A Tapestry of Spells

by Lynn Kurland

  He snorted out a laugh, sounding thoroughly exasperated. “Damn it, Sarah, I will not yield.”

  “Neither will I.”

  “You will when I strap you to your horse and tell it where to take you.”

  She lifted her head and met his gaze. “You won’t manage that.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “You underestimate me.”

  “And you me.”

  He pursed his lips and pulled her close again. “Very well, it might not be easily done, but I could send you back to the company if I chose to.”

  “Continue to think that, if you like.”

  He sighed deeply and simply held her in silence until his silence became hers. She didn’t want it to. She might have been mouthy, as Ruith would have said, but she was no fool. She had perfect recall of how she’d felt in that barn, or when Daniel had stood in front of her, or while she’d watched her mother’s house fall and caught a whiff of the magic involved. If Ruith intended to be involved with anything remotely resembling what her brother had become entangled in, he was going to be facing those things.

  And so would she if she went with him.

  “I’m afraid,” she said, then she realized what she’d said.

  That seemed to make some sort of decision for him. He loosened his hold on her so he could look her in the face.

  “That is the first sensible thing you’ve said all morning.”

  “I’m lying to instill a sense of confidence in you,” she blustered. “You know, all those manly feelings of protection and chivalry and ... well, things of that nature.”

  She’d intended to sound sure of her self, but her voice quavered as she said the words.

  Damn it anyway.

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her. On the forehead, but that was a start, she supposed. He looked as if he might have liked to kiss her a bit closer to her mouth—such as on it, truth be told. Perhaps she had laid out his future for him prematurely.

  Or perhaps she was mad to even be thinking on any of it when she was fairly certain she was about to walk into hell.

  He closed his eyes very briefly, then took a step backward. But he kept his hands on her shoulders.

  “I don’t like this, but,” he added, no doubt to cut off her protests, “in truth, I like even less the thought of you being in the company of useless mages and a lad whose first instinct is to hide behind your skirts. I fear not even Franciscus could protect you as I would wish it.”

  “Then I suppose you’ll have to do it.”

  His expression didn’t lighten. “There may come a time, lady, when I cannot. What will you do then?”

  “Survive. I have before.”

  “Doìre is a child’s playground compared to where we’re going.”

  She tilted her head slightly. “How would you know?”

  He looked momentarily startled. “I, ah, read quite a bit.”

  And one of the books he should have read was how to maintain a lie over the course of several days. She wasn’t sure why he felt the need to be less than forthcoming with her, but he certainly did. She studied him closely.

  “What else do you know?”

  “Vast amounts of lore, speculation, and outright gossip,” he said, dragging his hand through his hair wearily. “I’ll entertain you with it whilst we ride. But there may come a point where I insist you remain behind with the horses. And that you will do, or we go not a step farther in this quest.”

  “If you promise you’ll make me a bow and some of your arrows.”

  He blinked. “Why?”

  “I’m a decent archer,” she said without any excess of pride. “Or I was before Daniel used my gear for kindling. It has been many years, but I think I could remember how they’re used. I assume you made your own.”

  “I did.”

  She walked away from him and swung up onto her horse. “Let’s go, then, that you might be about that sooner rather than later.”

  He hadn’t moved. He looked up at her. “I don’t like this.”

  “I never said you had to.”

  He pursed his lips. “How will anyone believe I can control any of the events surrounding a stupid, arrogant wizardling when I can’t manage to control his headstrong, impossible sister?”

  “I promise to look properly cowed if we meet anyone you want to impress.”

  He rolled his eyes, swore at her a bit more, then went to retrieve his own horse.

  Sarah looked at the mountains in the distance. They were rugged and beautiful and covered with evergreen trees. But there was something else there as well.

  Something dark.

  She drew her hand over her eyes, took her reins, and followed Ruith when he set off.

  And she didn’t look at the mountains again.

  They traveled for most of the morning in silence. Ruith seemed to have much on his mind and she supposed the less he thought about her presence, the better off she would be. But when they stopped to water the horses, she had to at least attempt some bit of innocuous conversation.

  “Why do black mages decide on that path?” she asked. She listened to the words come out of her mouth and thought that perhaps she should have kept her mouth shut.

  Ruith looked at her in surprise, then hesitated before he sighed. “Who’s to say? I suspect ego is involved. One doesn’t gain much notoriety for going about secretly doing good, does one? But inspire terror, or make war for your own ends, or destroy something beautiful, and there you have a tale fit for telling in pubs across the world. ”

  “But what if you have only a little power?” she asked. “Daniel doesn’t seem to be particularly good at his spells, so I can’t imagine he’ll become famous.”

  “As I said, he’ll never achieve more than a dingy white as his final color,” Ruith said. “But I suppose a lad can dream. As for the others... ” He shook his head. “Others have possessed power enough to achieve their ends without undue effort.”

  “All for the sake of ego?”

