A Tapestry of Spells (5 page)

He looked at her with disgust. “Do you actually think I want to stay here in this pitiful house with that pitiful village down the way for the rest of my life?”

She didn’t imagine he was interested in her answer, and nay, she had never imagined he would stay. She was only surprised that he hadn’t left the day their mother had died instead of waiting a month to go. At the time, she’d supposed laziness had been the reason. Now, she suspected he’d been plotting something and it had taken a bit to come to fruition. She hadn’t cared for the look in his eye as he’d left, and she liked even less the reek of magic he now carried with him, obviously acquired on his jaunt to points unknown.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, because she apparently couldn’t stop a last attempt to be polite to her only sibling.

He picked a speck of lint off his black cloak, then looked at her. “I am off,” he said, with no inflection at all to his words, “to destroy the world.”

She blinked in surprise, then laughed before she could stop herself. “Don’t be ridiculous—”

The change in his mien was swift and terrifying. She watched as the darkness that surrounded him rose up and rushed toward her.

“I
will
do it, but before I do, I’ll make a brief stop in the village where I’ll tell everyone what I know about you. Be grateful. At least that way you won’t be alive to see what I do to the rest of the Nine Kingdoms.”

Sarah watched, openmouthed, as darkness loomed over her. It was full of terrible things that she had only half imagined in nightmares, though she would be the first to admit that there were a few pockets of light where she supposed Daniel’s spell hadn’t been woven very well. She stared at those holes and looked absently at the bits of scenery she could see through them. Shettlestoune as a county was not a pretty place, and Doìre was surely the ugliest part of it. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to look at it much longer.

She hadn’t intended that to be because she was dead.

She felt herself falling. She supposed she should have said something to Daniel about that shadow she saw lurking in a scraggly bit of scrub oak behind him, but before she managed to open her mouth to say anything, she blinked and the shadow was gone. She frowned. Did figments of her frenzied imagination have lace at their wrists, or had Daniel woven a better spell than she’d given him credit for and she was now losing her mind as a precursor to losing her life?

She felt her head crack against her mother’s threshold with a sickening crunch before she could decide.

She felt darkness descend and knew no more.

S
arah dreamt that snow was falling. It wasn’t an unpleasant sort of dream, except for the chill, but it did nothing for her arm, which she could see was burning with a fire that no amount of snow could quench. The snow soon became bits of fire that fell onto her face. She opened her eyes, intending to brush the ashes aside, then came fully out of her dream with a squeak.

Ned stood over her with a dripping stewpot of something that he was apparently poised to upend onto her face.

She rolled out from under whatever spell her brother had cast over her—grateful he hadn’t managed to do her in completely—and staggered to her feet only to find that she couldn’t see for the stars that suddenly swirled around her head. She felt for something solid, found her mother’s house, then leaned against it heavily.

“Mistress Sarah, are you unwell?”

She didn’t bother to answer. She felt as if she’d spent a solid se’nnight eating vile, rotted things only to have them strike her down all at once and leave her too ill to even begin to retch. She couldn’t do anything but hold her hand over her eyes and pray that the scenery around her would cease spinning sooner rather than later.

She listened to Ned make little noises of distress for several minutes until she managed the question that concerned her most.

“Where’s Dan?”

“He took himself off toward the village awhiles back. Don’t know what he intended.”

Sarah knew exactly what her brother intended, but she didn’t bother to enlighten Ned. The only question left was how soon it would take the villagers to round up torches and pitchforks so they could come fetch her. Better to be off sooner than later. She turned and felt her way into her house to fetch her gear—

Only to walk into a marshy, reeking swamp of spells.

She looked in horror at the inside of her mother’s house. Evil coming from under her brother’s door had already covered most of the floor, slithered up three out of four walls, and crawled up the curtain that covered the nook where she slept. The only thing still untouched was her weaving, but the spells were gathering there as well. She supposed it was just a matter of time before they managed to overcome their revulsion of something beautiful to smother it along with the rest.

Daniel’s words came back to her with unpleasant clarity. She couldn’t imagine he had the power to do that, but she couldn’t deny that he’d certainly wreaked a fine bit of havoc in front of her. No doubt he’d been happy to add to that by stirring up trouble in the village. Perhaps the villagers were already on their way—

She turned away from the doorway and walked into an immovable object. She jumped back with a shriek, then realized it was merely Lord Higgleton standing there, smiling. Before she could ask him his business, he had enveloped her hand in his beefy paws and begun to shake it vigorously.

“I’m here to thankye, Mistress Sarah,” he said happily. “Already we’ve seen a great difference in the lass.”

“Oh,” Sarah said, feeling light-headed all over again. “How lovely.”

Lord Higgleton reached not for his rather substantial dagger tucked into his belt—it was Shettlestoune, after all, and even an alderman wasn’t above dispatching the odd vagrant or villain himself when necessary—but for his equally substantial purse. He opened it, fished about in it with a pudgy finger, then pulled the drawstrings shut. He handed the entire thing over with another smile.

“I would have thanked your brother on your behalf,” he said, “but he seemed particularly determined to closet himself with the constable and I didn’t want to disturb. Mage’s business, as you well know, is always carried on more successfully without unnecessary distractions.”

Heaven help her. “Indeed, it is,” she agreed. “And how long ago was it that you saw my brother about his goodly work?”

