The Sword (40 page)

“That's sort of classified,” Kelly improvised with a quick grimace. “Even Dr. Nightfall doesn't know how it works. I suggest the rest of you take the news of this little would-be riot to the papers—but leave our names out of it, please. We're not supposed to be using this stuff for personal reasons,” she added cagily, lying for a very good cause. “I don't want to get the government pissed off at us. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have some things to discuss with my friend, here.”

Catching Hope's arm, she hustled her and Saber off among the tents at the edge of the field, seeking out her friend's jewelry-selling stall. Pulling them into the back of the tent erected behind the stall, she embraced Hope once again. Hope returned the hug with equal fervor.

“I
know
you're lying,” Kelly's friend whispered in her ear, as Saber eyed the cot and its zippered sleeping bag, the flashlight-lantern on a folding table, and the other odds and ends of Earth civilization that weren't quite like anything he had ever seen before. “But I don't mind.” She pulled back enough to eye Saber with her weighing gaze, then whispered once more in Kelly's ear, grinning lasciviously. “Just tell me there's more of them where
he
comes from!”

Kelly laughed and hugged her friend. Hope had her own oddities, but she was a good woman, and Kelly had missed her. “
Eight
of them, actually, and seven still bachelors—but you wouldn't
believe
where you'd have to go to find them.” She shook her head. “Hope, I can't stay, here. I belong with—oh! Where are my manners?” She smacked her forehead and gestured at him. “Saber, this is Hope O'Niell. Hope, this is Saber of Nightfall, my husband—yes, that's his real name, and yes, I really married him.

“Hope, here, was my first and best friend when I moved here from my old home three years ago,” Kelly added, hugging the somewhat younger woman around the shoulders.

Saber and Hope exchanged polite nods.

“I really
do
have to be going. And I don't think I'll be coming back very often. I like you, and I like most of the people in the Middle Ages Society, but I don't like living in this town, and I don't belong anymore where I used to live, back up near Seattle. So I'm staying with Saber and his brothers…do you understand what I'm saying?” Kelly asked her friend.

The other woman narrowed her eyes slightly. “You're trying to say we'll probably never see each other again.”

“Sort of,” Kelly agreed reluctantly. “Probably; it's pretty tough to come back here for a visit, from where I'm living now.”

Hope shook her head. “We'll see each other again.” When her strawberry-haired friend opened her mouth, she shook her head again, holding up her hand. “No, we will. Trust me.” She eyed Saber once more, then smiled slyly. “If he's a witch, then so am I.”

“Hope, he really
is
a mage,” Kelly returned firmly, trying to convince her friend though she knew it was fruitless.

Her friend grinned. “I
know
—get it?”

Saber frowned at her, this woman his wife was making her good-byes to. “You…are a
Seer
?”

“Not all the time, and only in occasional, irritating flashes of insight, but yes, I am. Oh, don't look so surprised!” she ordered Kelly, who was staring at her in uncertainty. “I told you when we met that I knew we'd be great friends, didn't I?”

“Well, yeah…but anybody could have guessed that,” Kelly pointed out, recovering from her shock. She shook her head after a moment, then shrugged philosophically.

It didn't surprise her, somehow, that her friend professed to have psychic powers. Then again, Kelly had just grown used to a whole world of magic, so it shouldn't surprise her that her birth-universe held a little “magic” of its own, in its own way. Morganen had implied as much, shortly after her arrival. Now, however, this world felt like the stranger one of the two to Kelly.

Reluctantly, she sighed. “We really do have to go. Morganen's waiting for us. Elsewhere.”

“So that's why I couldn't find you, then. All this time, you've been…elsewhere.” Hope eyed the man in the tent with them, then pulled her friend aside. “Do me a favor?”

“What's that?” Kelly asked, curious.

“Give me a couple of months to settle my affairs, then invite me over.
Elsewhere
,” she added pointedly with another glance at Kelly's handsome husband. When Kelly started to speak, her friend cut her off. “I don't belong in this world either, Kel. If those guys with the guns knew
I
could sometimes sense things,
my
house would be next. And they'd make abso-damned-lutely sure I was in it, too, because I actually
have
‘witch' powers.”

Kelly bit her lower lip. She couldn't speak for the others…but she knew a few things. One of them was that, while the eight men now in her life were good companions, and her husband was all she could hope a husband to be…she wanted female companionship in her life. “Okay. But only on one condition. Take a midwife course or something; buy books on childbirth, and books on other stuff. Lots of different subjects. Where we are, they don't exactly have any hospitals or libraries nearby, and I don't trust any of the brothers to ‘know nothin' about birthin' no babies!', if you know what I mean. Mages or otherwise.”

“Deal! How do I contact you?” Hope asked, clasping Kelly's hand.

“I'll have Morganen watch you once in a while. Don't worry, I've seen his scrying mirror, and it
does
blank out the improper bits—it's a long story,” Kelly added as Hope arched a brow in confusion. “I could also have him scry your kitchen, so all you'd have to do is put a note on your refrigerator saying ‘Kelly, I'm ready to go' in big letters, and we'll contact you. Or whatever else you need to say to us. If we need to get in touch with you, we'll do the same. I know there are a few things
I'd
like to have on the other side, if you don't mind doing a little shopping for me?”

Hope grinned and hugged her enthusiastically. “You won't regret this! Give me a list of anything you want me to bring over, and I'll bring it. Though if you ask for a lot, it may take me a year to get it all together.”

Kelly laughed and hugged her back. “Given the fact that everything I owned burned down in the fire, that's one heck of a shopping list, all right. We'll send you some things to sell to pay for it all, I promise. Gold or gems or something.”

