Gift of Magic

by Lynn Kurland

  “On their own?” Nemed asked in surprise.

  Ruith shrugged. “I’m not sure how that’s possible. I imagine someone is finding them.” He looked at Sarah. “And carrying them off to have a closer look at them, perhaps.”

  She thought about the strange light that had come into her brother’s eye that morning in Doìre when he’d looked at the half of one of Gair’s spells he’d had on his table. It wouldn’t have surprised her if others were finding the spells. It would have surprised her even less to learn that they’d picked up those spells and found themselves unable to release them.

  “Then you’d best hurry before those mages run off with them where you can’t follow,” Nemed said.

  Ruith nodded, then looked at his grandfather who had come to stand next to him. “I think perhaps we should leave now, if you could convince Morag to advance her supper schedule.”

  Sìle sighed deeply. “I will, of course. And I’ll say this one last time: if I could retrace my steps, I would have killed Gair the first time I clapped eyes on him.”

  “And lost your grandchildren in the bargain,” Sarah said quietly. She listened to the words come out of her mouth, but found it too late to take them back.

  Sìle sighed deeply. “Aye, my gel, there is no going back, nor would I in truth. I simply grieve that there is so much darkness in the world.”

  “But there is light,” Sarah said, because apparently she just couldn’t keep herself from talking. “Obscured, perhaps, but there if one looks for it.”

  Sìle looked at her for a moment or two in silence, then walked behind Ruith to put his hand on her shoulder. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

  “I’ll remember that, lass, whilst you’re about your business. Then you’ll come to my hall and only look at loveliness.” He stepped back. “I believe I’ll go myself to push up my dinner invitation to that harpy Morag. Ruith, you and your gel should make good use of my sacrifice.”

  Sarah took herself out of the midst of the preparations, happy to simply sit on a bench under the window and stare at the floor. It was better that way, for she had less to look at.

  She wasn’t alone for long, though. She looked up to find Ruith’s sister sitting next to her.

  “Ruith will keep you safe.”

  Sarah smiled in spite of herself. “And here I was going to tell you I would keep him safe for you.”

  Mhorghain smiled wryly. “I don’t know that you won’t, in the end. Those are quite useful-looking daggers you have down your boots.”

  “If only I had your skill in using them,” Sarah said with a sigh, “but I don’t and I have no time for any instruction.”

  “I suggest using womanly wiles,” Mhorghain said, “which Ruith said you used to great advantage in the woods near Doìre. I can’t say that will work against all mages, but it’s been my experience that they generally have poor opinions of those who they think are powerless. There is no shame in allowing others to underestimate you.”

  “Is that one of Weger’s strictures?”

  “Miach’s favorite ploy,” Mhorghain corrected with another smile. Her smile faded. “I would like very much to have the chance to speak at length.” She paused. “I understand what it is to discover that your past is not what you think it is.”

  Sarah realized her nails were digging into the wood of the bench where she was holding its edge. “And how did you survive it?”

  Mhorghain shrugged. “It galls me to admit as much, but I leaned on Miach. Far more than I should have, but there you have it.” She smiled faintly. “He has mud on his boots, if you know what I mean.”

  “And your brother bakes a very decent loaf of bread, if you can ignore the burned outsides.”

  Mhorghain laughed a little. “They are, to my surprise, very much alike.” She smiled. “Lean on him. I don’t think he’ll protest. In fact, he might be pleased to have you do so before you have a look at that very long list of suitors my grandfather thought you might want to have a look at before you considered Ruith. He said he’d discussed it with you already, but thought you might like him to write the list down so you might have it to study at your leisure.”

  Sarah couldn’t help a smile. “And where is this lengthy list?”

  “Ruith threw it into the fire.”

  “Aye, I did,” Ruith said, nudging Sarah over a bit so he could sit down. “I thought it prudent to remove any distractions until I can present my suit to her grandfather Franciscus. I fear if I take any liberties before the fact, I’ll find myself changed rather permanently into a boot scraper.”

  Ruith chatted companionably with his sister for quite some time, discussing things of no consequence, then was silent when Mhorghain went to see if the small meal that had been brought could possibly be any less disgusting than everything they’d eaten up to that point. Sarah watched her for a moment, then looked at Ruith. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked as if he could have used a decent nap.

  “We’ll leave within the half hour,” he said quietly.

  “Am I going to carry you?” she asked.

  He smiled, then leaned over and kissed her very briefly. “I’ll sleep after this is all finished, but you can close your eyes now for a bit if you like.”

  “I don’t think I can,” she said seriously.

  He hesitated, then nodded, as if he understood.

  She imagined he did.

  The spells weren’t where she’d thought they were, and they had no idea who was moving them.

