by Lynn Kurland
She also realized, as she looked about herself a bit more, that those bruised and rumpled lads weren’t where the true danger lay. There were other men in the great hall, men who moved suddenly to enclose her and Ruith in a large circle. A spell immediately sprang up between each of them, razor sharp and dripping with an unpleasant sort of magic that made her want to close her eyes so she didn’t have to look at it any longer. But if she looked away, she might miss something and Ruith would pay the price.
She would have given much for the chance to simply sit and try to come to terms with what she was seeing, but she knew she wouldn’t have that luxury. They were going to be fortunate to escape the hall, much less the keep. For reasons she couldn’t understand, the men surrounding her and Ruith were profoundly angry. It was almost as if they had a reason that went far beyond normal annoyance at having one of their doors splintered.
She wondered about the man in the library who had quite obviously known Ruith somehow, but how was that possible? She would have attempted a whispered question to Ruith about that, but before she could decide how best to go about it, she found herself spun around roughly. She started to protest, then she realized who had done the spinning.
It was Ruith.
Not only had he taken her by the arms in a grip that was very painful, he was glaring at her.
“I told you not to follow me here! Can you not obey a simple instruction?”
Sarah blinked in surprise. “What?”
“Shut up,” he snarled.
She felt her mouth slide open, but before she had the chance to demand to know if he’d lost his wits completely, he had turned her away from him and shoved her so hard that she went sprawling and slid across the floor.
Under the spell that connected the six men standing in a circle, as it happened.
“Get out of my sight,” he ground out. “You disgust me.”
She rose to her hands and knees in muck and other things she couldn’t bring herself to identify, then turned and looked at Ruith in shock. He wasn’t watching her, though. He was looking at a man who had melted through the circle and come to stand alongside him.
“Who is she?” the second man asked, folding his arms over his chest and tilting his head to one side. “A slave girl? Your leman?”
“Witch’s get,” Ruith said with a sneer. “The worst sort, of course.”
“Too true, of course,” the other man said. He turned to study Ruith. “I must admit I’m surprised to see you here. Actually, I’m quite surprised to see you alive. I was under the impression you were slain during that awful business at the well.”
Sarah heard the words, but it took a moment for them to sink in. That business at the well?
She felt a chill slide down her spine.
“So what has brought you back to our father’s keep,” the man continued, watching Ruith with a calculating glance, “or shall I assume by the manner of your entrance that you don’t want me to know?”
Sarah watched his mouth continue to move, saw that Ruith was also speaking, but she couldn’t hear either of their words.
Their father’s keep?
Before she could give any of it the thought it deserved, she was interrupted by the sound of very loud and vile curses. The man Ruith had felled in the library came stumbling out of the passageway into the hall, blood dripping down his chin to stain his shirt. He strode through the barbed spell and threw himself at Ruith.
Or at least he attempted to.
Sarah gaped at the spell she could see suddenly glittering in the air around him, binding him in mid-lunge, holding him immobile at a very awkward angle. She wanted to look away, for she had seen enough, but she could not. This was not village wizardry she was witnessing, or the occasional show put on by some traveling mage to delight and astonish, this was hard, unyielding, terribly powerful magic that reeked of evil.
She could hardly breathe.
“Let me go,” snarled the man with the bloodied nose.
“I think not, Táir,” the man standing next to Ruith said. “I have a question or two for our beloved brother before I take all his magic and kill him.”
Sarah felt the floor begin to rock beneath her hands. It troubled her for a moment or two until she realized it wasn’t the floor trembling, it was her. She backed away carefully until she felt the wall against her feet, then sat back on her heels against it. The stone wasn’t as hard as it should have been—no doubt because of the magic that dripped down it like a noisome drape—but it was preferable to being out in the open where the chamber was so unsteady.
Magic?
Ruith?
Brother?
“I don’t care what magic he bloody has, Doílain,” the man named Táir ground out. “I have bruises to repay him for.”
Doílain lifted his finger and Táir ceased speaking. His mouth was open and his eyes still blazed with hate, but he was, perhaps thankfully, now quite mute. Doílain walked over and pushed Táir back until he became a part of that circular spell.
“Stay there and don’t move,” Doílain suggested.
Sarah didn’t imagine she would want to be anywhere near Táir when he finally managed to get free of what bound him.
Doílain glanced at her as he did so, frowned thoughtfully, then turned to study her.
“You know, Ruithneadh, that’s a remarkably pretty wench there, though I suppose I should have expected nothing less from you. Even as a boy, you were a connoisseur of the finer things. But witch’s get?”
“A dalliance,” Ruith said dismisisvely.
“Of course,” Doílain said. “The youngest son of Gair of Ceangail could likely have a princess of any house in any of the Nine Kingdoms, couldn’t he? So, if you don’t want her any longer, perhaps I—”
“Don’t bother,” Ruith said shortly. “She talks too much and she has no magic. I imagine you’d want to kill her within half an hour and then where would you be? Look rather in loftier spheres.”
