by Lynn Kurland
She stopped Ruith outside a particular door, then leaned back against the wall as he put his hand on the wood and bowed his head. After a brief moment, he looked at her.
“No one inside.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m guessing.”
She pursed her lips at him, but followed him inside just the same. The chamber was empty, as he’d said, but that wasn’t a relief. She walked immediately over to a wall sporting shelves full of treasures. There in the place of honor was what they’d come for. There were no strands of barbed magic laid across the glass case, which surprised her. In fact, there was nothing at all there, just a sturdy lock, as if Morag didn’t think anyone would dare make it into her inner sanctum.
“Which spell is that?” she asked, because she had to do something to keep from weeping.
“Finding,” he said, “which surprises me because it isn’t a particularly powerful spell.”
“And the other one from downstairs?”
“I didn’t stop to look, but I can tell you it’s burning a bloody hole in my leg—”
She would have smiled, but she had been jerked off her feet—literally—and pulled into a corner of the solar. Ruith backed her up against the wall, then pressed himself back against her. If his intent had been to crush her, he was coming close to succeeding. She put her hands on his back, closed her eyes, and forced herself to breathe silently. It was surprising how accustomed she’d become to having him put himself between her and danger.
A gel could learn to appreciate that about a man.
The door opened, bodies entered, then the door slammed shut.
“I think you should let them go,” a male voice ventured.
“Are you mad? He’s Gair’s son, you fool.”
Sarah forced her hands to remain flat against Ruith’s back instead of clutching the cloth of his tunic in terror. Ruith didn’t seem to be panicking, but, then again, he never had during the whole of their acquaintance. He simply stood in front of her, an intimidating and hopefully quite invisible barrier to the terrible storm brewing there before the fire.
“He’s no good to you dead,” the prince consort said.
“I have no intention of killing him. I want him for what spells he might have.”
“But you don’t have the power to use ... ah . . . them—”
“I know where to have help with that!” Morag bellowed. She took a deep breath. “Let me explain this to you again, Phillip, and simply, so you’ll understand. I am, as you can’t help but have noticed, collecting spells.”
“Gair of Ceangail’s spells?” Phillip asked hesitantly.
“Aye, Gair of Ceangail’s spells,” Morag repeated, in the same tone of voice she might have used with a small child. “These are very desirable spells because whilst Gair was the most hated mage of his generation, he was also the most powerful. Indeed, it wouldn’t be exaggerating to say he was perhaps the most powerful mage of all. To have even one of his spells commands great respect and admiration.”
“But everyone respects and admires you already—”
“It isn’t enough!” Morag bellowed. “Is it possible you’re this stupid? I don’t want respect, I want power!”
Sarah listened to Morag in fascination. Indeed, if she hadn’t been cold with terror, she might have been slightly amused by the queen’s tantrum. It must have been extremely frustrating for Morag to find herself trapped in a keep that no doubt seemed far below what she likely supposed she should have had, being forced to socialize with rustics, remaining unadmired for her obviously superior self. Sarah couldn’t imagine that having any more of Gair’s spells would help with any of that, but what did she know? She could only see spells, not use them to flatter her vanity.
“Why do you think I’ve been looking for these spells for so long?” Morag demanded.
“Well, not you personally,” Phillip protested.
“Nay,” Morag said in a deceptively soft tone, “you have been looking for me, haven’t you, my love? Traveling the world for the past twenty years, trying to make up for your blunder.”
“I couldn’t kill a child—”
“So you left her to rot in the moors instead,” Morag snarled. “At least I would have made her death quick.”
Sarah felt Ruith flinch, but she had as well, so she couldn’t blame him. Killing a child? What sort of woman was Morag that she could contemplate the like?
And what had the child seen, or done, or known that would have merited such a fate?
“I couldn’t kill a child,” Phillip repeated, sounding as if he would rather have been having a different conversation. “So I saw to her end as I saw fit.”
There was silence in the chamber for so long, Sarah finally could bear it no longer and gingerly peeked out from behind Ruith’s shoulder.
Morag and Phillip were facing each other in front of the fire, frozen there, as if they’d been statues. She initially suspected that Morag was angry and Phillip equally so, then she realized that wasn’t the case at all. Morag wasn’t angry. She was something else, something that went beyond anger.
She was mad.
Sarah could see her lunacy wrapping itself around her as if it had been a fine cloak she had reached for, swathing herself in its comfort with a pleasure that was actually quite difficult to watch.
“You didn’t send her out to the moors, did you?” she asked in a soft voice. “Come, now, Phillip. You have no need to fear me.”
“I don’t fear you, Morag.”
Even Sarah could tell that was a bald-faced lie. The poor man looked as if he might soon fall to his knees and beg his wife to kill him quickly rather than end his life in other, more painful ways.
“What did you do with the babe?” she asked soothingly. “The truth, now, after all these years.”
“Why does it matter?” Phillip asked nervously. “I got rid of her.”
“Why does it matter,” Morag repeated slowly. “Why does it matter?” She lifted her arm and pointed back toward the door. “It matters , you imbecile, because of what walked through my gates this morning!”
