Dreamspinner (44 page)

She supposed there was no point in trying to quantify them, for they were too innumerable for that. It was as if his hands had been caught under a hopelessly unforgiving weight and he’d had to pull them free by sheer determination alone. She lifted her head and looked at him, realizing only then that he was watching her. She smiled gravely.

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head but said nothing.

“It must have been painful.”

“It was.”

“Hmmm,” was all she could find to say. She smiled as best she could, then put her head back on his shoulder. She forced herself to pick up the thread of Miach’s current tale, but she couldn’t concentrate on it.

She wondered what had happened to Rùnach’s hands.

I
t was almost midnight when she found herself swathed in her usual, ridiculously luxurious dressing gown, and sitting in front of the fire in the chamber she’d been given. Rùnach had asked her that first day if she preferred to have a chamber of her own, but she’d found the thought rather unsettling. It was a little surprising how quickly she’d become accustomed to having him within sight, as he was at present, sitting across from her and working on fletching an arrow. She knew he was making more for her, which she found somehow quite overwhelming.

“Rùnach?”

He looked up and smiled. “Aye?”

“Thank you,” she said, gesturing inelegantly at what he was doing. “That is very kind.”

He smiled ruefully. “My brother would be appalled by my efforts,
being as he is the far superior fletcher, but I’ll do what I can. I suppose you can blame me if your arrows go astray.”

She smiled, because he made it easy to smile, then considered the truth that had been nagging at her for most of the evening.

“Rùnach?”

He looked up again from his work. “Aye?”

“Miach didn’t tell us any tales about black mages.”

“He didn’t,” Rùnach agreed.

“Do you know any?”

“The better question would be, do I want to tell you any?”

She smiled. “Aye, that would be a better question.”

He continued to work for some time in silence. He finally looked up, considered her, then sighed. “You’re not going to let me out of this, are you?”

“I’m curious.”

He smiled, as if the word had a particular meaning for him beyond the norm. He looked at the arrow in his hands, then set it and his knife aside. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, then looked at her.

“Which black mage did you want to know about?”

“Are there many?” she asked in surprise, then she scowled at his pained smile. “You realize, of course, that ’tis only the past pair of days that I’ve begun to believe they might exist. I haven’t had time to make a list of their names.”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s a list I would care to make for you.”

“The worst offenders, then.”

“In truth, Aisling?” he asked, wincing. “There are so many other things we could discuss that would be a far better use of this lovely fire and our full stomachs.”

She looked at him steadily. “I think I need to know.”

He rubbed his hands over his face briefly, then sighed and looked at her. “Very well. There is Lothar of Wychweald, whom you already know,” he said wearily. “Droch of Saothair—”

“His father was Dorchadas, wasn’t he?” she asked.

Rùnach looked slightly startled. “Aye, he was. How did you know?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I’ve heard his name mentioned somewhere. But that isn’t important.” She waved him on. “I’m sure there are more.”

“Wehr of Wrekin,” Rùnach said, sounding as if he would rather have been talking about anything else. “Gair of Ceangail, of course.”

She shivered. “I
have
heard of him.”

“Have you?” he asked in surprise. “Where?”

She caught herself just in time before she revealed that Mistress Muinear had on an occasion or two been prevailed upon to terrify and unnerve a few select inmates with darker tales of myth and legend. Gair had been a particular favorite, though she had to admit she hadn’t thought about him in years.

“I wasn’t able to read many books about legends and myths and that sort of thing, but there was one that, ah, spoke of…” She looked at Rùnach and simply shut her mouth. She couldn’t lie with any enthusiasm, so perhaps there was no point in lying at all.

He smiled. “Keep your secrets, if you like. I’m sure I’ll pry them from you eventually.”

And she was just as certain he wouldn’t, but perhaps they would leave that for later.

“About whom shall you hear about from my very meager supply of lore?”

“Gair.”

He sighed, as if he hadn’t expected anything else. She knew Gair’s tale, of course, and had always thought it the unabashed work of fiction it had to be, but after seeing what she’d seen come out of Lothar of Wychweald’s mouth in the valley just outside the keep, she had begun to seriously doubt her thoughts.

Rùnach recounted the bare minimum of details, as if he were reading from a text he didn’t particularly care to commit to memory. She heard many of the same things she’d heard before, that Gair had lived a thousand years before he’d wed himself the daughter of the king of the elves, had several children with her, then—

She stopped Rùnach. “Wait, that isn’t how I heard it told. I was told that he wanted to take over the world and found a source to do so in a glade.”

Rùnach looked at her seriously. “And what else did you hear?”

“That it was a well of power,” she said, “which is, of course, ridiculous, but there you have it. Power does not exist in wells made for water, nor does it run through streams, or underground, or, well, anywhere.” She paused. “Does it?”

He lifted one shoulder in a hesitant shrug. “Who is to say?”

She certainly wasn’t the one to ask. She waved him on. “What happened then?”

“As the tale goes,” he said slowly, “he opened a well of evil, found it too much for him to control, then lost his own life along with all his family members in an instant.”

“Well,” she said, “at least that’s the end of him.”

He nodded but said nothing.

She was vaguely dissatisfied with that, but she was weary, so she decided that her unease and discomfort was merely due to needing sleep. She looked at Rùnach and tried to smile.

“I think I must retire.”

“Here by the fire, perhaps?”

“Aye. I can see to a pallet—”

“Of course you won’t,” he said promptly. He smiled at her. “You, Mistress Aisling, are far too independent for my chivalry. Go fuss with your hair or whatever it is you gels do to prepare for long hours of beauty slumber and I will see to your luxurious couch.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“It is, as always, my pleasure.”