Sarah flinched as surely as if he’d slapped her, then she realized exactly what he’d said.
She had no magic? How in the bell did he know that?
She shook her head, but that didn’t improve matters. She looked at Ruith, but didn’t see the man she had eaten with in a barn three days ago, a man who had brushed her hair far beyond the point when she’d assumed he’d tired of it. Instead, there stood a man who looked at her with a hauteur that left her cheeks flaming.
“I have come home and won’t need your services any longer,” he said. “Get you gone before I’m forced to send you away. I promise you won’t like what opens the door to you here.”
“Aye, off you go, little rabbit,” Doílain said, shooing her off with an indulgent smile.
Sarah realized she was having help with that. Guardsmen took her by both arms and hauled her to her feet. She tripped over bodies that weren’t moving—dead perhaps—as she was propelled from the great hall. She looked back only once, but Ruith wasn’t looking at her. He was deep in conversation with a man he obviously knew quite well. She realized then that he hadn’t needed her help, indeed he had likely never needed her aid. For all she knew, the entire exercise from Doìre to Ceangail had been nothing but a bit of amusing sport for him.
Sport at her expense.
She was dragged across the passageway, then found herself flying out the front door. She landed on gravel that cut her hands and cheeks. She lay there for a moment or two, stunned, and listened to the front doors slamming behind her. She didn’t look to see if anyone was on the outside of those doors. She simply heaved herself to her feet and ran, realizing as she did so that she was weeping.
Gair of Ceangail’s youngest son?
It should have been impossible, but she could now see how it was all too possible. Hadn’t he known things he shouldn’t have? Hadn’t he been angry with Connail’s tales of Gair’s evil? Hadn’t he been uncommonly interested in the pages from Gair’s book that apparently only she could see? Hadn’t he been more than willing to acco
mpany her so he could find her brother, who was also quite interested in what Gair had done?
And, the most damning of all, hadn’t he known his way around his father’s keep, as if he might have lived there at one point?
She tripped and fell to her knees, then staggered back to her feet and stumbled again down the road, feeling the terror she’d been feeling for most of the morning turn suddenly to a clear, clean fury. She might have lost all sense the moment she’d seen Ruithneadh of Ceangail’s unnaturally handsome face, but now she was fully recovered.
And furious.
Damn him to hell a thousand times, the liar. He could have, at any point during the past several se’nnights, saved her time and trouble by pulling forth his mighty magic, dusting it off, and using it on her behalf. Instead, he had forced her to spend what little coin she had left on a merry chase that had left her, in the end, without her brother, without her horse-turned-dog, without her purse, and definitely without her pride.
All because of his perverse reasoning, which she was thoroughly convinced would be only understood by another bloody mage.
She had to slow down thanks to a stitch in her side, but that didn’t keep her from stomping down the road with as much vigor as she could muster.
Unfortunately, that lasted only a quarter mile before the fine, righteous anger she was feeding began to lose some of its fierceness along the edges. She wasn’t afraid of entertaining unpleasant thoughts, though, so she looked at them—albeit with a jaundiced eye.
It was true that he hadn’t wanted her to come to Ceangail—likely because he feared she would discover his identity. He also hadn’t wanted her to go to that terrible forest with its profoundly evil well, but that was likely so she didn’t eat his supplies. There was the difficulty of realizing that the one place he had wanted her to come was Lake Cladach, but she rushed quickly by that thought before she became entangled in memories that were too beautiful to think on without weeping.
She realized, with a start, that she was standing still, staring off into nothing at all. She recaptured her fury and started again down the road. That bloody lout could rescue himself, then go on to lead whatever sort of purposeful life sons of black mages led. She washed her hands of him. She had her own quest to see to, one she could obviously not count on anyone but herself to fulfill. The sooner she was about it, the—
She saw a glint of yellow in the trees. She was surprised enough by the sight to leap off the road into a handy clutch of pine trees. She wondered if perhaps she was imagining things, but nay, there it was again: a blond-haired man walking through the trees on the far side of the road, oblivious to anything but his cursing.
Her brother, Daniel.
Sarah cast a baleful glance toward the keep, which was quite obviously Daniel’s destination. She supposed she should have followed him, but she had no desire to enter those horrible walls again. She might find her brother, but then she would likely elbow him in the nose and render him senseless. If she saw Ruith again, she would stab him and render him dead.
Perhaps she would simply let all the mages she now knew congregate inside that spell-covered castle, then hope the bloody thing collapsed in on itself. If she could have found the right thread to the spell that covered the stone to accomplish that feat, she would have pulled it without hesitation.
It was tempting.
But so was a life free of magic, enspelled castles, and mages she wanted to see rotting in a hell of their own making.
She stood there for longer than she should have, dithering, before she made a decision, the best decision she’d made in a pair of fortnights.
She turned her back on the keep and walked away.
Twenty-two
Ruith knew he was going to die.
