Dreamspinner (40 page)

“Thank you,” she said finally. She pulled away from him and attempted a smile. “Very kind.”

He smiled gravely, as if he were thinking things he simply couldn’t put into words, then reached out to tuck her shorn hair behind her ear. He met her gaze. “Does it bother you if I do that?”

She shook her head.

“Was it long?”

“Once,” she said with a shrug. “Not any longer.”

“It is still beautiful,” he said quietly. He took a deep breath, then clasped his hands behind his back. “You don’t have to go back there, you know. To wherever there is.”

She clutched that dreadful hope for the space of approximately four glorious heartbeats before she realized she had to let it go. “I think I must.”

He shook his head, then took her hand and pulled her over to sit down in one of the chairs placed by the doorway. He sat down next to her and looked at her seriously.

“I think you could safely ink
the reality of curses
in the back of that very rare book of myths Lord Nicholas gave you,” he said seriously. “And I would put that in the back simply because it’s far less possible than anything else you would read there.”

“But why would anyone lie about such a thing?” she asked in surprise.

“I don’t know,” he said frankly. “Why
would
someone lie about such a thing?”

She looked off at the fire across the room, glanced at the scenes of heroic battle painted with great care and no doubt at great expense on the walls, then looked back at Rùnach.

“Because they want to keep their people powerless,” she said slowly, “or because they have something they want to keep hidden.”

“Exactly.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. It was suddenly rather chilly. “I don’t understand why anyone would do either.”

“Neither do I,” he agreed, “but that doesn’t change the truth of it. There are many who have no greater wish than to cause harm to those around them, by whatever means.”

“Like Lothar?” she asked reluctantly.

“He is a good example of it,” Rùnach said. “And as for your situation, unless there is a spell laid upon your land that would have the power to follow you all over the Nine Kingdoms—” He looked at her, then shook his head again. “I don’t believe in curses.”

“And if it were a spell instead?”

“Then I think you would see it. Don’t you?”

She started to speak, then shook her head. She had spent too many years believing fully that she would pay a very dear and exact penalty if she spoke out of turn. She wanted to believe Rùnach was right, but she couldn’t bring herself to. After all, what did Bruadair have that anyone would want? There was no magic, no beauty, nothing but endless drudgery. She half wondered, when she allowed herself to wonder, if Sglaimir enjoyed any of his luxuries in that ugly, unrelentingly grey keep she had only ever seen the faintest glimpse of one day when she had been feeling particularly feisty and wandered a few streets from where she should have been.

She looked at him. “I cannot risk it.”

He smiled, as if he understood, then looked at her silently for a bit, as if he were trying to come to a decision. “What if you were to prove it to yourself? Which is, I believe, what you’ve been trying to do in various libraries.”

“There is that.”

“Then let’s make a bargain, you and I. We’ll start from opposite ends of the library below. Whoever reaches the middle first with all the answers wins a prize.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “And what would that be?”

“Your life,” he said succinctly, “and my sanity.” He stood and held down his hand. “Shall we?”

She put her hand in his and looked up at him. “You are a very kind man.”

“And as I’ve said before,” he said, pulling her to her feet, “you are easy to be kind to. Let’s be off, gel, and see what the bowels of Tor Neroche have to offer.”

“Will they allow us in?”

“We’ll put on our best scholarly miens,” he said cheerfully. “That worked out well the last time, didn’t it?”

She had to agree that it had. She took his arm, because he offered it, and walked with him out into the passageway.

And she hoped she would find what she needed.

T
hree hours later, she was tired, cross, and overwhelmed. She had stumbled to a halt initially just inside the library doors—they were a pair of doors that opened grandly, instead of a single one that opened normally—and spent a good five minutes simply trying to catch her breath.
Bowels
had been, she suspected, a deliberate misuse of the word, because whilst she and Rùnach had definitely descended steps to reach the library, they had not ended up in a dark, unpleasant little room. She had no idea how the king of Neroche—who she understood was in residence and sincerely hoped she wouldn’t encounter and have to make polite conversation with—had managed to make his library so gloriously full of light, but it was so. If the story of Queen Mehar was fact and not fiction, then the rulers of Neroche possessed magic. Given the marvels of the monarchy’s library, she had to concede that their magic might have certainly been on display in the bowels of the keep.

