by Lynn Kurland
Looking for details about her country was what Rùnach and Soilléir had ostensibly been doing, though she knew they hadn’t limited themselves to that. On those fairly rare occasions when she had succumbed to the lure of library chairs, she had listened to them discuss politics, the shifting of country borders, and the antics of the members of the Council of Kings.
Well, those things and magic.
Not only had they discussed magic and all the incarnations of it that interested them, they had occasionally trotted out their formidable skills and indulged in the practice of it. Rùnach, who had been without his magic for a score of years, had smiled a little with each spell tossed out into the midst of the chamber for examination.
She had avoided thinking on how he’d had his magic restored to him. Of course, that had been made substantially more difficult by his affectionate gratitude plied on her whenever possible and the ensuing discussions between Rùnach and Soilléir about her part in the affair.
That discomfort had been added to quite substantially by the distress she’d felt over discussions of things pertaining to Bruadair. It wasn’t simply that her country had been taken over by a usurper who strutted about the city as if he were sure no one could oust him from his stolen palace. It wasn’t that she had seen for herself paintings of her country when it had been drenched in magic and beautiful because of it. It wasn’t even that Bruadair’s magic had been drained almost completely from the land, as if it had been a very fine wine siphoned out of the bottom of a cask.
It was that she knew she and Rùnach would have to not only rid Bruadair of its unwanted ruler, but uncover the mystery of where the country’s magic had gone.
She couldn’t bring herself to think about attempting to get it back.
She had never once considered, all those se’nnights ago when she’d been tasked with finding someone to remove Sglaimir of places unknown from the throne and restore the exiled king and queen to their rightful places, that such might be her true quest. She had thought only to travel to Gobhann and seek out Scrymgeour Weger’s aid in selecting a mercenary to see to the business of overthrowing a government. It had never occurred to her that she would fail in that only to find herself taking on the role of savior for a country she had thought she didn’t love.
It was odd how one’s life could change so suddenly and in ways that were so unexpected.
She had never imagined she would encounter someone like Rùnach of Ceangail or that he would offer to take her quest on himself. As tempting as that had been, she’d known that her soul wouldn’t have survived such a display of cowardice. She had agreed to his coming with her in part because he had his own quest that seemed to lie conveniently alongside hers, but mostly because she couldn’t imagine her life without him.
She jumped a little when she realized Rùnach was watching her from his spot at the table. It was no doubt foolish to be so overcome by the sight of a handsome man, but perhaps she could be forgiven. The first time she’d seen Rùnach, she’d been rendered speechless by the sheer beauty of his face. Well, half his face, rather. The other half had been covered by scars he’d earned from an encounter with a well of evil, though those scars had done little to temper his elven beauty. Unfortunately for her ability to do anything useful when he was around, those scars had been taken almost completely away when she’d spun his power out of him, woven it into a shawl that she had laid over his shoulders, then watched as the king of Durial had spelled it into him.
Rùnach rose with a welcoming smile. She pushed away from the doorframe and started across the library to meet him—
Only to find herself sprawled on the floor. She caught her breath and lifted her head in time to be whipped in the face by a flurry of what she had to admit on closer inspection proved to be the skirts of an extremely lovely silk gown.
She watched in surprise as that excessive amount of red silk and the woman it encased continued their rush across the floor only to throw themselves collectively at Rùnach with a cry of gladness that soon turned into very expressive weeping.
Aisling sat back and considered this new turn of events. She commiserated with the carpet’s disapproval of the newcomer’s very sharp heels and considered adding her own opinion about too much silk in the face, but she was distracted from that by the conversation going on in front of her, if conversation it could be called.
“I thought you were dead!” the woman wailed.
Rùnach’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. He looked around him for aid, but Aisling didn’t suppose she dared offer any. Soilléir had risen from the table as well and was sauntering around the end of it as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He didn’t seem inclined to offer anything past an amused smile.
“Um,” Rùnach managed.
The woman wailed a bit more in a terribly artistic way, then sank back down onto her very dangerous heels.
“You’re not covering my face with kisses,” she said in surprise, obviously quite unhappy about that realization.
Aisling wasn’t altogether thrilled with the idea herself. She looked at Rùnach, but he was still wearing the sort of look a body wears when it’s just been walloped across the face with a cricket bat. She knew exactly how that expression looked because she’d occasionally taken the time on her day of liberty to watch lads play that pleasing-looking sport in an open field near the Guild. She’d had little to do with lads and nothing to do with bats and balls, but watching something besides her shuttle endlessly going from side to side on her loom had been at least marginally entertaining.
“Ah,” Rùnach offered.
The woman pulled away and put her hands on her silk-covered hips. “Have you lost your tongue or your wits? Or both?”
“I’m surprised—”
“To see me here?” the woman demanded. “I should think you would be overjoyed. Obviously you’ve lost your wits.”
She seemed to realize quite suddenly that she was not alone with her rediscovered . . . well, whatever Rùnach was to her. She pulled away from him, then glared at Soilléir.
