A Tapestry of Spells (41 page)

She completed a circuit of the entire chamber, then decided that if she’d found a corner of Gair’s book tucked inside something else, there was no reason not to think other bits of his book might be likewise hidden. She rubbed her arm gingerly and looked at the ruined floor as she walked across the chamber—

And into someone.

She looked up with an apology on her lips, thinking it was Ruith, only to find that it wasn’t.

She backed away only to be hauled behind Ruith. He affected a casual pose, but she knew him well enough to know he was anything but that. His arms were folded over his chest, likely to put them closer to his knives if necessary.

“Well,” the other man said with a disbelieving half laugh, “I just killed a man downstairs for telling me who he thought he’d seen.”

“A waste of your effort, then,” Ruith said seriously, “for he was surely mistaken.”

Sarah leaned up on her toes slightly so she could see the other man’s face. He was dark-haired and tall, handsome enough if she hadn’t seen Ruith first, but he was full of the darkness that hung in the passageways downstairs.

“Oh, I don’t think he was,” the other said softly. “But I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.”

“Your eyes are deceiving you as well,” Ruith said, just as quietly. “Let us be on our way, and we’ll trouble you no longer.”

“Are you daft?” the other asked with a laugh. “We thought you were dead. Now that I have you here in the flesh, do you think I’m stupid enough to let you go?”

“I don’t know,” Ruith returned sharply. “How stupid are you?”

The other’s face was suddenly quite red. “I imagine you’ll find out soon enough.”

“Friend,” Ruith said tightly, “I’ve no quarrel with you—”

“Friend?” the other man echoed with a snort. “That seems rather too cold a greeting for—”

Ruith lashed out suddenly, catching the other man under the chin and sending his head snapping back. He fell to the ground with a crash. Ruith turned on her.

“Pages?” he demanded.

“I—I don’t know,” she stammered.

“Well, look! I can’t keep him unconscious forever.”

Sarah turned and looked because she was too startled not to. She would have been a little tidier about it, but Ruith was cursing behind her, growing more agitated with every moment that passed. He had to favor his ... friend ... twice more with his tender ministrations to keep him senseless, but by then she had long since ceased to be careful about what she was doing. She pulled books off shelves without care, flipping through whatever she dared and shaking the others vigorously to dislodge whatever might have been lurking within the covers.

“Make haste!” Ruith said, his voice very strained.

“I am making haste,” she snapped. She started on the last bookcase only to realize that the thumps of books against the stone weren’t the only thing she could hear. Before she could point out to Ruith that those were booted feet coming up the stairs, he had taken her hand and jerked her along with him over to another doorway.

“We can’t be caught in here,” he threw over his shoulder. “Pull the door shut behind you.”

She did, though she didn’t imagine it would do any good, for again, there was no way to lock it. She stumbled along behind Ruith as he raced with uncanny surety down a passageway that was completely dark. He tried to open the door at what was apparently the end of it, but it wouldn’t give way. He pushed her back a bit, then kicked it in. She crawled through the splintered wood after him and out into a great hall.

A hall full of souls waiting for them, apparently.

Ruith stopped so suddenly that she ran full into his back. It should have at least moved him, but it was as if he’d suddenly been turned to stone. She remained on her feet only because she had a decent sense of balance. Ruith was of absolutely no help.

Then again, perhaps he had other things to worry about.

She knew suddenly what a plump rabbit must feel like to find itself caught in an open field by a pack of determined, ravenous wolves. She turned and put her back against Ruith’s, but then wished she hadn’t. The men she now faced were armed with very sharp swords and vile humors. They looked to be a rather roughed-up bunch, as if that battle they’d recently been in hadn’t gone particularly well for them.

She also realized, as she looked about herself a bit more, that those bruised and rumpled lads weren’t where the true danger lay. There were other men in the great hall, men who moved suddenly to enclose her and Ruith in a large circle. A spell immediately sprang up between each of them, razor sharp and dripping with an unpleasant sort of magic that made her want to close her eyes so she didn’t have to look at it any longer. But if she looked away, she might miss something and Ruith would pay the price.

