Dreamspinner (28 page)

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“Good,” she said shortly. “And I suggest you don’t get in my way.”

He held up his hands slowly but said nothing.

She would have pushed past him and been on her way, but the truth was, she had no idea where to push past
to
.

“Might I help you find this something you’re looking for?” he asked.

She wished she could stop biting her tongue, but in truth it was
more difficult than she would have thought it not to speak her mind. She who had kept her mouth shut for so long. The difficulty was trying to describe what she needed without
revealing
what she needed.

“I am looking for tales of, well, tales that aren’t of your usual sort. I’m not sure what to call them.”

“What do these tales contain?”

“I need tales about, ah, well, perhaps elves, dragons, dwarves, that sort of thing.” She looked at him. “You know. Myths.”

He blinked. “Myths?”

“Well, of course myths,” she said in surprise. “You don’t believe in faery tales any longer, do you?”

“Well—”

“Creatures from myth such as I’ve listed,” she said, wishing he would stop looking at her as if she had suddenly sprouted faery wings herself. “If possible.”

He started to speak, then shut his mouth. He seemed to be wrestling with something. Perhaps he was accustomed to dealing with more soldierly and less wondrous subjects. Perhaps he feared he would not be able to aid her.

“Do you know how to find things in a library?” she asked gingerly. “I don’t mean to put you on the spot, as it were.”

He smiled, though she couldn’t account for why. Perhaps he merely found everything that didn’t find itself inside Gobhann to be humorous.

“I think I might be able to at least find you the proper section. After that, you’re on your own.”

She supposed it was a place to start. She trailed after Rùnach as he wandered through the stacks of books, selecting a handful of tomes that he carried back to a well-worn table for her. He set them down, then looked at her.

“Anything else?” he whispered.

She considered. “Is there anything, do you think, about the histories of the Nine Kingdoms?” She had no idea if Bruadair was considered part of the Nine Kingdoms or not, being such a secretive place, but she supposed it didn’t hurt to ask.

“I’ll find something, then leave you to your reading, shall I?”

She nodded, then watched him walk away. When she could no longer see him, she reached for the topmost book and opened it to read the first page:
Famous Elves, Dwarves, and Dragons of Legend.

That seemed a promising enough place to start. She only hoped she could make her way through the thing without making so many noises of disbelief that Master Dominicus threw her out of the library.

L
ater, and she wasn’t sure how long that later was, she decided she had read enough. In spite of her brush with the Heroes of legend in that much coveted book of Mistress Muinear’s, she could at least say those lads had been real. She had spent the day reading about things she couldn’t possibly believe, elven creatures that lived in enchanted forests where flowers whispered and trees sang, dwarves that mined in stone that spoke their names and murmured their tales of glory and riches, dragons that turned themselves into horses and horses that turned themselves into dragons.

Ridiculous.

She reached finally for a history of the Nine Kingdoms that Rùnach had found for her. She opened it and looked at its contents. There were chapters involving all manner of locales she’d read about in other places. There would be, she could only hope, time enough in her future to peruse histories that might have less to do with otherworldly creatures and more to do with wars and monarchs. She blinked when she realized that one place seemed to have been blacked out in the list. It lay in the vicinity of both An-uallach and Cothromaiche…

She flipped back through the pages and found that a certain number of them—three, to be exact—had been torn from the book.

“Find anything interesting?”

Aisling shut the book with a snap, then put her hand over the cover. “Nothing,” she said promptly. She looked at Rùnach and realized he was sitting around the corner of the table from her, reading something that was propped up against his knee, which
was propped up against the table. He looked perfectly at ease, something she couldn’t say for herself. She also had no idea how long he’d been there. “Nothing interesting,” she clarified, “though I appreciate your aid.”

He only lifted his eyebrows briefly.

“Have you been there long?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not very. I actually just came back to see if you might want something to eat.”

“Luncheon?”