  “Or revenge.” He boosted her onto her mount’s back, then swung gracefully up onto his own horse. “Several of the more persistent and unpleasant black mages of this world were tossed out of the schools of wizardry for dabbling in things they shouldn’t have, or denied some coveted spot in a royal house they had no claim to. Others simply chose darkness when they could have as easily chosen light. Some were born to privilege and great power, but chose to scorn it and rebel against it.”

  She watched the countryside for a few minutes in silence. It had been relatively lush that morning, but now it was much less so. As if some sort of flood had washed over it and left it barren except for the weeds that had grown up to take the grass’s place.

  “Was Gair of Ceangail the worst of them all?” she asked. “Connail seems to think so, though he perhaps wasn’t an unbiased raconteur of tales.”

  “I can’t say,” Ruith said carefully. “Lothar of Wychweald has killed scores of his own progeny. Wehr of Wrekin left his family alive, but he turned all of them save a handful to darkness. Droch of Saothair is not a pleasant soul. I understand he has a brother who wouldn’t dare find himself within arm’s reach, but perhaps he is kinder to his children. But Gair?” He took a deep breath. “His evil is particularly egregious considering who he was and how noble his birthright.”

  “I don’t know much about him,” she admitted, “save what Connail told me, which was more than enough. His poor parents, though. Did they live to see him turn to evil?”

  Ruith nodded. “They live still. His mother is Eulasaid of Camanaë, a powerful wizardess in her own right, his father S—ah, an elven prince of Ainneamh.” He shook his head as if he strove to free it from some sort of dream. “Their children have been perfectly content to live their lives, love their offspring, and contribute to the world as they could. All save Gair, their youngest.”

  “At least his evil died with him,” she said, with a shiver. “All save the spells, I suppose.”

  “Aye, save those.”

  �
��Are they sound spells?” she asked. “Those spells of Gair’s?”

  He was quiet for several minutes. “They are,” he said finally, “without exception exceptionally elegant. Simple, direct, and devastatingly powerful.”

  “A pity he chose darkness.”

  “It is.”

  “Am I talking too much?”

  He shot her a look, then relented and smiled a bit. “You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you?”

  She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Both of us, perhaps, though I’m not choosing a very distracting subject. Are there no tales of good mages? You have to have at least one tucked away in your store of gossip and hearsay.”

  He smiled. “Let me think for a moment or two about an appropriate subject, then I will.”

  Two days later, he was apparently still thinking. Sarah had found as time went on that he was not so much unwilling to speak as he was incapable of speech. She understood completely. The journey had been endless, broken up only by stops to eat, water the horses, and sleep when they hadn’t been able to go on.

  Nights had been the worst. She had insisted on watching her share of times, sitting next to Ruith with his knives stabbed into the ground next to her, fingering his arrows and distracting herself by marveling at their perfection.

  But that hadn’t driven the shadows away.

  Now she was simply too frightened to speak. She hadn’t asked Ruith much about their destination beyond wondering where they were headed. He had mentioned a forest. She wouldn’t have imagined in her worst nightmares the sort of forest she now knew he had been talking about.

  The trees were evergreens, looking old and stately even from a great distance. It should have been a pleasing place.

  But somehow it wasn’t.

  She realized why once she drew close enough to the trees to see them clearly. She looked quickly at Ruith but there was absolutely no expression on his face. Not surprise, nor horror, nor curiosity. He was pale and very quiet. She realized then that he hadn’t said anything that morning. She thought they might have discussed what she’d managed to stuff into her saddlebags to use for breakfast, but she couldn’t remember if that had been that day or the day before. In fact, the entire journey had begun to feel like a very long, relentless descent into nightmare.

  She looked for somewhere to leave the horses, but there was nothing but the forest surrounded by that barren, noxious-looking plain. To her right were the beginnings of those rugged mountains that swept up into the sky at a certain point, but there was no shelter there either. Either they would have to convince the horses to remain under those accursed boughs or they would have to turn the beasts loose and hope they returned. She stole another look at Ruith, but he was so deep inside himself that she seriously doubted he would even hear her, much less understand her.

  She grew more uneasy with every hoofbeat until she could bear it no longer.

  “Ruith?”

  It took calling his name three times before he blinked, but he did, then turned to her.

  “Aye?”

  “I don’t think the horses will go into the trees.”

  He looked at the forest, then nodded. “Agreed.”

  “Do we tie them up, or turn them loose?”

  He looked at her, then at the trees, then fell silent, as if conversing with her was just more than he could manage. He continued to watch the forest loom in front of them until he simply stopped his horse and sat there, fifty paces from the edge of it.

  She understood why. It was an even more horrifying place up close than it had been from far away. Spells hung from the trees, spells that were torn and ragged. It was if the entire place had been draped in some unpleasant fabric that had subsequently suffered a tremendous storm that had clawed it to shreds.

  She looked at Ruith, but he didn’t acknowledge it. He simply stared at the trees in front of him for so long that Sarah began to worry about him. Well, more than she’d been worrying already.

  “Ruith?”

  He turned to her, but he wasn’t seeing her.

  “The horses?” she prompted.

  “We’ll tie them,” he rasped.

