by Lynn Kurland
“They’re written in Croxteth,” she ventured.
“That’s interesting,” Ruith said, sounding intrigued. “Can you make out what they say?”
Sarah had the same sensation she’d had as she’d stepped away from the forest earlier that morning, as if a layer of wool had been pulled from her eyes. She supposed there were more layers still, but even so she had a definite clearing of her sight.
Odd.
Perhaps it was nothing more than the leagues she had put between herself and Doìre. To be sure, her heart had lightened with every step.
She pulled herself back to the task at hand and studied what she could almost see.
“I think most of them have to do with power and magnificence and the superior quality of the cloth used in Master Oban’s robes.”
Ruith made a noise that might have passed for a bit of a laugh in someone else. “How fortunate we are that your mother did not neglect your education in the tongues of magic, else we might still have questions on that score.” He leaned against the door again. “What other secrets are you hiding?”
She felt a thrill of fear rush through her before she could begin to stop it. Too many years of hiding who she was had obviously taken a toll. But since there wasn’t any possible way Ruith could know even the first thing about her, she had to believe his question was an innocent one.
“Oh, just the usual things a witch’s daughter can do that no mage would lower himself to,” she said lightly. “I’ll tell you one of my secrets for every one of yours you reveal.”
“I suppose that will leave us discussing the weather.”
She imagined so. She studied the runes trailing up and down the doorframe and winding around the latch like a vine. “I can actually get along in quite a few tongues,” she conceded, “though not as many as I would like. What of you?”
“The same,” he said easily. “I had to do something during all those centuries of hiding in the hills, didn’t I?”
“If you’re a score and ten,” she said with a snort, “I would be surprised.”
He tilted his head slightly. “Do you think so?”
“You don’t really want to discuss this right now, do you?”
“Nay, I do not,” he agreed. “I think we should rather be about this business and see what it yields.”
Sarah supposed she might have hit closer to the mark than he was comfortable with, though he didn’t retreat back into the silence he’d wrapped around himself earlier. Perhaps she would wear him down eventually and discover all his secrets—
Which would leave her open to his discovering an equal amount of hers. Fortunately, she had no plans to be traveling with him long enough for any of that. She had plans of her own that didn’t include a man wearing more weapons than necessary and sporting a face that was distracting in the extreme. She had her duty to the Nine Kingdoms to fulfill, then she was going to be about her own future. Ruith would no doubt wish to return to his house on the hill where he could retreat back behind his terrible reputation and have his own measure of peace, though how he could find it in Shettlestoune, she couldn’t imagine. She wouldn’t have set foot in the place again if her life had hung in the balance.
Ruith knocked on that door that was covered in endless praises to Master Oban and his marvelous magic. A small square slid open and a long nose appeared protruding from it.
“What do you want?”
“An audience with His Magnificence,” Ruith said politely. “We bear gifts.”
Two eyes looked down that nose skeptically. “What sorts of gifts?”
“Small, round ones.”
“Let me see.”
Ruith produced two gold coins, then handed them into fingers that had replaced the face in the opening. The fingers fondled the coins for a moment or two, then retreated back into darkness. The door over the little window slid shut.
Sarah waited for a moment or two, then looked at Ruith. “Perhaps the wizard is not receiving visitors.”
“Could be.”
“Do you think Daniel threatened the mage?”
“So Oban won’t open to us?” he asked in surprise. “Of course not.
“He can be intimidating.”
Ruith snorted. “Your brother is nothing more than a very small annoyance in a world too large for his power. I have the feeling he will try to intimidate a mage or two, find himself slapped for his trouble, then slink off in shame and set himself up as a village wizard in some obscure locale to the south where neither you nor I will need travel to find him.”
She wanted to believe him. She would have given all the gold in her purse plus whatever she might have earned over the rest of her life to have believed him. But she couldn’t.
She had seen what Daniel could do.
Ruith pushed away from the wall. “We’ll work harder at chatting up this lad here and see if I’m not right about the other.”
He knocked again, deposited another three coins into the gatekeeper’s questing fingers, and was informed that was enough for a single entrant. Ruith stuck his foot in the door when it opened, then pushed it open far enough for Sarah to go in first. He followed, shutting the door securely behind him. The gatekeeper eyed him warily, then scuttled back into what apparently served as his sitting room.
Ruith started along the passageway. Sarah followed him, loosening the knife in the back of her belt as she did so. She was prepared to find any number of souls loitering about with her death on their minds, but to her surprise she saw no one save a kitchen lad who took one look at Ruith, squeaked, and fled.
They saw no one else until they reached a door on the upper floor that was covered with the same sorts of runes that adorned the front door below. Sarah looked at Ruith.
“I think he’s here.”
Ruith tried the door handle, but it was locked fast. He picked the lock with tools he produced from some pocket or other, then he very carefully turned the knob. Sarah leaned up on her toes and looked over his shoulder.
