Spellweaver

by Lynn Kurland

  Odd how her arm bore the same sort of wound.

  She looked into Rùnach’s eyes and smiled. “A sister and a pair of brothers,” she said quietly. “I’m glad for you.”

  “Family is a good thing,” he agreed. He nodded toward Ruith. “He has become everything our mother would have wished for him, despite his years masquerading as a curmudgeon.”

  “He wasn’t happy about giving up the disguise,” Sarah said with a smile, “but I think he needed to. Not, of course, that I know him well enough to judge that.” She shifted uncomfortably. “It’s just an observation.”

  “An apt one,” he agreed. He studied his brother for several minutes in silence. “Whatever else he’s done, he’s become a good swordsman.”

  Sarah had to agree. Though Ruith was using spells and not a blade, he moved as if he parried steel and fought as if he’d had a sword in his hands. She supposed he might think differently, but to her eye, the years of defending himself with his hands alone and no doubt looking for weaknesses in opponents that might not have been plain to a mage’s eye had certainly not harmed him any.

  Soilléir flinched at a particularly pointed spell he had to stretch to counter, then laughed. “Damn you, Ruith, what spells didn’t you filch?”

  “I told you my library was extensive,” Ruith said, his chest heaving.

  “Aye, well, so is mine,” Soilléir said.

  Rùnach sighed lightly. “Ruith is in for it now.”

  Sarah couldn’t bring herself to speculate on what he might have meant by that. She was far too busy watching Soilléir throw apparently more than the usual complement of spells at Ruith. They began as swarms of beelike things that Ruith countered easily enough, then changed to mighty winds, which Ruith fought off much less easily, then enormous waves that beat down on him, which left him finally on his knees, simply struggling to fight off Soilléir’s attack with an ever-weakening magic of his own.

  And then Soilléir cast a spell of Olc over him.

  Sarah watched it, shocked at its vileness—and that was saying something given the rather gory battle she’d just witnessed. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Ruith had caught it, then thrown it back accompanied by a spell of some sort of terrible harm.

  He didn’t. He simply watched it fall over him, obviously exhausted by the battle, then with a single word sent it scattering in shards that slid across the floor to encounter Soilléir’s spell of ... well, Sarah wouldn’t have called it protection. Containment, perhaps. Then again, what did she know? It had kept their battle within its confines and apparently absorbed what came its way. It treated the Olc no differently than it had anything else.

  The Olc disappeared as if it had never been there. Ruith leaned over with his hands on the floor, gasping for breath. Soilléir’s spells disappeared completely, leaving no trace of the chessboard, the pieces, or the magic that had so recently filled the solar with such terrible noise and lightning. Instead, there was just Ruith, shaking with weariness, and Soilléir.

  Who was breathing with a little more enthusiasm than usual, truth be told.

  Rùnach started to rise, but Sarah put her hand on his arm. “I’ll fetch wine for them.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” Rùnach said quietly. “I think I may have my hands full with carrying my brother over to a chair.”

  Sarah declined to offer him any advice on that, even though she’d been the one to get Ruith on his horse and away from the well after his battle with the trolls there. She looked at him critically. He was grey, but not senseless, which she supposed was something of an improvement. He didn’t decline the aid, however, when Soilléir pulled him to his feet and Rùnach drew his arm over his shoulders to help him over to a chair in front of the fire.

  Sarah fetched two glasses and a bottle from the cabinet where she’d seen Rùnach go before. She walked over to the hearth, poured the wine, then set the bottle down. She handed Ruith his cup and would have happily walked away to take Rùnach’s place in the shadows, but Ruith caught her by the arm before she could.

  “Sit, please,” he said, sounding rather breathless. “And forgive my condition. I’ll bathe later.”

  “Not on my account,” she began, but he shook his head.

  “I do have decent manners now and again,” he said. He had a long drink of his wine, spent another moment or two trying to catch his breath, then looked at Soilléir. “I’m not sure if you deserve wine or curses—especially for that last gift.”

