by Lynn Kurland
She smiled. “I imagine so.” She looked back down at his hands. “What is that one there? It seems to cover the rest.”
Rùnach looked at his hands. “What do you mean?”
She traced something on the back of his right hand, a rune that flashed to life, sparkling silver and gold in the firelight. He looked at it in surprise because he hadn’t known it was there. It seemed to be under the other runes, though he couldn’t have said what its purpose was. He never would have noticed it if it hadn’t been for Aisling having touched it.
“It seems to be something that extends . . .” He studied it for quite a while before he shook his head. “It would take centuries to learn all the runes of Tòrr Dòrainn, then even longer to know what they mean in conjunction with something else. I have never seen that particular rune, though it resembles another that is used for, well, hiding things. But not hiding, for that is too strong a term.” He looked at Aisling and shrugged. “Let’s say it inspires a lack of interest.”
She nodded, returned his hand to his knee, then rose and began to pace. Rùnach watched her, then looked at the king who was watching him with an expression Rùnach didn’t dare attempt to identify.
Aisling came to a stop suddenly and looked at the king.
“Where does your power come from, Your Majesty?” she asked. “What are the sources?”
Rùnach found the words to tell her she shouldn’t ask on the tip of his tongue, but he bit them back at the look on Uachdaran’s face. The king wasn’t angry. In fact, his expression indicated the opposite. He looked as if a prized student had asked a question he’d been waiting forever for her to ask.
“A very interesting question, indeed. Shall I tell you or would you prefer to guess?”
Aisling wrapped her arms around herself. “I would guess it comes from underground.”
Uachdaran nodded. “My magic reaches deep, like veins of ore, down into places in the earth too deep for man or dwarf to reach. It is, as you might imagine, an endless source of magic and might.”
“So, it is possible,” she said slowly, “to have power lying underneath, say—”
“Rock?” Uachdaran finished for her. “Not just possible, lass, but imperative. It isn’t as if anyone else could take my magic, not after all these years of my having been connected to the land. I suppose they might try, but my spells for hiding that magic from view are impenetrable. It is for that reason that you could look at my hall for years upon years and never see what lies beneath it.”
“I can.”
He smiled, a small twisting of his mouth that wasn’t at all unkind, but rather unsurprised. “Aisling, lass, I don’t doubt that for a moment.” He tilted his head toward Rùnach. “See something there that interests you?”
“I’m not sure,” she whispered. “What I think I see is so faint, so far down, so remote . . .” She took a deep breath. “I think I might be imagining it.”
“Imagination is the daylight counterpart to dreams, my gel, and the start of all sorts of things that seem impossible at first.”
“Is that so,” Aisling said, and it wasn’t a question.
“It is so.” He set his mug down on the floor. “I hear you once believed elves were mythical creatures.”
Rùnach wondered just what in the hell they were talking about. He would have asked, but he was too busy wondering why Uachdaran was now carrying over to the fire a small table such as might be used to hold drinks or a light supper.
“Ah,” Aisling began, “aye, I did.”
“Pointy ears and all that, eh?”
“That too.”
The king of the dwarves banged a rather large pewter cup down in front of Rùnach, then poured a liberal amount of something amber. Rùnach looked at the king.
“What’s that for?”
“You elves have rather delicate constitutions,” he said without a shred of levity. “Best to get you drunk before one does anything painful to you.”
“Painful,” Rùnach echoed. He looked at the king, who didn’t have anything sharp in his hands, then at Aisling, who was only watching him as if he were something she intended to experiment on. “What,” he managed, “are you talking about?”
“Ask your lady,” the king said with a shrug.
Rùnach wasn’t sure he dared. She looked as if she were fair to falling over in a faint as it was. He would have gotten up to put his arms around her, or lead her to a chair, but he wasn’t at all sure he wouldn’t fall over as well. There was something afoot that he couldn’t name, and it frightened the hell out of him.
Aisling looked at him for an eternal moment, as if she were gathering her courage for something truly dire. Then she took a deep breath.
And then she started a flywheel of air.
“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Uachdaran said softly.
Rùnach thought it was less interesting than it was unsettling, but he didn’t suppose anyone cared at that point what he thought. Aisling was looking around, apparently for something to put on her flywheel and connect it to the bobbin he could see hanging there motionless in the air. The king was just watching her work with what Rùnach considered to be an unseemly amount of interest.
Aisling pulled a single strand of flame into it.
And then she looked at him again.
He had the feeling, ridiculous as it was, that he was somehow going to factor into what she was doing at present. There were many things he thought he wouldn’t have minded where she was concerned. A long walk along the shore, a morning outside where they shot pointy things into targets pinned to subsequently irritated trees, a quiet evening spent in front of the fire.
But he didn’t like the look of that fire that was spinning not only her flywheel but the bobbin as well.
“What,” he managed in what sounded to his ears like a very garbled tone, “are you doing?”
She met his gaze. He thought he could safely say that he had never seen her look more unsettled, but at the same time, he was fairly sure she had never looked more determined.
It was profoundly alarming.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that there is something beneath your scars.”
“Aye, my flesh!” he exclaimed.
