River of Dreams

by Lynn Kurland

  “To send me off on a quest?” she asked. “For a mercenary?”

  “On a quest,” he said, “but not for a mercenary.”

  She jumped up because she had to pace or she was going to make noises she was very sure would frighten them both. She pulled Rùnach up with her and towed him along behind her as she walked the paths that seemed to present themselves to her as she required. She walked until she found herself quite out of breath, only then realizing that she had been running. She put her hand over her chest and struggled to catch her breath, but couldn’t seem to.

  “What are you talking about?” she said finally.

  He looked at her seriously. “I think we can safely say that in Bruadair there are dreamweavers. Thanks to Soilléir, we now know there are dreamspinners.”

  “Six of them, at least.”

  He nodded. “Six of them. It would be interesting to know what happened to the seventh, the most powerful of them all, wouldn’t it?”

  “Fascinating,” she agreed.

  “We know that she—or he, perhaps—had been slain because Soilléir said as much, didn’t he?”

  She nodded uneasily.

  “And if that most powerful of dreamspinners had had a successor who was a babe when the chief dreamspinner was slain—how many years ago did Soilléir say?”

  She looked at him and knew very well that he knew exactly the count. “A score and six years,” she whispered.

  “Aye, a score and six years,” he said. “The wee one was placed with a family, then hidden away elsewhere, if I’m understanding Soilléir aright.”

  “Let’s go run some more.”

  He didn’t move. “If you wanted to hide a spinner, Aisling, where is the one place in Bruadair you would put her?”

  “I don’t know,” she said miserably. She pulled her hand away from his. “I have to run.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  She would have asked him to come with her, of course, but she had no more breath for it. It was all she could do to stumble farther away from the palace, trying to outrun things she didn’t want to know.

  In time, Rùnach reached for her hand and pulled her back first to a walk, then into his arms. She was grateful for his aid in remaining on her feet, for she was certain she wouldn’t have managed it on her own. She held on to him for as long as she could before she knew she had to speak. She pulled back and looked up at him.

  “I am no one.”

  “Well, I disagree with that because you are definitely someone to me,” he said easily, “but apparently it isn’t just my opinion that matters.”

  She took a deep breath. “What are we going to do?”

  “First, we’re going to go find something to eat. Then we’ll ransack Seannair’s library for the sport of it. After that, we’ll find Soilléir and see what details we can pry from him. Though I suspect,” he said, smoothing her hair back from her face, “that we know all we need to know.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know anything.”

  “You know the seventh and most powerful dreamspinner has been dead for over a score of years,” he said quietly. “I suspect that the lack of her presence has created a void that many unpleasant mages have tried to use for their own ends.”

  “And just what are we to do about that?” she asked, pulling out of his arms.

  He clasped his hands behind his back. “Why don’t we go to Bruadair, find the remaining six dreamspinners, and ask them a few questions? They might have a suggestion or two for us.”

  She dragged her sleeve across her eyes. “What has any of this to do with me?”

  He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “You spin air. Fire, too. Oh, and water.” He looked at her seriously. “In my grandmother’s garden, whilst I slept, you took the dreams of the trees and flowers and—”

  “Don’t,” she pled. “Please don’t.”

  He simply looked at her, silently, for so long that she wondered if he would ever move again. She took a deep breath, then walked forward until she walked into his embrace. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his cheek against her hair. His cheek that had been scarred but was almost scarless thanks to the fact that she had taken his power and spun it out of him.

  “If you wanted to hide a dreamspinner,” he murmured, “where would you put her?”

  Aisling felt a shudder start at the back of her neck, travel through her, then finish at her feet. It took her quite a long time before she thought she could answer.

  “In a weaver’s guild,” she said finally.

  “Any weaver’s guild?”

  A half sob escaped her before she could catch it. “The most horrific of them all.”

  “Where?”

  “In Beul.”

  “Hmmm,” he said. “I think you have something there.”

  She wanted to weep, but she was too terrified to weep. “It can’t be . . . it’s just not possible . . .” She held on to him tightly. “I can’t do this.”

