by Lynn Kurland
“Already done,” Miach said, uncrossing his ankles and sitting up. He put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I understand hospitality has been extended and a servant awaiting their pleasure. I’m sure discretion is still advised as they traverse the halls, but since their errand is a private one, perhaps that will suit.”
Rùnach stood, helped Aisling to her feet, then embraced Miach briefly, slapping him perhaps with more vigor than necessary on the back of the head in return for the smirks barely suppressed. He shot his brother-in-law a warning look as he released him, then reached out and pulled his sister into his arms.
“Thank you,” he whispered against her ear.
She only hugged him tightly, then leaned up and kissed his scarred cheek.
“I like her.”
He had nothing to say in response to that, because he did too. Unfortunately, nothing would come of it. She had a quest and he had an ordinary life in front of him. He could only imagine her fury when she discovered exactly what he was…or, rather, had been.
Mhorghain looked at Aisling, then very carefully put her arms around her and embraced her briefly. She pulled back and smiled at her.
“It is difficult,” she said honestly, “to realize that the world is not what you thought it was. I’ll promise you this, though: it will grow easier with time.”
“Have you always had magic?” Aisling asked, her voice not quite steady.
“Heavens, no,” Mhorghain said promptly. “Didn’t know I had it, and I would have cut it from my veins if I’d been able to when I found out I did. It can be useful now and again, though I prefer seeing to things with my sword.” She looked at Aisling closely. “Do you have any, do you think?”
Aisling shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She glanced at Rùnach, then back at Mhorghain. “I can spin.”
“That’s handy,” Mhorghain noted.
“Water,” Aisling added. “And air, I think.” She looked at Rùnach. “Would you say that’s all?”
“I would say that Miach needs to go find a drink before he chokes to death,” Rùnach said, giving the king of Neroche a bit of a shove in the right direction. He looked at Mhorghain. “She has some unusual gifts. What they mean, I couldn’t possibly begin to guess.”
“You might have more success at that after a nap,” Miach said with a smile. “Morgan and I have our duties to scamper off and see to. We’ll catch up for supper, if you like.”
Rùnach nodded, thanked his hosts for their hospitality, then waited until his sister and her husband had closed the door behind them before he looked at Aisling.
“Shall we?” he asked politely.
She smiled faintly. “Your sister is very kind.”
He smiled in return. “I thought you might like her. Let’s see if we can’t take advantage of what hospitality we’ve been offered, then perhaps have a nap. I’m exhausted; what of you?”
“Terrified,” she said frankly.
He gathered up their gear, pulled his hood over his face, then opened the door for her. “We’re safe here, Aisling. The world can turn a bit longer without us, I imagine.”
She looked up at him seriously. “And yet it still turns and time grows short.”
He made the appropriate noises of agreement and ushered her out the door, but adjusted his plans as he did so. He would indulge in a bath and wee nap, but then he was going to take up the hunt again.
For her sake and his.
Because she had taken Lothar of Wychweald’s spells and spun them on a wheel of air, and it just didn’t seem possible to him that an unremarkable girl from nowhere in particular should have that skill.
Twenty
Aisling was beginning to wonder if she would ever manage to keep her mouth closed. She was fairly certain she’d been gaping since they had landed without fanfare a goodly distance from the castle and ridden under its walls that leaned out just the slightest bit, as if the keep itself wanted to make certain anyone brave enough to ride under them understood just how perilous their situation was. That had been just the beginning of the things at Tor Neroche that had left her astonished.
First, there had been that very frank conversation with Rùnach’s sister, Morgan. She had spoken about the most appalling things—magic, mostly—as if they were as normal as the endless training that went on inside the unforgiving walls of Gobhann. She’d still been shaking her head as she’d been separated from Rùnach—a rather alarming turn of events, actually—and led off to a chamber where she’d luxuriated in a bath better suited to the needs of a princess. She’d wondered briefly if commenting on the fact that the water was hot instead of icy cold and clean instead of less-than-pristine had been inappropriate, but the servants had been too discreet to react.
She had been swathed in a luxurious dressing gown and offered a seat in front of a roaring fire after which her hair had been combed for her and allowed to dry as she had been left briefly alone with her thoughts. She had wondered just what it was that Miach did in the castle that had won her such delights, but decided perhaps it was better not to know.
She had then been offered the choice between a gown or a tunic and leggings. She had hesitated, but the lure of the gown’s fabric had just been too strong to resist. She’d put skirts on over leggings, just in case she needed to make a quick getaway. She had been draped in a cloak that was very light yet so deliciously warm she thought she might never want to take it off. A liveried servant had been waiting just outside the door to take her to she knew not where, but she had followed him just the same.
All of which led her to where she was at present, standing outside a heavy wooden door and watching it be opened by someone who at first glance looked like a prince.
