Dreamspinner (19 page)

“And have my mouth catch on fire? You ask too much.”

Rùnach looked at him seriously. “I honestly don’t care what you use as long as you use something that will save her life. Whilst you still can.”

Weger looked as if his fondest wish was to turn and flee. But he apparently wasn’t the master of Gobhann because he was a coward. He took a deep breath, cursed fluently, then knelt down on Aisling’s other side. He took her hand in his, then put his other hand over the still-bleeding spot in the middle of her chest. Rùnach listened to him spit out an eminently useful spell of Croxteth, then follow that bit of healing with a very long string of curses in which Lothar of Wychweald and Rùnach’s own father figured prominently.

Aisling took a deep breath. She murmured a handful of things, opened her eyes and looked at Weger, then sighed and fell back into senselessness.

Rùnach smiled in spite of himself. Perhaps the spell had been hastily and roughly spoken, but as with any spell used for healing, there was something left behind, something wholesome and good. If Weger’s spell had left a wholesomeness that was better suited to the rough atmosphere of a garrison hall, well, perhaps that
was only to be expected. Aisling would live, which was all that mattered.

He smoothed the hair back from her face, then looked at her benefactor. To his surprise, Weger was looking at the woman lying there in front of them as if he’d seen…well, his expression was not one of horror or disgust. It was as if he were seeing something he had never expected to see, no matter the location.

“What is it?” Rùnach asked in surprise.

Weger put Aisling’s hand he’d been holding in Rùnach’s, then lurched to his feet. “I need something very strong to drink,” he said thickly.

“What did you see?”

Weger glared at him, spat out another pair of spells that flooded the chamber with werelight and created and filled a hearth behind Aisling’s head. “Nothing.” He threw a key at Rùnach that he barely managed to catch. “Lock up and make sure I get that back. It’s the only one I have.”

“And the werelight?”

“Everything inside here will disappear when you lock the door.” He took the two steps necessary to get to the door, then paused as he put his hand on the latch. He considered, then turned and looked at Rùnach. “No magic?”

“Not a drop,” Rùnach said. Almost without flinching.

Weger pursed his lips. “Magic is a very unmanly way to go about things. Prissy and affected, if you ask me.”

“I feel better already.”

Weger paused and seemed to be chewing on his words quite thoroughly before he found ones he wanted to spew out. “See her back to your chamber,” he said, “then do not leave her.”

Rùnach frowned. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is I want you to keep her next to you at all times.” He scowled. “The girl needs a guardian, not only here but when she leaves here. I believe you are that man.”

“But I’m not going anywhere with her,” Rùnach said in surprise.

Weger was very still. “I would rethink that, were I you.”

Rùnach felt his mouth fall open. “Why?”

“Because along with a keeper, she needs a swordsman to win a war for her.” Weger lifted an eyebrow. “Are you not a swordsman equal to that?”

“I have no
desire
to be equal to that—” Rùnach heard the words come out of his mouth, then shut his mouth slowly, because it felt as if the entire world had slowed to a smooth, almost imperceptible stop.

Are you not equal to me, son?

I have no desire to be equal to you, Father.

A good thing that is, young one. You with your pitiful scribblings in your book that will never be equal to mine…

The conversation in its entirety came back to Rùnach with startling clarity, as if he were standing to the side of the little tête-à-tête, watching his father speaking with his son of ten-and-eight. A son who, as it happened, very much wanted not to be equal to his father, but surpass him in every way.

Only whilst using that power for good, of course.

He had often wondered, in the years that followed when his power was no more and the controversy was confined to mere speculation, if perhaps he would have failed that test if he’d had to face it in truth. Perhaps he would have become just like his father if he’d had the opportunity. He had been, he had to admit, perhaps a bit more proud than he should have been of several things. His skill with the sword. His skill with a spell. The way he could walk into a hall and have all eyes turn his way, the masculine eyes with envy and the feminine ones with admiration that ofttimes had led to swooning.