  “I wanted to see what you would do,” Soilléir said tranquilly. He cast himself down into his own chair and blew his fair hair out of his eyes. “Though I suppose I was more interested in what you wouldn’t do. Thank you for the wine, Sarah.” He smiled at her. “Shall we play a game, you and I?”

  “After that spectacle?” she asked without hesitation. She pushed herself to her feet immediately. “I have too much weaving to do for a relaxing game of strategy, though I thank you just the same.”

  Soilléir smiled at her as she passed by him, which led her to believe he’d had no intention of treating her as he’d treated Ruith. Still, she had no stomach for chess pieces that weren’t fashioned of inanimate substances.

  She wove in relative peace for almost an hour, perhaps a bit more, before she could no longer escape what had been nagging her. She sat at her loom and simply held the shuttle in her hand. Ten princesses? She shook her head at her own shortsightedness. She should have insisted on a hundred of them. Ruith was an elven prince with the power to match his title. The thought of him—

  “You think too much,” Ruith whispered loudly as he walked unsteadily past her.

  She looked at him, had a smile as her reward, then watched him disappear into a chamber where he was presumably going to tidy himself up. She looked the other way and watched Soilléir and Rùnach leave, presumably to go fetch supper.

  She sat there, alone, and considered what she’d seen. She had wondered, now and again, if she might, at some point, lay claim to even the tiniest bit of magic, inherited from her mother. She would have been satisfied with calling fire or a handy spell of un-noticing.

  But now that she had seen what Ruith could do and what she suspected was the very beginning of what Soilléir could do, she realized that making a fire and hiding her best skeins of wool was a very meager wish indeed.

  Worse still, she wouldn’t manage even that.

  She put her shoulders back and recaptured her good sense. She would find her brother, help Ruith find his father’s spells, then she would do the most sensible thing of all.

  She would help him off on his merry—and marriageable—way.

  It was, as it happened, the most she could do.

  Thirteen

  Ruith dreamed.

  He walked down unfamiliar streets of Beinn òrain looking for something he couldn’t name. That in itself was unsettling given that he always recognized the landscape of his nightmares. Then again, they usually had to do with his past, his father, and being unable to save his family.The current torment, however, was full of things he didn’t recognize, seen in a way that he wasn’t accustomed to. Layered over it all was a feeling of urgency that was less a raging fire than it was a slow, relentless pushing that left him feeling as if he were nearing the edge of a precipice and would soon be going over it whether he willed it or no.

  Without warning, he was no longer walking down the street. He was on wing, flying away from Beinn òrain. He looked down from an impossible height and saw the twinkling lights of cities and villages beneath him.

  He descended toward the earth in swooping circles until he found himself flying along the edge of the plains of Ailean. It was then that he realized he wasn’t looking at twinkling lights from welcoming homes.

  He was looking at fires.

  And they hadn’t been caused by lads with flint and dry tinder . . .

  Ruith woke with a start and sat up so quickly, he had to lie back down until his head stopped spinning. He put his hand over his eyes and simply breat
hed in and out for a moment or two until the dizziness passed. He looked to his right to find Sarah lying on the pallet in front of the fire, still sleeping. He stared at her for a moment or two, then it occurred to him that he hadn’t been dreaming his dreams.

  He’d been dreaming hers.

  He realized with another startling bit of clarity that his sight in her dreams had been magnified far beyond what he ever saw in his own nightly visions. He put his hand over hers, then had her clutch his fingers so tightly that it pained him, though she slept still. He reached out with his free hand and smoothed the hair back from her face until she finally let out a deep, shuddering breath and her dream receded.

  He considered all the fires he’d seen and wished that he’d been able to see them more clearly. He wondered if Sarah had, or if she knew what they were—

  He froze. They hadn’t been fires; they had been his father’s spells.

