A Tapestry of Spells

by Lynn Kurland

  She leaned against the fence. “What happened to him?”

  “Treun of Angesand hunted him down, pulled out his entrails, and hanged him with them in his own barn.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Savage, isn’t it?”

  She laughed a little at him. “You’re not very original, are you?”

  “I’m just entertaining you for the sport of it.”

  “Then ’tis verywell-done. I’ll be even more impressed if you can talk that man over there out of a pair of horses and have any gold left over.”

  “What, these lame nags here?” Ruith said dismissively. “Look you at those strange and ungainly growths on their hooves.”

  She leaned close. “I think they’re wings.”

  “I’ll look for other flaws, then.”

  “Best of luck with that.” She looked at him sideways. “How is it you know so many things?”

  “I have an extensive library at home,” he said, “with tomes full of gossip and speculation.”

  She said no more, but she did smile more easily and she did indeed have a way with horses. He paid a fair price for two very fine nags with what he wasn’t entirely sure weren’t wings on their hooves. He gave Sarah a leg up, then swung up into his own saddle with as much grace as he could muster—which wasn’t much, given the day he’d had so far—and turned with her back toward town.

  The road was fairly empty, but he supposed that didn’t matter. He had no intention of sampling his horse’s canter at the moment anyway, given the fair likelihood of his falling off upon his arse. So he remained at a walk, listened to the wind in the branches of trees thinking about breaking forth into buds, and contemplated the great pleasure of riding next to a woman who seemed content to enjoy the same.

  He nodded at souls that they passed, not paying them much heed past avoiding trampling on them.

  And then he froze. He hardly dared look behind him but he was fairly sure he recognized the two men he had just passed. Sarah looked at him, then back over her shoulder. She frowned.

  “Ruith, those lads are coming back toward us.”

  “Fly,” he said without hesitation.

  She did, and so did he. He didn’t look back, and he heard no shouts or calls to stop and explain why he was where he was when he was supposed to be dead. He drew his hood over his face, but the wind had other ideas.

  He supposed the lads he’d passed would think they had perhaps been overtired, or overfed, or over-aled and imagined what they’d seen. Surely they wouldn’t rush back to Lake Cladach and tell their employers whom they thought they’d seen.

  Surely.

  He hazarded a glance behind him but saw nothing. His secrets were still safe and he wouldn’t soon find himself hunted down so he could explain things he wasn’t ready to.

  At least not yet.

  “You’re losing!” Sarah called over her shoulder.

  Aye, more than just the race. His sanity, his peace, his heart ...

  The list was very long, indeed.

  Fifteen

  Sarah set a pot of water to boil and glanced at her right wrist. Ruith had bought a salve from an herbalist during their walk through the market earlier that morning and whether it had been enspelled by someone else or simply worked because of who had put it on her arm, it had eased her pain greatly. The marks were still there, but not so black. She had the feeling it would take a mighty magic indeed to cure her. That would have to come later. First, she had to come to terms with the fact that she was now the very fortunate, if not slightly mortified, owner of a very fast horse. That horse would be, in the morning, wearing the tack that his purchaser was now sitting in front of the fire cleaning.

  She had won the race.

  They had caught back up with their reduced company earlier that afternoon to find that there was still no sign of Urchaid or Connail and no one had any idea what had befallen either of them. Connail had seemed angry enough to have taken a blade to Urchaid, but Urchaid had also possessed a certain coldness that had bothered her. That there had been no sign of a struggle, nor any remains left behind, was troubling. She couldn’t credit either man with magical mischief, but what did she know?

  She knew, actually, that she was ready to be done with magic altogether.

  Ruith had discussed plans with Franciscus after their return, then informed the mages and Ned that if they wanted to live, they would do well to stay close to the alemaster, who had more hidden in the false floor of his wagon than his finest reserve of cognac. Sarah had heard the things Ruith had left out, such as the danger involved in shadowing Daniel more closely and the dodginess of the places he might be visiting.