Unfortunately, her search had yielded absolutely nothing. The only mention she had found of Bruadair had been one made a score of years earlier when King Frèam had sat on the Council of Kings and contributed not a single word to the proceedings. Every single history she had read had contained nothing about Bruadair, not even the slightest mention. For all anyone knew, the country didn’t exist. If she hadn’t spent the first twenty-seven years of her life there, she might have begun to doubt as well.

Rùnach was sound asleep in a chair on the opposite end of the table from her. She rose, walked down to his end, then sat and looked at him.

She had no idea how old he was. He didn’t look much over a score-and-five, though she suspected he was older than that. His dark hair was the perfect foil for his fair skin. She was admittedly rather new at admiring exceptionally handsome men, but she supposed it didn’t take much practice to note the pleasing breadth of his shoulders or, well, anything else, for that matter. She put her elbows on the table, propped her chin on her fists, and looked until she thought she could consider herself quite properly dazzled.

And then she noticed a dimple appear suddenly in his cheek.

She kicked him under the table, because he deserved it, the lout. He opened his eyes and smiled.

“Flattering.”

“I was bored.”

He laughed softly and sat up, dragging his hands through his hair. “You are a cruel gel, Aisling. Let’s take ourselves out to the lists and you can vent your ire on a target instead of me. My heart is too tender to endure it.”

She would have said she doubted that, but she didn’t, actually.

He stacked his books in a tidy pile, then looked at her. “Find anything useful?”

“Not a thing.”

“Neither did I,” he admitted, “which is why a bit of time sticking arrows into targets that resemble my brother-in-law might bring us both pleasure.”

“What has he ever done to you?” she asked with a smile. “He’s a lovely man, and he quite obviously loves your sister.”

“Hence the problem,” Rùnach said with a snort, “though you realize I’m not serious. We’ll find something equally as interesting to use, I’m sure.”

She walked with him from the library and down passageways and hallways. And then she heard a sound. She put her hand out on Rùnach’s arm, stopped him, then turned and looked for the source of the noise. She left him standing there and made her way
back down the passageway, turning down a little hallway that terminated in a modest doorway in what she was sure was in a more obscure part of the castle.

She knocked, was invited to enter, then came to a teetering halt.

How so many windows had been fit into one wall, she couldn’t have said, though she was grateful for it. It made the riotous colors of wool piled in baskets beneath them all the more glorious. But that wasn’t what caught her attention.

It was the spinning wheel in the middle of the little room.

A woman sat there, spinning, singing to herself as she did so. Her hair was snowy white, her hands worn and wrinkled, but her eyes were a bright blue, as full of life as they had likely been when she’d been a girl.

“Ah, a fellow spinner,” she said, stopping her wheel and rising to come take Aisling’s hands. She turned them over, then frowned. “No stains, though, from freshly dyed wool. Perhaps you’ve been spinning other things of late, eh?”

Aisling heard a choking noise, but it wasn’t coming from her. It was coming from Rùnach, who was standing behind her. She turned to look at him, but he was simply standing there, looking rather winded. Aisling frowned briefly at him, then turned back to the old woman.

“I’ve never spun wool.”

“Then perhaps ’tis time you began.” The woman inclined her head. “I am Ceana. And you are Aisling.”

Aisling felt her mouth fall open. “How did you know?”

“I know many things,” Ceana said wisely, “though I rarely speak of them.” She made a sweeping gesture with her arm. “Please come in and make yourselves comfortable. I don’t often have company, so you are most welcome. What would you care to see?”

Aisling had no idea where to begin. She looked around the chamber, so full of light and color…then looked at the old woman helplessly. “I don’t know.”

“Why don’t we start with my showing you how to spin wool,
my dear.” She glanced at Rùnach. “You may come along as well, my lad, if you care to.”

