Gift of Magic

by Lynn Kurland

  Admittedly, he’d known Mhorghain was alive, which should have given him an edge in the current situation, but somehow it didn’t. The last time he’d seen her, they’d both been standing on the edge of a glade in a forest draped in the very vilest of spells of illusion and distraction, watching their father stride out into the clearing to demonstrate for them his unprecedented power by uncapping a well of evil, then containing it. Ruith’s mother had given him the charge of keeping Mhorghain safe.

  Looking back on it from the slightly less devastating position of having his sister again within reach, he could say that he had made the best decision he could have at the time. His mother had put herself in mortal danger to save them, and he’d released Mhorghain to try to save their mother.

  He’d ended up losing the both of them.

  He’d been washed away by the contents spewed by that monstrous well. When he’d managed to crawl back to the last place he’d seen his family, he’d found only his mother lying by the well, dead, and the rest of his family gone. He had assumed Mhorghain had been washed away to her death with the rest of them. He’d been wrong.

  Mhorghain was looking at him as if she’d just seen a specter of some kind. It occurred to him, with a flash of dismay, that she might have mistaken him for their sire.

  “Do I look so much like Father, then?” he asked.

  “Don’t be an ass,” Mhorghain said promptly, “of course not.”

  Miach laughed briefly, then sobered abruptly at the look Mhorghain shot him. Ruith only shook his head. She looked like their mother, but she was obviously not their dam. He was fairly sure he’d never heard Sarait of Tòrr Dòrainn call anyone an—

  “You look like you,” Mhorghain was saying. “I simply hadn’t expected to see you here, and that because no one bothers to tell me anything interesting before he flaps off into the night.”

  “Your betrothed has been hedging again,” Ruith managed.

  Mhorghain pursed her lips. “Aye, he does that.”

  “Outright lies now and again, I’d imagine,” Ruith supplied helpfully.

  “I don’t lie,” Miach said mildly, “though I will admit to leaving the truth undisturbed when necessary.”

  Ruith imagined so, which would make him a very good king indeed. Discreet and politic, two things his deceased brother wouldn’t have recognized if those qualities had broadsided him. Ruith would have said as much, but he realized his sister was looking at him still, as if she just might have had enough surprises for the day. He winced, then reached out and pulled her into his arms.

  He thought he might have wept. He was fairly sure Mhorghain had cursed quite a bit more than was ladylike. He supposed that in spite of the litany of curses he was fairly certain she hadn’t learned at Nicholas of Diarmailt’s knee, she had shed a tear or two herself.

  She finally pulled away, dragged her sleeve across her eyes, then glared at him. “Where have you been?”

  “Hiding,” he said, intending that the word sound offhanded and casual. He failed rather spectacularly, actually.

  She closed her eyes briefly, then shook her head. “You can’t blame yourself for any of it, Ruith.”

  “The well,” he asked politely, “or letting go of you?”

  “Either,” she said impatiently, “or both. You couldn’t control the first and you had no choice in the last. You did what was needful. Not that I remember much of it, thankfully.” She rubbed her arms suddenly. “I don’t suppose we have to stand out here and chat, do we? It seems like either you or Miach could quite easily build us a fire in some secluded glade.”

  Miach laughed a little. “Morgan, the entire place is either still frozen solid or dripping with rain that should be solid—” He looked at her, then shut his mouth around what else he apparently intended to say. “I’m not comfortable with the exposed nature of a fire in the midst of a field. Perhaps we could seek out a comfortable corner of the stables instead.” He paused. “If that suits you, of course.”

  Ruith suppressed a smirk and stopped himself just before he bawked like a chicken to mock Miach’s utterly henpecked state, partly because he could see his sister was thoroughly undone but mostly because he was no longer a ten-year-old boy. He contented himself with the thought of poking Miach about it later, then realized what Miach had called his betrothed.

