Dreamspinner (18 page)

“As you say.” He nodded toward the steps. “Shall we?”

“If we must.”

“Think on the delights awaiting you in the dining hall.”

She looked at him quickly, but he only smiled before he walked away. She supposed as long as he was there to intimidate the cook, she might manage to eat something that didn’t leave her retching. It had been the case this morning.

She wished the rest of the mysteries in her life could be solved as easily.

B
y the time the day had waned and she had eaten another less-
disgusting-than-usual meal, she was exhausted and profoundly
confused. Rùnach, however, seemed happy to spend a bit of time in Weger’s upper gathering hall. She didn’t want to argue, on the off chance Weger had decided upon a solution to her mercenary problem.

She soon found herself sitting on a bench near one of the bookcases with Rùnach on one side of her and Losh on the other. She would have been happy to speak further to Weger, but he was engaged in spirited conversation with a very rough-looking man. The truth was, most of the men gathered there were disreputable-looking, so she wasn’t sure she could ask Weger to recommend any of them. She considered, then leaned slightly closer to Rùnach.

“Are there any good men here?”

Rùnach leaned back against the books and folded his arms over his chest. “I suppose it all depends on what your definition of
good
is.”

“Not what I see there,” she said with feeling. “They all look so rough and…assassin-like.”

He looked at her, amused. “Have you known many assassins, Aisling?”

“I’ve read about them,” she said. She looked at him reluctantly. “I’ve led a somewhat sheltered life.”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve been out in the world of late much either, so perhaps we are not so different.”

“What have you been doing?”

He seemed to consider what he should say. “I was a servant of sorts,” he said slowly, “to a man who was a very great friend of my mother’s. I needed a refuge from events I could not control and he was good enough to provide that for me.” He shrugged. “I had the run of a very large library, so in return for that I was quite willing to pour his wine for him.”

“A library,” she breathed.

He turned slightly to look at her. “Have you never seen one?”

“Only Weger’s,” she admitted, “though I was made loans of books from a woman who owned perhaps a score of them. I borrowed them one at a time, you know, because they were precious to her.”

He studied her. “Why did you come here?”

She took a careful breath, then looked at him. “I have been sent on an errand.”

“Have you?”

“Aye.” She considered. She started to speak, then realized Weger was standing in front of her. She rose to her feet because Rùnach was on his.

Weger smiled unpleasantly. “I’m still thinking on your problem,” he said. “You need someone rough, uncouth, always ready for a nasty adventure.” He leaned in closer. “And you’ll need someone willing to work for hobnails, eh? That’ll be a challenge.”

Aisling had to agree about the price, but before she could ask if he’d found such a lad he had sauntered away, whistling.

“We should both be abed,” Rùnach was saying. “Work begins at dawn.”

Aisling hadn’t seen dawn and didn’t imagine Gobhann experienced dawn, but she wasn’t going to argue.

He smiled briefly. “Things will look better in the morning.”

She would have said that wasn’t possible, but she had hope for the first time that she might actually go to bed, then wake to see the sunrise.

And if she did, perhaps she would manage to figure out why.

T
wo days later, Rùnach stood in Weger’s upper courtyard, trying to decide it if was more work to run the stairs endlessly or keep Weger’s twelfth most proficient student—something Weger had informed him that morning with a smirk—at bay. He found himself with a bit more time than expected to think about things that puzzled him when his opponent unexpectedly held up his hand for a bit of a rest. He propped his sword up on his shoulder and happily allowed himself the pleasure of just breathing deeply without having to push himself past what he could bear.

Aisling was looking for an assassin?

He had watched her—occasionally, when he had reached the top of the endless stairs and was preparing to descend them again—training with Weger over the past two days. Apparently Gobhann’s lord had decided that if the woman couldn’t wield a sword, she could at least poke her finger into an assailant’s eye and do some damage. Rùnach had serious doubts she would manage even that, but he’d always been too winded to argue.

None of which answered the question of why she had left her home, why she would ever have thought that coming inside Gobhann to look for a mercenary could possibly be a good idea, or why she seemed to greet each day in utter surprise that she was alive to do so.

His training partner made a strangled sound of horror. Rùnach looked at him in surprise, then turned and looked where the man was pointing with his sword.

And then he understood the sound.

He was halfway across the courtyard before he realized that he likely should have covered his face.

Lothar of Wychweald stood five paces away from where Aisling was staring off into the distance, as if she saw things no one else could. Lothar looked rather rumpled, as if he’d recently been in a bit of a tussle, perhaps with his guards. He smoothed his hand down the front of his tunic, then he glanced at Rùnach. He looked away, then swung his gaze back. His mouth fell open.

Rùnach knew he shouldn’t have even looked in Aisling’s direction, but he was fool enough to rush toward her. He saw the thought that she might mean anything at all to him cross Lothar’s face, followed immediately by calculation, then a decision.

Time slowed to a crawl. Lothar pulled the knife from Losh’s belt, gave him a hearty shove, then jerked Aisling in front of him. Rùnach leapt forward, but not before he watched Aisling flinch, hard. Lothar smiled, but Rùnach was less concerned with that than he was with the way Aisling was gasping, though that likely had quite a bit to do with the point of the knife that was protruding from her chest. Rùnach flung himself forward and skidded to a halt in front of her in time to catch her as she fell forward.

He turned her sideways so he didn’t bump the blade either going into her or coming out of her. He wondered how he might pull the blade free and stab his father’s nemesis standing there without wounding Aisling further.

