Spellbinder (Moonshadow #2)

It was an audacious suggestion. In all his years as a sorcerer, Morgan had never attempted to communicate with one of the gods. He rubbed his mouth as he considered it. Would the geas allow it, or would the action be too direct?

He needed to check the texts back at the cottage to see if any of them offered a ritual for contacting the gods. Reading did not activate the geas. If the texts didn’t contain anything useful, he would either need to look elsewhere or construct the summoning himself. At that thought, he could feel the geas’s coils shifting uneasily and knew he was skating very close to the edge.

Both Sidonie and Robin were watching him for his reaction.

“I don’t know if I can,” he said. “But I’ll work on it. My biggest concern right now is I’ve only got one bottle of hunter’s spray left. Either I need to curtail my movements drastically until we find a solution to this problem, or I need to slip back to Earth to get more.”

“How big are the bottles?” Robin asked.

In answer, Morgan reached for his bag of supplies, pulled out the bottle, and showed it to the puck. Robin scratched his spiky hair with both thin hands as he considered it.

Finally he said, “I can’t smuggle something as large as a human across the crossover passageways, but I might be able to hide a few bottles of that in one of the cargo caravans. Unfortunately, the caravans aren’t very frequent.”

Straightening her spine, Sidonie exclaimed, “Kallah is going to arrange this morning for the acquisition of a violin and a guitar for me! There’ll be some kind of caravan coming from one of the passageways this week! But… I guess that might not call for a caravan. Someone could bring those instruments on the back of a horse.”

Morgan raised his eyebrows. “Do they know that?”

Her startled gaze flashed to his. “No. They have no idea how big a violin or a guitar is.”

“So they’ll arrange for a caravan.” He frowned.

He didn’t like relying on Robin to perform such an important task. If the puck didn’t make it back with more hunter’s spray, Morgan would need to become housebound, or eventually he would be caught and he would have to go back to Isabeau.

But the thought of leaving Sidonie alone to deal with life here while he traveled back to Earth was intolerable.

“What’s wrong?” Sidonie touched the back of his hand.

There wasn’t any real choice. Realizing he had paused too long, he added briskly, “Nothing. They’ll want to make the caravan as efficient as possible, so they’ll be sure to transport anything else they might have stored at the encampment until the next trip. It might not be a very big caravan, but there will be one. The time slippage from Avalon to Earth is not significant, so with travel and enough time on the other side to acquire the instruments, the caravan should return in four days, maybe five.”

The puck grinned. “That’s more than enough time. I just need to get the bottles across the passageway, so I’ll tuck the package in with other things. Once everything has been transported to Avalon, I can steal them back and bring them the rest of the way, myself.”

A shadow passed over Sidonie’s expression. She asked, “Will you do me a favor as well, Robin?”

“If it is within my power to do so, yes,” he replied. “I owe you that much.”

“I want you to mail a letter for me.” Her jaw tightened. “I have friends who are worried about me, and a business that has ground to a standstill. They need to know I’m alive and to hang on until they hear from me again.”

Robin’s gaze dropped from hers. Softly, he said, “Of course. As long as it’s small, I can get a message back to Earth.”

“Thank you.” Taking a deep breath, she turned back to Morgan. “So Robin has his task, and you have yours. What am I supposed to do?”

“Nothing,” Morgan cupped her face in both hands. “You do nothing. You play for the Queen when she asks you to, and you listen to every conversation you can. When it comes to the Athame, she has always been extremely careful in my presence—she always wears it around me, even if she has nothing else on, and while she has reminisced enough that I know she had the Athame for a while before she trapped me, she has only referenced it in passing. So there’s always the possibility she might let something slip around you. But that’s all, Sidonie. You don’t put yourself at risk for any reason. Do you hear me?”

She scowled, but said, “I’ll be careful, and I won’t do anything that puts me at risk. I promise.”

He relaxed. “That’s our plan, then. We stay in a holding pattern for the next few days, until Robin returns. Sidonie plays for the Queen when she asks for it, and I’ll limit my movements and see what I can do about researching a summoning spell.” At the flash of anxiety in Sidonie’s expression, he added, “If I’m careful and go across the rooftops in town, this last bottle should be enough for me to get back and forth from the cottage to this room. We won’t be separated for all that time.”

Relaxing somewhat, she gave him a twisted smile. “Okay. But what about your scent here in my room?”

“Tell the proprietress you’ll take the room indefinitely, and there’ll be no reason for the Hounds to come up here,” he told her. “I have plenty of money if you need more. Sometimes they do come to the taproom to drink and eat, so you’ll need to be on your guard when you go downstairs. Whenever you leave, make sure you wash thoroughly and always wear a clean outfit, and you should carry the sheets down yourself to be laundered. I believe there’s a back staircase for the servants, so you wouldn’t have to run into anyone from the taproom.”

She nodded. “I can do that. I don’t usually wear perfume, but perhaps I can buy some rose water or an essential oil. I need more clothes and some stationery so I can write my letter.”

Taking one hand, he rubbed her fingers as he thought. “It’s a shame Isabeau couldn’t give you some time to yourself. It’s going to be hard on us both if I have to cast a battle spell on you every day.”

“I don’t think you need to.” Her fingers tightened over his. “When I was playing last night, I felt the ability to play the lute solidify again. When the spell wore off, I was exhausted but I didn’t feel like I had lost it.”

“Are you sure?” He frowned.

“Don’t worry,” she told him reassuringly. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “I might be out of my depth here in Avalon in virtually every other subject, but this is the one thing I do know something about.”

“Okay.” Angling his head, he rested his cheek on top of hers. “I’ll trust you.”

Robin stood. “I will return midafternoon for your letter. That should give you time to go to the market and get what you need. In the meantime, good luck to both of you.” He added to Morgan, “Find that summoning spell.”

Morgan didn’t tell them about the geas shifting uneasily. No need to worry them unless it became necessary. Instead, he said, “I’ll do my best.”

Without anything further, Robin melted into the cat again. It blinked at them at the foot of the bed, then trotted to the balcony and disappeared.