 
### Second Slavery

**and Other Stories From the World of** Dracul Morsus

by Stephanie Barr

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2018 Stephanie Barr

Discover other titles by Stephanie Barr

Conjuring Dreams: Learning to Write by Writing

Tarot Queen

Beast Within (First of the Bete Novels)

Nine Lives (Second of the Bete Novels)

Twice the Man (Third and final Bete Novel)

Saving Tessa

Musings of a Nascent Poet

Curse of the Jenri

Legacy

Ideal Insurgent

The Taming of Dracul Morsus

Pussycats Galore

Catalyst

The Library at Castle Herriot

Dedicated to Stephanie, Roxy and Alex, always.

To Chuck, Lee, Mirren and many other beta readers, proof that good beta readers are worth their weight in gold but I'm too scatterbrained to keep track of who read each story.

"Second Slavery" was first published in the 2017 charity anthology, Iron Doves.

Cover Art by Stephanie Barr

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Puppy Love

Higher Calling

Second Slavery

Displaced

About the Author

Preview of The Taming of Dracul Morsus

**Puppy Love**

"So, _this_ is where you've been, Xylyx," Fylyx said from the doorway to the room that held the well of souls. He stamped his feet to rid himself of caked filth on his clawed feet. "You were supposed to be helping me muck out the ogre's pens. Damn it, man, _your_ error is why we were both tasked with it. And now I found you here, playing in the master's well?"

Xylyx made a rude gesture and gave a little _baa._ "Bite me, birdboy. Flay me alive if you aren't always squawking about something. Kissing up to Mulvar's ass with your stupid beak."

"You look like a goat, but you're really a horse's ass," Fylyx retorted, smoothing down his ruffled feathers and eyeing Xylyx shrewdly with his hawk eyes. "We haven't even finished the punishment for your last prank and here you are, dipping into his well as if he doesn't know every time you use his name. You won't rope me into this one. You can do the next nightmare task alone."

"Chicken-heart!"

Fylyx dropped his spear and punched Xylyx sufficiently hard to smack him into the wall behind him.

Xylyx rose, his head askew, and carefully thumped it on the wall again to knock it back into joint. "Fylyx, you bastard, that's the third time you've broken my neck this year."

"And still you do not learn," Fylyx retorted, snatching up his spear. He strode for the door, before pausing to say, "Remember last time you messed with the well, you pulled out Xenet? How many months was it before you unpetrified? And Xenet caught the master, too, in her gaze. It took him more than a month to move at all. And I was the one flayed alive for that."

"She's beautiful, you know," Xylyx said, distracted.

"Well, I'm not going to find out myself if I can help it. Fortunately, she's a very reasonable individual, as gorgons go, and didn't mind providing another deterrent for anyone seeking the master—though why they'd want to... But the bottom line is the master was pissed, and _I_ was punished for your mischief."

"He did drop me in the river of death, but it didn't really bother me until the paralysis wore off."

"Well, you're lucky you haven't done any harm this time. Come away before it happens again."

Xylyx rolled his eyes. "Fine!" He began retrieving the line that fell into the nasty maw of the well. The room was littered with pools of blood and the corpses of misshapen beasties, bones and smears of gore. And the smell! Fylyx might be a demon but it was always too macabre for his tastes, some place out of a nightmare, which, when one lives in Netherworld, is a high bar.

"Hurry up," Fylyx said. "This place gives me the creeps."

"Some all-powerful demon you are," Xylyx scoffed. "Gimme a hand with this line, then."

"Well, why is it taking you so long?" Fylyx said, setting down his spear and yanking on the line behind Xylyx. "You'll be all day about it—what's this?" Fylyx was an efficient individual and had drastically increased the speed at which the line was being pulled, but it came to an abrupt halt. He tugged again a little harder and was rewarded with a yelp but no more line. "Xylyx, I think it's caught on something."

Xylyx stuck his head over the side of the well, then leaned so deeply in he might have tumbled in if Fylyx hadn't caught his cloven feet. "Damn your eyes, Xylyx," Fylyx gasped, pulling back on his suddenly far-heavier fellow demon.

Xylyx responded by gyrating wildly and bleating frantically, nearly bucking out of Fylyx' hands. Fylyx was sorely tempted to let go of his irksome cohort and walk away, but past experiences argued Mulvar would likely send Fylyx down into the hell hole to retrieve Xylyx, which did not appeal.

Instead, Fylyx braced a clawed foot against the well's edge and heaved with all his considerable strength, bringing Xylyx out of the hole with a rush as he fell backward, Xylyx in his arms.

Xylyx had what appeared to be a black dog, teeth deeply embedded on top of Xylyx' snout. The beast's other two heads, one on either side, were snarling and yipping though the heads looked more bovine than canine despite their sharp teeth. As it barked, spittle—in this case, droplets of molten rock—spewed about indiscriminately. Several drops sizzled on Xylyx' bare skin and on Fylyx, trapped beneath the pair.

Fylyx tried to push them off by getting his hands and feet under them, but the creature gnawing on Xylyx was as heavy as the rock he was spitting everywhere and Fylyx couldn't get leverage. Exasperated, Fylyx pecked the little monster on the cranium. The monster let go and began whimpering and crying with three mouths.

Xylyx shoved it off, then rolled off Fylyx. He moaned. A number of severe burns and gouges in his furry snout began to heal with little hissing sounds. "That little bastard," Xylyx complained. "Those teeth are sharp. It will take forever for my fur to grow back properly. Will you look at this?"

"Never mind your face. It's always been ugly. What are we going to do with that?" Fylyx complained, jerking his bird head at that still-crying, er, puppy.

Xylyx, who had gained his feet, crouched down next to it. "Stop crying, you silly thing. You hurt me a lot more than Fylyx hurt you."

"Just toss it back in the well," Fylyx said, regarding his broken spear with disgust. Apparently, they'd all tumbled on it and snapped the shaft. "Would you look at that? That's my favorite spear."

When Xylyx didn't answer, Fylyx glanced over to see Xylyx playing with the creature with a remnant of bloody cloth he found who-knows-where. "What are you doing?"

"Isn't it adorable?" Xylyx asked.

Fylyx studied the creature. Its body was definitely one of a muscular black dog, with a whip-like tail and powerful shoulders, probably necessary to support the three thick necks and heads. The heads were also black but cows' heads, with wide flat noses, slick with slime, vacant brown eyes, and ears that fell over like a dog's might rather than like a cow. A black tongue lolled in one of the heads not actively involved with playing with Xylyx, dribbling more of its lava spit. The other head had all the appearance of chewing cud, which was apparently also geological since it ground its sharp teeth in a noisy way as it munched.

"I hit your head too hard," Fylyx said ruefully. "Put it back before the Master finds out."

Xylyx reached for his neck. "I already put it back."

"Not your head, you clod. The hellhound!"

"Oh! I'm keeping it."

Fylyx stared at him blankly. "Do you know what the Master will do to you if you keep a hellhound?"

"No," Xylyx said with no sign of fear. "What?"

"I don't know and I don't want to know. But I doubt it will be pretty." Fylyx gathered up the bits of his shattered spear. "I wash my hands of the whole thing."

The creature, tired of the rag, seemed interested in Fylyx as he knelt on the floor and started running circles around him, barking maniacally with all three heads. Fylyx poked at him with one long splinter, but the little monster just grabbed hold with its center head and began growling deep in its throat, while its other two heads barked, tongues lolling with glee. "I suppose," Fylyx said reluctantly, after a few moments, "it has its own charm."

Xylyx looked down at him, grinning with glee.

Fylyx relented. Again. "Fine, but we can't let the Master know about it. If he does, there's no telling what will happen to us. Do you know how to raise a hellhound?"

"No," Xylyx responded. "How?"

_Why? Why?_ Why _did he always get caught up in Xylyx' mischief?_ Fylyx thought. He knew better. He wasn't even fond of Xylyx. Fylyx glanced at Xylyx, currently underneath the dog that was literally licking his face off with its lava spit and raspy tongue, while Xylyx laughed and screamed at the same time. Demons heal quickly but it still hurts.

Fylyx guessed that Xylyx had his own charm, too.

***

"FYLYX!"

Fylyx jerked and called a subordinate to coordinate the disposal of the latest batch of the dead. Spear in hand, he trotted, double-time, to the throne room.

But it was empty.

"FYLYX!"

Fylyx ran full-tilt toward Mulvar's chambers and arrived, winded, just as the short, rotund god was making his way out the door, wearing his toga and carrying what looked to be like shreds of gilded leather in his hands.

Fylyx threw himself prostrate. "You called, my lord?"

"Where in Netherworld have you been?"

"I was supervising the last group of—"

"It's a rhetorical question, you oaf. Do you know what this is?"

Fylyx lifted his head and Mulvar thrust the leather scraps beneath his beak. Fylyx' swallowed against his fear. "Is—is that a rhetorical question, too?" he asked, trying to buy some time.

Mulvar kicked him for his troubles and then grunted. Must have been painful without shoes. "These," Mulvar said through clenched teeth, "are my favorite sandals, the ones Morda gave me for my last name day."

"Did they come unassembled?" The words escaped before he had had time to reconsider, so the next kick was totally deserved.

"My wife gave me beautiful _complete_ sandals, you imbecile. What _I_ want to know is what happened to them."

"I didn't touch them, my lord."

"I _know_ that. But I want to find out what did destroy this lovely gift so I can smother it with honey and bury it in an ant hill of volcano ants for the next two hundred years."

Fylyx had started shaking. "Perhaps—perhaps it was mice, my lord."

"Mice? Some sort of, what, demon mice? Have you ever seen a demon mouse, Fylyx?"

"No, my lord."

"Go see if anyone has let out an ogre. Those damn things will chew on anything. If not, find out what destroyed my shoes or _you'll_ be doing time in that ant hill."

"Yes, my lord," Fylyx said, scooting to his feet and running off, though not to check the ogres but to go and find Xylyx.

***

Xylyx and Fylyx were scrubbing the floor in the kitchen when Mulvar called again. "FYLYX! XYLYX!" Mulvar was in the room with them and the sheer volume cause Xylyx to slam his head on the table above them.

They scooted on their hands and knees until they were side by side and bent their heads to Mulvar. "Yes, my lord," they said together.

"What is this?" Mulvar fumed, holding out an empty bowl.

Fylyx had learned but Xylyx never did. "A bowl, my lord."

Mulvar smacked Xylyx hard enough that his head slammed into Fylyx'. "Hanar give me patience. Yes, but what did it contain before it was empty?"

"Food?" Xylyx asked, with predictable results. Fylyx' head was ringing by then.

"Not just any food, you lackwit, but what had been the hearts of a hundred criminals given to me by my beloved. Except, now, there's only a smear of blood. Do you know why?"

Fylyx slammed a hand against Xylyx' mouth. "No, my lord," he said.

"Perhaps you think it's _mice_ ," Mulvar said, his voice the pinnacle of sweetness.

Fylyx swallowed, "No, my lord. We will find the culprit at once." He stole a glance at Mulvar and saw Mulvar's brow was raised skeptically, a look particularly frightening on Mulvar's round and jolly face.

"Just like you found the culprit with my sandals." Mulvar's voice dripped with sarcasm as he walked between them. "Something or someone is destroying gifts from my wife. Put an end to it, or I will dissolve you both in a vat of acid. As you know from experience, it takes years to fully reconstitute after that." He bent. "And it's incredibly painful."

There was a yip from the pantry and Fylyx did his best to cover it with a cough. "We understand, my lord. We will find them at once." He did not dare look up again nor did he stop shaking until Mulvar turned on his heel and left the room.

When he was sure Mulvar had gone, Fylyx punched Xylyx. "You fed the puppy the Master's special treat?"

"No, of course not. I was digging around for a haunch of venison and just set the bowl on the counter. Seconds later, well..." Xylyx looked at the creature Fylyx released from the pantry fondly. "Look how he's growing. A dog's got to eat."

"And who will feed the doggie while we're dissolving, I'd like to know. If Mulvar finds the dog, you'll wish you had tossed him back into the well, and so will the dog."

***

"FYLYX!"

Fylyx sighed and set aside the new spear he was working on. The puppy had chewed up the last three into charred fragments. With reluctant haste, he made his way to the throne room and would have thrown himself on the ground but just checked himself as he confronted a steaming pile of, well... That damned hellhound was not easy to housetrain. He contented himself with falling to one knee, head bent.

"Ah, Fylyx," Mulvar said in that friendly voice that boded the worst temper. "I see you've noted the new decoration some denizen of my domain left _in my throne room_ for me to discover. What would you say it was?"

"Is—is that a rhetorical question, my lord?" Fylyx asked, looking up at him

"Indulge me."

"It appears to be fecal matter, my lord."

"Yes," Mulvar said, beaming affably. "It does, doesn't it? You don't suppose one of my subordinates confused my throne room with a stable do you? Or perhaps is so lost to the notion of self-preservation that he would deliberately bait me?" Mulvar smiled, his face cherubic but for the fire in his cerulean eyes. "Or, perhaps you think it's _mice_?"

"N—No, my lord."

"Fylyx, do you know why I'm calling you and not Xylyx? Why I usually call you?"

"No, my lord," but he would have been lying if he said he hadn't wondered why more than once.

"Xylyx, for all his stupidity and laziness, has a real gift for lying. While you, dear, dedicated, efficient, capable Fylyx, suck at it heartily."

"I—I do?"

"Quite." Mulvar held his gaze. "Odd, given how little mobility your face has. You know who or what has been destroying my sandals, eating my food, and taking a dump in my throne room, don't you?"

"My lord, I protest—"

Mulvar lifted a hand for silence. "Such a dedicated servant, yet no culprit have you provided nor have you reported your lack of progress. You were just hoping I'd forget about it all, as if I would. You know and you're protecting someone or something. What is it?"

Fylyx' mind raced. "My lord—"

"You're lying," Mulvar accused before the lie had even formed in his mind. "Lying will get your punishment doubled. _What_ is it?"

