Gift of Magic

by Lynn Kurland

  Ruith blinked at her in surprise. “What did you say?”

  “Urchaid is standing in the trees over there so don’t make a fuss,” she said in a low voice. “He’s not casting any untoward spells that I can see, so perhaps he’s not as dangerous as we think.”

  Ruith exchanged a look with Franciscus. “Let’s see to Thoir first, then turn our attentions to intimidating other mages later. I don’t want to terrify that fop back there in the trees unnecessarily.”

  Franciscus nodded and bent to remove the very filthy cloth from Thoir’s mouth. He stomped out several nasty spells that Thoir immediately spat out, then used some sort of Cothromaichian spell of containment to help him keep his magic to himself. He hauled Thoir up into a sitting position, then stood behind him and held him there with his knee. He looked at Ruith.

  “Ask away.”

  Sarah watched Ruith come to stand in front of Thoir. “You said you simply trotted up here—thanks to directions from the witchwoman of Fàs—and immediately laid your hands on a spell buried behind a rock. Somehow I find that last part difficult to believe.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Who left that spell of Diminishing here, Thoir?”

  Thoir looked at him with contempt. “Do you think I’ll tell you anything you want to know?”

  “Do you think I’ll spare one moment’s regret leaving you here, bound helplessly, to be devoured by wild beasts?” Ruith shot back. “Do you think I’ll ever allow you to sully Seanagarra’s glittering halls again? If you tell me what I want to know, I might beg Grandfather to show you mercy.”

  Thoir cursed him viciously, but seemed to realize rather quickly that he had very little room for bargaining. He looked at Ruith with absolute hatred in his eyes.

  “Who do you think left that spell here, Ruithneadh?” Thoir asked flatly.

  Sarah might not have noticed Ruith sway if she hadn’t known him so well. His face certainly gave nothing away. His hands were now clasped behind his back, though, and his knuckles that she could see were white.

  “My father?” he asked flatly.

  “Of course your father, you imbecile,” Thoir spat. “I followed him here just in time to see him tear the spell in half, roll up a part of it, and tuck it behind a rock over there.”

  “And then you just pulled it out and made off with it before he noticed, is that it?”

  “Actually, nay, I didn’t,” Thoir said stiffly. “I found myself overcome by a spell I hadn’t seen tiptoeing up behind me and was unfortunately rather senseless for quite some time.” He paused. “I’m not sure how long.”

  “My father is a rather clever fellow,” Ruith said. “You shouldn’t feel embarrassed that he bested you. The first rule with him is to always watch behind you for what he doesn’t intend that you see. So, he rendered you blissfully senseless and no doubt set some spell of ward over you that nothing ate you whilst you were dreaming of spells you shouldn’t have wanted, then you awoke. What happened then?”

  “I looked for the damned spell, that’s what happened,” Thoir snarled. “What else was I going to do?”

  “Identify evil for what it was and leave it alone?” Ruith asked politely.

  A light came into Thoir’s eyes that chilled Sarah to the marrow. She thought she had understood, after the times she had come face-to-face with Olc, that the reasons Ruith wanted nothing to do with it was because of its inherent evil. Now, looking at the elf in front of her, his eyes full of madness, she suspected Ruith shunned it for other reasons entirely.

  “You don’t understand at all,” Thoir said quietly. “You don’t understand the power—”

  “I do,” Ruith corrected him. “I do, all too well.”

  Thoir made a sound of impatience. “Aye, as an observer. But to actually use Gair’s spells, to feel their absolute perfection under your hands, to have their power rushing through you like a mighty wind that only you can control—”

  “Illusion,” Ruith said curtly. “’Tis illusion, Thoir, and distraction and a thousand other things that lead you to believe things that simply aren’t true. His magic is evil, conceived in darkness—”

  “It is beautiful!” Thoir shouted suddenly. “Beautiful and perfect in a way you couldn’t possibly begin to understand.” He took a deep breath and looked at Ruith pleadingly. “Can’t you understand? I once thought as you do, that Gair was darkness embodied and that my task was to aid Sarait however I could in stopping him. I was wrong, though. The first of his spells I tried was a simple spell of reconstruction, but the way it took the elements and rearranged them, making them more beautiful than they had been before, fashioning something new and enticing from the old.” He started to shake his head, then he froze. “Perhaps you do know.”

