A Tapestry of Spells (37 page)

She was so busy concentrating on keeping things from falling down on her head and across her face that she didn’t look at Ruith until he stumbled and caught himself heavily on one leg. She realized only then that he was pale as death.

“Ruith!”

He leaned over with his hands on his thighs and sucked in great lungfuls of air. He straightened in time, but looked no better.

“We’ll press on.”

She drew his arm over her shoulders. “Lean on me.”

“Nay—”

“Lean on me, you stubborn fool,” she said sharply.

“You have no care at all for my dignity,” he managed.

“I’ll heap all manner of compliments on you when we’re free of this place to make up for it. Where to now?”

“Ever inward,” he said, then he leaned on her the slightest bit. “Thank you.”

She shook her head and continued on with him. The trees grew closer together, the spells thicker, the gloom more impenetrable. And the farther they walked, the worse Ruith looked until she thought he might not manage to walk any farther.

Several times, she caught him just before he walked into spells strung across the path like spiderwebs. Those seemed to bother him more than just the general feeling of fear that seemed to be as woven into the air as the trees were planted in the ground.

“We cannot go on,” she said, at one point.

“We must.”

She started up again with him, but he grew whiter with every footstep until she was convinced that even if he survived the journey into the forest, he wouldn’t live long enough to escape it. She started to say as much.

Then she realized they had reached their destination.

The trees had thinned, then disappeared to reveal a glade in front of her. She realized the glade wasn’t empty, so she quickly pulled Ruith off the path with her. When she was fairly certain they couldn’t be seen, she stopped. Ruith sank to his knees, breathing shallowly. She leaned over and put her hands on his shoulders.

“What can I do for you?” she asked softly.

“Nothing,” he rasped.

“You can’t stay here,” she said, feeling very worried indeed.

“I must. Is your brother by the well?”

“I’ll go look, but first let me make you comfortable.”

He didn’t argue when she pulled his bow over his head and removed the quiver of arrows from off his shoulder. She knelt, unbuckled his sword, then removed that as well so he could sit back on his heels. He reached up and groped for her hand, squeezed it, then dropped his hand back to his thigh. She put her hand briefly on his head, then quietly walked away until she could see what lay in the middle of the forest.

The glade there was large, much larger than she’d suspected it might be, and in its precise center was a well. It was perhaps three feet tall, made of unremarkable rock, with a stone cap closed atop it. She studied it for another moment or two, then frowned as she realized what seemed so strange. Caps on wells weren’t unusual, she supposed, though she’d seen them only on wells that were dry and owned by farmers who didn’t want children and grandchildren falling down them.

But why would a dry well find itself in the midst of a forest full of spells?

Daniel was standing by the well. Sarah watched him busily trying different spells to get it to do something. Open, shut, disintegrate : who knew? She leaned against a tree when the view became slightly tedious. It was difficult not to snort at his increasingly grandiose movements. He finally grew so frustrated at his lack of progress, he put his hands on his hips and began to shout at the rocks. When he drew a sword she hadn’t known he had and started to hack at the stone, she supposed she might safely leave him to his madness for a bit and see how Ruith fared.

She walked back to find him kneeling in the same place, breathing in and out very carefully. She squatted down in front of him.

“Why does this place make you so ill?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.” She could see that on his face without any special gift of sight. “Have you ever been here before?”

He only bowed his head and rubbed his hands over his face. “Ask me later, I beg you.”

She was unsettled enough by his tone to agree. “Daniel is there.”

Ruith only nodded, as if he’d expected nothing less.

“What is that well full of?”

He looked up, his face ashen. “Power.”

She would have fallen over, but Ruith’s hand shot out and kept her balanced. She closed her eyes briefly, then looked at him.

“He wants to have it.”

Ruith nodded.

“Is it evil?”

“It was, once. What it is now, I can’t say.” He took a deep, unsteady breath. “What is your brother doing?”

“Trying to open it, I think. First he tried a few spells. Now he’s just hacking at the stone with his sword.”

Ruith’s expression lightened just the slightest bit. “He isn’t.”

“He is. Shall I go see what else he’s combining?”

“I’ll come—”

She put her hand on his shoulder and forced him to remain where he was. “There’s no need. I’ll go have a look, then return.”

He began to struggle to his feet. “You shouldn’t—”

“And neither should you.” She pushed him toward a tree and propped him up against it. “Stay there. I’ll go have another look, then tell you what I found—”

“Nay,” he said sharply, “I must come.” He took another breath, deeper this time. “If you would hand me my sword and bow, that would help.”

She supposed there was no point in arguing with him about it. She fetched his sword, but slung his arrows over her shoulder and kept his bow herself. She put her arm around his waist and walked slowly with him until they were within sight of the glade. Ruith’s breathing was a painful-sounding rasp in the stillness. He put one hand out on a tree and leaned heavily on it, but he kept his other arm around her shoulders.

“What should I do?” she murmured.

“Stay here whilst I see to him,” Ruith said without hesitation. “But I must catch my breath for a bit longer before I do.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what ails you?”

He squeezed her shoulders slightly. “Aye. When you cut it from me with a dull knife.”

She didn’t release him. “He’s now trying to set the stone on fire. What do you think?”

“I think he underestimates the peculiar properties of this forest,” Ruith said grimly. “If he’s not careful, he’ll set himself on fire.”

