by Lynn Kurland
Doílain was faster than a striking snake, Ruith had to concede that. His bastard brother had backhanded him before he saw the blow coming. He went sprawling only to find himself hauled to his feet and struck again.
Doílain’s rage was palpable. “I’ll kill you, you little whoreson.”
“I suppose you could try—”
Doílain launched himself forward. Ruith felt his head connect with the stone of the floor in an unwholesome and quite abrupt way. He saw stars, but it wasn’t the worst thing to happen to him, so he ignored it.
“Can’t have what ... you want ... if I’m dead,” he managed to gurgle.
Doílain heaved himself up, releasing Ruith’s throat as he did so. He stood over him, simply shaking with fury. “I’ll have your power if it is the very last thing I do on this earth.”
Ruith didn’t want to lay odds on that happening. He kept that to himself, though, and accepted help to his feet. He thanked his other bastard brothers, who would just as soon have slit his throat as look at him, then concentrated on Doílain. The others were powerful, to be sure, but Doílain was the one to watch. Hadn’t he learned that well enough in his youth?
“Give me the spell,” Doílain demanded.
“Never,” Ruith said politely.
It was then that things began to go badly indeed for him.
He supposed it was prudent not to comment on the quality of Doílain’s spells, more of which were being wrapped around him with alarming velocity, but he honestly couldn’t help himself. It took his mind off realizations he couldn’t help but come to quite abruptly.
He had made a grave miscalculation.
If he had been using his magic all these years, he might have stood a chance of releasing it all, then wiping out the entire collection of his bastard brothers, but his magic was unwieldy and the power too great. He had killed those trolls in the glade successfully, but without any finesse at all. He’d only glanced at them before he’d incinerated them, but they had been a bloody mess, as if a great sledgehammer had fallen upon them. He could only imagine how his other spells might go awry.
And he was in a hall full of mages whose magic might have been black as night, but it was well honed and well used. He wouldn’t stand a chance against them.
And whilst Doílain might not have had Gair’s spell of Diminishing, he was who he was and his power was not insignificant. Ruith was genuinely afraid that if he released all his power, Doílain might manage somehow to take it—even a fraction of it—and then where would the world be?
Nay, better that it all died with him.
Only he had the feeling his death would not be quick.
At least Sarah would be safe. He regretted to the depths of his soul every word he’d said to her, but what other choice had he had? She was defenseless and he unable to help her. He hoped her fury would carry her at least a few days’ south where she would meet up with Franciscus and the two of them would decide, with any luck at all, to go to the schools of wizardry. She could tell the masters her tale, then someone would help her.
And then, with any luck, she would feel his last wish for her, which was that she seek out Sgath and let him build her a little house in that perfect spot on Lake Cladach. He himself would sit down beyond toil or sorrow in the east with his mother, his brothers, and his sister and tell them how much he’d loved her.
A pity he hadn’t had a chance to tell her.
“You stubborn git,” Doílain panted, “surrender!”
Ruith didn’t have any strength left to manage even a grunt. He was in his father’s hall, surrounded by mages who would as quickly slay him as look at him, and he was quite ill from the memories of living there in the past. It would be easy, so much easier actually, to push Doílain past the point of reason and find himself too dead to be a temptation to them any longer. It would certainly end problems of magic and the pain of knowing he alone of his siblings was left alive to come to ... well, this. He opened his mouth to spew out the most vile insult he could. Or he did until he caught sight of movement near the window.
A blond man was gingerly crawling through the jagged glass and spells of a window at the back of the hall. He was apparently unhappy with the condition of his hands, judging by the look on his face and the way he was apparently on the verge of letting loose a torrent of curses. But those curses never came. He stiffened, then fell over, senseless.
Sarah crouched behind him in the window well, a rock in her hands.
Ruith focused immediately on Doílain, suppressing his own string of what would have been very impressive curses. He imagined half of them at least would have been directed at Sarah of Doire. Damn her to hell, what was she thinking? He’d perjured himself to the depths of his soul to send her away, yet there she was back again.
And she would soon be in Doílain’s sights if he didn’t do something very soon.
He opened his mouth to curse Doílain, then flinched at the streak of lightning that split the great hall from top to bottom.
Sarah.
Her name whispered across his mind as if someone else had said it, though he knew he was the only one in the hall who knew her name. The very thought of her was, as always, a cascade of sunshine pouring down through the trees of a forest. Pure, clear, and enough to drive away the darkness that was in him.
And if he had the chance, he just might shout at her until her ears rang.
He could scarce believe it, but he wondered if he just might have that chance. He couldn’t move his head, but he could see if he looked hard enough, a creature of light standing just inside the hall door. Apparently, so could all his bastard siblings. Doílain spun around, curses and spells on his tongue. Six more brothers—which wasn’t the full tally, but Ruith didn’t spare any thought wondering where the others might be—gathered around Doílain to fight with what magic they had to hand. Táir was left where he’d been frozen in place.
Much as Ruith was himself.
He watched out of the corner of his eye as Sarah walked quickly to where he was, stopping at his side where she might be missed if Doílain turned to look at him.
