by Lynn Kurland
“Why you, do you think?”
“I have no idea,” she said helplessly. “The peddler told me to find a mercenary to save Bruadair, told me to do so in three weeks or I would die, then told me to have the lad meet him at Taigh Hall in three fortnights or I would die. And he told me that I wasn’t to speak of my errand or I would die.”
“He wasn’t very original, was he?”
“I daresay he didn’t need to be with me.”
Rùnach smiled at her, then straightened. “Ah, but look at how jaded you are now. I don’t think you would be taken in by his tales were you to meet him tomorrow.”
She attempted a smile and was fairly surprised when she managed it. “I believe the scales have indeed fallen from my eyes.”
“It might have been the pegasus.”
“I think it was Iteach as a dragon,” she countered. “Elves, mages, dragons . . . I hate to think of what I might encounter next.”
“Something to eat, then an hour or two of comfort in a very lovely library.” He rose, then held out his hand for hers. “Shall we?”
She put her hand in his, rose, then started toward the palace with him. She looked up at him as they walked. “Thank you.”
He looked at her in surprise. “For what?”
“For opening my eyes.”
He shook his head. “You give me credit I don’t deserve. All I did is give you rides on a shapechanging horse. You’ve done the rest.”
She knew that wasn’t true. It was substantially less true when she dared give thought to her future. She might have been slightly more jaded than she had been several se’nnights earlier, but she was no more courageous. The thought of going anywhere near Bruadair filled her with dread. She couldn’t breathe past it; she couldn’t swallow past it; she couldn’t rid herself of it as it curled in her stomach. She looked up at Rùnach.
“I don’t know what to do now.”
“What do you want to do?”
She struggled to swallow normally. “I want to run.”
“I think you already did that.”
“You know what I mean,” she said. “I want to run very far away and never think about Bruadair ever again.” She knew her voice was shaking, but she couldn’t seem to control it. “How did you ever force yourself to go to that well?”
He looked at her gravely. “I went to protect those I loved.”
“Weren’t you afraid?”
“I was too arrogant and stupid to be afraid.”
She wrapped the arm not attached to the hand he was holding around herself. “I am very afraid. And there is nothing left in Bruadair that I love.”
“Then run.”
She felt her mouth fall open. “Do you think so?”
He squeezed her hand. “Aisling, I think this might be a decision you could put off for another day or two.”
“I only have two days left.”
“See? The timing is ideal. Let’s go take our ease in the library, and you can read that book you dropped. My grandfather left it for me with the intention that I would show it to you, I’m sure.”
“Your grandfather knows?”
Rùnach laughed uneasily. “I don’t think either of us should be surprised by what he knows. You can, however, count on his absolute discretion. I am perfectly sure he will remain silent on your origins unless you say otherwise. He wouldn’t even divulge them to me.”
“Did you ask?”
He smiled a small, serious smile. “Nay, Aisling, I did not.”
If she had been fond of him before, then at that moment . . . well, she supposed she could safely say she was extremely fond of him then. She continued on with him in silence, trying not to shake her head. She was walking with a man who knew her darkest secret, and she hadn’t been slain for it.
That thought kept reverberating in her mind like a great tolling bell until they reached the edge of the forest. Another step would take her out of the trees and onto the finely laid paths that led to the palace proper, and for some reason, that brought her up short. Rùnach stopped alongside her and looked at her with a faint frown.
“What is it?”
She could hardly believe she was doubting her doubts, but it was hard to do anything else. “They lied to me.”
“Aye,” he agreed, “it certainly seems so.”
“I just don’t understand why.”
“That is definitely something I think you could put off thinking about until later. Perhaps after supper, after you’ve had a decent meal. You never know what might happen then.”
That thought was almost enough to convince her that she should sneak off to the kitchens to beg scraps, then hide somewhere discreet where no one could find her. She wasn’t sure she was equal to having anything else happen. After all, she’d already been favored with rides on a shapechanging horse, encounters with creatures from myth, meetings with kings and queens of legendary realms, and a journey with a man who had kept her secrets until he couldn’t reasonably keep his knowledge of them from her any longer. She wasn’t sure what the evening would bring after her recent adventures.
She sincerely hoped she was equal to facing it.
Six
Rùnach walked along pathways he had walked innumerable times in his youth, now and again with extremely eligible and desirable maidens from other kingdoms, and considered the changes that had happened in his life.
He was without magic, though if he were to be honest with himself, he had to admit that he had suspected that would be the price he would have to pay at the well if he failed. He was without any elven beauty he may or may not have once possessed, but he supposed that was no great loss to any but those who had to look at him. He was without any fame or fortune he particularly cared to claim, which would likely render him very unattractive to any women he might or might not have known in a former lifetime.
But he was walking next to a lass from Bruadair who was looking around her as if she still couldn’t quite believe where she was or that she was still breathing. She was also seemingly examining her surroundings for creatures she’d been led to believe only existed between the pages of a book.
