A Tapestry of Spells

by Lynn Kurland

  “Master Seirceil is better at that sort of thing than I am,” Sarah said quickly. “I’ll go look for wood.”

  Ruith realized she was coming for him only as he found himself being taken by the arm and pulled along, out of the firelight. He went, partly because it was Sarah doing the pulling, but mostly because he too had had enough of tales about things he didn’t care to discuss.

  “I didn’t like any of that,” she said in a low voice, once they were out of reach of the firelight. “I don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight.”

  The moon was but a sliver, not nearly enough light for him to see her face properly, though he had no trouble feeling her fingers digging into his arm.

  “At least Gair of Ceangail is dead,” Ruith said, understanding completely her feelings. “You’ve nothing to fear from him.”

  She looked up at him. “But I think we all have something to fear from his spells. Especially if they fall into the wrong hands.”

  Ruith rubbed his hand over his mouth, then sighed. “Only if those hands understand what they have. How much does your brother know of history? Of mages and that sort of rot?”

  “Daniel knows very little, I imagine,” she said with a shrug. “He went to school, though they weren’t happy to have him, as you might guess. Whether or not he paid attention at his lessons, I don’t know. He was too busy thinking on ways to torture small animals, I daresay.”

  He pursed his lips. “I’m sorry you had to live with him for so long.”

  She smiled, one of the more genuinely happy smiles he’d seen her wear. “You know, as difficult as it’s been to travel and as often as I’ve had to swallow my pride to accept aid—your aid, mostly—I have enjoyed being free of him.” Her smile faded. “I don’t think it will last, though. It can’t last, if I’m to accomplish what I must.”

  He nodded, because he had no choice. He would have spared her the journey as well, but he couldn’t. Seirceil hadn’t seen but a hooded and cloaked Daniel, Oban couldn’t shout if he recognized him, and Ruith had the feeling Connail would have retained the knowledge out of spite. Nay, Sarah would have to come if only to identify her brother.

  Though he couldn’t help but feel there was more to her presence near him there than just that.

  He pulled her cloak—his cloak, rather—up to her ears and tugged it closer around her. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her.

  “You should sleep—”

  “After that?” she interrupted. “I told you I couldn’t. Since you don’t seem to sleep either, we’ll not sleep together.” She pulled away, then offered him her elbow.

  He looked at her in surprise, then smiled. “Are you escorting me now, my lady?”

  “It’s just Sarah, though I can see how you might be confused given the blouse I’m still wearing.”

  “You seem to like the ruffles.”

  “I most certainly do not, but I can’t divine how to get them off. I’m not entirely sure that seamstress didn’t sew me into the bloody thing.”

  He smiled, because he suspected she had it aright, offered to have a look at her prison in the morning, then took her arm and walked with her in a large circle about camp. It occurred to him suddenly that he hadn’t seen anything of the creatures from nightmare since the forest. He couldn’t imagine that he’d been so fortunate as to leave them behind entirely, but perhaps the trolls were uneasy around such a large group. That was all the more reason to stay with the wagon.

  He supposed he wouldn’t be able to manage that forever. He had the feeling that Connail had unbridled his tongue more than he’d let on to earn those four broken fingers and the one twisted thumb. Perhaps he’d taunted Daniel with his knowledge of the author of those pages, if only to politely point out that Daniel wasn’t and would never manage to work one of Gair of Ceangail’s spells.

  Ruith didn’t suppose that would stop him from trying.

  He considered that invisible path before him and attempted to reconcile it with Sarah’s quest. It was perhaps better that he now knew for a certainty what Daniel had in his possession and what he was seeking. If his goal was to visit every mage in the south and take their power, that made his path easier to follow.

  But what if Daniel’s intention was different? What if he actually, in some wee part of his deluded mind, thought that wasting time with minor mages and half-written spells was beneath him and he would be better served to look for the source of those spells?

  Ruith stopped himself before he considered that even a moment longer. He had a plan and that was to stop Daniel before he traveled much farther and convince him that the path he’d put his foot to led only to death.

  Ruith knew that very well.

  He looked at Sarah. “Weary?”

  “Not if it means going back to camp and listening to that pompous arse babble any longer.”

  He managed a smile, then started on another circle with her. And he ignored the fact that each circle led him back to where he’d started, back to the realization he could hardly bring himself to face.

  His father’s spells were out in the world and mages were finding them.

  And he was the only person alive who knew those pieces of magic well enough to recognize them.

  Thirteen

  Sarah walked along behind the company, looked at her hands, and wondered why they were equal to some tasks, yet completely incapable of the simplest of others. They had carded wool, spun it into thread for weaving and yarn for knitting, and sported a rainbow of colors from her dyeing.

  But they had never once been used in even the most pedestrian piece of magic.

  She supposed she might have continued on quite happily not caring that her hands could only do things any village gel would have learned at her very unmagical mother’s knees if it hadn’t been that she was continually surrounded by an apparently never-ending supply of mages. Wounded ones, unmagical ones, ones who couldn’t seem to stop themselves from decorating everything in camp with things that sparkled and fluttered and bloomed. She found herself wishing that, just once, she might use her hands for the same sort of thing. She’d been fighting that thought for the past four days, since Connail had told that horrible tale about Gair of Ceangail and his evil. If she had possessed any sort of power, she would have used that power only for good.

