Fifteen
Ruith closed his eyes and simply enjoyed the feel of the wind in his face. It had been years since he’d last flown, and he’d never thought he would miss it. He’d been wrong. It was glorious, that soaring above the earth, made all the more glorious by the lack of it over the years. He didn’t imagine Sarah was enjoying it, so he tightened his arms around her. He supposed the fact that he didn’t have an elbow in his ribs for the familiarity told him all he needed to know about her opinion of their mode of transportation.
He also supposed he would be wise to enjoy the brief moments of pleasure he might have in doing something besides encountering what he was quite sure he would find along their quest. He didn’t want to say as much to Sarah, but he feared those moments would be few. Soilléir had given him nothing but abstruse hints about nothing in particular. Rùnach had been more specific about his aid, having given him earlier that morning a list of black mages to consider. He had a fair idea of who was still roaming through the world, but he would be the first to admit he hadn’t kept up with it as he should have.
He jumped a little at the feeling of Sarah’s elbow in his ribs. He bent his head over her shoulder.
“What is it?” he said, loudly to be heard against the wind.
“There’s something down there.”
He could see nothing at all, but that didn’t mean anything. He steered Tarbh where Sarah pointed, then smiled, pained, at her acerbic curses. Unfortunately, he suspected events were going to worsen before they improved. He put his mouth to her ear.
“See the lad there?”
“Chasing the other?” she managed. “Aye, ’tis Daniel. I don’t know who the other one is.”
“Can you see him?” Ruith asked in surprise. “Or can you, ah, see him?”
“I can’t tell the difference any longer,” she said with a shiver. “I’m going to have words with Soilléir after this is all over. I want him to put back whatever he took off my eyes.”
Ruith didn’t want to tell her that he suspected it was far too late for that. He simply cast a spell of un-noticing over them, asked Tarbh to consider a rather quiet landing, then waited until Tarbh had put talons to earth before he carefully swung down off his back.
He looked at Sarah, intending to tell her to stay where she was, only to find her clambering inelegantly off the saddle.
“I needed to stretch my legs,” she said hastily.
He might have believed that if she hadn’t stumbled and fallen into his arms. It was a fortuitous turn of events, but one he didn’t dare take advantage of. He waited until she was steady on her feet before he pulled away.
“I won’t be long.”
“You’re not going anywhere without me,” she said breathlessly, taking hold of his arm. She looked over her shoulder. “What is that fool doing?”
Ruith looked over her head. “Continuing his chase, I daresay. I wonder if gold is involved.”
“My gold,” she grumbled, “though I imagine he’s after spells.” She looked up at him. “I forgot to tell you, but that morning I found myself in Droch’s ... ah ...”
“Garden,” he supplied. “If you can call it that.”
She nodded, once. “Aye, there. I had actually been following a pair of men who were talking about the buying and selling of spells. To Droch, as it happened.” She paused. “I thought I should follow them.”
“Brave.”
“Stupid,” she conceded, “but what else was I to do? I’m sure one of them was Droch’s servant that we saw at the front gates that first morning. The other—” She shrugged. “I don’t think I’d recognize his voice if I heard it again, but he said he was working for a mage from Shettlestoune. I’m assuming that had to be Daniel.”
Ruith frowned. “Why would Daniel want to make a bargain with Droch?”
“For a ring of mastery, I imagine. His messenger said he’d torn the spell he was attempting to sell to shreds, even though he’d been instructed merely to tear off a small piece and bring it along as proof of having the entire thing.”
Ruith watched the spectacle in front of him. He perhaps wouldn’t have been able to see the unknown man throw a fistful of shredded parchment up in the air if it hadn’t been for Daniel’s rather useful werelight. At least the fool could do that much.
He didn’t think, however, that Daniel was capable of slicing through any Olcian spell of protection, which left him still with questions he didn’t care for, namely who had made the rent in that particular spell and how Daniel had come by another spell of Gair’s. He considered that for a bit longer, then looked at Sarah.
“Your brother doesn’t look happy.”
“Nay, he doesn’t.”
“I could make him substantially less happy.”
She watched her brother for a moment or two, then looked up at him. “Well, if you’re interested in fighting my battles for me.”
“Endlessly,” he said. “With magic, or without, however they come.”
