by Lynn Kurland
“Are his spells that powerful?” she asked. “Truly?”
“Aye, they are, truly,” he said. He rubbed his hands over his face, then sighed. “I’m not sure I want to think about what would happen if they fell into the wrong hands.”
“And if someone tried to pry them from you?”
He looked at her steadily. “Death first.”
“If I asked nicely?”
He blinked, then he smiled. “Would you?”
“Death first,” she said seriously. “I can scarce bear the thought of knowing the one I already know.” She paused. “I’m trying to forget it. Unfortunately, it was a very useful spell.”
“I daresay it was,” he agreed. “I wonder if Bruadair’s magic has anything like it.”
“Sìorraidh,” she said without thinking.
“What?”
“That’s what the magic is called.”
He smiled. “I wish you’d stop that sort of thing. I’m running out of things to do besides gape at you.”
She walked across the chamber and into his embrace. She closed her eyes and was simply happy to have his arms around her.
“It has been a very long spring so far,” she said.
“So it has, my love,” he said with a sigh, though he didn’t sound unhappy about it. “What does that word mean, do you suppose? Sìorraidh?”
“Everlasting,” she said, finding the word there on her tongue without having called for it.
“Fitting.”
“Am I losing my mind?”
He laughed a little, then hugged her tightly before he pulled away. “I don’t think so, but we could find a dreamspinner and ask her opinion. And to do that, we need to find your father. Why don’t we have a look at the map Riochdair gave us and you see if anything strikes you in particular. I know what he told me, but I’m interested in what you think.”
She waited until he had fetched a map out of his pack and spread it out on the bed. It was a more detailed map than she’d been given by the madame’s runner boy, so she supposed it might serve them best at present. She sat down on one side of it and looked at him sitting on the other.
“Do you see anything?” she asked.
“Roads and rivers. You?”
She scowled at him. “Chicken scratches, rather. I have no experience with reading anything save the odd weaving chart. What did my cousin tell you?”
Rùnach pointed to three places, then turned the map so they were facing the right way for her. She trailed her fingers along roads and, aye, rivers as well. And then she blinked.
“Did you see that?”
“See what?” he asked.
“That sparkle there,” she said. She pointed to a place on the map where the roads and rivers were not so well demarcated. “That little glade there—” She looked at him. “Why does everything always end in a glade?”
“Because foul deeds are often wrought in forests and apparently sunlight is useful for revealing them,” he said dryly. “Hence the need for a spot missing trees.” He peered at the map. “So, you see something there?”
“Unless I’m imagining things.”
“Do you think you’re imagining things?”
She had to take a rather deep breath. “Nay.”
“Then let’s go investigate.”
“I’m not sure I know how to get there. Maps are not my strong suit.”
“That’s why you have me,” he said cheerfully, rolling the map up and reaching for his pack. “I love maps.”
She put her hand on his arm. “It isn’t just for maps, Rùnach. Loving you, that is.”
He paused, then looked at her seriously. “Will you remember that when I’m on my knees in front of your father, begging him to let me wed you?”
“I’m not sure he’ll have anything to say in the matter.”
“Well, that may be true, but I imagine there will be someone somewhere in the next fortnight or two who will have something to say about it. Perhaps even you.”
She looked up at him as he rose and started to stuff the map into his rather empty pack. “You know,” she said slowly, “I’ve spent so much of my life not having any say over my life.” She paused and met his eyes. “I think I want a say.”
He reached over and pulled her to her feet, then into his arms. He smoothed a stray hair or two back from her cheek. “Of course you do. And I will, of course, acquiesce to all your demands.”
“You will not,” she said with a snort.
“Well, probably not,” he agreed, “but what would you do with a man you could walk all over?”
“Wonder where you’d gone,” she muttered, pulling out of his arms. She picked up her pack she hadn’t even opened, then looked at him. “Shall we?”
He smiled, kissed her briefly, then reached out and opened the door for her. “We should. Perhaps the innkeeper will prepare something for us to eat before I anger him by paying him for the effects of my magical adventures. Next time, I think I should attempt the same out in the open.”
“In a glade?”
“It worked for my father,” he said wryly, “though I’d like to hope my spells are slightly less objectionable to the surroundings than his would have been.”
She nodded and left the chamber with him, hoping that would be the case. She wasn’t exactly sure what they would do if hers was the only feeble magic they had to rely on.
• • •
Two days later she walked into a clearing with Rùnach. It was the place she’d seen on the map, of that she was certain. She’d found that she hadn’t needed to consult the map more than a time or two that first day before she realized she knew where she was going. She had looked at Rùnach often during their journey, but he’d only been watching her gravely.
She wondered if he could possibly be as unnerved as she was.
The horses currently loped along behind them in the form of enormous, ferocious-looking hounds. She supposed Iteach couldn’t be blamed if he spent as much time looking at Orail as he did Rùnach. Her shapechanging horse was glorious as a horse, but her golden hound’s coat was truly something to behold. That said, she wouldn’t have walked up randomly to those two beasts for any amount of gold.
