Free The Sword by Jean Johnson Page A

warped carrion-eaters alone.
    A pity they will not simply eat each other, Saber thought, holding his quarter slice of the sphere-shield steady. The original version would only breed once a year, unless a more than adequate food supply was on hand. Such as on a battlefield. They also lived only two years. These things bore young anytime they ate ten times their own body-weight, once their central bodies were as thick as a man’s fisted hand and their legs longer than that by a hand’s length.
    A mekhadadak would eat anything that moved and caught its vision, heading straight for it while it moved and relying on its sense of smell when it got within a yard or two to tell it if it were actually edible meat or something indigestible, like a curtain swaying in the breeze. The fact that they were silent even while they burned, unlike the hisses and shrieks their more vocal prey had issued while being devoured or burned, was unnerving. Saber grimaced, watching the immolation as he held his part of the shielding.
    Gods, I hate mekhadadaks! I’d love to know which bastard keeps sending them to us. And now we have a woman on the isle, a magicless one with no clue as to what’s dangerous or safe in this world, to worry about, too.
    Rydan had nodded at him when he arrived, reassuring him silently that the woman hadn’t moved from the ward-circle he had cast around her, that she was still safe and unharmed. Not that Saber really cared if she was or not. He couldn’t allow himself to care. Whether or not her viewpoint on the meaning of his Curse was more accurate than his own, he couldn’t, daren’t allow any woman to stay long enough to risk bringing that foretold disaster down upon them all.
    It didn’t help that he lived in a universe where disasters foretold by true Seers had a bad habit of coming true.
    I will not fall in love with her. She isn’t even my type. Of course, it would help if he could remember what his type was. That was what happened to a man after three years of involuntary celibacy. She’s sharp-tongued, screams too much, and doesn’t even dress properly—no, don’t think of how she’s not dressed!
    Firming his attention, he held the sphere until Koranen finally ended the burning hot fire at the center of their sphere. The second youngest of them slumped into the waiting arms of three of his brothers, the white-hot fire dying out at the same time. Saber nodded, and his brothers lowered their linked shield. Only the finest white powder drifted down to the floor from the incineration site, and not much of that. Koranen had been well named, when the Prophecy had labeled him the Son that was Flame.
    â€œI’ll get him some food,” Evanor offered, heading for the kitchen.
    â€œTrevan, Wolfer, sweep the woods outside tomorrow. Rydan, scry through the night, make certain we missed nothing. And keep the wall shields up all night, until we can sweep the land outside during the daylight.”
    Dominor smiled slightly, but not out of humor. “I suppose we’ll be cleaning the castle, next? Doing all the dusting, sweeping, cobwebbing, and polishing to please our guest?”
    About to suggest that himself, Saber stiffened his resolve. “No. If she wants her chamber cleaned, she can do it herself. Get to work on getting her out of here as soon as you can, Morganen. She doesn’t belong here.”
    Leaving the others, he strode out of the great hall. When he reached the courtyard, the woman Kelly of Doyle was still standing there, indecently clad in those charred, loose trousers and that ripped, singed tunic-shirt of hers, instead of a proper skirt and blouse, or a gown. She was idly rolling and shifting the lightglobe someone had fetched for her from hand to hand, lost in whatever thoughts had occupied her in the intervening time. She looked skinny and strange. And yet she wasn’t an ugly female. Even Saber couldn’t lie about that.
    Her