She closed her eyes briefly, then looked as if she might have considered a brief embrace. She seemed to stifle that readily enough, then settled for taking his hand and shaking it firmly. He somehow wasn’t terribly surprised.
“I don’t know what it cost you,” she said seriously, “that first step into ... well, into this whole business of magic and spells. It couldn’t have been easy.”
It had been made much easier by knowing just exactly what he was protecting with that magic, which was the woman standing in front of him, holding his hand in hers in most comradely fashion, but he didn’t suppose the time was right for telling her as much.
“You wouldn’t kill him, would you?” she asked.
“I would certainly end his life to save yours,” Ruith said, “but for now, perhaps I’ll limit myself to helping him along to his just desserts.” He took her hand and pulled her behind him. “I’ll go first. He won’t see us until we’re ready for—”
He stopped in mid-sentence because in spite of all the times he’d seen his father leave mages as nothing but lifeless husks, he’d never seen his sire kill someone in white-hot anger. Daniel of Doìre apparently didn’t have any reticence about the like, for he shouted at his messenger, then suddenly thrust a sword through the man’s chest.
“I think, Sarah my love,” Ruith said seriously, “that I may be taking those words back sooner rather than later.”
“He’s not a nice man,” she agreed.
Ruith suspected that was a bit of an understatement, but he wasn’t sure he dared find out the truth of it lest the tidings lead him to act more rashly than he would have otherwise. He stopped a score of paces away from Daniel, removed the spell of un-noticing, and conjured up his own ball of werelight bright enough to have woken a drunkard out of a stupor.
Daniel didn’t notice.
Ruith would have said something to help him with that, but before he could, Sarah took matters into her own hands. The fact that she trusted him to keep her safe was quite possibly one of the more humbling moments of his life, even coming, as it did, whilst dealing with her ridiculous brother.
“Daniel.”
Her brother stopped frantically searching the ground for the pieces of whatever spell lay there, then leapt up and spun around, an expression of astonishment on his face. Scraps of parchment fluttered to the ground.
His astonishment only lasted a split second before what Ruith had come to recognize as his usual smirk appeared and a spell came tripping out of his mouth. Ruith didn’t even stop to consider what to use. He simply dissolved the spell without fanfare and waited for the reaction he fully expected. Daniel gaped first at Sarah, apparently reminded himself she had no magic, then scowled at Ruith.
“How did you do that?”
“’Tis a secret,” Ruith said solemnly, “known only to mages with a decent amount of power.”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
“Ruithneadh,” Ruith said casually, “the youngest son of Gair of Ceangail.”
Daniel blinked in surprise, seemed to consider whether or not he should run, then threw a spell of death at Sarah. Ruith caught it easily, crushed it, then did far less to Sarah’s brother than he deserved. He wrapped him securely in a spell of fettering and left one end of it waving tantalizingly near the man’s face.
Sarah looked up at him and smiled.
He smiled in return, feeling a little winded. “I forget that you can see so much.”
“I never forget,” she said, her smile faltering. She nodded at her brother. “What will become of him?”
“Nothing will eat him, if that’s what you’re worried about. If he has two wits to rub together, he’ll figure out how to unravel the spell. I think, given what I have seen of his wits, that it may take him a bit of time. He might die of hunger first.” He provided Daniel with an endlessly filling waterskin he could reach if he tried, then looked at Sarah. “We should gather up the pieces of my father’s spell, I imagine, and be on our way.”
“I will,” she said without hesitation. “Perhaps you can use the time to lecture that fool there on the evils of slaying messengers.”
Ruith supposed he could do no less. He fashioned a shield of Fadaire, then covered it with a spell of un-noticing, poached from the solar in Léige. He would have offered to help Sarah, but he hadn’t been indulging in false modesty. He couldn’t see a damned thing but the moon darting behind clouds and his werelight that followed Sarah as if it had been designed specifically to cast its light lovingly around her—and that wasn’t because of anything he’d done.
Though he heartily agreed with the sentiment.
He stood next to Daniel and watched with him as Sarah gathered up the pieces of spell. He looked at her brother and had to shake his head. How the two of them could possibly have been related ... well, it defied even his well-developed powers of imagination. But since he had the lad within earshot, there was no point in not asking him a pointed question or two.
