by Lynn Kurland
“Say what you like about me,” Ruith said, his words clipped. “At this juncture of my life, nothing can harm me.”
Connail laughed, but it was a very unpleasant sort of laugh. “You say that now, but you haven’t thought it through. Nay, my friend, I’ll keep your secret. But in return, I want what you know. And you know precisely what I’m talking about.”
“Never,” Ruith said flatly.
Connail glared at him for several very long moments, then he took a step backward.
The weak fool.
“You’ll regret that,” Connail said angrily. He glared at Ruith one more time, then turned and stalked unsteadily off.
Ruith bowed his head and dragged his hand through his hair.
Sarah watched him for several minutes in silence, until he finally sighed and departed for points unknown. She waited for a handful of minutes until his footsteps receded, then rubbed her arms briskly. She was suddenly quite chilled, though she couldn’t account for it. Obviously Connail knew Ruith far better than he’d let on. And Ruith knew it.
She turned and started toward the fire, then leapt back with a squeak.
Urchaid stood there, silent and unmoving.
“ ’Tis dangerous to be out here alone,” he said softly.
She opened her mouth to give vent to a bit of bluster, but found it was unnecessary.
“She isn’t alone.”
Sarah had never been so happy to see the glint of a sword hilt in her life. Ruith stepped around Urchaid and came to stand next to her.
“Too much walking might be dangerous for you, my lord,” Ruith said, inclining his head. “Shall we help you back to camp?”
Urchaid took a step backward. “How thoughtful your concern is, my friend. I seem to have forgotten your name ...”
“It’s forgettable,” Ruith said. “Head straight through those trees. You’ll see the fire shortly”
Sarah was perfectly content to allow Ruith to pull her away. She didn’t dare look behind her as she walked with him into the shadows. He said nothing and she had no desire to break the silence. They walked directly away from the camp and into the midst of a farmer’s freshly ploughed field. Ruith stopped, finally, then simply stared off into the distance. She wanted to ask him what it was Connail held over him, but decided that whatever it was, it was none of her affair. If Ruith wanted to tell her, then he would. If not, she was likely better off.
But now that they had a bit of privacy, she turned to what she’d been putting off.
“I took something from Connail’s house,” she said.
He looked at her. “Did you, indeed? What?”
She hesitated, then reached down and pulled the piece of velvet from her boot. “Something from his case of precious things. I haven’t looked at it, lest someone notice it, but I can tell there is magic involved.” She took a deep breath. “I know you don’t have any magic, but you seem to know quite a bit about it, so—”
“My parents had a bit of magic,” he admitted slowly. “I am schooled in the theory of it, if not necessarily the practice.”
She was surprised by that, but perhaps the fact that his parents hadn’t passed on their abilities to him was embarrassing to him. She held out the square of cloth. “Do you know the page Connail was talking about? The page from Gair of Ceangail’s book?”
“I’ve heard tell of it, aye.”
“This is the cloth that page was resting on. I’m not sure how much you’ll see in the dark, but I think the words were burned into its surface.”
He accepted the swatch, then flinched and dropped it immediately. Sarah looked at him in surprise.
“Did it burn you too?”
He blew out his breath. “Aye, but no matter.” He reached down and picked the cloth up again. He looked up at the sliver of moon, then peered at the cloth intently. “I fear we’ll need to leave it for the morning.”
“You keep it,” she said with a shiver. “I have welts from it on my leg already.” She looked at the cloth, but she didn’t dare touch it again. “Do you truly think Daniel is trying to collect other pages of Gair of Ceangail’s book?”
Ruith took a deep breath. “I’m beginning to.”
“What will we do?”
He folded up the cloth and shoved it down the side of his boot. It must not have pained him as much as it had her, for he didn’t flinch. “We’ll continue along after him.” He looked up at the sky again, then turned to her. “I think he might be the one who attacked Lord Urchaid.”
“Do you think so?” she asked in surprise. “Then we’re not far behind him.”
“I think we still have a fair amount of travel before us,” he said slowly, “for I suspect Urchaid was lying there longer than he claims. Perhaps to admit otherwise would be too great a blow to his pride.”
“Is he an elf?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said, frowning. “Why do you ask?”
“Because he can’t seem to stop talking about himself,” she said with a snort. “And he’s very handsome, in a cold, unpleasant sort of way”
Ruith’s mouth twitched. “Does he have any other flaws I should have noted?”
“I have a list, but I also think I have a hole in my boot. My toes are damp.”
He smiled and put his arm briefly around her shoulders. “Let us make one more circle, then go back. We’ll leave Urchaid’s heritage unexamined. I don’t think I’ve the stomach for it tonight.”
She agreed without hesitation. In fact, she was happy to leave several things behind her as they walked back to camp, namely the burden of carrying that quite obviously enspelled scrap of cloth. Now, if only she could have avoided another pair of things at the fire, she would have been content.
They walked back into camp a quarter hour later to find the company gathered around the fire, enjoying something of Franciscus’s make that smelled fit for a king’s table. Sarah sat down next to Franciscus and watched Ruith sit across the fire from her. Urchaid reached out to hand her a cup of something, but upset Franciscus’s stew onto the flames in the process.
