by Lynn Kurland
She wasn’t sure she wanted to admit how badly she wished that wasn’t the case.
She stood next to Ruith in the shadows of the trees that lined the road leading to that castle and suspected that this time, her choice was going to lead to consequences too terrible to bear. The keep before her was the single most inhospitable place she’d ever seen—and given that she’d grown to womanhood in Shettlestoune, that was saying something.
The grey of the walls was unrelenting, the towers crumbling, the air hanging over those walls and towers full of smoke and stench she could smell from where she stood. There was a profound darkness there, a darkness that permeated the stone, the grounds, even the forest where she stood. It had soaked into the road that led to a bridge stained with it and dripped down from that bridge to pollute the moat below.
She wasn’t altogether certain she would manage to cross that bridge, truth be told.
She looked next to her to see if Ruith was equally as affected by it. Unfortunately, he was only staring at the keep as if he studied how best to assault it. His expression was so forbidding, she didn’t bother to ask him if he was willing to change course.
He had been grim on the way to that horrible well, true, but his descent into unfathomable depths of it these past two days made his mood before seem cheery by comparison.
It was almost as if he’d known what he would find here.
That was odd, but she supposed it was merely something else to add to the very long list of things about Ruith that were puzzling. She decided there was no better time than the present to examine that list—because it was an excuse to think about something other than what lay in front of her.
It was strange that he had no magic when his family, more particularly his grandfather, seemed to possess quite an enormous amount of it. Sgath had said nothing of Ruith’s parents or siblings, but Ruith had said they were all dead. Had they all been slain together? And if so, by whom, and had that slaughter been what had driven him south to Shettlestoune? Surely he wouldn’t have traveled there without a desperately compelling reason, not when he had Lake Cladach as another refuge.
And that was perhaps the greatest puzzle of all. If he’d had Sgath’s house there simply waiting for him to call it home, why hadn’t he gone there instead of continuing on to the wilds of the south?
And how in the world had he managed such a journey at the tender age of ten winters?
Those were answers he obviously didn’t want to give, though she supposed the reason for that was likely the most important of all. He had secrets, that lad, that he hadn’t even given to Master Franciscus. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they led, in a less-than-roundabout way, to the keep standing in front of them.
Gair of Ceangail’s keep.
It seemed improbable, but she continued to come back to that name despite its improbability, never mind that Ruith had said nothing at all about the spells of Gair’s they had collected, nor had he commented, at least in her hearing, on Gair’s having taken Connail’s power. And he had certainly said nothing about how he knew his way to the keep standing in front of them. Or to that evil well—
She froze. It had been a well of power that Gair had opened, a well that had spewed its dreadful contents out and slain Gair’s entire family. She shook her head. It couldn’t have been that well, the one they’d left behind them a handful of days earlier.
Could it?
“We should press on.”
Sarah looked up at Ruith, fighting to keep her thoughts off her face. Had he suspected it might be Gair’s well? Had he listened to one too many tales of black mages and learned many things she wouldn’t have expected him to know?
None of which explained how he’d known where that well lay, or why the glade had made him so ill, or why those monsters seemed to be coming for him alone.
Or why, after laying out his plan, he’d stopped speaking two days ago and descended into a silence she hadn’t dared break, though perhaps that had been for the best. There had been no reason to discuss their destination—especially her desire to turn tail and run away from it as fast as her legs would carry her.
She took a deep, careful breath. Nay, the choice had been made and there was nothing left to do but keep going and let answers to questions come later. Daniel was quite possibly inside the keep and if not, Ruith wanted to attempt an assault on the library to see if he could find the rest of the pages of that book, or learn what had happened to it. If they found both the book and Daniel together, so much the better.
Though she wasn’t precisely sure what either of them would do about it given that Daniel had magic and they did not.
Ruith suddenly pushed off the tree he’d been leaning against, took her by the hand, and started up the road to the keep.