“Where did you find that spell?” he asked politely.
“I’ll never tell you,” Daniel spat.
Ruith lifted a finger and the spell of fettering tightened. Daniel only cursed him. Ruith was happy to torment him by degrees, though it only took another handful of moments before Sarah’s brother was gasping out things he no doubt didn’t want to.
“Found it on the ground,” he squeaked. “Had to replace what was taken from me, didn’t I?”
Ruith supposed there was no point in telling Daniel he’d been the one to make off with the other spells. He was still left with the unpleasant question of who had taken the spells from his boot, but he supposed he could safely exclude Daniel from any list of possible suspects.
He tried to consider that list, but Daniel’s cursing became distracting enough that he was forced to slap a spell of silence over his mouth. He loosened the lad’s bonds because he wasn’t completely heartless, but he certainly had no intention of setting him free. He indulged in a few minutes of instruction on the proper way for Daniel to comport himself in the future, then smiled at Sarah when she came walking toward him.
“Ready, love?”
Sarah nodded as she shoved the fragments of parchment into a pocket of her cloak, then studied Daniel for a moment or two before she spoke.
“You were a bad brother,” she said.
Daniel gurgled in response.
“I should have liked someone to watch over me now and again, which you never did.” She looked at Ruith. “I don’t suppose I could borrow Rùnach.”
“Absolutely,” he said without hesitation. “He would be an ideal older brother for you—and nothing but, if you want my suggestion.” He leaned closer to Daniel. “Come within twenty paces of that woman there and you’ll wish you hadn’t. If you’re tempted to disregard my advice, remember who my father was and think on all the things I likely learned at his knee.”
Daniel looked at him in horror for a moment, then his eyes rolled back in his head. His head lolled to the side, and he began to drool.
“That doesn’t look very comfortable,” Sarah remarked.
“It isn’t meant to be very comfortable.”
“I think your chivalry is showing.”
“That, or my depravity,” Ruith agreed, taking her by the elbow and turning her back to their mount. “I can scarce believe I invoked my father’s name.”
She smiled up at him faintly. “What is the use of being related to a black mage if you can’t use his reputation to intimidate now and again?”
“I’m not sure we would want to know what my grandfather Sìle would say to that,” he said dryly, “so perhaps we’ll keep it to ourselves.”
He walked with her over to Tarbh, realizing only then that he was feeling a sense of urgency he hadn’t felt before. Or perhaps he simply hadn’t noticed it before.
“I suppose I could have spent a bit more time being careful that I didn’t miss anything,” Sarah said slowly.
“You’re simply looking for a way to avoid flying again,” he said, struggling to keep his tone light.
“I might be,” she muttered. “Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s anything else here. No spells, no magic. Just darkness made by ordinary things.” She swallowed, hard. “Though I’m less sure of the last than I’d like to be.”
He was too, but he wasn’t going to say as much. “You’re certain there’s nothing else on the plains of Ailean?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then we’ll make for Slighe,” he said. “We could be there by dawn if we flew hard. It would give us the chance to see if the lads were there before we turned north.”
“Will Tarbh agree to it?”
He nodded toward the dragon, crouched and watching them with his glittering eye. “He doesn’t seem opposed to the idea. I gather his only regret is that you don’t much care for his takeoffs and landings.”
She started forward, then stopped and simply shook for a moment or two before she looked at him. “I’m not going to be much help if I don’t get over this.”
“You’ll accustom yourself to it,” he promised her. “I will admit that I too suffered a bit of ...” He paused, then supposed there was no point in not being honest. “Very well, the first time I threw myself off my grandfather’s battlements and changed into dragonshape, I thought I wouldn’t manage it before I hit the ground and died.”
“Which thrilled you so much that you immediately tried it again.”
He smiled sheepishly. “I was a lad.”
“Who were you with?”
“Miach of Neroche and, if you can believe this, Rùnach.”
“How old were you?”
“Five.”
“Your poor mother.”
He smiled a little at the memory. “Aye, I daresay. She spent the evening convincing my grandfather that beating us soundly for our cheek would only drive us to do it again. Elves do not shapechange! he bellowed periodically that evening at supper until the lot of us were simply bundles of nerves.”