Fylyx steeled himself to the coming slap when a voice broke in, the only voice—alive or dead—that could stay Mulvar's hand. "Mulvar, oh come see! It's darling!"

Mulvar was diverted and hastened to the doorway to give his wife a kiss when she entered, but was forestalled with a huge dog filling Morda's arms to overflowing and licking her face with great enthusiasm with three different tongues. Gods, Fylyx was relieved to see, were not injured at all from the dog's molten saliva.

"What is that?" Mulvar asked, in a tone more sharp than he was wont to use with her.

"It's a puppy! Isn't it adorable?" Morda said. "Can we keep it?"

Mulvar turned accusing eyes to Fylyx who lowered his own immediately. With his usual affection, he said, "Of course, my love, if it would please you. I'll set Fylyx and Xylyx to teaching it some sort of manners." He gestured at the pile of poo behind him.

"Oh, dear," she said, setting the dog down carefully. The dog made a jump for Mulvar, but he quelled it with a glare.

The creature hung all its heads and was rewarded with a pat from Mulvar. "Well, you're a handsome fellow in your own way. And we could use a guard dog. We can hardly count on Fylyx and Xylyx to keep the scaff and raff of the Netherworld out of the keep. We'll name you Cerbrix. Fylyx and his erstwhile brother in arms, I know, will ensure you behave properly or be punished in your stead. Right, Fylyx?"

Fylyx swallowed. "Yes, my lord."

***

"Well, at least we don't have to worry about the dog being discovered," Xylyx said philosophically, smeared with treacle and chained to a massive anthill. "Who would have guessed Mulvar would have adopted it?"

"If my arm were free," Fylyx said, "I'd break your neck again. This is all your fault. Again."

Xylyx screeched as he was bitten in a particularly painful location. "Oh, I don't know," he gasped. "At least we're not dissolving in acid."

Fylyx shook his head and jerked at a quick succession of several murderously painful bites. "Don't you learn anything? We haven't been set to dissolve in acid...yet."

**Higher Calling**

_To the underworld with mankind,_ Dracul Morsus thought grimly, brushing through a thigh-high field of unkempt grass. Why he ever came down to the land of men, he couldn't say.

He thought briefly of the Seeress Mala, with whom he'd spent many a satisfying but sleepless night the decade before and grinned. He supposed there was one reason. But Mala had, in the end, returned to her temple and the women who offered themselves to him since had been shallow, reluctant, or pathetic. Sex with a prostitute, however willingly she had embraced the profession, was rarely gratifying. And he would not touch an unwilling woman—though those that had left the girls as a sacrifice to Dracul or his master, the dragon, Magerus, faced Dracul's rage when he discovered them.

He was lonely, perhaps. Magerus was a marvelous teacher, but not a sociable type and he'd encouraged Dracul to wander into the lands of men from time to time to further his experience. A different sort of education, Magerus had said. But men, Dracul discovered, were petty and distrustful, demanding and dismissive, all at the same time. They scoffed at Dracul's skills on the one hand and tried to use them on the other. They reviled him for a knave and a monster, then begged him for boons.

In the end, he had searched out Mala and found her nursing a newborn babe and leading one of Hanar's temples. "I've no time for you, now, Dracul. You haven't aged a day, but I most certainly have. More, I have responsibilities that preclude my making time for you." She'd smiled at him kindly, then. "But I'm hardly the only companion in all the world of men, you know."

"I prefer women of character," he'd said stiffly.

She'd cackled. "Women of character, is it? For you to spend your time with? Your definition, where you could cavort with an unclaimed woman, doesn't exactly jibe with society's views."

"I would have wed you, but..."

"Nay, Dracul. My fate is with this temple." She looked up and her eyes unfocused as she was consumed with her Sight. "The one to tame you, young mage, has not yet been birthed." She grinned as the Sight faded. "I'll take care to pray that, when the god that forms her, makes her, she finds her way to your door. Though it might serve as a warning for what you wish for."

Dracul had paced before her as she'd placidly fed her babe. "I don't see why I can't still see you! You seem young enough to me and, though you've a baby, I see no sign of a husband."

"Nay, nor will I ever have one, as I told this child's father. I am married to the temple, the price I promised for my Sight. And cavorting with you, though my body tingles at the memory, is no way to set an example."

"So, I'm to wait for who knows how many decades until some fated woman finds me?" He'd thrown himself on a bench in disgust.

"Nay, there are other women of character about, if you will but look for them. And society is a heavy burden for many who will not conform to a man or to the serving of many men. Go and find them, only do not be surprised if they, too, must serve a higher calling than only your companionship."

"You needn't make it sound as though I'm some tyrant, demanding obedience," he'd said, his voice sulky. Dracul cringed at the memory. He was a man, young for a mage of course, at fifty or so years, but surely past the stage that he must sound like a recalcitrant schoolboy.

"Nay, but you are still a pupil to Magerus," she'd said, "to accompany you is to divorce from the world of men. Perhaps one day, you'll find your path among men and can share your fate with a woman. Perhaps not. The future is chaos in many ways for you."

"Except for this fated one or is even that in doubt?"

"The future is always in doubt," she agreed. "If you are lonely, there is an herb witch in the land of Barden who goes by the name of Corna. She is a woman of character and comely besides. Perhaps you should seek out her company."

"Perhaps, I'd do better to return to the teachings of Magerus and lock myself in his library."

Mala had smiled, unfazed with Dracul's pettiness. "Perhaps you should." She'd moved the baby from one breast to the other. "But you won't."

He _should_ have gone back after that, he thought, still nettled. But even he thought he was acting childishly and refused to leave in a pout. "Kalor, my pet, are you sure this herb witch is in this area?"

_So her spirit companion informed me,_ his phoenix familiar said. _Should I have dropped you closer?_

"No, no, I don't want to scare anyone. Go hunt and I will try to search her out, though, like as not, it's a waste of time. How much character can an herb witch have?"

_Enough to gain the trust of a spirit companion,_ Kalor said dryly.

"Well, there's that. Go and hunt." He was not getting enough exercise, most likely, which is why he felt hot and sweaty and tired. Too many hours in the library. He should get out more.

He slipped through a gap in an overgrown fence and found himself in a graveyard. He noted the scent of quite a few herbs out of the ordinary growing amongst the headstones. Perhaps he was closer than he'd thought.

"Who are you?" a voice, dulcet and decidedly female, demanded. He turned toward the other end of the small enclosure and spotted a woman, short, swathed in an array of mismatched clothing, but with a striking face and distrustful eyes. Her brown hair was piled high on her head in a messy bun, and the apron she wore was stuffed with various plants and herbs. But, in her hand, was a sharp knife, probably from her kitchen but brandished at Dracul.

Dracul spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I mean you no harm."

She snorted. "I've heard that afore. More than once."

"Not from me."

She raised her eyebrows but lowered the weapon. "Why's your skin all dark?" she asked suspiciously, clearly surprised at the color of his skin—a reaction he's seen many times before. He was wearing a sleeveless robe—since the day was hot—and his hood was down.

"I've no notion. Why are you so pale?"

She snorted again, but this time it was clearly laughter. "Fair answer to a difficult question. Why are you in my garden?"

"You have a graveyard for a garden?" he said.

"Why not? Most won't live beside such a place for fear and that keeps many from bothering me." She gestured to him with the knife still in her hand. "Doesn't seem to scare you, though. Why are you here?"

"I'm looking for Corna, the herb-witch."

The knife came back up. "Who are you and what do you want of her?"

Dracul bowed his head slightly. "I am Dracul Morsus, the mage, and I was sent here by a priestess of Hanar to find Corna the herb witch," he said, wondering how she would react to that.

"Priestess? Do you mean Mala?" The knife dropped again and found its way to a sheath tucked into her apron. "Does she need a medicine or some such from me?"

"She did not say. She's a distance away, over the mountains, so I'm surprised you knew her," Dracul said. It was easy enough for him to travel, clutched in his familiar's talons. But a journey on foot would take weeks if not months. The girl was barely out of her teens.

The girl—Corna he decided—raised a diffident shoulder. "She saved me, three years ago. It's not likely I would forget. Come along, since she sent you." She turned and made for a stone cottage just past another dilapidated fence.

"Are you sure?" he asked, surprised at the change in her attitude.

"I never really thought you were dangerous or Alona would have told me and I would have stabbed you in the back rather than hail you," she said in a matter-of-fact way. "But Mala would not have sent you if she thought you would do me harm."

Dracul picked his way behind her, warning brambles that might have blocked his path to leave his robe untouched. He hated mending.

She'd left the door open, the door split top and bottom, and moved at once through a veritable sea of boxes and bottles, jars and bags, trays and shelves, all crowded with more bottles and jars, canisters, and an array of objects from the dried foot of a very large bird to a roll of what looked to be a reptilian tongue. And, of course, plants, dried and fresh, hanging and bundled everywhere. Near the back was a small bed under the window and, to the side, a couple of stools, a chair crowded with objects, and a tiny round table.

"Speak, Dracul Morsus, since you've come all this way," she said, taking one of the rickety stools. "What is it you want from me?"

Well, and what did he want from her? She was certainly a woman of spirit and power. He could feel that. Her eyes were not unintelligent and she was pleasant to look at. Sex would be nice. Someone to talk to would be nearly as well. If he could convince her to do both, even better for all concerned.

But how to explain it without bringing forth the knife again.

"I've long been a friend of Priestess Mala," he said by way of beginning. Since Mala held such sway with the girl, no sense not using it. "When I went to visit, she explained her duties made my presence a distraction, now that she is the head of her temple and a new mother besides."

"Mother? Why she must be forty if she's a day?"

Dracul Morsus thought back to his acquaintance with her going back nearly a decade and a half. "More than likely, but the Earth Mother can be generous with her gifts to her chosen children."

"Still," Corna said, grinning, "given your reputation as a dastard and a demon, I can see why she might not want you to hang around the temple."

"You've heard of that, have you?" He wished his bitterness didn't come through so clearly in his voice.

She gestured to the mountain visible in the distance. "Very few who live in the shadow of Mount Morsus are unaware of your reputation or of your brutal protector, the dragon."

"He is _not_ brutal," Dracul said, his voice biting. He took a second to grapple with his temper. "And he is not my protector, not for several decades now."

Corna nodded sagely. "So, if you were in trouble, he would leave you to perish?"

Dracul felt startled. "Well, no, I'm sure he'd... Just as I'd, well, not that I'd likely ever..." He petered off as she began to giggle. "You're laughing at me!" he accused.

"You don't look a day older than I and there you go getting all pompous and I couldn't help myself," she said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.

"I _am_ older than you," he said.

"Oh, I know. I've heard stories of you since I was a child." She waved it away. "In years, maybe, but you still act like a boy in other ways." She shook her head, sending the strands of hair flying. "Besides, you're proud of the wrong things. Nothing wrong with being capable, as I know you are, or self-sufficient. Nothing wrong either with having friends who have your back when you need it. Many don't, you know, and having the sort of character that calls out powerful allies is as much or more to be proud of than any skill you possess. Many people have allies, but only a few have the kind of friends who will face the fire with you."

"Ah," he said, mulling her words.

"It doesn't make you less of a man to stand in someone's defense or to use the support of someone else. Everyone needs help once in a while."

"I don't," he said, but he didn't sound convincing even to his own ears. "Do you have friends, my girl?"

"Some. Can always use more. So, Great Mage Who Needs No One, why are you here?"

Dracul searched in his mind for some sort of explanation that would make sense without inducing her to fetch her knife out again. Before he could put the words together in his mind, he said, "I was lonely."

Her mouth quirked. "Not what I expected. And you're here because?"

"Mala suggested that you might be an alternate companion as she is unavailable."

Her smile faded. "I don't need a man."

"How about a friend?" he said, sensing far more tension than she showed. "Didn't you say you could always use more?"

"Not one that seeks to flip my skirt over my head at the first opportunity."

"I have no interest in sex with the reluctant," Dracul said, careful not to sound belligerent. "You may lift your skirt if you chose, but it is not required. Someone to talk to is boon enough."

"Is it?" she asked, the tension receding and leaving her...fragile. Wounds across her psyche, as clear as if carved by a sword, showed themselves in her shaking voice, her haunted eyes, her fidgeting hands. She started and looked around. "Where's Alona? Oh, yes, she went to play with your phoenix." Color stole back into her cheeks. "Alona is such a flirt," she said in much her previous tone.

"Alona?"

"My spirit companion. One of those friends...wait, is that a horse?"

Dracul listened and thought it did sound like a galloping horse and quite close. Before he could say so, the horse halted near at hand. There was the jingle of a bridle, the stomp of a foot coming heavily down to the ground, the tinkle of spurs.

Corna's knife was in her hand again and she ran for the door to brace it with a diagonal crosspiece when someone smashed the door open. A stocky man, lightly armored and bristling with weapons, stomped in. He wore a short sword at his side and the sigil of the king's guard—from a different kingdom—on his shoulder. He pulled his blade as he recognized her.

"Noral!" Corna said, in shocked accents, but holding her knife up.

"Finally! I found you!" he snarled in return, regarding her knife—not entirely unreasonably—with scorn. "You can't get away from me. Didn't I tell you? Didn't you learn nothin'?"

"I'm free," she said, eyes defiant but hand shaking. "I'll never be in your power again."

"I paid a bride price for you! You belong to me."

"I will _not_ go back."

The man, Noral, took a menacing step forward and then paused, catching sight of Dracul. "Who are you?" His face reddened and he pulled his sword. "You slut!"

Dracul saw he was going to strike her with the flat of his heavy blade but reacted anyway, calling forth a shard of ice to thrust itself from the ground between Corna and her assailant. The blade bounced off the ice and he stepped back. "Spell-slinger," Noral said, the word an epithet.

