by Lynn Kurland
Gair of Ceangail, alive?
“Perhaps knowing the exact number isn’t as important as we’d like to believe,” Sarah said suddenly. “Could he have written spells that your brother might not have remembered?”
“I wish I knew,” Ruith said, happily abandoning thoughts that bothered him more than he would ever admit. He dragged his free hand through his hair. “With my sire, anything was possible. I certainly didn’t pay attention to his book as I should have in my youth.”
“How were you to know what he was truly capable of?” she asked. “I’m sure you mother tried to keep it from you as best she could.”
“Aye, until she couldn’t deny it any longer.” He sighed. “I suppose the worst part is, I entertained from time to time the idea that if I could reason with him, I could convince him to be other than he was.” He smiled briefly. “I daresay my mother entertained the same notion, from time to time.”
“There must have been something redeeming about him, else she wouldn’t have wed with him.”
“Oh, he could be charming,” Ruith agreed, “when it suited him. My mother was no fool, so I imagine he had been charming enough, long enough, that she considered his nature changed. Or perhaps she was simply dazzled by his good looks.”
Sarah laughed a little. “I’m sure the get of elf and wizardess had material enough there to dazzle.”
“I daresay.” Ruith shook his head. “He is an enigma I’m not sure I will ever understand completely. He had lived so long before he wed my mother I imagine his character was fixed beyond any repairing. But my mother obviously saw things I didn’t.”
“Or she had a tender heart,” Sarah said with a smile, “like her son.”
He laughed a little uncomfortably. “You give me credit for things I don’t deserve. I’m as hard-hearted as the next black mage’s son. I suppose I’ll need to remember that if I ever see my father again . . .” He stopped speaking only because he realized that Sarah had come to an abrupt halt. He looked at her in surprise. “What is it?”
“If you ever seen your father again?” she echoed. “What do you mean by that?”
Ruith took a deep breath. “We haven’t had a chance to talk—”
Her fingers suddenly digging into the back of his hand made him wince hard enough that he stopped speaking. And once he stopped thinking long enough to pay attention to his surroundings, he realized what she was telling him.
“We’ve been followed,” he murmured, half under his breath. “Damn it anyway.”
“Aye, I daresay,” she breathed, “and so soon. What now?”
He was slightly surprised to find his first instinct was to turn into something difficult to contain and cast himself onto the first available wind. All those years he’d spent in the mountains without magic had been more easily left behind than he would have suspected. He let out his breath slowly.
“I think we should simply continue on. I’ve been laying spells of protection around us, though I haven’t been as thorough as I could have been.”
“Because we have Tarbh and Ruathar to keep watch for us?” she asked with a faint smile.
“What is the use of having shapechanging horses if they can’t turn into watch owls for us?” he asked lightly. “So, since they’ve expressed no objection to what seems to be trailing us, I say we continue on as we have been. I’ll lay an extra spell or two as a snare, and we’ll see who winds up caught.”
“I’ll leave you to it.”
She said it with a tone matching his, but he could tell by the chill of her fingers that she was less casual than she claimed to be. Perhaps he could have asked her if she could see anything, but he suspected he could narrow down quite quickly who their uninvited traveling companion could be. It was either Morag, escaped early from supper with Sìle, or perhaps one of his bastard brothers. The rest of the cast their assorted relations had identified honestly had no idea where he was or what he was about.
He continued on with Sarah, in silence, and stretched himself to see if he could gain a sense of who was behind them. He was fairly alarmed to find he didn’t care for the whiff of magic the soul carried with him. It wasn’t Morag, for it wasn’t Caol he sensed.
It was Olc.
His first thought was that his father had come to haunt him, but he immediately dismissed that as the workings of an overwrought and overtired mind. He considered each of his bastard brothers in turn, but whoever was stalking them was very good at a spell of concealment, which left them out.
Nay, it was someone else. Someone with a powerful knowledge of a very dark magic.