She realized with a start that it was just Rùnach. He thanked her escort, then took her hand and drew her inside a chamber that was so large, her mouth resumed its previous posture of hanging open. She turned around in a circle, looking upward toward a ceiling that she couldn’t make out clearly because it was so far above her. The chamber itself was no less magnificent. It wasn’t particularly large, she supposed, but it was extremely fine, full of comfortable places to sit, an enormous hearth at one end, and murals of heroic scenes painted upon the walls.
She started to ask Rùnach why they’d been given such a place of luxury, but she made the mistake of looking at him.
He’d had a bath as well, she could tell, and been dressed in clothing that was very discreet, but very well made. She was, after all, a weaver, and could spot poorly made cloth from fifty paces. She realized he had shut the door behind her and was simply leaning against the wall, watching her.
“What?” she asked uneasily.
He shook his head with a smile. “Nothing. Just watching you and wondering what you’re thinking.”
She gestured weakly to the chamber. “This is…well, it is…” She had to take a deep breath. “I thought Lismòr was spectacular, but this is something else entirely. That is to say, I’ve read about glorious things of this nature, but I never thought to experience them for myself.” She looked up at him. “I feel like I’m in one of those tales, if you know what I mean.”
He winced, closed his eyes briefly, then looked at her. It was terrible, she decided abruptly, that a man should be so perfectly beautiful. She had stopped seeing his scars long ago. All she saw at present was someone who had been kind to her for reasons she couldn’t fathom. He would go off, she was sure, to be fawned over by beautiful women, but for the moment, she was surprisingly glad he was standing there in front of her.
He had, she had to admit, the most amazing pair of green eyes she had ever seen.
Which had absolutely nothing to do with her current quest, of course. She ruthlessly recaptured her good sense and reminded herself of the task before her. She had to find a swordsman willing to go to Bruadair with only the hope of riches and glory as motivation, though now that she was standing there perfectly comfortable and no longer hungry, she had to face the
truth she had known full well before but hadn’t been willing to acknowledge. To get a soldier to Bruadair she would either have to tell him where to go or lead him there herself. And if she told him where to go, she would fall under the curse and die. But if she led him there herself, she would be captured, labeled a renegade, and put back in the power of her parents and the Guild, because her birthday wasn’t until summer, and until the sun set on that birthday, she was not legally emancipated.
Death of her body or death of her soul. It was no wonder she had avoided thinking on it before.
“Aisling.”
She pulled her gaze away from nothing and looked up at Rùnach. “Aye?”
He was still leaning against the wall, but she suspected that was a casual pose designed to put her at ease.
“I think I could help you,” he said carefully, “if you would give me a few more details about your village.”
She shook her head. “You know why I can’t.”
He looked at her gravely. “Death if you don’t find a swordsman, death if you speak of your village, death if you flee the Guild. Is it a land of death, then?”
“I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “I only saw the inside of the Guild and the pub where I went on the sixnight’s end. I don’t think the people were happy, but who is?”
He looked at her in astonishment. “Why, many people are, I daresay.”
“How can they be?” she asked. “Working from dawn to late in the evening, one day a week where there is freedom from endless, unrelenting greyness, but having not enough money to do anything but pay for a meager meal and go back to a terrible bed in an overfilled dormitory to sleep uneasily until rising and doing it all over again the next week?”
He looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “Was that how it was?”
She reached for the door. “I think I need to walk.”
He caught her before she opened the door, then turned her to face him. He put his hands gently on her shoulders. “Please let me help you.”
“I cannot,” she said. She looked up at him and realized that her eyes were burning, she who had never wept, not even as a child. “I don’t want to die.”
He drew her gently into his arms. She began to have trouble breathing, but perhaps that came from gasping for air. And she supposed that came from realizing that for the first time in her very long, weary existence, she was being presented with the opportunity to feel safe courtesy of a man who was offering that safety simply because he was kind.
She let out her breath slowly and allowed herself to indulge in something besides an intense urge to flee. She considered for a moment or two, then slowly put her arms around his waist. It shouldn’t have been difficult. She had, after all, ridden on a pegasus for the better part of four days with Rùnach’s arms around her, though she supposed that was just his making sure she didn’t fall off.
Yet another courtesy offered where he hadn’t needed to.
“Thank you,” she said finally. She pulled away from him and attempted a smile. “Very kind.”
He smiled gravely, as if he were thinking things he simply couldn’t put into words, then reached out to tuck her shorn hair behind her ear. He met her gaze. “Does it bother you if I do that?”
She shook her head.
“Was it long?”
“Once,” she said with a shrug. “Not any longer.”
“It is still beautiful,” he said quietly. He took a deep breath, then clasped his hands behind his back. “You don’t have to go back there, you know. To wherever there is.”
She clutched that dreadful hope for the space of approximately four glorious heartbeats before she realized she had to let it go. “I think I must.”
He shook his head, then took her hand and pulled her over to sit down in one of the chairs placed by the doorway. He sat down next to her and looked at her seriously.
