by Lynn Kurland
It was far safer that way, he was sure.
Fourteen
Aisling wandered through the racks of books in Lismòr’s library, trying not to look as overwhelmed as she felt. She had never in her life seen so many books, nor imagined that so many could exist in the same place. The keeper of the books, Master Dominicus, had sternly warned her not to touch anything, a condition of entrance to which she had agreed without hesitation. He had then demanded to know what she was looking for, but in that, at least, she had held her ground and refused to speak.
Because she was looking for the truth.
She had eaten a very lovely breakfast by herself, brought by Lord Nicholas’s page William, which had shored her up for the day’s activities but also left her feeling rather more irritated than she would have suspected. Who knew that such food existed and in such abundance? She wondered how she had lived twenty-seven years of her life on beggar’s rations.
She was beginning to wonder quite a few things.
William had told her that she was free to wander about the university, and he had been good enough to show her to the library. She had walked inside, then come to an ungainly halt.
She had stood at the door for several minutes, trying without success to shut her mouth. The sight that had greeted her eyes had been so overwhelming, she hadn’t known even where to begin to look for what she needed. Not that she’d even had a clear idea of what that thing might be. She had considered earlier that morning trying to find out about the nature of curses and how to get out from under them, but the more she’d thought about it, the sillier the idea had seemed. Who would write a book about such a thing?
She had then decided perhaps she should seek out books about Bruadair, but it had taken her even less time to dismiss that idea. Given the secretive nature of her country, who would dare pen such a tome? No native would for fear of dying and no stranger would know enough to say anything useful. Even she, who had lived inside Bruadair’s borders for the whole of her life, couldn’t speak of anything but the Guild.
What she wanted was to find everything in a neat, tidy little tome that would tell her without mincing words that everything she had believed up until that moment had been true, that she could count on curses, that she had never once over the course of her twenty-seven years been lied to, and that the preceding two fortnights had been nothing but an aberration.
She wasn’t quite sure what she would do if she found out that it had all been an elaborately staged lie.
After William had introduced her to Master Dominicus, then departed for safer ground, she had done her best to look trustworthy, which had perhaps worked in her favor. Master Dominicus, after delivering his warning to her, had gone back to his work of scolding students who were whispering loudly behind their hands.
Now, even after an hour of wandering about, not touching anything, she stood in the middle of the rows and rows of books and still had no idea where to even begin.
“Need help?”
She jumped a foot, she was sure of it, pulling three books off a shelf as she whirled around. The only reason she wasn’t thrown from the library, she supposed, was that Rùnach caught those books and put them back where they belonged before Master Dominicus was the wiser. He propped his elbow on a shelf and looked at her.
“Searching for something in particular?”
She almost blurted it all out, right there in the section devoted to the science of insects. After all, he was a simple soldier, wasn’t he? He had no reason to be interested in the political complexities of Bruadair, did he? He would listen to her tale, nod wisely, then…
He would think her mad, that’s what he would think her. She would tell him of the curses laid upon those who dared leave or speak or spin and he would think her absolutely daft. And perhaps she was, daft to believe that she could come and go across the border as she pleased and not pay a price.
It was one thing to touch a wheel and survive. Perhaps the Guildmistress had feared she would lose her control of her weavers if they looked further afield for more interesting things to do with their hands, so she had invented a curse to keep them fearfully obedient. But crossing the border, now, that was a different thing entirely. Those were tales she had heard from more sources than just the Guildmistress. Even Mistress Muinear had told her that the secrets of Bruadair had to be protected, even if those secrets were kept by slaying those who dared cross the border without permission.
Perhaps she had been protected because she’d had a trader’s license, or because the peddler had bargained for her life by some means she couldn’t divine, or because she still had her errand to see accomplished—
“Aisling?”
She focused on Rùnach, then blinked at the sight. He was simply appalling to look at. More shocking still was that she hardly noticed his scars any longer. She wondered, absently, how it was he’d managed to avoid any entanglements to this point. Surely women threw themselves at him wherever he went, scars or no scars.
“Are you unwell?” he asked.
“Daft, rather,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead. “Or at least I think I’m daft.”
He smiled. She wanted to close her eyes when he smiled. She looked down at the floor, though Weger wouldn’t have approved of that. He’d shouted at her scores of times—in a single day, no less—to keep her eyes up and focused on what was in front of her. A very difficult lesson for one who had spent the whole of her life with her gaze fixed to the ground so as not to draw attention to herself.
“Are you looking for something in particular?”
She started to blurt out I can’t say, but something stopped her. It was odd, wasn’t it, how outside the borders of her land there were countless others who went about their lives and business without living under the shadow of a terrible curse. She took a deep breath, because something was beginning to stir in her, something that felt quite a bit like the beginnings of rebellion. She had learned to control those feelings at the Guild, because she had watched what rebellion had cost others who had allowed it to grow and flower, but now…
Well, there was no one there to punish her for it, was there?