“I see you’re in the thick of things, Léir,” she said, sounding greatly displeased. “As usual.”
Soilléir inclined his head. “To my continued surprise, cousin,” he said, “I find that I am.”
The woman shot him an unfriendly look, then continued her inspection of the chamber. Aisling knew she shouldn’t have been surprised to be singled out next given that she was the only other soul in the library, but she was. In her defense, it had been that sort of year so far.
She scrambled to her feet and suppressed the urge to curtsey. Perhaps she should have because it was obvious she was looking at royalty. The gown she had already encountered and been intimidated by. There were endless yards of fabric expertly sewn to give the impression of a terribly tiny waist, a perfect bosom, and an inexhaustible amount of riches. The tiara sitting atop the woman’s black hair didn’t detract at all from her face, which Aisling had to admit was so beautiful it was almost difficult to look at.
She rethought her decision not to curtsey.
“And who,” the woman said, her voice dripping shards of ice, “is that?”
Rùnach took a deep breath. “My betrothed.”
Aisling felt her own skirts flutter. That was likely because the woman’s intake of breath had almost sucked them right off her.
“That?” she asked contemptuously, then she turned just slightly and favored Rùnach with a look that would have perhaps brought a lesser man to his knees. “Perhaps you have forgotten in all the excitement of your obvious escape from death at your father’s hands, Your Highness, that you are betrothed to me.”
Aisling felt something sweep through her and it was no longer a desire to curtsey to the woman in front of her. She suspected it was an intense desire to kill the man standing behind that woman.
Rùnach looked profoundly uncomfortable. “That’s where things become a little complicated.”
“Which is reason enough to take a bit of
air,” Soilléir said cheerfully, “elsewhere. Aisling, perhaps you would care to join me?”
“Aye,” the woman said shortly, “take that creature there with you. I’ve a desire for private speech with the apparently still-breathing prince of Tòrr Dòrainn.”
“Annastashia,” Rùnach said with a sigh.
Princess Annastashia whirled on Rùnach. “All I want from you is the answer to where the hell you’ve been for the past twenty years!” she shouted. “And don’t pretend you’ve been off on some bloody noble quest!”
Aisling was torn between wanting to see how Rùnach would extricate himself from his current straits and wanting to escape having to listen to what she was certain would be a very unpleasant conversation. The one thing she knew with certainty was that she had no desire to be anywhere near that woman while she had her claws out. Soilléir’s cousin looked as if she were fully capable of doing damage to anyone who got in her way.
Soilléir paused next to her. “We can back out the doors, if you like,” he murmured. “Keep her in our sights, as it were.”
“I don’t think she can hear you,” Aisling said, “if that worries you.”
“I think I should be more worried about what will be left of Rùnach’s hearing after she’s finished with him,” Soilléir said with a faint smile.
“Will she stab him, do you think?”
“I don’t think she has any weapons. Well, none save her sharp tongue. If Rùnach cannot defend himself against that, there’s nothing I can do for him.”
Aisling nodded and walked with him to the doorway, wishing she could appreciate his attempt at levity. She paused, then looked over her shoulder. Rùnach was leaning back against the library table with his arms folded over his chest, wearing an expression that very eloquently said he was steeling himself for a conversation he didn’t particularly want to have. Aisling found herself the recipient of a look that she thought might have been a request not to rush off and do anything rash, but it had been a very brief look indeed.
Aisling decided there was no point in not taking the opportunity to look at what might be the means of finally sending Rùnach to his grave. Annastashia looked less elegant than perilous, and not because she was currently shouting dangerous things at Rùnach. There was something about her that left Aisling with the intense desire not to be in her sights. She considered the woman for another moment or two, then looked at Soilléir.
“Are you elves?” she asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because your cousin is very beautiful, but she doesn’t look like what I thought elves should look like.” She paused. “When I thought they were nothing but mythical characters, that is.”
“Is that what you thought?” he asked with a smile.
“It is,” she agreed, “and you’re answering me with questions.”
“Am I?”
“Rùnach does that. It’s very annoying.”
Soilléir laughed softly and offered her his arm. “I’ve tried to stop, but the habit is too ingrained in me by now. Blame Rùnach’s mother. I learned it from her.”
Aisling didn’t wonder, then, that Rùnach had taken the practice for his own, given how much she knew he had loved his mother. She suppressed the urge to look at him one final time and instead walked with Soilléir out of the library. She waited until they had left the shouting far behind before she looked at him seriously.
“Well?”
“My bloodlines are complicated,” he conceded. “I’m not even sure my grandfather’s bard could identify exactly where we come from. We’re a mongrel bunch, honestly.”
“Yet possessing magic capable of undoing the world, or so Rùnach says.”
“I would say that you, my dear Aisling, are one to talk.”
She would have laughed, but she realized he was serious. She shivered. “I can’t talk about magic now.” Never mind that the reason she couldn’t talk about it was because she couldn’t bring herself to face the fact that she might have it. Magic, that was. Not in truth. Not when it meant that she might have to become familiar enough with it to use it—
“Let’s make for the garden then,” Soilléir suggested. “’Tis a truly lovely place to spend the morning, as long as you aren’t wearing delicate court shoes.”