  Seven

  R

  uith walked swiftly but silently through the forest with Sarah, wishing he dared make werelight. Fortunately he wasn’t unused to stumbling through the dark, even the semi-dark of twilight, and apparently neither was Sarah. He wasn’t sure he wanted to think about why she’d learned the skill. He already knew the answer for himself. They’d left the inn just after Sìle commandeered the keeping room below for the queen of An-uallach and her advisors. The ensuing chaos once the innkeeper had learned just how many members of royal houses he was entertaining under his roof had allowed them to slip out of the kitchens. Sìle had promised he would make certain dinner lasted at least three hours. Ruith was grateful for the head start, and he hoped that once Morag realized that he and Sarah were missing, she wouldn’t simply excuse herself and go running after them. Ruith planned to be far enough away that even if Morag rode like the wind, she wouldn’t manage to catch them.

  They’d left the inn by way of the stables in order to fetch their horses, who they’d subsequently asked to change into something discreet. Ruith had objected to the ferocious-looking spiders they’d chosen, not because he was particularly squeamish but because he had no desire to find himself as a repository for the fangs he’d been able to see from several paces away. The horses had marched off in something of a huff on eight legs apiece, then changed themselves into mighty owls and flapped up into the trees.

  Ruith had settled for dragonshape himself after half a league in the twilight, and that only after having told Sarah that he would be even less likely than her horse to allow her to fall off his back. Apparently she’d been as eager as he to leave Queen Morag behind, for she had agreed almost without hesitation.

  To his surprise, he’d forgotten how much he’d missed shapechanging. He hadn’t changed himself into anything more exotic than either a mouse or night air in the past pair of fortnights. Feeling the dragon wildness coursing through him had left him rather hard-pressed to remember that he had a rider atop his back he had promised not to terrify.

  He had landed an hour ago where Sarah had told him to, then walked with her, trying to shake off the intense desire to change himself again into something with wings and hurtle through the rather breezy evening sky.

  Perhaps he was slightly more grateful for his magic than he’d been willing to admit.

  Sarah had stopped him at one point, then pointed down at his feet. He’d looked, then cursed under his breath. It was a piece of the first half of his father’s s
pell of Diminishing. Of all the things he would have wanted to see, this was the last.

  It wasn’t that the spell itself was so powerful, though he had very unpleasant memories of watching his father use it on fully coherent mages who knew that every drop of their power was about to be drained from them and added to Gair’s own considerable store of the like. It also wasn’t the thought that someone was possibly aware enough of his movements that he was able to predict where Ruith would go before he went there and thereby leave a little surprise for him when he arrived.

  It was that Ruith had had the second half of the spell of Diminishing stolen from him and he wasn’t entirely sure that the mage responsible for that theft wasn’t the one tearing up the first half and leaving it behind.

  The question was, why?

  After all, why would anyone with sense give up any part of that spell unless he had the bulk of it in his possession and could part with a bit of it with the apparent intention of making Ruith himself quite mad? Ruith supposed there were a variety of other reasons a mage might be doing the like, but he cared for none of them for they all led him to the same conclusion which was that there was someone out there, someone he couldn’t see, who knew he was alive. Whether or not that mage realized what Ruith was searching for, Ruith couldn’t have said.

  He wasn’t looking forward to the moment he discovered the truth.

  Sarah put her hand suddenly on his arm. “It’s over there. The spell we’re seeking, not just a scrap of Diminishing.”

  Ruith pulled himself back from his useless thoughts and nodded, then followed her off the road and into darkness. She was unerring in her ability not to plunge them into ravines, though, and soon they were standing in front of a handful of stones. Well, they were actually boulders, but they looked as if they’d been there for centuries, grouped together unremarkably thanks to some heaving of the earth in distant memory. He looked at Sarah in surprise.

  “Here?”

  “Under there.”

  He considered his sword as a lever, then dismissed it and looked for something else. He didn’t suppose even a sturdy branch would serve him any, so he settled for magic to move things to his satisfaction.

  And there, under the rubble, looking rather worse for the wear, was one of his father’s spells.

  “Which is it?” Sarah asked.

  He rolled it up without looking and stuffed it into his pack. “I don’t know and couldn’t care less. We’ll lay them all out at the end of our road and see what we’re missing. For now, I just want to be away from here. I don’t like the feel of these woods.”

  She nodded and followed him away from the rock that had been rolled away from the others, then stopped with him when he pulled her into the deeper shadows of the forest. He leaned against a tree to catch his breath for a moment, then reached for her hand.

  “How are you?”

  “Terrified,” she breathed.

  He laughed a little. “Well, you’re honest, at least.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m trying not to think on it,” he admitted.

  And he wasn’t. He had spent a score of years on his own, propelling himself into manhood without the guidance of anyone. Well, he supposed he’d had aid from the books in his library—heroic tales had been very well represented, as it happened—and the occasional lecture from Franciscus offered over initially very watered-down ale, but for the most part he’d relied on himself. Any uneasiness he’d experienced as a youth, he had faced and overcome by himself. And despite how lovely it had been to sit recently in a circle of family and friends, he certainly didn’t need aid—

  He stopped and looked at the remarkably beautiful woman standing next to him shivering with cold but watching him steadily, and it occurred to him that perhaps he needed more aid than he wanted to admit.

  Aid, or perhaps affection.

  He closed his eyes briefly, then reached out and pulled her into his arms. That she came willingly was perhaps one of the sweeter moments of his life.