  She had no doubt that Ruith intended to leave her behind again, his fine promises aside.

  She cursed him under her breath as she fetched a pot to use for the tea she intended to make. He would find that she was a very light sleeper indeed and a better rider. He wasn’t going to be going anywhere alone.

  She looked up, froze, then dropped the cast-iron kettle into the fire.

  A stranger had walked suddenly and without pause into the midst of their camp. She fumbled for her knife, realizing only as she couldn’t seem to grasp it that she also had two slim, lethal-looking daggers down the sides of her boots thanks to Ruith’s generosity. She didn’t bother to reach down for those given that Master Franciscus seemed determined to make up for her lack of weapons with his axe in one hand and a barrel hook in the other. Ruith had an arrow fitted to a string.

  The arrow dipped, then fell from his hand. He gaped at the stranger as if he’d seen a ghost.

  Oban rose immediately to his feet and upended the remains of his supper into the fire on top of her pot, and that bloody dog of Oban’s yipped until Ned reached over and brought it onto his lap where he could muzzle it. Seirceil didn’t seem as astonished as he perhaps should have been, but that one was prone to keeping his humors quite settled. She glanced at Ruith, who looked no less stunned than before, then turned to study the stranger.

  He was dressed very simply in traveler’s garb: an unremarkable cloak, worn boots, a hat that had seen better days and sported feathers, which she realized, on closer inspection, were actually fishing lures. Perhaps that explained his lack of weaponry, though she supposed that might have been a gutting knife tucked into his boot.

  Before she could find her voice to ask him who he was and why he’d turned Ruith as pale a shade of white as he himself seemed to be, he had stepped forward and thrown his arms around her hired sword.

  He wept.

  It took Ruith a moment or two, but there were soon tears running down his cheeks as well. Sarah looked away out of respect.

  In time, Master Franciscus walked over to the man and inclined his head slightly. “Welcome to our fire,” he said. “We’ve just finished supper, but we can prepare more, if you like. Perhaps you have traveled far and are hungry?”

  “Thank you,” the stranger said simply. “Something to drink would be most welcome.”

  “And who is ’e, do you think?” Ned asked in a whisper that wasn’t quite a whisper. “He looks a bit rough around the edges, I’d say.”

  Ruith stepped back and dragged his sleeve across his eyes. “This is my grandfather.” He paused. “It has been many a year since last we met.”

  “Oy, his grandpappy?” Ned said, scooting behind Seirceil. “He don’t look a day over a score.”

  Ruith’s grandfather, who indeed didn’t look much older than Ruith, only smiled. “Clean living, my lad, and a distaste for sweets. You might think about it.”

  Ned frowned. “I don’t know—”

  Franciscus shot Ned a look. “Stay out of my sugar barrel, Ned, and keep your teeth.” He turned to Ruith’s grandfather. “I’ll prepare a light meal for you, which will give you a moment or two of privacy with your grandson.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sarah watched Ruith walk off with his grandfather into the shadows, but not before he’d sent her a look over his shoulder.

  He was undone.


  It was very much later, after all the others save Franciscus had gone to sleep, that she sat and worked on a sock with the knitting needles Franciscus had thoughtfully tucked away under the bench of his wagon along with several skeins of wool she had spun for him. He was diligently working on a pair of mittens. For at least an hour there had been nothing but the comforting sounds of the fire cracking and popping at their feet and the barely perceptible tick of their needles as they worked.

  “I didn’t know Ruith had family alive,” Sarah remarked at one point.

  “I didn’t either. I wonder if he knew.”

  She didn’t look up from her work. “He has secrets, I think.”

  “Aye.”

  She looked at him briefly. “I think he appreciates that you haven’t told them.”

  Franciscus held his mitten away and looked it over critically. “I’m in the business of secrets, my gel. Not that I know any of yours.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Save how it is you spin such lovely yarn,” he said, fingering the mitten and sighing with pleasure. “A more eloquent man might call it magic.”