“Oh, I imagine that’s my fault,” he said, looking faintly surprised. He frowned, then looked at her. “I don’t suppose, my dear, that you have the energy to see to this for us?”
Sarah fumbled for her flint, but Urchaid shook his head.
“Magic, my dear Sarah, is what’s needful.” He smiled. “I understand your mother was quite powerful. Surely this isn’t beneath you.”
Sarah would have silenced him if she could have, the obnoxious fool. Unfortunately, all she could do was what she always did in like situations. She demurred. “I prefer to be discreet,” she said.
“Better warm than discreet,” he countered. “Don’t you agree?”
She would have perhaps said something she might have regretted, for she didn’t care at all for the mocking expression on his face, as if he knew something he shouldn’t. Fortunately, Seirceil interrupted her before she could speak.
“Go on, Sarah,” he said gravely. “I’ll join you. What sort of spell shall we use?”
“I don’t know,” she stammered, feeling completely flustered. Every eye was on her, most with expectation she couldn’t meet even on her best day.
“Let’s try Croxteth,” Seirceil suggested. “I’m sure we both can manage the simplest spell of fire-making.”
Sarah nodded, though she felt a little ill as she did so. If his magic had not returned to him in some useful fashion, the jig would, as Master Franciscus was wont to say, be up. She took a deep breath, then repeated the words with Seirceil, because she couldn’t do anything else. She was actually quite surprised when the fire sprang to life. It certainly hadn’t been her magic that had done the work. She looked quickly at Seirceil, but he was only watching her with a gentle smile on his face, as if he understood completely.
“Well-done,” he said quietly.
“Thank you,” she managed, vowing then to weave him something spectacular at her earliest opportunity. “
I couldn’t have done it without you.”
He waved aside her thanks, then turned to Oban, who was about his usual work of filling the flames full of things that glistened and glowed, strands of colors not found in the usual bit of business consuming wood. She didn’t dare look at anyone else, but she could feel Urchaid’s eyes on her. Speculating on what he knew—or thought he knew—was bound to leave her not sleeping well. She turned instead to look at the fire Seirceil had made and Oban had embellished. Then she realized that wasn’t all that was there.
Someone had added something else. It was so profoundly beautiful, that last bit of magic, that she could hardly look at it, yet she couldn’t look away. It twisted and tangled with the flame, wrapping around the fire and the wood a whispered song that only she could hear. It was as if it had been something out of a dream.
“Where is Lord Connail?” Ned asked suddenly.
Sarah blinked, pulled away from what she’d been watching, feeling suddenly quite bereft. She looked at Urchaid, who lifted a shoulder in a half shrug.
“He had something stuck in his throat,” Urchaid said dismissively. “He wandered off to see to it before Sarah and her swordsman came back.”
Sarah pursed her lips. What he likely had stuck in his throat were the things he’d intended to say about Ruith. It was odd, though, that he should have left the safety of the company. He complained endlessly about the necessity of traveling with them, but he was never out of earshot of Franciscus’s wagon.
“I’ll go look for him,” Urchaid said, rising to his feet easily. “Perhaps I’ll even take the first watch, so you all can rest. No need to thank me.”
Sarah watched him go, saw that Ruith was watching him as well, then turned back to the fire. The magic that had been there before was there no longer. She would have grieved for its loss, but somehow, she saw an echo of it in Ruith’s face as she glanced at him. His eyes were full of the loss she felt.
Perhaps he too wished that something so beautiful could come from his hands.
She shook her head slightly and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Ruith was looking at the blade he was sharpening. It was just as well, for she had other things besides magical flames to think on. The morrow would bring what it did, a closer look at the cloth, more lovely vistas she’d never before imagined, perhaps even a few questions for Urchaid that might reveal something besides that flawless exterior he took great pains to maintain.
But for the night, she couldn’t help but look at the fire, remind herself of the beauty she’d seen wrapped in the flames, and think on the many things she hadn’t expected to see when she’d walked away from Doìre with the ruins of her mother’s house behind her.
She supposed those memories might carry her through what she suspected she would face sooner rather than later.
Fourteen
Danger came in many guises.
Ruith leaned against Master Franciscus’s wagon and contemplated the truth of that. He’d suspected, as he’d closed up his house on the mountain, that putting his foot to the path he’d sensed lying before him would spell trouble. He’d thought he might have to come to grips with his beliefs about magic and its usefulness. He’d feared he might encounter a reminder or two of his past. He’d actually expected that at some point, he might find that his soul had been shattered.
He had just never expected that to happen thanks to a woman who had spent her time the evening before looking for magic in his face.
He hadn’t intended to add anything to the fire Seirceil had started for her. Sending a flicker of a flame to dance along the wood had been an afterthought of sorts, nothing grand or useful. But it had been beautiful and she had obviously seen it.
That in itself was unusual.
“And where do you think they’ve gone off to?” Seirceil asked, his face full of worry.
Franciscus shrugged, though he looked no less worried. “I’ve scoured the surrounding countryside for hours, but seen nothing of either of them.”