Rùnach had stopped and was simply standing there in the glade, a little off to one side, watching her. She supposed she wouldn’t have walked up to him either, if she hadn’t already known him. He looked lethal enough with that terrible sword at his side and an aura about him that warned he wouldn’t be trifled with. He also seemed perfectly content to simply stand there and wait for her to do something, damn him anyway.
“Well?” she demanded.
He smiled briefly. “Don’t look at me. This is your country.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t like being the one making the decisions.”
“I don’t think I can make that any different for you,” he said seriously. “What do you think we should do now?”
She blew out her breath. “Continue to look for my father, if he’s still alive.”
He clasped his hands behind his back and simply looked at her.
“Well?” she said crossly. “Just how am I supposed to do that from this point?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly “How are you supposed to do that from this point?”
She would have glared at him, but she couldn’t bring herself to. “Do you always answer a question with a question?”
He opened his mouth, but she shot him a warning look. He smiled. “Very well, I’ll give you an honest answer. I think you should attempt a bit of magic. Perhaps Bruadair will hide us long enough for you to unhide what you need to use at this point.”
“I never hid that magic I don’t have,” she said firmly, “because, as I said, I don’t have any.”
He looked around himself, then fetched something and put it on a small, flat rock. “A pinecone,” he said seriously. “Why don’t you see if you can hide it.”
She started to deny that she knew how to do anything o
f the sort, but realized that wasn’t precisely true. She surrendered her backpack to the elven madman who put both hers and his in a pile and then looked at her expectantly. She closed her eyes briefly, then laid a spell over the pinecone. She knew what to say because Bruadair’s magic told her.
The pinecone faded, then disappeared.
“Hmmm,” Rùnach said thoughtfully, stroking his chin. “Can you undo that spell?”
“Undo it?”
“Either reverse it, or perhaps use a spell of revealing?”
Aisling found that the words were there, again, ready for her use. She looked at Rùnach. “I don’t like this.”
His smile was terribly gentle. “I know, love. But if it eases you any, I think your country’s magic seems fairly determined to have you take note of it.”
She couldn’t even scowl at him, he’d said it so gently and with such a conspiratorial smile. She rolled her eyes on principle, then took the spell the magic had given her and used it on the spot in front of her where she’d hidden—
The pinecone that was again revealed.
And then the world rent in twain.
The pinecone exploded. So did the spell covering a path that led from the glade into the woods. Rùnach shouldered both packs, called for the dogs, then looked at her.
“Well, let’s follow that then, shall we?”
“Are you mad?” she gasped. “We’re to simply up and walk into that forest there?”
He took her by the hand. “Let’s go and see where this leads.”
She wanted to balk, truly she did. It would have been much easier, even at that late date, to simply turn around and run the other way. But she knew she couldn’t. Rùnach was watching her. She had two shapechanging horses watching her.
Bruadair’s magic was watching her.
She took a deep breath, gathered what scant courage she had, and nodded briskly. “Off we go, then.”
Rùnach said nothing. He simply waited for her to move. She did, eventually, though it was perhaps one of the more difficult steps she had ever taken. After all, it was just a path . . .
Through an obviously enchanted wood that had revealed the path in question thanks to a spell she hadn’t known ten minutes earlier but had used as easily as if she’d known it all her life. She could accept that, with enough time.
She wished she could accept the fact that she had the feeling she wasn’t going to like what they found at the end of that path.
Ten
Rùnach followed the faint path with a fair bit of caution, with a ferocious equine-born hound in front of him, Aisling next to him, and his own pony-turned-canine bringing up the rear. He hadn’t been surprised that Aisling’s spell had turned up more than she’d cared for it to. He also hadn’t been surprised that the true extent of her magic had been revealed in her home country. In fact, he was half tempted to say he was no longer surprised by anything.
But that would have been a lie because as he stopped fifty paces away from a house, he found himself too surprised to continue on.
“Well,” he said, nonplussed.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
He glanced at Aisling to find her wearing the same expression he was sure was plastered to his own visage. He turned back to the house in front of him and wondered if they would have walked right into the side of the house without Aisling’s spell or simply wandered into the stream running alongside it and drowned.
The house itself looked like the sort of house one might find in the mountains: steep roof, rough timbers, utilitarian with the odd touches of whimsy here and there. It looked as if it belonged to someone who made his living from the land, but not in any magical way. A stream, which on second glance turned out to be fairly large, flowed along one side of the house, turning a large waterwheel. Rùnach had no idea what the owner of the house did to earn his bread, but perhaps he ran a mill or a woodshop or something that required a fairly steady, unmagical source of power.
He watched the wheel for a moment or two, then realized that was where the circles began.
Rùnach found himself walking with Aisling up the path to the gate set in a low rock fence. That was the last thing he saw that didn’t have some sort of curve to it. They entered the gate to find circular stones leading up to the house, curves in the edges of the flowerbeds, stones encircling a dozen different varieties of fruit trees. He was half tempted to ask Aisling if those trees had any stories to tell, but he didn’t have the chance.