“I am agog,” Lothar said with obvious mock surprise. “Fancy meeting someone here who I was just certain was dead.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” Rùnach said evenly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lothar said, smiling pleasantly, “I recently had your brother, Acair, as a guest in my hall and heard all kinds of things in return for, well, I think it was for something I neglected to give him.” He shrugged. “A bit naughty of me, I suppose, as is what I’ve done to your little friend here—”

He didn’t manage to finish, but that was likely because he’d just enjoyed the feeling of his descendant’s fist under his jaw. His head snapped back and he crashed to the ground. Rùnach listened to Weger bark out orders for Lothar to be bound, gagged, and locked in his chamber below. He snarled out a few dire threats for whomever had been fool enough to allow the blackguard out of his prison, which Rùnach heartily seconded.

Weger turned to Rùnach. “I don’t think we can take her anywhere with this in her flesh.”

Rùnach found that his arms were shaking. “Can she be healed?”

“Aye.”

“Then do what you must.”

Weger’s face was absolutely expressionless. He put his hand on Aisling’s back and pulled the knife free without further comment.

Rùnach felt Aisling sag in his arms, which he supposed was a mercy for her. All he could do was hope she wouldn’t bleed to death before something could be done.

“Clear the courtyard,” Weger bellowed.

Men scattered as if a strong wind had blown them to the four quarters. Weger looked at Rùnach.

“Follow me. Bring her.”

Rùnach didn’t argue. He picked Aisling up in his arms, again shocked at how little there was to her. She was actually rather tall, but she was so terribly thin, as if she had spent her life not eating very well. Yet another thing to add to the list of mysteries that swirled around her.

He followed Weger across the courtyard and through a gate he hadn’t noticed before. It led to another courtyard of sorts, though Rùnach couldn’t begin to guess the purpose for that. He continued
along behind Weger until he realized that the only thing before him was the sheer face of a mountain. Cut into the side of that mountain was a set of stairs. He looked at them, then at Weger.

“You can’t mean me to climb these,” he said in disbelief. “Not with this girl in my arms.”

“Shall I put her on your back?”

“I think moving her at all is an extraordinarily poor idea—”

“I don’t care what you think,” Weger said shortly. “Don’t fall off. I can’t save you.”

Rùnach balked. “But—”

“If you want her to die, keep talking,” Weger snarled. “If not, follow me.”

Rùnach settled Aisling more securely in his arms, made the decision to ignore the wind blowing a gale, and followed Weger. Because for some reason he couldn’t divine, he didn’t want the girl in his arms to die when he could be a means of saving her.

He decided once he’d reached the top that he would never think about the journey there again. He was no coward, but the route had been heart-stopping. He’d lost count of the times he had slipped and barely caught himself before plunging to his death, taking Aisling with him. He had also been acutely aware that every breath Aisling took became shallower. Perhaps that wasn’t her blood dripping down his arm, but then again, perhaps it was.

His need for haste coupled with the terrible wind had left him resorting finally to cursing his father for having taken what might have aided him. He could have carried Aisling out the front gates, healed her right there in the mud, then come back inside within the same quarter hour.

Instead, there he was with a bitter wind lashing him, the woman in his arms dying, and no recourse but to follow a madman who for some unknown reason thought climbing the side of a mountain was going to do something for any of them.

Before he could think too long on that, or find his breath to shout a question about it, they had reached the top of the staircase. Weger fitted a key to a lock, then pushed open a door. Rùnach walked inside, surprised to find the chamber lit by torchlight, but
dismissed that in favor of laying Aisling down on a pallet in the middle of the chamber. He stepped over her, then knelt by her side. The sleeve of his tunic was indeed drenched in blood, as was she. She was as still as death, which didn’t surprise him. If she survived it would be a miracle. The sooner she was seen to the better.

He looked around himself, then up at Weger. “Where is your surgeon?”

Weger shook his head. “He’s useless.”

Rùnach didn’t consider himself particularly dull, but he had to admit he was baffled. “Then what now?”

“What do you mean,
what now
?” Weger echoed in disbelief. “Do what is necessary! Bloody hell, man, must I instruct you in every bloody step? Take your mighty magic and heal her!”

Rùnach blinked. “What in the world are you talking about?”

Weger threw up his hands in frustration. “Heal her, you fool! Use Fadaire or whatever elvish rot comes first to mind.”

“But—”

“Have you lost all sense?” Weger demanded incredulously. “Surely you haven’t been so long out of the world that you can’t recognize when you have your magic back. It will work here in this chamber, I guarantee it.”

Rùnach gaped at his host. “But I have no magic.”

“Of course you have magic—” Weger stopped suddenly and his mouth fell open. “You
what
?”

“I have no magic,” Rùnach said, through gritted teeth. “My father took it all at the well.”

Weger looked quite suddenly as if he would have liked to have sat down. “Bloody hell,” he said faintly. He sagged back against the door. “I had no idea.”

“You didn’t ask.”

Weger rubbed his hands over his face and indulged in a selection of very vile curses. “Damn it,” he said, finally. He looked at Rùnach. “What are we to do now?”

“Well, if magic will work here,” Rùnach said, “why don’t you use yours?”

Weger folded his arms over his chest. “I haven’t used a word of magic in over three hundred years.”

“No time like the present to dust it off then, is there?”

Weger hesitated. Rùnach suspected it was the first time in those same three centuries he’d done so. He considered, then looked at Rùnach.

“I could,” he said, sounding as if the words had been dragged from him by a thousand irresistible spells, “but I have no elegant magic.”

Rùnach shrugged. “Then use Wexham.”

“It will leave a scar.”

“I don’t think she’ll care.”

“It will leave a very large, ugly scar,” Weger amended.

“Then use Camanaë or Fadaire,” Rùnach suggested.