lips to Al’An’s cheek.
Above her waist, her clothes were all pushed away and her skin felt cold and hot simultaneously, the sleeves of her blouse binding her arms ever so slightly. Al’An leaned back, shrugging out of his jacket, his baldric and his firespitter sheaths, standing to pull the sweater she’d made for him off over his head. He tugged off the shirt beneath it—he called it a T-shirt—and his upper body was naked before her.
Swan knelt before him, touched her mouth to his abdomen and to his chest as he dropped to his knees before her. The soft hair which grew from a man’s flesh was odd feeling to her lips, wonderful feeling. Without knowing why, but wanting to, Swan kissed first one, then the other of his nipples.
Al’An took her into his arms, their flesh nearly one, her breasts on fire with desire for him. Al’An guided her onto her back and his hands were at her waist, fumbling with the stockings. Swan laughed softly, bringing her own hands to help his.
“I have to,” Al’An whispered, apologized, in desperation tearing the second skin of stockings from her own.
Al’An’s hand brushed against her hip, his fingers trailing along her thigh, down to her knee.
Swan’s breath left her so rapidly that she almost screamed. Al’An’s fingers moved slowly up the inside of her thigh, then touched where she knew that he would touch her, had wanted and feared that he would touch her. A shiver pulled her into herself, all of the breath gone from her and, in an eyeblink, her lungs filling with the chill air. Swan tossed her head back and Al’An kissed her throat, his fingers knotting in her hair. Her hands, without conscious will, tugged at the belt girding Al’An’s waist, discovered how to open it. There were these things Al’An called buttons, coin shaped and of metal, and her fingers struggled with them.
At last, she had them open.
Al’An laughed softly as she struggled to lower the garment which restricted her from touching the flesh below his waist.
Al’An let go of her, leaned back. Swan knelt at his feet and pulled first one, then the other of his boots from his feet. His stockings made her laugh because they were so short, not even to his knee.
“Pull on the pants legs,” Al’An advised her.
She did that and Al’An sprawled back, laughing. And Swan flung the garment aside, but there was still more covering him. Al’An smiled, started taking off the little pants, but Swan would not let him, put her hands on the waist of the garment and pulled it down.
Swan gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Al’An asked her.
“I had never imagined that it looked like that!”
“It doesn’t always, only on special occasions.”
“Is this a special occasion, Al’An?”
“The most special,” Al’An informed her, then pulled her body down over his.
Al’An rolled her over onto his clothes. “Ouch!”
“Sword got in the way,” he smiled, shoving his baldric aside.
“And your other sword? What will you do to me with it, Al’An?”
“Many things,” Al’An told her, looking her square in the eye.
“Then, prithee, run me through and through again, my lover,” Swan begged.
Al’An’s left hand came to her back, arched her upward as his hips slipped between her thighs. Swan screamed.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Al’An whispered, the fingers of his right hand caressing her breast.
Swan exhaled into his ear and Al’An shook his head and her teeth found the shell of his ear and her fingertips and then her nails gripped his flesh.
Swan screamed again.
Al’An was inside her.
A flash of thought, of a flower-dotted grove where Ka’B’Oo trees grew and beautiful white horses awaited to bear her and Al’An to some happy place. And Swan opened her eyes and the flowers and the trees and the horses were real and there. On the ground beside them lay a dress of magnificent white lace, and her arms were no longer entangled in the blouse she’d worn with her mannish jerkin and stockings, but in a gown of pale linen trimmed with fine lace and ribbons blue as the sky.
“Al’An,” Swan murmured.
The air around them was warm and full of magical energy and, flowing into her, coursing through her blood was the magical energy of the universe.
“I love you, Al’An, and I am yours throughout life and beyond death for all eternity,” Swan whispered, Swan vowed.