Spellweaver

by Lynn Kurland

  “There was an Urchaid of Tòsan, who was one of the wizards who argued against casting Lothar of Wychweald from the schools of wizardry, but your grandmother Eulasaid would know more about him than I would.” He paused and considered. “The only other Urchaid of note that comes to mind is Urchaid of Saothair.”

  Ruith blinked. “Who?”

  “Droch’s brother.”

  Ruith felt something slither down his spine. “I’d heard that there was another one roaming the world besides Wehr and Droch.”

  “And where did you hear that?”

  “In a pub,” Ruith said with a snort. “Some drunkard was delighting his companions with gruesome tales of how Dorchadas of Saothair had looked on his eight sons to decide which was the strongest so he might slay the rest. There was universal agreement that he hadn’t been able to choose between Wehr and Droch, but the teller of very tall tales was convinced that another son had escaped whilst his father was otherwise occupied with that decision.”

  “’Tis possible, I suppose.”

  Ruith considered for a moment or two. “What of Dorchadas? Does he live still?”

  Soilléir shrugged. “He’s still alive, I imagine, weaving his webs of evil in some forgotten corner of the world.”

  Ruith thought about the Urchaid he knew for a moment or two, then shook his head. For one thing, Urchaid looked nothing like Droch, and the other ... well, he was fairly sure that when Dorchadas of Saothair killed something, he made sure he’d done the job properly. Tales heard in a pub were best relegated to just that. He considered other things for a bit longer, then looked at Soilléir.

  “If my father’s spells are out in the world, loose, would Droch want them, do you think?”

  “Assuredly,” Soilléir said. “Droch was—is still, I daresay—incoherently jealous of your sire’s power. And to have a collection of his most treasured spells and Gair not be able to stop his using them? Aye, I daresay he would have them if he could lay his hands on them. But you can be sure he is but the start of a very lengthy list of those who would want the same.”

  Ruith leaned back against the opposite window casing. “We can be thankful then, that Droch has no idea what I’m looking for.”

  “I doubt he’ll be in the dark about that for long,” Soilléir said dryly, “particularly if your half brothers exercise their notoriously loose tongues about it.”

  Ruith sighed. “I wish he’d never written that book.”

  “Could you write down what you remember of it?”

  Ruith shot him a look. “I could, but I will not.”

  Soilléir smiled. “Just testing.”

  Ruith found himself being studied in a way he didn’t particularly care for, but it was Soilléir after all, and there was nothing he could do but endure it and swear a bit to make himself feel better.

  “Were all his spells contained in that book, do you suppose?” Soilléir asked.

  Ruith looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “I just wonder if he was working on other things that perhaps weren’t quite perfect enough to write down. It was your father, after all.”

  Ruith looked over his shoulder to see if someone had opened a door or a window or if the fire had gone out. Surely that was the only reason for the sudden chill that brushed against his neck. “He was forever honing spells into something vile, which you well know. What sort of other things do you think he was contemplating?”

  “I don’t know,” Soilléir said, looking at him with clear, innocent eyes. “What do you think?”

  Ruith pushed away from the window and walked away, because he didn’t like what he’d heard and he liked even less the thought of having to contemplate what madness his sire had been considering during the last days of his life.

  Other spells?

  He shuddered to think.

  He paced to the doorway and back before he stopped again in front of the window and looked at Soilléir.

  “The list could be long.”

  “Or very short.”

  Ruith swore. “Why are you pursuing this?”

  “Because I fear,” Soilléir said quietly, “that there are things out in the world that truly will undo it unless they’re found and destroyed. Things loosed that should be contained. Spells and thoughts and schemes that I cannot see and couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop even if I knew where to look.”

  Ruith turned to stare out the window until the faint light of dawn stretched across the sky. “There are times,” he said finally, “when I profoundly regret walking out my front door and putting my foot to the path waiting for me.”

  “I imagine you do. But then you wouldn’t have met Sarah.”

  Sarah. Ruith blew out his breath. It was one thing to contemplate taking Sarah along with him when the journey was comfortably far away; it was another thing to be facing that moment and realize what it would mean. He looked at Soilléir. “I’m going to leave her here.”

  “Nay, Your Highness, you are not.”

  Ruith closed his eyes briefly, shot Soilléir a warning look, then turned to find Sarah awake and standing behind him, watching him with her arms folded over her chest.

  “Sarah,” he began, dragging his hand through his hair.

  “I’m almost finished with my cloth,” she said briskly. She looked at Soilléir. “I might need needle and thread, if I could trouble you for both.”

  “I think I can do better than that and even dredge up a seamstress or two,” Soilléir said with a smile.

  She glared at Ruith, then walked off to her loom. Ruith watched her go, then turned to Soilléir and lifted an eyebrow.

  Soilléir shrugged. “She’s formidable. And you need her, for more things than just her sight. You’ll just have to keep her safe.”

  “I don’t want her to come along,” Ruith said grimly.

  “And what is your other choice?” Soilléir asked. “Leave her behind with me? You have the power to protect her. I daresay even your father would find you a difficult opponent now.”