“Dinner, actually. Lord Nicholas has invited us to join him in his solar. It will require, from what I understand, having the chamber infiltrated by orphaned lads at some point, but perhaps we will have finished our meal before then. Apparently the lads here have an uncommon fondness for tales of elves and their ilk.”

“Is that wise?” Aisling asked seriously. “Filling their heads with rubbish of that sort?”

“Rubbish?” Rùnach echoed faintly.

She shrugged helplessly. “I think perhaps it might give them an unrealistic view of the world as it is.” She paused. “Then again, I read more than I should have in my youth about Heroes and such.”

He shut his book and looked at her with interest. “Did you? Care to enlighten me?”

“Don’t you know any of those tales?”

“I fear that in my youth I was fed a steady diet of mythical characters engaging in mythical adventures, so my knowledge is sorely lacking about things of a more heroic nature.”

She frowned at him. If she hadn’t known better, she might have suspected he was poking fun at her. She frowned a bit more.

“Are you making sport of me again?”

He smiled. “Not at all. I’m curious.” He set his book on the table. “Shall we walk whilst you’re telling me about these lads and lassies?”

She supposed there was no sense in earning any more dark looks from Master Dominicus than necessary. He was obviously very particular about the conduct going on in his domain. She nodded to him, then walked with Rùnach out of the library and up the stairs.

“Where to?” she asked.

“The shore?” he suggested. “It isn’t far and I have a cloak here for you. We could be there and back in less than an hour, well in time for a tasty supper.”

“The shore,” she repeated. “The seashore?”

“The very same.”

She had never seen the shore before, nor the sea really, save what she’d seen of it aboard Captain Burke’s ship and in the courtyard of Gobhann. She agreed readily, accepted a cloak that was certainly not the one she’d worn at Gobhann, then walked with him along passageways and to a heavy gate set in the wall. She wondered why a university would need such a substantial entrance.

“Lord Nicholas is careful with his students, then,” she mused.

“He takes in orphan lads, as well,” Rùnach said, “and he’s careful with all who come inside his gates.” He had a quiet word with the gate guard there, then the gate was unlocked and held open for them to go through.

Aisling found the path rocky enough that she had to watch her feet, not that she likely would have seen anything anyway. It was very foggy and rather rainy, actually, though she wasn’t inclined to turn back and Rùnach didn’t seem bothered by the weather.

“Are there any other libraries of note in the world?” she asked, because those three missing pages in that book bothered her. She didn’t suppose it was possible that she might find the same book elsewhere, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

“Chagailt,” he said with a shrug, then turned back to watching the path. “I suppose there are books enough at Tor Neroche. There is a very useful library in Beinn òrain.”

“Beinn òrain?”

He stopped then, and turned to look at her. “Have you never heard of it?”

She shook her head helplessly. “Never. What’s there?”

“It is a city in the east that hosts the schools of wizardry.”

She would have smiled, or chided him about his imagination running off with him, but it was clear to her that he was perfectly serious. She hesitated, then reached out to put her hand on his arm. “Rùnach,” she said as gently as she could manage, “I’m sorry
to tell you the truth, but there is no such thing as wizards, or magic, or other creatures from myth. I have no idea what they purport to teach there at that school, but it can’t be magic.”

He blinked a time or two, then he smiled gravely. “As you say.” He tilted his head to one side. “Let’s carry on, shall we?”

He had taken that well, which reassured her about his ability to listen to hard things and accept them. She could only hope she had that same skill.

It occurred to her, with a startling flash of something that didn’t set well, that Weger had spent an inordinate amount of time during the apparent composition of his strictures talking about mages and how to either avoid them or rid the world of their pestilence, but perhaps that was a euphemism for something else.

“There is also, of course, the great library at Eòlas,” Rùnach continued.

“Where?”

“Eòlas,” he repeated. “The city itself is in Diarmailt, which used to be its own country but now is part of Wychweald, or so I understand. Eòlas was once a very great seat of learning. The library there is immense.”

