Star of the Morning

by Lynn Kurland

  None at all.

  He looked at Paien. “I’ll go check on the horses.”

  Paien lifted one eyebrow, but didn’t argue. He merely waved Miach away and returned to listening to Camid recount an adventure that involved a handful of brave dwarves and a disgruntled troll. It was difficult to leave that engaging tale, but Miach forced himself.

  He left the fire and walked to the barn, considering the spectacular steeds housed therein that had cost him that thousand-year enchantment of sweetness and Morgan several days of her own particular sort of magic. Though his bit had drained him and left him feeling a little sour, it had been worth it. He would have done it again in a moment, for it had given him a handful of days with Morgan of Melksham all to himself.

  He came to a sudden halt.

  He might have skidded. One tended to do that, he supposed, when one came to such a stop on the hay-strewn floor of a barn. He had, he had to admit, expected to find Morgan here, brushing her horse’s mane.

  He hadn’t, in all honesty, expected to find her here brushing her own.

  He should have turned right then and walked away. He should have walked from the barn, bid his brother good fortune, changed himself into a hawk of uncommon swiftness, and fled for home. He would have been safe there, in his cold tower of stone, surrounded by books and potions and herbs drying in bunches that only he knew the purpose for. It would have been the most intelligent thing he could have done. It would have been the safest.

  Instead, he found himself walking forward.

  Fool that he was.

  Morgan looked over her shoulder at him. “Fretting over the horses?” she asked.

  “I don’t fret,” he managed.

  “Hmmm,” she said wisely. “Well, I did. But I saw to them all.”

  “Then since you took on my task, I’ll take on yours,” he said, taking her brush away from her. He might as well have clutched a pile of nettles for all the sense it made. He dragged a bale of hay behind where she sat. “I think your mane will take longer.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t have time for it.”

  “I’m surprised you keep it long,” he said, finding it difficult to breathe all of a sudden. He gritted his teeth and set himself manfully to his task.

  “I cut it after I left Lismòr,” she said without inflection. “I’d grown it long to please Nicholas, but then I cut it.” She paused. “Later.”

  “After you left the orphanage?”

  She was still. “Hmmm.”

  Miach paused. Perhaps now wasn’t the time, but if not now, he didn’t know when. He put the brush down and rose. He walked around to squat down in front of her. It was a guess, he supposed, and likely none of his business, but since she seemed to view him not unkindly, she likely wouldn’t stick him for the familiarity. He reached up and brushed her hair off her forehead. There, over her left brow, was a small mark.

  A sword.

  But it pointed neither up nor down. It pointed sideways, as if it neither rested nor was raised for constant use.

  Or perhaps that meant that it was never sheathed.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “Is it?” she asked.

  He thought that perhaps he might have been better off never to have started this, but it was too late now. He met her eyes. “It’s Weger’s mark, isn’t it?”

  She looked at him for several minutes in silence. “And what would you know of it?” she asked finally.

  “Ah,” he stalled, “word gets round.”

  “Does it, indeed?”

  He curled his fingers into a fist to keep himself from reaching up and touching the mark again. “Why does it point that way?”

  “Perhaps you’ll learn that in time,” she returned. “When word gets round again.”

  He looked at her and couldn’t help himself; he laughed. “I imagine so.”

  She frowned at him. “I think you enjoy poking fun at me. You know, I have skewered men for less.”

  “Have you?” he asked, with another smile.

  “Well, not for exactly that, but I do not like to be teased.”

  “Did you go straight to Gobhann after you left the orphanage?”

  She blew her bangs out of her face in frustration. “Miach, I do not want to discuss it.”

  He tried not to enjoy the pleasure of hearing his name from her lips overmuch. “You really don’t?” he asked. “In truth?”

  “You aren’t going to stop, are you?”

  He smiled gravely. “I will, if you want me to.”

  “Nay, you will not. You’ll be like the drip, drip, drip of an endless string of fall rainstorms, wearing away at me until I relent.”

  “What a flattering description,” he said. It beat boots. She sighed deeply. “Very well, I will spew even more of my secrets to you. But just a few,” she warned.

  “Wonderful.” He sat down next to her on her bale of hay. “Go right ahead. Spew away.”

  “I see I have no choice,” she grumbled. “Very well, I left the orphanage at ten-and-eight. I went straightway to Gobhann—”

  “Where you cut your hair,” he put in.

  She glared at him. “Actually, I cut it just before I left the orphanage.”

  “Just curious.”

  “Are you going to let me finish?”

  “I’ll try.”

  She almost smiled. Miach was almost sure of it.

  “I left Gobhann at a score-and-four. I could have left earlier, but I was invited to stay and teach.”

  “That is flattering,” he murmured.

  “Terribly,” she agreed. “But as to the particulars of any of it, I will say no more.”

  Miach supposed that was far more answer than he deserved. Perhaps in time she might give him the entire tale so he wasn’t forced to resorting to rumor and innuendo for his information.

  He sighed lightly, then moved to resume his place on his bale of hay. “So,” he said conversationally as he began to brush the tangles and prickles from her hair, “you cut it at some point before you went to Gobhann and earned that bit of business on your brow that I’m certain you will tell me all about someday.”