She looked at Rùnach, because Weger had taught her to keep her eyes up. She lifted her chin for good measure.
“I am looking for something,” she said firmly.
Rùnach lifted an eyebrow. “Are you going to do damage to this thing when you find it?”
She looked at him narrowly. “Are you mocking me?”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“Good,” she said shortly. “And I suggest you don’t get in my way.”
He held up his hands slowly but said nothing.
She would have pushed past him and been on her way, but the truth was, she had no idea where to push past to.
“Might I help you find this something you’re looking for?” he asked.
She wished she could stop biting her tongue, but in truth it was more difficult than she would have thought it not to speak her mind. She who had kept her mouth shut for so long. The difficulty was trying to describe what she needed without revealing what she needed.
“I am looking for tales of, well, tales that aren’t of your usual sort. I’m not sure what to call them.”
“What do these tales contain?”
“I need tales about, ah, well, perhaps elves, dragons, dwarves, that sort of thing.” She looked at him. “You know. Myths.”
He blinked. “Myths?”
“Well, of course myths,” she said in surprise. “You don’t believe in faery tales any longer, do you?”
“Well—”
“Creatures from myth such as I’ve listed,” she said, wishing he would stop looking at her as if she had suddenly sprouted faery wings herself. “If possible.”
He started to speak, then shut his mouth. He seemed to be wrestling with something. Perhaps he was accustomed to dealing with more soldierly and less wondrous subjects. Perhaps he feared he would not be able to aid her.
“Do you know how to find things in a library?” she asked gingerly. “I don’t mean to put you on the spot, as it were.”
He smiled, though she couldn’t account for why. Perhaps he merely found everything that didn’t find itself inside Gobhann to be humorous.
“I think I might be able to at least find you the proper section. After that, you’re on your own.”
She supposed it was a place to start. She trailed after Rùnach as he wandered through the stacks of books, selecting a handful of tomes that he carried back to a well-worn table for her. He set them down, then looked at her.
“Anything else?” he whispered.
She considered. “Is there anything, do you think, about the histories of the Nine Kingdoms?” She had no idea if Bruadair was considered part of the Nine Kingdoms or not, being such a secretive place, but she supposed it didn’t hurt to ask.
“I’ll find something, then leave you to your reading, shall I?”
She nodded, then watched him walk away. When she could no longer see him, she reached for the topmost book and opened it to read the first page: Famous Elves, Dwarves, and Dragons of Legend.
That seemed a promising enough place to start. She only hoped she could make her way through the thing without making so many noises of disbelief that Master Dominicus threw her out of the library.
Later, and she wasn’t sure how long that later was, she decided she had read enough. In spite of her brush with the Heroes of legend in that much coveted book of Mistress Muinear’s, she could at least say those lads had been real. She had spent the day reading about things she couldn’t possibly believe, elven creatures that lived in enchanted forests where flowers whispered and trees sang, dwarves that mined in stone that spoke their names and murmured their tales of glory and riches, dragons that turned themselves into horses and horses that turned themselves into dragons.
Ridiculous.
She reached finally for a history of the Nine Kingdoms that Rùnach had found for her. She opened it and looked at its contents. There were chapters involving all manner of locales she’d read about in other places. There would be, she could only hope, time enough in her future to peruse histories that might have less to do with otherworldly creatures and more to do with wars and monarchs. She blinked when she realized that one place seemed to have been blacked out in the list. It lay in the vicinity of both An-uallach and Cothromaiche…
She flipped back through the pages and found that a certain number of them—three, to be exact—had been torn from the book.
“Find anything interesting?”
Aisling shut the book with a snap, then put her hand over the cover. “Nothing,” she said promptly. She looked at Rùnach and realized he was sitting around the corner of the table from her, reading something that was propped up against his knee, which was propped up against the table. He looked perfectly at ease, something she couldn’t say for herself. She also had no idea how long he’d been there. “Nothing interesting,” she clarified, “though I appreciate your aid.”
He only lifted his eyebrows briefly.
“Have you been there long?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not very. I actually just came back to see if you might want something to eat.”
“Luncheon?”
“Dinner, actually. Lord Nicholas has invited us to join him in his solar. It will require, from what I understand, having the chamber infiltrated by orphaned lads at some point, but perhaps we will have finished our meal before then. Apparently the lads here have an uncommon fondness for tales of elves and their ilk.”
“Is that wise?” Aisling asked seriously. “Filling their heads with rubbish of that sort?”
“Rubbish?” Rùnach echoed faintly.
She shrugged helplessly. “I think perhaps it might give them an unrealistic view of the world as it is.” She paused. “Then again, I read more than I should have in my youth about Heroes and such.”
He shut his book and looked at her with interest. “Did you? Care to enlighten me?”