Uachdaran sighed gustily. “Don’t unman yourself in front of the woman you’re wishing to woo.”
“Woo?” Aisling echoed.
Uachdaran looked at them both, then laughed. “If the two of you manage to do anything but stare at each other in confusion and consternation for the rest of your days, I’ll be thoroughly surprised. Here, let me set things along on the right path before you do damage to him. Aisling, he wants to woo you, presumably for the usual reasons. Rùnach, if she weren’t busy preparing to spin things out of thin air, she would possibly tell you that you are looking too far above yourself. Now, Aisling, tell him what you see.”
She looked at the king. “Do you see it too?”
He only smiled.
“See what?” Rùnach demanded. “What are you two talking about?”
Aisling took a pair of deep, steadying breaths, then looked at him.
“I think your power lies under your scars,” she said.
He was absolutely sure he was hearing things. “You can’t be serious.”
“And here,”—she reached out and touched the corner of his mouth—“and here and here,” she continued, touching the corner of his eye and the place where the scar terminated near his ear.
He wondered if somehow his hearing had begun to fail him, because she couldn’t possibly be saying what the words sounded like.
“Impossible,” he said, but there was no sound to the word, because he couldn’t bring himself to even entertain the thought.
She touched his hand. “Rùnach, I don’t think your sight was taken from you, or your magic, or your voice. I think it’s buried under your scars.”
He shook his head, because he had to convince her she was wrong before she got her hopes up. “Miach and Ruith worked on my hands for hou
rs. So did my grandfather. They would have seen something.”
“Would they?” Uachdaran put in. “Funny that a gel from Bruadair can see what they could not, isn’t it?”
“Sarah would have seen it,” Rùnach protested.
Then he watched his words fade away into something that fell into the fire with a soft hiss.
Sarah hadn’t been there for any of it.
He couldn’t remember why not, now, though he supposed she had gone on with Sgath and Eulasaid to Lake Cladach, leaving Ruithneadh behind. Soilléir had been there for the wedding, of course, but he had been his usual self, pleasant but not offering too many words.
He looked at Aisling—nay, he could hardly look at her. The thought of having, well, he couldn’t dare hope.
He shook his head. “Impossible.”
She put her hand over his. He watched as she traced a rune there, the rune that was revealed very briefly as a discreet, elegant thing of silver and gold that lay under all the other runes. It covered his scars completely, as it happened.
She touched the edge of that rune, then drew a long strand of Fadaire out of it and wound it around her finger.
“I’ll be damned,” Uachdaran whispered.
Rùnach was afraid he would be more than damned, he would be shattered if she were able to pull anything out of him but agony over what he had lost, what his father had taken from him. Because hadn’t his father taken everything? In truth, the whole sordid episode was blurry in his mind despite how many years he’d had to think about it. His mother had rushed forward, his brothers had fallen, he had . . .
He couldn’t remember clearly what he had done. He was fairly sure his mother had blurted out a spell that had shielded him from the brunt of his father’s spell of Diminishing, for all the good it had done him. Or perhaps she had laid that spell over Keir. He simply didn’t know.
But what he did know was that the cap of the well had gouged his cheek as it had fallen shut on his hands.
“Your Majesty?”
“Aye, gel?”
“What do I do with his power once ’tis spun?”
Rùnach realized they were discussing him, his life, his long-dismissed, gravely mourned . . .
Nay, to say his loss of magic had been gravely mourned didn’t come close to describing it. He had grieved for it every moment of every day for so long, he’d stopped counting the days as they passed. He had initially wished for death, but been too cowardly to take his own life. In the end, he had told himself he was resigned to the loss of his birthright, content to simply go about as an ordinary man, happy with his lot in life.
He had been a terrible liar, actually.
“Well, I don’t know, gel,” Uachdaran said, stroking his chin thoughtfully, as if they discussed what they might have for supper later that night. “Can you weave?”
Aisling made a sound that was something akin to a sob. Rùnach turned his head to look at her and saw that she was very pale. He felt very pale, so perhaps they were evenly matched there.
“Aye, Your Majesty, I can weave.”
“I suppose you could weave his power and we could throw it over him like a cloak, but that doesn’t get it back in his blood where it belongs, does it?”
Rùnach felt the room begin to spin.
Spinning. It was what she did best, after all. Hadn’t he watched her spin all kinds of things: air, fire, spells . . .
“I don’t suppose you have a spell that might suit,” Aisling asked carefully. “Do you?”
The king held up his hands. “Aisling, I have spells for all sorts of things, but opening the soul of an elf and putting his power back inside him is beyond whatever art I might call my own.”
Well, at least her notice was off him for a moment or two. Rùnach drew in breaths, trying to ignore how ragged they sounded. He felt as if he had just run endless numbers of stairs at Gobhann in the predawn air that tore at one’s lungs and left a body wanting nothing more than to go back to bed.
“How does your kingship come to you,” Aisling pressed, “if that isn’t too personal a question. I’ve read that in Neroche it is a mantel that falls upon the man so chosen.”
Uachdaran shook his head. “Here, it just sinks in . . .” He looked at her. “Well, I suppose we could try that sort of spell, if you like.”
