Natalie found herself in that uncomfortable position where her eyes were closed but the world kept spinning, like she’d just gotten off the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair. She must have had a dizzy spell and fallen into the pit. Probably a delayed reaction from her fight with Cedric. The reality of it had just hit her all at once.
Natalie forced her eyes open, expecting to find herself surrounded by earthen walls and covered in dirt. Instead, she was lying on soft grass, with nothing in sight but a canopy of trees and an incredibly handsome man leaning over her suspiciously.
Very few men could pull off sideburns, but he did it admirably, his thick brown hair framing a square jaw and broad cheekbones. More than that, though, Natalie was caught by his eyes. They were dark and piercing, and fiercely intelligent. If this was an EMT come to rescue her, she was ready to be rescued.
Then she noticed that the extremely handsome man was holding a sword.
Sitting up with a yelp, Natalie looked around. It wasn’t just one man—she was completely surrounded. More than a dozen strangers stood around her, all of them armed, in some cases with farm tools. Not only that, the dig site was nowhere to be seen. These strange men must have picked her up and taken her somewhere.
This night just kept getting worse and worse.
***
It was the end of the day. The sun was starting to set. The men were heading for the main hall, ready for dinner after a long day’s work. Alrek himself was about to enter when there was a blinding flash and a crack of thunder. While everyone looked around in confusion, for there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, Alrek saw smoke rising from a field just outside the settlement. Whistling to gather everyone’s attention, he headed in that direction.
The field did not have so much as a blade of grass blown out of place, but it had sprouted a woman. She was lying flat on her back, apparently unconscious, with her mouth hanging open. She was so unnaturally pale that Alrek wondered if she was dead, until he saw her chest rise and fall with her breath.
She clearly wasn’t a Gael. Even if she was a Gael, Gael’s didn’t usually travel by means of lightning. She was unlike any woman he’d ever seen before, her clothes completely foreign. His men stared at her suspiciously. Even Banki looked like he wanted nothing to do with her. Still, Alrek thought, women didn’t just come out of nowhere. We’ll have to do something with her.
He was about to drop his sword and see if he could wake her when she woke up on her own. Their eyes met, for just a moment— and then she saw his sword and panicked. She jumped away with a shrill yelp, setting everyone even more on edge.
Alrek knew his men were looking to him for an order, but he stood silent as he watched the strange woman scramble about, a smile teasing the side of his mouth. She looked like a frightened chicken. Finally, she lurched to her feet, staring at them in terror.
Grabbing the bag slung over her shoulder, she held it out in front of her, saying something completely unintelligible. Even if she was speaking a language he knew, she was so upset Alrek wouldn’t have understood her anyway.
The men were beginning to shift, but Alrek held up a hand and they maintained their position. This woman seemed completely harmless. There was no need to kill her.
Yet.
The woman had noticed his motion, and turned to Alrek. He was stunned by the expression on her face—pleading desperation. They didn’t need to speak the same language for him to understand she was begging him for mercy.
Her expression wasn’t the only thing he was stunned by. He’d seen many blue eyes in his life, but none that were quite the same shade as a calm ocean on a clear day. They would have been beautiful if they weren’t filled with fear, and the fact that they were, barely made a difference.
While Alrek stared, she continued to speak, babbling in that strange foreign tongue of hers. She began taking things out of her bag, dropping them on the ground in front of her— a small white tube, a metal ring with jangling keys on it, some pieces of paper held together with a coiled wire. Finally, she found whatever she was looking for and yanked it out, thrusting it toward Alrek.
Everyone jumped, Alrek himself included. Banki growled at his side, ready to thrust his spear forward, but Alrek flung an arm in front of him. The woman was standing there with her eyes clenched shut, shaking like a newborn foal. She clearly expected him to take the object she was holding.
Cautiously, Alrek leaned forward and took the object from her hand. It was rectangular, carved from some smooth white material Alrek had never seen before and decorated with metal edges and studs. Banki leaned over curiously, though he didn’t lower his axe an inch.
Alrek turned the device over, examining it closely, and to his shock, it vibrated and lit up like a torch. No, not like a torch. Not like anything Alrek had ever seen. The flat front of the object was glowing with some uncanny light, colorful symbols drifting across it. He couldn’t even have begun to guess the source of this light, or even what it was for.
Banki glanced suspiciously from the rectangle to the woman.
“What magic is this?” he muttered, glaring at her suspiciously. Giving him a frightened look, the woman started digging in her bag again, this time coming out with a folded leather pouch. This, she gave to Alrek as well.
There didn’t seem to be anything usual about it at first— it was just a folded leather pouch, stitched neatly at the sides. Then Alrek flipped it open. A tiny picture of the woman herself, more accurate than any drawing could ever be, stared out at him. She’s smiling. Quite unlike the face she was making now, he thought, glancing up at her. More of those strange runes surrounded the picture, and it gleamed with iridescence in the evening light.
Fiddling with the pouch in his hands, Alrek discovered it was like a book—several leaves of leather stitched together, containing small chips of a strange rigid material. A central pouch held foreign coins and some pieces of paper.
She must think we’re here to rob her, Alrek thought. She’s trying to give me her valuables.
“I’d put that down, if I were you,” Banki said. “It’s unnatural. It must be some object meant to cast a spell on you.”
Alrek frowned, looking up at the stranger. Women attempting to lay curses usually didn’t look that terrified. She was still searching her bag, dropping objects on the ground as she went.
The next thing she produced was a small, thick tube made of dark metal. Evidently, she didn’t think this was important enough to offer as a gift, because she dropped it to the grass along with everything else. It landed on one end with a loud click, and an impossibly bright light began to pour out of it. The men jumped, yelling as the beam of white fire cut across them.
“Alrek, you can’t tell me that hasn’t got some dark trick about it,” Banki said angrily. “No man can make a light like that.”
Everyone else seemed to agree. Growls went up around the circle, and more than a few men started to inch forward, axes and spears at the ready. Alrek’s eyes went from his angered men to the frightened woman. She was frozen in place, not seeming to understand what they were so angry about. The look on her face chilled him to the bone.
That was the look of a woman who thought she was about to die.
They were all inching forward now, closing in on her. If Alrek didn’t do something soon, they’d run her through. To his confusion, the idea made him uncomfortable. He’d seen many women die. Some of them, he’d even killed himself. This woman, he did not want to die. He wanted to see what her eyes looked like when she wasn’t scared for her life.
Stepping forward, Alrek began to speak.