“Who are you?” she demanded in a harsh whisper.
“What?” he asked in surprise.
“I want your name.”
He struggled to breathe. “Just ... go,” he managed. “Please.”
“Damn you to hell, I won’t go until I can take you with me so I can stab you in your sleep. I want your name. Your entire name, you pathetic liar.”
“I’m a very ... good ... liar.”
She drew one of the knives from her boot and began to pick at the spells surrounding him.
“Your name.”
He supposed there was no point in not giving it to her. “I am Ruithneadh ... of Ceangail. Or of Torr Dòrainn ... if you’d rather.”
Her knife stopped its torture, and she came to stand in front of him. “You’re a damned elf!”
“Only three-quarters.”
“This isn’t amusing and I’m not laughing.” And her expression said she was telling the absolute truth. “You lied to me. From the very beginning. Actually, you were lying to me before we even met, living up there on your mountain, pretending to be someone you weren’t.”
“You weren’t exactly ... forthcoming ...” He watched the words come out of his mouth and knew—perhaps because his mother seemed to be standing next to him in spirit, shaking her head slightly in that way she’d done when he was starting down a path of bad manners he shouldn’t have—that they were the wrong ones.
“I was trying to save my life,” she said hotly.
“So ... was I.”
“I wasn’t hiding the fact that I had magic powerful enough to undo the world and everything in it!”
She was overestimating his abilities, but he didn’t have the strength to tell her so. He could only close his eyes and concentrate on breathing. He didn’t even have the energy to pay attention to what was becoming an all-out battle by the hall door.
She took a step closer
to him. “Could you have found Daniel without this entire accursed journey? Found him and stopped him?”
There was no use in denying that either. His father had had a spell for everything, from keeping his favorite boots eternally scuff-free to forcing his steward to bring him a delicate infusion of tea every morning without being reminded. Aye, he could have found Daniel. Any other mage with even a rudimentary knowledge of hiding himself might have been more difficult, if not impossible, to locate, but Sarah’s brother? Aye, he could have found him easily enough.
“I’m waiting.”
He met her eyes. “Aye.” If he’d been willing to use magic, which he hadn’t been.
She glared at him, then pulled her other knife out of her boot. He wasn’t altogether certain she didn’t intend to stab him with them both, so he kept his mouth shut and hoped she wouldn’t kill him before he’d regained enough strength to apologize.
She scowled at the spells that bound him—spells he couldn’t see, as it happened—then from all appearances began to rearrange the strands. The spells were quite unwilling to release him, though, and her tugging was substantially more painful than he’d anticipated it would be. In time, she found something that almost sliced through him as she pulled it out where she could cut it.
And then every last bloody spell he’d been held captive by slithered to the ground like silken threads to pool at his feet.
Go...
Ruith found himself on his knees in that mess of spells, but not for long. Sarah hauled him up, then pulled his arm around her shoulders.
“Let’s go.”
Ruith looked to his right. “We should help whoever that is—”
“Master Franciscus said to go.”
He felt his mouth fall open. “That’s Franciscus? How do you know?”
“I can see him. Can’t you? Or does your royal sight not extend to peering inside clouds of sunlight?”
He set his jaw. “You are the one with sight.”
“And hearing as well, apparently. He wants us to go.” She said it confidently, but she looked rather worried. “I would say I’m surprised to see him here—and even more surprised to see him with magic—but after the day I’ve had, I think I might have passed being surprised by anything. And I would argue with him, but I imagine we should listen to him and leave before Urchaid decides to detach himself from that darkness he’s lingering in on the other side of the hall.”
“Urchaid, as well?”
“Apparently, we are surrounded by men with secrets. Actually, I’m surrounded by men with secrets. And unless you’re planning on using some of that mighty magic you apparently have to save us all—”
He shook his head sharply. “I will not.”
“Somehow, Your Highness,” she said flatly, “that is the one thing that doesn’t surprise me.”
“Don’t call me that.”
She looked at him in a way that made him flinch. “It’s the least of the things I want to call you.”
He imagined that was true and decided abruptly that he didn’t particularly want the rest of that list. He merely nodded and leaned on her as little as possible. He gave Táir a push that landed him on the floor in the muck, because he couldn’t help himself, then stumbled with Sarah across the hall. He forced her to go out the window first, then paused and looked down.
Daniel of Doìre lay on the floor at his feet. He was terribly tempted to just thrust a knife through the whoreson’s heart, but he hesitated. He supposed that Daniel would meet his end in some other way, perhaps a more fitting way, if he woke to a hall full of angry bastards. He looked over his shoulder and wondered how it was he hadn’t realized how fierce the battle on the other side of the hall was. It was darkness and lightning and terrible noise.
And there was other darkness as well, along the wall as Sarah had said. Urchaid? He didn’t imagine she was mistaken, but it was odd just the same.
Go, Ruithneadh. Take Sarah andgo.
Ruith hesitated. He couldn’t simply flee—
Go. The battle is almost won.
“He wants us to go.”