“I have no magic, so you’ll have to do it.”
“Of course, my girl.”
Rùnach watched with a fair bit of alarm as Aisling bent over his left hand again. “I need something to pry up one of the edges of this rune here,” she muttered. “It’s covering too much of the scar.”
“The boy has a knife down the side of his boot.”
Aisling considered. “Well, his grandfather did give it to him. I think it might have magical properties.”
“I imagine it does.”
Rùnach tried to pull the knife free—quite possibly to stab himself with it, for the thought did cross his mind quite strongly—but his hands were shaking too badly to do so. He couldn’t even bring himself to reach for what Uachdaran had so graciously poured for him there on the table. All he could do was watch Aisling and wonder if he would howl or weep.
Or if she would fail.
Or succeed.
He honestly wasn’t sure which would have been worse.
Uachdaran pulled the knife from his boot and wielded it where Aisling told him to, quickly and without any mercy. Rùnach would have cursed him, but he had no breath for it. He could only gape at the multihued strand that Aisling pulled from under the scar on his right hand.
“The end of this is what I saw,” she said, frowning thoughtfully. “It made me wonder.”
“I can see why. Lovely thing, isn’t it, for it being fashioned not of anything my land produced. Why don’t you spin it up and let’s see what it is.”
It was agony, that’s what it was. Rùnach felt as if she were pulling his soul out of him through the back of his hands, first one, then the other, then the scar on his face. It could have taken a handful of minutes or a handful of hours. All he knew was that when she stopped, he was so empty of himself, he could scarce breathe.
“Best hurry, hadn’t you, lass? He doesn’t look at all well.”
Rùnach managed to get his eyes open to watch Aisling string a loom of air and fire. She quickly wove what she’d pulled from him into a long, wide scarf of sorts.
“Put it around his shoulders, Aisling, then we’ll use the spell together. You hold on to his magic, and I’ll put my hands over yours.”
Oh, please don’t was what Rùnach would have said if he could have. He knew what happened when a mage joined his power to another mage that way. His own sister had tried to heal a cut on his hand by having little Miach of Neroche put his hands over hers and speak the words of a spell with her. Well, Miach had only spoken the last word, but Mhorghain had fainted just the same. Rùnach had felt a white-hot something streak through him. It had almost killed him, truth be told.
“Don’t . . . hurt . . . her,” Rùnach managed. “Not . . . worth . . . it . . .”
He looked up, because he could hear the spell beginning to fall on him. He could feel Aisling’s fingers digging into his shoulders and Uachdaran’s voice sounding a great deal like the entire mountain collapsing.
And then it fell.
Rùnach found himself suddenly on the floor, watching a heavy bottle of wine come with agonizing slowness toward his face.
“Oh, sorry, lad,” Uachdaran said from a great distance. “I only had hands to catch one of you, and I fear you weren’t my first choice. Can you blame me?”
Indeed, he could not.
Rùnach closed his eyes and knew no more.
Seventeen
Aisling sat by Rùnach’s bed and wondered if she’d killed him.
He was pale as death, still as death, perhaps even dead. She reached out quickly and put her fingers to his neck, then sighed in relief. His heart was beating, for all the good it apparently was doing him. She would have looked
around her for aid, but there was none to give it to her. She was there alone with the remains of her actions.
It hadn’t been very long ago—a pair of hours at best—that she’d woken from a terrible dream about attempting to run away from rocks rushing down a mountainside toward her, to find herself instead of being crushed by the slide, lying comfortably on the sofa in front of the king’s fire.
Rùnach, however, had been lying on the floor, an angry red mark over one eye that she hoped hadn’t come from her fist. The bottle from which the king had poured him a cup of wine had been lying next to him, so perhaps that had been the perpetrator of the assault. She had knelt down by his side, ignoring the way the chamber spun at such a minimal movement, and felt for his pulse. Her relief over the fact that he lived still had been almost overwhelming. She might have indulged in another swoon, but she’d been interrupted by the arrival of the king.
He had marched inside with a small army of helpers who had heaved Rùnach up and onto their shoulders to then carry him to his chamber and put him to bed. Aisling had followed, trying not to wring her hands. If she had killed him, how would she be able to go on?
If King Uachdaran had found anything unusual about the situation, he had given no indication of it. He had merely advised her to keep watch, promised to send along sustenance, then sauntered off to see to his other guests with a whistle and a light heart.
She hadn’t shared his optimism.
That had been a pair of hours ago and Rùnach had still not stirred. She hadn’t dared even sit on his bed at first, preferring to limit herself to the bedpost where she could clutch the wood that remained blessedly silent instead of chiding her for killing an elven prince, and wonder if he would ever wake. By the time she had dared perch on the edge of his bed, she had wondered less about whether or not he would wake again than she had whether or not he would wake to himself.
The issue of his magic was something she still couldn’t bring herself to face.
That was, she supposed, an issue she would only be required to face if he awoke. She looked at him, lying there still as death, and wondered what his grandfather would say when he listened to her discharging the unenviable duty of telling him she had slain his grandson.