  “You are irritating.”

  “But very good with a curry comb. You’re welcome. So, at some point you grew your hair long again. It is a perfect disguise. Who would think a woman with locks so fine would be so skilled with a sword?”

  She looked over her shoulder at him with a frown. “Did you think that up on your own?”

  “I may have poor sword skill, but I do have a brain.”

  “Poor sword skill? Miach, you have no sword skill.”

  “Untrue,” he managed. “I hold my own against Adhémar.”

  “He has no sword skill either,” she said promptly. “Even Glines shows better than you.”

  “Does he?”

  “He can occasionally see to an enemy,” she conceded. “If he manages to get his sword pointed in the right direction and the enemy does him the favor of falling upon it in precisely the right way.”

  Miach laughed again, then fell silent. Soon the only sounds were the whickers of the horses and the noise of the brush going through Morgan’s long hair.

  Soon, even that ceased. Miach stopped only because he felt her go quite still. It didn’t take a mage’s perception to know she was considering something serious.

  Miach dropped his hand and fingered the brush. “Morgan?”

  She sat for several minutes in silence, then turned and looked at him.

  Miach would have blanched at the distraught look on her face, but he was the archmage and an archmage was made of sterner stuff than that. He did take a deep breath, though. This was something serious indeed.

  “I’ve been dreaming,” she said flatly.

  “I know.”

  She considered for a moment or two, then stood up and took the brush from him. She set it down on the bale of hay where she had been sitting. Then she said a few appropriate words of un-noticing over the brush.

  Th
e brush disappeared under her spell.

  Miach tried not to look as surprised as he felt.

  Morgan shivered. “Well? What say you?”

  “Interesting.”

  “It isn’t the first thing I hid,” Morgan said. She gestured across the passageway between the stalls. “I tried it on another pair of curry combs.”

  Miach thought that if she didn’t sit, she would fall, so he took her hand and pulled her over to sit down next to him. He considered the brush lying directly before them. The spell was woven well, if not a little untidily. What surprised him, though, was that the spell was of Camanaë. He could see that magic shimmering in the threads of the spell that covered the comb. That was a beautiful magic, like a cloth woven of soft and lovely colors, shot through with a silver as hard as steel.

  It was not his magic of choice. As archmage, he was free to choose what magic to use and he tended to use a combination of Wexham and Croxteth. He knew that in his own veins there ran Eulasaid of Camanaë’s blood, because of his mother. He was, he conceded, also Camanaë sorceress Mehar of Angesand’s descendant, which he supposed Hearn knew very well. Perhaps that had been a mark in his favor.

  Which was neither here nor there. Camanaë was a gentler magic, but he supposed that was no reflection of the women who used that magic. Womanly they might have been, but with wills of steel and ferocious in their defense of their land and their children.

  He turned to study Morgan. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised that such a magic would come from her. She was as adamant as polished steel, but even so, there was beauty there.

  And then he felt his mouth fall open.

  Morgan? Magic?

  Perhaps that blazing of the Sword of Neroche hadn’t been a fluke after all.

  But fluke or not, she did not look at all as if she relished what she’d just done. Miach promised himself a good think on what that might mean later on. For now, he would do what he could to ease her mind.

  He rested his chin on his fist and looked at her. “Well,” he said, finally, “that’s something.”

  She looked at him so earnestly, he almost winced.

  “Can you see the brush?”

  “Um,” he said, wondering what he could say that wouldn’t reveal more than he cared to, “well, I know it is there, of course. You’ve done a very good job of hiding it.”

  “I know,” she said grimly. “But what of the others?”

  Well, aye, he could see them as well, but there was even less sense in telling her that. He smiled faintly. “You’ll have to show me where they are, of course. Now, tell me again how you knew the spell?”

  “I dreamt it.”

  “Did you?” he said. It wasn’t unheard of, but it certainly wasn’t common. “Will you tell me of that particular dream?”

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve been having it for days now. Bits and pieces of it.” She patted herself for a weapon, drew a dagger from some bit of her person, and fingered it. “It has troubled me greatly.”

  Miach looked at her dagger. “Don’t stab me by mistake.”

  She frowned at him. “Miach, I try not to be overly critical, but you need to work on your manliness.”

  He only smiled. “I’ll be about it right after you finish.”

  She put her dagger away, clutched the edge of the hay bale, and looked down at the floor of the stable. “It started with dreams of running.”

  “Were you running?”

  “I thought so, at first. Now I think I’m dreaming of a little girl and she’s the one running. The forest was full of thorns and underbrush that could not be bested.”

  He waited.

  “Then I had another dream. I stood near the edge of a clearing, under the trees.” She stopped and stared off into the distance, as if she saw it afresh. She stared so long and so quietly that Miach finally took his life in his hands and covered one of her hands with his.

  “And?”

  She looked at him and there was a look in her eye he’d never seen before.

  It was fear.

  “There was evil there,” she whispered. “A well of it.”

  “In the clearing?”