  Unlike her brother.

  She took a deep breath, then concentrated on the road in front of her. She was bringing up the rear because she feared that if she had to listen to Connail tell another of his magnificent tales of might, magic, and lads who had come to him wishing they could possess even a fraction of his charm and wit, she would do him an equally mighty insult. Likely to his mouth where he might be required to spend several days wondering how it was her fist could leave such impressive bruises.

  She turned away from that appealing thought and allowed herself the pleasure of watching the countryside they walked through. They had left the last of the vast farmlands behind earlier in the day and begun a slight but steady climb into terrain that was more lush and green than she’d imagined anything could be, even in winter. Even though the snow seemed to be giving way to bouts of rain and the damp air made even the rain seem unpleasantly cold, she hadn’t cared. She could see evergreen trees in the distance.

  It was as if she walked in a dream.

  She wasn’t sure anyone else was enjoying it as much as she was, especially Ruith. He was pleasant enough when they were walking together alone, but that was a rare occurrence of late. The last time she’d had two words with him had been three mornings ago when he’d cut her ruffled monstrosity from her to leave her standing there quite happily in her everyday tunic. She wished she could have cut Connail away from Ruith as easily.

  Unfortunately, wherever Ruith was, Connail seemed to want to be. She watched them walking thirty paces in front of her and knew that Connail was picking at Ruith again, as if he simply couldn’t stop himself from needling the man every chance he had. Why, she just couldn’t fathom.

/>   Ruith’s only reprieve seemed to be going off every day for hours at a time to hunt. She didn’t begrudge him the time alone, partly because she understood the need and partly because he always returned with something useful for the stewpot. She had happily turned the tending of that stewpot over to Master Franciscus, who was a much better cook than she.

  Indeed, the entire company seemed to have fallen into roles suited to their particular talents and desires. Master Franciscus drove his wagon and saw to their meals, Ned tended the horses, and Seirceil watched over Master Oban, who hadn’t regained his voice but seemingly didn’t miss it much. He had become very adept at expressing all manner of things with spells.

  Seirceil insisted his magic was intact, but he used it only with great reluctance and seemingly not very successfully. He’d attempted a fire one night but it had gone awry and only Master Franciscus rolling him in the dirt had put out the blaze that had sprung up all over him instead of the wood. Magic the man might have still had, but something had happened to him to alter it. It was as if the weft threads of his piece had been cut, leaving the rest of the weaving to unravel frantically and without any discernable pattern.

  And if Daniel was responsible for that, she couldn’t bear to think what other things he might manage before they could stop him. She had begun to wonder if that sort of thing would become their means of determining where Daniel had been, that trail of mages who were only partly damaged. Connail didn’t seem anything but pleased by it. He was convinced Daniel would eventually realize that all he could weave were flawed spells, he would see reason, and then he would stop even attempting any magic.

  Sarah knew better. He wouldn’t stop until he had destroyed the world, even if it was only one mage at a time.

  She spent most of the day watching the ground at her feet, having grown increasingly unable to look up and enjoy her surroundings, unable to taste the brew Franciscus pressed on her every few hours. The farther she walked, the less sure she was that she was going in the right direction, or doing the right thing. She felt as if a storm were brewing, and she would go mad if it didn’t break soon.

  “Ho, there! Lord Seirceil, see if he lives.”

  Sarah looked up to watch Franciscus struggle to control his normally very obedient horses. He convinced them to halt, set his brake, then jumped down off his seat and hurried to the side of the road where Seirceil was leaning over a body lying there in the weeds.

  Sarah approached, then found herself running into a hand. She frowned up at Ruith, who was stopping her without looking. I don’t need protection was half out of her mouth before she managed to shut it around the whole of her thought. If he wanted to trot out his rusty manners, she wasn’t going to argue.

  Perhaps he would want to use them again and take her for a walk that evening. She still hadn’t had the privacy to show him the velvet cloth she’d filched from Connail’s chamber. She would be happy to be rid of the thing, for it had begun to leave welts on her leg. She wasn’t sure it wouldn’t do the same to Ruith, but even so perhaps he would be willing to carry it for a bit.

  She managed to look around his shoulder and the clutch of arrows in her way. A man lay on the ground, groaning. He was finely dressed and might have been handsome if it hadn’t been for the bruises on his face—

  She blinked in surprise. It was the same man she’d seen in Firth as she’d been fetching herbs for Lord Seirceil. Obviously, he’d continued to travel and apparently he’d done so on his own. She was slightly surprised to find him in his current condition given that she hadn’t seen anything of ruffians or thieves along the way. Perhaps Ruith had been more deterrent for their own company than she’d thought.

  Odd, though, that in all their walking, they hadn’t seen the man before.

  Within moments, he was sitting up, accepting drink, and trying to make sense of what had happened to him. He seemed to be less distressed about the condition of his face than he was by the fact that the lace had been ripped off his sleeves and his collar.