"I am Dracul Morsus, the mage." Might as well use his reputation for good. Few soldiers indeed would be willing to grapple with someone reviled so wildly for his power.

"Demon," Noral said and spat. He turned his eyes, alive with revulsion, back to Corna. "So you have sold the body that belongs to me to a demon. I will not rest until you are dead until I have cleansed you with fire." He would have leapt forward, perhaps to swing his sword in earnest but his feet were frozen to the floor.

"I will not let you touch her," Dracul said.

"Then you will join her in the grave. And do not think a few shards of ice can stop me." He stabbed into the ice around his feet. Then, without another word, he spun on his heel and strode from the cottage, swinging up into the saddle in a single movement.

The silence after his horse's hoof beats faded was profound.

"He found me," she said. She spoke without inflections as if asleep though she still stood, her knife now dangling at her side.

She had clearly not expected he would. The sigil on his shoulder was from Mala's country, if Dracul remembered correctly. Clutched in Kalor's talons, Dracul could fly from Mala's temple to Corna's cottage in a few hours. On foot or even on horseback, it was a journey of months depending on the season. Dracul doubted love prompted him to find her—more like pride and possession, but it was powerful enough that he had made a concerted effort.

"Yes, he did," Dracul said.

And, as if his voice had revived her, she shook her head, sheathed her knife. "I have to go." She grabbed a large bag filled with bandages and dumped it, grabbing odd bits of clothing and bottles as she wandered through the chaos of her cottage.

"And he will find you again. That badge is not from Barden where you live. If he came so far, will he not chase you again?"

"I can't stay. I won't go back! I can't go back!"

"I will protect you."

"How much can one man protect me? He's going for the local constables. He'll be back with more men. Even if you defeat him this time, he'll come again and again. How long will you be here? A day? A month?"

Dracul could not stay indefinitely. She was right there. "Come with me! I doubt he'll dare Mount Morsus and its guardians."

She stopped, her eyes wide. "Come with you? He—he'd never find me..." Her eyes were dark as she considered, as she took the impetuous offer to heart. She turned, relief on her face, and then paused. "But, I'll be trapped. I'll never be able to leave and I can't help anyone."

"You'll be safe."

"I want more than that," she said, more strongly now. "I want to be able to help people, provide safe haven as Mala did for me, heal people who need it."

He shook his head. "For your calling to be effective, people must know of you. There is no way to hide yourself from someone who pursues you if you are to share your gifts with others. Even if I dropped you even further away, you'd never know when he'd find you again."

"Even so, I _must_ do so. I swore I would, swore I would help others much as Mala helped me when I needed it. She saved me. I dishonor the gift she gave me if I do not share it with others who might need me."

"You won't help them much if you're dead."

"We all must die. And, thanks to your presence, at least that is now all I face," she seemed resigned to the possibility and was returning her clothes to where they'd been before. "I wonder at you. Why would you offer indefinite sanctuary in your home? You don't even know me."

"Perhaps my reason is the same as yours. When I might have died, Magerus saved me, took me under his wing, literally and figuratively. How could I not offer the same to you?"

"You're a strange man, but you'd best go if you don't want to share my fate."

"I will not leave you alone to be taken. I cannot promise I can repulse them alone, but I will certainly try. Today, at least, you will have a friend at your back."

_Kalor, I may need you,_ he thought to his phoenix.

_Must it be this moment?_ Kalor responded in a mental tone that argued he was indulging in carnal activities of his own. Well, Dracul could certain sympathize.

_No. But do come when you can._ Surely, he had sufficient power to hold off a few bumpkins by himself without requiring Kalor's power.

As he'd conversed with his familiar, Corna had barred the door, closed the shutters and barred them as well.

"What are you doing?" he asked as she began to work amongst her bottles and jars.

"A little bit of chemical defense," she said. "No sense letting them come in unscathed."

He grinned down into her serious face. "I like the way you think." He moved to a corner and summoned all the spiders in the vicinity. Corna gasped at the number, but Dracul set them spinning across the doorway, with the most venomous to ride along with anyone who broke through it and give them a taste of their bite.

When they were busy weaving, he searched out any other nearby beasts and began requesting their help, then talked the ivy that climbed over her cottage to help if anyone came within their reach.

When he had run out of contingency protection, he uncovered a chair by the shuttered window, sat down, and watched Corna's gyrations with admiration. She gave him a penetrating glance. "Quite the coincidence you came calling today."

He sighed with a bit of exasperation. "No coincidence at all if I recall Mala is a seeress." He didn't care to be manipulated, but he found himself intrigued by Corna, as Mala had known he would be, and glad he could be of some service to her. He hated when women were mistreated, though, he had to admit, not enough to seek it out and put a stop to it. He wasn't proud of that admission, but at least he could help _this_ woman.

As he leaned back at his ease, he wasn't worried. If they had enough men to pose a serious threat, he'd hear their hoof beats long before they arrived and would call in Kalor, whatever he was busy with.

It did not occur to him that they might muffle the horses' hooves or leave the horses at a distance and come up to the cottage on foot, at least not until some heavy object crashed through the shutter and slammed into his cranium. He had barely time to register his chagrin before he blacked out.

***

Master! Master! Wake up!

The strident voice was amazingly annoying and Dracul was just cognizant enough to realize that with consciousness would come considerable pain. He sank back into his blissful darkness.

Rouse, you careless fool, and reassure your friend!

Dracul sat bolt upright, a hand to his forehead to keep it from exploding. He did not open his eyes—he was in plenty of pain already—but he breathed, "Magerus!"

_Master, you're alive!_ Kalor exulted in a loud mental voice. _I was so worried when I couldn't reach you._

_I am, unfortunately,_ Dracul thought back, _but not without discomfort. If you could moderate your mental tone a bit..._

_Better to show him your gratitude,_ his dragon mentor said in a mental voice as large as his physical size. _When you had carelessly allowed yourself to be incapacitated and left this young woman unprotected, Kalor came to your rescue and also requested my help._

I'm sorry he disturbed you, Master.

_Don't be stupid,_ Margerus retorted. _If you needed help,_ you _should have contacted me. You are, after all, my adopted son._

Dracul considered mentioning that he had been unconscious. And that he might not have needed help if he had been awake. And that he had had no idea Magerus would come to his aid or that he was the great black dragon's adopted son. Actually, with his head pounding and his stomach roiling, it was a bit much to take in. _Thank you, Master_. Hopefully, that would cover it.

"Are you alright?" Corna asked softly, placing a sweet-smelling wet cloth to his head.

"I don't believe I am, but I am still breathing."

"You are lucky Kalor was already on his way back. I tried to hold them back and protect you, but there were more than a dozen."

"I'm sorry I was so maladroit," he said, taking a chance and opening his eyes. He closed them almost at once again and let her help him back to his back. "So very sorry."

"'Tis a fortunate thing that he missed your head with the axe. It was just a piece of wood from the shutter that hit you," she told him.

"Seemed sufficient at the time," he said.

"Do you want to vomit?"

He swallowed against his recalcitrant stomach. "Yes, and yet most fervently, no. I do not think retching will improve the state of my head." He pulled the cloth down over his eyes and opened them, then peeled back a corner to regard her. "Are you unharmed?"

"Maybe a couple of bruises. I fought with Noral who seemed to want to take me personally so the others hung back." She smiled, "Alona was distracting him and he stepped into several of my traps. Three of the others were taken down with spiders and two with snakes, including the man who knocked you out. They might have survived, but the dragon pulled them from the cottage with a long talon and, er, finished them."

"Good," Dracul said.

_Humans make vile snacks,_ Magerus said. _I shall likely get indigestion._

"What of Noral?"

"He—he was heavier and stronger than I was and, when he spotted you slumped in the corner, he seemed to be obsessed with killing you. He threw me aside like I was nothing." As he watched, she stiffened. "But I _wasn't_ nothing and he wasn't going to kill a friend of mine while I watched."

She sighed and looked at Dracul ruefully. "I'm not saying stabbing him in the back was the honorable thing to do, but it was necessary. And it worked. And—and he can't hurt me again."

"No. Good for you. Good for _you_. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You fought for yourself and you fought for me. All honor to you."

She colored. "The dragon spoke to the few survivors. Said I was under his protection and that, if they bothered me again, he would not stop with a—a..."

_A handful of foul-tasting miscreants. Next time, I will take the whole town,_ Magerus supplied mentally. He added, with evident satisfaction, _They left with alacrity. I doubt I'll have to eat any more of them._ _My dear child,.._

"Corna," Dracul said.

Yes, indeed, Corna, that admonition will likely not last forever. The memory of men is as volatile as their tempers, but it should give you a decade of peace now that you abuser has been dispatched.

"Thank you," Corna said with obvious gratitude.

A trifle only. If you'll excuse me, I think I'll raid a nearby farm for something to take this taste away. I trust, Dracul, you will return in time?

"When I feel a bit better if you don't mind, Master."

As you will.

There was a great swoosh as the dragon leapt into the sky outside, sending enough air through the broken window to throw quite a bit of Corna's detritus about. "A real dragon," Corna said, awed. "I thought you said he would not come to save you."

"I was surprised myself. I'm quite embarrassed that I am the one who needed saving. You have my heartfelt apologies."

"Didn't you say there was no shame in needing help?"

"No, I believe you said that," he said, with a painful chuckle, "but it was truth nonetheless." He found himself smiling. "You really are amazing. Are you sure you don't want to join me in the mountain?"

"I'm needed here," she said, shaking her head. She sat beside his bed and took his hand, kissing it. "But, if you'd care to come down, now and again, in a friendly manner, I'm sure I can make you feel welcome."

"That sounds delightful."

**Second Slavery**

When the light of day finally found her, Xana woke, stiff and cold, with the smell of freshly turned earth in her nostrils. The clean scent of earth—not mildew and sweat—made her startle awake as she realized she wasn't in the room they confined her to. She jerked up, wary of pursuit, and bit down on a gasp as her caned back protested. Hopefully, they couldn't hear her.

She'd slept in the lee of a large stone that had shielded her from the sun all morning, and only now saw it was a grave marker. When she'd crawled through that fence last night and had come to rest, she'd had no idea she'd found a graveyard.

She bowed her head in respect to the fallen—whose name she could not read—but made no sign against evil nor even felt her heart quicken in fear. She'd lived with enough real terrors that superstition was no more than a possible means to keep her pursuers at bay, though she had never expected a full morning's respite. They couldn't be far behind her, now. She'd best make her escape while she could.

She shifted her stiff shoulders. Sleeping on the ground never got more comfortable and her bed had been rocky indeed. Her back protested again, the welts still fresh on her skin. The manacles on her arms and one leg remained, the skin raw beneath. Her best attempts at picking them had yielded nothing, but a farm implement had helped her pry open a link of chain so she could escape.

But to where? And where would she go now? It would do her no good if she ran in the direction of those that pursued her.

"I figured you were tired," a voice said. Xana nearly leaped to run, but the voice was old and female. And kind. She'd heard old and female voices before, but they had been every bit as cruel as the men's. She'd never heard one that was kind.

"Who are you?" Xana's eyes latched on to an old woman perched on a low stone. She wore a mishmash of faded clothing but looked so natural that Xana hadn't noticed her before.

Between the shawl, the apron, the dress, and the coat she wore over it, the woman could be of nearly any girth though she was not tall. Her face was ancient, but she still had her teeth and a smile that showed them off. Her hair, silver streaked with a darker gray, was pulled to the top of her head in a messy bun that left much of it free to move when she moved.

The woman heaved to her feet with a grunt of discomfort. "Normally," she said in that kind voice that disarmed Xana against her will. "The trespasser would be the one explaining herself." The old black eyes, lost in a seamed landscape of a face, regarded Xana's manacles with sympathy. "But I'm guessing you might not be ready for that. I'm Corna the Witch."

Somehow, Corna had moved right next to Xana and brushed her cheek with a gnarled digit. "I will do you no harm, child."

And Xana believed her. Why, was a mystery.

Corna took her hand, the one without the broken finger as if it were perfectly reasonable, and led her through shrubs and clumps of plants. They were scattered as haphazardly as the many stone and wooden markers. "Where am I?" Xana asked, trying to summon distrust, then braced for the blow that usually followed her queries. The inevitable punishment had not, to date, curbed her curiosity, however.

Corna cackled and Xana was charmed. "'Tis my backyard, little one."

"What does a witch need with a graveyard?" Xana didn't recognize many of the plants, some pungent enough to sting her nostrils.

The old woman did not turn around. "Some plants are more powerful if they grow in a graveyard."

Xana gave the woman's hand a little tug. "Really?"

The old woman paused just long enough to turn and give her a wink. "As far as you know."

A breeze blew past that raised the hairs on Xana's neck. She started, then flinched as her wounded back brushed against her blood-stiffened shift.

Corna turned back at once, her face concerned. But she stared past Xana to where the touch of breeze seemed to play with a green plant that smelled strongly of mint. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Corna demanded with some disgust.

Xana felt bewildered. Tell her what?

But the old woman went on as if Xana had answered. "That's no excuse. Look at her wrists. She'd never have told me. And Kalor has been here and back again. You had plenty of time to return."

The crazy hair escaping her bun twisted in the breeze as if in apology, but Corna did not appear mollified. "Flirt! I hope you at least thanked him and sent thanks back to Morsus. He gets little enough appreciation as it is and it was kind of him to spare us his pet."

Corna blinked then turned her attention back to Xana. "I'm sorry, my dear. Alona says you have other wounds."

"Who is Alona?" Xana interrupted. "Is she a ghost?" The breeze that had been tugging at Corna's hair whipped Xana's short locks in irritation.

"Ghost? I guess some might call her that, but she's a good bit more. Think of her as a capable spirit that occasionally drinks blood."

"Drinks blood?"

Corna smiled and Xana's fear evaporated inexplicably. "She won't hurt you, child. You've been hurt enough. Do you want me to treat your wounds first or remove your shackles?"

