He peered past his dripping hood to judge the distance between himself and the keep, sitting like an enormous bird of prey at the head of the street. Perhaps it was madness to think that he could even get past the gate guards. Even if he managed that, there was no guarantee he would gain the particular set of chambers he hoped for—or that the master who lived in those chambers would allow him entrance.
Unfortunately, at the moment he had no other choice. The idea of taking Sarah to Shettlestoune had been unthinkable, simply because there was no safety there. He would happily have taken her either to Lake Cladach or Tòrr Dòrainn, but he couldn’t bring himself to sully either place with his father’s bastards—assuming, perhaps poorly, that they were what hunted him.
That he wasn’t sure galled him, but he had no one to blame but himself for not being able to identify his enemy. He had grown accustomed over the years to looking out for foes of a merely mortal nature. Keeping a weather eye out for mages hadn’t been a skill he’d cultivated, though now he wondered why not.
He suppressed the urge to look over his shoulder to see if they were still being followed. He hadn’t seen anyone since they’d reached the city, but again, he couldn’t be sure. The only thing in his favor was that Beinn òrain was a busy port town and getting lost in a crowd was easily done. And now they were less than two hundred paces from the gates. Safety was within his grasp.
And once he’d reached the particular chamber he was aiming for inside those intimidating walls, he would set Sarah down in a chair before the fire, then fall to his knees and apologize profusely for his boorish behavior. He wasn’t entirely certain that he would manage to blurt out an apology before she either buried a knife in his gut or simply turned and walked away from him. He could safely say he wouldn’t have been surprised by either. It had been all he could do on the plains to make sure she stayed beside him—
Which she wasn’t, at the moment.
He spun around, dragged his damp sleeve across his eyes to clear them, but saw nothing of her. He hadn’t felt anyone with magic around him, but then again, he was hardly one to judge such a thing. He cursed fluently, then strode back the way he’d come. He ignored the pubs and inns. She had no more gold than he did, which was none, and whilst she might have been willing to work for a meal, he suspected she would have first sought nothing more than a place to hide. He passed two alleyways before he hit upon the right one. Sarah was there.
So were a handful of lads who had apparently found her worth a second look.
He strode forward, took the two lads closest to him, and cracked their heads together. They slumped to the cobblestones with remarkable grace, all things considered. Sarah struck the third in the nose, sending him stumbling backward. Ruith reached for the fourth only to have him cry out suddenly and bolt past him.
Never a good sign, that sort of thing.
Ruith felt the shadow sweep over him before he saw it, but shadow it was and not one made by the heavy clouds hanging overhead. He reached for Sarah’s hand and pulled her into a stumbling run over the slippery stone toward the alley’s entrance, hoping to blend in with the shrieking thug who was clutching his nose and stumbling about. Sarah fought him briefly, then fell abruptly silent.
Ruith pulled Sarah under his cloak and backed her against the wall with more force than he meant to.
“Careful, damn you—” she gasped.
“Feign interest,” he begged.
She glared at him before she wrapped her good arm around his neck and pulled his head down where she could whisper furiously in his ear. “If I thought I could stick you between the ribs and not swing for it, I would, you unfeeling, unpleasant … impolite …” She spluttered a bit, seemingly unable to lay her hand upon an insult vile enough to suit her. “I would call you a mannerless whoreson,” she said finally and with a distinct chill to her voice, “but that would be an insult to your honorable dam, who I’m quite sure would be terribly ashamed of how you’ve behaved over the past several days.”
He agreed, silently. He would have attempted a brief apology, but he didn’t suppose Sarah was in the mood to hear it, and he didn’t dare take his attention off what he feared was coming their way. Sarah’s arm trembled so violently, he feared she would either truly do him a goodly bit of damage or collapse from weariness. He slipped his arm behind her back to hold her up, which displeased her every bit as much as he’d expected it might.
“If you think I’m going one step farther with you, Your Highness,” she said in a voice that trembled as badly as the rest of her, “you are sorely mis—”
“Sshh,” he whispered frantically, pulling her closer. He hazarded a glance to his left. A dragon had swept but a foot over the heads of the local civilians, sending most of them sprawling onto the cobblestones. The dragon laughed before it disappeared and a man stood in its place.
Ruith turned back to Sarah and bent his head forward to hide hers. He heard footsteps coming toward the alley, then heard them pause. He held his breath, because there was nothing else to be done. The evil that flowed ahead of the man standing there was like a strong wind before the brunt of a storm. Ruith didn’t consider himself particularly self-effacing, but he would readily admit he wasn’t up to besting even the forefront of that storm.
Damn it anyway.
After several eternal moments, boots scuffed, then walked on, their heels clicking against the stone.
Ruith would have dropped to his knees if he’d had the strength to. Instead, he held himself upright by means of his hand against the wall. He kept Sarah close likely longer than he should have, but he supposed it might be the last time he would manage it so there was no sense in not having the memory to keep him warm in his old age.
“Who was that?” she managed.