Lord Higgleton looked thoughtfully up at the sky. “An hour, perhaps, no longer. Shall I hasten back to the village and have him fetched for you?”

“Nay,” Sarah said, her mouth rather dry all of a sudden. “Nay, though I thank you for the thought. And I wish Prunella every success tonight.”

“Her mother is forcing her to wear perfume-scented gloves to keep her from chewing on her hands,” Lord Higgleton admitted, “but we have great hopes that she’ll keep her hair out of her mouth on her own.”

Sarah managed a smile, accepted another round of profuse thanks, then forced herself to wait until Lord Higgleton was out of sight before she pulled on the drawstrings of his purse and peered inside. There was less gold than silver, but when added to what his wife had already given her, it would be enough to see her over the mountains and well on her way to somewhere else. She would have indulged in a well-deserved swoon, but she didn’t have time. Perhaps later, when she was certain she would get out of Doìre without any other visitors. She silently wished Prunella Higgleton a very happy match and turned to her own plans.

Ned was peeking around the corner. She walked over to him and handed him two silver coins. It was likely more than she should have given him, but he had served her mother for years and stayed on quite happily after her passing. She could do no less.

“Thank you, Ned,” she said honestly, “for your service to me and my mother.”

He blinked in surprise. “What do ye mean, mistress?”

“I’m off on an adventure,” she said, putting on a confident smile.

“Mage’s business?” he asked, in hushed tones.

“Of course.” And that was true, especially if that business included being as far away from mages as possible. “I think I must be off on it posthaste. I’m sure your father will be glad to have you back.”

Ned didn’t look as if he thought so, but he went because she gave him a push to start him in the right direction, then another pair of them to keep him headed that way. He looked over his shoulder, once, then frowned in a baffled sort of way before he turned and shuffled off reluctantly toward home.

Sarah abandoned any hope of going inside the house for gear or waiting to weave a cloak. She would just make do with what she’d hidden away in the barn. If she hurried, she might manage to be deep in the mountains by sunset. She walked quickly around the house, then winced as she grazed her wrist accidentlly against the wall. She paused and looked down at the wound she’d earned in her brother’s bedchamber by touching that scorched book.

...
Dedtroy the world
...

She tried to laugh that off silently, but it suddenly didn’t seem very amusing. He couldn’t be serious.

Could he?

An unsettling feeling snuck up on her from behind, a little niggling something that suggested that she pay attention to what he’d said.

She considered, then shook her head. Daniel was seven kinds of fool and would destroy himself long before he managed to destroy anything else. She put her shoulders back, took a firmer grip on her rampaging imagination, and turned to the task at hand.

She walked swiftly into the trees, found a particular one, then turned and looked down at the ground as she counted the paces to the first of her hidden caches of gold.

Only to realize that no counting had been necessary.

She came to an abrupt halt and gaped at the hole at her feet. It had been neatly dug, she could say that much. Neatly and thoroughly and obviously quite carefully, for there was a pile of nettles laid tidily to one side. She dropped to her knees and reached down into the hole on the off chance that her eyes were deceiving her.

It was empty.

She would have said it was impossible, but she could see the pilfering of her funds was all too possible. She pushed herself up to her feet, then strode off to see if her next hiding spot had suffered the same fate. She looked, but she could hardly believe her eyes.

Obviously, the mushrooms hadn’t been deterrent to whomever had stolen her future.

A quick, furious search proved that every last bloody one of her stashes of gold had been discovered and plundered. Magic had obviously been brought to bear in a foul way.

She would have made a very long list of why magic vexed her and added this latest insult to the list, but she was too angry. She had gone to ridiculous lengths to make sure that her future had remained hidden. She had never talked about her plans with her mother or Ned—and certainly not her brother. She had never even hinted that she might want to live anywhere but where she lived. She likely should have left home at ten-and-five and chanced a village on the other side of the mountains, but she’d remained another ten very
long
years simply to make certain that when she left, she would leave with enough to begin a successful, respectable life somewhere else.

If someone else didn’t manage it first, she was going to find her brother—who she was certain was responsible for her loss—and kill him.

That, or perhaps she would slip up behind him, clunk him over the head, then tie him up until he could be delivered to some sort of mage-ish tribunal where they would surely sentence him to some sort of disgusting labor as punishment for his vile self simply drawing breath. She kicked a tidy pile of dirt back into its hole, then stomped out into the glade. She paused by her cauldron, saw the remains of her fire that had long since ceased to be of any use, then peered inside the pot. The contents were a vile, putrid sort of green.

Unsurprising.

She was revisiting the thought of going after her brother to do him bodily harm when she became distracted by a noise that wasn’t quite audible coming from her mother’s house. She looked up to see a thin stream of something coming out of the chimney, something that wasn’t smoke. As she watched, the house trembled for a moment or two, then with an enormous rumble, collapsed onto itself. Only part of one wall remained, the wall that supported the bulk of her mother’s bottles. There were a few of them left sitting on the windowsill, their colors rather pretty in the faint winter sunlight, all things considered.

She gaped at the ruin, then shut her mouth with a snap. Perhaps Daniel had more magic than she had supposed. And if that was the case, the farther away from him she was, the better. And the sooner she was about that, even with the pitiful coins she had in her hand currently, the safer she would be. She crossed the glade, then walked into the barn and whistled for her horse, fully expecting to see him poke his nose immediately over his stall door.