  “And if something comes?” she said. “What then? They’ll drive themselves mad trying to get away.”

  He drew his hand over his eyes and shook his head. “You’re right, of course.” He dismounted ungracefully, then began to methodically remove his weapons from the saddle and strap them to himself. “We’ll send them away and call them back when we’re finished. If worse comes to worst, we’ll continue on without them.”

  She nodded and slid down off her horse. She didn’t have any gear to speak of that she wasn’t already wearing, so she shortened her stirrups to keep the irons off Teich’s sides, then tied up the reins so he wouldn’t tangle himself if he had to make a quick dash to somewhere safe. She supposed Ruith would think her daft if she gave her horse instructions on how to survive the next several hours, so she merely shared a short mental picture of escape with her mount, then turned and waited for Ruith to join her.

  She didn’t want to walk into the forest, but there was no other alternative. She drew closer to Ruith.

  “What is it that lies in this forest?”

  He took a deep breath. “You’ll see. ”

  She suddenly didn’t want to see, but if he could go forward, then so could she.

  It was a singularly unpleasant journey. She was apparently the only one who could see the spells hanging down from the sky above like tangled, putrid vines. She pushed them aside with her hand at first, but just the touch of them on her skin made her recoil with revulsion. She drew one of the knives from her boots to do the duty for her, but it wasn’t long enough. She finally tried one of Ruith’s arrows poached from the quiver on his back. It seemed to make less of an impression on the spells than her steel, but it was of some help at least.

  She was so busy concentrating on keeping things from falling down on her head and across her face that she didn’t look at Ruith until he stumbled and caught himself heavily on one leg. She realized only then that he was pale as death.

  “Ruith!”

  He leaned over with his hands on his thighs and sucked in great lungfuls of air. He straightened in time, but looked no better.

  “We’ll press on.”

  She drew his arm over her shoulders. “Lean on me.”

  “Nay—”

  “Lean on me, you stubborn fool,” she said sharply.

  “You have no care at all for my dignity,” he managed.

  “I’ll heap all manner of compliments on you when we’re free of this place to make up for it. Where to now?”

  “Ever inward,” he said, then he leaned on her the slightest bit. “Thank you.”

  She shook her head and continued on with him. The trees grew closer together, the spells thicker, the gloom more impenetrable. And the farther they walked, the worse Ruith looked until she thought he might not manage to walk any farther.

  Several times, she caught him just before he walked into spells strung across the path like spiderwebs. Those seemed to bother him more than just the general feeling of fear that seemed to be as woven into the air as the trees were planted in the ground.

  “We cannot go on,” she said, at one point.

  “We must.”

  She started up again with him, but he grew whiter with every footstep until she was convinced that even if he survived the journey into the forest, he wouldn’t live long enough to escape it. She started to say as much.

  Then she realized they had reached their destination.

  The trees had thinned, then disappeared to reveal a glade in front of her. She realized the glade wasn’t empty, so she quickly pulled Ruith off the path with her. When she was fairly certain they couldn’t be seen, she stopped. Ruith sank to his knees, breathing shallowly. She leaned over and put her hands on his shoulders.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked softly.

  “Nothing,” he rasped.

  �
�You can’t stay here,” she said, feeling very worried indeed.

  “I must. Is your brother by the well?”

  “I’ll go look, but first let me make you comfortable.”

  He didn’t argue when she pulled his bow over his head and removed the quiver of arrows from off his shoulder. She knelt, unbuckled his sword, then removed that as well so he could sit back on his heels. He reached up and groped for her hand, squeezed it, then dropped his hand back to his thigh. She put her hand briefly on his head, then quietly walked away until she could see what lay in the middle of the forest.

  The glade there was large, much larger than she’d suspected it might be, and in its precise center was a well. It was perhaps three feet tall, made of unremarkable rock, with a stone cap closed atop it. She studied it for another moment or two, then frowned as she realized what seemed so strange. Caps on wells weren’t unusual, she supposed, though she’d seen them only on wells that were dry and owned by farmers who didn’t want children and grandchildren falling down them.

  But why would a dry well find itself in the midst of a forest full of spells?

  Daniel was standing by the well. Sarah watched him busily trying different spells to get it to do something. Open, shut, disintegrate : who knew? She leaned against a tree when the view became slightly tedious. It was difficult not to snort at his increasingly grandiose movements. He finally grew so frustrated at his lack of progress, he put his hands on his hips and began to shout at the rocks. When he drew a sword she hadn’t known he had and started to hack at the stone, she supposed she might safely leave him to his madness for a bit and see how Ruith fared.

  She walked back to find him kneeling in the same place, breathing in and out very carefully. She squatted down in front of him.

  “Why does this place make you so ill?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying.” She could see that on his face without any special gift of sight. “Have you ever been here before?”

  He only bowed his head and rubbed his hands over his face. “Ask me later, I beg you.”

  She was unsettled enough by his tone to agree. “Daniel is there.”

  Ruith only nodded, as if he’d expected nothing less.