Forging the Runes

by Josepha Sherman

  But Ardagh held up a thoughtful hand. "I have an uneasy little suspicion that it's not going to be quite so simple."

  The mercenary groaned. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

  "Cadwal, do me this favor, if you would. When you go out there to reassure Egbert as to the state of my health, look around a bit. Talk with them. You can wander more freely among the ordinary folk than"—his wave of a hand took in his exotic appearance—"could I."

  "Right," Cadwal muttered. "I could. Even if they are Saesneg. All right, man—Prince Ardagh, I mean—don't look at me like that. I'll behave myself."

  "I'm delighted. Go out there, if you would. See if you can't find out for us just who it was who actually put the king on his throne."

  He saw alarm spark in Cadwal's eyes. "You think it's our sorcerer."

  The prince nodded. "See if I'm not right."

  He waited, wondering if he should contact Sorcha. Ae, Powers, Sorcha . . . miss you, my love, I miss you more than I ever would have believed I could miss another.

  But what could he say to her? Tell her about Osmod? In the Sidhe Realm, there wouldn't be a question—but then, in the Sidhe Realm no one would be bothered by the thought of magic. Ae, Powers, what would a human do? Never tell her the whole truth, not if what he'd seen of folk in Fremainn was accurate: They protected their loved ones from needless worries.

  Exactly that. She was human; he would try human ways. And at any rate, why should he burden her with new worries? That would be nothing but selfishness.

  That made the prince sit hack in surprise. Concern about others, worry about others—he had come far and far again from his homeland! And just now yet another reminder of that fact was not exactly soothing. Ardagh determinedly set about banishing such thoughts, calming his mind with Sidhe disciplines . . . calming . . . till at last time meant nothing. . . .

  He came back to himself with a start at Cadwal's wary cough. Stretching, the prince asked, "Well?"

  "First of all, Egbert finally did accept my story and sends his sympathies: you are still to meet with him tomorrow, but are excused from all festivities till you feel rested."

  "Good enough. And the second point?"

  "Och, well, you were right. There's not a soul not willing to tell the heroic tale of how Ealdorman Osmod braved the terrible winter seas to bring the king safe to his throne, and how the seas most miraculously turned calm."

  "Miraculously." Ardagh put a world of sarcasm behind the word. "A hero. Possibly one claiming heavenly aid. And well placed at court."

  "Wonderful, isn't it?" Cadwal asked dryly. "Means Egbert's going to trust him, too, or as near to trust as a king's going to come."

  "Wait. There's yet another problem."

  "Iesu. Now what?"

  Searching for an easy way to describe a magical concept in an awkwardly unmagical human language, Ardagh asked, "Have you ever seen how the drualas, the . . . I think they call it mistletoe here—"

  "Yes."

  "Have you ever seen how delicately it insinuates itself into the host tree, till it's virtually unremovable?"

  "Save by a blade," flatly. "But we can hardly use a blade on an ealdorman." Cadwal paused, eyes widening slightly. "Is that what you think Osmod's done with the king's mind? Woven his sly way into Egbert's will? Is that possible?"

  There was a hint of panic behind that cry. "In my Realm, yes," Ardagh told him. "In this one, it's just barely less rare than a man taking wing and flying off. You needn't worry that Osmod can seize your mind from you. Besides," the prince added thoughtfully, "even if such things had been possible here, I would certainly have sensed any major tampering with the king's will. No. Osmod could never get a firm enough grip to truly affect Egbert's judgment."

  "How frustrating for him."

  "Ah, but what he can do, even with this Realm's limited Power, is heighten those opinions Egbert may already possess."

  "Damnio."

  "Well put. This means that convincing him of anything he and Osmod don't like is going to be twice as difficult."

  "Osmod can sense your . . . uh . . . your magic, too?"

  "Definitely."

  "Things keep getting better and better. That means he's going to see you as a rival? Maybe even an enemy?"

  "Probably. Why, Cadwal," Ardagh added with a sardonic little smile, "don't look so stricken! Think of the challenge!"

  The mercenary snorted. "I'd rather think of us safely back in Eriu, if it's all the same to you."