  Sarah would have responded, but Ruith and his grandfather walked back into the light of the fire. It was obvious they had both shed their share of tears, though the grandfather was now smiling. Ruith still looked a bit winded. The grandfather shook hands with Franciscus and accepted a cup of ale, which he tasted, then praised effusively. She scrambled to her feet when he turned to her, and held out her hand to shake his in her most manly fashion. Grandfather he might have been, but there was no sense in his not knowing that she was a woman with her own mind and her own quest.

  “Grandfather, this is Sarah of Doìre,” Ruith said quietly. “It is her errand I’m on.”

  Sarah found her hand held on to whilst the older man—if a fortnight in age could have been called older—made a low, formal bow over it.

  “ ’Tis a pleasure, lady,” he said, straightening. “I am Sgath of a very tiny little fishing spot just over those hills, really not worth mentioning. I apologize for having stolen your guardsman for the past pair of hours, but I see that you have needles there that are surely protection enough.”

  Sarah put her sock behind her back and shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry—”

  “Oh, not at all,” Sgath said with a smile. “And I don’t know about you all, but I would very much appreciate just a scrap of ground to sit on for a bit and rest my old bones.”

  Sarah sat, eyeing him critically. He didn’t look a day over two score, truly, but perhaps he was full of a magic that had preserved him. Ruith had said his parents had had a bit, so perhaps one of them had inherited their bit from that man named Sgath.

  The name seemed familiar somehow, but she couldn’t place it. It wasn’t as if she was well versed in the souls who peopled the rest of the Nine Kingdoms, even if Sgath had been someone of note. Perhaps he seemed familiar because he looked like Ruith. Not so much that she would have immediately identified them as kin, but there was definitely a resemblance there.

  She watched Ruith watch his grandfather as if he still couldn’t quite believe his eyes, or as if he’d just discovered a lovely bit of something that he was afraid might disappear if he looked away. She didn’t want to envy him, but she couldn’t help it. Sgath seemed delighted just by Ruith’s existence. It seemed ridiculous to be as old as she was and find herself wanting so badly that same thing in her own life—

  She put away her knitting abruptly and leaned over to Franciscus. “I’m going to go see to the horses. Shall I see to yours as well?”

  “You can if you wish, my gel,” Franciscus said with a smile. “Though you spoil them overmuch.”

  “You’re feeding my horse carrots,” she pointed out.

  “He brings me rabbits, thankfully being too confused to know what to do with them himself, which leaves them for my stew. ’Tis a fair trade.”

  She nodded, rose, and walked away. By the time she reached the horses, she had forcibly shaken off her melancholy. That wasn’t her natural state, so it sat very ill on her shoulders. She was very happy for Ruith that he should encounter, after what had to have been a very long time, a relative he obviously loved so much. And she didn’t envy him his family, for life was difficult enough without it. If he had been so fortunate as to have run across a relative he cared for, then she could be nothing but pleased for him. She turned around to look for a brush and ran bodily into the man for whom she had so diligently wished only good things. She took a step backward, a deep breath, and ahold of her womanly emotions. She looked up at him and attempted a smile.

  “What a happy coincidence for you.”

  He rested his hand on her horse’s neck and fussed absently with his mane. “I didn’t expect this.” He was silent for quite a while. “It has been many years.”

  “He is obviously overjoyed to see you.”

  “And I him,” Ruith murmured.

  She elbowed him out of her way. “Go back to him. I can see to these beasts. I’ll even tend your grandsire’s horse over there. I can see he’s rather finer that these spectacular specimens here.”

  “A trueblood,” Ruith admitted.

  “Your grandfather must be very wealthy.”

  “Just choosey,” Ruith said. “About his horses and his fishing gear.”