She would have given much for the chance to simply sit and try to come to terms with what she was seeing, but she knew she wouldn’t have that luxury. They were going to be fortunate to escape the hall, much less the keep. For reasons she couldn’t understand, the men surrounding her and Ruith were profoundly angry. It was almost as if they had a reason that went far beyond normal annoyance at having one of their doors splintered.

She wondered about the man in the library who had quite obviously known Ruith somehow, but how was that possible? She would have attempted a whispered question to Ruith about that, but before she could decide how best to go about it, she found herself spun around roughly. She started to protest, then she realized who had done the spinning.

It was Ruith.

Not only had he taken her by the arms in a grip that was very painful, he was glaring at her.

“I told you not to follow me here! Can you not obey a simple instruction?”

Sarah blinked in surprise. “What?”

“Shut up,” he snarled.

She felt her mouth slide open, but before she had the chance to demand to know if he’d lost his wits completely, he had turned her away from him and shoved her so hard that she went sprawling and slid across the floor.

Under the spell that connected the six men standing in a circle, as it happened.

“Get out of my sight,” he ground out. “You disgust me.”

She rose to her hands and knees in muck and other things she couldn’t bring herself to identify, then turned and looked at Ruith in shock. He wasn’t watching her, though. He was looking at a man who had melted through the circle and come to stand alongside him.

“Who is she?” the second man asked, folding his arms over his chest and tilting his head to one side. “A slave girl? Your
leman
?”

“Witch’s get,” Ruith said with a sneer. “The worst sort, of course.”

“Too true, of course,” the other man said. He turned to study Ruith. “I must admit I’m surprised to see you here. Actually, I’m quite surprised to see you alive. I was under the impression you were slain during that awful business at the well.”

Sarah heard the words, but it took a moment for them to sink in. That
business at the well
?

She felt a chill slide down her spine.

“So what has brought you back to our father’s keep,” the man continued, watching Ruith with a calculating glance, “or shall I assume by the manner of your entrance that you don’t want me to know?”

Sarah watched his mouth continue to move, saw that Ruith was also speaking, but she couldn’t hear either of their words.

Their
father’s
keep?

Before she could give any of it the thought it deserved, she was interrupted by the sound of very loud and vile curses. The man Ruith had felled in the library came stumbling out of the passageway into the hall, blood dripping down his chin to stain his shirt. He strode through the barbed spell and threw himself at Ruith.

Or at least he attempted to.

Sarah gaped at the spell she could see suddenly glittering in the air around him, binding him in mid-lunge, holding him immobile at a very awkward angle. She wanted to look away, for she had seen enough, but she could not. This was not village wizardry she was witnessing, or the occasional show put on by some traveling mage to delight and astonish, this was hard, unyielding, terribly powerful magic that reeked of evil.

She could hardly breathe.

“Let me go,” snarled the man with the bloodied nose.

“I think not, Táir,” the man standing next to Ruith said. “I have a question or two for our beloved brother before I take all his magic and kill him.”

Sarah felt the floor begin to rock beneath her hands. It troubled her for a moment or two until she realized it wasn’t the floor trembling, it was her. She backed away carefully until she felt the wall against her feet, then sat back on her heels against it. The stone wasn’t as hard as it should have been—no doubt because of the magic that dripped down it like a noisome drape—but it was preferable to being out in the open where the chamber was so unsteady.

Magic?

Ruith?

“I don’t care what magic he bloody has, Doílain,” the man named Táir ground out. “I have bruises to repay him for.”

Doílain lifted his finger and Táir ceased speaking. His mouth was open and his eyes still blazed with hate, but he was, perhaps thankfully, now quite mute. Doílain walked over and pushed Táir back until he became a part of that circular spell.

“Stay there and don’t move,” Doílain suggested.

Sarah didn’t imagine she would want to be anywhere near Táir when he finally managed to get free of what bound him.

Doílain glanced at her as he did so, frowned thoughtfully, then turned to study her.