  Ardagh, about to give some offhanded quip, sighed. "So would I," he admitted softly. "Believe me, so would I."

  Osmod sat amid the storm of confusion that had followed in the foreign envoy's sudden leaving and struggled with his mind and will. Damnation! Why in the name of all the Darkness had he drunk so much? Had he been that stupidly confident of his dominance over the foreign magician? How much could Prince Ardagh have learned from him?

  Never mind. What was done, was done. And hopefully no harm to it.

  But, damn and damn again, if only he had the time and solitude to use the runes to clear his head—

  "Osmod."

  The ealdorman glanced up, then shot to his feet. "King Egbert. Ah, how is the foreign envoy?"

  Egbert sank into his chair amid the wreckage of dinner, brusquely waving away would-be helpful servants. "Leave us, all of you! Not you, Osmod." His fingers steepled, his blue eyes thoughtful, the king said, "Prince Ardagh was, or so his rough-hewn Cymreig bodyguard assures me, merely overcome by fatigue. Do you believe that?"

  "It is a long journey from Eriu to here. Even with pauses along the way."

  Egbert snorted. "In other words, you don't. What were you saying to him, Osmod? What was going on between you two?"

  "Why, my liege! Surely you could hear us?"

  "Surely you can pretend I could not. What were you discussing?"

  Osmod forced an innocent little smile onto his face.

  "Nothing outlandish! There really wasn't much at all. Oh yes, I admit, I did play with words a bit, testing his wit a little. He is quite a clever man, King Egbert."

  "And I am not a fool. Were you deliberately baiting him?"

  How would Egbert want this answered? Osmod hesitated over it only a moment, then said honestly, "Yes."

  "Yes!"

  "But only as a precaution. A royal envoy, particularly one who actually is royal, is going to be so well schooled in smooth, politic words that the truth behind that diplomatic wall will be difficult to learn."

  "And so you decided to see if he could be shaken. For the good of the realm, of course."

  "My liege, please don't forget that the good fortune of the realm is my good fortune as well."

  "Cleverly put. And," Egbert added, holding up a warning hand, "possibly just a little too glib."

  "My liege!" Osmod put just the smallest amount of will into the words, stressing, "I am loyal to you, loyal, always loyal.

  Did it work? "I'm not accusing you," Egbert said after a pause that was disconcertingly long. "I know you are loyal to me, always loyal. As long as it suits you. And no, don't argue. I know exactly how much I owe to you. And you must admit I haven't been ungrateful."

  "You've been most generous, my liege."

  "Stop being so unctuous, Osmod. I'm not angry at you. In fact, I rather approve of what you've done, if not quite when you chose to do it. As for that 'when' . . . tomorrow, see what you can do during our meeting with Eriu's emissary. See if he can, indeed, be shaken."

  "It will be," Osmod said with utter sincerity, "a pleasure."

  He bowed almost to the floor to hide his smile.

  Dreams and Nightmares

  Chapter 14

  The hour was late, late enough, Ardagh hoped, for most of the humans in the royal enclosure to be asleep.

  Cadwal definitely was, lying there on his pallet, hand near sword hilt even in sleep; Ardagh suspected that the mercenary could spring into full wakefulness as quickly as a predator. The prince stepped soundlessly and carefully ov
er the gently snoring man, then paused for an instant, bemused all over again by the phenomenon of snoring: yet another difference between his people and humanity.

  I wonder, does Sorcha—

  No, no, dangerous subject, Sorcha asleep close enough to him for him to learn—no! Blocking that chain of thought from his mind, the prince slipped carefully down the ladder, avoiding creaking wood as best he could, to the ground floor and past the rest of his slumbering—and yes, he thought with a touch of humor, snoring—entourage out into the night.

  Ae, chilly out here.

  He stopped to get his bearings, hearing faint sounds of humanity at rest, the occasional quickly stifled laugh or brief snatch of conversation, smelling hints of wood smoke and earth and less pleasant aromas. The royal enclosure was almost totally without light. All cooking fires would be banked by now, but the occasional flicker of a torch indicated a guard on duty. Ardagh glanced up. The moon was the smallest silver sliver up there in a slightly overcast sky, but Sidhe night-vision hardly needed much light.