  “My mother was his equal,” Ruith said, “and yet she failed to stop him.”

  “And she failed because his power had been augmented by your brothers’ magic, which you well know. If you could turn back the wheels of time and face him as a man, I think you might be slightly more cynical about what he might do than your mother was and act accordingly. Though, in her defense, she was balancing trying to stop him with trying to keep her children safe.”

  “I regret that she had to face that,” Ruith said quietly.

  “As do I.”

  Ruith imagined Soilléir would have stopped the entire thing if he’d been able to—and he was equally sure it hadn’t been a lack of capability so much as a self-imposed vow of discretion that included not interfering in the choices of others.

  “I can’t imagine,” Ruith said quietly, sure Soilléir would know what he intended by it.

  “I sincerely hope, my friend, that you never have to,” Soilléir said.

  Ruith sighed, then caught sight of Sarah sitting at her loom. He could safely say that any regret about his current path lasted only as long as it took him to look for her in any given chamber.

  And the rest of the truth was, he had spent a score of years hiding, but also pacing in place, as if he’d waited for a task he’d somehow known he was destined to take on. And if that task sent him into his father’s darkness, so be it. He supposed it hadn’t been happenstance that the majority of the books in his library had been books of spells, gathered from obscure sources, and for the most part incomplete. He had passed the years stretching his mind in directions it hadn’t perhaps been meant to go, pushing himself to think in ways he’d never anticipated he would even want to.

  He was, he could admit with a fair bit of distaste, a bit like his sire when it came to that sort of thing.

  But to consider things his father had been creating near the end of his miserable life?

  It would take an event of monumental proportions to inspire him to
do that.

  He thanked Soilléir for the pleasant conversation, paced about the solar a score of times, then came to stand next to Sarah. She paused in her work, scowled at him, then shifted just the slightest bit so he would have a place to perch. He did, with his back to her work but still so he could see her face.

  “I want you to stay here.”

  “You don’t,” she said without hesitation. “Not in truth.”

  He had to sigh a little. “Very well, I don’t in truth, but I also don’t want you to come where I fear we’ll need to go.”

  “You need me.”

  “Well, that is true as well,” he agreed. “But for more than just your sight.”

  She elbowed him rather firmly in the ribs. “Concentrate on what route we’ll take.” She continued to work, though a bit more slowly. “I dreamed last night.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “I was caught up in it.”

  She almost dropped her shuttle. “Then you saw the spells?”

  He shook his head. “I saw fires, but I couldn’t tell you where they were.”

  She took a deep breath. “I could.”

  “I suspected as much.” He watched her continue on with her cloth, a greyish green that he imagined would blend in quite well in whatever landscape they found themselves. It shimmered with something that wasn’t precisely earthly, so he imagined that the yarn had been enspelled somehow. “I was thinking we should retrace our steps,” he said slowly. “North.”

  Her hands stilled for a moment, then she continued her work without speaking.

  “I would like to find Franciscus, if finding can be done,” he ventured. “I have a few questions for him, which I imagine you do as well.”

  “Very pointed ones,” she agreed.

  “The other person I would like to find is Urchaid. Soilléir gave me an idea or two about lads with that name, but he doesn’t seem to be any of them.” He couldn’t bring himself to wonder if Urchaid the fop might have somehow escaped the heavy hand of his father’s filial jealousy. He certainly wasn’t going to speculate aloud with Sarah listening. “Whoever he is, he is up to no good, I daresay.”

  “I daresay,” she murmured. “What do you think he want—nay, never mind.” She looked at him. “They all want what Gair had, don’t they?”

  “I’m afraid so. And I fear we’ve only begun to unravel the web being woven.” Which was why he wanted her nowhere near any of that web, but as Soilléir had once said, Soilléir wouldn’t be her jailor. Better that she be where he could protect her than trapped in the schools of wizardry where she didn’t dare venture out into the passageway.

  “How will we travel?” she asked. “On foot?”

  He pulled himself back to the task at hand. “I’ll find horses somewhere and pay the seller with a few spells. Perhaps Soilléir will gift us food for the start of the journey. We’ll make do as we travel.”

  She concentrated on her weaving for a bit longer, silent. Ruith didn’t interrupt her. He merely sat next to her, considering the women of his family, powerful in their own right, endowed with magic that commanded respect even among the mighty ones of the world. He wondered, absently, what his grandfather would say when he brought home the very unmagical daughter of the witchwoman Seleg and announced that he’d inspected the required ten princesses, and would Sìle mind putting on three luxurious banquets so Sarah could only refuse two of them before she was forced to attend and listen to a proposal of marriage. Surely Sìle wouldn’t roar at a woman. Ruith imagined that his own ears would be ringing for quite some time.

  Somehow, he rather thought he would have preferred to take her to Lake Cladach where Sgath dressed in homespun and Eulasaid tended her gardens herself and had a great appreciation for what two hands could fashion from finely spun yarn.

  Sarah finished with her cloth, then paused and looked at him. “We’ll leave tonight?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll draw as much of a map as I can manage,” she said briskly. “And see about finishing these cloaks for us.”

