Princess of the Sword

  “Miach.”

  Miach ignored the voice, then smiled at Lothar coldly before he deliberately began the spell again. Lothar’s eyes widened with what another might have called fear. If Lothar was terrified by the words, he could hear them at least another time or two. Perhaps the spell could be wrought very slowly so Lothar would have time to contemplate between each word just what he was about to lose. Miach didn’t need the added power, but he would take it just the same—

  “Miach.”

  He looked down and saw a hand on his arm. His first reaction was anger that he was being interrupted as he strove to lay out the best thing for all those around him, then he realized it was Morgan’s hand. Her nails were chipped, her hand covered with blood and dirt. She squeezed his arm.

  “Miach, not this way.” She looked up at him, her green eyes very bloodshot. “Not this way, my love.”

  The anger he felt burning furiously inside him was so strong, he had a hard time pulling back from it. He felt someone else’s hand on his other arm. He turned his scowl on that soul only to find Sosar standing there next to him.

  “Don’t turn into him to spare me,” he said seriously. “Think about that spell you’re weaving, Miach. It isn’t Lothar’s spell of Taking, it’s Gair’s spell of Diminishing. Think.”

  Miach looked back at Morgan. Her eyes were full of understanding.

  “ ’Tis tempting, isn’t it?” she murmured. “Keir said it would be. But think on the price you would pay, Miach.”

  He glanced back at Lothar. He stood there, bound completely, but there was no longer any fear in his eye. There was satisfaction there instead, as if he might actually have been happy to trade his power for Miach’s destruction.

  Miach looked back down at Morgan’s hand on his arm. He saw the faint sparkle of elvish runes about her wrist, runes that promised things he would never be able to claim if he took even a single step farther down the path he’d started.

  He looked up and stared at Lothar for another moment in silence.

  Then he took a deep breath and very deliberately stepped backward.

  “I will not become you,” he said quietly.

  “How noble of you,” Lothar said scornfully. “Noble and weak. You’ll leave the elven prince without what he treasures most because you haven’t the nerve to destroy me.”

  Miach watched the spell of Diminishing blow away on the faint breeze that came in from the ocean to his left. That breeze was full of the smell of the sea, clean and crisp. He breathed it in a time or two, then looked at Sosar.

  “I don’t think I have to kill him to have your power back.”

  “It wouldn’t matter if that were the only way,” Sosar said with a faint smile. “I don’t want it at the cost of your soul. We’ll discuss it later, when we’re slipping into our cups in front of a hot fire. Now, though, I think you have to decide what you’re going to do with him.”

  Miach looked around him. Besides Morgan and Sosar, he was being watched by his brothers Cathar, Rigaud, Nemed, and Mansourah; Morgan’s grandfather; her mercenary companions; and a complement of his own grandsires he hadn’t realized were there. Yngerame of Wychweald stood to one side with Gilraehen, Harold, and Yngerame’s son, Symon, the first king of Neroche. They were dressed in unremarkable soldier’s gear, but their swords had obviously been well used. Miach turned to Yngerame, who happened to be, as fate would have it, Lothar’s father.

  Yngerame only shook his head. “ ’Tis your choice, Mochriadhemiach,” he said. “I won’t make it for you.”

  “Shut up, Father,” Lothar snarled. “This is none of your affair. Or Symon’s. This is between me and the least of your line. And he’s a fool if he thinks his pitiful bindings will hold me.”

  Symon rested his hands on his sword. “I don’t see you moving overmuch, brother. I seem to remember you in this same position several centuries ago, only it took me and Father both to do so. You’ll notice that young Miach didn’t need any help.”

  “He’ll need help enough when I’m free and I come to kill him,” Lothar spat. “I should have done so when he was weeping in my dungeon and saved myself this trouble.”

  “I never wept,” Miach said quietly. He pushed aside the renewed desire to strip Lothar of everything he valued, then looked at his great-uncle. “Now, if you have anything to say, be about it before I put you where I won’t have to listen to you any longer.”

