A Tapestry of Spells (2 page)

It had been a slaughter,a hopeless,unforgiving slaughter.He sought frantically for signs of life, but saw none. No doubt the force of the eruption had been enough to wash away all the others
—
save his mother who was still there, lying motionless by the well. He watched her for several minutes, hoping beyond hope that. . .

 

R
uith of nowhere in particular found himself on his feet in front of his own hearth without knowing quite how he’d gotten there. He was breathing harshly, as if he’d run for leagues without pause. He’d done that regularly over the course of his thirty winters, so he felt fairly safe in comparing the two. He leaned over and put his hands on the long table there, sucking in desperately needed breaths until he thought he could manage a few normal ones without feeling as if he were drowning.

He didn’t dream often. In fact, he had spent more of his youth than he should have not sleeping in an effort to avoid dreaming. In time, he had learned to simply sleep dreamlessly.

It had taken years, but he had also eventually learned not to remember how he’d managed to crawl up the rugged path to what had turned out to be an empty house, bury his magic deep inside himself with a single, powerful spell, then surrender to the weariness he had no longer been able to fight. He rarely thought about how he’d woken later in front of a stone-cold hearth only to find wood chopped and ready for his use, food preserved and set aside to keep him from starving that first winter, and a library large enough to engage his ten-year-old’s curiosity.

Eventually, he had settled quite comfortably into an existence that was physically and mentally demanding in a strictly pedestrian sort of way. If he could sense the spells that surrounded his house and protected him, or if he sometimes amused himself by thinking on ways they could have been fashioned differently, or if he now and again found himself tempted to add something extra to the local alemaster’s latest offering, well, those were things that other men thought on without incident.

Surely.

He hadn’t used a single word of magic in a score of years, not since that last spell he’d woven, a dwarvish spell of concealment. He was, for all intents and purposes, just a man—or, rather, a man pretending to be a mage whom the nearby villagers feared too greatly to approach. He sometimes wondered what he would have done had one of them dared beg for a decent piece of magic to be wrought on their behalf, but that never required much thought.

He wouldn’t have used magic if his life had depended on it.

He straightened, took another deep, cleansing breath, then turned and walked back into his bedchamber. He pulled on boots and a heavy tunic, then walked back to his front door. He snatched up a brace of hunting knives and strapped them to his back. He might have been out merely for a run, but he was also not fool enough to leave the safety of his house without some sort of weapon to hand.

He buckled the belt for his sheathed knives and winced at the pain in his hand. He looked down at that hand and frowned. There was nothing to be seen, of course, but he felt the remains of his dream wrapped around his arm, from his wrist up past his elbow. He clenched and unclenched his fist, then purposely ignored the discomfort. Overindulgence in Master Franciscus’s finest pale ale, no doubt. Spending the better part of the morning running would be penance enough, perhaps.

It was odd, though. He hadn’t had dreams of that sort in at least a decade. He’d all but forgotten that he’d ever had them.

He pulled his door shut behind him, then loped off down the path. Dawn was still an hour off, but the darkness didn’t deter him. He had run through the woods surrounding his mountain for so long, he likely could have run them with his eyes closed—

Which at the moment might not have been such a wise thing to do. He was almost on top of a man strolling through the woods before he realized it. He supposed ’twas a fortunate thing he was as light-footed as he was, or he might have had a battle on his hands he didn’t particularly want to fight. He drew back and waited until the man continued on past him, walking without haste, apparently oblivious to what was in the woods around him. Ruith watched him go, then shook his head. The fool would likely end up in a ditch somewhere, dead and missing not only his very fine cloak but his boots as well.

He consigned the almost-encounter to the list of rather odd things that had happened to him in the past several hours, then decided that perhaps he should make a vow to swear off more than a single glass of ale at a sitting. Perhaps Master Franciscus’s brew was more potent than he’d led himself to believe all these years.

He considered the direction the man was taking, then frowned. He had no stomach for conversation and now south was apparently denied him. He muttered a curse, then put his head down and took a direction he hadn’t intended to take.