The front door had opened.
That perhaps might have been unremarkable, but Aisling had come to a staggering halt and was gaping at the man standing there.
“Recognize him?” Rùnach murmured.
She wheezed out something that he was fairly sure was a curse. He looked at the tall, unfortunately quite intimidating-looking man standing there, then wondered if it might be wise to release Aisling’s hand. The moment the thought crossed his mind, she tightened her fingers with his and glared at him.
“Don’t you dare.”
He supposed when she put it that way, he shouldn’t. He nodded toward their potential host.
“Who’s that?”
“One of the Guild guards!” She looked torn between raging and weeping. “He handed me off to the fop—or, rather, to Prince Soilléir, who then dragged me down to the border where Mistress Muinear got me across into the tender care of Ochadius of Riamh. And here, after a very circuitous route, I find myself facing that man again!”
Rùnach ventured a look at the man standing in the doorway. He looked . . . haggard.
But he seemingly had no lack of courage, for he stepped out into the sunlight just the same. Rùnach would have winced at the sight of hair the same color as Aisling’s, but he supposed he shouldn’t. She had to have inherited it from somewhere. It was obvious she had inherited it from that man there.
The man continued down his path, away from his house, until he was standing a handful of paces away.
“Aisling,” he said quietly. “Welcome home.”
She looked at him, mute. Actually, she looked as if she were wrestling with the intense desire to kill him.
Rùnach couldn’t blame her. There was a man who obviously knew her, who had obviously sent her away, and now had the gall to welcome her home? And just what did he expect her to do? Fall on his neck and weep with joy?
Rùnach found himself the object of a quick, brutal assessment that began at his boots and ended at his face, with a practiced check conducted along the way for weapons. It was at the end, however, that the man’s whole demeanor changed. He glanced at Aisling’s hand in Rùnach’s, then gave him a look that was tinged with something it took Rùnach a moment or two to identify, and he wasn’t unaccustomed to warning looks from fathers. This was something else entirely. He rather strongly suspected that if his hand strayed to his sword or he looked as if he might spew out a spell, he would find himself rather dead.
“Who,” the man said very carefully, “are you?”
Aisling offered no opinion. Rùnach supposed he might have to have a chat with her about that later. She did, however, squeeze his hand and shift a bit closer to him. That didn’t improve her father’s opinion.
“My name is Rùnach,” Rùnach said slowly.
“You resemble someone I’ve recently seen.”
Rùnach wished he could have said he was surprised. “And did this person have a name?”
“None that I could discover, but he looks a damned sight like you.” The man considered, but his expression didn’t soften. “Acair, I think. Something along those lines.”
Rùnach sighed. “My half brother—”
He supposed the only reason he continued to breathe was because Bruadair thought his death might grieve Aisling and it had spared him from the spell that slammed into him—and only him—and knocked him flat on his back. Once he could see again through the stars swimming around his bloody stupid head, he found that Aisling was standing in front of him holding off a spell of death with
her mere presence alone. He gaped at the shards of spell that were hanging over him like scores of portcullis spikes and supposed he couldn’t be blamed for indulging in a shudder.
“He is my betrothed,” Aisling said distinctly. “I do not want him harmed.”
The spikes hesitated, then tucked themselves rather reluctantly back into what he could see was a canopy of death still hanging over his head. He shot those lethal shards of spell a wary look, then accepted Aisling’s hand back up to his feet. He stood there and did his damndest to catch his breath without looking as if he were desperately trying to catch his breath.
Perhaps it was time to revisit the ability to keep his mouth shut he’d learned so well in Buidseachd.
Aisling’s father was pointing at him with an unfriendly finger. “Do you have any idea who that is?”
“Do you think you have any right to ask that question?” Aisling countered.
“His father is Gair of Ceangail!”
Rùnach glanced at Aisling to see how she was reacting to that piece of truth. She merely shrugged.
“His mother was Sarait of Tòrr Dòrainn. I know his grandfather and several of his cousins. Very handsome, those lads, but I like this one the most.”
And then that blessed girl glanced at him and winked.
Rùnach rubbed his free hand over his mouth because he needed something to do besides laugh. He looked at Aisling’s father.
“I am Rùnach of Ceangail,” he conceded, “and while I am my father’s spawn, I am my mother’s son.” Or so he hoped. Given how his magic had been behaving since Aisling had restored it to him, he was beginning to wonder if somehow some of his father’s madness had found its way into his veins as well.
The other man didn’t look terribly pleased, but he wasn’t spewing out spells so perhaps they would at least manage conversation before things went south again.
“I don’t like this,” he said crisply.
“I’m not sure you’ll have anything to say about it,” Aisling said. “My life is my own to share with whom I choose. And I choose this man here.”
The spikes of death rattled once more, sounding like crisp, icy snow falling in the dead of winter, then disappeared.