  He pushed himself to his feet without delay, groaning in spite of himself and regretting quite thoroughly the twenty years he’d spent without using his magic. He had certainly been no portly trader reclining on his spoils, but there was a difference between weaving heavy spells and engaging in a more pedestrian sort of labor. A pity he had no time to shoulder the burden of the former. He would just have to carry on as he could.

  And hope Sarah didn’t pay the price for it.

  He had no idea what time it was, but it was still dark in Soilléir’s chamber, so perhaps sunrise was still a distant hope. He turned to look at the windows only to find Soilléir standing there. Ruith walked quietly over to join him. Soilléir said nothing. He merely stood, still as stone, and looked out over the city. Heaven only knew what he was seeing. Ruith was quite certain he didn’t want to know.

  But curiosity was his worst fault, so he asked the question he’d been wondering about for quite some time.

  “How do you bear it?”

  “Centuries of living,” Soilléir answered, not looking at him.

  “Tell me of it, if you will,” Ruith said very quietly. “That seeing.”

  Soilléir shrugged. “If one is fortunate, it comes to one’s hand slowly, sight by sight, until the sight of everything together isn’t so overwhelming. For others, it comes all at once and they’re fairly incoherent for several months until they learn to manage what they see.”

  “It comes all at once?” Ruith asked. “Or it’s forced upon them?”

  Soilléir looked at him then. “And what else should I have done, Ruithneadh? Allowed our gel to long for Droch’s garden every moment of every day until it either drove her mad or left her offering to be one of the pieces on his board simply so she could wrap Olc around her in hopes that it would ease her craving for it? Or should I have made the choice for her I did, which was to force her to see the truth and hope you would help her through the pain of it?”

  “I fear I won’t be the one she turns to for comfort,” Ruith said grimly.

  “An elven prince and a witchwoman’s get with no magic,” Soilléir mused. “An interesting pairing.”

  “She said exactly that.”

  “She is a very wise gel. And to answer the question you haven’t asked, Seeing is usually a bloodright magic, but not always—just as there has been the occasional farmer standing out in his pasture, examining his hay, who wakes to realize he’s just become the archmage of Neroche. I have it because my father had it, and his father before him for as long as our line stretches back into the dreams of our forebearers. The magic itself comes from Bruadair, where the dreamweavers wander through their forests of spells and visions. But I have met those who have it gifted to them with no apparent connection to that birthright.”

  Ruith looked at him. “Then you understand what she’s suffering?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” Soilléir said with a pained smile. “She will find it useful, in time. As for the pain she endures now, how should I ease it for her? The work must be done, whether ’tis done slowly or quickly. Just as your work must be done, be it slowly or quickly.”

  Ruith supposed that with Soilléir, he had no pride left. “My thanks for the game last night.”

  “You look to have recovered well enough.”

  “Not quickly enough,” Ruith said with a sigh, “but that will come in time.”

  “Aye, it will.”

  Ruith turned to study the few twinkling lamplights in the city below. “Why are you here?” he asked, finally. “Instead of in Cothromaiche?”

  Soilléir’s breath caught, then he laughed very softly, if not a bit uneasily. “That is twice you’ve had me off balance over the past few days. How do you manage it?”

  “I lie awake at nights working on it.”

  Soilléir shot him a faintly amused look. “I daresay.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Only one other person has ever asked me that, not finding the usual reason of keeping Droch in check to be sufficient.”

  “Not my mother,” Ruith said with a shake of his head.

  “Nay, not your mother,” Soilléir agreed. “She had far too much on her mind to worry about the twists and turns of my life. It was Desdhemar of Neroche. She and Miach are cut from the same cloth, you know, relentlessly seeking to know things they likely should leave alone.”

  Ruith had his own thoughts on things Miach should leave alone—namely his own sweet sister, who was definitely not old enough to be making decisions about her future without him, no matter what Soilléir or Sìle thought—but he kept those thoughts to himself. He studied Soilléir for a bit longer. “Is there an answer?”

