A Tapestry of Spells (25 page)

He had just never expected that to happen thanks to a woman who had spent her time the evening before looking for magic in his face.

He hadn’t intended to add anything to the fire Seirceil had started for her. Sending a flicker of a flame to dance along the wood had been an afterthought of sorts, nothing grand or useful. But it had been beautiful and she had obviously seen it.

That in itself was unusual.

“And where do you think they’ve gone off to?” Seirceil asked, his face full of worry.

Franciscus shrugged, though he looked no less worried. “I’ve scoured the surrounding countryside for hours, but seen nothing of either of them.”

Ruith rubbed his hands first over his face, then together, though he wasn’t sure what sort of aid he expected from either action. He and Franciscus had been sitting at the fire the night before, discussing the virtues of the widow Fiore’s garden and just what sort of cider Franciscus could brew with a bushel of her green apples and a modest cutting of her lavender. Realization that neither Urchaid nor Connail was back had hit them both at the same moment.

Ruith had risen to go look, but Franciscus had waved him back down, saying he could easily sleep during the day and leave his draft horses to follow the road without incident or direction from him. Ruith had agreed reluctantly, but he hadn’t slept. He had put his weapons within easy reach and wondered about the missing men. There was no reason for either of them to have disappeared, unless Urchaid had irritated Connail a bit too much and Connail had stabbed him, then limped off.

But there had been no trace of either of them.

“Perhaps we should just continue on without them, then,” Seirceil said quietly. “I don’t like to speak badly of anyone—”

Franciscus smiled and put his hand briefly on Seirceil’s shoulder. “In this case, my lord, I think you could safely express a desire not to travel farther with either of them and still be considered kinder than they deserve. And aye, I agree. We’ll be off and leave them to follow—or not.”

Seirceil’s expression didn’t relax any, but he nodded just the same. He smiled briefly at Ruith, then went to gather up the various and sundry who were vexing Sarah over breakfast.

“You light the fire,” Ned cajoled.

“We’ve already eaten,” she hedged.

“But that were cold,” Ned complained. “Just a brief bit of warmth, then you can put it right out again.”

Ruith watched Sarah dither. It was so contrary to how she usually conducted herself that he felt certain it was an adequate reflection of the conflict going on inside her. He shook his head. If trailing after her brother, who was apparently doing his damndest to gather up pages from a book of spells, wasn’t enough to unsettle her, being part of the current madness certainly was.

“ ’Tis too trivial a thing for her,” Seirceil said, putting his hand on Ned’s head. “Something better suited to a child. I’ll see to it, since that is about the extent of my skill at present.”

Ruith winced, but Seirceil’s words were completely without rancor. It wasn’t exactly true, for Seirceil did possess magic. It was unreliable, though, even for such a simple thing as fire.

He could remember vividly the first time he’d called to fire in his mind and wrapped it around a single twig without so much as the slightest lifting of his smallest finger. He knew he should have been chiding himself for all the things he’d set on fire as a toddler before his mother had convinced him to exercise a modicum of self-control, or damning himself for now adding a simple bit of Fadaire to what Seirceil was doing, but all he could do was watch a headstrong, beautiful, ferociously determined woman look at the fire as if she saw things he could not.

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

Damn it anyway.

He reached for that very thick protective crust he’d built around his heart and found to his dismay that it wasn’t nearly as substantial as it should have been. He suspected he knew on whom to lay the blame for that. He tried to scowl, but that didn’t work either. He grasped for shreds of common sense in a last-ditch effort to save his sanity.

Sarah wasn’t the right sort of girl for him. He needed, were he to actually manage to find anyone to wed, a girl with courtly manners, the ability to tell which fork to use first at dinner, and an innate grace and unfailing command of the niceties of lofty conversation and flatteries. A gel with a big dagger, a quick tongue, and eyes that saw far too clearly were not what he wanted—er, needed.

But he couldn’t look away as she sat there and looked into a fire that he hadn’t created entirely himself, but had certainly added things to to make it burn in an especially beautiful way.