  “I don’t,” Ruith said without hesitation.

  A look of profound suspicion came over Thoir’s features. “You’re lying. You saw his book, the whole of his book. You can’t tell me you didn’t memorize the spells you read there.”

  “Of course I did,” Ruith said shortly, “and I’ve memorized scores of others I shouldn’t have, but that doesn’t mean I would ever use them.”

  “Then you’re a fool,” Thoir said. “A fool not to use the power available to you.”

  “I prefer to use that power for good—”

  Thoir laughed derisively. “How noble of you, Ruithneadh. Always trotting off into the darkness to do the right thing, the praiseworthy thing, the thing that ingratiates you with our grandfather.”

  Ruith looked at his cousin steadily. “Far better to ingratiate myself with him than trade my soul for the madness that comes with Gair of Ceangail’s spells.” He paused and considered. “When did you take the first half of Diminishing?”

  Thoir looked down his very aristocratic nose. “After you left Léige, for reasons of my own.”

  “Which no doubt included fear that I would find it first,” Ruith said with a snort. He looked at Franciscus. “We have to do something with him. We cannot leave him simply roaming about the Nine Kingdoms in this state.”

  Sarah watched Franciscus draw Ruith aside, but she had no desire to listen to their conversation. She couldn’t look at Thoir either. The look of pleasure on his face when he’d spoken of Gair’s spells was a thousand times worse than the madness in his eyes.

  She looked down at the map in her hands, desperate for a distraction. She could hardly believe that Gair might be alive, but she supposed it wasn’t unthinkable. The well had been powerful, true, but surely he wouldn’t have attempted to open it if he hadn’t known he could contain it. Even if it had wounded him grievously, it was not beyond belief that he could have survived.

  After all, Ruith had.

  She looked off unseeing into the distance, hoping for a distraction, but finding only that unpleasant and unwelcome thoughts began to crowd in on her.

  Perhaps the spell of Dimishing did call other spells to it. It certainly seemed to call other mages to it if the events of their journey north were any indication. She saw immediately the truth of that, for the other spells had remained in their proper places until Thoir had removed the first half from the crevice behind her. She thought back to the mage Ruith had been forced to slay on that morning they’d encountered Amitán. Hadn’t the mage ignored the bulk of the spells Ruith had tossed to Franciscus and instead made straight for him? Hadn’t Ruith had pieces from the spell of Diminishing on his person?

  She wondered, with a fair amount of discomfort, what the second half of the spell might have woven onto its surface. It had been covered with something—and that something had leapt up and wrapped itself around her arm.

  Leaving a wound that simply would not heal.

  “Oy, Mistress Sarah, will you look at that?”

  Sarah looked up to find Ned standing over her. She frowned. “What is it?”

  He pointed to the map. “Look there. ’Tis the exact shape of the highest window in my sire’s barn.” He frowned. “Don’t know why he favors turning them on a point like that save it makes
’em more difficult to open.”

  “A point?” Sarah echoed, wondering why there was such an annoying buzzing suddenly in her ears.

  “Like a square, only turned on a point,” Ned said. He reached over and took the map from her, lined it up so the torn edges met, then showed it to her. “See? ’Tisn’t a perfect square, more like one a bit squashed in its middle—”

  Sarah stopped listening. She felt behind her for any part of Ruith she could lay her hand on. She tugged until he was standing next to her, then she simply pointed at the map.

  “Look,” she managed.

  “Interest—”

  He stopped abruptly. She understood. The spells, marked as they were with the ones she’d found in the south and the ones they and Thoir had found in the north, formed a square. Well, not an entire square, because there was one corner that should have lain in Tòrr Dòrainn but didn’t. But if one were to count Gair’s well as one point and his refuge as another and an unmarked spot in Tòrr Dòrainn as a third…that left a fourth as yet unmarked spot that made something of a square.