  “Morgan,” he murmured. Miach had told him that’s what they had called her for most of her life, but it was still very odd to watch her respond to that name.

  Mhorghain shot him a look he couldn’t quite decipher, but there was a fair amount of discomfort in it. “You may call me what you like. Just don’t let Grandfather hear you.”

  He took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I can call you anything save Mhorghain.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything else.” She turned to Sarah and held out her hand. “I believe you must know my brother, and I’m guessing that harpy my grandfather just took away knows you, but we haven’t met properly. I’m Morgan.”

  Sarah took her hand. “Sarah,” she said politely. “And I appreciate the rescue. I needed it.”

  Mhorghain looked at her thoughtfully. “You remind me of someone. Not so much in looks, actually, but in the air about you . . .”

  Miach leaned close to Mhorghain. “She won’t tell you, but I will and face her wrath later. She’s Soilléir of Cothromaiche’s cousin, but she only recently discovered it. You remember that ageless, bright-eyed keeper of the spells of essence changing who roams the halls of the schools of wizardry, terrifying the masters and keeping the workers of evil in check.”

  Mhorghain looked at Sarah in surprise. “Then you have a mighty magic.”

  Sarah shook her head quickly. “I don’t have any at all.”

  “I’m not sure how that’s possible, but you can surely count yourself fortunate,” Mhorghain said, with feeling. “’Tis vile stuff. I’m happy enough to watch Miach have as much of it as he likes, but I don’t care for it.”

  Ruith suppressed a smile. The seventh child and only daughter of the black mage of Ceangail disavowing any claim to his power? Nothing would have wounded their father more.

  “I imagine,” Miach said dryly, “that you two might have several things in common.”

  Mhorghain lifted her eyebrows briefly. “I daresay. Perhaps we might discuss them later in front of a hot fire. For now, I’ll be satisfied to know how it was you met my brother.”

  “In Doìre,” Sarah said looking briefly up at Ruith. “He was pretending to be the ancient mage living in the mountains whose reputation was so terrifying no one dared disturb him.”

  “I’m unsurprised,” Mhorghain said, rubbing her arms suddenly, “though I’m suddenly not so sure I want to hear the rest out here. Let’s find shelter where you might tell me the rest.”

  Ruith realized abruptly that he shared the chill that had suddenly overtaken her. He shared a brief look at Miach who immediately reached for Mhorghain’s hand.

  “A fine idea, my love. I’ll make sure we have a bit of privacy from listening ears and conjure you up a decent blanket.” He exchanged another look with Ruith. “I don’t think Morag is the only thing haunting these woods.”

  Ruith didn’t either, but he couldn’t bring himself to speculate on who else that might be. The list was too long for his comfort. He looked pointedly at his sister’s hand in Miach’s, then glared at the man who thought he was going to actually drag her in front of some species of priest. Miach only returned his look steadily, without even so much as a hint of a smirk.

  “If you kiss her in my presence,” Ruith said, just so Miach was clear on where he stood, “I’ll make it so you can’t walk to your wedding—which I’m still not convinced isn’t just a detail left over from a bad dream.”

  “Is it too late if they’re both wearing Fadairian runes about their wrists?” Sarah asked with a thoughtful frown.

  “Everlastingly,” Miach said cheerfully before he walked away with a woman he obviously adored.

  Rui
th sighed and put his arm around the woman he shared that same sort of affection for. He only hoped he would manage to keep himself alive long enough to make it a permanent arrangement. Given the morning he’d had and how close he’d come to losing her to Morag of An-uallach, he was honestly afraid to hope too much for it.

  “How are you?” she asked, as they followed the king and future queen of Neroche.

  He supposed there was no point in not being honest. “I’m not sure unsettled begins to describe it.”

  “She looks so much like your mother, then?”

  He blinked, then realized she was talking about Mhorghain and not the list of things potentially haunting the woods around them. “Aye, she does, but they are very different.” He took a deep breath. “’Tis very difficult to think on how many years have passed since I saw her last.”