“How fortunate, then, that I’m wearing boots.”
Soilléir smiled and the sting of the previous handful of moments disappeared. “Exactly so. You and the garden will get on famously.”
Aisling considered a bit more as they walked without haste through passageways that were simply corridors instead of being hallways determined to deafen her with tales of glory and former traversers. She’d had enough of that in elvish palaces and dwarvish fortresses. The silence was, she had to admit, something of a relief.
“That was my cousin, Annastashia,” Soilléir said at one point. “In case you were curious.”
Aisling would have preferred to ignore the whole subject, but she supposed it was better to know everything sooner rather than later. “So I gathered. Is she betrothed to Rùnach in truth?”
“I think it may have been discussed,” he conceded, “but to my knowledge there was nothing formal between them.”
Which could mean several things she wasn’t comfortable thinking about. “She has magic, doesn’t she?”
“She does,” he agreed.
“Is she going to turn me into a garden gnome while I’m not paying attention?”
Soilléir smiled. “She doesn’t have those spells, thankfully.”
“You sound relieved about that.”
“I am, actually, and I imagine Rùnach is as well. Those of us who hold the spells of essence changing are very choosey about the souls to whom we give them. Anna doesn’t have the temperament to manage them very well, so she knows none of them. Rùnach, however, is the soul of discretion, which is why he has them all.”
“Did you know he had his power hidden behind his scars when you gave him those spells?”
“Which spells?”
“The spells of essence changing.”
He frowned. “Those spells?”
“You’re doing it again,” she warned.
He smiled a little. “I’m trying to avoid answering that.”
She looked at him blankly. “Answering what?”
“Whether or not I knew Rùnach’s power—” He stopped short and laughed a little. “You almost had me there.” He considered, then shrugged. “Perhaps it’s best to leave that question unanswered lest I put myself in a position of having to say more than I’m comfortable with at another time to someone else. I can tell you, though, that even if I had known what I won’t admit to knowing or not knowing, I didn’t have the power to draw his magic from him.”
She stopped at that. “In truth?”
“In truth.”
“But you are so powerful,” she said faintly.
“It makes you wonder about the woman who managed the feat, doesn’t it?”
Aisling didn’t want to wonder about that at all. She also didn’t want to think about the fact that Rùnach had spent a score of years thinking that magic was lost to him forever when in reality it had been with him all along, buried by his mother under the scars on his hands and face. Perhaps Soilléir had done him a mercy by never mentioning it to him. She sighed.
“And yet you gave him your spells, thinking he would never use them?”
“I never said that.”
She shivered. “You must trust him.”
“With my life,” Soilléir said frankly. “And believe me when I say there are few whom I could say that about.”
She nodded and continued on with him out to the edge of the garden. She paused, then looked at him.
“They aren’t engaged?” she asked, because she couldn’t not ask it.
“It was discussed,” Soilléir conceded, “but nothing more that I’m aware of.”
Aisling wondered absently if all women who loved a particular man felt the same sort of queasiness she
did upon learning that that man had come very close to wedding another.
“Well, I guess he could help me, then come back for her,” she said slowly. “If he decided to formalize what had been discussed.”
“He could,” Soilléir agreed. “Though that would make it a little difficult to continue a betrothal with you, wouldn’t it?”
“But he’s a prince. He would likely be most comfortable in a palace.” She glanced at him. “Don’t you think?”
“He might,” Soilléir said with a nod, “occasionally. But not for the rest of his life. That would be a terrible thing for him, I think.”
“Do you?” she asked searchingly. “Why?”
“Because he spent twenty years haunting my solar,” Soilléir said, “when he could have been having cushions plumped for his royal backside in Seanagarra.”
“Perhaps he wanted a look in the library there.”
“He could have had that without masquerading as my servant.” He shook his head. “He is a man of taste, true, but a life of luxury and ease is not for him.” He paused, then looked at her. “It is difficult to step back and watch terrible things happen to other people, isn’t it?”
“Is she a terrible thing?”
“I’m not sure I would want to cross her.”
She couldn’t believe that was true, but she also knew what she’d seen. “Rùnach looked uncomfortable.”
“Rùnach looked terrified.”
Aisling realized he was teasing her. She smiled at him. “Should I leave him to terrible happenings, do you think?”
“I think you should. We’ll see if he manages to emerge unscathed in time for supper. If not, we’ll decide whether or not we dare attempt a rescue.”
She supposed there was little else to do. She walked with Soilléir along paths that were just paths and under trees that seemed content to silently stretch their branches toward the heavens. Not even the fountain they walked past seemed inclined to do anything but sing softly to itself. She passed by it, then paused and turned back.
There was something caught there on the lowest basin. Aisling plucked it off the stone, then held it up to the sparkling morning sunlight. It looked like a thread from Annastashia’s gown, though it seemed a little less like proper thread and a bit more like a strand of magic.