“You know, Ruithneadh, that’s a remarkably pretty wench there, though I suppose I should have expected nothing less from you. Even as a boy, you were a connoisseur of the finer things. But witch’s get?”

“A dalliance,” Ruith said dismisisvely.

“Of course,” Doílain said. “The youngest son of Gair of Ceangail could likely have a princess of any house in any of the Nine Kingdoms, couldn’t he? So, if you don’t want her any longer, perhaps I—”

“Don’t bother,” Ruith said shortly. “She talks too much and she has no magic. I imagine you’d want to kill her within half an hour and then where would you be? Look rather in loftier spheres.”

Sarah flinched as surely as if he’d slapped her, then she realized exactly what he’d said.

She had no magic? How in the
bell
did he know that?

She shook her head, but that didn’t improve matters. She looked at Ruith, but didn’t see the man she had eaten with in a barn three days ago, a man who had brushed her hair far beyond the point when she’d assumed he’d tired of it. Instead, there stood a man who looked at her with a hauteur that left her cheeks flaming.

“I have come home and won’t need your services any longer,” he said. “Get you gone before I’m forced to send you away. I promise you won’t like what opens the door to you here.”

“Aye, off you go, little rabbit,” Doílain said, shooing her off with an indulgent smile.

Sarah realized she was having help with that. Guardsmen took her by both arms and hauled her to her feet. She tripped over bodies that weren’t moving—dead perhaps—as she was propelled from the great hall. She looked back only once, but Ruith wasn’t looking at her. He was deep in conversation with a man he obviously knew quite well. She realized then that he hadn’t needed her help, indeed he had likely never needed her aid. For all she knew, the entire exercise from Doìre to Ceangail had been nothing but a bit of amusing sport for him.

Sport at her expense.

She was dragged across the passageway, then found herself flying out the front door. She landed on gravel that cut her hands and cheeks. She lay there for a moment or two, stunned, and listened to the front doors slamming behind her. She didn’t look to see if anyone was on the outside of those doors. She simply heaved herself to her feet and ran, realizing as she did so that she was weeping.

Gair of Ceangail’s youngest son?

It should have been impossible, but she could now see how it was all too possible. Hadn’t he known things he shouldn’t have? Hadn’t he been angry with Connail’s tales of Gair’s evil? Hadn’t he been uncommonly interested in the pages from Gair’s book that apparently only she could see? Hadn’t he been more than willing to accompany her so he could find her brother, who was also quite interested in what Gair had done?

And, the most damning of all, hadn’t he known his way around his father’s keep, as if he might have lived there at one point?

She tripped and fell to her knees, then staggered back to her feet and stumbled again down the road, feeling the terror she’d been feeling for most of the morning turn suddenly to a clear, clean fury. She might have lost all sense the moment she’d seen Ruithneadh of Ceangail’s unnaturally handsome face, but now she was fully recovered.

And furious.

Damn him to hell a thousand times, the liar. He could have, at any point during the past several se’nnights, saved her time and trouble by pulling forth his mighty magic, dusting it off, and using it on her behalf. Instead, he had forced her to spend what little coin she had left on a merry chase that had left her, in the end, without her brother, without her horse-turned-dog, without her purse, and definitely without her pride.

All because of his perverse reasoning, which she was thoroughly convinced would be only understood by another bloody mage.

She had to slow down thanks to a stitch in her side, but that didn’t keep her from stomping down the road with as much vigor as she could muster.

Unfortunately, that lasted only a quarter mile before the fine, righteous anger she was feeding began to lose some of its fierceness along the edges. She wasn’t afraid of entertaining unpleasant thoughts, though, so she looked at them—albeit with a jaundiced eye.

It was true that he hadn’t wanted her to come to Ceangail—likely because he feared she would discover his identity. He also hadn’t wanted her to go to that terrible forest with its profoundly evil well, but that was likely so she didn’t eat his supplies. There was the difficulty of realizing that the one place he had
wanted
her to come was Lake Cladach, but she rushed quickly by that thought before she became entangled in memories that were too beautiful to think on without weeping.