River of Dreams

by Lynn Kurland

  Aisling shoved the knife into his hand before she gasped once more, then fainted.

  He caught her before she washed away, then decided he should make a list of people he intended to speak badly of and at great length. First on the list would be Acair, for walling them into the side of the mountain, but coming a close second was Uachdaran of Léige, for being right, as usual. He held on to his knife and Aisling both, struggling to keep her head above water as he clawed his way upstream.

  Rocks continued to fall into the water behind him, filling in the tunnel that had obviously been a much larger waterway at some point. He didn’t spare the breath to curse, but he certainly thought vile thoughts. It was his father’s bloody bolt-hole all over again, only this time Aisling was a dead weight in his arms and he was going to drown if something didn’t change very soon.

  He fought his way the only direction he could go, which was forward. He had to ignore the collapsing of the tunnel on his heels because thinking about it robbed him of breath.

  So close to another chance at the life he’d given up, only now perhaps with a woman he had grown to love.

  Taken again by his father’s magic personified by his bastard brother—

  He pushed aside the thoughts that didn’t particularly feel as if they had come from inside his own heart and gritted his teeth. He would not give in, would not give up. Not when there was a possibility of escape.

  Aisling came to with a jerk, almost causing him to lose his hold on her.

  “Where—oh.”

  “Aye,” he gasped. “That’s where we are.”

  He ran into a bit of protruding rock with his hand, which felt about as if he’d slammed his hand into, of all things, solid rock. A little investigating revealed it to be a slight shelf, but dragging himself and Aisling both onto it was simply beyond him. He settled for clinging to it in an effort to very briefly catch his breath.

  “Up ahead,” Aisling said, spitting out water that seemed determined to splash them both in the face. “Just a bit farther.”

  “What do you see?” he managed.

  “I don’t see anything.” She was silent for several very long minutes. “The magic is telling me there is a way out.”

  “Then, by all means, let’s listen,” he said frankly. It was for damned sure he had no solutions and a serious lack of energy.

  “I’ll use the wall as well. Let me get ahead of you.”

  He didn’t want her to, but he wasn’t sure they had a choice. He waited for her to move in front of him, then took a moment to shove his knife down the side of his boot. He clung with her to whatever bits of wall protruded enough to be useful. Their progress was agonizingly slow, made worse by the relentless chill of the water. Rùnach continued on until he realized he simply couldn’t go any farther. He wedged his fingers into another crack in the wall and looked at Aisling.

  The magic swirled up and around her. Ethereal wasn’t quite the word he would have used to describe her at the moment. Terrifying was perhaps closer to the mark.

  “Who are you?” he managed.

  She smiled and the magic smiled as well. Rùnach thought he might want to lie down very soon before he simply fell over from shock.

  “I’m someone who is very fond of you,” she said loudly over the rushing of the water.

  “Good thing, since you’re going to wed me.”

  She rolled her eyes, the heartless wench, then put her hand over his that was wedged into the rock.

  “We can open this here,” she said.

  “I’m not going to ask how you know that,” he said, finding that he was too cold even to shiver. “Pray it leads somewhere warm.” He spoke the spell to make werelight, but the ball that sprang to life above his head only spluttered feebly. He looked at Aisling. “You try.”

  She blinked. “I have no magic.”

  “Try it anyway.”

  She opened her mouth, then shut it with a snap. “I have no idea how.” She looked at him seriously. “You’ll have to help me.”

  He put his arm around her, pulled her close, and kissed her.

  “I love you,” he said simply.

  She put her arms around his neck and held on so tightly, he almost asked her to stop. But the return sentiment she whispered in his ear was enough to convince him that he was most certainly not going to do anything but hold her close and not say anything about her squeezing the very breath out of him.

  “Very well,” he said hoarsely as she released him just far enough to look at him. “It’s easy. You take the words and just say them.”

  “But how do they become a spell?”

  He shrugged. “They draw on the power of the magic in your blood.”

  She looked at him in alarm. “But I don’t have any magic in my blood.”

  “I believe there’s magic here that disagrees.” He paused, then looked at her. “I can’t believe we’re this close to death and this is the conversation we’re having.”

  “And I can’t believe you can talk so much.”

  He laughed, because he couldn’t help it. “So said my dam on more than one occasion.”

  She kissed him, artlessly and with a joy that almost was his undoing.

  “Be quiet and tell me what to do.”

  He took a deep breath, turned away to cough out the water that had come with it, then nodded. “If the magic is not yours by bloodright, then you use the words but command them to pull their power from themselves. Less simple, but doable.”

  She shook her head. “I can hardly believe I’m asking this—”

  “But what is the spell?”

  She nodded.

  He gave her the simplest spell of werelight he could think of, one of Croxteth, not Fadaire. He supposed Fadaire would have done just as well, but he wanted fast and to the point. Aisling looked at him, as terrified as he’d ever seen her, then lifted her chin and nodded. Rùnach smiled. Weger would have been proud. Aisling repeated the words faithfully, though her teeth were chattering almost too fiercely for her words to be understandable.