Somehow that went a long way in making up for things he might otherwise have been mourning the lack of.
He paused several feet away from his bedchamber door and turned to Aisling. “I’ll only be a minute. You can come inside if you like, though the view isn’t particularly inspiring.”
She considered, then nodded toward the garden to her right. “Might I wander there?”
“Of course,” he said with a smile. “I’ll fetch you straightway after I’ve finished, shall I?”
“No hurry,” she said faintly.
And her voice was faint because she had already abandoned him and wandered into one of the innumerable gardens dotting the palace grounds. Rùnach supposed the worst she would find there was a horse who had escaped his confines in the stables and gone in search of tastier fare, so he left her to her ramble and went inside his chamber.
All was as he had left it, which didn’t surprise him. He supposed the servants had sighed enough times in his youth over muddy boots deposited just inside the door and too many weapons stuffed into corners and under the bed that they were accustomed, even after all this time, to simply leaving things to lie where they’d been dropped. His pack was still in its place where he’d stuffed it under the chair.
He pulled the book out and ignored the shiver that went through him at the sight of it. He’d thought about it often over the years, as it happened, but he’d been able to do about it exactly what he’d been able to do about most events in his past, which was absolutely nothing. It had been madness perhaps to depend on the witchwoman of Fàs for anything but a hearty case of food poisoning after eating at her table, but he’d had no other choice. It wasn’t as if he could have left the damned thing with either of his grandfathers. Sgath would have misplaced it in some tackle box or other, and Sìle would have immediately opened it and thereafter had an attack over what he�
�d read.
Rùnach could safely say he hadn’t been dabbling in anything untoward, but he had been creating and refining spells intended to counter every single one of his father’s. By the very nature of that task, he’d had to use a few things that others might have found . . . unsavoury. Well, Sìle would have found them unsavoury. His mother had found them nothing more than necessary.
He wondered if the library would catch on fire if he dared open the book downstairs.
He decided there was nothing to be done but make the attempt, so he took the book in hand and went to look for that still-breathing Bruadairian lass who was likely having a conversation with the flora and fauna of his grandfather’s garden.
He just hadn’t expected her to be singing.
It wasn’t loud singing, though he could hear it once he’d wandered the garden long enough to catch sight of her, standing beneath a flowering linden tree, holding a blossom in her hand. He came to a skidding halt and gaped at her.
He had no idea where they’d found that gown for her, or if someone had merely conjured it up to suit her coloring, but it had been very well done on some industrious seamstress’s part. It was blue, as if the shadows of dawn were lying just so on snow, giving it just a hint of color. He would have liked to have been able to say that he’d never given heed to a woman’s gown before, or her hair, or her face, but he would have been lying, because he’d been a connoisseur of all three. The gown was perfect for her; it made her hair—which he had done a terrible job of putting back up actually—seem like the finest of pale, spun gold, and it didn’t do anything to her face, her face needed nothing done to it save a goodly bit of admiring lavished upon it.
Very well, so he had ceased to think of her as plain directly after she’d stopped puking at Gobhann, and he’d been struggling to come up with some sort of worthy adjective ever since. He supposed he might spend the rest of his life trying to come up with something useful and never manage it.
It was difficult to describe a dream.
He had to sit down on the first bench he found, because he couldn’t stand any longer. He wondered if the day would come when she ceased to surprise him with the things she did.
Her song was nothing he’d ever heard before, but for some reason it seemed familiar in a way he couldn’t divine at first. It was enough for the moment to simply sit there and watch as she and the tree—and several of the flowers, it had to be said—engaged in an ethereal bit of music making. It was truthfully the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, and that was saying something because the musicians who graced his grandfather’s hall were unequalled in any elvish hall he’d ever visited.
And then he realized why what she was doing sounded so familiar.
She was singing in Fadaire.
He grasped for the rapidly disappearing shreds of anything resembling coherent thought, but it was useless. All he could do was sit on a very cold stone bench and listen to a woman who had hardly set foot past her place of incarceration sing a song in his mother’s native tongue that would have brought any elf in the vicinity to tears if he had heard it. He knew, because it was nigh onto bringing him to that place and that in spite of his sorry, jaded self.
He saw something out of the corner of his eye and found that there were several elves standing nearby, hidden discreetly behind this garden ornament and that, most with their eyes closed and expressions of wonder on their faces. He was fairly sure he’d seen a male cousin or two amongst the lot—in fact, he knew that was the case because one of them started forward. Rùnach frowned him back into his place and decided that perhaps he should make his own presence known before Aisling was made uncomfortable by her audience.
He rose, then walked unsteadily toward her, stopping a few feet away. He cleared his throat, which he expected would make her jump. He hadn’t expected the smile she turned on him when she saw him. She looked as if she were, for the first time he’d ever seen, completely at peace.
“The garden is magnificent,” she said happily.