“In the daylight?” she said, wishing her voice had sounded slightly less like a squeak.
“We’re travelers seeking refuge from the gathering storm.”
“Will they believe that?”
He glanced at her. “If we look desperate enough, they might.” He turned back to the keep, no trace of emotion on his face. “We’ll look for your brother first.”
Sarah took a deep breath, then nodded. She was too terrified to say anything else.
By the time they reached the unguarded bridge that dripped with evil and spanned a moat full of other vile things she didn’t want to identify, she was shaking so badly, she could hardly walk. She wasn’t afraid of dying; she was terrified of living too long in the tender care of a mage with nefarious intentions.
“I’m a coward.” Her teeth were chattering, but she supposed Ruith hadn’t noticed.
“Stay behind me,” he suggested. He looked at her briefly. “If only you looked more like a lad, I would feel better about your safety.”
“I smudged dirt on my cheeks.”
He stopped and looked at her. “No amount of dirt, Sarah of Doíre, could possibly hide exactly what you are.”
She pulled her hood forward over her face as he had done. “Better?”
“Better would have been leaving you behind,” he said grimly, “but as I was fool enough not to tie you up and leave with your howls of outrage ringing in my ears, I have only myself to blame for whatever happens to you.”
“I insisted on coming,” she pointed out. “To guard your back.”
He shook his head slowly. “We are entering a keep, love, where I’m not sure it will matter.”
“You needed me to look for the pages.”
He sighed. “Aye. Pray we get that far.”
He looked at her once more, then nodded toward the keep. She walked across the bridge with him in silence. There was nothing left to say.
Ruith knocked confidently, as if he weren’t at all plagued by the terror that raced through her veins. The door creaked open almost immediately and Sarah felt her mouth go dry. She had thought she knew all about darkness, for she had seen it daily with her brother, she had seen it in Ruith’s house that first time he’d opened the door to her, and she’d seen enough at that accursed well to last her a lifetime. She had hoped that somehow, those things would have helped her acquire the ability to endure whatever she found in Ceangail.
She had obviously been sorely mistaken.
Ruith kept his hands at his sides, well away from his weapons. He’d left his bow and arrows behind with the horses, along with his sword, but his knives were still down his boots and on his back. Lethal enough still, if the lad looking at him had any sense.
The guardsman opened his mouth to speak, but he was suddenly yanked backward and a fight ensued. Ruith hesitated, then fumbled for her hand.
“Let’s go.”
She didn’t have a chance to answer before he’d pulled her into a passageway full of absolute chaos.
She looked down at her feet. They were almost immediately reached for by spells and so were Ruith’s. She looked around her frantically, then stopped, momentarily overcome by the things she saw.
Spells, innumerable spe
lls, lay in twisting, writhing masses on the floor, put there no doubt to immobilize enemies—or perhaps just those the lord of the keep was unhappy with. Sarah took a deep breath, then looked for escape, ignoring the way the spells had already wrapped themselves around her ankles. In the middle of the passageway the spells were damaged, sliced perhaps with some sort of magical knife. She could see the ends of them waving in a wind that was most certainly not there, as if they’d been noxious vines so virulent that even severing them from their roots couldn’t kill them.
“In the middle,” she said quickly. “The spells are not so many there.”
Ruith wrenched himself away from what tried to bind his feet, then leapt forward, pulling her with him. She went, but almost left one of her boots behind. She drew her knife briefly, slit the spell, then jerked herself away from the ends of it that tried to capture her again. She shoved her knife back down her boot and hurried forward to follow Ruith.
He stopped the first guardsman who looked amenable to it, a man sporting a stitched cut over his eye. The man looked at him with a scowl.
“What d’ye want?” he demanded.
“We be trav‘lers lookin’ fer a meal,” Ruith said in a very decent imitation of the worst of Shettlestoune accents. “Any to be had ’ere?”