The chamber was exactly as she imagined it would be, full of very fine furniture, an enormous, elegant hearth, and cases upon cases of expensive things to dust. There was a man sitting in front of the fire with his back to the door. The wizard, obviously, judging by the height of his pointed hat and the robes that flowed over the sides of the chair and cascaded down to the floor. He was, quite thankfully, alone.
Ruith motioned for her to stay behind, which she chose to do without hesitation. She stood in the shadows and watched him pad silently over to the man. He stopped to the mage’s left, well within his line of sight, and made a low bow.
“Master Oban?”
The wizard threw himself to his feet, but the motion seemingly overbalanced him. Before Ruith could reach out and take hold of him, he’d gone sprawling on the floor. Sarah hurried over and pulled his very heavy chair back a bit whilst Ruith righted the side table that had taken a tumble along with its master.
The mage looked up at them, then began to scream.
Silently.
Ruith took hold of the man and pulled him to his feet. The mage fought him, but he wasn’t any match for Ruith in size and strength. Ruith set him with surprising gentleness back into his chair, then pushed his own hood back from his face and looked at the wizard gravely.
“What befell you, Master Oban?”
Sarah was ready to ask the same thing, but then she had a decent look at the mage’s face. He wasn’t so much disfigured as he was slightly... empty. As if something that had been there before had been removed—and not very well. He mouthed spells, but nothing happened. He picked up a very ornate wand, golden and sparkling, and waved it frantically at Ruith. Sarah watched a poorly woven and exceedingly slow-moving spell waft its way through the air like eiderdown. Ruith stepped aside, leaving the spell whispering harmlessly past him.
The mage looked at them both for a moment in silence, then he put his face in his hands and began to sob. It was done in profound silence, which made it all the more terrible. S
arah perched on the edge of the man’s chair and put her hand on his back. He reached up and fumbled for her hand until she gave it to him. He held on tightly and continued to grieve.
Sarah looked up at Ruith. “What do you think happened to him?”
His expression was very grim. “I’m not sure.” He pulled up a stool and sat down in front of the old mage. “Can you tell us what befell you?”
It took another few minutes before Master Oban finally dragged one of his velvet sleeves across his face, then nodded. He seemed to recapture something of himself, because he suddenly waved his wand around furiously, sending more spells scattering around him. Sarah watched them bounce harmlessly off things and disintegrate. He then leapt up and began an involved pantomime where he played two characters: himself, by all accounts; and apparently another evil, sneaky mage. A fight ensued and, despite Oban’s masterful strategies and impressive defenses, his voice was taken from him.
Sarah caught sight of Ruith’s face during the last bit of Oban’s tale and was surprised by his expression. He said nothing, but he watched Oban as if he’d seen something almost too horrible to face. She almost reached out to him, but stopped herself just in time. He visibly shook aside whatever had troubled him, then assumed an expression of sympathy.
Curious.
She turned her thoughts to what the runes below had proclaimed about Oban’s utter magnificence. She wondered about her brother and how Ruith had been certain he didn’t have enough power to do anything but be an annoyance. But what if he had found a way to take things from others?
Their voices, perhaps?
Or their power?
The thought was so horrifying, she instinctively turned away from it ... and then she looked at it again. How many times had her mother wished aloud that she could add to her own power and lamented the fact that she knew no spell for such a thing? How often had Daniel simply listened to her rattle on without adding to the conversation? Sarah had always assumed he was simply allowing their mother to go on so she would think kindly of him when he wanted something from her. Now Sarah began to suspect he might have been thinking about something else entirely.
Her only question now was how in the world he ever would have found such a spell.
“Master Oban,” she said slowly, “did someone steal more than your voice?” She paused. “Perhaps your power, too?”
The mage stopped in mid-retelling of his tale, then turned to her and nodded vigorously, but that shouldn’t have caused the sound of breaking glass. Sarah realized then that the glass Ruith had been holding had slipped through his fingers and shattered against the marble floor. She rose from where she’d been sitting on the edge of the chair to help him, only to find Master Oban in her way. He held up his thumb and forefinger pinched together and looked at her pointedly.
“But only a bit,” she guessed.
He looked down his nose at her and jerked his head once in a brisk nod. Of course. It likely wouldn’t do for anyone to believe he was less than he had been.
She cleared her throat. “Was it a man, a dark-eyed man with blond hair?”
Master Oban’s eyes widened suddenly, and he nodded.
“I fear that was my brother,” she admitted. “We’re trying to find him and stop him from doing any more damage—”
The mage pulled his cloak more closely around him and tapped her aside with his wand before he marched unsteadily toward the door. He looked back over his shoulder at them, then pointed pointedly at the passageway.
Sarah looked at Ruith. “I think he wants to come with us. Do you need to rest—”
“Nay,” he said hoarsely. He rose, crunching glass under his boot. “I am well.”