How many times had Gille complained loudly that Rùnach had taken at birth all the beauty intended for the rest of them before they could claim their share? Rùnach had laughed, for his brothers had not been lacking in handsomeness themselves, but he could admit, now that his face caused flinches of disgust and horror, that there had been a time when he’d been very aware of the elegant figure he’d cut.

Perhaps the well had been a boon.

“Must you think about this all day?” Weger demanded.

Rùnach looked up at him. “What war?”

“How would I know?” Weger snapped. “I just know…well, never mind what I know.”

“With all due respect, my lord Scrymgeour, what have you seen?”

Weger rubbed his hands over his face suddenly, then blew out his breath. “Nothing I could name,” he said, sounding suddenly very weary. He looked at Rùnach. “I’ll give you another fortnight, then throw you out. I think I can protect your anonymity that long, though Odo recognized you easily enough as Morgan’s brother. I can’t imagine others would, but one never knows. Lothar certainly knew who you were—” He started to speak, then shook his head. “A fortnight. No longer.”

“But, I don’t want to fight her war,” Rùnach spluttered.

Weger looked at him in a way that made Rùnach suddenly feel as if he were a lad of ten-and-two who had disappointed someone who had until that point thought highly of him.

“You might, Prince Rùnach, think about someone besides yourself for a change.”

And with that, the door banged shut and Weger was gone.

Rùnach shook his head, then he shook his head again. He finally had to get up and walk around the chamber, a dozen times, two score, five score, until he stopped being able to count the turnings.

He realized, at a certain point, that Aisling’s eyes were open. For a moment, he feared she was dead in spite of Weger’s spell, but she was watching him. He stopped at her feet and looked down at her.

She was, as he had thought at more than one point, not at all plain. She was…well, he had no idea what she was. To be honest, she frightened the hell out of him. She should have been at home, sitting by the fire, trying to fatten herself up, not lying in a bitterly cold tower chamber attached to the most austere keep in all the Nine Kingdoms, sporting what he was certain was a very ugly scar on her chest.

He wondered, not for the first time, how she had been chosen
to come look for a man to save her village. Had there been no one else? Or had she volunteered?

And why?

“You’re making the chamber spin,” she said, putting her hand over her eyes.

“I’ll stop.” He hesitated. “How do you fare?”

“I feel a little…breathless.”

He imagined she did. He looked at her and shook his head. How she had expected anyone to have believed her a lad, he had no idea. He watched her put her hand over what had recently been a hole in her chest, then flinch. She lifted her head and looked at blood still damp on her tunic and the rather substantial rent, then looked at Rùnach in surprise.

“That man stabbed me.”

He nodded.

“Who
was
he?” she asked faintly.

Rùnach had no desire to discuss those details with her, so he wouldn’t. He sat down on the floor next to her. “He was no one important,” he said easily. “I wouldn’t give him another thought.”

She rubbed her chest absently. “He seems very dangerous. Why is he here?”

“Perhaps
because
he is dangerous,” Rùnach said. “Weger may keep him here because he can do less damage locked in a cell here than he could outside the gates. Why he was free today, I wouldn’t attempt to speculate.”

She sat up carefully, then looked over her shoulder at the fire in the hearth. The sigh that escaped her was difficult to listen to.

“Let me help you,” Rùnach said, holding out his hand.

“I don’t need aid,” she said, then crawled over to sit against the wall, close to the hearth.

That bothered him slightly, that refusal, though he decided it was perhaps wise not to examine why. He simply turned so he could watch her as she leaned her back against the stone and breathed. It looked painful, truth be told, but perhaps there was no healing that came without some sort of price attached.

“Why am I not dead?” she said finally.

Rùnach realized he should have thought sooner about inventing a decent answer for that. He was absolutely positive Weger wouldn’t want anyone to know what he’d done, not even the woman who owed him her life.

“Ah,” he began, “Lord Weger keeps a, er—” He cast about for a plausible tale. “He keeps a mage here for emergencies.”

She blinked. “A what?”

“A mage.”

She laughed a little. “Surely not.”