“I have no idea,” he said, though he supposed he could hazard a guess. Students at the schools of wizardry were under strict instructions not to torment the townspeople. The punishment for it was ejection from the school and damage to the reputation that anyone with a care for it wouldn’t possibly want. Of the masters, Ruith could bring to mind only one who would terrify people simply because he could.
Droch of Saothair, the master of Olc.
Sarah shuddered again, once, then shoved him away from her. He looked down, then winced. Her pale green eyes were bloodshot, her hair uncombed and hanging in straggling curls over her shoulders, and her face grey with weariness. A pity that didn’t detract at all from her beauty.
He wondered absently if he had lost his mind that he could be thinking about the fairness of her face when they were walking into a clutch of mages—one of whom, at least, would quite happily have seen him dead.
She glared at him. “I’m finished with this, Your—”
“Don’t,” he said, with more sharpness than he’d intended. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she shoved him out of the way and started toward the street before he could.
He caught up with her and stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “If you could just have another half hour’s worth of patience,” he began, “we could be inside—”
“Nay,” she said, taking a step backward, then another. “I don’t want to go any farther with you.” She gestured toward the street with a hand that trembled badly. “I don’t want any more of that.”
He had never once doubted over the course of their acquaintance that Sarah of Doìre would manage whatever was necessary because she was just that kind of woman. A courageous, resilient, terribly responsible woman who would do what needed to be done simply because she found herself the only one who could do it. But for the first time since he’d known her, he thought she might have reached her limit.
He didn’t attempt to move toward her, didn’t attempt to reach out and brush any stray locks of damp hair back from her face. He merely clasped his hands behind his back and looked at her gravely.
“Would you continue on,” he began slowly, “if I could promise you a safe place to sleep for a few days?”
&
nbsp; She considered. “Will you be there?”
He maintained a neutral expression, though it cost him more than he’d thought it might. “Aye, and I can well understand why you wouldn’t want any more of my company.”
“I imagine you can,” she said stiffly, “for which you should at least have the good grace to blush.”
“I vow I will,” he promised, “when we’re safe.”
She pursed her lips. It was obvious she didn’t trust him, which he’d known would be the case. He wasn’t above hoping, however, that at some point in the future she might be willing to bring to mind a few of the more pleasant moments of their journey.
Before he’d been fool enough to take her first to his father’s well, then to the keep at Ceangail where no woman should ever have had to set foot.
“Very well,” she said with a dark look, “I accept, because I have no choice. And also because I’m not through repaying you for what you’ve put me through over the past few fortnights and all the terrible things you’ve said to me.”
He caught up to her quickly, before she walked out into the crowd that was still apparently recovering from almost being singed by a renegade dragon. He knew she didn’t want to remain with him, but the truth was even though she wasn’t safe next to him, she was even less safe away from him. He had also realized over that rather lengthy and anxious journey spent chasing her that he didn’t particularly care for his life without her—something he hadn’t expected that particular winter evening when he’d gathered his gear and locked the door of his mountain house behind him.
Odd, how things could change so quickly.
He paused as they stood on the edge of the street. “Would you be opposed to taking on an alias?”
She looked up at him quickly. “Why does that matter?”
“Because we won’t make it past the guards up the way without one.”
She shivered. “And just what sort of hell is His Royal Highness deigning to take me to?”
“One that leads to paradise,” he promised. “And please stop calling me that.”
“‘Tis what you are.”
“Not any longer, and there are other ways you could wound me that would hurt less.”
She looked up at him seriously. “Do you think I want it to hurt less, Ruith?”
He suppressed a grimace. Nay, he imagined she didn’t. He’d known at various points along their journey from Doìre that he would regret not having told her who he was, he just hadn’t known how much. He pulled her borrowed hood up over her hair, did the same for himself, then nodded toward the castle.
“I’ll invent a tale as we walk. We’ll go quickly.”
She didn’t look happy about it, but she nodded. He walked up the way as if he’d been nothing more than a traveler seeking shelter. He felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck, but again, that was likely from imaginings brought on by weariness. All he had to do was put his head down, blend in, and walk past anyone whose notice he might not have wished to garner. He took Sarah’s hand and drew it under his arm. Perhaps she felt uneasy as well, for she didn’t fight him.
He hazarded a glance at the keep, then wished he hadn’t. The walls were still sheer, rising a hundred feet into the air with a ruthless exuberance that defied anyone to scale them. The front gates were a forbidding barbican with two towers and a portcullis that was made of more than just steel. Ruith half wondered why the masters bothered with guards there. Surely the magic even he could sense was enough to keep any but the most foolhardy at bay.
Wizards. What an unruly, arrogant lot. Ruith remembered as he walked with Sarah up to those gates why he’d never wanted to waste time earning any rings of mastery. The thought of having to sit under the supposed tutelage and substantial scrutiny of most of the masters within would have been absolutely insupportable. And dangerous—for them. He hadn’t had the patience for it at ten summers; he certainly didn’t have the patience for it now.
But within those hallowed, if not stuffy, walls lay absolute safety, and he was willing to endure a bit of genuflecting to have it.
“Your plan?” Sarah asked.