“I think you could safely ink the reality of curses in the back of that very rare book of myths Lord Nicholas gave you,” he said seriously. “And I would put that in the back simply because it’s far less possible than anything else you would read there.”
“But why would anyone lie about such a thing?” she asked in surprise.
“I don’t know,” he said frankly. “Why would someone lie about such a thing?”
She looked off at the fire across the room, glanced at the scenes of heroic battle painted with great care and no doubt at great expense on the walls, then looked back at Rùnach.
“Because they want to keep their people powerless,” she said slowly, “or because they have something they want to keep hidden.”
“Exactly.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. It was suddenly rather chilly. “I don’t understand why anyone would do either.”
“Neither do I,” he agreed, “but that doesn’t change the truth of it. There are many who have no greater wish than to cause harm to those around them, by whatever means.”
“Like Lothar?” she asked reluctantly.
“He is a good example of it,” Rùnach said. “And as for your situation, unless there is a spell laid upon your land that would have the power to follow you all over the Nine Kingdoms—” He looked at her, then shook his head again. “I don’t believe in curses.”
“And if it were a spell instead?”
“Then I think you would see it. Don’t you?”
She started to speak, then shook her head. She had spent too many years believing fully that she would pay a very dear and exact penalty if she spoke out of turn. She wanted to believe Rùnach was right, but she couldn’t bring herself to. After all, what did Bruadair have that anyone would want? There was no magic, no beauty, nothing but endless drudgery. She half wondered, when she allowed herself to wonder, if Sglaimir enjoyed any of his luxuries in that ugly, unrelentingly grey keep she had only ever seen the faintest glimpse of one day when she had been feeling particularly feisty and wandered a few streets from where she should have been.
She looked at him. “I cannot risk it.”
He smiled, as if he understood, then looked at her silently for a bit, as if he were trying to come to a decision. “What if you were to prove it to yourself? Which is, I believe, what you’ve been trying to do in various libraries.”
“There is that.”
“Then let’s make a bargain, you and I. We’ll start from opposite ends of the library below. Whoever reaches the middle first with all the answers wins a prize.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “And what would that be?”
“Your life,” he said succinctly, “and my sanity.” He stood and held down his hand. “Shall we?”
She put her hand in his and looked up at him. “You are a very kind man.”
“And as I’ve said before,” he said, pulling her to her feet, “you are easy to be kind to. Let’s be off, gel, and see what the bowels of Tor Neroche have to offer.”
“Will they allow us in?”
“We’ll put on our best scholarly miens,” he said cheerfully. “That worked out well the last time, didn’t it?”
She had to agree that it had. She took his arm, because he offered it, and walked with him out into the passageway.
And she hoped she would find what she needed.
Three hours later, she was tired, cross, and overwhelmed. She had stumbled to a halt initially just inside the library doors—they were a pair of doors that opened grandly, instead of a single one that opened normally—and spent a good five minutes simply trying to catch her breath. Bowels had been, she suspected, a deliberate misuse of the word, because whilst she and Rùnach had definitely descended steps to reach the library, they had not ended up in a dark, unpleasant little room. She had no idea how the king of Neroche—who she understood was in residence and sincerely hoped she wouldn’t encounter and have to make polite conversation with—had managed to make his library so gloriously full of light, but it was so. If the story of Queen Mehar was fact and not fiction, then the rulers of Neroche
possessed magic. Given the marvels of the monarchy’s library, she had to concede that their magic might have certainly been on display in the bowels of the keep.
Unfortunately, her search had yielded absolutely nothing. The only mention she had found of Bruadair had been one made a score of years earlier when King Frèam had sat on the Council of Kings and contributed not a single word to the proceedings. Every single history she had read had contained nothing about Bruadair, not even the slightest mention. For all anyone knew, the country didn’t exist. If she hadn’t spent the first twenty-seven years of her life there, she might have begun to doubt as well.
Rùnach was sound asleep in a chair on the opposite end of the table from her. She rose, walked down to his end, then sat and looked at him.
She had no idea how old he was. He didn’t look much over a score-and-five, though she suspected he was older than that. His dark hair was the perfect foil for his fair skin. She was admittedly rather new at admiring exceptionally handsome men, but she supposed it didn’t take much practice to note the pleasing breadth of his shoulders or, well, anything else, for that matter. She put her elbows on the table, propped her chin on her fists, and looked until she thought she could consider herself quite properly dazzled.
And then she noticed a dimple appear suddenly in his cheek.
She kicked him under the table, because he deserved it, the lout. He opened his eyes and smiled.
“Flattering.”
“I was bored.”
He laughed softly and sat up, dragging his hands through his hair. “You are a cruel gel, Aisling. Let’s take ourselves out to the lists and you can vent your ire on a target instead of me. My heart is too tender to endure it.”
She would have said she doubted that, but she didn’t, actually.
He stacked his books in a tidy pile, then looked at her. “Find anything useful?”