“Gair’s get—”
Morag took a deep breath. “Nay, Phillip, not Gair’s son. The girl, the girl that came with him. Surely if anyone would see her for who she is, it would be you, given how often you admired her dam.”
Phillip looked at her in surprise. “But she doesn’t look like Sorcha—”
“Of course she looks like Sorcha!”
The prince fell silent, obviously considering things he hadn’t before. “But that’s impossible.”
“Because you killed her?” Morag asked in a low, furious voice. “Or is there another end to this tale you haven’t told me?”
“Ah—”
“What did you do with the bairn?”
Phillip swallowed convulsively. “I sold her, her and a kitchen lad I picked at random, to a gypsy—”
“You liar!”
“Very well,” he shouted back, “I didn’t sell her, I gave her to the witchwoman Seleg and begged her to carry her off somewhere you wouldn’t find her because I could not kill a child!”
Sarah blinked. She would have shaken her head, but there were stars spinning around it already and she didn’t want to add to the cluster of them. Ruith’s hand was immediately around her, holding her to him. She clutched his arm and continued to look at the pair before her, because she couldn’t look away. Phillip had apparently found the spine he’d been missing for quite some time, but the truth was, he wasn’t his wife’s equal in power or craft. Sarah watched spells gather in front of Morag, spells of death and misery and horror that sprang up and blossomed into a single something that towered over them both. Phillip watched it, openmouthed and unmoving.
But it never fell upon him.
It took Sarah a moment or two to realize that someone was pounding on the door. The spell disappeared, Phillip collapsed against the mantel, holding himself up by willpower alone, no doubt, and Morag walked over to the
door and threw it open.
“What?” she snapped.
“My queen,” a guardsman said, sounding thoroughly terrified, “I’ve heard word there was one of the night lads found on the floor of the kitchens—”
“Put a guard in front of Gair’s get,” Morag said immediately. She shot Phillip a look. “Guard the spell here, if you have any power at all.” She sent him another withering look. “I told you we should have killed her.”
“But she has no magic,” Phillip protested. “She had no magic as a babe, which was why you wanted her in the first place, wasn’t it?”
“Shut up, you fool,” Morag said, drawing herself up and looking down her nose at him. “What would you know of it?”
“I know what you did to her sire—”
“Enough,” Morag thundered. She swept out of the chamber and jerked the door closed behind her.
Ruith walked immediately over to the case. Sarah could only watch him, numb, as he picked the lock with an adroitness she might have admired another time. The prince consort had been staring into the fire, but when the hinges on the glass squeaked, he whirled around, his mouth open.
He watched for a moment or two, then shut his mouth.
Sarah could still see Ruith, perhaps only because she could see, but obviously Phillip could not. Until, rather, Ruith dissolved his spell of un-noticing. He locked gazes with the prince as he rolled up the spell and stuck it down his boot. Phillip looked around him in surprise—presumably for her, but she was apparently too well hidden by Ruith’s spell. Sarah supposed that was just as well. She knew she must have looked like death.
She certainly felt like it.
Ruith continued to look at Phillip. “I have a spell for you, Your Highness.”
“What sort—” Phillip licked his lips nervously. “What sort of spell, Prince Ruithneadh?”
“A spell of protection,” Ruith said quietly. “I don’t know if you have the power to use it, but you could certainly try.”
“I’ll stretch myself.”
“That might be wise.”
Sarah listened to him give Phillip the spell, watched the prince consort attempt to use it—badly—then watched Ruith nod briskly at him. He pulled his spell of un-noticing over himself again and walked swiftly toward her.
“Let’s go.”
She’d hardly gotten halfway across the chamber with him before the door burst open again and guards spilled inside.
Ruith took her by the arm—her right arm, unfortunately. She almost fainted from the pain.
“We’ll need to shapechange,” he whispered harshly.
She gaped at him. “But I cannot—”
“Trust me.”
The next thing she knew, she was running along behind him, hugging the wall and praying no one would step on her very long tail. Either Ruith had chosen their colors well, or the guards were simply too busy shouting at each other to notice two plain brown mice skittering along underfoot. Sarah found herself almost felled by the unaccustomed smells assaulting her nose alone, but she ignored them and pressed on until she and Ruith were at her door.
Guards were there, trying to get past not only the lock but Ruith’s spell he’d covered both the inside and outside of the door with. He paused so suddenly that Sarah ran up his back before she realized what she was doing.
We’ ll need to change again. His voice whispered across her mind.
I can’t—
We’ll try air this time.
She was going to kill him. If she ever had hands again, she was going to find some slow, painful, unpleasant way to do him in. She tried to concentrate on that, but it was too difficult. She found herself somehow wrapped up in Ruith as he pulled her under his spell and through the doorway with him.
She regrouped—or was regrouped, as it were—near enough to the fire that she was a little surprised she hadn’t rolled right into it. Ruith materialized out of thin air and went sprawling half over her.