  She brushed for a minute or two in silence, then stopped. She couldn’t look at him. “If you need to go now, I’ll pay you and you can be on your way.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She didn’t dare look at him at first, but when he remained silent, she supposed she might as well. The moon was beginning to wax again, but it was of little use. She could see little but what the stars would reveal, which might be more than she could bear. She had no other choice, though, so she looked at him.

  He was merely resting his arm on Osag’s neck, watching her with a very grave expression on his face.

  “And what would you give me as my payment, Sarah of Doire?” he asked quietly.

  She didn’t flinch, but it took most all of her self-control not to. She had next to nothing, but since that was all she had, that was all he would have unless he wanted to tell her where he was going so she could have gold sent to him later. She moved past him, then went to fetch her gear from its secret location under the wagon seat. She pulled out her feed sack, rummaged around in it unnecessarily because there was only one thing inside, then drew forth her very small collection of coins. She closed her eyes briefly, then turned and walked over to where Ruith was standing. She pulled the knives from her boots, then held them and her bag of coins out to him.

  “There. That is all I have.”

  He took the three things without comment. He tucked the knives under his arm, then opened the bag and spilled the contents out into one of his hands. He contemplated the meager pile of coins for a moment, then poured the coins back into the sack and drew the strings closed. He stood there for several minutes without moving until Sarah could bear the silence no longer.

  “I know it isn’t enough—”

  “It isn’t.”

  She knew she had no right to be angry, but she found she was just the same. “And this comes as a surprise to you? You knew I had no gold—”

  “I don’t want your gold,” he interrupted.

  “Then what do you want, you bloody, arrogant, unfeeling—”

  He reached out and pulled her into his arms. She protested, loudly, mostly because the hilts of her daggers were pressing painfully into the soft spot just inside her shoulders. Ruith pulled back, took the daggers and tucked them into the back of his belt, then paused.

  “Are you going to shout now if I attempt that again?”

  “Nay,” she said shortly. “I’ll just pull my knives from your belt and stab you. Why don’t you simply be about your demands whilst I still have a modicum of pride left to bear them?”

  He clasped his hands behind his back, though he didn’t step away from her. The bloody lout, he
might as well have been clutching her to him.

  In that divine embrace she wished she hadn’t protested.

  “I want you,” he said gravely, “to come with me on a journey.”

  “We already have a quest, which you’re obviously ready to abandon.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I’m not and a few hours of conversation with my grandfather at his summer house—”

  “He has a summer house?” she asked in astonishment.

  “ ’Tis very small,” Ruith said with a smile. “It gives him a place to take his grandsons to keep them out from underfoot.” He paused and chewed on his words for a moment or two. “Unless you’d rather not.”

  He sounded unaccountably hesitant.

  She frowned fiercely, because it helped her keep control over that little bit of something beautiful that threatened to sprout up in her heart. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “I believe I asked you to.”

  She had to clear her throat roughly, for it was either that or weep and she had already wept once in front of the man. She would not do it again.

  “I’ll come,” she said, dredging up a stern look. “How else will I keep you from scampering off if I don’t keep you within blade’s reach?”

  He reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, then he frowned and tried again. “It doesn’t stay.”

  She blew out of her eyes a bit of the fringe that seemed determined to frame her face no matter what she did to it. “I don’t plan it that way.”

  He put her coins back into her hand, gathered up her curry comb and brush, then put his arm around her shoulders. “I’ll rebraid it for you in front of the fire. Leave the horses. I’ll come tend them later.”

  She knew she should have protested, but she found she simply couldn’t. She watched him toss the brushes into the wagon before he walked with her back to the fire.

  A handful of moments later, she was trying to keep her eyes open whilst Ruith brushed her hair with something Oban had conjured up for him. Whatever else that mage’s faults, he certainly knew how to see to life’s luxuries with aplomb. He was busily working on ribbons for the end of her braid, creating strand after strand only to spell them into oblivion when they apparently didn’t suit.