And he ignored the pain in his arm that had nothing to do with a visible wound.

T
he village of Doìre lay to the south in the county of Shettlestoune, which found itself comfortably to the south of anywhere else. It lurked close enough to the kingdom of Neroche that the occasional bit of reluctant trade was possible, but far enough away that undesirables generally found the trek north to be just too much trouble. The kingdom of Meith to the west was not so arduously reached, but that was countered nicely by the enthusiastic guarding of Meith’s border by hardened soldiers with very sharp swords, which tended to discourage any but the most desperate of lads determined to attempt a trip into more welcoming territory.

Shettlestoune was a place where men with secrets went to hide and women with aspirations of a decent future tried to escape as soon as possible. Villages were few and far between, taverns were rough, and local constabularies more than willing to find the relentlessly sunny skies more interesting than whatever mischief might have been going on under their noses.

It was also quite possibly the most unrelentingly bland landscape in all of the Nine Kingdoms.

Urchaid of too many places to name acknowledged the truth of that as he eyed with disfavor the flora and fauna, such as it was, that huddled nervously beyond the boundaries of the one-street village he was wandering in. Traveling in the south was always tedious, but he’d found himself, against all sense, blown down from more civilized countries on an ill wind that seemed reluctant to let him go.

He checked his sleeves briefly, tugged at a bit of lace that had somehow become tucked where it couldn’t be seen, then smoothed his hair back from his face. At least it could be said that no matter where he went, he traveled there well dressed. Perhaps he should have continued on a bit longer on wing, as it were, and spared himself even a few hours’ worth of travel stains, but he’d been interested in what was being whispered in the trees. There was something afoot, something untoward. Given that the only thing that intrigued him more than a well-stocked haberdasher was an evil spell, it had been worth the trouble to settle back into his usual form before dawn.

There were those, he had to admit, who found his magical preferences distasteful, but fortunately for him those lads were either locked up in the schools of wizardry or doing good whilst sitting on some kingly throne or another in countries he tried his damndest to avoid.

He hated do-gooders.

He tried to counter their efforts as often as possible, though he couldn’t say his current journey had anything to do with that. It had merely been the result of nothing more villainous than a bit of eavesdropping. He’d heard rumors of magic, magic he hadn’t heard discussed in years, springing up in unexpected places. What else could he do but see for himself if those rumors were true?

He walked into the only pub in town, a decent-looking place as far as rustic pubs in the midst of hell went, then found a relatively comfortable seat by the fire and waited patiently for someone to come take his order.

He waited without success until he realized he was still wearing a spell of invisibility. He frowned and removed it with a snap of his fingers, which had the added benefit of drawing the attention of the lone barmaid. She looked every bit as wholesome and well fed as he’d expected a local country miss might. Whatever else they did in the south, they certainly didn’t forget to eat. At least she was quick about her business and remembered to deliver exactly what he’d ordered.

He sipped his ale hesitantly, then found to his great surprise that it was eminently drinkable. He sat back in his chair, stretched his long legs out and crossed his feet at the ankles, then amused himself by looking at the patrons who had wandered in for an early-morning constitutional.

Thieves, liars, cheaters—and those were the more upstanding souls gathered there. The few honest ones stood out like gold nuggets lying in the sun on dark soil. The wench who had served him was one of those, as was the master brewer who had come in from his workroom, but the barkeep didn’t qualify, nor did most of the patrons. Well, save that gawky farmhand who had stumbled into the pub and was asking for watered-down ale, if the barkeep wouldn’t mind seeing to it for him.

The alemaster elbowed the barkeep aside and saw to the deed himself. Urchaid frowned thoughtfully. The man pushing the glass across the wood seemed familiar, though he couldn’t fathom why. He considered a bit longer, then shrugged. Perhaps he had frequented so many pubs in a search for something decent to drink that all the alemasters had begun to look alike. Such was the hazard of a very, very long life, apparently.

The alemaster waited until the boy was well watered, then slid a jug across the counter to him.