  Lothar looked at him, then slowly smiled. “I do have one more thing to say.” He took a deep breath, then made a strange, shrill call.

  An answering call came from the keep in the distance.

  Miach slapped a spell over Lothar’s mouth, but that horrifying cry continued in spite of it, echoing in the keep. Miach looked for his sword, but before he could ask Morgan for it, Cathar chucked another at him. He caught it without thinking.

  It blazed suddenly with bloodred magelight.

  Miach gaped at the sword in his hand. It took him a moment or two, but then he realized what had just happened.

  And judging by the gasps, so did several others.

  Nineteen

  Morgan wondered if she were seeing things.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen enough in the past handful of months to make her rub her eyes more than once to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. She’d seen knives tinged blue with magic. She’d seen swords shimmer with otherworldly light and sing songs apparently only she could hear. She’d watched duels with spells, gazed on the painful, glittering beauty of elves, and admired the twisting and turnings of the hidden palace of the dwarf king. She’d seen more Olc than she ever wanted to and watched the beauty that was Fadaire sparkle on the top of a torch in a particular tower chamber at Gobhann where magic was possible.

  She’d also seen the sword Miach was holding blaze with light as it was doing now, only she’d been holding it at the time and protecting someone she hadn’t known was the king of Neroche from finding himself impaled by a particularly gruesome monster.

  Why was that sword now glowing for Miach?

  She would have asked his brothers who had stopped gasping as if they’d been kicked in their guts and instead were gaping at him stupidly, but she was distracted by other things.

  Miach had turned away from Lothar to face their company. The sword was still in his hand, still ablaze with that unearthly dark red light. He was wearing an expression of absolute astonishment. Morgan didn’t take the time to ask him why. She was too busy watching a crown—and a rather robust one, at that—appear suddenly, shimmering in the air above him. It was a lovely thing as far as crowns went, magnificently cast and adorned with all manner of impressive gems. Considering how many crowns she’d tried to get out of wearing over the past month, she thought she might be a decent judge of their quality.

  It wasn’t a particularly solid crown, however. It seemed instead to be fashioned out of stuff that wasn’t entirely of this world.

  It was also settling itself on Miach’s head.

  A very impressive velvet robe, trimmed in ermine and embroidered with all manner of kingly insignia appeared as well, falling around Miach’s shoulders like some sort of mantle.

  She felt her mouth fall open.

  Miach’s brothers sank to their knees.

  Miach fell to his hands and knees far less gracefully, as if he’d been crushed under some impossibly heavy weight and simply didn’t have the strength to bear it.

  Morgan looked around her again and saw that every soldier who had come to witness the spectacle there had also dropped to his knees. Her grandfather was staring at Miach as if he’d never seen him before. Miach’s ancestors weren’t kneeling, but they were watching him with very grave expressions. Only Sosar was smiling from where he’d gone to lean on his father, as if he didn’t have the strength to stand through anything else on his own. He looked at her and winked.

  “Interesting,” he mouthed.

  Morgan turned back to look at Miach wearing that bloody enormous crown and that regal robe and
thought that perhaps she should bow as well, for that wasn’t the crown of a prince.

  It was the crown of a king.

  She started to kneel, but found her hand taken suddenly. Miach had reached up and was clutching her fingers so tightly in his that it hurt. He shook his head sharply.

  “Don’t,” he rasped.

  She started to protest, but she made the mistake of blinking first.

  The crown and the robe were gone. All other otherworldly manifestations were gone. It was just Miach, hunched over on the blood-soaked ground, gasping for breath and looking particularly green.

  Damn it, when were those unsettling visions going to stop?

  “Get up, you fools!” Sìle bellowed suddenly. “We’re not finished here.”

