She pulled herself back into herself to find him watching her with a faint smile.
“Forgive me, Sarah, my dear,” he said quietly. “I could have done that better.”
“Done what better?” Ruith asked sharply.
“Opened her eyes,” Soilléir said. “I was, unfortunately, in a good deal of haste.”
“What,” Sarah croaked, “did you do?”
Soilléir rubbed his hands together as if they pained him, much as Ruith had done that first night when they’d been talking about … well, she couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about. She just remembered how Ruith had looked, as if his hands had wrought something that had distressed him somehow.
“It would seem,” Soilléir said with a bit of a smile, “that you have a gift for Seeing.”
“Is it magic?” she asked hoarsely.
He smiled briefly. “Not in the sense you’re thinking, I daresay, but I suppose there is something … unusual about it.”
“How did you—never mind.” She put her hand over her eyes. “I don’t want to know how you knew.”
“I imagine you don’t,” he agreed. “I think we can perhaps simply concede that you were walking into danger and the most expedient way to get you out of it was to help you see the truth for yourself.”
Sarah wasn’t sure she could muster up any thanks, nor was she entirely sure what she should be thanking him for. She was too busy simply trying to breathe in and out. That didn’t help the nausea she was feeling or the way the chamber was not just the chamber, but a place now filled with spells and essences of those around her and sights she had never before imagined. She jumped a little when she realized someone was standing next to her, holding out a cup of wine with his ruined hands. She accepted it, then looked up at the man still hovering there.
“Thank you, Prince Rùnach,” she whispered.
Ruith leapt to his feet, sending his stool flying into Soilléir’s knees and himself almost pitching back into the fire. “What did you say?” he asked incredulously.
“Well, that is his name,” she said, feeling a little defensive. “I can see it woven into his soul. Can’t you?”
Ruith’s mouth was working, but no sound came out.
“Do you know him?” she asked. She turned to Soilléir. “Did I say something amiss?”
Soilléir only shook his head slightly, a very small smile on his face.
Sarah focused on Ruith with an effort. The blood had drained from his face, and he looked as if he might pitch forward onto her lap at any moment. He took a deep breath, then put his hands over hers to help her drink—though his hands weren’t much steadier than hers—then took the cup away and set it aside. He then turned to Soilléir’s servant, looked at him for several minutes in absolute silence, then lifted the cowl back from his face. Sarah couldn’t say she was at her best, but even she could see well enough to mark the astonishing resemblance between the two.
And then she realized the truth.
They were brothers.
She realized she was pitching forward only because she heard Ruith bark something at Soilléir that sounded remarkably like, I’ll see to her myself this time, Master Soilléir, thank you just the same.
Or words to that effect. Sarah wasn’t sure of anything until she felt softness against her back. She looked up to find Ruith leaning over her. His expression of devastation almost matched what she felt. She reached up and put her hand against his cheek.
“I understand,” she managed, her voice sounding as harsh as a crow’s cry in her ears. “About the magic.”
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
“About Olc,” she whispered, finding that the chamber was starting to contract around her. “Why you don’t want to use your magic. Why you want none of … that.”
He only looked at her in silence, his eyes full of what she’d seen. She now understood. He had, more than once, put himself between her and that evil for no other reason than to protect her.
“This is why you said those things to me in Ceangail,” she murmured, feeling her eyes close relentlessly. “To spare me that.”
“Aye,” he said very quietly.
“I wish I’d never gone inside in the first place.”
“You can blame that fully on me,” he said in a low voice. “I should have left you behind, but I didn’t because I am an idiot. Because I thought I needed you to find the spells. Because I thought you’d be safer with me than with Franciscus. Because I am, again, a fool of the first water.”
She almost managed a smile. “That’s more than you’ve said to me in a fortnight.”
“You told me to keep my mouth shut.”
“Only when we’re facing black mages with your death on their minds.”
Which, she supposed, hadn’t been that day. She’d come face-to-face with a black mage, but it hadn’t been Ruith’s death he’d had on his mind.
It had been hers.
She felt herself falling into blackness and surrendered to it willingly.
Nine
Ruith watched Sarah slip into what he hoped was a peaceful, dreamless sleep, then straightened and turned to face the other occupants of the chamber. Soilléir was standing near his hearth, watching him gravely. Rùnach, the one who had been masquerading as Soilléir’s servant, was standing next to Soilléir, his cowl pushed back from his ruined face, his expression equally grave. Ruith wondered if his brother would have revealed himself if Sarah hadn’t done it for him, or if he would have remained in the shadows.
The thought of that was, he had to admit, absolutely devastating.
He walked over to his brother, put his arms around him, and fought the urge to break down and bawl like a bairn. Rùnach returned the embrace, slapped him a time or two on the back with hands Ruith had already seen were not up to that task, then pulled back and kissed Ruith on both cheeks.
“Ruith,” he said, sounding enormously pleased.
Ruith dragged his sleeve across his eyes. “I can’t believe you said nothing.”