Ruith rubbed his hands first over his face, then together, though he wasn’t sure what sort of aid he expected from either action. He and Franciscus had been sitting at the fire the night before, discussing the virtues of the widow Fiore’s garden and just what sort of cider Franciscus could brew with a bushel of her green apples and a modest cutting of her lavender. Realization that neither Urchaid nor Connail was back had hit them both at the same moment.
Ruith had risen to go look, but Franciscus had waved him back down, saying he could easily sleep during the day and leave his draft horses to follow the road without incident or direction from him. Ruith had agreed reluctantly, but he hadn’t slept. He had put his weapons within easy reach and wondered about the missing men. There was no reason for either of them to have disappeared, unless Urchaid had irritated Connail a bit too much and Connail had stabbed him, then limped off.
But there had been no trace of either of them.
“Perhaps we should just continue on without them, then,” Seirceil said quietly. “I don’t like to speak badly of anyone—”
Franciscus smiled and put his hand briefly on Seirceil’s shoulder. “In this case, my lord, I think you could safely express a desire not to travel farther with either of them and still be considered kinder than they deserve. And aye, I agree. We’ll be off and leave them to follow—or not.”
Seirceil’s expression didn’t relax any, but he nodded just the same. He smiled briefly at Ruith, then went to gather up the various and sundry who were vexing Sarah over breakfast.
“You light the fire,” Ned cajoled.
“We’ve already eaten,” she hedged.
“But that were cold,” Ned complained. “Just a brief bit of warmth, then you can put it right out again.”
Ruith watched Sarah dither. It was so contrary to how she usually conducted herself that he felt certain it was an adequate reflection of the conflict going on inside her. He shook his head. If trailing after her brother, who was apparently doing his damndest to gather up pages from a book of spells, wasn’t enough to unsettle her, being part of the current madness certainly was.
“ ’Tis too trivial a thing for her,” Seirceil said, putting his hand on Ned’s head. “Something better suited to a child. I’ll see to it, since that is about the extent of my skill at present.”
Ruith winced, but Seirceil’s words were completely without rancor. It wasn’t exactly true, for Seirceil did possess magic. It was unreliable, though, even for such a simple thing as fire.
He could remember vividly the first time he’d called to fire in his mind and wrapped it around a single twig without so much as the slightest lifting of his smallest finger. He knew he should have been chiding himself for all the things he’d set on fire as a toddler before his mother had convinced him to exercise a modicum of self-control, or damning himself for now adding a simple bit of Fadaire to what Seirceil was doing, but all he could do was watch a headstrong, beautiful, ferociously determined woman look at the fire as if she saw things he could not.
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes.
Damn it anyway.
He reached for that very thick protective crust he’d built around his heart and found to his dismay that it wasn’t nearly as substantial as it should have been. He suspected he knew on whom to lay the blame for that. He tried to scowl, but that didn’t work either. He grasped for shreds of common sense in a last-ditch effort to save his sanity.
Sarah wasn’t the right sort of girl for him. He needed, were he to actually manage to find anyone to wed, a girl with courtly manners, the ability to tell which fork to use first at dinner, and an innate grace and unfailing command of the niceties of lofty conversation and flatteries. A gel with a big dagger, a quick tongue, and eyes that saw far too clearly were not what he wanted—er, needed.
But he couldn’t look away as she sat there and looked into a fire that he hadn’t created entirely himself, but had certainly added things to to make it burn in an especially beautiful way
.
Because he liked her.
Very much.
He drew his hand over his eyes. He had to run before he did something stupid. Perhaps he would slip off that night and run all the way to Gilean. It was still some fifteen leagues from where they were. Even if they managed five leagues that day, the rest would take him all night, even if he ran hard. By the time he reached the place, he would have surely invented a reason he’d needed to come with such haste.
He turned into Franciscus before he realized the man was standing there watching him.
“I didn’t see you.”
“Apparently.”
He pursed his lips. “I was just watching over the company.”
“Never said you weren’t, lad.”
Ruith shot him a look but Franciscus only smiled pleasantly—and unrepentantly.
“I’m going to run ahead to Gilean tonight,” Ruith muttered, “because I think the journey will do me good.”
“Clear your head?” Franciscus asked politely.
“Allow me to escape meddling old men.”
“I am not old. I’m seasoned. And I’m not meddling, I’m observing.”
“You’re going daft,” Ruith said. He started to turn away, then hesitated. “You’ll watch after Sarah whilst I’m away?”
“With both eyes and a dagger in each hand.”
Ruith paused. “I don’t trust Urchaid.”
“We could hope he’s dead.”
“If someone was murdered last night, I imagine it wasn’t him,” Ruith said grimly, “but I’ve been wrong many times before. Please keep Sarah close.”
“I will, but tell me what you’re about. Something to do with our present business?”
Ruith considered, then leaned against the wagon again and looked at the alemaster. “I think there will come a time when I must go on ahead,” he said slowly. “And I’m certain you’ll need to be about your own affairs sooner rather than later.” He chewed on his words for a bit. “I fear Daniel is determined to have a few more of those spells he’s laid hands on. I’ll actually be a bit surprised if he continues on with his harassing of local mages. I fear he has a different plan.”