“And what do elves do?” she asked. “Though I hasten to add I’m only asking out of polite and friendly curiosity.”
“We admire flame-haired weavers of exquisite cloth and always hurry about our business on the ground so we might fly with them again.”
She scowled at him. “I’m not going any farther on this quest of yours if you don’t stop that.”
He smiled and put his arm around her, because she was trembling. He imagined it wasn’t from the cold. “Where—” he began, then he stopped. The moonlight had broken through the clouds and cast the whole of the tableau in front of him into sharp relief, making his werelight unnecessary.
There was something standing twenty paces behind Daniel.
“Let’s go,” she said quickly. “I’ll try not to scream so much this time.”
He was happy to acquiesce. He climbed onto his horse-turned-dragon’s back, then pulled Sarah quickly up onto the saddle in front of him. He put his arms around her and held on as Tarbh leapt up, beating his wings against the chill air. He looked over his shoulder but saw nothing untoward following them. If someone had shapechanged to chase after them, he certainly couldn’t tell. He didn’t imagine Sarah would be willing to open her eyes long enough to look. Perhaps later, when she felt more secure.
He started to pull Sarah’s hood up over her hair only to have her shriek.
“Don’t let go!”
“I never plan to,” he assured her. He wrapped both arms around her again, then rested his chin on her shoulder. “I won’t let you fall. I promise.”
She didn’t relax, but she did pat his hands briefly before she went back to clutching the pommel of the saddle. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the feel of the chill wind against his face.
“I left my cloak behind,” she said suddenly. “The very lovely green one you made for me.”
“I know.”
“It was too fine for a journey such as this will be.”
He tightened his arms around her briefly. “We’ll fetch it after we’re finished. Soilléir will keep it for us.”
She nodded, then fell silent for quite a while. Ruith would have thought she had gone to sleep if it hadn’t been for the way she flinched every now and again, as if she’d almost fallen asleep but reminded herself unhappily of where she was. She finally leaned back.
“Ruith?”
“Aye, love?”
“I can’t help but wonder about that spell of Gair’s. The one of Diminishing. I tried not to listen too closely when Connail was speaking of it on our way north, but it was hard to avoid.”
“Given Connail’s unfortunate familiarity with its effects, I can understand why he was obsessed with it.”
“That was the spell that Daniel had half of, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. He could scarce believe he’d lost that half he’d had, which was indeed his fault. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so fastidious about not using magic—
“I wonder why someone would want it so badly,” Sarah said, interrupting his thoughts.
He leaned up a bit so the wind wouldn’t carry away his words. “There are mages out in the world who aren’t satisfied with their limits. In the beginning of the world, I think there were boundaries set—by good taste, if nothing else. Over the years, though, there have been many who sought to cross those boundaries and do the unthinkable.”
“Taking someone else’s power?” she asked faintly.
He nodded. “Neònach of Carragh was the first to attempt it, but it went badly for him. He began with inanimate, enspelled objects that rendered him, in the end, quite inanimate himself.”
“So it is as Connail said,” she said. “When Gair took his power, he took his madness as well.”
“No one ever said it came without risks,” he said. “Lothar has his spell of Taking, but it is, from what I understand, a crude and inelegant thing that might siphon off half another mage’s power. Droch has his own variation of the same thing, loftily called Gifting, which produces about the same result.”
“But Gair’s?”
“Every last drop,” he said with a sigh, “as Connail also said. It is a spell that never should have been conceived, much less refined and certainly not written down. Why my father allowed such a thing to be let loose, I’ll never know.”
“Perhaps he never intended it be discovered.”
“I imagine he didn’t,” Ruith agreed. “He guarded it jealously, never uttering it in the presence of anyone but those whose power he took.”
“Then how do you and your brothers know it?”
“I was very young when Keir first determined that it was something we all should know,” Ruith said slowly. “He eavesdropped first, but refused to pass along what he’d heard—to his credit. He and Gille argued bitterly about that, for Gille thought the only way to counter my sire’s evil was to know how to name it thoroughly, but Keir feared the spell would somehow corrupt us.”
“Did it?”
“Nay,” he said simply, because he couldn’t blame her for asking. “Keir insisted that if we wanted it, we would have to have it for ourselves and watch with our own eyes what it could do. We all then made it a point to overhear my father using it, though we certainly never would have used it ourselves.”