He walked out into a clearing with Sarah almost before he knew what he was doing. He had to admit that was a fortuitous turn of events, for it made laying a spell of protection much easier. He quickly cast that net over himself and Sarah, then set spells of ward along the perimeter. And then, because he supposed that all that effort he’d expended memorizing Miach’s most vile spells shouldn’t go to waste, he used a few extra things guaranteed to make life rather unpleasant for anyone who drew too close to him.
And then he simply looked at Sarah. She wasn’t, he could tell, any more comfortable with their location than he was, but she wasn’t bolting.
“And now?” she asked, finally.
“We wait and see.”
“I was hoping for a different answer,” she said grimly.
He smiled. “Did you memorize Soilléir’s spell before we left? The one to dim your sight?”
She nodded. “I’ve used it a handful of times already in the past several days.”
“You might want to use it again fairly soon.” He felt the presence of something behind him and it wasn’t either an owl or a recently restored horse. “Does that other spell increase your sight, do you think?” he asked pleasantly, “or just clear away spells of concealment laid before you by others?”
“I don’t think it affects anything anyone else does, because that would mean I had magic and we both know that isn’t the case.” She looked up at him bleakly. “I think it affects just me. I don’t want to know the particulars right now, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Of cou—”
The word didn’t make it past his mouth because he was interrupted by the annoyed bellowing of a mage who had run up against a spell that wasn’t so much dangerous as it was painful. Ruith spun around, his sword drawn, to find Ardan of Ainneamh swearing profusely and trying to brush off several thorns that drove themselves further into his flesh with every brush. He finally looked at Ruith and swore again.
“Get these off me!”
Ruith wiped away not only his spell but the remainder of the thorns industriously working their way into Ardan’s flesh. Thoir was standing a pace or two behind him with his hand over his mouth, no doubt striving to keep from laughing.
Ruith dissolved the rest of his spell without delay, then waited for his cousin—and cousin by marriage—to approach. He wasn’t terribly surprised to see them there. After all, they had promised him they would do a bit of scouting, then find him and give him reports of what they’d seen.
He listened to them argue about who should have gone first in order to have been the one to have best enjoyed Ruith’s spells for quite some time before they seemed to find the bickering too much effort. Ardan looked down his long, aristocratic nose at Sarah.
“Ah, the witchwoman’s get from Doìre. Still.”
Ruith opened his mouth to correct him only to have two elbows in his ribs. One, he knew without looking, had been Sarah’s. He was surprised to find that the other was Thoir’s.
“Shut up, Ardan,” he said shortly, “and use your extensive knowledge of all the inns throughout the Nine Kingdoms to see if we’re anywhere close to a hot fire and decent victuals or if we’ll need to send Ruith off hunting for something to put in a stewpot.”
“There is nothing for leagues,” Ardan said with distaste, “and nay, Ruith will not go hunt. I shall, for at least I’ll recognize what I find for supper. I’m
not sure I would recognize anything he found, his having been out of polite society for so long, of course.”
“Then be about it, please,” Thoir said politely.
Ardan cast them all a look of disgust, then turned and walked away. He melted into the darkness and was gone.
Ruith frowned. He wasn’t altogether certain Ardan wouldn’t look for the nearest inn and poach whatever was bubbling over the fire, but he wasn’t going to say anything. He had other things to think on, such as why Thoir was looking at Sarah as if he’d never seen a woman before.
He nudged his cousin gently in the ribs. “Stop it. She doesn’t like scrutiny.”
Thoir looked up at him. “And you don’t like others scrutinizing her?”
“Nay,” Ruith said shortly. “I don’t.”
Thoir only frowned at him, then turned back to his study of Sarah. “You look familiar.”
“That’s because you saw me in Slighe,” Sarah said politely.
“Nay,” Thoir said, shaking his head, “that isn’t it. I’m not sure why I didn’t see it before—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—but you look a great deal like Sorcha of Bruadair.” He glanced at Ruith. “She was a dreamweaver, you know. Very powerful, those gels from Bruadair. She wed Athair of Cothromaiche, if memory serves.”