It was as if the question awakened every hurt on her body. Suddenly her back stung unbearably, her broken finger throbbed, scratches and blisters complained, and the dull ache from where her master's son had pounded himself into her mourned. But, she did not hesitate. "The shackles."

"Yes, I thought so. Perhaps we can do both if Hildr remains about."

In the distance, a dog bayed and Xana remembered her pursuers and their cruelty. "I have to go! I shouldn't be here."

"Of course, you should," Corna said, with no loosening of her grip on Xana's hand. "Else you would not be here."

"They'll find me and if I'm with you..." Xana twisted and yanked desperately, but Corna was amazingly strong. The thought of what the master and his men would do to the kind woman turned Xana's stomach. It was made all the worse because it would be her fault.

"It would not be your fault, little one," Corna said, "And that is not your former master's dog. Nor are they chasing you. They are gone."

"Gone?" The notion seemed impossible, but she _wanted_ to believe. Plus, there was something in her that trusted Corna.

"Gone. Destroyed." She pulled and Xana followed. "Dead. That was Kalor's doing. Nor will there be bodies to lead others to you."

"And who is Kalor?" Xana asked, attempting again to tug her hand free.

"Kalor is Morsus' familiar, a phoenix. Kalor's protected by Morsus' spells from all but ensorcelled weapons." She regarded Xana closely. "Those who once owned you are charred to ash from Kalor's fire."

Xana tried to summon sorrow or even satisfaction, but could only feel relief. Corna seemed pleased at that response and pulled again at the girl's hand. "You are free of your shackles in all but the literal sense and those will go soon enough." She led Xana through a gap in the fence toward a sprawling cottage, " _If_ that's what you want."

"If? How could it not be?"

"You'd be surprised. But, yes, I can see that you are different." The top of the door was open and Corna called through it. "Hildr, are you still here?"

"Someone," an irritated voice growled from within the shadows, "had to be, else my hero could have died again while you were off who knows where."

"Yes, yes," Corna responded with no sign of remorse as she opened the lower half of the door with her free hand.

"That is not an apology!"

"Nor will you get one," Corna said, rifling through baskets near the door, which blocked Xana from following her through for a moment. "You are not my only responsibility. And, if he had died, what's one more revival? You should have taken him to Valhalla long since and well you know it."

"Better, I'm thinking, to take him to Fólkvangr when he has completed his quest," a dark figure said, looking out a window. The figure was cloaked and hooded, and the voice low. "I have promised him enough life to finish his quest, and he has promised me his afterlife."

Xana regarded the inside of the cottage in some surprise. It was large, as expected, but stuffed with baskets and cupboards, bottles and jars crowding shelves and nearly every other flat surface. On the far side of the room, beneath an open window, a man lay asleep, bathed in the afternoon sun beneath a blanket. Near his shoulder, a huge raven eyed her with suspicion, flapped its wings, and cawed.

"You're soft on him," Corna said. "How many times can you fail to bring him as commanded without paying a price?' 'Tis your job, is it not?"

"I am not without influence," The voice was diffident.

"You can't fool me, Hildr. Why else would you bring your hero to me to heal his wounds when you could take him to Eir? Has she refused you or offered to inform your leaders?"

The figure turned and Xana gasped. Despite the low voice, she was obviously female in stylized armor that ensured her gender was a given. Cloth, like metal scales, covered her long legs and her arms set akimbo on her hips. She was tall, far taller than either of them and her hair, long and curly, tumbled like molten copper from her helmet. She flicked her green hood back with a "tch" and regarded Xana with amazing grass-green eyes from the most beautiful face Xana had ever seen. The face also glowed—actually emitted light—as if she were...

"Are you immortal?" Xana asked, then gasped as the raven flew across the room to perch on the armored shoulder.

"I am." Hildr strode forward and grabbed Xana's chin, perhaps to see it better in her own glow. Most would turn away if Xana looked at them directly, but Hildr was not among them. "Pretty cheeky for a mortal pipsqueak, aren't you? Unusual eyes and, an aura... Is this the reason you wandered off and left my hero with a half-healed belly wound?"

"Aye," Corna said, examining bottles in a crowded cupboard. "Something, isn't she?"

Xana had not understood any of their conversation, but it was more frustrating now that she was the subject. She lifted the chin Hildr gripped defiantly. "I know I'm not much to look at."

"How wrong you are, child," Hildr said, her voice warmer. She released the chin gently, her touch lingering like a caress. Hildr's eyes traveled down the soiled and scrawny length of her then latched onto a manacle. With a light touch, she stroked the one on Xana's wrist as her eyes narrowed and her voice hardened. "Who did this to you, child?"

"My parents, I was told. They found my sight too frightening and sold me to a slave trader when I was nigh an infant." Xana closed her eyes. "I do not remember them. As I grew older, the slaver could not find a buyer, so loaned me out to clean a chimney or a henhouse. He was harsh but rarely cruel. I was fed, and treated fairly if I did as he directed."

She shrugged, embarrassed by what she knew she looked like in the face of such glorious beauty. She scrubbed a bit of blood between her fingers and wondered how many bruises there were on her pointed face with its wide brow, narrow chin, and large yellow-green eyes. Her short hair was matted with sweat and mud and blood, while her filthy shift was torn and bloody, equally discolored. Her scratched legs were muddy and bruised.

"Perhaps things might have been different if I had grown up a beauty as the slaver hoped. But I was short and slim, with no sign of womanliness at all. My face was ugly, my gaze disturbing. Since I could never serve men in the brothel, he finally sold me to a prosperous farm in need of extra hands." Her teeth gritted at the memory. "They needed far more than mine, yet, though I did the work of three hands they needn't hire, I was still beaten for dropping a single squash or my way of laying hay or if I was caught looking at them. They hated my eyes.

"So, I ran away. What they wouldn't spend on hands for the fields, they spent on guards to pursue us. When they caught me the first time, I was sure that beating would kill me, but I lived. So I ran away again. First, they locked me in, then ropes, but those can be defeated. So, finally, the chains."

Xana couldn't read Hildr's face, or Corna, for her mind had turned inward. "I would have worked, a trade of my labor for a chance to live. I would not have left—I had nowhere to go. But they delighted in hurting me, and that was not a bargain I would accept. After I ran away the first time, I refused to work and devoted all of my attention to escaping. But this last time, when they brought out the chains, they used them to hold me back as Brill—the farmer's son—used my body, the one he had always found so ugly." She swallowed against the memory but refused to flinch from it. "I fought against him, against the chains. I lost but I _never_ stopped. And, when he had finished, I found a pick and pried the links open."

"How do you get them to bare their soul like that?" Corna said, wiping away a tear.

"We all have gifts," Hildr said.

"Hildr, can you use your magic to open the shackles while I attend her hurts? As a favor?"

"I will do it gladly," she said and touched the manacles in turn, which fell away instantly. "Then I will deal with your pursuers."

"Kalor has dealt with them," Corna said, offering a quilt of surprising softness to Xana. "Why don't you cover yourself, little one? I'm going to cut off your shift to treat your back."

Xana took it, held it to her chest then said, "My name is Xana, though I know not if my parents named me or the slaver."

With deft skill, Corna sliced through the shift, and behind each shoulder so the garment could fall away without taking scabs with it. Hildr, looking over Corna's shoulder, hissed her irritation at the sight. "Even Kalor's end was too good a fate for such monsters. That's going to be painful to clean. Let me help."

Hildr slid back around to where she was facing Xana. Ignoring the blanket, she grasped both Xana's hands in hers and tapped her forehead to Xana's. "Imagine Valhalla..."

Xana had no idea what Valhalla was, but she felt transported to a huge hall, beyond what kings might have in even her dreams. The beams that curved overhead to hold the roof were enormous and blackened with smoke from the fireplaces at either end. Tables, closely packed, filled the void between fireplaces with a warrior at every place setting. Before her was metal cutlery and a plate and, within easy reach, a roast pig, a haunch of beef and sea of dishes with foods she could only guess at as to contents. A metal tankard, foaming with some golden liquid, was at her right. Her body felt painless and light, snuggled into a padded seat of some kind rather than perched on a wooden stool in Corna's cottage. She picked up the plate, clean and smooth enough to reflect her image, and she saw her face—hers—with the same short hair but clean and neat, the same pointed face, but with the skin free from bruises and scars. The eyes that stared back at her were fearsome and powerful. Seeing them stare her down from her own face made her feel fearsome and powerful as well. Not beautiful, but glowing with a sense of her own worth.

She returned the plate and reached for the tankard. She was so thirsty...

With a jerk that set her mind spinning, she was back in the charmingly cluttered cottage, her back on fire before Corna smeared it with an unguent of delicious coolness.

Hildr regarded her with sympathy and offered her a ladle of water. "Sorry, small one, but best you not taste the mead nor viands of Valhalla lest you rush to return in earnest."

"What is Valhalla?"

"A place not of your world or of my hero's, where valiant souls can find rest before the last great battles."

"And why would I go there? I'm a slave and a peasant, not a soldier or a king."

Hildr waved away Xana's protest. "Many a soldier or king will ne'er know Valhalla, my child. But you?" Corna had quietly moved to treating Xana's broken finger. Hildr took the other hand, her finger sliding to the raw flesh left by her manacle. "No armor, no sword, no axe, and yet you stood up to those who would destroy you. Believe me, child, you are a hero."

Corna emphasized the point by setting the bone, then wrapped it against its neighbor with a tiny board and cloth strips. Xana flinched but made no sound, just held the blanket to her chest with the free hand that Hildr had relinquished.

"Corna! Healer Corna!" They all turned to the voice from without, a voice just short of screaming with the edge of hysteria already pushing her voice to high register. "Help me!"

Corna exchanged a glance with Hildr. "Will you take over?"

Hildr sneered. "I'm no healer, woman!" But she took the jar and smeared the soothing ointment on the raw wounds where Corna had left off.

Corna scurried out the open door and returned, almost immediately, her arm draped around a richly dressed woman cradling what appeared to be a ten-year-old boy in her arms. "He doesn't move!" the woman cried, her face stained with tears and paint. "I cannot see him breathing! You must help him, Corna! He's all I have!"

Bruised and dirty, Xana refused to move or bow. The woman spared Xana a single withering glance as she went by, then hobbled past to lay the child on a padded bench with the rattle of her gold bracelets.

"Lady Wense, you must let me examine him," Corna said, pushing the woman back gently.

Xana was no healer, but the way his head flopped as he was set down, argued his neck was broken. Xana had killed many a chicken and knew it was a bad sign for the boy.

Corna primmed her lips after touching the boy's cheek, then laid her hand on his forehead. "I'm sorry, Lady Wense, he is beyond my care. He is gone."

The woman collapsed in a puddle of vibrant silks. "He can't be! He _can't_ be! When he fell, I wanted to bring him then, but he wouldn't let— And then I was unconscious, locked in my room and only just managed to escape. If only I had broken out earlier! Loba! Loba! You can't be dead!"

"It would make no difference, Lady Wense, for his neck was broken and I cannot heal that."

"No!" the woman wailed, then said nothing else coherently as she wept with abandon into her hands with Corna crouched beside her.

Xana found herself confused. She could see this woman was high-born, beautiful, despite the ravage of tears in her face paint. She was richly clothed, gems winking from bracelets and rings and neck chains. But her arms were bruised, angry finger marks firmly imprinted in a way Xana could not mistake, having worn those marks herself many times. She could see the shadow of a bruise across near the ear on the woman's cheek, something fresh. And there was blood in her hair. But there was another bruise near the opposite temple that was yellow with age. Her fingernails were bloody and torn, though the remaining paint argued they were generally well-cared for.

Xana couldn't reconcile the woman's obvious wealth and power with her injuries. Obviously, she had been beaten. Obviously as well, it had not been the first time. She had had to escape, but she was wealthy! Xana could not make sense of it. And to wail as if she had nothing but her son?

"Your face reveals everything, little one," Hildr said softly, for Xana's ears only. "But I see no compassion."

"I don't understand her," Xana said. "She has money. She's not a slave. Why would she take abuse? Why would she stay with one who would abuse her son?"

"And if she leaves, who will protect her son? Do you think a man who would kill his own child—would injure his wife as you see here—would let her take him? She felt she had no choice and likely accepted the beatings thinking it would protect her son."

"Corna said you revived him, that man back there. Did she mean, from the dead?"

Hildr's eyes widened in surprise, but her voice became softer still. "You are surprisingly observant. Yes, but do not ask if I can save this boy; his soul has already flown and could not be returned to a body with a broken spine. Nor should you fret for his soul, child. He died a warrior, defending his mother from his own sire. All honor to him."

"Why does she say she has nothing now?"

Hildr's eyes were moist, and the sympathy she showed was for more than the woman sobbing on the floor. "Not every mother is as callous as yours. When you have a child, if you have a child, you will understand a love that is larger than yourself."

"Like yours for the man under the window?"

Hildr's brows lifted again. A sad smile touched her lips. "Indeed, all real love is greater than the person who loves. It can go too far, if you lose yourself in it and refuse to care for yourself, as likely happened here. Or it can be less than love, just a reflection of the love one has for oneself."

"Like a man who would beat his wife, slay his son?"

"Yes, or sell one's child."

Outside, the sound of horses, riding hard and close enough to be heard over the woman's keening, caused Hildr to look up in some alarm. She flipped her cloak off and swung it around Xana, "Stand behind me. Others come!"

The woman's sobbing stopped as if she'd been gagged. She huddled on the floor, in the arms of Corna, staring at the open door with terror. Perhaps it was seconds, perhaps minutes, but the time from the woman's silence to the time the horses came to a halt outside the cottage door seemed interminable, marked only by the rhythmic sound of galloping hoofs and the throb of their own heartbeats.