  A fourth point that found home in a place where things were not visible.

  In Doìre.

  Seventeen

  R

  uith caught Franciscus as he swayed. He would have helped the man down onto the stool Sarah had just vacated, but he wasn’t all that steady on his own feet and wasn’t sure he wouldn’t join Sarah’s grandfather in an undignified swoon. Franciscus put his hand on Ruith’s shoulder and attempted to catch his breath. “Let’s go over there,” he said faintly. “Where we’ll have a modicum of privacy.”

  Ruith looked at Sarah and found her visage ashen, as if she’d had a great shock. He understood completely. Though it should have been of no great import, somehow seeing a pattern made not only by the locations of his father’s spells, but the significant locations in his father’s life—especially the well—was unnerving in the extreme.

  He put his arm around Sarah’s shoulders, then walked with her and Franciscus far enough from Thoir that he wouldn’t be able to overhear them. He looked at the map, then at Franciscus.

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  Franciscus rubbed his hands over his face, then folded his arms over his chest, perhaps to hold himself upright. Ruith understood that, actually.

  “It could be a random thing,” he said.

  Ruith wished he could have agreed. “We have two points representing two corners of a square, then marks on the map indicating the locations of my fathers spells which if connected would form two solid sides of the square and suggest two other sides of the same.” He had to pause to catch his breath. “If Tòrr Dòrainn is counted as the third point and the locations of the spells we found at the beginning of our journey used to draw other lines—” He had to spend a bit more time simply breathing. “Tell me you’re not looking at this map and thinking what I am.”

  The forth point lay in Shettlestoune, in Doìre.

  Was it possible his father was there?

  Franciscus looked rather green. “Let me give you details about your past—both your pasts—then we’ll examine this tangle here.” He looked at Sarah. “I am sorry, Granddaughter, if these tidings will grieve you. I will try to atone for my choices when our circumstances permit.”

  Ruith felt Sarah squeeze his hand. It was the first time Franciscus had called her that. It hadn’t seemed inappropriate, rather it had sounded like something he had wished to call her for the past score of years but hadn’t dared.

  Franciscus sighed. “Briefly, here is a bit of history you need to know. There are those of my kin who have not only the gift of magic and sight, but of Foreseeing.”

  “Foreseeing,” Sarah echoed faintly. She shot Franciscus a look. “You can’t mean that you can see the future. Soilléir said nothing about that.”

  “As well he should have,” Franciscus said darkly. “Most of us know how to keep our own counsels. And aye, that foresight has to do particularly with the future and events to be found lingering in its mists.”

  Ruith would have smiled, but he was too unnerved to. He could only imagine what sort of long periods of silence filled the halls of Seannair’s palace if Soilléir was the most loose-lipped of the clan. Soilléir could be, he could say with certainty, counted on to remain silent on almost any subject under any inducement. To learn that his relatives were even more closemouthed came as no surprise at all.

  “Very well, so you see the future but you’re discreet,” Sarah managed. “What terrible details do you have for us today?”

  “Things in the past, fortunately,” Franciscus said, sounding very relieved. “I would like to blame some of this on others—Sgath in particular—but I fear I must bear the responsibility for the choices I made for you both. You see, I knew what Morag was planning, and while I prepared Athair and Sorcha as best I could . . .”

  “With steel,” Ruith said when it looked as if Franciscus might not say more.

  Franciscus nodded with a grim smile. “Uachdaran told you as much, I suppose. Aye, I made those knives you bear, Sarah, and your sword, Ruith. And whilst I could do that for my son and his lady wife, I could do no more.”

  Ruith saw Sarah close her eyes briefly and understood. Simple thoughts and single words were all that Soilléir would offer, and he gave those both sparingly. Ruith had thought he’d understood why before, but he’d been wrong.

  “I could not wrench events surrounding them to my pleasure any more than I could convince your sire to stop being a fool,” Franciscus said with a sigh, “though I will admit I said more to Gair than I should have. With my children, however, I could only watch and hope they would succeed.”

  “Even though you knew they would fail,” Sarah said quietly, her eyes full of tears.