“Don’t you know any of those tales?”
“I fear that in my youth I was fed a steady diet of mythical characters engaging in mythical adventures, so my knowledge is sorely lacking about things of a more heroic nature.”
She frowned at him. If she hadn’t known better, she might have suspected he was poking fun at her. She frowned a bit more.
“Are you making sport of me again?”
He smiled. “Not at all. I’m curious.” He set his book on the table. “Shall we walk whilst you’re telling me about these lads and lassies?”
She supposed there was no sense in earning any more dark looks from Master Dominicus than necessary. He was obviously very particular about the conduct going on in his domain. She nodded to him, then walked with Rùnach out of the library and up the stairs.
“Where to?” she asked.
“The shore?” he suggested. “It isn’t far and I have a cloak here for you. We could be there and back in less than an hour, well in time for a tasty supper.”
“The shore,” she repeated. “The seashore?”
“The very same.”
She had never seen the shore before, nor the sea really, save what she’d seen of it aboard Captain Burke’s ship and in the courtyard of Gobhann. She agreed readily, accepted a cloak that was certainly not the one she’d worn at Gobhann, then walked with him along passageways and to a heavy gate set in the wall. She wondered why a university would need such a substantial entrance.
“Lord Nicholas is careful with his students, then,” she mused.
“He takes in orphan lads, as well,” Rùnach said, “and he’s careful with all who come inside his gates.” He had a quiet word with the gate guard there, then the gate was unlocked and held open for them to go through.
Aisling found the path rocky enough that she had to watch her feet, not that she likely would have seen anything anyway. It was very foggy and rather rainy, actually, though she wasn’t inclined to turn back and Rùnach didn’t seem bothered by the weather.
“Are there any other libraries of note in the world?” she asked, because those three missing pages in that book bothered her. She didn’t suppose it was possible that she might find the same book elsewhere, but it didn’t hurt to ask.
“Chagailt,” he said with a shrug, then turned back to watching the path. “I suppose there are books enough at Tor Neroche. There is a very useful library in Beinn òrain.”
“Beinn òrain?”
He stopped then, and turned to look at her. “Have you never heard of it?”
She shook her head helplessly. “Never. What’s there?”
“It is a city in the east that hosts the schools of wizardry.”
She would have smiled, or chided him about his imagination running off with him, but it was clear to her that he was perfectly serious. She hesitated, then reached out to put her hand on his arm. “Rùnach,” she said as gently as she could manage, “I’m sorry to tell you the truth, but there is no such thing as wizards, or magic, or other creatures from myth. I have no idea what they purport to teach there at that school, but it can’t be magic.”
He blinked a time or two, then he smiled gravely. “As you say.” He tilted his head to one side. “Let’s carry on, shall we?”
He had taken that well, which reassured her about his ability to listen to hard things and accept them. She could only hope she had that same skill.
It occurred to her, with a startling flash of something that didn’t set well, that Weger had spent an inordinate amount of time during the apparent composition of his strictures talking about mages and how to either avoid them or rid the world of their pestilence, but perhaps that was a euphemism for something else.
“There is also, of course, the great library at Eòlas,” Rùnach continued.
“Where?”
“Eòlas,” he repeated. “The city itself is in Diarmailt, which used to be its own country but now is part of Wychweald, or so I understand. E
òlas was once a very great seat of learning. The library there is immense.”
“Have you been there?” she asked in surprise. “I mean, you being a soldier of fortune and all that.”
“Even a soldier needs to read now and again.”
“Where are you from?” she asked without thinking.
“I was born in the mountains,” he said with a shrug. “The place doesn’t matter.”
“Do you have siblings?”
“Yes, several. Not all are still living.” He smiled faintly. “You are full of questions this afternoon.”
“The library was a bad influence on me.”
He smiled briefly. “And I believe that was three questions you asked me, which leaves me with three of my own.”
“That was two.”
“I don’t count very well.”
“I think you count very well,” she said grimly.
He only smiled again. “I’ll contemplate which answers I’ll have and let you know.”
She thought she just might be dreading them, but she couldn’t bring herself to say as much. She continued to walk with Rùnach along flat ground that was rather softer and less manageable than what she was accustomed to.
“Have you ever seen the sea before?” he asked.
“On the ship,” she said, watching her feet. “But that was only a brief glimpse before I spent the rest of the time hiding in the captain’s cabin. And then I didn’t have much of an opportunity when we docked in Sgioba.” She paused. “I don’t remember much about Sgioba, actually.”
He paused, then turned and looked at her. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more for you. I didn’t realize then that you weren’t a lad.”
“My disguise was so good, then?” she asked lightly.
“Nay, I am so stupid,” he said with a smile. He held out his hand for hers. “Come with me, but keep your eyes closed. I think the sun has cleared away the fog closer to the water. You’ll have a better view of things there.”