Daniel chose that moment to do just that. He flapped his arms frantically and attempted to beat out the sparks that had leapt up and attached themselves to his tunic.

Before she could stop him, certainly before she thought better of trying to stop him, Ruith had walked unsteadily out into the glade. Daniel turned around in time to have Ruith catch him under the chin with his fist and send him sprawling. Sarah would have complimented Ruith on his technique, but she didn’t have the time.

She was too busy trying to find her breath to shout that they were not alone.

R
uith heard the twang of his great bow and turned about in surprise.

Sarah stood there, killing things from nightmares as they lumbered into the glade. The bow was too big for her, but she was managing it with admirable skill. He shook his head briefly and wondered if there would come a time when he wouldn’t be surprised by something she was able to do. He left her to it and turned back to his most pressing problem.

Just as a precaution and because he was beginning to stir, Ruith pulled Daniel of Doìre to his feet by the front of his tunic, elbowed him firmly in the face, then let him slump down to the ground, groaning. One less useless thing to worry about. He stumbled across the glade, unsheathed his sword, and put himself between Sarah and a trio of trolls. The arrows wouldn’t last forever and it was taking Sarah at least four to bring down each of the creatures coming toward her. Once those were exhausted, she would have nothing standing between her and death but him and his sword.

And he knew instantly that that wouldn’t be enough.

Not even the fact that the trolls were coming for him would be enough to save her if he didn’t call upon more aid than his sword and bow could provide. He put himself at her back, feeling her elbow bumping into his arm each time she loosed an arrow, and made a decision.

He took a deep breath, then released all his magic.

It should have sent him to his knees, but he kept himself upright through sheer willpower alone and began to kill things with a spell of death that came all too easily to his tongue. He had never used that spell—a spell his father had perfected, as it happened—though he had often imagined how it might be to try it out on his father, the arrogant bastard—

“I have no more arrows!”

Ruith put his left hand behind him and yanked her against his back. He turned in a circle and fought with sword and spell, keeping evil at bay with the first and killing with a spell of Olc that was augmented far beyond what it should have been by an anger he hadn’t realized he had burning in him like a raging fire.

A quarter hour later, he dropped to his knees, stars swimming in front of his eyes. He had never in his life been so exhausted, not even twenty years ago after he’d managed to drag himself up to the door of his house, crawl inside, then collapse in front of the fire.

“Ruith, you’re burning up,” Sarah said, her hand on his back. “Are you ill?”

“Nay,” he gasped. “Are they all dead?”

“They are,” she said, sounding completely unsettled. “I’m not sure what killed them, though. There are more here than we could have seen to.”

He couldn’t answer. He had to simply breathe until he thought he could see straight. He supposed it was going to take more time than he had to manage that. He squinted at the glade, full as it was of the bodies of his enemies, and saw it as he’d seen it a score of years earlier, with his mother lying there—

“Daniel isn’t here.”

He wrenched himself away from that memory. He supposed Sarah had it aright, but he honestly couldn’t tell for certain. He continued to simply suck in air for another precious moment or two, then reached for her hand.

“Can you fetch my arrows?” he rasped. “I’m sorry to ask it—”

“Don’t be daft,” she said briskly, walking away from him. “I’ll hurry.”

He supposed she was wise to. He had no sense of time passing, but he imagined Sarah had worked very quickly. She returned with two score arrows in her hand.

“I didn’t clean them,” she said apologetically.

“We’ll do it later,” he said. He used his sword as a means of getting himself to his feet, then incinerated the bodies almost without thought. Sarah gasped, but he said nothing. He merely buried his magic again, carelessly and incompletely, but it would have to do. He resheathed his sword and wished he had the strength to strap it to his back.

Sarah did it for him, pulled his bow over her head, then drew his arm around her shoulders.

“We have to hurry.”

He knew she was right. He only hoped they would manage to hurry quickly enough.

He ran with her, a stumbling, ungainly run that he was sure wouldn’t end any other way but with him flat on his face in some location where he wouldn’t want to be. He continued to run, though, because he knew that if he didn’t get out of the forest, if he didn’t get them both out of the forest, they wouldn’t simply die.

Nay, their fate would be far worse.

Because whoever was sending those trolls had obviously had enough forethought to have them seek out those with particular characteristics. Magic, perhaps, or something else desirable in their blood. Ruith couldn’t have said and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth of it.

He just knew he couldn’t stop running.

 

H
e woke to the smell of hay in his nose and the crunch of it under what felt like his own cloak. That he had no idea where he was or how he’d gotten there was profoundly alarming. He let his eyes adjust to the gloom and realized that it was perhaps closer to day than he’d first suspected. He was still for a moment or two, then he carefully turned his head and looked at the soul breathing very softly beside him.

There were dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept in far too long. A pity it did nothing to diminish her beauty. He turned carefully so he might have an unobstructed view of her face.

He wondered how it was that a woman of her mettle and courage—and loveliness—had ever found herself as the daughter of Seleg of Doire, a woman of uncommon ugliness inside and out. He wondered how it was she’d survived all those years with her brother picking at her, no doubt belittling her for her lack of magic, likely never appreciating her for all the things she could do.

He speculated for a while longer about how the hell she’d managed to get him from his last memory, which had been ducking under one of the final, putrid spells of illusion and disorder that had hung from the boughs of those accursed trees, to his current place, watching her dream. How he’d come from there to where they were was perhaps one of the more miraculous things that had happened to him ...