The last time he’d been faced with that knowledge, he’d been a lad of ten winters, standing next to his sister under the boughs of a terrible forest and cursing to give himself courage. He’d watched his father open that well, watched him gape up at its contents shooting toward the heavens, and known that all hope was lost. He remembered letting go of his sister’s hand to rush forward and try to stop the madness.
He’d failed.
He’d failed his mother, his brothers, his wee sister who he’d been charged to protect, yet somehow, beyond all reason, he’d been spared—only to find himself standing in a great hall that had once been free of his father’s bastards but now was not, waiting to die.
He felt the first spell wrap itself around him even though Doílain’s lips didn’t move. Doílain was, after all, Gair of Ceangail’s eldest son, bastard though he might have been. His power was great, even corrupted as it was by the blood of his mother, the witchwoman of Fás. Then again, she was powerful enough to give the masters at Beinn òrain pause.
The only thing good to come of the day was that Sarah was safe. He regretted how he’d had to bring that about, but perhaps she wouldn’t, when she thought about it and could see why he’d done what he’d done. Perhaps she would even forgive him, in time.
He was tempted to release all his power and bring down the hall around his ears, killing everyone inside including himself, but he realized with a start that that was what Doílain was waiting for. He felt the first tentative intrusion inside his soul and knew Doílain was testing him to see just what he had that Doílain might want to take for himself.
“Where have you been?” Doílain asked idly, sending one of his servants off for a chair.
“Away,” Ruith said shortly. He sensed others leaning closer, still bound together by magic he couldn’t see but could definitely feel, but he paid them no heed. He supposed he knew without asking what they wanted.
Doílain put his chair near Táir, shot his brother a sardonic look, then sat and leaned back in that chair, looking for all the world as if he contemplated a fine afternoon behind the chess board.
“I’m surprised you didn’t find your way here after Father was murdered. Keir did, you know.”
Ruith struggled to mask his surprise. “Is he still here?”
“Unfortunately not,” Doílain said with mock regret. “He seems to have slipped out of our ... protection, shall we say. He has very little power left, of course, so I didn’t waste the effort to follow him.”
Ruith folded his arms over his chest. “Was my brother an unwilling inhabitant of his own home, then?”
Doílain smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “His home? How quickly you forget who lived here for centuries before you were spawned on that pretentious trollop from Torr Dòrainn.”
Ruith threw himself forward only to realize he hadn’t moved. He cursed himself viciously, but quite silently. He had been too long out of the world of mages and their ilk, had spent too many years numbing himself to their machinations and intentions. He had sensed the first spell, but now he realized that whilst he’d been dawdling amongst his memories, his bastard brother had wrapped him in so many spells that he couldn’t move.
“If it eases your mind any,” Doílain said, crossing his legs and swinging one foot, “we didn’t mistreat Keir. Not overmuch.” He smiled. “Just a bit, now and again. Poor lad, he just couldn’t fight us. I think Father must have taken most of his magic before he met his very untimely end, wouldn’t you agree?”
Ruith didn’t want to think on those memories. Aye, Gair had taken quite a bit of power to himself, including most of Keir’s, which had rendered him almost unstoppable in the final seconds as he opened the well. Ruith knew that was why his mother hadn’t been able to fight him, in the end. Her power had been immense, but Gair’s had been more so, augmented as it had been by his sons’ bloodright.
He could scarce believe Keir was alive. He had never considered it, but now he wondered why not.
Well, he knew why not. Because he’d hidden himself away in the most unlikely place possible and never intended to come out again, not even to see his family. Or, at least that had been his plan until he’d found a woman with pale green eyes and hair the color of cognac on
his doorstep, a woman who wanted nothing more than peace, safety, and a place where she could weave things to make the world more beautiful.
“I wonder what Father left of you?” Doílain asked.
Ruith didn’t have a chance to answer before his soul was ransacked. He felt as if he’d just been kicked in the gut by a young stallion, but he ruthlessly refused to acknowledge it. It would only give Doílain pleasure he didn’t deserve. He felt Doílain find the well of magic he’d created inside himself and knew of the other’s intense displeasure at its construction.
And imperviousness.
“You won’t last,” Doílain promised.
“Why did you keep my brother here?” Ruith asked, ignoring the threat. He wished he sounded less affected by both Doílain’s torture and the little spells someone—he had no idea who—was tossing at him, painful little spells that stung where they landed and blossomed into raging, invisible fires.
If he escaped, he was going to bring the entire bloody place down on everyone in that circle.
Doílain was smiling, as if he knew exactly what Ruith was thinking. “Amitán, stop tormenting him.”
“I never liked him,” a voice said from behind Ruith.
“I imagine he feels the same way.” Doílain looked back at Ruith. “So, tell me, brother. Why do you think I kept Keir here?”
“My father’s spell of Diminishing.”
Doílain sat forward suddenly. “Our father’s spell of Diminishing, boy.”
“Perhaps he was our father,” Ruith conceded, “but you have to wonder why it is he didn’t see fit to share that particular spell with you. Could it be that you didn’t have the power for it, or was it that he thought you too stupid to use it?”