Because he liked her.

Very much.

He drew his hand over his eyes. He had to run before he did something stupid. Perhaps he would slip off that night and run all the way to Gilean. It was still some fifteen leagues from where they were. Even if they managed five leagues that day, the rest would take him all night, even if he ran hard. By the time he reached the place, he would have surely invented a reason he’d needed to come with such haste.

He turned into Franciscus before he realized the man was standing there watching him.

“I didn’t see you.”

“Apparently.”

He pursed his lips. “I was just watching over the company.”

“Never said you weren’t, lad.”

Ruith shot him a look but Franciscus only smiled pleasantly—and unrepentantly.

“I’m going to run ahead to Gilean tonight,” Ruith muttered, “because I think the journey will do me good.”

“Clear your head?” Franciscus asked politely.

“Allow me to escape meddling old men.”

“I am not old. I’m seasoned. And I’m not meddling, I’m observing.”

“You’re going daft,” Ruith said. He started to turn away, then hesitated. “You’ll watch after Sarah whilst I’m away?”

“With both eyes and a dagger in each hand.”

Ruith paused. “I don’t trust Urchaid.”

“We could hope he’s dead.”

“If someone was murdered last night, I imagine it wasn’t him,” Ruith said grimly, “but I’ve been wrong many times before. Please keep Sarah close.”

“I will, but tell me what you’re about. Something to do with our present business?”

Ruith considered, then leaned against the wagon again and looked at the alemaster. “I think there will come a time when I must go on ahead,” he said slowly. “And I’m certain you’ll need to be about your own affairs sooner rather than later.” He chewed on his words for a bit. “I fear Daniel is determined to have a few more of those spells he’s laid hands on. I’ll actually be a bit surprised if he continues on with his harassing of local mages. I fear he has a different plan.”

“Care to share it?”

Ruith wasn’t sure where to begin. He had looked at the velvet cloth of Connail’s Sarah had made off with and it was indeed a perfect imprint of his father’s spell of Reconstruction. It wasn’t necessarily a dangerous spell, though he supposed under the right circumstances, he who found himself reconstructed might find himself unable to protect himself against further assaults. Fortunately, Ruith highly doubted Daniel would use it with any success on anything that moved.

But if he managed it to any degree, he might redouble his efforts to find more of those sorts of spells.

Ruith looked at Franciscus and forced himself to maintain a blase expression. “What do you know of Gair of Ceangail?”

“Other than the tales Connail has seemed determined to bludgeon us with?” Franciscus asked. He shrugged. “Just rumors. There are many nasty little mages weaving dark spells, but few of note, wouldn’t you agree?”

Ruith nodded and refrained from comment.

“Lothar, Gair, Droch of Saothair, and Wehr of Wrekin, of course, come immediately to mind, though Gair, at least, was rumored to have manners and a decent bit of charm. I can’t speak with any authority about the others.”

A
decent bit of charm.
Ruith pursed his lips. Aye, his father had been charming—to others. And to his family, when it suited him. Unfortunately, the mercurial changes in temper had been swift and all the more terrifying because of their unpredictability.

“Ruith?”

Ruith unclenched his fists, realizing only then that he needed to. He managed a smile. “I was just thinking that if Daniel knew what he had in his possession, he might be willing to see if he could have a bit more of it.”

He couldn’t bring himself to talk about his father’s spell of Diminishing. He had watched his father completely strip other mages of their power at least a score of times. He didn’t like to remember the particulars, so he didn’t. Even the fact that Daniel possessed but half of that spell was enough to turn his blood cold. If Daniel found the other half, even if he didn’t possess the power to wield the entire thing fully, he could do terrible damage.

Ruith didn’t want to think about what would happen to the world if someone with a substantial amount of power got hold of both halves of that spell. Daniel might think he could undo the world, but he was hopelessly lost in delusions of grandeur. But the spell of Diminishing in the hands of Lothar of Wychweald, or Droch of Saothair?

Devastating.

“And you suspect you know where Daniel might be going?” Franciscus asked.