“Get off me,” she squeaked, because squeaking was all she could manage. She patted herself frantically and was very relieved to find she was herself and not something for which squeaking might come more naturally.
Ruith conjured up a cloak and pulled it over her, sending sparks flying. He looked down at her, his eyes full of wildness. It was mageish delight at becoming something he wasn’t, no doubt.
“I have to go,” he said, sounding a little breathless. “I’ll be outside before they manage to get through my spell. Feign ignorance.”
She had every intention of doing just that. She looked up at him. “I think I’m going to be ill.”
“Puke on Morag.”
“You, sir, have absolutely no compassion for the unmagical.”
He bent his head, kissed her cheek—rather near her mouth, actually—then pulled away. She caught him before he could get to his feet.
“Don’t ever do that again, damn you,” she warned. “You turned me into a mouse!”
He smiled at her. “And the breath of air?”
“I still feel scattered.”
“I understand, believe me,” he said with a bit of a laugh. He pushed himself to his feet. “Hold them off as long as you can.”
And with that, he disappeared.
She cursed him again but had to clap her hand over her mouth. She lay on the floor, feeling truly very ill, and listened to the pounding on the door continue.
“Coming,” she called weakly.
There was a sudden silence. Sarah knew without being told that Morag was now standing just outside the door. She could only imagine the terrible spells that would accompany the woman. She had no way of knowing where Ruith was, how he would get himself on the other side of the door, or what he would do when Morag realized he had his father’s spells stuck, as usual, down the sides of his boots.
She decided it was better to meet the storm on her feet, as it were, so she heaved herself up—and almost into the fire. She clung to a chair until a violent wave of nausea passed, then staggered over to the door.
“Open this door,” came the voice that cut through the wood and spells as if they hadn’t been there.
Sarah shuddered. She was frankly terrified to stand alone—for however long that might be—against a woman so ruthless as to take a child and order her to be killed—
That was something she was going to have to come to terms with, she suspected, very soon.
She put her hands on the door to hold herself up, then suddenly found herself stumbling backward. Morag towered over her as if she’d been a thundercloud, accompanied by a dozen spells Sarah could see surrounding her and half out of her mouth. It was one of the single most horrifying things she’d ever seen, and that included what she’d been witness to at Ceangail.
She realized abruptly that she was going to be ill.
So she did the first sensible thing she’d done in a fortnight.
She took Ruith’s advice and sicked up her supper on the queen.
Twenty-five
Ruith put himself between Sarah and the queen as Morag let her hand fly. She caught him full across the face, which troubled him not at all. It was rather bracing, actually, and cleared his head of the last of the shapechanging magic. He backed up a pace, only because he wanted more room to fight, if necessary.
“Where did you come from?” Morag spat.
Ruith pointed toward the passageway. “There. I believe I knocked over a pair of your guardsmen on my way in.”
The truth was lying there in a heap, struggling to get back to their individual feet. Morag spun back to glare at him.
“Where have you been?”
Ruith raised his eyebrows and put on his grandfather’s best none-of-your-bloody-business look. Morag was—predictably—unimpressed, but he didn’t dare give her any ground.
“I was trying to rest,” he said haughtily, “when I was disturbed by what sounded like the castle falling down around my ears. Knowing that couldn’t possibly be the case given the perfect condition of your hall, I th
ought perhaps there had been an assault of some sort. How disappointing to find it was only your guardsmen disturbing my lady’s rest.”
“Your lady,” Morag said, her words dripping with disdain. “You are as foolish as Athair of Cothromaiche, to look so far beneath you.”
“Am I?” Ruith said coldly. “Then perhaps I should take care to make certain I don’t suffer his same fate.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Morag blustered. She tried to push past him, then glared at him when he wouldn’t move. “I want to look in this chamber for something I believe was stolen from me.”
“Are you accusing my lady of stealing?” Ruith asked sharply.
“Nay, I’m accusing you,” Morag said without hesitation. “And unless you want me to kill you where you stand, you’ll step aside and allow me my look.”
Ruith held her gaze for a handful of long, highly charged moments before he pulled Sarah behind him and stepped aside, waving the queen into the chamber with an expansive, mocking gesture. The woman’s gown was still soiled from Sarah’s efforts, but she seemed to have forgotten that in her fury to find what she thought had been taken from her.
He could only hope she wouldn’t look down his boot.
The queen was thorough, he would give her that. She delved into every cranny, every drawer, under the bed, behind the tapestries. She found nothing save Sarah’s pack—Ruith had hidden his on a quickly made hook he’d driven into the ceiling—which she emptied out onto the bed. She reached out to touch the statue of the horse, but pulled back in revulsion at something she apparently saw there.
Ruith didn’t want to know what that might have been, but he was quietly very thankful for a horse who apparently could still be useful even cast as he was in very fine marble.
“What rubbish,” she said stiffly. She turned and swept toward the door. “Your gel there is nothing but a common strumpet.”
Ruith gritted his teeth. “Your Majesty, you are obviously overwrought by your loss, but that hardly excuses the discourtesies you’ve favored us with. I will not tolerate any more slurs directed toward my lady.”