  He watched the words come out of her mouth, watched the magic in the river leap up and catch them, then continued to watch in absolute astonishment as the magic took her words and translated them into whatever Bruadairian magic it seemed to be. Aisling paused, then repeated the spell the magic itself had given her. It was Deuraich, he supposed, or perhaps a more magical version of it—

  Suddenly a soft, almost painfully beautiful light sprang to life above them. He gaped at it in astonishment. He supposed he could have written quite a thick scholarly paper on the various properties of different magic and how they took shape in light alone. Goodness knows the headmaster of Buidseachd had done it and Rùnach had had to continually pinch himself to stay awake through the reading of it. If he were to compare what he was seeing at present with his own magic, he would have said that whilst Fadaire produced a light that was aggressively beautiful, the light that Aisling had called was . . .

  Like something from a dream.

  “So,” he said casually, as casually as a man could whilst clinging to a rock wall to keep from washing away to his death, “you said the magic told you there was a way out?”

  “Aye,” she said uneasily.

  “Here?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, then let’s try something else, shall we?” he suggested cheerfully.

  “Wait,” she said. She listened, then she looked at him. “It wants us to do it together.”

  “Does it?” he asked in surprise. “Why?”

  “It likes you.”

  “Well, there’s a mercy,” he said with feeling, though the feeling he had most strongly was one of not being able to catch his breath. It might have been from the icy water, or it might have been from his surprise. He sincerely hoped he would have the time to decide. “Very well, we’ll do it together. Let’s hope it doesn’t blow a hole through the entire mountain, though I wouldn’t mind seeing some sunshine.”

  “Rùnach, I don’t know
how I feel about this.”

  “Magic, or wielding it with me?”

  “Oh, it isn’t you I mind,” she said. She paused. “I’m just not sure what to think.”

  He wasn’t either, but he wasn’t about to say as much. He put his arm around her and pulled her close, under his hand that was wedged into the rock. He nodded at the wall.

  “Let’s get through that, then we’ll talk. We’ll try Croxteth again, because I have absolutely no idea what your magic would consider a proper spell. That, and Croxteth generally comes most easily to hand. Here is the spell.”

  He gave the spell, then listened to her repeat it back. Her words were barely audible, but he felt the river take note—and not just the part from Bruadair. It occurred to him at that moment that whilst the bulk of the river might have had its start as a modest stream, that wasn’t what had turned it into the bone-chilling flow that it was at present. It was magic, and not of a pleasant sort. Why the Bruadairian magic—and he would have asked it what it called itself if he’d had the presence of mind to do so—endured its company, he couldn’t have said. He supposed it didn’t have much choice.

  “Let’s try,” he said. “Ready?”

  She nodded. He took a deep breath, felt Aisling put her hand over his, then they spoke the words together.

  And the world exploded.

  The stream of magic from Bruadair diverted immediately into the new course, carrying them along with it. Rùnach would have been relieved, but it was too powerful and almost suffocating. He managed to keep hold of Aisling, but only just. He went under more times than he cared to count and he was fairly sure Aisling had done the same.

  He had no idea how long that continued, though he suspected it was measured in hours, not minutes. There came a point when he could no longer demarcate the boundary between dreaming and consciousness. He could only clutch Aisling by the hand and try to keep his head above water. The only thing that saved them, perhaps, was the fact that the water had lost most of its chill. That hardly made up, though, for the endless rushing that carried him too quickly past anything he might have wanted to hold on to.

  At the moment when he was convinced he would drown and take Aisling down with him, he found himself running up hard against what turned out to be a ledge. Iteach crawled off his shoulder onto it, shaking and complaining. Rùnach realized only then that his damned horse had been clinging to him the entire time. He left his pony-turned-tabby to his immediate ablutions and struggled to get Aisling up onto the rock outcropping. She made a valiant effort to pull him up after her, but he knew he was too heavy for her. He rested his head against the rock and closed his eyes until he realized Aisling was shouting at him and he had almost consigned himself to a watery grave.

  He pulled himself up onto the ledge with the last of his strength, pulled Aisling to him, and put his arm around her. He managed to make sure her feet were out of the water, couldn’t find the energy to think about his own, then laid his head down and closed his eyes.

  “We’ll try . . . again . . . later,” he gasped, his chest burning with the effort of breathing. “Don’t let go.”

  She shook her head, coughed, then fell silent. Rùnach would have used a spell to give them dry clothes, but given how his magic had behaved recently, he was afraid he would only make matters worse.

  “Aisling.”

  “Aye?”

  “Make . . . werelight.”

  She spoke his spell of Fadaire as if the words were priceless treasures she didn’t dare get too close to. The light sprang to life and glowed softly above them. Rùnach looked at her and felt a strange lassitude come over him. It wasn’t mere weariness, of that he was certain. Aisling was already senseless. He didn’t want to join her, but he realized he had no choice. He sent Iteach a useful thought about guarding them, then succumbed to something he couldn’t name.

  He could only hope it wasn’t the curse Aisling had been certain would take her life. There was too much left to do. He had to return her country to her king. He wanted to find a dreamspinner and ask them about their art. He had to find out what Acair was doing and why he wanted so badly the book Rùnach had in his pack, the one he was rather glad he’d wrapped in a spell or two to keep it dry and un-noticed.