There was the jingle of reins, a soft neighing, and the sounds of spurred boots on the hard soil. Hildr blocked her view of the door, but Xana peeped carefully around her to see the large room crowded with men. They were massive, well dressed, and, except for their leader, bristling with weapons. The leader was as pale and beautiful in his own way as Hildr. He was beardless, and his eyes were blue, not green and his hair was gold, not copper. His beauty was marred by the ugly look of disdain on his face for the cottage, the sneer on his sculpted lips for its clutter and relative poverty to his beringed and braceleted person, and the rage he wore for the silent wreck of a woman cowering before him.

"You stole my son, woman! How dare you think you could do so! And to bring him to this hovel? I should lash you as I would my dogs."

"I had to try to save him, Petral! He would not answer me nor move! And now I find that he is dead!" The tears, never really abated even if they had been silent, flooded her cheeks as her voice caught. "How could you kill him? He was just a boy!"

"I? _I?_ Kill my son? It was you that killed him, with your puling weakness and coddling ways so that, when I would treat you as any honorable husband would, he interfered, standing against _his own_ father! It was not _I_ that killed him, but you, for putting your needs above his own as well as mine. And now I have lost my son because of _you_!"

"No! No! Petral!"

But he ignored her pleading, turning aside as if she meant nothing. "Take the boy and my wife. The boy gently. My wife as harshly as necessary. Then put this useless place to the torch so she does not escape here again."

The wind that Xana remembered from before—Alona—swirled around the room, lifting dust and powders in its agitation, but the men ignored it. One man lifted the boy's body up with care, while the other grabbed the woman's arm and yanked her to her knees, despite Corna's gasp of protest.

Xana was moving before she thought about it. With a kick to the soldier's elbow, she forced him to release his grip on the weeping woman. Then, draped in a cloak that dragged the ground, she stood between. "You will not take her."

Petral was livid. "Who are you? And where did you come from? How dare you stand between a man and his lawful consort!"

"How dare you slay your child and harm your wife, sir! What kind of husband and father is that? How dare you demand your wife return for more pain at your hands!"

She glared at him with her yellow-green eyes, the ones that had scared so many. He stared back for a moment then looked away. "Kill it."

The man Xana kicked reached for his sword with his off arm and slid out a curved blade with an ugly grin. "You're dead, cockroach."

He stepped in and slashed, though Xana did not move, only closing her eyes for the final blow. She opened them again at the clang of metal striking metal. Hildr stood beside her, the henchman's curved blade trapped on her straight one.

"Who are these people interfering?" Petral said. "Where are they coming from? This is your doing, witch!" The raven took wing, screeching raucously, and slashing at faces with its claws.

Corna stood to Xana's other side, completing the wall of women protecting Petral's wife. "I've never made a secret of my witchcraft." She waved and Alona became a whirlwind, working in concert with the angry bird, picking up dust and flinging it in the men's—and only the men's—eyes. Then, when that had little effect, small bottles and other items were chosen and tossed with considerable force from nearly every direction.

"Enough!" Petral shouted as a bottle bounced off his shoulder.

"There goes my belladonna," muttered Corna. "Do be careful, Alona."

"Did I not order you to kill them?" Petral demanded of the man confronting Hildr. "How long am I to be kept waiting?"

His henchman swallowed. Perhaps Corna and Xana did not look threatening, but anyone gazing without fear at the tall and powerful form of Hildr, sword unsheathed, was a fool indeed. With a shout he perhaps hoped would cow her, he leaped forward again, sword at the ready. Xana—eyes open this time—never even saw her move. One moment the man was screaming and lunging, the next he was surprisingly still, a look of shock on his face before his body slid apart at the diagonal slice through his body.

Hildr's patience appeared to be at an end. "This house and all in it are under my protection. The next one to die will be you, Petral." And there was a rush of power as she spoke his name.

Petral stepped back, paling, but his words were still brave, "Give me back my wife."

"If she wills it, she may go with you. You will not take her by force."

To Xana's surprise, Petral laughed, transforming his face, for the moment, into the vision of beauty it might have been. "Oh, she'll come with me. I need only tell her to."

Corna gripped Xana's arm through the cloak. "We will not stop her if that is her choice."

Petral waved back his remaining men, sent them out the door with his son's body, humor gone. "Come, wife. You have shamed me enough this day. Come with me now or never show your face at my door again."

If Xana was surprised at his laughter, she was shocked as Petral's wife, quiet now, tears quenched, her face wiped of the worst of her paint and tears, rose to her feet with a quiet dignity. She walked around Corna without sparing a glance for the woman she'd begged for help, or for her other defenders. The raven, perched on a ledge, cawed at her as she passed.

Xana moved to stop them—again without thought—but Corna's grip stopped her. "Why would you go back with him?" Xana asked.

Petral's wife stopped but did not turn. "He has my son."

"He has the corpse of your son. The son he killed!"

Petral's wife sighed and then continued forward. "You do not understand."

"No!" Xana said. "No, I don't."

"Xana!" Corna hissed, her grip like iron.

Petral, his face transformed again with a smile that was anything but beautiful, would have turned to follow his wife's form, but was stopped as Hildr was at his side in an eyeblink. "Know this, Petral, if you harm anyone of this cottage or cause it harm, either through your agency, a hired agency or even rude talk in the town, I _will_ find you. And your end will not be glorious."

That killed Petral's smile. He paused as if debating with himself if he should argue, but there was no give in the eyes that stared back at him. "I give you my word," he sighed at last.

"Your word is not worth spit. But I believe you will do as I say because my word is sacrosanct and you're just smart enough to figure that out."

If he stumbled as he walked to where the men held his horse in waiting, his men were careful to make no comment. Seconds later, they were riding away.

Hildr sheathed her sword. "Sorry about the mess, Corna."

"Alona will dispose of the body—I will not defile my graveyard with it—and the blood. Should make a nice repellant with the proper treatment."

"Why did he seem surprised to see us?" Xana asked.

"Because no one sees a Valkyrie unless she chooses to be seen, so you were protected as long as you were behind me." Hildr punctuated her words with a smack on the back of Xana's head. "And what was that foolish stunt you pulled? You could have and should have been killed."

"I couldn't do nothing!"

"Of course, you could. But you probably should have acted _if_ you'd had the slightest means to protect yourself and her. But you didn't. And getting yourself needlessly killed when there are other choices is foolish indeed. Were we not here as well?"

"Would you have stopped him?"

"If she had chosen not to go with them?" Corna said, examining the work Hildr had done on Xana's wounds. "Yes. But she didn't. Hildr, you did fine work. Perhaps you could hold your own against Eir in healing."

"Yeah, no thanks. Care to check on my hero?"

"I'm going," Corna said, shuffling to the recumbent man.

"Why don't you use your hero's name?" Xana asked.

"Damn, you see everything. Because, little one, if I call his name three times, his life is over and I will have no choice but to take his soul to the proper realm. That is why I have not named you nor the witch either."

"You named Petral," Xana said.

"Aye, twice, and he felt my power both times. That is the protection I promised. How is he, witch?"

"Healing with alacrity. You can likely take him tomorrow so he can get himself killed again for his glory."

Xana had to know. "Why? Why did she go with him? Won't he hurt her again? Won't he be as much a threat for the next child as he was with this one?"

"Yes," said Corna, washing her hands in a basin.

Corna sat on the bench where the dead boy had been before and patted the seat next to her. Hildr forestalled her with a hand and offered her a clean shift. The cloak! With care for her hurts, though they were far less painful than they had been, she donned the shift and handed the long cloak back to Hildr, who swept it around herself with a sigh of contentment.

Gingerly, Xana sat next to Corna and stared at her without flinching, "So, why?"

Corna returned her gaze calmly. "Women of this world and many others are often doubly enslaved. One means is the direct threat and power of her husband or father, and a society that backs them so that her options for escape are few if any. No matter how harshly she may be treated, where is there to go where she will find better?"

Xana shook her head. "That was true for me as a slave, but these are free women. Don't they have families? Friends?"

"Families can sell their daughters as easily to a husband as you were sold to a slaver. To accept a daughter's return is an insult to many," said Hildr. "Friends will often not stand between a husband and his wife."

Corna shook her head. "There are sometimes places for protection or escape, but, if you're unaware of them, they might as well not exist. And if you have children to protect or fear for your life—or theirs—if you should try, even knowledge of a safe haven can't help you. And even safe havens may not provide for you indefinitely. If you have no skills to support yourself or your children, like as not, you will end up in the same situation."

"But she chose to go back! She had a safe haven and she chose to go back."

"That is the second slavery, the one in her own mind, the one that tells her she belongs to men, that ties her sense of self-worth to her roles as wife and mother and nothing else."

Xana felt bewildered and glared at Hildr. "Did _you_ not say that love was greater than oneself for a mother or a lover? Which is it?"

"There is nothing wrong with being a wife and mother," Hildr said, perching on Xana's abandoned stool, her raven preening on her helm. "Unless you relinquish your sense of self to them or lose sight of yourself and your own worth as a human being. You heard him blame her for the slaying of his own son. Before the week is out, she will believe it herself, if she doesn't now."

Xana sighed, rubbing her temples. "I don't understand. How could she possibly think that? How can she feel responsible for her husband's violence?"

"They are taught from birth that their worth is in the eyes of a man, that his treatment of her reflects on her worth, that her ability to produce offspring is the culmination of her life. You heard him. He has blamed her for the child's bravery as if protecting another were a sign of weakness." Corna sighed. "Men are taught, too, to expect that devotion and never relinquish that power. Some, even with education and examples, can't escape the conditioning. Some never get those examples or education."

"Everyone does this? Everyone believes this?"

"There are some," Hildr said, "who do use those examples and education to break free, to respect themselves, though their path—society being relatively unchanged—is generally a hard one. Some, like you, without education or example, find self-respect on your own."

Hildr shook her head. "Your world really is horrible in so many ways."

Corna, narrowed her eyes. "And is the world of your hero much better?"

Hildr laughed. "Not yet, but I expect it will be."

"Will this world always be thus?" Xana asked, feeling the dark maw of hopelessness open above her.

"Perhaps not," Corna said. "People can change their fate if they've will enough."

Xana's frustration at the woman's return ate at her. "Women like that won't change it."

"No," said Corna. "She is a victim, trapped in two prisons. But even she can inspire change in the son who hates his mother's mistreatment, in a daughter that refuses that fate, even in a man who wants no part of a woman cowering before him."

"People like you of innate power and determination and many others who become enlightened through education, both men and women, can make the world a different place. Not only for yourselves by freeing yourselves from your slavery, but by providing examples and safe havens for those who will need them in future generations. Every soul you free from both slaveries becomes another example, potentially another oasis, another lesson in the collective society." Hildr reached over and brushed Xana's cheek. "You give me hope for this realm, child, you and that witch beside you."

The wind in the room swirled in protest. The body was gone and there was a large flagon of dark fluid Xana feared might be blood. There was no blood left on the stone floor. Hildr winked at Corna. "Yes, yes, you give me hope as well, you sprite."

"So, Xana, what will you do now?" Corna asked.

Until she was asked, Xana had literally never thought of "what's next." It was about getting away and then adjusting to the loss of her pursuers. What would she do? Where would she go? Penniless and homeless, she was no prize as a bride, even without her lack of appeal. Any employ she attempted would likely leave her in a situation not unlike that she left behind. What _could_ she do?

Her stomach chose that moment to rumble. It had been more than a day since last she ate.

Corna and Hildr laughed. Corna heaved to her feet. "Best get you some lunch then, young one." She hobbled to the fireplace and stirred a cauldron simmering near the fire.

"That is _food_ , isn't it?"

Corna laughed again, her body shaking and her eyes leaking tears. "It is, child. It is." She spooned out a bowl of what appeared to be a savory stew with actual meat in it and offered it to her. Xana didn't hesitate to dive in and relished the first bite with something approaching ecstasy. Nor did she flinch when Corna added after the second bite, "As far as you know."

"You've a mean sense of humor, healer," Hildr noted. "Has it occurred to you, she may not know what to do? For instance, she may not know you'd be willing to teach her your trade."

At that, Xana choked. When she finished coughing, she asked, "Would you? Really?"

"Aye," Corna said without hesitation, "but you best be understanding that it would not solve all your problems. I will not live forever, or even much longer, and the path ahead, if you choose to follow me, will be hard. Though, I fear there is no path for you that isn't difficult."

"I am not afraid of hardship. I would like to learn. I would like to repay your kindness to me."

"You pay the next one, the next child that needs you, the next one who needs a haven, the next one that calls you. That's what my calling is about. It has no less sorrow than any other calling, but I sleep well knowing I did my best."

Xana finished her stew. "I would like that. I would like a calling where I made a difference, even if I cannot change everything."

Corna nodded and fetched another bowl of stew.

"You're thinking of the woman today. Smart girl. Too observant by half, you are," Hildr said. "Such a valiant spirit, I've little doubt that someday I shall collect your remarkable soul when you finally fall."

"Yeah? Well, you'd best not be too hasty about it. I've a quest of my own now."

**Displaced**

Xana didn't mean to be lazy. It's just that gathering herbs around the gravestones was back-breaking, hot and sweaty work. And some of those shadows, cushioned by sweet-smelling plants, were awfully inviting. What harm if she took a little nap?

She'd shed her apron, stuffed with herbs and seeds, and curled around it in the lee of a large gravestone when BANF! She opened her eyes just in time to see a huge man fall backwards from the sky and land on his back with a thud.

He was wearing a blue-green leather tunic, leather boots, and a loincloth that left his legs bare. He'd also had a huge sword in his hand that, fortunately, fell to the side when he landed. Standing on his stomach as the man gasped and groaned was a large fluffy black cat. The cat sat as Xana stared at it and regarded her fixedly with enormous bright green eyes.

"Solace, you bastard, would you get off? I can't breathe," the man choked out, giving the cat a shove. The man rolled to an elbow and kept trying to draw air into his lungs. "Oh, did you land fine? On top of me? Well, that's just charming, you selfish beast. I feel like I've been wrestling a cave troll."