  Morgan hauled Miach to his feet and spun him around so he was standing behind her with his back to hers. She killed three lads apparently bent on doing damage to the man behind her before she took another breath. She suddenly found herself in the middle of Nerochian soldiers she hadn’t seen before, soldiers who seemed particularly concerned with keeping Miach safe.

  She couldn’t find any words to use to express her astonishment at what she’d just seen, much less anything handy to use as an intelligent question, so instead, she did what she she’d been trained to do: she fought and saved the thinking for when she had a cup of ale in her hand and a fire near her feet. There was a stricture for that, though she couldn’t bring the exact wording of it to mind at present.

  And so she fought with Miach’s back to hers, fought alongside him, found herself pulled behind him a time or two when faced with a particularly burly opponent—though she would have been the first to point out that she did that for him just as often.

  It might have been an hour, it could have been three, when the battle in the area around them was finished and their enemies slain. Lothar had been dragged over to one side and was currently under the tender care of a pair of Miach’s progenitors. Morgan supposed they would be able to keep him in line now he was not only immobilized, but mute. She turned back to look at the keep in front of her, sitting on the edge of the shore. The ocean was lovely; the keep was not.

  “Riamh?” she asked Miach, who was standing next to her.

  He nodded wearily. “It was once, I understand, quite a lovely place. It is that no longer, I fear.” He took a deep breath. “I need to go inside and find Turah. And Adhémar as well, I imagine.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “Miach, don’t. Don’t go in that dungeon. Let me go in your stead.”

  He jammed the Sword of Neroche into the ground, then took the Sword of Angesand from her and did the same with it. The magelight faded from both swords immediately. Morgan looked at them in surprise, then found herself pulled into Miach’s arms. That was handy, actually, for the sight of those swords without their light left her somewhat bereft. She put her arms around him and didn’t bother to fight her trembles. He would think they were from weariness anyway. And given that he was trembling in the same manner, perhaps it didn’t matter what weakness he might credit her with.

  “Don’t go in there,” she repeated, when she thought she could get the words out without her voice breaking. “Give me a minute to catch my breath, then I’ll go.”

  “Morgan,” Miach said quietly, “I wouldn’t let you near that place if my life hung in the balance. It has nothing to do with courage or strength or what you are able to bear. It just has to do with me, wanting to protect you from horrors you would regret having seen.”

  She lifted her head and looked at him. “And who will protect you?”

  “I’ll fall apart in your arms in some deserted corner of the palace tonight,” he said, with a very faint smile. He lifted his hand and smoothed it over her hair. “I’ve already been inside the keep, Morgan, and seen the worst it has to offer. After today, I don’t think it will trouble me.”

  “Then take someone else with you,” she insisted. “A handful of someones with very sharp swords.”

  “I will if it pleases you,” he acquiesced, “though I don’t think there’s much to worry about. Lothar’s kin behind us are happily trapped under my spell and I don’t think Lothar himself will be doing anything else untoward today. I’ll be safe enough.”

  She hesitated, then put her arms around his neck and held on to him very tightly for a moment or two. She wished with a desperation that surprised her that they were at Lismòr, lingering over wine in Nicholas’s solar; or even at Gobhann, listening to the roar of the wind and attempting to choke down very bitter ale. She wished they were anywhere but where they were, standing on accursed soil and surrounded by events she wasn’t sure she wanted to examine too closely.

  She decided then that she didn’t care for change.

  Miach held her tightly for another moment or two, then pulled away. “Wait for me?”

  She nodded. “I’ll watch over the swords.”

  “Thank you,” he said gravely. He reached out and touched her cheek, then turned and walked away toward the keep. By the time he reached the main door of the hall, he had been joined by Yngerame of Wychweald, Harold of Neroche, and his brothers Cathar, Mansourah, and Rigaud. She took up a post next to the swords and waited.

  She soon found herself accompanied in that labor by her mercenary companions and Miach’s brother, Nemed. He smiled at her and held out his hand.