“I’m discreet,” Rùnach said, shooting Soilléir a look. He turned back to Ruith. “I thought you were dead, you wee fool,” he said, in his voice that sounded quite a bit like branches scraping against a sheet of glass. “Léir, of course, has said nothing to me during these long years to dissuade me from such an assumption.”
“Predictable,” Ruith said darkly. “And nay, I’m not dead, but ’twas a very near thing. And at the moment I think I’m very near to falling upon my arse from shock. Perhaps we could sit until I’m recovered.”
Rùnach stepped back. “I’ll fetch chairs—”
“Of course you won’t,” Ruith said. “I’ll see to it.” He started to walk away, then looked at Soilléir. He had to take a careful breath before he trusted himself to speak instead of doing his host bodily harm. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Soilléir said quietly.
“I don’t suppose you have anything else to say to me, do you? Siblings to reveal, censure to offer, reminders of my inability to face anything but supper and come away the victor?”
Soilléir smiled faintly. “I believe my work is done with all three. I’ll go pace through the halls and stir up mischief. You and your brother have things to discuss, I imagine.”
“You could have told me about him,” Ruith said in a low voice.
“Rùnach is not my servant,” Soilléir said with a shrug. “I do not reveal secrets that aren’t mine.”
“It would be so much easier to dislike you if you would just be wrong. Once.”
Soilléir clucked his tongue. “Unkind.”
“But poetically just. I would like to see it, perhaps when you’re undone by a woman, or trying to win a woman, or finding yourself turned about by a woman.”
“I’ll watch you a bit longer and see how the solving of that tangle is managed,” Soilléir said before he clapped Ruith on the shoulder and walked away. “You might consider taking her for a walk later, Ruithneadh. She’ll n
o doubt want to be free of the university for a bit.”
Ruith wasn’t about to ask him how he knew that, or exactly what he had done to make her see what she’d walked into, or what that meant for her now. He would ask before the day was out, but he supposed even Sarah wouldn’t begrudge him a moment or two with a sibling he’d thought was dead.
He drew chairs up to the fire, then sat and looked at the brother he hadn’t seen in a score of years.
“What happened to you?” he asked, when he thought he could speak without weeping.
“After?”
Ruith nodded.
Rùnach shrugged. “Mother covered me with her power as she died, so the well didn’t kill me, but it rendered me senseless. By the time I regained my wits and managed to get my hands free of the stone, the bodies, save Mother’s, were gone.” He paused for a rather long moment. “I had no power—Father took it, of course—and no strength. I crawled away and hoped I could find a place to hide.”
Ruith understood completely. What he couldn’t bear to think on, however, was his brother having lost his power. Rùnach had been a master mage, endlessly searching for spells, continually testing them, improving upon them, making them more than they had been before. Elegant, powerful, resistant to evil—
He took a deep breath and looked at his brother. “Why didn’t you go home or to Lake Cladach?” he asked, realizing Soilléir had asked him the same thing.
Rùnach’s laugh was faint and humorless. “To have those at Seanagarra pity me my ruined hands and lack of magic? To have Grandmother Eulasaid fret over how to restore either—or both? Nay, Ruith, both places were closed to me.”
“But why here?”
Rùnach looked at him seriously. “I wanted the seven rings of mastery.”
Ruith felt his mouth fall open, and he laughed a little in spite of himself. “Surely you jest.”
Rùnach shook his head slowly.
“But you never wanted those,” Ruith said in surprise. Indeed, he and Rùnach had had numerous conversations about the folly of subjecting their magic to the scrutiny of masters who couldn’t possibly hope to wield the same power and might. Ruith supposed, looking back on it now, that they had been a little arrogant about it all.
How things changed.
“I wanted to walk through the doors the rings would open for me,” Rùnach said with a shrug, “so I would have lowered myself to make the attempt. But Léir wouldn’t allow it.”
“What a woman you’ve become,” Ruith said. “Surely you could best him and his pitiful spells in order to do as you saw fit.”
“Perhaps before,” Rùnach said, smiling faintly, “but not now. I suppose in his own way he was attempting to keep me safe. In Mother’s memory, no doubt.”
“Does no one know you’re here, then?” Ruith asked in surprise. “Even after all these years?”
“Not even Droch, who would likely turn me into a pawn without hesitation should he learn the truth,” Rùnach said with a snort. “Nay, brother, there are advantages to masquerading as Soilléir’s servant. I live and breathe, for one thing. And I have the run of the library downstairs, which you will readily admit is something to envy.”
And for Rùnach, that was no doubt indeed the case. Ruith studied his brother for a moment or two in silence, then shook his head. “I still don’t understand why you ever would have wanted any of those bloody rings.”
“Can’t you?” Rùnach asked, sounding faintly amused.
“To have Soilléir’s spells?” Ruith asked, not at all surprised to watch Rùnach nod. His brother might have lost his magic and his hands, but his ambitions had obviously not changed. “Which ones?”
“I would have taken all of them, but I was willing to settle for two.”
“And those would have been?”
“Return and Alchemy.”
Ruith began to smile. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I am,” Rùnach assured him. “And just so you know and can be envious, Léir gave them to me.”