  He nodded, ignoring the way her hands trembled slightly as she took one of her knives and began to slit her warp threads. He wondered what the runes said and wondered further why Soilléir hadn’t seemed to find time to translate them for her.

  “Are you napping?”

  He smiled faintly. “Just thinking.”

  “You look more at peace, if that pleases you.”

  “Do I?” he asked in surprise. “Was I not peaceful before?”

  She rolled her eyes and slid off the bench. He was fairly certain he’d heard her mutter that what he had been before was in great need of a lengthy soaking of his head. He watched her walk away to confer with Soilléir about seamstresses, then found himself joined on Sarah’s bench suddenly by his elder brother, who also seemed to find the sight of an elegant weaver of lovely cloth to be worth his study. Too close a study, actually.

  “Mine,” Ruith said distinctly.

  “She might have an opinion about that.”

  “I’m planning an extended campaign to sway that opinion my way.”

  Rùnach smiled, a crooked thing that hadn’t lost any of its wry-ness. “I would happily stand along the edge of the road and offer any assistance I could.”

  “Aye, by seeing if there might be a team of horses coming along which you might invite to crush me underfoot,” Ruith said darkly. He looked at his brother assessingly. “You like her.”

  “Very much. Unfortunately, she seems to be looking at you more than is polite. I thought to warn her of the inadvisability of such a practice but didn’t want to burden her with anything unpleasant.” He shot Ruith a look. “I’ve tucked a few friendly notes into the book of Cothromaichian child’s verse I found for her downstairs.”

  “Got to it before Soilléir did, did you?”

  “I thought it prudent.”

  “Find your own wife.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Well, you can’t have that one,” Ruith said, realizing quite suddenly that his brother was serious. “I saw her first.”

  “She might like me better.”

  “Which is why we’re leaving tonight,” he said, then he shut his mouth as Sarah walked over to them to retrieve some pieces of thread for her seamstress.

  She found it, then stopped and looked at them both with a frown.

  “What mischief are you two combining?”

  “Nothing,” Ruith said promptly. “Just a friendly discussion about—”

  “Love,” Rùnach interrupted smoothly.

  “A brotherly, comradely, platonic sort of love,” Ruith finished, elbowing his brother rather firmly in the ribs. “Nothing more.”

  She looked at them both as if they’d lost their wits, then turned and walked away. Rùnach sighed wistfully.

  “She is exceptionally charming.”

  “I’ll invite you to her wedding,” Ruith said. “To me.”

  Rùnach lifted his eyebrows. “That remains to be seen. I believe I’ll go see to a few luxuries for her pack.” He slapped Ruith companionably on the back of the head, then heaved himself to his feet and walked away.

  Ruith watched him go, then smiled to himself. He would have given much to have simply lingered where he was, enjoying the company of his brother, the tartness of a certain lovely woman, and the tales of a man who had loved his mother.

  At least he might continue on with one of the three, though he imagined there would come a time when he would wish she had been safely left behind with the others.

  Other spells that Gair of Ceangail had been working on?

  He shuddered to think.

  Fourteen

  Sarah stood near the fire, holding her hands to the blaze and purposely ignoring the fact that her fingers were well past the point where any fire could warm them. She wasn’t afraid, never mind that she was leaving a place of safety and comfort—and that she should have found either in a clutch of mages was alarming in and of itself—or that she was walking into
a future filled with no safety and likely very little comfort—also filled with mages, but of a different sort entirely.

  Nay, she wasn’t afraid.

  She was speechless with terror.

  It was one thing to sit at a loom of such quality she half fancied she could have woven spiderwebs into something that would have been sung about for centuries to come and know that taking up the task of looking for her brother, stopping his stupidity, and aiding Ruith in whatever small, inconsequential thing he contemplated was still comfortably far in the future.

  It was another thing to know that future was now waiting just outside the door.

  She didn’t want to think about that future or where it might lead her, so to distract herself, she began a list of things that seemed to be in her favor. She was still without gold or home, but she was wearing very sturdy boots, warm leggings and a tunic, and the cloth she had woven had been gifted—no doubt by Soilléir himself—a measure of glamour that she was confident would hide her if necessary. She was wearing a pack that she hadn’t filled herself, but had been assured by Rùnach would contain all she needed for at least the beginning of the trek. She had drawn a map of what she’d seen in her dream, which Ruith had studied as well and nodded over.

  So, if she were to look at the quest without putting herself in the middle of it, it was a simple one and easily accomplished. She would lead Ruith from spell to spell, he would stuff them in a safer place than his boots, then when they had them all, he would destroy them. That would leave his bastard brothers nothing to want to kill him for and leave her free to imagine Daniel attempting to convince some poor village he was equal to being their local wizard.

  She couldn’t think any further than that. She didn’t want to think about which of the ten princesses Ruith would learn to love, want to wed—

  “Sarah?”

  She looked up from her contemplation of the fire to find Ruith and Soilléir standing to her left. Ruith was dressed as she was and looked as if he too might have been contemplating his assets. She supposed he had a few more than she did, but then again, he had a larger burden to bear.

  She couldn’t think about that either.