“Are ye daft, man?” the guardsman said, scowling. “Can’t ye see we’re too busy to feed beggars?”
Ruith nodded sympathetically. “What’s befallen ye?”
“Some bloody gel and her guardsman came through a pair of days past,” the man groused. “A bloody demon with a blade was she, I’ll tell ye. The new lord’s been raging ever since.”
“The new lord?” Ruith asked politely. “Is ’e blond, with a spell—”
The man rolled his eyes. “Hunger’s made ye stupid. The lord’s Doílain and ’e’s dark-haired, of course.” He shot Ruith a look of disgust, then stomped off with a curse, apparently oblivious to the spells he was wading through.
Ruith took a deep breath, then turned to his left and strode down the passageway as if he knew exactly where he was going. Sarah would have spared thought for that, but she didn’t dare. It was all she could do to keep up with him and ignore the spells she could see lurking in a darkness the torches on the wall couldn’t begin to relieve.
They were soon caught up with guardsmen who were running about as if the keep were still under assault. Sarah supposed the confusion provided some anonymity for her and Ruith, but that was little comfort. With every minute that passed, she grew more unnerved. If Ruith felt the same, he didn’t show it. She didn’t dare press him. She simply followed him as he ducked into a stairwell that led down to what she assumed were the kitchens.
There was no less confusion there. Ruith didn’t stop for pleasantries or food; he merely pulled her along with him and wound his way through tables, then back through kegs and barrels and up a tight circular staircase. Sarah found herself now thoroughly unnerved. She would have demanded that he tell her how the hell he knew where he was going, but she didn’t have the breath for it, or the desire to sound as panicked as she was.
The place was simply crawling with spells. She could no longer see the walls or the floor for the spells that covered them and continually shifted, leaving her feeling as if the keep didn’t truly exist around her. She touched as little of the stone as possible as she climbed what seemed to be an endless set of stairs.
She stumbled out into a chamber behind Ruith, then jumped out of his way as he shut the door and tried to bolt it. The bolt was broken beyond repair and there was no other means to secure it. Ruith cursed, then pushed the hood back from his face.
“We’ll hurry.”
She nodded. “Please.”
He took a deep breath, though that didn’t help his color. His face was ashen.
“Do you see anything?” he asked, his voice a harsh croak in the silence. “Any ... spell?”
Sarah looked around her. It was a library, obviously, and looked as if it had once been in a terrible fire. There were scorch marks on the ceiling still, though someone had apparently made a feeble attempt in the past to clean the floor. It was obvious, however, that the chamber hadn’t been used in quite some time. There was a handful of dusty, rickety chairs near the decent-sized hearth but no rug lying on the unforgiving stone floor. She supposed there might have been bookshelves lining the walls at one point, but now the walls were lined with crude wooden things that looked as if they’d been hewn with an axe and nailed together without any care.
“I don’t know,” she began slowly.
“Look,” he insisted. “Hurry.”
She shot him a look, but couldn’t chasten him for his lack of manners. He was absolutely grey. She nodded, then turned to the nearest wall and looked closely at what lined one of the shelves.
The books bore the marks of the fire that had apparently swept through the library. Blackened spines, wrinkled covers, scorched pages, all covered by copious amounts of dust. She only managed to look at a few books before just the thought of touching more of them made her ill. She turned and looked at Ruith, who had started searching on the other side of the chamber.
“They’re covered with spells.”
“Aye.”
He didn’t seem surprised by that, nor troubled by the spells. Perhaps he was, and he simply refused to show it. She wished she had his control. It was almost all she could do to stay where she was and not bolt from the castle where she might actually breathe clean air again.
She turned back to where she had begun and forced herself to walk slowly along each wall, looking carefully on each shelf to see if she saw anything that burned with that unwholesome light she had come to recognize. She finally knelt down and looked on a bottom shelf. She pulled a book from between its companions and opened it. There was something there, but it turned out to be only a corner of an obviously enspelled page, charred and brittle. She shut the book before that corner could reach out and burn her. Her arm had improved dramatically during that sleep she’d had in the first farmer’s barn, though being inside Ceangail’s keep had made it ache again.