  “I suspect she feels the same way,” Sarah said quietly. “And I imagine she doesn’t hold you responsible for it.”

  “Can you see that?” he asked.

  “I heard it in her voice, actually, but it would have taken no especial powers of sight to see in her face that she meant it.” She looked up at him and smiled. “It’s good to know that, wouldn’t you say?”

  He could only manage a nod, which he supposed was better than unmanning himself again by a display of untoward emotion. He also decided that lecturing Sarah on the perils of walking through the woods in the dark could be saved for later. After all, she’d had a rather busy morning trying to avoid being killed by the queen of An-uallach and then watching him fall apart whilst greeting the sister he hadn’t seen in a score of years. Perhaps there was something in particular that had driven her from the inn in the first place.

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to speculate on what that something might be.

  So he walked with her, feeling rather more content than he deserved to feel no doubt, and listened to the conversation going on in front of him between his wee sister who was not so wee any longer and the fig-eating, spell-poaching boy who seemed to be torn between his pleasure at seeing her and an intense desire to shout at her.

  “You promised you were going to remain behind,” Miach said rather calmly, all things considered. “You promised, Morgan.”

  “I brought guardsmen,” Mhorghain returned without hesitation.

  “Guardsmen,” Miach echoed, sounding as if he were very close to choking on the word. “Is that what you call them?”

  “Aye, that is what I call them. I was in no danger.”

  Miach opened his mouth to say something, then apparently thought better of it.

  “You promised you would be gone three days,” Mhorghain said tartly, “and you were gone five, which I thought was overlong, all things considered.”

  “I had business—”

  “So did I. And part of that business was to find out where you were. Interrupting that shrew’s morning sport was merely a happy coincidence.”

  Miach looked at her in silence for a moment or two, then sighed deeply. “I suppose I cannot fault you for doing what I would have no doubt done as well, but the least you can do is tell me how you knew where to find me and why you felt the need to look in the first place.”

  “Nicholas arrived shortly after you left and did me the favor of telling me where to look. He also had a suggestion or two about things I hadn’t considered.” She paused and gave her betrothed a look that Ruith couldn’t quite identify. “As for the why of my journey, I did have a particular reason.”

  “I hesitate to ask what that might be. Well, past an intense desire simply to be in my arms again.”

  “There was that,” she agreed, “but there was something else as well, something I had to bring you.” She paused. “A particular something that you and I acquired in Lismòr, actually.”

  Miach looked winded enough that Ruith almost stepped forward to force him to sit and put his head between his knees. Miach recovered admirably, closed his eyes briefly, then reached out and tucked a wildly curling lock of hair behind Mhorghain’s ear.

  “I understand now,” he said quietly.

  “I imagine you do.”

  Miach exchanged a long look with her that Ruith envied. It was passing strange that Miach should know his sister so much better than he did—and substantially more wrenching than he’d suspected it might be. But before he could think on that overlong, Miach released Mhorghain’s hand, then turned and smiled at them.

  “The path here is wide enough for four, I daresay. Shall we walk together?”

  Ruith checked his first impulse, which was to ask Miach what he was hedging about at present, and instead took the opportunity to walk for a bit with both Sarah and Mhorghain within easy reach. Miach drew Sarah into a conversation about the weaving guild in Neroche, which left Ruith walking alongside his sister, wondering where to even begin with her. He finally mustered up enough courage to look at her.

  “I’m sorry, Mhorghain,” he said quietly, “that I didn’t know you were alive.”

  “’Tis hardly your fault—”

  “But I would have come to look for you,” he said. “If I’d known.”

  She started to speak, then shook her head. “There is no point in trying to refight yesterday’s battle, Ruith.”

  “Is that one of Weger’s strictures?”

  “He is pithy,” Mhorghain agreed. “And he would say the same thing to you. What’s done is done and nothing can change it. I have no regrets for the course my life has taken.”