  “I understand, my love,” he said very quietly. “I understand that perfectly.”

  She pulled back to look at him, then. “What did you do?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “I did what was needful.”

  “Alone?”

  He shook his head. “I had my family.”

  “I have no family.”

  “You have me,” he said simply. “Shall we wed today?”

  She smiled, because she had the feeling he was utterly serious. “Your grandfather would be unhappy.”

  He returned her smile. “He might be, but only because he would want to escort you to the priest.”

  “I don’t think he was slain,” she said quietly, “on the plains of Ailean.”

  He paused, then shook his head. “I don’t think so either. He’s far too canny for that. Besides, he has a wedding to attend to when I can get you into a chapel somewhere. For all we know, there is a family somewhere in Bruadair who frets every day over your welfare.” He froze. “I might have to ask your sire—who I seriously doubt will find himself slaving in a mine—for your hand.”

  “Ha,” she said. “It would serve you right to be the one worrying for a change.”

  He took her face in his hands, kissed her softly, then put his arm around her. “Let’s rest here for a bit, pry a few more details from our taciturn host, then we’ll find our way across the border and see what answers lie there. Besides, you know how I love a good mystery.”

  “I don’t want to solve any mysteries before breakfast,” she said firmly. “Do you think if we hurry back to the palace now, there might be anything edible left in the king’s audience chamber?”

  He smiled. “Let’s go see.”

  Aisling supposed they might not manage to arrive before Soilléir had done his duty to the tea tray, but perhaps they would find him half asleep on a sofa somewhere, too overcome from his desserts to properly fend off their questions.

  Because she had several of those.

  She wanted to know why he had been in Beul at precisely the right moment, not once but twice during her escape—the entire truth, not what he seemed to want to tell them. She wanted to know why Rùnach had found his book of spells that didn’t contain his spells at Eòlas where he might not have looked otherwise. Had they been driven in that direction, or had it been happenstance?

  She wanted to know if Sglaimir had any idea that all Bruadair’s magic was being siphoned off by rivers that ran away from her country, in all likelihood under dwarvish palaces, and terminating in a place she couldn’t yet name. And if he knew, why did he allow it? In return for more power or was there another reason?

  But most of all, she wanted to know with absolute certainty why she had been lied to, the asking of which seemed to bring her full circle to almost where she’d begun. She was a simple weaver, parentless, friendless. Who would have gone to such lengths to have her out of her home country . . .

  And why.

  There were seven dreamspinners in Bruadair a
nd the last one was missing, the one who had been but a wee babe twenty-six years ago, a wee babe who had been first fostered, then hidden away where no one could find her.

  How coincidental that she should be exactly that age, have come from exactly those circumstances, and been helped out of her country into obscurity by a prince of Cothromaiche who never did such things normally after which she’d had the very great fortune to meet a magicless elven prince who had turned out to be so much more than could have been suspected at first.

  So much more than could have been suspected at first.

  She wondered how many other things that could apply to.

  “There are always answers.”

  She looked up at Rùnach. “But do I want to ask the questions?”

  He laughed a little. “That is a question only you can answer, I’m afraid.”

  “Are you going to stay with me whilst we find the answers?”

  “Be a bit difficult to wed you if I’m off somewhere else, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so.”

  He smiled. “You know, that almost sounds like an aye.”

  “It does almost, doesn’t it?”

  He looked at her in surprise, then laughed. “You are a heartless lass, Aisling of Bruadair.” He stopped, pulled her into his arms, then held her close for a moment or two. “Let’s go take our ease in peace and safety for a day or two, then we’ll see about those answers perhaps neither of us particularly wants but definitely must have. At least this time, we won’t be walking into darkness alone.”

  She nodded, then put her hand in his and walked with him back to the hall. She had thought that the bulk of her life had been spent alone, but now she was beginning to suspect there had been those watching over her unseen and unmarked. That was a great comfort, made perhaps even more dear thanks to the man walking alongside her, humming snatches of things she was quite certain she’d learned from the trees in his grandmother’s garden.

  She was going to have a few questions for those unmarked souls.

  Aye, she was going to have several questions, indeed.