In Fadaire.
“It is,” he managed. “Very tuneful trees, apparently.”
She laughed a little. “Did you hear us?”
“Willingly,” he said honestly. “It was unmatched in all the performances I’ve ever attended.”
She sighed deeply, but in satisfaction. “Their dreams are so lovely. Your grandparents are blessed to live here. ’Tis no wonder they don’t noise their existence about. The land would be overrun in no time otherwise.”
“Either that or my grandfather is simply not a good host,” Rùnach managed. “I never can decide which it is.”
She smiled and patted the tree before she turned away and walked toward him. “Did you find your book?”
“Do you realize you’re speaking my tongue?”
“So are you, so it seemed fair.”
He opened his mouth to point out to her that her recently acquired ability was a little, ah, unusual, but he supposed that when it came to Aisling of Bruadair, unusual was the order of the day. Unusual and, it could be said, almost magical.
He was obviously missing something important.
“When are you going to teach me Deuraich?” he managed.
She blinked a little, then shook her head. “You know too much about my land.”
“Yet we both still breathe.” He offered her his arm. “Fair is fair, if you’re insisting on that. You’ve left me gaping time and time again, so I must have a bit of my own back when I can. So, when shall we begin our lessons?”
She considered. “Learning it is perilous, you know.”
“What isn’t in Bruadair?”
“That’s true,” she agreed. “You’ll have to tell me what you want to learn, I suppose. I can teach you the dialect we were allowed to speak in the Guild or I can teach you the forbidden but admittedly more beautiful High Deuraich that I shouldn’t have known. That is reserved only for nobility and those of a loftier and more worthy social standing.”
“What absolute rot.”
She smiled at him as if he had pleased her in some way. He supposed that he would have done jongleur’s tricks all down the portico’s pathway to have another of those looks, poor fool that he was.
“Mistress Muinear taught me the more refined tongue so I could read her books.”
“Did you sharpen your skills reading edicts from the king?”
She laughed. “Aye, I did, as it happens. I could easily command you to be tidier with your rubbish or instruct you on the proper way to bow as I passed so you didn’t trouble me with your impudent gaze.”
The whole country was daft. He wasn’t sure how to express that politely, so he decided that perhaps he would do well to simply keep his thoughts to himself. “Perhaps we can find a pile of edicts or myths for you to use for my lessons,” he said.
“I suppose we could do that.” She nodded at the book in his hands. “What do you have there? Not more revealing secrets about secret places, I hope.”
He started to speak, then decided perhaps it wasn’t a good idea when there might be listening ears he couldn’t see lurking around some corner or other. “I’ll tell you in the library.”
“Do you think that other book will still be there?”
“I have the feeling it might, because I hid it under the chair.”
Which was exactly where he found it not a quarter hour later. He saw Aisling seated comfortably in the chair next to him, made sure there was food and drink within reach for her, then took his own book in hand and hoped he wouldn’t bring the library down around his ears when he opened it.
“Are you unwell?”
He looked at Aisling sitting next to him, watching him. He shook his head.
“I’m fine.”
“You look pale.”
“I need food.”
She looked skeptical. “Are you going to tell me what that book is that’s making you look pale?”
He supposed there was no reason to deny its effect on him. “If I survive the open
ing of it, aye, possibly.”
“Is it worse than mine?”
“I’ll let you know,” he said grimly, “and that was three questions I answered. I believe I’ve answered all the questions we bargained for, so we’re back to even.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He nodded, then looked at the book in his hands. He remembered vividly the tooling of the cover and the binding of the pages. He had laced the thing liberally with spells, of course, and he was faintly surprised to find there was still the echo of them on the cover.
But not the pages.
There was no time like the present, he supposed, to have something unpleasant over with, so he opened the book, fully expecting to see his own hand staring back at him.
But it wasn’t.
In fact, not only was the hand not his, the words there made no sense because they weren’t words; they were scratches. Scratches that made a sound, actually, that he quickly realized had set his grandfather’s glamour to protesting quite loudly what it was being assaulted by. Rùnach shut the book, the sound ceased, and calm was restored. He glanced at Aisling to see her sitting there with her hands over her ears.
She pulled her hands away carefully, then took an unsteady breath. “What was that?” she managed.
“I’m honestly not at all sure,” he said.
“Are you going to tell me what that book is?”
He took a deep breath. “You know, that delicate little bell we’re hearing is the supper gong. Why don’t we deposit our treasures in our chambers, then spend a lovely evening thinking about things that have nothing to do with quests, books, or countries that are shrouded in mystery.” He looked at the book in her lap that she hadn’t had time to open yet. “Want to take that with you?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “I’ll come back tomorrow and look at it, if you think they won’t mind.”
He imagined they wouldn’t, though he suspected he wouldn’t find the same sort of forbearance when it came to his own reading. Obviously he was going to have to get out of the palace’s reach before he dared look again at what was in his book.