He didn’t look well, but she wasn’t going to argue. She followed him from the chamber not out of any desire to defer to him, but rather because she thought she might better catch him that way if he keeled over.
Master Oban, however, seemed perfectly happy to be off hunting Daniel, if the alacrity with which he descended to his kitchens was any indication. He found a rucksack and began to load it with dainties that likely wouldn’t survive the trip out of town. She watched him for a moment or two, then looked up at Ruith, who looked better than he had before. Then again, he’d poached a substantial piece of cake and was putting it where it was intended to go.
Man first, mage second, apparently.
Master Oban paused in his packing and wandered out of the chamber.
“I believe we’ve made another acquisition,” Sarah said with a sigh.
“He’ll slow us down,” Ruith said grimly. He poured two glasses of wine, handed one to her, then sipped at his own. He paused, then drained the entire glass in one slow pull. He drew his sleeve across his mouth and shook his head. “Give me a reason, any reason at all, why we shouldn’t leave him behind.”
“Because he might know something useful?”
He cursed, set his glass down, then began to pace restlessly. Master Oban came trotting back into the kitchen from points unknown with several bottles that he shoved into his sack without regard to the cakes and delicate pastries he’d already packed first. Sarah watched him hurry off to rummage through his silver, then looked again at Ruith, who had stopped pacing and was merely standing there, watching grimly.
“What befell him, do you think?” she asked before she thought better of it.
He looked at her, opened his mouth, then shut it again and shook his head. “What I’m thinking doesn’t bear repeating. ’Tis so fanciful that even I think I’m mad to entertain it.” He scratched his right wrist, then flinched. “I forget about this.”
“I wish I could.”
He studied her for a moment, then sighed. “I’m sorry for it. As for the other, I think we can safely assume that your brother was about his business, then left town before he was caught. Unless you think he might still be loitering somewhere here.”
“He might be at a bookseller,” she said without hesitation. “He was always looking for more spells, and ’twas certain he couldn’t find them in Doire—”
She jumped at the sound of a pounding on a doorway at the front of the house. Oban popped up from where he’d been rustling around in a chest of linens, stuffed a handful of things into his pack that was already overflowing with spoils, and hauled it up onto his shoulders. He waved for them to follow and sprang for the back door.
She followed, with Ruith hard on her heels. They slipped through the garden and out into a street she hadn’t seen before. Sarah wasn’t sure who had been trying to get into the wizard’s house, but she knew she didn’t want to meet them if Master Oban didn’t.
She supposed it might have been easier to blend in if she hadn’t been hurrying off with a tall, profoundly dangerous-looking man and an ancient wizard dressed in purple velvet robes and a tall, pointy purple hat, and waving a wand that scattered spells around him like seeds.
’Twas little wonder Ruith was cursing rather more loudly than necessary.
He finally stopped them on a corner. “I have to have my gear,” he said in a low voice, “and we have to get out of the village before we’re not able to.”
“I’ll fetch Ned-”
He shook his head. “Too dangerous. Just take Oban and wend your way east until you reach the road. Many companies stage their wagons there. I’ll follow with the lad and your hound.” He paused. “If the choice is between you and the mage, leave him.”
She nodded, though she wasn’t sure she could do it. She watched Ruith walk off swiftly into the light of the setting sun, then turned to Master Oban.
“Listen to me,” she said sharply. “If you want to live, hide your gear, keep your head down, and follow me.”
His mouth fell open, but he took off his hat and put that and his wand under his cloak just the same.
Sarah towed him along behind her, ducking into the first shop she saw when she heard shouts in the distance. It happened to be a bookstore, which she thought to be fortuitous for a potential sighting of Daniel�
�until she realized she’d lost Oban. She found him fondling what were obviously books of spells, but she didn’t have time to look and neither did he, no matter how vigorously he flapped his arms in protest when she pulled him away.
It took a good half an hour to duck in and out of front and back doors, but she finally found herself on the outskirts of town with the sun going down behind her and a road full of dust in front of her. She looked over the wagons critically, wondering which one might be willing to take on an unusual quartet of travelers without asking too many questions.
She selected a likely suspect, then walked over. The four horses already hitched were large and sturdy and the wagon seemed to be well stocked. Her coin might buy them at least a few meals from the wagon master if she were very polite.
She left Master Oban thinking on her command that he not move, then approached the man and waited until he’d turned from his business to greet her. To her profound surprise, the man turned out to be none other than Master Franciscus.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in astonishment.
He shook her hand with a smile. “Deliveries in the north, my girl. What are you doing here?”
“Don’t ask.” She pulled her purse from her feed sack and held it out. “I need you to hide us.”
“Us?”
“That mage there, Ned, me ... and the mage from up the hill.”
Master Franciscus ignored her coins and instead put his hand on her head the same way he’d been doing for as long as she could remember.
“I sense quite a tale here, but I’ll wait until we’re a more comfortable distance from Bruaih to pry it from you. I assume your other companions will find us?”