by Lynn Kurland
“There was a woman with him earlier,” Amitán pressed on relentlessly. “Where is she?”
The third elbowed his way to the front of the group. “Sold her to traders, did His Lordsh—”
Ruith watched as his companions jerked him backward and shouted him into silence. He wasn’t sure if it was because Sarah’s fate had been revealed or if the man had been on the verge of unwittingly revealing who had hired them.
If Amitán didn’t pry the entire tale from them, he certainly would.
He continued to rub his hands against his legs as he listened closely to Amitán and the men carrying on their discussion in increasingly belligerent tones. He quickly looked around him for a convenient escape route, then noticed something he hadn’t before.
The spell he was covered with was sporting a great rent in itself, as if someone had sliced through it. He would have assumed it was Amitán to do the like, but if he’d managed it, he would have continued on by making a great rent in Ruith’s chest. Perhaps someone had been trying to rescue him and been interrupted in the act—
But the rent had been made by another spell of Olc, Olc mixed with something he couldn’t quite see.
That was odd.
He would have examined that a bit more closely, but he was distracted by Amitán beginning to lose what little patience he possessed.
“I don’t care about the traders from Malairt!” he shouted, “I want to know who hired you and why he wanted you to guard that thing over there.”
The third of the group, the bravest by far, told Amitán in the most detailed of terms just what he could do with his questions.
That man crumpled to the ground quite suddenly, either dead or senseless. That seemed to bring the other two to a spirit of cooperation they hadn’t enjoyed before.
“I don’t know who the man was,” the second blurted out. “In truth. He just gave us orders to keep watch until he returned. Said that lad over there was a lord’s brat who needed tending.”
“What did this beneficent lord look like?” Amitán demanded.
“I couldn’t look at him,” the first answered promptly. “He was all darkness.”
“But that could have been anyone!” Amitán thundered.
Ruith had to agree. Given the nature of every bloody soul inhabiting the keep up the way and the surrounding environs, the description could have applied to anyone within a thirty-league radius.
But why would darkness have wanted to keep him whole? He ran quickly through a list of black mages and dismissed them all as he watched the escalation of hostilities in front of him. Amitán was demanding that the guardsmen bring Ruith to him; the remaining two were refusing just as adamantly. It said something about the man who had hired them that they were terrified enough of him to choose facing down the angry mage in front of them presently to facing his wrath later.
Amitán cursed them, then turned and flung a spell at Ruith.
Ruith shifted away from the mysterious rent in the spell of protection, more than willing to use something not of his own making to save his own sweet neck. Amitán’s spell was absorbed easily, then it gathered itself into something quite different and hurtled back toward him. It slammed into him with the force of a score of fists, then encompassed him from head to toe.
Amitán began to scream.
Ruith wasted no time in making his escape. He shoved apart the spell, dove through it, then rolled up to his feet, drawing his knives as he did so. The pain of that almost sent him to his knees. He looked at his palms in surprise only to find them covered with blisters.
What in the hell was in that spell?
He would have given that more thought, but he was too distracted by watching the spectacle of Amitán clawing at his face, trying to remove what had attached itself to him. Ruith winced as Amitán staggered about the glade, making altogether inhuman sounds of agony before he dropped to his knees.
Ruith turned away from the spectacle. He took a firmer grip on his knives, ignoring the pain of his ruined skin, and walked over to the remaining guardsmen who were gaping at him as if he’d been the cause of Amitán’s suffering.
“Where did the traders go with the woman?” he asked shortly.
They lifted their hands, then, as one, pointed to the south.
“Fair enough,” Ruith said, trying to sound calmer than he felt. “If I were you, I would hurry away and hide somewhere you think you won’t be found. Because that”—he tilted his head toward Amitán—“will be the least of what’s coming.”
The men looked at each other, then turned and bolted.
Ruith would have followed them in like manner, but there was at least one answer he needed to make his journey less perilous. He resheathed his knives, then turned to his bastard brother, who was now lying on the ground, panting.
“Who survived the fall of the keep?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t tell you ... if my life ... depended on it,” Amitán gasped.
Ruith cursed him. Though that list of what had now been loosed into the world would have been useful—perhaps even critical—he didn’t have the time to wait until Amitán was in enough distress to unburden himself.
“Help ... me,” Amitán wheezed.
Ruith actually considered it, even though the little stinging things Amitán had tossed at him whilst he’d been captive in Ceangail’s great hall were still quite fresh in his mind. Unfortunately, he possessed nothing—or, rather, nothing he would use—to counter what had taken his half brother in its painful embrace.
“I think you’ll need a mage for what ails you.”
Amitán looked at him with naked hatred on his face. “I’ll find you ... and kill you.”
“I imagine you’ll try,” Ruith agreed.