  “In the clearing, aye,” she said. “A man stood there. Tall. Dressed in black.” She took a deep breath. “There was a woman as well. Children too, I think. I’m not clear on how many, though I think they were all lads.”

  He waited for quite a while as she shook. He squeezed her hand. “Did you recognize any of them, Morgan?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t,” she said finally. “But I did recognize some of the things the mother said, or at least I think so. For all I know, it was just the words you were saying when you healed my leg.”

  Miach blinked. “What?”

  “I wasn’t awake, not fully, but I heard the words you used for the spell. Soon I dreamed and those words were in the dream. The mother of the girl used words like those.” She looked at him, obviously distraught. “The mother was there with the little girl, but she left her at the edge of the woods. Next to me.”

  “Did she,” Miach said, frowning. “What happened then?”

  She swallowed convulsively. “The man said words. He uncapped the well. Evil erupted from it. It fountained up, then came down and washed over the people like a black wave.” She paused. “It killed them all.”

  Miach closed his eyes briefly. “Even the little girl?”

  “Nay, not the little girl.”

  “Why not?”

  Morgan took a deep breath. She had to take several. She was clutching his hand so tightly, it was starting to become a little painful. But he didn’t move.

  Morgan looked at the brush. “The little girl said those words, the ones I used on that brush.” She looked at him. “The evil swept by her without seeing her.”

  Miach looked into her eyes as time slowed to a halt. A thousand questions clamored for answers, but they were naught but noise that distracted him from what he truly needed to know.

  How had a shieldmaiden from a backward island famous for bickering peasants and too many sheep dreamed a spell that she managed to weave without possessing any magic at all?

  Unless she had magic.

  Unless she dreamed memories.

  He looked away first, released her hand, and rubbed his hands over his face. Then he turned back and smiled at her. “We’ll find answers.”

  “Are there answers?”

  “There are always answers. The difficulty lies in knowing where to look.” He nodded toward the brush. “Can you undo that?”

  She shuddered. “I haven’t the faintest idea how.”

  He waited. He could have unwoven the spell, of course, but he wasn’t going to do it without her permission. He wasn’t even sure he wanted her to know that he could. Her distaste for mages was clear.

  Heaven help him if she ever found out who he was.

  She frowned thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t know how, would you? I mean,” she said quickly, “being a farmer and all.”

  It was what he had told her, of course. And he was a farmer—of sorts. He grew all kinds of things in his garden, things that made his brothers uneasy and terrified the servants. And those were just the flowers. Aye, he farmed. He planted spells all over the kingdom and watched them grow and flower into enchantments of beauty and ward and defense.

  “Well,” he said finally, “a spell of un-noticing is a handy thing for anyone to know. When you have tender radishes growing that you don’t want the pigs to find. When you have a particularly tasty cluster of grapes that you’d prefer to save for yourself after a long day of harvesting. That kind of thing. But you also have to know how to undo it or fairly soon your entire garden is invisible.”

  “Then you know the spell?”

  “Aye.” Several of them, actually, in several languages of wizardry. But he had to admit, he liked the one from Camanaë the best.

  “Well,” she said, “spit it out!”

  He hoped he could pretend a look of concentration mix
ed with a little doubt well enough to convince her. “You wove it thusly. You unweave it this way.”

  He gave her the words. She took them from him as if he’d handed her a bowl of steaming dung, then spat them back out as quickly as possible in the direction of the brush.

  There was a substantial rending sound as the spell tore itself apart.

  The brush was revealed, in all its dusty glory.

  Actually, all three brushes were uncovered. The others lay in the dirt across from them.

  Morgan leaped to her feet. “Let’s run.”

  Miach found himself taken by the hand and pulled from the stables. He was long since past the time where the mere touch of a woman’s hand was enough to bring him to his knees, but somehow, his poor self had seemingly forgotten that.

  “Doesn’t your leg hurt?” he managed.

  “Not enough to stop me.”

  Unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, he soon found himself running alongside Morgan as she fled across a farmer’s field. He counted himself fortunate that he had passed so much of his life outrunning his demons in the same way she had, else she would have left him on his knees, panting, leagues behind her. It did, however, take all his self-control not to whisper a few of his favorite words and exchange legs for wings and so he could outfly what troubled him.

  He wondered if Morgan could change her shape.

  He suspected he would do well not to ask.

  There came a time, after the moon had risen, peaked, then begun to sink, that he suspected he might simply fall over if she did not stop. He took her arm and pulled her back as he stumbled into a walk.

  “You have bested me,” he said, gasping for breath. “I can go no farther.”

  She was breathing deeply as well, but it was a very even, measured bit of business. “We have doubled back. The barn is just ahead.”

  “Good. You can carry me there.”

  She looked at him in surprise for a moment, then she laughed. It was not a loud laugh, nor a long one, but it finished him as the run had not. He hung his head and prayed for sanity.

  “You’re killing me,” he wheezed.

  She patted him quite firmly on the back. “You’re soft, Miach. Pick up a sword now and then along with your ploughshare.”

  He heaved himself upright and caught up with her as she started toward the barn. “I’ll remember that.”