“How would you know that?” Ruith asked in surprise.
Thoir pursed his lips. “You forget how often I’m away from home, seeing to this and that. ’Tis surprising what you can pick up in even the seediest of pubs. And as unpleasant as the memories are, I have even ventured places that Grandfather would shrink from. Such as Cothromaiche.”
“Are you insulting my lord Soilléir’s homeland?” Sarah asked pointedly.
Ruith wondered if he might stop being surprised by things that came out of the mouths of those around him. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought Sarah was preparing to draw one of her blades and use it on the fool standing to his left.
Thoir only looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time.
“Hmmm,” was all he said, then he turned to Ruith. “Since we’re waiting for Ardan to return with breakfast—”
“Supper,” Ruith corrected.
“Aye, that,” Thoir said, rubbing his hands together, “let’s make ourselves comfortable and rest. I’m interested in what King Uachdaran had to say about your quest.”
“You assume he let us inside the gates,” Ruith said.
“Grandfather had been there less than a fortnight earlier,” Thoir said with a shrug. “I assumed he had paved the way for you. But don’t describe what you found at his table. I’m not sure I could bear it given the unpalatable things I’ve eaten over the past se’nnight. Here, I’ll make a fire to warm our hands against.”
Ruith left him to it, for he was more interested in staying aware of his surroundings than he was making in his cousins comfortable, though he wasn’t above seeing Sarah seated comfortably in front of flames that sparkled on rather damp wood thanks to Fadaire. He made certain Sarah wasn’t going to be gawked at, listened to a few words of conversation to make certain she wasn’t going to be insulted, then put his hand on her shoulder briefly before he started a slow circle of the glade.
He felt nothing, which suddenly struck him as odd, for he’d definitely felt a goodly bit of menace not a quarter hour ago.
But he felt it no longer.
“Ruith, stop glowering and come over here,” Thoir called. “I have gossip you’ll be interested in.”
Ruith considered the surrounding environs once more, then shrugged aside his unease. He’d obviously been awake too long. Awake or suspicious, he wasn’t sure which. Thoir was his father’s son and like Iarann, wouldn’t have touched Olc if it were all that stood between him and death. Ruith couldn’t say he was as confident in Ardan’s scruples, but he could certainly vouch for the elf’s disdain for anything that didn’t come from within his borders. Nay, it had to have been someone else.
He set spells of ward about the glade, leaving Ardan’s name out of them for the sake of friendly diplomatic relations, then walked back over to the fire. He would have a bite of supper when it arrived, then have another look around whilst Sarah slept. Hopefully she wouldn’t mind spelling him for an hour or so. He didn’t want to ask, but he was more tired than he should have been, with no end to that in sight.
He stared out into the darkness one last time and felt the faintest hint of Olc. But was it something new or merely an echo of things gone before?
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Eight
S
arah woke abruptly and sat up, realizing only then that she’d fallen asleep. She looked over her shoulder to find Ruith sitting on a log behind her, watching someone that she discovered subsequently was Thoir sitting on the other side of a very lovely but rather inadequate fire. Ardan sat up as she watched, scowled, then brushed the dirt off himself with angry strokes. Apparently the rustic accommodations didn’t suit him at all. She supposed there was little point in trying to feign sleep any longer, so she inched back until she was sitting against the log, not because it was more comfortable to be further away from the fire, but because she didn’t want to be in the middle of any of the conversation going on at present. She didn’t particularly care for Thoir or Ardan, no matter how they were related to Ruith. Ardan was a fine example of every terribly arrogant characteristic generally associated with elves, and Thoir was…well, he was simply too handsome. All that male beauty made her nervous. It wasn’t that Ruith wasn’t handsome, it was just that in addition to his unwholesome good looks, he had some useful skills. She suspected Thoir’s only skill was leaving all maids in his vicinity swooning.