Amitán struggled against the spell that seemed to be wrapping itself ever more tightly around him. Ruith wasn’t above seeing a black mage come to his own bad end, but he wasn’t one to enjoy overmuch the watching of that journey there. He started to walk away, then paused. He turned back to Amitán.
“There appears to be one end of the spell near your left boot,” he conceded. “I think if you could reach it, you might be able to unravel the whole thing.”
Amitán wasted a goodly amount of energy condemning Ruith to a score of different deaths, each more painful than the last, before he apparently decided he would be better off saving his breath. Ruith left him to it.
He left the camp in a southerly direction, following the tracks of a handful of horses. He hadn’t gone twenty paces before what had struck him as odd before presented itself as slightly more than odd.
Someone had made a rent in that spell of protection. He was willing to bet his knives that the maker of the spell and the maker of the rent were not the same mage simply because it made no sense to weave a spell then slice it in half. But if that was the case, who had cut through that spell, and why?
He leaned down absently to adjust one of the knives stuck down the side of his boots and found the answer.
The pages from his father’s book of spells that he had rolled up and stuck down his boots were gone.
He turned immediately and strode back to the camp. It cost him precious time, but he forced himself to methodically look through everything his guardsmen had left behind. He ignored the continuing shrieks of his bastard brother as he rifled through packs and searched all about the tree where he’d been bound. The spells were gone. He started to curse, then felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Someone was watching him from the shadows.
He straightened his knives, furiously considering the facts he was now faced with. Sarah was captured and carried off to points unknown, he was being stalked by an unnamed mage—either the maker of the spell of protection or the mage who’d broken through it to take the spells Ruith had been carrying—and his magic was buried, which left him unable to address either problem easily. But if he released his magic and someone took it, he would be unquestionably powerless, which would leave Sarah alo
ne, unprotected, unable to fight what he was quite sure would be hunting her.
Then again, perhaps the fact that he was still breathing said something about who was following him. Apparently he was worth more to that mage alive than dead, which led him to wonder if perhaps his unexpected benefactor intended to follow him and take his magic at a later time.
That left him with only one choice. He would find Sarah, then remain as attractive a prize as possible until he could get both himself and Sarah somewhere safe. He didn’t dare hope the mage standing motionless under the trees behind where he’d been captive would simply give up and go home.
He left Amitán trying to bring his foot up toward his face where he could presumably take hold of the end of the spell with his teeth and pull, then walked off toward the south, looking for tracks. There were two sets: one made by horsemen and the other made by a single soul.
That single set of tracks would eventually lead him all the way back to his own house where he could shut his door on things he didn’t care to look at anymore. It was the road he had taken as a lad of ten winters when he’d been seeking refuge from the storm. But he was no longer a lad of ten winters, and he had taken on a quest willingly, knowing that it would lead him into a darkness he knew all too well.
Only now that quest included a woman who had relied on him for protection and been repaid with harm.
He turned away from a path he wouldn’t have seriously considered and started quickly down the other because the truth was, the quest was no longer just about finding Sarah’s ridiculous brother and stopping him from trying to make magic far beyond his capabilities. He had himself loosed things in Ceangail’s keep that would need to be contained, he had lost spells that could wreak untold damage on the world, and he had failed to hold on to a woman whose only error in judgement had been desiring to do good.
And to trust him.
He would give her no reason to regret that trust in the future. Once she was found, he would seek out the closest safe haven for them both where they could hide until she was rested and he had unraveled a mystery or two. Perhaps by then he would have had the time to consider just who might have protected him with magic whose main purpose was to destroy.
He wasn’t sure he would care for the answer.
But have it he would, then he would leave Sarah safely behind and follow the trail of his father’s spells himself. There was naught but darkness in front of him and darkness following, and he would be damned if she would have any more of it.
He pushed aside his absolute dread that he would find her too late and concentrated on the tracks before him.
He could do nothing else.
Two
Sarah of Doìre was finished with mages.
She had, she would readily admit, entertained that thought more than once over the course of her life. Being the daughter of the witchwoman Seleg had given her ample opportunity to watch magic and its practitioners at close range. Her brother Daniel, whose ultimate goal was to destroy the world with his self-proclaimed mighty magic, had laid yet more twigs upon the fire of her aversion.
But the last score of hours had turned aversion into full-blown loathing.
She leaned her pounding head back against the tree she’d been propped up against and tried to think clearly. It was possible that her ill feelings toward those of a more magical inclination might have been exacerbated by her recent journey made with her own poor self cast over a horse’s withers where her head had apparently bounced quite enthusiastically against its shoulder. She hadn’t blamed her very unmagical captors for setting her rather ungently against a tree, nor had she faulted them for tying her wrists and ankles together. How else could they have kept her where she was meant to stay? But there were others she could most certainly blame for the events leading up to her sitting where she was, freezing, and blame them she would.