  “Not a very interesting one,” Soilléir said with a shrug. “To be the youngest son in a house full of sons ... let’s just say my work is best done here. My family is not overly large, but my great-grandfather did have several children, which you may or may not know, having had your own share of things to think on that didn’t include Cothromaichian genealogy. The magic in my family, as you also may not know, is a capricious thing.”

  “Dangerous, you mean,” Ruith corrected.

  Soilléir laughed softly. “And just how many times did you hear Sìle of Tòrr Dòrainn say that in your youth?”

  “Every time my mother mentioned your name,” Ruith said without hesitation. “He would roar, ‘Sarait, you will not associate any longer with that young rogue full of dangerous magic!’”

  “There are those of my family to whom that description might apply,” Soilléir agreed, “though I am more inclined to settle for capricious. It manifests itself differently throughout our lines.”

  “But always with great discretion,” Ruith said dryly.

  Soilléir slid him a look. “Are you mocking me, Ruith?”

  “And find myself turned into a rock when I’ve still a stubborn, beautiful, impossible woman to convince to look at me twice?” Ruith asked with mock horror. “Of course not.”

  Soilléir studied him for a moment or two in silence. “You know that you could have any lass from any house of the Nine Kingdoms—or, I imagine, from any house whose ruler would very much like to sit on the Council of Kings.”

  Ruith shook his head. “I don’t want a life at court.”

  “You won’t escape it—and you’ll force Sarah to be a part of it.”

  “She walked into Ceangail with nothing but her courage in order to rescue me. I think she can manage the odd supper at Seanagarra.”

  “But does she want to?”

  Ruith pursed his lips. “When you find yourself in love, my lord Soilléir, just know that I will be there to aid you precisely as you’re aiding me now if I have to crawl to where you are in order to enjoy the spectacle of you wallowing in your longing. I might, out of gratitude for the current safe haven, toss you a rope or something else quite pedestrian to keep you from drowning in the swamp.”

  “You have a very generous heart, Ruith.”

  “I doubt Sarah would agree, though I extended the courtesy of three no-need-to-justify-the-reason begging offs from social functions in return for her having pl
aced on me the burden of becoming acquainted with ten princesses before I am allowed to pursue her wholeheartedly. She used one yesterday. I imagine she’ll be more judicious with them in the future.”

  “Pray she doesn’t use one to avoid being at your wedding.”

  Ruith laughed uneasily. “I hadn’t considered that, though I should have.”

  Soilléir turned and leaned against the wooden window frame. “What will you do now?”

  Ruith sighed. “I thought to make for Léige, to see if Keir might have remained behind, or returned there ... after.”

  “Will Uachdaran let you in his gates, do you think?” Soilléir asked with what could have been charitably called a smirk.

  “I’ll approach on bended knee,” Ruith said darkly. “King Uachdaran might allow me in if he knows I’ve just come to look for my brother. And after I’ve pried what I need to from Keir, I suppose we’ll continue to look for spells and search for Sarah’s brother.” He paused. “I thought perhaps we should leave tonight.”

  “Agreed,” Soilléir said. “There is mischief afoot in the world.”

  Ruith would have given much for a peep inside Soilléir’s head, but there was no point in asking for it. There was no harm in asking a few questions, though, never mind that he didn’t imagine he would have answers that would ease him any.

  “I’m curious,” he said slowly, “and I didn’t have time to search in the library below for anything useful. I don’t suppose you know a mage called Urchaid, do you? Or Franciscus?”

  “Franciscus is a fairly common name in the north,” Soilléir said with a shrug. “Unless you’ve more specifics for me than that, I can’t help you. Urchaid, on the other hand, is a fairly uncommon name, of which only a handful of men come to mind. There was Urchaid of Srath, who fought against Cuideil of An-uallach, though I believe he was slain by a serving girl who poisoned his wine. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise knowing the cantankerous nature of the inhabitants of An-uallach.”

  Ruith had no experience with them, so he remained silent.