  The quiet was wonderfully welcome. As Cadwal had predicted, that sudden flight from the royal hall had brought about a visit from the royal physicians, a busy, chattering lot, but Ardagh had finally managed to shoo them away. They'd left convinced, as far as he could tell, that the foreign envoy was nothing worse than weary.

  Weary of humanity, that's for certain.

  But he was not likely to be disturbed again, certainly not at this late hour. The night was his.

  The prince turned sharply, suddenly alert. Yes. There was the feel of sorcery that could only mean Osmod. Ardagh grinned as sharply as a wolf and moved silently out into the night, warily keeping to the darkest corners just in case some guard should decide to patrol. Memories of stalking another sorcerer, the false Bishop Gervinus, stirred, and the prince's grin thinned. He had spent all too many sleepless nights tracking that one, trying to prove to himself as well as to others that Gervinus's wall of piety was a sham, that behind it lurked Darkness.

  But Gervinus was dead, sent—if the Christians were right—shrieking to Hell and the devils with which he'd toyed. And Gervinus, after all, had borne not one scrap of innate magic, which had made proving his sorcery so ridiculously difficult since there was no way to sense what wasn't there. Osmod . . . Osmod was another matter. Ardagh wasn't sure exactly what he'd be able to learn without alerting the sorcerer to his presence. But, as the Sidhe saying went, all knowledge was, eventually, useful.

  Even if not always in the fashion that one expected.

  Osmod sat cross-legged on the floor of his bedchamber before a clean white cloth, alone in flickering candlelight, the room Warded against eavesdroppers, sat holding a handful of runes and with eyes shut, calming his mind. Or, he corrected wryly, opening his eyes again, trying to calm it. None of the disciplines seemed to be working tonight; no matter what he did, his thoughts insisted on returning to the foreign envoy, to Prince Ardagh of the eerie eyes and quick wit. And the alarming sense of Power.

  With a sudden convulsive jerk of his hand, Osmod let the runes fall, then snatched up a rune at random, hunting an omen.

  Oh, an omen, indeed. By the flickering light, he saw that what he held was Thorn, the most perilous rune of the lot. Osmod closed his hand about it, wondering. There was great Power in this sigil, battle-Power to strike down an enemy. But it, being a singularly treacherous thing, could just as easily strike down the wielder as well.

  Still, he thought with a little stab of anger, it might be worth the risk—

  Bah, nonsense. Why should I endanger myself over that . . . foreigner? There are safer ways to destroy him if it comes to that.

  And why bother destroying him at all? Why feel this burning need to do so? Osmod frowned, puzzled at himself, then gathered up the runes. Enough of this nonsense. He'd try a formal divination, as formal as could be worked indoors, and see what he could learn—or at least what the tricky runes would deign to tell him—about the prince. Maybe that, Osmod thought with a touch of wry self-humor, would set his mind at ease.

  Maybe.

  And then again, maybe not. The runes specifically dealing with Prince Ardagh were telling him plainly Eoh, Yew, meaning that the prince was amazingly strong and long of life.

  Not exactly what I wanted to see.

  Ac and Asc, Oak and Ash, honor and perseverance.

  Yew, Oak and Ash—bah. Yes, and the prince's past was, at least as far as the runes were insisting, full of an eerie, exotic strangeness—Osmod hissed in disgust. This wasn't the reading for a human, it was something more suited to one of the elf-folk out of the old pagan days!

  No. No more of this foolishness. All it probably meant was simply that Prince Ardagh, being from far Cathay, was just too strange for the runes to read with any accuracy.

  Egbert, now . . . ah, there was another matter. Osmod settled himself amid the scattered runes, hunting the ones he sought, turning them as he wished them, Rad, yes, upright and Oss, inverted . . . self-control and dominance brought together. Ah yes, this was far more practical than wasting time and emotion trying to read that foreigner.