She had no desire to swoon, so she was more than happy to simply let Ruith make all the polite conversation he cared to. Why he put up with those two was a mystery, but she supposed the answer was likely simply because his mother had taught him decent manners. And there was something to be said for another pair of eyes—two, even—looking in places Ruith couldn’t go himself.
“Perhaps I should have been there,” Thoir said thoughtfully, obviously continuing a thought he’d had earlier. “I’ve only encountered the queen of An-uallach at state functions, of course, but I might have been of use to Grandfather. After all, I am the son of Làidir, grandson of—”
“Oh, aye, we know all that already,” Ardan said with a gusty sigh. “Second in line to the throne, or you would be if Sìle hadn’t wrapped those runes around Miach of Neroche’s wrists, but let’s not discuss that or you’ll stomp about in a snit again.”
“I never stomp about in a snit,” Thoir said, shooting Ardan a look.
“And you aren’t second in line to the throne,” Sarah said. She heard the words come out of her mouth and wondered when it was she was going to be able to control her tongue. First Sìle, now his grandson. She wondered if it were simply a lack of sleep or a lack of safety that had left her blurting out what would have been better left unsaid. She started to apologize, but Thoir waved away her words before she managed them.
“Nay, I’m not,” he agreed, apparently unoffended. “I am my father’s youngest son not his eldest, which Ardan would remember if he didn’t have such trouble counting. That inability to follow consecutive numbers makes for interesting, if not taxing, journeys.” He looked at Ruith. “Where were we, cousin?”
“You were discussing that hag from An-uallach,” Ardan said with distaste, “and why she didn’t squash Ruith like a bug.” He shot Sarah a look. “Surely Morag didn’t want anything to do with her.”
Sarah didn’t dare look at Ruith. She heard his sharp intake of breath, which was enough.
“Perhaps, Prince Ardan,” Ruith said in a low, careful tone, “there are glittering palaces which are calling to you to add to their springtime splendor. I suppose ’tis too much to hope for that in such locales you might learn even the basic manners a well-bred lad should call his own, but perhaps you and Thoir might benefit from a
t least attempting to gain entrance.”
Thoir laughed a little. “I think I’ll stay and keep my mouth shut. You can improve my manners all you like, Ruith.”
Sarah didn’t look at Ardan, but she didn’t miss his very gusty sigh. He pushed himself to his feet, muttered another curse about the primitive nature of their outdoor accommodations, then, instead of stomping off which she fully expected him to do, turned and made her a slight bow.
“Mistress Sarah,” he said, sounding not precisely contrite but slightly less arrogant than usual, “if I might apologize?”
Sarah looked up at him. He was, as she had noted before, almost difficult to look at, and that not just because of the fairness of his face. She had no idea what sort of magic ran through the streams in Ainneamh or flowed through the veins of the elvenkind there, but it was a very complicated, very formal sort of magic. Perhaps Ardan resented the necessity of traveling about in the world when he could have been at home, surrounded by the very stately, formal beauty she could see reflected in his soul.
She put on the best smile she could manage. “There is no need—”
“But there is,” he said. He considered, then made a very low, formal bow. “I apologize. I am, as anyone who knows me will tell you, a great arse. Being away from the edifying influence of my mother has only augmented the problem.”
“Well, now that is cleared up for us,” Thoir said dryly, “why don’t we turn to other things. Ruith, don’t you think you should tell us what you’re truly about? You know I hate mysteries.”
Sarah found that Ardan was waiting for her to accept his apology, so inclined her head at him and hoped that would be enough. He seemed to think so and resumed his seat by the fire with a grunt. Thoir was still looking at Ruith expectantly, waiting for details she wasn’t sure Ruith would give him. She felt Ruith’s hand come to rest against her back, as if he either strove to give himself something else to think about or wanted to keep her from jumping up and plunging a knife into the chests of their company. She looked up briefly at him, had a grave smile in return, then turned back to watching Thoir and Ardan.