He wasn’t unaccustomed to inventing identities for himself on the spur of the moment, so he set about it as they walked slowly toward the barbican gate. “We’re parents of some talented lad who was recommended by our local mage. The guards will have memorized all the wizards of note in the Nine Kingdoms, so we’ll claim an acquaintance with Oban.”
She nodded, then looked up at him reluctantly. “You didn’t see Master Oban on your way south, did you?”
“I didn’t,” he said quietly, “nor any of the others, but I didn’t look for them either.” He was quite eager to discuss the apparently undisclosed identity of their local alemaker-turned-mage, but now wasn’t the time. Perhaps he would use it as an excuse to keep her nearby for another day when the time came that she wanted to leave.
He nodded toward the keep. “Just so you know,” he said slowly, “there are spells of ward set inside the gates, wards which alert the headmaster should anyone with magic enter and not announce his power beforehand. We’ll present ourselves at the gates and look innocent. If our luck holds, we’ll request a tour, then whilst on it run like the wind for a certain chamber.”
“Why don’t we just ask for directions to this certain chamber right from the start?” she asked, frowning.
“Because the man we’re here to see doesn’t have anything to do with novices and the headmaster won’t believe he’s asked to see us. He is, though, the only one with the power to fight what hunts us.”
“And you can’t?” she asked tartly.
“I can’t,” he admitted, though he found the admission a little less palatable than it should perhaps have been. “And here we are. I’ll tell you the rest later.”
“If we survive this descent into madness.”
Now that he was at the gate, he found himself agreeing with her, though he supposed it was unwise to say as much. He stopped well in front of the foremost guardsman’s outstretched sword.
“Oy, stay where you are,” the man said firmly. “State your business, my good man, else you’ll wish you had.”
“I have business with the masters here,” Ruith said, with as much deference as he could muster. “I would prefer to discuss it inside your gates, if you don’t mind. The streets of Beinn òrain are a dodgy place, aren’t they, and one must keep one’s lady safe from harm.”
The man either couldn’t argue with that or didn’t find them particularly dangerous-looking. He did, however, motion for a bit of aid in containing the potential threat as he escorted them under the barbican gate and into the courtyard.
Ruith felt rather than heard Sarah’s breath begin to come in gasps. He put his hand over hers that rested on his arm and squeezed it reassuringly, though he couldn’t say he was any more comfortable than she was. He had forgotten just how the spells pressed down on a body once inside the gates, how the very air was full of magic, how centuries of tales echoed faintly along the stones.
“Now to your business,” their escort said, looking at them suspiciously.
“We’re here because of our son,” Ruith lied without hesitation. “We bear a message from Master Oban of Bruaih, who bid us come and speak with the masters here. We are simple folk with no magic, but our son …”
He paused. Was that a bell?
The guardsman frowned as well, then cocked an ear to listen.
Ruith was now certain he’d heard a faint ringing in the distance. It surprised him enough that he looked at Sarah before he could stop himself.
“Very well,” another guardsman said, pushing past the first. He was accompanied by a handful of equally burly lads bearing both sharp blades and long arrows. “Which one of you is lying?”
Ruith patted himself, figuratively of course, to see if he might have left any untoward parts of himself exposed, but nay, his magic was all safely tucked where it should have been and covered by impenetrable layers of illusion and div
ersion. There was no lingering whiff of the spells that had been wrapped around him in Ceangail, and even the blisters on his hands where he’d touched that spell of protection fashioned of Olc were almost gone.
He looked at Sarah, but she was only glaring at him as if it were all his fault.
“Oh, Tom, ’tis you,” the second guardsman said, nodding at someone behind Ruith. “Announce yourself next time, won’t you?”
“Are you daft?” a lad squeaked. “And have me master find out I’ve been gone?”
“Bah, Droch is more bark than bite,” the guardsman said dismissively, waving the lad on. “But I’d not like to have either from him, so you’d best hurry. He came through here not a quarter hour ago, looking less than pleased about something.”
“He’s still sour over that chess game he played with that mage a bit ago,” Tom said, stopping in front of Ruith and shuddering. “Never seen him in such a temper. He’s been out looking for new pieces, don’t you know, to replace what was lost.”
“I’d like not to be one of them,” the guardsman said nervously. “Where’ve you been?”
“Oh, here and there,” Tom said with a shrug. “Searching for the odd spell to keep tucked away for appeasing Droch when needful. It served me well this past fortnight, believe you me.”
“You’re daft to be within ten paces of him,” the guard said, shooing Tom away without delay and looking rather more unsettled than he had the moment before.
Ruith had no idea what sort of chess Droch played, but he suspected it wasn’t anything he would want to be involved in. He wondered who the fool was who’d found himself led into such a terrible situation. No one he knew, no doubt.
A single, delicate bell rang again.
Just once.
Ruith suppressed a wince at the sight of a man rushing across the courtyard from points unknown. He was adjusting his tall, pointy hat as he did so, which adjustment was hampered by his long, voluminous robes flapping in the breeze created by his haste.
Ceannard, the headmaster of the schools of wizardry and the possessor of the loosest tongue in the bloody place.
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