“We must go now,” Saber reminded his wife. “Morganen said the way would not stay open for very long.”

Kelly nodded and released her friend. She stepped back and caught Saber's hand. “I promise, we'll see each other again, on the other side…” She broke off and grinned as it hit her, what the “other side” was made of. “On the other side of the looking-glass. Literally!”

Saber pulled his wife against him, holding her close. They would go back together, for he wasn't about to leave his wife behind. He eyed the woman in front of them. She stood about an inch shorter than his wife, with more curves—though his wife, with the benefit of plenty of regular meals, was developing some really nice ones—naturally tanned skin, and longer, dark brown hair. Clad in clothes that were almost properly styled, a two-layered skirt hiked up slightly on one side and a ribbon-trimmed blouse that slipped off one shoulder at the neckline, she was attractive in her own way.

Of course, she wasn't as beautiful as his Kelly, but for other men…a thought made his mouth curve up in humor. “I did hear what you said to my wife, and I think it would be a
good
thing for you to come and join us. There are seven more verses to fulfill after all, in our Song of Destiny. You just might be one of them.”

“And I think it's about time to leave here, before we spend all day trying to explain
that
,” Kelly asserted. “Morganen!” she called out, looking up at Saber with a smile. “Take us home!”

The world swayed and rippled around them. Out of the tent and back into a workroom a whole universe away. As soon as her balance steadied, Kelly turned around, looking at the mirror. Hope stepped into the view, first a blot of darkness, then her gypsy-clad body. She peered around the tent, waved her arms through the air…then smiled and shook her head. Straining, Kelly could just make out her words.

“
What an adventure she must be having, in the other world!
”

“I'll close the link in a few moments.”

Kelly looked over at the youngest of the brothers. He looked tired, but his gaze was on the woman in the view. Since she couldn't read Morganen's expression, which was normally quite amiable and open, Kelly censored most of the thought that flashed through her mind. Most of it; she let only a roundabout trickle come out. “I, um, invited her to come across and live with us, when she gets all her affairs in order. Which will probably be in less than a year—Saber said it was okay, in case you were wondering.”

Morganen grinned at her. “So quick to pin the blame elsewhere, Sister? How many times do I have to
tell
all of you? I
like
women! Go on, get out of here. Saber, have you told Rydan, yet?”

“No—I got distracted,” Saber admitted with a glance at his wife. He tightened his grip on her hand. “We will do that now. Thank you, Brother.”

“Just don't ever hit me again.” His smile fading, Morganen watched them leave, then glanced toward the mirror again. He had left the link active, in case anything else might be needed to deal with the foreigners, but it didn't look like it was needed.

The woman in the view was frowning softly, touching her fingers to the air—to the exact plane where the Gate intersected her world. There was no way for her to come across, not from her almost magicless side, but she evidently still felt its location. That startled Morganen.

As he watched, she caressed her tanned fingers through that plane with a little smile. She had a gamine face, warm with a generous mouth and laughing brown eyes, lighter in hue compared to the dark lashes fringing them. If she could find the intersection zone in that realm of so very little magic…if she was sensitive to things, like a Seer…she
was
powerful. As Morganen studied her, she spread her hand flat just in front of the mirror's point of view, perhaps in a good-bye gesture, perhaps for one last touch of something truly magical in her life.

Of pure instinct, of unconscious will alone, his own body moved forward. His hand came up, spread flat…and passed into the mirror.

On the other side, from her perspective, a hand came out of nowhere. It was strong, supple, and almost as stoutly muscled as the other man's hand had been. Palm met palm, fingers touched fingers, and she
felt
the warmth and strength that was that masculine hand. A warm that zinged through her whole body instantly.

Gasping, Hope snatched her hand back. The hand pulled back before her heart finished pounding hard, just as she started to re-extend her own hand to touch it again. Lowering her fingers, she eyed the air in front of her for a long moment in wide-eyed thought. Then smiled just a little, narrowing her brown eyes speculatively before silently reminding herself to return to her business.

There were many things that needed to be done before she could go “Elsewhere,” too—
her
current home and belongings were still perfectly intact and needed to be taken care of somehow, after all. Yes, it would probably take Hope O'Niell up to a year to disentangle herself from this realm, and it was time for her to get started.

On his side of the mirror, Morganen pulled his hand free and touched his palm to his chest, watching her. Kelly's friend.
Hope.
He had heard the words being exchanged while his brother and sister-in-law were on the other side of the looking glass, translated through his own draught of the Ultra-Tongue spell. It would be good to have a Seer in the family.

I suppose she might do for one of my brothers…

He watched her straighten her clothes, followed her with a touch of the frame as she went back out to the front of her tent to attend to her customers. She had a natural swing to her hips that no man would ever ignore and enough soft curves to remind him his own body was filled with hard planes by contrast. Those curves were exactly what he liked to see on a woman's body. With that awareness came a single, whispered thought passing through his mind.

Or she might do very well for me. Your Destined wife's title is “Hope” after all. Why can't it also be her given name?

But there were a lot of things to do, first: a brother to heal, another brother to rescue…and six more wives to secure, before he could think about walking the eight altars with a woman of his own.

It was no use tormenting himself by watching her, by entertaining thoughts about her. It seemed destiny had blatantly named her as his hope, but he could not claim her. Not until his brothers were wed so that he could be, too, according to Prophecy. As much as Morganen wanted to continue watching her, this friend of his eldest brother's wife…he had work to do. Turning and picking up a handful of the red binding-powder that resolidified the border between their worlds, he cast it on the mirror, firming its surface. Then reluctantly murmured the words that dissolved the scrying link entirely.