“Good of him,” Ruith grumbled.
Rùnach’s face was, the poor lad, as scarred as his hands, but that didn’t stop him from managing a look of supreme smugness. “He was more than generous, actually, for he gave me all his spells.”
“Damn you,” Ruith said with an uneasy laugh. “Very well, you have what Father would have killed for. What, pray, did you intend to do with any of them?”
“Bring Father back to life, then turn him into a rock.”
Ruith smiled. “Your problem, brother, has always been your lack of imagination.” He ignored the fact that he’d thought exactly the same thing. “Rather you should have turned him into a truffle, exposed perilously in a forest full of insubordinate pigs, perhaps. Or a large, hairy spider sent into a chamber full of feisty ladies’ maids with heavy court shoes. Or a target pinned to a haystack for use by Meithian archers who are, you will remember, simply unparalleled for their accuracy and ability to practice for all the hours daylight allows them and often into the night when torches can be fetched. But a rock?”
“As if you could have invented anything more interesting,” Rùnach said with a snort.
“I believe I just did.”
“And I believe you don’t have the spells to do it, so, little brother, ’tis naught but speculation with you.”
Ruith wanted to laugh, but his brother’s words hit too close to home.
He decided, for the third time that day, that he didn’t like being less than he was. He didn’t like it at all.
Nay, if he was going to be truthful with himself, he would have to admit that he hadn’t liked the fact that his magic was buried and unused for quite some time now. Since he’d been in the great hall at Ceangail and found himself completely unable to protect Sarah.
Nay, that wasn’t true either. He’d known, on a night a month ago when he’d sat against the wheel of Franciscus’s ale wagon and held Sarah in his arms so he could wake her if she dreamed about his father’s spells burning like lamps all over the world, that if he’d been half the man his mother had expected him to be, he would have not run but instead turned and faced his demons squarely.
Actually, his father would have agreed with that as well, but Ruith preferred not to think about that.
“And at least you have the magic to do what I cannot,” Rùnach mused. “If only you had the spells.”
Ruith pursed his lips and remained silent.
“You should, if I might offer an opinion,” Rùnach began carefully, “be grateful for what you have.”
Ruith smiled wearily. “Am I so easy to read, then?”
“I just know you, Ruith,” Rùnach said quietly. “I know your demons.”
“Because they’re yours as well?”
Rùnach nodded. “I’m simply fortunate I’m not forced to confront them.”
“You have always led a charmed life.”
“Haven’t I, though?”
Ruith smiled. “I’ve missed you.”
“And I you, but if you fling yourself in my arms again and slobber all over me like a woman, I’ll stick a knife in your gut.”
“Do you ever talk this much to Soilléir?”
“Oh, aye. He begs me to be quiet.”
Ruith smiled, then looked down at his hands for a moment or two. He could feed himself, clothe himself, and keep himself from freezing to death in the mountains. He could wield a sword, make arrows for a bow, and extricate himself from situations not requiring a sword but instead a tactfulness his mother would have been satisfied with.
But that wasn’t enough to do what he had to.
“Tell me of the pages you’ve been hunting.”
Ruith looked up. “What—oh, those. I’ve been finding pages of Father’s book—well, Sarah’s been finding them. We had a few, but I lost them.” That wasn’t exactly the case, but the truth was too unsettling to look at presently. “I suppose I don’t need those, though, given that I could write at least most of them from memory.”
“Could you?” Rùnach asked in surprise.
“Couldn’t you?” Ruith asked, feeling equally surprised.
Rùnach shook his head slowly. “I had the entire bloody book memorized … before. When I lost my power, I lost those memories as well.” He smiled grimly. “Blow to the head and all that, I suppose. I have over the years, however, found most of the spells I think he drew from.”
“Where are those?”
“I gave them to one who needed them.”
“Do I want to know who?” Ruith asked unwillingly.
“I don’t think so today.”
Ruith dragged his hands through his hair and sighed deeply. “What do you think I should do now?”
“Oh, nay,” Rùnach said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to stop making a complete arse of yourself. Unless you’d like me to echo the suggestion that you take your lady for a wee walk. I, however, would suggest that you do so in Grandfather’s garden.”
Ruith wondered why it was he was continually being caught off guard. He didn’t remember his last visit to Buidseachd having been so taxing. “An interesting thought.”
“You can’t tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind before.”
“It has,” Ruith managed. “And I made certain the thought continued on into the darkness where it belongs. I’m quite happy pretending to be something I’m not and ignoring things that make me uncomfortable.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” Rùnach said sadly. He shook his head. “How have you managed without me all these years, Ruith?”
“Poorly,” Ruith admitted, then steeled himself for the better part of an afternoon spent listening to his elder brother point out to him just where he’d gone wrong. Instruction on how to go about winning a woman he wasn’t at all sure would want to be won would no doubt figure prominently in Rùnach’s conversation.
Ruith supposed that whilst he was listening, he would think more than he should have about the fact that whilst he would happily have retreated to his mountain sanctuary, his brother would have shouldered his burden and marched doggedly into the battle that lay ahead.
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