He smiled, because there was something about her laugh that was like a glimpse of sunshine after endless days of rain. He had the feeling, daft though it might have been, that she hadn’t laughed all that much in her life. She seemed to savour it just as much as he did.

“What do you mean, ‘surely not’?” he asked.

“Because there are no such things as mages,” she said, almost gently, as if she feared to ruin a dearly held belief for him.

Rùnach had to admit there was part of him that wished desperately that he could take Aisling down and have her shout that over and over again outside Lothar’s door until the man went completely mad.

“Ah, well, I suppose the man was a healer,” he conceded. “Call him what you will.”

She frowned thoughtfully. “But I am healed completely.”

“Potent herbs, I imagine.”

She looked at him and frowned again, as if she knew that couldn’t be possible but couldn’t possibly admit that anything else might be responsible. He decided that before she gave herself pains in the head by any more frowning, he would do well to change the subject. No sense in not prying a few answers from her whilst she was distracted.

“Where were you raised?” he asked. “I mean, it was obviously a place without mages.”

“Who don’t exist,” she said absently.

“Of course not.”

She seemed to be struggling to find the right words for heaven only knew what. She crawled to her feet, shunning his help, then began to pace slowly around the edge of the chamber. She stopped
by the door and put her hand on the wood, much in the same way Weger had not half an hour beforehand. She looked at him bleakly.

“I don’t know whom to trust.”

“Don’t you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I have spent my life with persons who were…untrustworthy.”

“Have you?”

“Will you stop that?” she snapped, then she let out her breath slowly. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m not trying to vex you.”

She looked at him seriously. “Are you trustworthy?”

He rubbed his chest, wondering how it was that mere words could leave him feeling as if he had been the one with a dagger recently plunged to the hilt in his flesh. It took him a moment or two to catch his breath.

“I can keep a secret,” he managed, “if that’s what you’re getting at.”

She considered him for several moments in silence. Rùnach looked at her by the light of a dozen orbs of rather decent-looking werelight and wondered what it was Weger had seen in her that had unsettled the hell out of him.

“Does your mother trust you?”

Had he agreed to go with this wench anywhere? He was quite sure he hadn’t, which was a good thing because he wasn’t going to spend but another quarter hour in her presence, long enough to get her back to their chamber, then see if he might find a scrap of floor in the kitchens. He took a deep breath then saw, to his shame, that his thoughts were reflected in her face, as if she’d seen them hanging in the air, drawn them to her, and wrapped them around her.

She was opening the door before he realized what she was doing. He shoved himself to his feet, jumped across the chamber, and pushed the door shut before the wind whipped it so forcefully into her that it knocked her over. He took off the cloak he had borrowed from some disgusting pile of unwanted clothes and put it around her shoulders.

“I have three and you none,” she managed.

“And we have a fire,” he said, taking her by the elbow and tugging. “Come and sit.”

She didn’t move. She simply looked at him with eyes that somehow saw far more than he was comfortable with. “You didn’t answer.”

He blew out his breath, then dragged his hands through his hair. He leaned back against the door and looked at her.

“My mother is dead,” he said quietly, “but when she was alive, aye, I believe she trusted me.” Only he had failed her, just as he’d failed his brothers and sister. If only he hadn’t been so concerned about magical fastidiousness, he might have lowered himself to use his father’s bloody spells against him—

“I’m sorry.”

He blinked, then pulled himself back to himself. He shook his head. “It was a long time ago, so no matter.” He nodded toward the fire. “We can at least be warm for a bit, I think. Come, lass, and sit.”

“La—” She shut her mouth abruptly. “I am no lass.”

He tried not to smile, but it was difficult. “Aisling, my hands may not work very well, but my eyes do.”

“Losh thinks I’m a lad,” she said, lifting her chin.

“Losh is a boy, which I am not.”

She frowned at him, but didn’t argue. She put her hand hesitantly over her chest, then looked at him. “I don’t think herbs work this quickly. Do they?”

“Generally not,” he conceded, “but ’tis possible this chamber has properties neither of us could possibly hope to understand. I wouldn’t worry about it.”