He groaned again and levered himself up on one knee. "Since when do portals open up twenty paces up in the sky?" He paused and then said, apparently in answer to a comment from his cat, "Well, it _is_ twenty of your paces, you little brat." He arched his back as he moved to the seated position. "Damn good thing I didn't land on my sword. Where is the stupid thing, anyway? Have you seen my—" He caught sight of Xana, kneeling now in the lee of her stone. "Hello, little one. Can you tell me where I am?"

Xana cleared her throat. He was a handsome man in a rugged way. Plenty of scars, pronounced lines at his eyes and around his mouth said he was not in his first youth, that he spent plenty of time in the sun, and that he loved to smile. His hair was black with only a few strands of silver and braided down his back. A silver circlet disappeared into his hair, and Xana wondered what this meant. His eyes were an intense blue and looked innocent somehow.

He was huge, perhaps the largest man she'd ever seen. His bare arms bristled with veined muscle and more muscle writhed on his bare legs. The sword, several paces away, was the longest sword she'd ever seen. "Hello? Did you hear me?" he said again, his voice a low rumble, but with an undercurrent of amusement in it, as if he recognized the ridiculousness of his position.

"You're in Barden, near the northern border, under the shadow of Mount Morsus.," she said. pointing out a tall mountain behind him.

"Barden...Barden. I don't know any Barden and I've never heard of Mount Morsus. Where in Nether is Barden?" He rolled his eyes and gave his cat a bit of a nudge. "I know _you_ don't know. Can't a man ask a rhetorical question?"

He sighed and regarded Xana with a friendly smile. "Where is it in relation to the High King?"

"Barden's capital is to the southwest," she said, feeling a bit bewildered.

"No, no, the _High_ King! The King of all Ferrell?"

"I've never heard of Ferrell," Xana said. She sighed. "And Corna is very particular on education."

To her surprise, he laughed. "I'm familiar with the breed, always wanting you to hit the books when there were more interesting things to be doing."

She tipped her head to one side. "I wouldn't mind if the subjects were interesting, but geography is dull."

"Well, never mind about where we are, how long have you been here? I'm looking for a couple of girls."

Xana felt her smile evaporate and took an unintended step back. "Why?"

The man looked at her with guileless blue eyes. "Why? They're my—oh!" He shook his head. "It's nothing like that. They're children, only eight summers old." When she did not unbend, a touch of temper touched his face and voice. "They're my daughters and I've lost them."

"You've lost your own children?" she asked, not quite ready to trust him, perhaps because she felt inclined to. "How did you lose two whole children?"

He rolled his eyes. "They were with my mother and—well, it's a long story but now my wife and I are trying to find them while my mother recovers her health. Have you seen them or haven't you?"

"I have not seen them," she said, "and I've been here all day? Are you sure they came through here? Did they fall from the sky, too?"

"I don't know. M'mother's friend was supposed to be helping us make portals but what kind of Bastor-damned fool puts one in the ground I can tumble through and has it open high up in the air?"

"Sounds impractical," she agreed. "Who is Bastor?"

"Who is Bastor? Silence, am I on some other continent?" He looked around suddenly, checking under nearby plants and around headstones. "Solace, are you the only one here? Where are the rest?"

"More children?"

"My cats!" He stood still, as if listening. "You can't hear them either, Solace? I thought I could hear them anywhere? What in Nether does that mean?" He strode over to retrieve his huge sword, stroked it lovingly, and then slid it into a half-scabbard on his back. "Hey, kid,"

"Xana."

"Xana. My name's Tander. You know anyone who knows anything about portals? Seems like I'm somewhere I shouldn't be."

Someone did come to Xana's mind but she had no idea how to get the Valkyrie's attention. "Let's go ask Corna," she suggested. "She's my teacher and a wise woman."

He gave a little bow, a smile tugging at his lips. "Lead on, er, Xana. Maybe we can figure out what's going on and how I can get back."

Xana nodded. For some reason she couldn't quite put her finger on, she wasn't the least bit scared of the behemoth armed with a huge sword and a knife on his thigh. The cat brushed by her with its silky black fur just touching her leg. Maybe it was the cat. Maybe it was the way he talked to the cat, just as Corna did her spirit guide, as if someone was answering back. Xana had been wondering if it meant Corna was insane. Now she was wondering if it was contagious.

She stroked her hand down the cat, and was rewarded with a purr and the feel of the sinful softness. Maybe it was just the cat.

"Shameless cat," the man muttered behind him. "She doesn't know what kind of monster you can be."

Xana led the huge man into Corna's cluttered cottage. It was tidier than it used to be—there was only so much Xana could stand before she had to put it to rights—but Corna's ability to create chaos from order was the stuff of legends. The boxes and baskets of jars and bottles seemed even more crowded when the lean hulking bulk of Tander filled the tiny front room. "I'd offer you a chair, but I don't know if it would hold you," Xana said. "Corna! I've brought a visitor."

As she passed by her bed in the back room, she spotted some paper and picked it up. _Liren is finally in labor. Don't know when I'll be back._ Well, this was awkward.

She returned to the front room to find Tander sitting, cross-legged on the floor, looking around him with interest. If he was uncomfortable or irritated, there was no sign.

"Corna, my teacher, went to help someone having a baby," Xana told him. "No telling when she'll return."

Tander shuddered. "Don't remind me. I still get nightmares from my wife's experiences." His friendly face sobered and, with great gentleness, he touched her wrist, still bearing scars from where she'd been chained the year before. "I hate to see those on a woman."

"I hate to see them on anyone."

"Had 'em once, though I'd been kidnapped. Managed to heal them up but that's a long story."

"We appear to have plenty of time," she said, smiling, before the sound of hoof beats made her frown. "Stay down. I am not to open the door if Corna isn't here."

"The door isn't barred," Tander whispered, sliding his feet under him so he was in a crouch.

And she couldn't bar the door without revealing her presence. Hopefully, whoever had come would only knock.

Seconds after the horse stopped, the front door slammed open, kicked apparently, by the mercenary bristling with weapons and wearing an ugly sneer on his freckled face. His hair—copper colored—was tucked under an open helmet. Xana, fingered the knife in her belt, but, though Hildr had been giving her lessons when she had time, Xana was undoubtedly less skilled than a professional. And this guy looked to be one.

To her surprise, for she expected Tander to stand back and divorce himself from a kick-up that had nothing to do with him, Tander rose and stepped forward, halting the intruder's progress. "What in Nether are you doing here? Who do you think you are?"

"I," the mercenary said with a sense of significance, "am Stefan Lear. I'm the Captain of the Barden militia and I have the best record in three countries for catching runaway slaves."

Tander regarded him blandly. "Never heard of you."

Xana, who was fighting her own terror, just stopped herself from snorting in laughter. She'd certainly heard of Stefan Lear, known not only for his success but also for his brutality.

Stefan looked taken aback. "Who are you?"

"I'm Tander d'Amer, married to Layla, tribemother to the Windera clan."

" _I've_ never heard of _you_ ," Stefan said loftily.

"You should get out more," Tander said as if he wasn't from who-knows-where. "And learn to enter a house with courtesy."

Lear gritted his teeth. "I've come to collect a runaway slave."

"There are no slaves here," Tander said implacably. "Now get out."

"Do you think I'm blind? That woman, with her evil eyes, fits the description. And look at her wrists. She's clearly a runaway slave."

"I had marks like that myself once," Tander said, nodding to his braces, "and I was born a king. There are _no slaves here_."

Stefan Lear tried to brush past him to get to Xana, who had slid her knife out. Tander did not let him and gave him a none-too casual shove that nearly send him back through the front door. Stefan was a beefy individual of good height, but Tander towered over him. "If you want a fight, Stefan, I'm happy to oblige, but not in here. This isn't my home."

"You can't stop me in lawful pursuit of stolen property."

Tander, still trying to push him out the door, paused to crook a thumb at Xana. "That is a person. And people who treat people like property are monsters." He gave Stefan another shove that pushed him out into the yard, then followed. "Fists or swords? Both work for me."

Stefan laughed. "You think I became leader by brawling with every large fool who though he'd thwart me?" He shook out his hands and they glowed green. "I'm a sorcerer."

"Swords, then." Tander said, pulling his sword from his back scabbard.

Once again, Stefan appeared taken aback. "You're not frightened?"

"Ha!" Tander said, "Spell-slingers don't scare me." He swung his huge sword one-handed, the blade nearly as long as Stefan was tall.

Stefan lifted a hand and lighting shot down from a clear sky, striking Tander at the shoulder and leaving a long ugly burn that cut through his tunic. The harness that held his scabbard was cut and it fell to the ground.

Tander gave a tongue click of disgust. "That. Stings. Look what you did to my harness." As he spoke, his shoulder wound healed visibly.

Xana had made her way to the front door, the black cat at her side. The cat did not seem disturbed or worried and looked on placidly. Xana felt like she had to do something before this poor man who had happened across her _died_ for her sins. "Tander, you don't have to fight him. Let me do it."

"Absolutely not," Tander said, batting away a fire ball with his sword. "There's a potential for a good sword fight here and I don't want to miss it."

"Why don't you go down?" Stefan asked as Tander flicked away another fireball.

Tander grinned. "Naturally resistant to magic. Now, you want to take me on or take yourself off? Either way suits me."

Stefan Lear wrenched his sword from its sheath and leaped forward. Tander tangled his oversized sword up with Stefan's, then twisted. This knocked Stefan's forward attack aside as easily as Tander had brushed off his magical attacks earlier.

""Okay, so maybe not a _good_ sword fight."

Stefan narrowed his eyes and dropped to the ground, pressing his open palm to the grass.

"What do you mean, 'watch out,' Solace?" Tander asked.

Xana saw it just a second after Solace did. "Ice! He's growing ice over you!"

Thick clear ice had already covered Tander's right side, locking his sword into place while the ice tried to stretch across his body. Stefan was back on his feet with another frontal attack to Tander's left side, but Tander was holding the empty scabbard and deflected Stefan's sword so Stefan did nothing worse than slam into Tander's body. They both grunted.

But Stefan snatched the knife sheathed on Tander's left leg and stepped back a step, smiling unpleasantly. "Now you're effectively unarmed."

"Break," Tander said quietly, and the ice shattered instantly. "Drop the knife, man! Hurry, or you'll regret it." Tander's voice, no longer amused, was low and urgent.

"Not laughing now, are you?" Stefan crowed. "You can have this knife back when I've used it to send you to your _grave_."

Tander's shoulders slumped as he hung his head, sliding his sword back into its sheathe.

For a moment, Xana didn't understand why Stefan wasn't attacking. His laughter had cut off abruptly. His eyes were bugging out. His face beneath the braided red hair was pale as death. "What," he gasped. "What's happening?"

Tander shook his head. "If I knew how to stop it, I would. It's a terrible way to die."

Stefan had dropped his sword and gripped his forearm, his face twisted by what appeared to be incredible pain. Above the brace on his arm, his skin was swelling, growing both black and green before it split open, and disgorged a putrid yellow pus. Gangrene!

As she watched, it grew up the arm, to the neck and seemed to spread both up into the head and down into the chest. That's when he started screaming.

He did not scream for long.

Xana, who considered herself fairly tough, swallowed against her bile as Tander stood over the still twitching corpse, shaking his head at the blackened remains of his knife. "Bastor damn it all, Layla gave that to me for my name day. Oh, well. Poor bastard." He built a fireball between his hands and used it to burn Stefan's body into ashes.

"What was that?" she asked, a corner of her apron over her nose. "And if you were a sorcerer, why didn't you just use magic?"

"Poison on all Jenri weapons. Triggers with the word 'grave.' If he'd listened to me or hadn't been so busy bragging, we might be fighting even now. What a waste!" He sighed. "As for using magic, what's the fun in that?"

"Tander, you worthless fool! Why have you stunk up Corna's place?" a haughty voice spoke up behind them.

Xana turned and ran to the glorious armored woman, glowing from an internal light, and hugged her. "Hildr!"

"I was busy with a battle of my own, wee one," Hildr told her or "I wouldn't have had to send this surrogate to help you." She grinned down into Xana's face. "Did I not tell you you were under my protection?"

"Who in Nether are you?" Tander asked, his brow knitted.

Hildr cocked a copper brow. "I'm Hildr the Valkyrie and I sent you here to protect Xana. Couldn't you have done so without making such a stink?"

Tander eyed her through slitted eyes. "And who asked you to send me to another continent—"

"Another realm," she corrected with a wave of her hand. "And it's not like you were busy. Someone had to help Xana. She would have jumped right in and gotten herself killed."

"I would not!" Xana protested, stung.

"Yes, you would have. I've told you to pick your battles, but you would have had Tander stand down if he'd have let you. Which is why I sent him."

"I lost the knife my wife gave me," Tander said. "And, next time, I'd prefer you _asked_ if you needed something, whoever you are."

Hildr chuckled. "As for the first, next time don't be so careless. As for the second," again she waved her hand, "I was pressed for time. I'll send you back now."

"Wa—" Tander had no chance to finish his complaint. He and his cat winked away simultaneously.

"That doesn't seem fair," Xana told Hildr. "And I can fend for myself."

"You'll do that plenty, I'm afraid," Hildr said. "If Corna were here, I might have refrained. Think of it as a bit of insurance to help my favorite warrior from this realm so she lives for whatever the fates have planned for you."

"You're mean," Xana said. "Do you know where his daughters are?"

"Of course! Oh, I suppose I should have taken a moment to tell him. Well, he'll figure it out somehow."

"I hope you didn't drop him from the sky when you sent him back."

She snapped her fingers. "I knew I forgot something."