She completed a circuit of the entire chamber, then decided that if she’d found a corner of Gair’s book tucked inside something else, there was no reason not to think other bits of his book might be likewise hidden. She rubbed her arm gingerly and looked at the ruined floor as she walked across the chamber—
And into someone.
She looked up with an apology on her lips, thinking it was Ruith, only to find that it wasn’t.
She backed away only to be hauled behind Ruith. He affected a casual pose, but she knew him well enough to know he was anything but that. His arms were folded over his chest, likely to put them closer to his knives if necessary.
“Well,” the other man said with a disbelieving half laugh, “I just killed a man downstairs for telling me who he thought he’d seen.”
“A waste of your effort, then,” Ruith said seriously, “for he was surely mistaken.”
Sarah leaned up on her toes slightly so she could see the other man’s face. He was dark-haired and tall, handsome enough if she hadn’t seen Ruith first, but he was full of the darkness that hung in the passageways downstairs.
“Oh, I don’t think he was,” the other said softly. “But I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.”
“Your eyes are deceiving you as well,” Ruith said, just as quietly. “Let us be on our way, and we’ll trouble you no longer.”
“Are you daft?” the other asked with a laugh. “We thought you were dead. Now that I have you here in the flesh, do you think I’m stupid enough to let you go?”
“I don’t know,” Ruith returned sharply. “How stupid are you?”
The other’s face was suddenly quite red. “I imagine you’ll find out soon enough.”
“Friend,” Ruith said tightly, “I’ve no quarrel with you—”
“Friend?” the other man echoed with a snort. “That seems rather too cold a
greeting for—”
Ruith lashed out suddenly, catching the other man under the chin and sending his head snapping back. He fell to the ground with a crash. Ruith turned on her.
“Pages?” he demanded.
“I—I don’t know,” she stammered.
“Well, look! I can’t keep him unconscious forever.”
Sarah turned and looked because she was too startled not to. She would have been a little tidier about it, but Ruith was cursing behind her, growing more agitated with every moment that passed. He had to favor his ... friend ... twice more with his tender ministrations to keep him senseless, but by then she had long since ceased to be careful about what she was doing. She pulled books off shelves without care, flipping through whatever she dared and shaking the others vigorously to dislodge whatever might have been lurking within the covers.
“Make haste!” Ruith said, his voice very strained.
“I am making haste,” she snapped. She started on the last bookcase only to realize that the thumps of books against the stone weren’t the only thing she could hear. Before she could point out to Ruith that those were booted feet coming up the stairs, he had taken her hand and jerked her along with him over to another doorway.
“We can’t be caught in here,” he threw over his shoulder. “Pull the door shut behind you.”
She did, though she didn’t imagine it would do any good, for again, there was no way to lock it. She stumbled along behind Ruith as he raced with uncanny surety down a passageway that was completely dark. He tried to open the door at what was apparently the end of it, but it wouldn’t give way. He pushed her back a bit, then kicked it in. She crawled through the splintered wood after him and out into a great hall.
A hall full of souls waiting for them, apparently.
Ruith stopped so suddenly that she ran full into his back. It should have at least moved him, but it was as if he’d suddenly been turned to stone. She remained on her feet only because she had a decent sense of balance. Ruith was of absolutely no help.
Then again, perhaps he had other things to worry about.
She knew suddenly what a plump rabbit must feel like to find itself caught in an open field by a pack of determined, ravenous wolves. She turned and put her back against Ruith’s, but then wished she hadn’t. The men she now faced were armed with very sharp swords and vile humors. They looked to be a rather roughed-up bunch, as if that battle they’d recently been in hadn’t gone particularly well for them.