Ruith looked at Sarah, then nodded. “I hear him too.” He heaved himself out of the window after her, then reached for her hand. He stopped himself just in time when he realized she was still holding on to her blades—and she had no intention of putting them down.
“Do you have a plan?” he asked, sucking in painful breaths of very cold air.
“Aye, you use your magic and find the pages so we can have this all over with.”
“I couldn’t see them, even with magic,” he said wearily. “That is your gift.”
She frowned, then nodded to her right. “Follow me, then. I know where another page is. I think it might be Daniel’s, so I’ve no mind to touch it.”
Ruith was so happy to be breathing the putrid air that surrounded his father’s keep, he would have crawled over hot coals if Sarah had wanted him to. He did his best to ignore the expression on her face he had full view of now and again.
Fury didn’t begin to describe it.
She led him with unerring exactness to a small pack stuck between two rocks and covered with underbrush. She shoved her knives into her boots, then folded her arms over her chest and looked at him.
“There.”
He unearthed from the pack a rolled leather scroll. He undid the leather ties, then slowly unrolled the sheaves.
It was his father’s spells of Reconstruction and Diminishing.
Well, half of the latter.
He could hardly believe he was holding both in his hands, but there was no denying it. There was also no denying that there was something, well, odd about those spells. A certain shimmer to the page. He realized, with a start, that the spell of Shapechanging had sported the same thing, as if the spell—
A rumbling started under his feet. He quickly rolled the scroll back up and shoved it down his boot to join the spell of Shapechanging. He would look at them all later, when he had the time to examine them properly. He was also going to have to find a better way to carry them, else he wasn’t going to have anywhere to put his feet.
He looked behind him in time to see the castle beginning to tremble.
“Franciscus is inside,” Sarah exclaimed. “Do something!”
An enormous rumble saved him from having to answer. He watched in absolute astonishment, though without perhaps the regret he should have had, as the keep began to collapse into itself.
Men began to hurl themselves out the windows. Ruith looked for the light, but saw no sign of it. He then turned to Sarah.
“We must run. If they find us, then death will seem a sweet release. Franciscus will see to himself, if seeing is possible.”
“Why don’t you hide us with a bloody spell of un-noticing?” she demanded. “Surely that isn’t beyond your powers.”
“I cannot,” he said tightly.
She shot him a look of disgust, then turned away. “Very well. We’ll run.”
And so they did. He wasn’t sure how far or how long they ran. It couldn’t have been terribly far, for he could still hear the echoes of the keep falling in on itself, apparently piece by enspelled piece. Or perhaps he was hearing with more than his ears. He didn’t know and didn’t have the energy to attempt to find out. All he could do was continue to stumble along after Sarah.
In time, he realized that her harsh breathing was coming from more than just their flight. He reached for her hand and pulled her back to first a painful walk, then a complete stop. He turned her to him, unsurprised to see fury still burning brightly in her eyes. It was, he supposed, a defense against the tears running down her cheeks.
“I should have told you, he said quietly.
“Why didn’t you?” she asked, dragging her free arm across her eyes. It was the arm burned by his father’s spell, and the motion left her wincing. She lifted her arm up. “You could have cured this.”
“I tried, in the barn.”
She froze. “You what?”
&
nbsp; “I had a little magic left, after the well,” he admitted. “I tried to heal you with it. There is something in the wound that is beyond my skill.”
“Then you have used magic,” she said, stunned. “Why didn’t you say something?”
He looked down at their hands intertwined. “Because I couldn’t,” he said with a sigh, “but aye, I have used it once or twice. On Seirceil. And at the well, to kill the trolls and burn them to ashes. At the barn, whilst you slept, to try to cure your arm.” He looked at her gravely. “But then I took it all and buried it in the well I’ve been keeping it in these past score of years.”
“Why?” she asked, and the fury was gone quite suddenly from her eyes.
“Because I do not want to become my father.”
She looked at him for another moment or two, then put her arms around his waist and held him tightly. He returned the favor, holding her close, wishing that neither of them was trembling as badly as they were. Hers wasn’t from weariness, he suspected. Then again, neither was his.
“Ruith, you will never be your father.”
“I have quite a temper,” he said lightly. “You don’t know what I could do.”
She pulled back where she could look at him. “You’re an idiot. Your Highness.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Again, I have a list that is much worse.” She pulled away from him and took a deep breath. “Not that you would care what I called you, I imagine. No doubt there are princesses aplenty who will be vying for your temper’s attentions once word gets out, so you’ll have no need of my sweet terms of endearment.”
“Are you going to be the one to put out that word?”
She shot him a look. “And be the means of subjecting spoiled lassies all over the world to your vile self? You jest, sir.”
He smiled in spite of himself, then pulled her close again before she could decide that in his arms was where she didn’t particularly want to be. She didn’t protest, which he supposed might have been construed as a good sign. He was tempted, whilst she was standing willingly in his embrace, to voice a few more flowery sentiments before she wasted any more thought on gels with useless titles, but before he could compose them in a way he thought wouldn’t result in her plunging her knife into his gut, she had gasped and pulled away.