**About the Author**

"We're all mad here." - Lewis Caroll

My name is Stephanie Barr and I write books, fantasy and science fiction and combinations thereof. A lot of them. My website (with my list of books available) can be found at stephanieebarr.us. I'm also a rocket scientist, raising my two autistic children as a single mother, and herding a bunch of cats. I have three blogs, which are sporadically updated: Rocket Scientist, Rockets and Dragons, and The Unlikely Otaku. Anything else even vaguely interesting about me can be found in my writing since I put a little bit of myself in everything I write—just not the same piece. Those pieces are all parts of my characters such as:

**A four hundred year old shut-in who reads fortunes and a care-for-nobody demon with a scruffy cat** [Tarot Queen]

A **mercenary swordsman cum sorcerer and a rule-abiding self-assured sorceress/warrior who never asks for help, and, of course, six snarky telepathic kittens**. [Curse of the Jenri] or

**A clever thoughtful young man who thinks he's weak who can turn into a dragon and a sweet generous young healer who knows her own worth and wields a dangerous wooden spoon** [Beast Within \- Bete Book 1] or

**A pugnacious firebrand who can think well in a crisis but feels in the shadow of his foster brother and a sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued engineer with a lightning temper and even quicker mind with even more snarky telepathic kittens**. [Nine Lives \- Bete Book 2] or

**A clever teen pursuing an older woman finds himself and all his friends captured by unfriendly natives who rip his powers away with their potions so he'll have to use his brain to escape as a self-righteous snake finds his notions challenged first by a tiny psychic kitten, then by a native of indeterminant gender.** [Twice the Man – Bete Book 3] or

**A teenage technological genius, short on social skills but long on dedication to those he loves and a scrappy girl who punches first and asks question later** [Saving Tessa] or

**A by-the-book analyst finds herself on the wrong side of the government she's always worked for and, with her crazy companion, takes it down. **[Ideal Insurgent **]** or

**A dragon-raised hermity mage who's given up on the world and a former slave who doesn't know the meaning of the word impossible** [Taming of Dracul Morsus] or

**A rocket scientist who finds a moment of anger turns into changing the world and she needs to do more or it will fall to darkness and she has a number of crazy men to help her** [Catalyst] or

**A repressed scholar finds the ultimate treasure, a library where the books can literally take you into other words. Coming back, however, is something else.** [The Library at Castle Herriot] or

L **iterally dozens of other characters in my anthologies** [Legacy and Conjuring Dreams: Learning to Write by Writing] **and my book of poetry** [Musings of a Nascent Poet]. **And many more feline friends to find in** Pussycats Galore **, another anthology.**

Website: http://stephanieebarr.us

Twitter: <http://twitter.com/stephanieebarr>

Facebook: <https://www.facebook.com/stephanieebarr>

Smashwords: <https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/786144>

My blog: http://stephanie-barr.blogspot.com

Or sign up for my newsletter: <http://eepurl.com/dqUBxn>

Preview of The Taming of Dracul Morsus

Prologue – Potential

A diamond can be cut and polished from an ugly stone, but only if that diamond heart is in there, perfect. You will not find a diamond in just any ugly stone.

-Wisdom of Dragons

Long ago, in the land of Anil, more than a century still before the scourge of the great conqueror Alarhar and his horde of zealots, a boy child was born. Small and sickly, born to crude peasants in need of a hearty lad to help in their scrabble for existence, he survived his first two years despite almost deliberate neglect. Only when as his first words were spoken and as his first steps were taken, did the ignorant folk that birthed him recognize a power they could not understand in their tiny son.

If the boy were hungry, animals from the wild would come to the door and offer themselves to the axe, sickly plants in the dry garden would produce lush fruit and vegetables, and the ancient cow's udder, long dry, would bring forth wholesome milk. His temper, which was prodigious, would call forth lightning and rain. His laughter would dispel it.

His parents were simple folk, untutored and superstitious. Rather than welcome these gifts or even covet them to use for their own profit, they reacted with fear and loathing and turned to their ignorant priest for guidance. With his advice, they took their child to the foot of nearby Mount Kraden under the light of the blood moon and abandoned him. In this way, they believed, he would be destroyed with no guilt falling on themselves. So it was in the land of men.

But the boy survived. In the depths of Mount Kraden, once a ferocious volcano, slept Magerus the great black dragon, ancient beyond accounting. He sensed the boy and rose from his bed of gems and precious metals to find the boy, sitting calmly beneath an outcropping, calling birds to deliver their own eggs to him for his nourishment.

Magerus, having seen men since they first came into the world, was not appalled at their cruelty to a child of their own. Men had ever been thus. But as Magerus sensed the great power in the child, most of it still undiscovered, he shook his great head at the waste. Men had so little power; how they could squander this prodigy was beyond his understanding.

So, he chose to do what few, if any, other dragons had done and took the child into his keeping, to nourish into manhood, to teach to know and use the whole of his power. Perhaps whim or his innate sense of justice called him to do this. Perhaps Magerus was bored with sleeping. Perhaps he was intrigued by the reaction of this minuscule creature when Magerus beckoned to the child with one huge razor-tipped talon. Unhesitatingly, the boy came forward on tiny feet and stepped into the deadly grip.

Dragons are not evil or even cruel, any more than they are benevolent. They are not social, except for brief moments of lustful interaction, and live too long to get sentimental even over their own near-immortal young, much less a mortal. But they are scrupulously fair, as they live by the order of justice. Magerus could teach him to use his talents, pass along a fraction of his incredible knowledge, but he could not teach him to be a man. Nor did he wish to.

Thus was born Dracul Morsus. It was at Magerus' patient teaching the Dracul's power and control grew, where his natural talents blossomed. Beyond the steamy confines of the mountain Magerus claimed for his mage, wars were fought and kingdoms crumbled. Princes became kings, grew old and faltered while Magerus taught his single student. Until, at last, Magerus yawned and bid his protégé farewell, intent on returning to his forsaken hoard.

Seven decades had passed since Magerus had extended his hand to an abandoned child. Dracul was now an adult: slim and tall, white just touching the raven mane of curling black hair with nary a wrinkle on his smooth brown skin. Not that Dracul was old. A natural born mage has a lifespan of several centuries that can be further extended with magic. Dracul was only just attaining adulthood. But he had learned what Magerus had seen fit to teach, and learned it well. What was little more than a moment's passing fancy to the venerable Magerus had been Dracul's whole life, but he merely bowed his head in gratitude as his master, with no more fanfare, took wing and returned to his den.

Dracul could have stayed in his mountain lair, turning his back on the world of men that had once abandoned him. He needed nothing materially from men. He had been raised by a dragon, but he was not a dragon and a part of him yearned for companionship. He packed up his few belongings and ventured into the world of men.

Seventy years had changed Dracul, but had not appreciably changed the world of men. He returned to humanity with the arrogance of dragons, the power of knowledge, and no interest in hiding either. He was met with fear, hatred, and resentment from those who tried to manipulate him for his power to those who would destroy him because he was dangerous and would not be controlled. He could not be intimidated, coerced, or bought. He had interest neither in using his power to seize control of others nor in knuckling under the control of others. In the end, he was reviled.

So he returned to the only home he had ever known, but not to peace. Over years, over the decades that followed, his name was known far and wide, spoken with awe and loathing. Every hardship that enveloped the land was laid at his door. When a famine struck several lands and persisted five long years, they cursed his name. When a storm came at last that flooded the land, laid waste to cities and towns and killed hundreds, he was blamed as well, this time justly. None offered thanks that the slow painful deaths of thousands by starvation were replaced with a fraction of quick deaths. None sang his praises when the flood brought fresh soil to the tired fields so that they could once more produce crops. He was Dracul Morsus the Terrible, the fiend.

After the great flood, men were no longer content to grumble in the foothills but sent their heroes, wizard and warrior alike, to challenge his stronghold, to rid the world of his menace.

He was attacked time and again because of his agelessness, his inborn power, and his perceived threat through no action of his own. They came, leading armies or as bands of magic wielders, and left—if they survived—defeated. The wizards that faced him were just short of charlatans, having forsaken any real power they might have had for material gain or influence, the soldiers more full of bluster than bravery or ability. Few of either could even reach him. Geography protected Dracul and only a Mage of his powers could call the great birds required to reach his home. He was not gentle—Dragons are not gentle—but he took no life unless it was unavoidable. He was loath to squander even human life needlessly.

Then, there were the women. They offered themselves in ones and twos and he brought them to him. Raised with a dragon, he had never denied himself physical pleasure, so he did not hesitate to take what was offered. But it was not companionship. They were curious and even, a few times, murderous. Most came for the notoriety to become celebrities, their hearts as empty as their heads. In days, sometimes hours, he was pleased to help them leave again, knowing they had never changed his loneliness. Those offered by fearful villages against their will, as an appeasement, he released untouched and expended a fraction of his power to punish those that offered them. The practice readily fell fallow.

There were, of course, interactions with women of character and power, but they had lives and dreams of their own and the liaisons were brief but treasured, and generally fell to friendship only as age took its toll on those mortals. Separate from the world, he often lost touch until they were gone. He had no way to find the women who had grown to replace them.

Which left only the women who sold themselves—or were sold—into brothels for his sexual fulfillment. Instead of addressing his loneliness, sex with women whose souls had been battered to serve men intensified it until, finally, he refused to step into the land of men for his pleasure. And, he stopped allowing anyone to his mountain.

Xana came anyway.

Chapter 1 – Precious

Trust your instincts on what has value. A battered scabbard can contain a mythril sword.

-Wisdom of Dragons

When one had lived more than a century, largely alone—or in the reticent company of an ageless dragon—one day was all but indistinguishable from another and hardly an incentive to rise. Through the dragging decades since Magerus had returned to his subterranean bed, Dracul Morsus had grown to appreciate the wisdom of slumbering untold centuries rather than looking out at the corrupt and senseless world of men. For those reasons, the great red sun, Tilin, and its pale smaller companion, Gilin, were high in the sky when Dracul made his way to the opening of the cave he called home and discovered his most unexpected visitor.

Without the aid of strong magic or a large flying creature, his home was almost inaccessible, so much so that Dracul had believed that it _was_ inaccessible to anyone else. Yet, someone, clearly not a mage, waited patiently at his doorstep.

His first reaction was to have her returned immediately from whence she came. He had long eschewed the company of humankind for reasons that had not become less compelling with time. Three reasons stayed his hand, at least temporarily.

First, this was a female. He had not allowed a woman in his lair for more than twenty years, and this specimen was dressed in crude male garb with no female features evident. Even so, his body responded in a way that made her gender unequivocal. He might intellectually prefer solitude to the unsatisfying sexual experiences he'd known in the past, but his body was eager, even desperate, for release.

Secondly, he was curious as to how she had come here and respected that it was clearly a challenging trek, given the bloody and broken fingernails, the torn skin at elbows and knees, the battered feet. He respected honest toil and the determination that had driven her to his lair.

However, mostly he was impressed with her deference and patience. Filthy, scraped and bruised, hands shaking from pain or perhaps hunger, she made neither demand nor entreaty. Instead, kneeling with her head to the ground, she waited patiently for him to acknowledge her. For some years, humanity had come to regard him with malice and revulsion, not this quiet respect. The difference intrigued and, he'd admit it, pleased.

He stepped forward softly, closing the long sleeveless robe he wore, as he wore nothing else. There was no benefit to confusing the child with his body's obvious reaction. Mindful that he had no interest in dispelling his reputation for being dangerous, he spoke in deep and ominous tones. "Who are you and why have you disturbed my peace?"

"Please forgive my intrusion, Great Mage Dracul Morsus. I have come to beg your aid." Her voice was low and rich. She didn't raise her head, waiting motionless. He wondered briefly if her face was as beautiful as her voice, then dismissed the idea. If he felt the need for physical release, there were always women he could access for his pleasure without imposing his wants on this earnest child. Even if the temptation was great. Perhaps more so as the strength of his temptation was...unprecedented.

That surprised him. Even alarmed him.

The alarm roughened his voice. "I have no interest in the importuning of any ungrateful human. Return from whence you came."

She lifted her face at that and he saw she was not beautiful. Her skin was indifferent, her face narrow but with a wide brow, her nose large. Her eyes, wide but slanted, were a startling pale yellow-green and hard as stone. To his amazement, her voice remained firm, unshaken by his dismissal. "No."

" _What?_ "

"No, Great Mage. I did _not_ climb all the way up here to have you refuse to even hear it. You need not grant it but it is ridiculous you won't even hear my request." The girl narrowed her eyes at him. "Weren't you ever taught manners?"

So much for deference. "Nonsense. Whatever you've done is hardly my responsibility and I do not owe you a hearing."

She was lean, slim as a boy, and tiny—as if a stiff breeze would send her down the cliff, not three strides to her back. He could send her over just as easily with a good kick, if he were careless with life. Not that he was careless, but that was hardly common knowledge. Even so, she spoke without fear. "I will not leave."

Dracul whistled, seeking his pet, Kalor, a phoenix in his last glorious year of power before his final decline. He came from his eyrie and flew in circles, his huge red-and-orange wings taking massive sweeps of air as he drifted lazily, flames flickering from wingtips and tail. Kalor was always intimidating. "You do not understand the situation. I can make you depart. I need only have Kalor return you to the valley below. And there is naught you can do to stop me."

She nodded, as if acknowledging the truth of this. "If you return me to the valley, I will only come back."

Brave words, but foolish. Manipulation of the earth was not beyond his scope such that even her determination would not avail her. Then again, he _had_ thought his home unassailable. And she was already so damaged. "Have you no care for your condition? Dehydrated, emaciated, plagued with painful lacerations. Here, it is easy to be determined, but would your resolve be sufficient to make another attempt when you are already so disadvantaged??"

"Only death can stop me." Her hands were shaking but there wasn't a hint of hesitation in her voice.

He shook his head. "I might very well dispose of you myself, send your body tumbling to its doom, and then sit down to a hearty breakfast."

She swallowed, and he wondered if that were driven by fear for her life or hunger. The pack on her back was flat, the waterskin empty. Given the fearless green eyes, he assumed her reactions had more to do with hunger and likely thirst as well.

He stalked forward to tower over here. "Well? Or would you argue that is beyond my powers?"