  With the most delicate care, Osmod tied the two runesticks round with a small strand of stolen golden hair, Egbert's hair, in a symbolic binding—the part representing the whole—and willed, I, the ruler, he the vassal, I the master, he the slave, just as he'd been doing every night for what seemed an eternity. It was agonizingly slow work, reminding him of the old tale of the sparrow wearing away the stone by each day dropping one drop of water on it. But it was working, surely it was. Egbert's will was far, far stronger than ever that of the late Beortric had been, but even he could not resist magic's force forever. And lately there had been definite signs of his softening to Osmod s wishes, signs that had to be more than merely a king agreeing with a reasonably trusted subject who—

  Osmod straightened with a startled hiss, clutching the runes convulsively. What—who—someone had been spying on him!

  Impossible! The room is Warded!

  He scrambled to his feet, hunting witnesses. . . .

  No one. The Wards still held. The servants were all asleep downstairs, and it was impossible for anyone else to have stolen in here.

  No one? With a curse, Osmod rushed to the chamber's one window, cast open the shutters.

  There in the night, barely visible, stood a tall figure, green eyes glowing in the darkness like those of some uncanny cat.

  "Prince Ardagh," Osmod heard himself hiss.

  As though he'd heard, the prince turned smoothly and vanished into the night.

  What has he seen?

  No, ridiculous. No one could see into a shuttered room, not even with the one candle casting its little glow, no one . . . human.

  "Oh, you idiot!" Osmod snarled at himself. Of course the prince was human; no matter what the runes had hinted, what else could he be? And there was no possible way for a man, even one with those uncanny eyes, to have seen anything.

  But the worry continued unabated: What does he know? What, oh, what does he plan to do?

  "And what," Osmod wondered aloud, "shall I do to block him?"

  What, Ardagh wondered, had Osmod been about? Some manner of magic, no doubt about that. He'd sensed Power being used—but what type of magic had it been?

  Nothing I've ever felt before, that much is clear.

  Not very comforting. It was nigh impossible to fight a magic without knowing its shape and name.

  Ah well, with any chance at all it wouldn't come to a fight. Much as he'd love to see the child-killer sent shrieking to whatever Place of Punishment received Saxon Christian murderers, Cadwal had been right: an alliance against the Lochlannach was more important than individual justice just now.

  At least whatever spell Osmod was casting wasn't either very Powerful or particularly successful.

  And for now, Ardagh told himself, since he could hardly go back there now that Osmod was aware of him, that was all the comfort he could take from this nights work.

/>   His entourage, as the prince picked his delicate way through them, were all still peacefully asleep.

  Not so Cadwal. He moaned and muttered in his sleep, plainly caught fast in the throes of nightmare. Ardagh heard him murmur "Gwen," the name of the man's dead love, and wondered in sudden alarm if this really was only a dream.

  Ae, no, not this, not here. I thought he was free of this.

  Hastily kneeling at Cadwal's side, he hunted with Sidhe alertness for magic, wondering if Osmod could have something to do with—no, not Osmod. Something . . . he almost felt it, something vague there at the very limit of his senses . . . magic? Or . . . could it, Ardagh wondered uneasily, possibly be the wavering edge of human sanity? He still knew so little about human minds—

  In sudden frustration and renewed alarm, the prince snapped, "Cadwal, wake! Cadwal!"

  The mercenary sat bolt upright, hand snapping shut on Ardagh's arm with a warrior's powerful grip. The prince's first reaction was pure Sidhe outrage that a human should dare—

  But this human could hardly realize what he was doing. Even though Cadwal's eyes were open, he was still very much asleep.

  Yes, and clinging to me as though his sleeping life depends on crushing my arm to the bone. At least he didn't draw his sword on me!

  Putting more than a little Sidhe will behind the words, Ardagh commanded, "Leave that realm. You are alive, awake. You are awake. Awake!"

  To his relief, he saw life flood back into the blank eyes. Cadwal stared at the prince for an uncomprehending moment, then suddenly shuddered, releasing his grip, sagging with despair.

  "The dream, then," Ardagh murmured, resisting the urge to rub his arm.

  "The dream. Och now, what are you doing?"

  "Be still. You know I'm not going to hurt you." Even if you've left finger-shaped bruises on my arm.

  Cadwal froze, determinedly rigid as Ardagh stared into his face, into his eyes, into as much of his essence as was possible in this Realm, hunting for any sign at all of intrusive magic. At last the prince sat back on his heels with an angry little sigh.