  Ruith winced at the grief in Franciscus’s eyes. He found himself quite thoroughly grateful that he was not one of those lads who belonged to Seannair. Their principles were too lofty and painful for him.

  “Who am I to challenge destiny, my gel?” Franciscus asked softly. “I prepared them as best I could, then made other, more quiet preparations that your great-great-grandfather Seannair would have found…inappropriate.”

  “Would he?” Sarah asked. “Is it wrong to prevent suffering?”

  “Who am I to change the course of Fate?” Franciscus asked. “Not all evil is final, nor is all suffering needless.”

  Ruith choked a bit in spite of himself. “I think I’ve heard Soilléir say the same damned thing in exactly the same way.”

  “They’re the first words we learn,” Franciscus said seriously. He turned back to Sarah. “Your parents were slain, Sarah love, three years before Gair took his family to the well. I had suggested to Phillip, Morag’s hapless mate, that he might spare his conscience undue distress by sending you away with Seleg, and that if he suggested to her that Doìre would be a fine place to land, she would be able to keep you out of Morag’s sights. I knew he would take my suggestion and that Seleg would travel south. She had her own reasons for wanting to disappear, not the least of which was wanting to be out of Morag’s reach. I had already scouted out possible locales, of course, and decided that Doìre suited my purposes. There was the house on the hill, of course, and in truth there had been a mage who had lived there for centuries. I wasted no time ginning up his legend every chance I had. I knew it would suit Ruith perfectly when he came south.”

  “Did you know he would come south?” Sarah asked quietly.

  Franciscus rubbed his hands over his face briefly. “Sgath and I had had numerous conversations about Gair, of course, and considered all possible outcomes, so aye, I had considered it.”

  “Considered it?” Ruith echoed. “Didn’t you know?”

  “Nay, I didn’t know,” Franciscus said, “not with certainty. Short of picking you up and carrying you to Shettlestoune, I couldn’t control your destiny. I could attempt to see how it might play out, but that is the thing about Foresight that isn’t always reliable
.”

  “The freedom of the poor sap in question to choose a different path?” Ruith asked dryly.

  Franciscus shot him an arch look. “I refuse to respond to that. All I will ask you is, didn’t you wonder why every step you took seemed to feel as if you were going downhill? I went against every precept, every warning, every stricture my father and grandfather spent lifetimes pounding into my thick head to lead you south. Because my lady and your mother were very fond of each other and the same thing killed them both.”

  Ruith found he couldn’t breathe all of a sudden. Sarah’s arm was around his waist just as quickly, holding him up more than he cared to admit.

  “I won’t speak of it now,” Franciscus said grimly. “Later, perhaps, when this tale is finished. Suffice it to say that Gair is the most powerful of the current crop of black mages, but there are others who share his vision for a world without light. And while I, unlike Nicholas of Diarmailt, did not promise your mother as much, Ruith, I vowed to myself that I would see you kept safe as I kept my granddaughter.”

  “Did Sgath know where I was?” Ruith asked. “Or what had become of the rest of us?”

  Franciscus shook his head. “I told him that I would do what I could, but I gave him no particulars. He has no self-control, you know, and he might have put his oar in where it didn’t belong. Once I’d landed in Shettlestoune, I didn’t dare leave, not even to visit Lake Cladach. I occasionally ventured to Bruaih to see how the ripples of Gair’s well were faring, but I didn’t dare leave Sarah alone there for long with Seleg and I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself from unseen eyes. So, aye, Sgath’s surprise at seeing you earlier this year was genuine.”

  “And the house on the hill?” Ruith asked, because he was having answers to questions that had plagued him for years. Understanding the particulars of the map could wait another few minutes as far as he was concerned.

  Franciscus shrugged. “As I said, the house was there when I arrived hard on Seleg’s heels and there had indeed been a mage there, but I embellished a legend of my own creation as thoroughly as possible. As you might expect, the locals had no trouble believing it. There were several who told me that there was a darkness there in the forest, something that seemed to leave everything around it laboring under a particular sort of malaise that no one could explain.”