  He also wanted to find out just what in the hell Soilléir of Cothromaiche was doing right in the middle of everything.

  “Rùnach, there’s something above us.”

  He could hardly muster the energy to look up. He thought he might have seen light, but he wasn’t sure. He actually was convinced he was dreaming. He wrapped his arms around Aisling and held on tightly.

  “There’s someone peering down at us from above,” she said suddenly.

  “Is it Acair?”

  “Nay, I don’t think so.”

  “Then if you aren’t dreaming, perhaps they’ll haul us up to safety and I can go have a nap.”

  A nap he supposed he might be taking sooner rather than later. He realized then that he truly wasn’t going to be able to fight the weariness any longer.

  He closed his eyes and felt consciousness slip away.

  Twenty-one

  Aisling woke with a gasp.

  That was becoming a bad habit she decided as she had to sit up, coughing, in order to regain her breath. She clutched the bedclothes beneath her fingers and was very grateful to find those there instead of the bottom of a rushing river. She looked around her quickly, not daring to hope she was in a place of safety.

  The chamber gave nothing away, though it was very lovely. The bed had a carved, wooden canopy and the bedcurtains were fashioned from a very lovely brocade that said nothing to her past a soft good morning. She appreciated that, gave what of them she could reach a pat as she swung her legs to the floor, then parted the curtains to see what lay beyond.

  There was a fireplace, a pair of comfortable chairs, and a dressing table with a mirror. An armoire stood guard against one wall and there was water set aside on a small table for her pleasure. The fire was polite but non-committal. It seemed to prefer that she toss another piece of wood onto its burning center rather than simply leap to life on its own. She found that somewhat refreshing, actually, given the fires she had been faced with over the past several days.

  She had a wash, put on clothes that seemed to have been left for her on a chair, then opened the door and peeked out into the passageway. It was empty, which made her slightly nervous. She was in her proper form, so she had to assume she wasn’t dead, but the lack of fellow-travelers along her road was a bit disconcerting.

  Or, more particularly, the lack of a particular fellow-traveler.

  She walked down the hallway carefully, keeping her ears attuned to any hint of anything useful. She was forced to admit that it was rather more difficult than not to negotiate a hall when the walls were simply walls and the floor gave no indication of who might have walked on it recently.

  She continued on, though, because she had to believe at some point she would either run into Rùnach or someone who had seen him.

  Unfortunately, all that wandering was accomplishing was to give her far too much time to think. She wasn’t at all sure how she felt about her journey from Gair of Ceangail’s lair to wherever she currently found herself. Seeing Rùnach’s brothers standing there in a cluster had been unsettling, no doubt because she had sensed all too clearly their unpleasant magic. Being trapped in Gair’s house, falling into that river, almost drowning before the magic had wrapped itself around her—

  Speaking a spell and feeling the words leap forward to act according to their assigned responsibilities.

  Perhaps more devastating still had been speaking that particular spell of opening with Rùnach.

  It had been nothing like having the king of the dwarves send his power through her hands. Then, she had felt as if she’d been flung against an unyielding rock wall. With Rùnach, the power that had come through his hands over hers had been immense, true, but not nearly so unforgiving. She hadn’t looked too closely a
t the glamour that covered King Sìle’s land, but she had the feeling it was akin to the power Rùnach had put behind the last word of her spell: beautiful, but full of an unrelenting elven magic that stretched back into times that had faded into dreams. She had wanted to weep for the beauty of it.

  She wanted to weep from other things as well, namely that she had actually used magic and had it do as she’d asked, but perhaps she would do that later. For now, she wanted to find Rùnach and make sure he was unharmed.

  She continued on until she found a set of doors that looked fairly substantial, though no guards stood before them. When she put her hand on the bar to open them, she was informed in stately tones that she was preparing to enter King Seannair’s audience hall and would she be so good as to refrain from turning cartwheels down the approach to the dais, filching tassels from the tapestries, or taking a turn on the king’s chair. She pulled her hand back, thought about what she’d heard, then smiled.

  She liked where she was.

  She considered the doors. “I don’t suppose,” she said slowly, “that you know where Prince Rùnach is, do you?” Or if he’s alive was what she wanted to add, but she couldn’t bring herself to.

  “I do.”

  Aisling whirled around and found a tall, handsome man standing there. He wasn’t an elf, though he didn’t seem to be very ordinary either. He was, she had to admit, extremely handsome. He was also looking at her as if he’d seen something he hadn’t expected.

  “Oh, I see,” he said.

  Aisling patted herself surreptitiously, grateful beyond measure that she was covered in all the proper places instead of having left her borrowed chamber in her nightclothes.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m lost.”

  “Consider yourself found.” The man made her a low bow. “I am Astar, at your service.” He smiled. “Too far away from the throne to be a bother but close enough to have my grandfather the king glare at me on occasion.”

  “Is that a comfortable place?” she asked.

  “Very. Now, if I might be so bold, I would guess that you are Aisling of Bruadair.”