"You could kill me, though it might not be as easy as you think," she said staunchly. "Did you think you could scare me? If I was afraid to risk my life, would I be here now?"

She had a point. Even so, youth so often considered itself immortal. He tried a patronizing smile. "The young..."

"I am _not_ young. If you wish to kill me, Great Mage, you'd best do it at once and not delay your breakfast any further. I will remain here until you do so or until you bid me enter."

"As you wish, you precocious brat. Toss your life aside. You cannot move me to pity or compassion. Nor can your death be laid at my door."

She did not cower. To his amazement, she managed a little chuckle. "Well, technically..."

"You are impossible," he said coldly, and withdrew with what he hoped was awful dignity.

As he ducked beneath the many layers of tapestry that separated his cave from the outside world, he berated himself for losing his temper over someone so insignificant, for being seduced with the perception of respect. After all these years, why would it matter? Idiot!

He didn't doubt his physical reaction was influenced with his nascent longing for approval. He would need to meditate long and hard on this unexpected weakness and his clumsy way of addressing it. Perhaps, he owed the pernicious creature some gratitude for opening his eyes to a failing he thought he had conquered long ago.

He breathed in deeply and let it go with a little shudder. Intellectually, he was certain that, despite her brave words, she would abandon her post when hunger or thirst overcame her. He was under no obligation to do anything for her, nor offer her sustenance, nor give her any magical boon. Just the notion infuriated.

He was not a trained monkey, performing tricks on command. He owed no one in the world of men any consideration whatsoever.

So, why was leaving her there so bothersome? He felt an itch between his shoulder blades, his hands clenching and unclenching as he felt a strong compulsion to allow her inside, tend her minor wounds, and consider her request. Why he felt that way, he couldn't fathom any more than he could understand his physical response. She was not beautiful or in any way sexually appealing. She was young and clearly not here to indulge his prurient inclinations.

Not that he would let such considerations flavor his hospitality or willingness to help her. His response was undoubtedly a result of too many years of celibacy. Perhaps an anonymous trip to the unsavory sections of the human world was called for. His body did not react with enthusiasm. Perhaps a hot bath would help.

Master? Shall I take the interloper back to the valley? Or kill her?

Kalor. Dracul had forgotten. _Sorry, my pet. No, she is determined but unimportant. I am sorry I disturbed you. Perhaps later today I shall use your services to travel down myself._ He still could summon no interest, so added, _or not. Why not go hunting, my pet?_

Thank you, Master. As you desire.

Dracul wandered into his kitchen, and pulled a bowl from the counter. The fireplace was equipped with a large cauldron and an iron swing-arm, which he pulled outward to spoon out some stew. His disinterest in cooking, and the effort behind cooking, had led to stew as his default meal and a constant presence in the fireplace. It had become tedious, but not yet sufficiently for him to make an effort to cook his own meals. Meat was readily available, thanks to a few domesticated animals kept in the caldera and the occasional game animal provided by Kalor or his panther, Teera. Vegetables were gathered by other minor pets largely from the wild, though a few select ones were grown in his sheltered garden along with his herbs.

He did not mind the minor effort required to cultivate his food, but its preparation he found onerous. Water, clean and delicious, rounded out his meal. He should have taken time to squeeze some juice. Kalor had brought tropical fruits two days previously that made a very tasty drink, tart and flavorful. He just didn't want to be bothered.

The stew had once seemed savory and likely would still be to an unconditioned palate, was tasteless. At this point, he saw it as a necessary evil to provide him the nutrition he needed. At least, it was fairly healthy. He just couldn't eat it with enthusiasm any more. As he ate, Teera wandered in and flopped down at his feet. _Stew again?_

_Do you want some, Teera?_ he asked politely.

Teera regarded him blankly, then closed one eye and then the other, her way of expressing disdain.

As he chewed and drank, the question in his mind refused to stay buried. What harm, truly, would there be in filling the girl's waterskin, giving her a bowl of unappetizing stew?

If he were to do so, he told himself sharply, she would only feel encouraged to hound him and live off his kindness indefinitely. Better that she give up and leave on her own. Surely she would. Without food or water, she could hardly hold out indefinitely.

And what where her chances of survival if she did, his needling inner voice whispered. Is it less murder if he sent her on her way when she had no opportunity to survive? Any less murder than his parents intended when they left him, a toddler, to die in the wild? Perhaps it would have been more humane to let Kalor take her after all.

"She is not my problem!" he insisted aloud, hoping that hearing himself say so would stop the internal bickering. Meditation, he decided. He needed to find his center, his calm. It was intolerable that a single intruder would so severely cut up his peace.

_Master?_ Kalor said in his mind. _I have brought you an extra boar I killed if you would like it._

Boar? Perhaps that would make his stew more palatable. _Thank you, my pet. I will be out to collect it shortly._

Also, I believe your intruder has expired.

Dracul abandoned his half-empty bowl and ran for the tapestries at his door. He slipped through quickly and fell to his knees next to the inert form half kneeling, half-lying in the dust, her hands gripping a lip of stone as if she expected to be wrenched away in her sleep. Her skin was warm—in fact hot—to the touch and he found a pulse, thready and swift, on her skinny wrist. And scars that chilled his soul. He saw that her lips were badly chapped, her eyes sunken and lids purple as she slept.

As he'd suspected, she was suffering from exposure, perhaps shock. Maybe her bravado had stemmed from dementia. Kalor fluttered to a perch, holding on to the edge of the cliff and setting a still-twitching corpse on the ground. _Should I take the body elsewhere, Master?_

She is not dead, Kalor.

Should I take her to a human village? Will they not treat her?

Dracul brushed his thumb along her wrist, across a scar one only received from a manacle. Prisoner or slave? Did it matter? _Doubtful. I will take her inside. I will return for your gift, dear one._

As you wish, Master.

When he lifted her body into his arms, he marveled at the slight weight. Unless she had taken weeks to scale his mountain, the child had been undernourished long before she began her journey. It sickened him. This was why he avoided humans, refused to be inveigled into their machinations and tribulations. They were cruel and dishonest, visiting the worst hardships on those least able to withstand it, leaving them begging for help from those with no mercy.

He should have left her be. She'd chosen to stay when he bid her go. He owed her nothing. But then, how would he be different from the monsters that had let her reach this state?

With care, he took her to where he slept, a wide indulgent pile of sumptuous cushions and blankets on the hard stone floor. He squelched his dismay at sharing his bed. Honestly, there was room for an orgy there. Her slight form would hardly discommode him. He began to remove her clothing.

First priority was getting fluids into her. Water would help. Juice would be better. He hummed for his raven, Meket. "You called, Master?" Meket asked, as he soared around overhead.

"Can you fetch me the fruits Kalor provided recently and a cup. I realize it will take several trips. Ah, she's burning up. Bring it to the bathing room." He lifted her naked form into his arms, kicking her clothing to the side.

"Yes, master."

"And ask Teera to bring a full waterskin as well."

His bathing room was spacious, carved from the native rock and filled with water that was pure snowmelt, heated by the sleeping volcano. The temperature was normally just short of scalding, which was perfect for him, but not in this situation. He laid the girl at the lip of his bathing pool, took a second to remove his robe, and stepped in, cooling the water with a simple but powerful spell. When he was confident it was cool enough, he brought her into the bath, holding her head out of the water.

She didn't react, and he held his ear near her mouth to ensure she was still breathing. If she did, it was so shallow, he could not be sure with the gurgling of the water in this room. His long fingers sought out the throb of her pulse at her slender throat and he breathed again himself. He caught her nostrils flaring and sighed in relief, then chided himself for his concern. She was not important, he insisted, but he didn't sound convincing even to himself.

Meket winged in, the stem of a fruit in one claw, the handle of a cup in the other. "Thank you, my pet." Odd of Meket to be so tardy with a task. "Did you not find them easily?"

"Teera is bringing the rest," Meket said proudly as the panther padded in, a basket clenched in her teeth. In the basket were another dozen fruit and the waterskin.

"Brilliant, my dears. You anticipate my wants." With one arm still supporting the slim girl, he yanked the stem of the fruit out with his teeth and held the fruit over the cup, using his mind to squeeze it so the juice siphoned into the cup without soiling his hand or the area.

He perched on the ledge at the side of the pool and levered the girl more upright, though still mostly submerged, and held the cup to her lips, but the juice he tried to force her to drink drooled uselessly into the water. That was a reminder that the water circulated with fresh so he had to be vigilant about cooling it lest she be parboiled when he wasn't paying attention.

"Smoke and brimstone!" he cursed, then took the remnants of the cup into his own mouth and pressed his mouth to hers to try to force her to drink. _Swallow, damn you, swallow,_ he thought and was rewarded, after what felt an age, with her gulp. After squeezing another fruit, he tried another mouthful and this was swallowed more easily, the rest of the cup even faster. By the time he reached his fourth fruit and seventh or so swallow, he reflected that this method was unbelievably tiresome and not the slightest bit romantic or seductive as one would think. He was quite furious at his nether regions which refused to agree with him on that score and indicated their eagerness for any other contact he might want to indulge in.

He thought her skin felt cooler, though, with wet hands, it was hard to be sure. Her pulse and breathing had definitely strengthened, however. He dipped her short dusky hair in the water to get the worst of the dirt from it and wiped the sand and grit from her face. Her skin was pale where the sun had not changed it, golden brown where it was exposed now that the dirt had been washed clear. Her face was pointed and thin, though her brow was wide as were her eyes, with a prominent nose. Not the face of a beauty, but a dramatic face, one with power. Her body was undersized, slim, slight of breast, with slender hips, but the muscles were well-formed, her hands and feet hard with callouses. She'd known hard labor.

His teeth clenched at the scars at her wrists and one ankle, of chains she'd once worn. His fingers felt more scars on her back, many of them, and he saw others on her gaunt arms and delicate chest. They were old, at least, years behind her, but she couldn't have been much more than a child. What kind of beast treated a child thus?

"Humans are animals!" he growled. She was starting to shiver so he lifted her out of the water. "Teera, bring my robe over here, please."

_That doesn't make sense,_ Teera offered, gripping the rich cloth in her teeth. _Of course they're animals. What's the alternative? Plants?_

"Valid point, Teera. Monsters, not beasts." He stretched her out on the robe. "Can you touch her with your nose or tongue, Teera? Tell me if she feels unusually hot?"

Teera looked at him, then blinked one gorgeous amber eye and then the other blue one. _I suppose_. She scraped a rough tongue along the girl's cheek. _Doesn't seem too hot to me. She is salty. I think her eyes are leaking._

"What?" There was a spare robe in the corner, and he reached for it as he leapt from the bath ledge to the floor. The girl's body was shuddering now, her head thrashing from side to side. He knelt beside her as her eyes flew open, and she screamed. "No! Coooooornaaaaa!"

Her back arched, her arms flung out in supplication.

"Corna?" Corna, Corna, he knew that name. He mused even as he lifted her in his arms and strode back to his bed. Corna was someone in his past, he was sure of it.

The girl in his arm was weeping, her fingers clutching at his robe as she shuddered in her nightmare.

He had learned, once, of methods to soothe the mind, but he had not used them in so long. He pressed his lips to her forehead and, hoping his force of will was sufficient, breathed, "Peace, little one."

Her gyrations stilled and her breathing calmed, though tears still leaked from her closed eyes. He placed her gently on his pillows and pulled the robe he dried her with away, covering her so she would not start shaking again.

The girl, curled against him, seeking his warmth perhaps, and he could not bring himself to push her away. Her body and fingers were so slim, her skin scratched and scraped from her adventures.

After some careful cautious dressing, rearrangement of blankets, pillows and her grips for his own comfort, he lay back on his cushions, the stubborn sleeping child on his lap. Her skin was still hot, but not so severely as before and he hoped it was naught but dehydration and hunger that ailed her.

Now that he was trapped, he sent his mind back to his own history to try to recall where the name Corna fit into it. He was certain it was a name... ah, the herb witch.

A comely woman he recalled some several decades before, when she was already past her first blush of youth. She had had a smattering of natural talent, a quick and inquisitive mind, and a good sense of humor. She'd already found herself with a spirit advisor. Dracul would have enjoyed a deeper involvement, but she also had a determination to stay and provide haven for others, like herself, who did not wish to be owned, as was the norm for women in the world of men. Dracul had had no choice but to respect that.

Still a pleasant memory for himself.

He had not seen her in some decades, but he did recall that she'd asked him for loan of Kalor perhaps eight years previously, to protect an escaped slave and deal with the slave's pursuers. Kalor had come back with her thanks and a report of his own thoroughness.

Was this girl, perhaps, that slave?

And what of Corna? She would hardly send this child to Dracul unaccompanied and unprovisioned if she had any other choice. Or without warning from her own spirit guide. Something was clearly amiss.

Dracul had ties to very few in the world of men, but his affection for the few exceptions was profound. He found himself very tempted to leave the girl to his pets' ministrations and find out Corna's fate for himself.

Unfortunately, things were not so simple.

_I am not a babysitter,_ Teera said. _And even if I were, what would you have me do if she relapsed and her fever returned with a vengeance?_

Practical creature. How irksome. "Meket?"

Meket responded with laughter. "Am I more capable of returning the intruder to the bath if required than Teera?"

His companions were too smart by half.

Kalor, my pet? Have you finished your meal?

Yes.

Do you recall Corna the witch and her spirit companion, hmm, what was her name, Alynn, no, Alona?

Yes, Master. Alona has visited me many times, though not for the past few months.

I fear some calamity has fallen on Corna and perhaps Alona. Are you too sleepy to fly down and find out what you can of their fate?

No, Master. Though I shall likely slumber as soon as I return. Are there other tasks that I might complete upon the way?

No, my pet. And thank you.

That would have to do. He would go and consult his books as soon as the girl relaxed her grip. She would need unguents for her lacerations and bruises, perhaps bandages. Did he even have some gauze or linen for bandages?