  “We’ll be about our business as quickly as possible,” he said finally, “so we might retreat to Seanagarra and perhaps even manage to witness what will be the most overdone and under-attended wedding in a century.”

  “Will no one come to Mhorghain’s wedding?” she asked, her words muffled against his shoulder.

  “My grandsire won’t let them in,” Ruith said. “He’s notoriously inhospitable to those who don’t meet his exacting standards.”

  She lifted her head and looked up at him. “Are you telling me Soilléir won’t be on the guest list?”

  “Miach will put him there, I daresay,” Ruith said. “Whether our favorite spewer of simple words and purveyor of rudimentary observations slips discreetly past the gate is another matter entirely.”

  She studied him in silence for a moment or two. In fact, she looked at him for so long in such silence that he shifted uncomfortably.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I was just wondering what it was you and Miach were whispering about over in the corner before we left?”

  Nothing he wanted to discuss with her, but he supposed that out of all the things he’d discussed with her, it was perhaps the least perilous. Why he hadn’t thought to have that particular conversation with his future brother-in-law earlier in their visit he wasn’t sure. Weariness, perhaps, or the distraction of seeing Mhorghain, or watching Sarah’s dark red hair by the light of the fire and wondering how it was he could be willing to allow her to walk into such peril—

  “Ruith?”

  He cleared his throat. “We were making a list of my father’s spells. Their number, as it happens.”

  “And what did you decide?”

  “That Miach knew two more than I remembered.”

  “That’s good,” she said, then she froze. “Or perhaps not. How many spots have I marked?”

  “Including the spells taken from me outside Ceangail?” Ruith asked. “A score.”

  “And how many spells did Miach remember?”

  “A score and two.”

  She looked up at him in astonishment. “But how is that possible?”

  He shrugged, though he felt anything but casual about it. “Miach could be wrong. Mhorghain didn’t know, of course, and when I asked Rùnach when we were at Buidseachd, he feared to trust his memory. I understand that Miach and Keir had had the opportunity to discuss them at length. Miach, being Miach, memorized them all, of course. And by his count there were twenty-two.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think I’ll look at the list of them I made and stuck down my boot, then rack my wee head for any Keir might have missed.”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “Does the number strike you as inaccurate?”

  “My father was terribly suspicious,” Ruith admitted. “He wouldn’t have chosen a number that didn’t have a meaning for him. Trying to divine what that might be, however, is a daunting task.” He tightened his arms around her briefly, then released her. “We should walk again, I think. ’Tis too cold to stand about.”

  She nodded and followed him for a bit until the path became wide enough for them to walk together. He reached for her hand and laced his fingers with hers. Sarah walked alongside him for several minutes in silence, then looked up at him.

  “Do you have any idea what number would have had meaning for him?”

  Ruith shrugged. “I’m not sure where to begin speculating. It could have been anything. He lived for a thousand years before he wed my mother.”

  “He had seven children.”

  “Aye,” he agreed, “and there are seven rings of mastery, seven founders of the schools of wizardry, and seven points on the crown of Neroche.”

  “But nine kings—including Morag, of course—on the Council of Kings,” she said with a faint smile, “ten languages of magic, and fifteen bickering farmers on the town council of Doìre.”

  Ruith laughed a little in spite of himself. “The last should likely shake the foundat
ions of the world.”

  “It should,” she agreed.

  He considered the numbers, but none of them made any particular impression on him. The only thing he was certain of was that his father had never written anything in his book that hadn’t been absolutely perfect down to the final syllable of each particular spell. That Miach could only remember slightly less than two dozen wasn’t a surprise. Gair had had spells for everything, but it wouldn’t have done to have gathered any but the most spectacular in a single tome.

  Ruith could see the book now as clearly as if it had been in front of him. The cover had been finely crafted leather, dyed black. The only thing of note had been the lock, which Ruith had never had the chance to examine closely enough to determine how it might be bested. No doubt it required the most important spell of all, recited crisply and with authority.

  Then again, the book could have simply required a key, but at the moment he couldn’t have said which it was. Perhaps the most reliable thing he could say about it was that most if not all the pages had been ripped out. When that had taken place, Ruith couldn’t have said. Surely not before his sire had attempted to best the well.

  It was possible, he supposed, that his sire had left the book in the library at Ceangail and his bastard sons had fought over it, then scattered the pages out of spite. Or, perhaps more likely, his father had been the one to do the scattering, on the off chance that someone would gather up the pages of the book and use his accursed spells. Ruith had just never suspected that the spells would find themselves being called by someone.

  What if that someone was his sire?

  He could hardly bear to entertain the thought, but he had to admit he’d considered the possibility a time or two over the previous score of years. Anytime the idea had cropped up like a noxious weed in the garden of his tranquil existence he’d plucked it up and burned it without hesitation, but aye, he’d considered it a time or two. To know that Miach had whipped himself into a bitter wind and blown for two solid days to find him to suggest as much…well, it lent the idea a credence Ruith didn’t care for in the least.