Dougal grunted.
"Oh, come now, neighbor mine. You often pit your beasts against each other. What do you think the odds would be? Which way would you bet?"
The troll grunted again. "Weapons? Sean wouldn't have a chance. Barehanded? Even worse." He paused and narrowed his eyes. "Magic, I don't know. You'd be the best judge of that. I'd guess Brian has more raw power and Sean more subtlety and precision. Brian seems to rely on brute force."
She giggled. "True. Who else would try to stun a dragon? We'll have to try it later, when Brian's healed and well broken to the leash."
Now her fingers caressed Sean's face, brushing a smear of dust from his cheek and then straightening the collar of his sweater. "You didn't think I'd trust you unwatched, sweet twin? The way you so admire your brother? No, love, I am not pleased with you. While Dougal plots ways to punish a bard with impunity, I have to think of what to do with you. I think a touch of poetic justice is in order."
She started to hum, gently, a tune Brian recognized. "My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, to let the punishment fit the crime . . . ."
She broke off. "Dougal, love, you do have other guards? It's not like you, to trust everything to a single dragon."
"I have other guards," he growled. "With such trustworthy neighbors, I'd be a fool not to."
"Oh, I'm not asking you what they are, or where." She chuckled. "That sort of information is dangerous to both the giver and the gifted. I was just thinking I might leave my beloved Sean in your woods to play a while. Just like Brian."
She picked up the heavy kukri from the ground and jerked its sheath from Brian's waist. "Exactly like Brian. With nothing but a knife and with his Power blocked. A week, or perhaps a moon or even two. What do you think?"
Dougal actually smiled. "I think, dear Fiona, it should be entertaining. I hope you won't be upset with me if he gets eaten in the process."
"Of course not, love. Any blame belongs to darling Sean, for being such a stupid ass."
She examined the kukri, a vague smile on her face. "Dougal, love, you know so much about weapons. Isn't it considered bad form to sheathe one of these without its steel tasting blood?"
Dougal blinked. "I didn't know you studied weapons lore. Some believe that, yes."
"I've studied brother Brian, dear neighbor, everything about him. The strangest things can be a window to the soul."
The blade caressed Sean's cheek. Brian caught the sudden smell of fear on the breeze and saw the muscles tremble in his half-brother's face as he tried to shrink away.
"I ought to carve your eyes out, love," she whispered. "I ought to cut off your ears and useless balls and feed them to you. You tried to trick me. You thought you could get away with it, and that is even worse."
Brian snatched at a glimmer of hope. With Fiona concentrating on the others, maybe he could break free. If she thought he was hurt worse than he really was . . . . He reached out and touched the winds of Power flowing through the Summer Country and jerked back as if he'd tried to grab a live wire.
She didn't even turn around. "Brian, love, don't try that again, or it will hurt. I've finally got you, and I intend to keep you. You always were such a beautiful child."
She tipped the kukri up and laid its edge against the soft skin right under Sean's eye. A blink would bring blood, a twitch of her hand would blind him. Brian swallowed convulsively, as if the razor steel touched cold against his own skin.
"I'd love to do this, sweet twin. But," she sighed, "I may need you again sometime. You can be such a useful snake." She lowered the knife. "Instead, I think I'll let you watch part of my spell-song. It may hurt just as much."
She turned the blade and slid it along the back of her own wrist, leaving a thread of crimson. One finger dabbed up a drop of her blood and held it to Brian's lips. His jaws opened of their own accord, and his tongue reached out and licked the salty finger clean. The taste burned down his throat and into his belly like a shot of whiskey.
His right hand reached out for the knife and mirrored her actions, holding his own blood against her matching lipstick. Brian watched the ritual like it was a movie on the screen, his body having no relation to his mind. Fiona had taken over her brother's spell as easily as picking up a book.
She frowned and turned to Dougal. "You do have that redheaded bitch behind cold iron? She's left her fingerprints all over Brian's lovely soul. This may take a little longer than I thought." Dougal nodded, watching silently.
Maureen. Brian focused on memories of her face, her gentle hands, her warmth and smell when she was holding him in the innocent acts of nursing. "I love you," he whispered to the memory, raising it as a shield against his sister.
Humming filled his ears, a gentle vibration against his skin that became music and then a song. Words coiled around his head and blurred his vision until it was filled with Fiona's face, her eyes, her hair. He still held the knife within inches of her heart, but he couldn't have stirred a finger against her will.
"'S tú mo choill, coill, coill," she whispered, singing the chorus of her spell-song.
"'S tú mo choill gaineach ban.
"'S tú mo ghiolla dubh ar luaimh.
"Os ar ucht tú 'bheith slan."
Brian heard the words in an obscure out-island dialect and their meaning whispered in his brain: "You're my love, love, love, you're my loved one so fair . . . ." He lost the thread of the song, but the words mattered little anyway. They merely held