Ruith dragged himself back to the conversation at hand. “I think Ceangail’s as good a place as any to start a search. But I can’t walk all the way there and I can’t take a large company with me. Especially one that includes that damned Oban, continually waving his wand and covering us with rainbows and whatever else he sends scampering around us at all hours.”

“Unicorns.”

“I was trying to forget that.”

Franciscus laughed briefly and reached up to put his hand on Ruith’s shoulder. “I am too. You go tonight and I’ll keep things together here. If worse comes to worst, Oban will create us an army of mythical beasts to charge our enemies and blind them with their twinkling.”

“I knew there was a reason we needed him,” Ruith said dryly. He took a deep breath, then nodded. “I thank you, my friend.” He paused, then looked at Franciscus seriously. “There are things that hunted us in the woods of Shettlestoune. Things that weren’t precisely human, I don’t think. I think ’twas me they were seeking, but I can’t guarantee that. But felling them is no easy task.”

“Then why don’t you leave me your weapons and I’ll teach Ned to use them.”

“When I’m dead and no sooner,” Ruith said without hesitation. “The lad would ruin my arrows, put chinks in my sword, and lose my knives. You’ll just have to watch during the nights. But I’ll leave you most of my gear. I won’t need it on my present errand.”

“You’ll be back, then.”

Ruith nodded, though he was less sure of that than perhaps he should have been. He needed to find Daniel of Doire and stop him, which might entail going into places where he wouldn’t have taken his worst enemy. Taking Sarah along to those places was out of the question.

But if he didn’t take her, he might not recognize Daniel in a crowd, which would leave him losing the chance to stop the man.

Worse still, he might possibly be leaving her in the sights of monsters and mages she couldn’t simply discourage with her hunting knife.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “In a day or two.”

Franciscus looked at him and considered for a moment or two. “Shall I continue on to Slighe, then?”

“Were you headed that way?” Ruith asked in surprise. “I assumed you would turn west for Angesand or make for Penrhyn.” He frowned. “Actually I hadn’t given much thought to your journey’s end past being grateful for your company now.”

“And my ale.”

“And your cooking,” Ruith added with a smile. He thought for a moment, then nodded. “If you’re going through the mountains, then aye, you could make for Slighe, though I have many miles to travel before I would find myself there.”

“You and Sarah, you mean.”

“Of course,” Ruith said without hesitation.

Franciscus looked at him closely, then pursed his lips and walked away. Ruith watched him go, then turned to go help Seirceil break camp.

 

I
t took him longer to reach Gilean than he’d intended only because he spent too much time thinking, which left him walking instead of running. He supposed, as he walked through a relatively crowded market, that that thinking was what had allowed someone to follow him without his having noticed.

Truly, he was in desperate need of sleep.

He yawned, stopped to purchase a rather wizened apple from an equally wizened-looking farmer, then leaned in close over the fruit.

“Might I use your alley?” he asked politely.

“For that lad behind you?” the man asked with a toothless grin. “Have your little brother following where he shouldn’t, eh?”

“Absolutely,” Ruith agreed. He had a nod for his trouble, then wandered away, doubling back behind carts and humanity until he had a clear path to the very tiny alleyway behind that seller of last year’s fruit.

He waited until the boy, Ned he assumed, had come walking by, then jerked him off his feet and into the dark.

He froze at the feel of steel against his throat. It was only then, after he realized that his assailant was gasping because he had hold of her—aye, that was
her
—right wrist, that he swore and released her.

Her blade didn’t move.

“I didn’t think you could kill with your left hand,” he said carefully.

“I can, if I need two old hens for the stewpot and my right hand is holding one of them.” She pulled her knife away and resheathed it. She cursed. “I must find a mage to heal this arm.”

He had to stop himself from making werelight, then had to bite his tongue to keep from cursing a bit more. He pulled her sleeve gently up her arm and relinquished the idea of not swearing. The grooves were yet deeper than they had been the day before and the blackness still spreading. He supposed there would come a time when there was naught but rot.