  Ruith sighed. “I suppose I should thank Fate that she didn’t send me stumbling into Weger’s thorny embrace.”

  “It is a bit austere,” Mhorghain conceded, “but rather bracing, when looked at in the proper light.”

  He couldn’t imagine, but he wasn’t going to argue.

  He studied her a bit longer in silence, storing up the sight against the possibility that he might not see it again.

  She blinked in surprise. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “I haven’t seen you in a bit, Mhorghain.”

  “Nay, you’re looking at me as if this might be the last time.” She looked at him narrowly. “What are you about?”

  He thought very seriously about leaving the truth undisturbed, as Miach would have no doubt advised him to do. After all, what good would it do for his sister to know the madness he contemplated? It wasn’t as if she could do anything to help him—not that he would have accepted her help if she’d forced it on him. She had, from what Miach had told him over a bracing cup of barely drinkable ale earlier that morning, closed the well their father had opened. Ruith had no illusions about what that had likely cost her.

  But if he didn’t tell her what he was about, he suspected she would investigate on her own and perhaps even insert herself into a battle that wasn’t hers to fight.

  He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m collecting the pages of Father’s book of spells.”

  “His what?” she asked in surprise, then she shivered. “Oh, that.”

  “Aye, that,” Ruith agreed.

  “And how do you propose to acquire these pieces of absolute evil?”

  “Sarah can see them.”

  Mhorghain looked at him in astonishment, then she closed her eyes briefly. “The poor gel.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Ruith said quietly. “When we began this quest, she was hunting her brother to keep him from destroying the world and I was coming along to protect her. It was very shortly thereafter that I realized what we were really hunting was Father’s spells and that I needed Sarah more than she needed me.”

  “For more reasons than just the seeing, I imagine,” Mhorghain said, scrutinizing him a bit more than he was comfortable with.

  “Aye, there is that,” he said, “but I won’t frighten her off by talking about it. And there you have it. I would leave her behind and do the best I can on my own, but—”

  “She won’t stay behind.” Mhorghain shook her head. “Sometimes, Ruith, th
ere are tasks that only you can do, no matter who or what you are. If this is Sarah’s burden to bear, not even you can take it from her.”

  He rubbed his hands over his face before he could stop himself. “I don’t want to hear that. The only mercy in all of this is that at least I had no idea you were going to that damned well with only Miach of Neroche as protection.”

  “And Grandfather,” Mhorghain said, “and Sosar, Keir, and a contingent of elves. But in truth, all I needed was Miach. And if it eases your mind any, Miach told me just a moment or two ago—”

  “Once he stopped shouting at you—”

  “He didn’t shout,” she said primly. “He was simply expressing his joy at seeing me in a place where he hadn’t expected to.”

  “Loudly.”

  “He’s overprotective, and you’re changing the subject.” She shot him a look. “I think I remember this about you.”

  “I haven’t improved over the years.”

  She laughed a little and the sound eased his heart more than he would have imagined it would. He couldn’t bring to mind many memorable times with his sister—he had, after all, been singularly obsessed with looking for useful spells—but he could remember her laughing at Seanagarra. Never at Ceangail, of course, but often as she ran through their grandfather’s halls. Her laughter hadn’t changed all that much over the years.

  She put her arm through his. “As I was trying to tell you, you need have no fear of my following you. Though I would ignore him if circumstances warranted it, in this I think I will humor Miach and leave you to see to your quest by yourself.”

  “Aye,” he agreed, “you will. Your turn is finished for the moment.”

  “Which is probably just as well. I don’t know anything about magic and that sort of rot.” She patted the Sword of Angesand affectionately. “I’d rather best my enemies with steel.”

  “I have the feeling Mehar of Angesand would approve of you,” he said.

  “She claims she does,” Mhorghain agreed. “You can ask her when you come to Tor Neroche after you and Sarah are finished with your task.”