  “We haven’t actually had a proper introduction yet,” he said politely. “I’m Nemed.”

  “I’m Morgan,” she said, taking his hand briefly. “Or Mhorghain, I suppose, if you’d rather. I am Miach’s . . . um—”

  “Betrothed,” Nemed supplied. “Aye, I know. I’m happy he found you when he did.”

  She blinked. “Are you? Why?”

  He started to speak, then looked briefly over his shoulder as someone called his name. “Forgive me,” he said with a faint smile. “Duty calls.”

  Morgan watched him go, then turned to Paien. “What do you suppose he meant by that?”

  “Timing is everything,” Paien said wisely.

  Morgan looked to Camid for his opinion, but he was only rubbing his long nose and looking with undisguised enthusiasm at the water to the north of the keep. Well, anything he might want to discuss would have to do with boats and since she had as little to do with boats as possible, conversing with him would be pointless. She turned to Glines. He was merely watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite identify at first. It wasn’t amusement, and it wasn’t pity. She suspected it might have been an unhappy mixture of both.

  “What?” she demanded.

  He shook his head slowly. “Not a thing, Morgan. Not a thing.”

  She nudged her other companions out of the way and moved to stand next to him. She had to take several goodly breaths before she trusted herself to look up at him. “I’m not sure I know what happened there,” she admitted. “I’m not sure I want to know what just happened there.”

  Glines looked at her gravely. “Adhémar is dead, Morgan.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I know so.”

  She closed her eyes briefly, then looked at him again. “I don’t suppose you’d know much about Nerochian succession, would you?”

  “I might.”

  “Noble blood will land you in trouble every time, Glines.”

  He laughed. “Morgan, you are hardly one to talk there, are you? But since I can see you want answers to questions you can’t bring yourself to ask, let me tell you of it.”

  “Is this going to take very long?”

  “Longer than you’d like, but you’re too restless to sit, so just be quiet and listen.” He clasped his hands behind his back and assumed the same sort of expression Miach did when he was about to relate some important bit of lore. “In the olden times, in the days of Gilraehen the Fey and his son, Harold the Bold—”

  Harold the Bold and Exhausted, she corrected silently. She would have said as much to Glines, but then he would have wanted to know how she knew and then
she would be giving him all the gossip Miach had given her and that would require ale and comfortable chairs. She had no time for that; she wanted answers to her questions. Perhaps she would give him details later, when she’d survived what she was sure were tidings she wasn’t going to be happy about.

  “The king of Neroche was, as I was saying before you dozed off there, in the olden days king and archmage both,” Glines continued. “As time went on and the line became diluted, the offices of king and archmage were separated. There have been kings throughout the years who could have borne both burdens, of course, and archmages who could have done the same, but that hasn’t happened for centuries. There was a prophecy—”

  “Oh, nay, not one of those,” she protested.

  Glines smiled. “Uisdean the Wise said: ‘The king will sit upon his throne with his sword sheathed and laid across his knees before the tide of darkness will be stemmed.’ Some have speculated that the prophecy meant the king would have to be powerful enough not to need the Sword of Neroche to win his battles. Others have thought that the king would need to give power to the Sword of Neroche, not take from it, for Neroche to prevail. In either case, the only way truly for the king to have that much power would be if he were king and archmage both. And only then would Lothar be bested.”

  “And what does that have to do with Adhémar possibly being dead?” she asked reluctantly.

  Glines looked at her pointedly. “There is no possibility of Adhémar’s being alive, Morgan.”

  “Why not?” she asked, finding that her mouth was very dry all of the sudden.

  “Because when a king or an archmage dies, his mantle falls on his successor immediately. I suppose Miach could tell you quite a few tales about unsuspecting mages—and a farmer or two—fainting suddenly only to wake and find they were the next archmage of the realm.” Glines smiled gently. “Adhémar’s mantle fell on Miach, Morgan, but I daresay you saw that.”