“Have you been there?” she asked in surprise. “I mean, you being a soldier of fortune and all that.”

“Even a soldier needs to read now and again.”

“Where are you from?” she asked without thinking.

“I was born in the mountains,” he said with a shrug. “The place doesn’t matter.”

“Do you have siblings?”

“Yes, several. Not all are still living.” He smiled faintly. “You are full of questions this afternoon.”

“The library was a bad influence on me.”

He smiled briefly. “And I believe that was three questions you asked me, which leaves me with three of my own.”

“That was two.”

“I don’t count very well.”

“I think you count very well,” she said grimly.

He only smiled again. “I’ll contemplate which answers I’ll have and let you know.”

She thought she just might be dreading them, but she couldn’t bring herself to say as much. She continued to walk with Rùnach along flat ground that was rather softer and less manageable than what she was accustomed to.

“Have you ever seen the sea before?” he asked.

“On the ship,” she said, watching her feet. “But that was only a brief glimpse before I spent the rest of the time hiding in the captain’s cabin. And then I didn’t have much of an opportunity when we docked in Sgioba.” She paused. “I don’t remember much about Sgioba, actually.”

He paused, then turned and looked at her. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more for you. I didn’t realize then that you weren’t a lad.”

“My disguise was so good, then?” she asked lightly.

“Nay, I am so stupid,” he said with a smile. He held out his hand for hers. “Come with me, but keep your eyes closed. I think the sun has cleared away the fog closer to the water. You’ll have a better view of things there.”

She put her hand into his, then closed her eyes. She followed him until he stopped, then felt him squeeze her hand. She looked.

And she lost her breath.

Nay, she lost her soul, or who she had been up until that point. She moved past Rùnach and continued on until she could go no further without walking out into the sea itself.

Rùnach had been right. Whatever fog there had been was apparently limited only to the university and the path leading up to it. From where she stood, the sun was shining, sparkling on the water in front of her, sparkling on the endlessly rolling waves. The roar was almost deafening. She put her hands to her ears for a moment or two, then pulled them away slowly. The roar was no less, but she expected it that time so it wasn’t as startling.

She stood there, the waves lapping every now and again at the toes of her boots, and felt tears streaming down her face. She remembered after a bit that she wasn’t alone, though she wasn’t sure how she could have forgotten. She looked to her left to find
Rùnach standing there. He was watching her, his green eyes full of something she couldn’t quite name. Pity, perhaps. Kindness, definitely.

“You
haven’t
seen the shore before, have you?” he asked gently.

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything before.”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “Are you going to tell me any more than that?”

I cannot
was almost out of her mouth before she stopped herself, because perhaps it wasn’t exactly the case. She was still breathing, which considering all the things she had done that she had been forbidden to said quite a bit. She looked at him.

“Have you ever seen the sea before?” she asked.

He smiled. “A time or two. Not as often as I would have liked, but a time or two.”

“What was your home like?” she asked.

“That’s two questions.”

“You look distracted.”

He smiled and a dimple peeked out at her from his unscarred cheek. “You are more devious than I give you credit for being. I am keeping a tally, you know, of all the questions I answer. I’ll expect a like number of answers from you.”

She stared at him for a moment or two. It was difficult not to sneak looks at the sea, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“Why?” she asked, finally.

“Because you are a mystery.”

“And do you care for a mystery?”

“I am obsessed by a good mystery,” he said frankly. “Reason enough to pry a few answers out of you however I’m able.”

“And what if I’m not inclined to give them?” she asked, her mouth suddenly dry. She had to take a deep breath, then another, and remind herself that she lived still. She had not been struck down by touching a wheel, had not died after less than a month because she hadn’t found a swordsman, and likely wouldn’t die in another few days’ time when her third fortnight ended.

“Then I’ll wonder about you silently.”

“In truth?” she asked, surprised.

He smiled, looking a little surprised himself. “What else would I do? Beat the answers from you?”