Better that than the alternative of giving in to the fear that threatened to steal her breath. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could bear the darkness, and the things that lurked in the darkness—
She let out her breath slowly and tried to think about something else, anything else. Unfortunately, there was little else on which to fix her thoughts, given that the twisting path that had led her to where she was at present had begun with darkness.
There she’d been, innocently planning to shake Doìre’s dust off the hem of her cloak, when she’d become embroiled in a bit of do-gooding she’d thought she could manage. It was only as she’d stood in the great hall of the keep at Ceangail that she’d learned how unyielding and merciless the world of magic could be, how awful mages with terrible spells could become, and just how far out of her depth she was.
If that had been all, she supposed she would have been justified in her loathing of all things magical, but there had been more. The final blow had been discovering that a man she had unbent enough to actually have a few fond feelings for had not been a simple swordsman as he’d led her to believe, but instead Ruithneadh of Ceangail, youngest son of one of the most vile black mages in the history of the Nine Kingdoms.
She didn’t trust easily, but there had been moments over the past month where she had actually looked at Ruith and felt herself lower her sword, as it were. It had been poorly done. She would tell him that just as soon as she could get close enough to him to do so. The traders wouldn’t have been foolish enough to tie him next to her, which meant he was most likely tied to some other sturdy tree.
She opened her eyes a slit. The traders were standing there in the middle of the glade, warming their hands against a fire and speaking in a language she didn’t understand. They didn’t have blades in their hands, which meant they had obviously secured Ruith as well if they were that at ease. She looked around her as unobtrusively as possible, fully expecting to see Ruith trussed up securely across the glade.
But he wasn’t.
She forced herself to breathe evenly in spite of her rising panic. There was no reason to assume anything untoward had happened to him. Just because she couldn’t see him didn’t mean he was dead. He might have been picketed with the horses, or deemed to be too heavy a burden and left behind. There were a myriad of things that could have befallen him.
Things he could easily have countered.
That thought was a brisk slap. The truth was, he had lied to her, led her to places she never would have gone even in her nightmares ... and he had continued to lie to her and take her to horrible places until they’d wound up in the worst place of all where he’d only admitted who he was because he hadn’t had a choice. What made all of it so galling was that at any time, he could have stopped it. He, the son of an elven princess and a mage full of untold power, could have saved her grief, fear, and danger if he’d simply been willing to use his magic.
Which he hadn’t been.
She turned away from any concern she might have felt for him. He would save himself, if saving could be done, but he would do nothing for her. That much was obvious, given where she found herself. All she could do was get herself free, then take herself somewhere safe. She would then lock the door and hide in obscurity where she would no longer have to fear the dark or peer into shadows and worry they were full of things they shouldn’t have been—
Things such as the mage standing suddenly in the clearing in front of her.
He was one of Ruith’s bastard brothers from Ceangail. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been part of a circle that surrounded her and Ruith, a circle of men connected by spells that had dripped with evil. He hadn’t said anything in the keep, but she had noted his black, soulless eyes, eyes that had looked at Ruith mercilessly. He was simply watching the traders as he had Ruith, as if they were insects he would allow to scuttle about for a few minutes more before he crushed them carelessly under his boot.
She wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there, watching. Apparently her escorts hadn’t noticed him before either, but they noticed him presently. They whirled around suddenly with their sw
ords drawn.
Sarah would have told them not to bother, but she thought her strength might be better spent seeing if she couldn’t get her hands free before she became the center of attention.
The first of the four traders threw himself suddenly forward. Ruith’s half brother didn’t move, but the man stopped suddenly and dropped to the ground, as lifeless as his sword. The mage then turned and looked at her. Sarah felt her mouth go dry.
Damnation. Too late for escape.
He lifted his finger and her bonds fell away. “You won’t be needing those any longer,” he said in a soft voice that was all the more unpleasant for its lack of malice.
Sarah was pulled to her feet, but not by any hands she could see. It was only as she was standing there, swaying with dizziness, that she realized how badly her right forearm pained her. She looked down at the black streaks that trailed over her flesh, black mingled with red that burned like hellfire. She didn’t want to think about where she’d come by that wound, so she instead looked up. Ruith’s half brother was still watching her.
“I will take care of you later,” he said.
She imagined he would. And she imagined she would be able to do about it what she was always able to do about magic and its vile practitioners, which was exactly nothing. She was tempted to turn and bolt, but she had the feeling that would end badly for her. All she could do was hope that something unexpected would happen and the vile man in front of her might be distracted by other things long enough for her to slip away.
Then again, the fact that he had left her unbound said all she perhaps needed to know about his fear of that happening.