“You were never tempted?” she asked casually.
He pursed his lips. “Never, you heartless disciple of Soilléir of Cothromaiche. Not even when my father was opening that damned well, though perhaps I should have been.” He sighed. “I’d never heard him spew out so many spells in such a short time. First he used his spell of Diminishing on my brothers, then, with their power in hand, he opened the well. He then turned his favorite spell on the well itself only to realize that he was sadly out of his depth. By the time the evil had raced up into the sky and was headed back down toward him, he was frantically trying spells of containment and closing. ’Twas too late for that, I fear.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “’Tis in the past, fortunately. I feel somewhat better about it, knowing that I’m doing something to stop his evil from spreading instead of merely sitting in the mountains, fretting over it.”
She fell silent. He wasn’t sure if she contemplated all his years hiding away in the mountains or wondered if he now had the power to protect her. Perhaps, in the end, it was just better not to know.
“Ruith?”
“Hmmm?”
She leaned her head back against his shoulder and turned toward him slightly. He had a difficult time concentrating on what she was saying. If he’d been a less gentlemanly sort of man—or one with more sense, perhaps—he would have kissed her right then, professed his undying love, then begged her to wed with him. But that might have caused both of them to fall off, so perhaps that was better left for another, less perilous perch.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Trying to.”
“Try harder.”
“The wind is fairly loud,” he said. “And you, if I may say so, are extremely distracting.”
She elbowed him firmly in the gut. He grunted, then wrenched his thoughts away from where they would have lingered quite pleasantly.
“What?” he asked.
“I was wondering,” she said loudly, “given that your father was so interested in taking the magic of others, if he ever worried about someone taking his?”
“Never,” Ruith said automatically, but then he found he couldn’t say anything else.
In truth, he’d honestly never considered it. His father had always seemed all-powerful, a towering figure full of arrogance and strength. The thought of anyone being able to do anything to Gair of Ceangail instead of running from him had certainly never crossed his mind as a child.
But now that he didn’t have his mother and brothers to protect him and he was exposed to the full brunt of whatever black mages wanted to throw at him, he certainly thought about his own mortality more often than he cared to. Surely his sire must have at least considered in passing the same sort of thing.
He tightened his arms around Sarah briefly. “Nay, he never would have, but I’ll think on it just the same, if you like.”
“At least it will keep you awake.”
He smiled. “I won’t fall asleep.”
“I know I certainly won’t,” she said with a shiver.
He wrapped his arms more securely around her, then rested his chin on her shoulder and gave some thought to things he hadn’t considered before. His father, who had spent more time than he would have admitted to looking over his shoulder, wouldn’t have left himself unprotected, in spite of his belief in his own invincibility. Surely.
What if he had created a spell to counter Lothar’s spell of Taking and Droch’s attempt at the like?
Or what if he had suffered a spontaneous and quite unwholesome bout of altruism and created a spell to restore what had been taken with his own spell of Diminishing?
The thought was intriguing, but Ruith wasn’t certain it was worth thinking on too seriously. His father never would have let his magic be taken, so he had likely never thought seriously about needing to find a way to have it restored. He certainly wouldn’t have given such a spell to anyone else. As for using it himself, on himself, he wouldn’t have had the magic to use it had all his own power been taken.
Then again, perhaps even if another mage managed to find and use the spell of Diminishing, anyone but Gair of Ceangail might not have managed such a thorough result—especially on Gair himself.
Which would have left Gair with perhaps enough power to save himself with a spell of Anti-Diminishing.
Ruith rolled his eyes at the thought. His sire was dead and gone. Whatever fools might have been left in the world were not his equal and would never harness the full power of the original spell.
Still, they might manage a good bit of damage, which left him with his original task, which was preventing the meeting of those two halves before someone with a decent bit of power put them together.
And in the meantime, he supposed he might be wise to actually do the unthinkable and create something of his own to fight whoever might be canny enough to have the entire spell at his disposal, though the thought of that was a bit like walking over his father’s grave.
He shivered, and not from the chill. That wasn’t a path he wanted to put even a single foot to.
Though he supposed he might not have a choice.