Aisling wondered if Rùnach would refuse, but he simply nodded, clasped his hands behind his back, and followed along behind them as if he had nothing better to do with his afternoon.

For herself, she felt as if she had walked into some sort of earthly paradise where everything was like nothing she’d ever imagined before. She found herself taken in hand and shown where the wool was separated, picked, then carded into batts ready to spin into thread.

She frowned, knowing where that was going. “And then you must weave it?”

The old woman chortled happily. “Well, of course, gel. What else would you do with it?”

“I’m not fond of weaving,” Aisling said. If she was going to be in paradise, there was no reason to not be honest.

“Neither am I,” Mistress Ceana said promptly, “which is why I never tell anyone I can. I am a spinner, you see. What would those weavers have to work with if not for my art?” She paused. “I will knit, I’ll allow, if the wool is particularly fine and I have need. But I would far rather spin.”

Aisling almost smiled. “Do you choose the colors?”

“That art lies in a different room,” she said, taking Aisling by the arm. “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

Aisling looked over her shoulder. Rùnach was standing there, leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest, watching her with a small smile.

“Bring your lad, if you like,” Mistress Ceana added.

Aisling felt her cheeks grow hot. “He isn’t my lad.”

“Nay,” the woman said thoughtfully, “he’s a man, isn’t he? And a powerful handsome one. Come along then, young man, and try not to leave my workers swooning over your pretty face.”

Aisling looked at Rùnach quickly, but he was only smiling ruefully. He pulled the hood of his cloak over his head, but she suspected it wasn’t because of the fairness of his face. It grieved her,
she had to admit, that he felt the need to do that because of his scars.

She could have told him it was unnecessary.

She spent a very pleasant hour learning how to dye, how to choose what wool to blend together, what sort of sheep and goat produced what kind of substance, and what types of each Ceana thought most fine. Eventually she found herself back where she’d started. She stood next to Ceana’s wheel and looked at it.

“What are you spinning now?”

The woman put her hand on the flywheel. “The stuff of dreams, my gel. Wool so soft it will make the queen herself sigh in pleasure to wear it.”

Aisling nodded. She hadn’t touched a wheel since the one that rendered her senseless—

“I have another wheel,” Ceana said, “over there under the window. Be a good lad and fetch it for us, would you, young Rùnach? Aisling, my dear, pull up a stool here next to me. We’ll have a lesson, shall we?”

Aisling looked at Mistress Ceana in surprise. “How did you know his name?”

The old woman only smiled enigmatically.

Aisling looked at Rùnach, mute. He smiled briefly, fetched what was required, then set the wheel down in front of Aisling. She looked at it and felt a little as if she were staring death in the face.

She looked down at her feet, because that was what she was accustomed to doing.

“There’s a leader already tied, my dear. I’ll show you what to do with it.”

Aisling looked up and met Rùnach’s eyes. He was watching her steadily, as if he would have given her some of his own courage if he’d been able.

She kept her gaze locked with his, then reached out and touched the wheel.

And she breathed still.

She smiled.

Rùnach smiled in return, though his eyes were full of tears.

“Tenderhearted, is he?” Ceana said gently.

“Very,” Aisling agreed.

Rùnach smiled at her once more, a smile she understood completely, then turned to Ceana and made her a low bow. “I’ll leave my lady in your care, then, for an hour or so. Manly business, you know.”

“A trip to the larder, I imagine.”

Rùnach laughed. “Aye, I daresay. What might I bring back with me?”

“Enough for three, me lad,” Ceana said, sounding pleased. “Spinning is hungry work that requires the occasional infusion of delicate edibles. You’ll want to watch and admire, though, which is why we’ll need food for us all.”

“I’ll return posthaste.”

Aisling watched him turn and walk away. She realized Mistress Ceana had joined her in the activity. The old woman looked thoughtfully after Rùnach as he closed the door, then at Aisling.

“You know who he is, don’t you?”

“A soldier,” Aisling said, feeling a little startled, though she couldn’t deny that the more time she spent with Rùnach, the less she thought him simply a soldier. “I once thought he was a lord, but he claims he isn’t.” She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know and he won’t tell me.”