She moved out of his way and went across the chamber on the pretense of making ready for bed. In truth, all she could do was think about that poor family of Gair’s who had been slain. She wondered about Gair’s wife, Sarait, and why she had left the splendor—admittedly simply rumored, not verified—of elven halls to link her life with a man who loved evil and not good.

She supposed Sglaimir was of that ilk, though she had never met him and couldn’t verify if his reputedly unpleasant qualities were due to magecraft or not.

She watched Rùnach thoughtfully for a moment or two, then remembered something he’d said once about his family having been slain by his father. Perhaps he understood, then, the horrors that might be perpetrated by a father with too much power and lack of pity. At least his father hadn’t had magic—

But Rùnach’s sister Morgan did.

Aisling realized she hadn’t slept enough. Picking through the threads of conversation and memories and words that swirled around her was difficult. Perhaps she had heard Morgan awrong. She couldn’t say she knew anything about magic, indeed she hardly believed in its existence, but it was odd that it should skip Rùnach to find home in Morgan.

Then again, what did she know? She was a simple weaver from a country no one could possibly care about, charged with a quest that was far beyond her ability to accomplish, enjoying for a very brief time the chivalry of a man who would no doubt very soon take up his own business. He hadn’t, after all, promised to do anything past getting her to Tor Neroche. What he would do now was anyone’s guess.

She didn’t have the luxury of wondering about her future. It had been a very lovely pair of days and she was very grateful for the refuge, but the sword of doom still hung over her head. She was even more convinced of that now that she’d had an evening full of fantastical things that her companions apparently believed were completely true.

Five days. She had five more days before the three fortnights had slipped into memory.

She would be about her quest first thing in the morning.

R
ùnach made his way along passageways, up and down stairs, until he reached the great hall. The hour was appallingly early, but he hadn’t been able to sleep. It wasn’t that his dreams had been troubled, for he never dreamed. It was just that there were threads that had been woven into his life that had suddenly begun to form a pattern.

A pattern he didn’t care for.

He supposed he wouldn’t have given any of those threads any particular thought except to dismiss them as quickly as possible if it hadn’t been for all the tales Miach had told them the night before.

He would give his brother-in-law credit for knowing some of the most obscure and pointless stories full of romance and ridiculous heroics. And those hadn’t even been the stories about Heroes from Neroche, which Rùnach was fully convinced had been so shamelessly embellished over the years that they bore absolutely no resemblance to the actual events.

But there had been one tale, one simple, random tale of a lad from Diarmailt who had once upon a very long time ago had an adventure he hadn’t cared at all for simply because he’d been a scholar who had mistakenly handed a greedy mage something he hadn’t meant to and hadn’t had the means to get it back. The mage had been Dorchadas of Saothair, father of the resident evil at Buidseachd. The scholar had been some lad Rùnach had never heard of, which had likely been for the lad’s own good, for he would have gone down in history as one of the biggest fools ever born.

Rùnach was quite sure Miach hadn’t told the tale to poke at him, but rather to prove to Aisling that there was indeed evil in the world and mages willing to use that evil to their own ends. But it had left him thinking on things he would rather not have thought on.

He stopped in front of the doors to the great hall. He was faintly surprised to find the guards not only opening the door for him but bowing as they did so. He realized then that he had once again forgotten to shield his face. He suppressed a sigh, nodded politely to them both, then walked into the hall.

He found the king of Neroche sitting on the edge of the high table, swinging his legs back and forth as if he’d been a lad of approximately eight summers. He was talking to his now-eldest brother, Prince Cathar, who was the only one of the pair to have any respect for the trappings of his office for he at least had his feet on the floor.

Cathar turned immediately to see to whom the footfalls belonged. Rùnach wasn’t surprised to see that his right hand was twitching. Miach was fortunate to have such a brother standing at his side, ready to defend him. Cathar clasped his hands behind his back and inclined his head politely.

“Prince Rùnach.”

“Prince Cathar.”

Miach laughed a little. “And now we have the formalities over with, let’s move on to other things. Why are you up so early?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Rùnach said. “You?”

Miach shook his head. “Too much on my mind.”

“Anything besides romantic fluff?” Rùnach asked politely.

Miach considered. “A pair of things, actually,” he said slowly. “The first isn’t anything you don’t already know.” He picked up a sheaf of paper from off the table. “Here, read this.”

Rùnach accepted the missive from his brother-in-law, read it as he’d been bid, then sighed. “Well, it was lovely of Weger to let you know Lothar had declined further hospitality at Gobhann. A pity he couldn’t have let us know a bit sooner, or how the deed was accomplished. There is such nuance to
escaped
.”

“Sending Lothar to Gobhann probably wasn’t a very good idea in the first place,” Miach said, “though at the time it seemed the easiest solution. That, and I couldn’t help but think it would bring Weger a bit of pleasure to be able to give his grandsire back a bit of his own. But now the burden lies again with me to see to him, which is as it should have been from the start.”

Rùnach couldn’t disagree, but he didn’t suppose Miach needed to hear that. He waited, but Miach wasn’t moving. “Well?” he prompted finally, when it looked as if Miach wasn’t going to do anything but continue to sit there, swinging his legs back and forth. “You said there were two things. What’s the other?”

Miach looked at him, his pale eyes full of something another might have called concern. “A puzzle,” he said. “I’m not sure I know what to make of it.”