  “He’s a fop,” she said under her breath.

  Ruith shot her an amused glance, then turned back to listen to a tale so fanciful, she was sure he would snort in derision and walk away.

  He didn’t. He merely put up his sword and studied the man as he spoke. Seirceil was offering what aid he could along with Franciscus and Ned. Oban was expressing his concern with roses that wept crystal tears. Sarah admired them as they marched on their long stems in a funeral procession to the man, then past him. Perhaps Oban was better off away from Bruaih. Surely no one there could possibly have appreciated his talents.

  Sarah made polite conversation with the man and expressed what she hoped was an adequate amount of sympathy when it was called for. But she found herself, to her profound surprise, sharing the opinion that was written quite plainly on Connail’s face.

  The traveler wasn’t quite what he seemed.

  His name was Urchaid, or so he claimed, and he demurred when asked where his home might be found. Too famous, he’d admitted modestly. Unfortunately, his native land was the only thing he was modest about. Within a quarter hour, he had pontificated on everything from magic to the proper method of field dressing a rip in one’s trousers. Sarah began to look on Connail with a friendlier eye. Urchaid might have been, admittedly, the most handsome man she’d seen save Ruith, and his deep, melodious voice should have been enough to soothe even the most fractious of ill-mannered mage’s spawn. There was, however, something about him, something that bespoke his absolute love of himself and all that made up his fascinating life that grated on her.

  Perhaps he was an elf. She wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Camp was pitched right where they’d stopped, without delay. Sarah looked at the others. Save Connail, who was carrying on some sort of conversation with himself under his breath that couldn’t have been pleasant, no one else seemed to think anything of their new addition. Perhaps her unease had less to do with Urchaid and more to do with the fact that her calf felt as if she’d shoved a handful of nettles down her boot or perhaps it had to do with the fact that if she didn’t escape Connail’s irritating self, she would kill him with Master Franciscus’s heaviest stew ladle.

  She eschewed supper and hastened away from the fire at sunset, before anyone else could volunteer for the first watch.

  She paced well outside the perimeter of their camp, listening intently for things that might be out of the ordinary, holding her knife loose in her hand on the off chance she found something untoward. She walked until she found herself standing at the place where Urchaid had lain, moaning delicately and placing his hand against his fevered brow. Oban’s roses were still there, lying side by side in a row, as if they’d been laid out deliberately.

  Only now they were black.

  And they were weeping bloodred tears.

  Sarah reached down to touch one only to have them all disintegrate. All that was left was a pile of ashes that vanished once she breathed out.

  She straightened and felt something slither down her spine. Perhaps Oban’s spells were going awry just as Seirceil’s were, or perhaps there was something about the ground where she stood that rendered things what they shouldn’t have been.

  It surely wasn’t anything more sinister.

  She took a step backward. That was it, surely. She shivered and rubbed her arms briskly, then stepped backward again until she was standing in the middle of the road. She looked up into a sky full of stars, but they were cold and unfriendly looking. The moon was nothing but the thinnest sliver, a deep yellow that was more like an eye watching her than a heavenly body looking down on her benevolently.

  She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She wondered why some things were nothing more than what they seemed, and others were layered with traces of things she didn’t expect.

  She shivered briefly under Ruith’s cloak, then started to walk again. The longer she walked, the calmer she felt. Taking the measure of a man by the reaction of Oban’s spells to
him was unreliable, nothing more. Besides, she might have been seeing things that weren’t there. It had been at least a fortnight since she’d slept well at night, and perhaps almost that long since she’d eaten anything that tasted as it should have. It was weariness that colored her vision. There was nothing amiss with members of her company. Even the woods surrounding her were reassuringly quiet—

  She froze. That wasn’t exactly true.

  “I know what you’re hiding, my false rustic.”

  Sarah let out her breath very carefully. That was Connail, his voice a harsh whisper in the dark. She couldn’t imagine he was talking to anyone but Ruith, for he was unfailingly polite, if not a bit condescending, to everyone else. She couldn’t fathom what Ruith had done to deserve it. After all, he’d consented to spiriting the mage out of a dangerous city, fed him, allowed him to travel along with them. What more did the man expect?

  “And I imagine I know why you’re hiding what you’re hiding,” Connail added.

  “Do you?” Ruith said mildly.

  “Of course I do,” Connail snarled. “I’ve been guarding my tongue, but I could stop. Then we’ll see how the rest of your company views you, especially the little wench.”

  Sarah stepped forward to listen a bit more, but she apparently disturbed a warren of rabbits, for two of them went racing off. By the time Sarah’s heart had calmed down enough for her to hear, the conversation had moved on.

  “And that,” Connail was saying, “is the reason for my silence.”

  Sarah cursed silently. She wasn’t one to eavesdrop, but she suspected that these were details she might want to know. What could Connail possibly be holding over Ruith’s head? His lack of magic? She moved closer until she could see both of them. She was tempted to walk out into the clearing and speak the truth aloud, to save Connail the trouble, but she supposed Ruith didn’t need her to fight his battles for him. The coldness in his voice was proof enough of that.