Dreamspinner (49 page)

His brother froze, watching as she created an enormous wheel from air.

She spun fire, pulling the spells Gàrlach was soon spitting out as quickly as possible into that fire, then sending what she was spinning around him as if he’d been a simple bobbin made just for her purposes. Rùnach realized he was gaping at her just as his half brother was, but the truth was, he couldn’t help himself.

The fire continually swirled around Gàrlach, leaving him standing there helpless in the midst of a vortex of his own spells. Rùnach felt Aisling fumble for his hand and pull him along with her. He stumbled after her, ignoring the shouting going on behind him, not daring to ask how long she could make it last.

Iteach appeared in front of them suddenly, looking very fierce. Rùnach stumbled with Aisling to fetch their gear, speaking the word that called to Miach’s spell as they went, hoping fervently that it would work as promised. He hooked gear onto Iteach’s saddle, then boosted Aisling up onto his back. He crawled up after her with much less grace, but the new howls of outrage he heard from Gàrlach left him feeling slightly less panicked than before. He and Aisling were obviously quite safely invisible.

Iteach leapt up into the sky and climbed fiercely on wings Rùnach couldn’t remember having seem him acquire. It was not a pleasant ascent, but Rùnach didn’t think to ask for a better. He was too busy trying not to lose what was left of supper from the
night before, though he couldn’t decide if that was from the unpleasantly turbulent ride or the aftereffects of his bastard brother’s ministrations.

He simply closed his eyes and held on to Aisling as tightly as possible until his head stopped swimming and Iteach settled down into something a bit more measured. He would have loosened his embrace but when he started to, Aisling clutched his arms and shook her head.

After an hour, he realized he simply wasn’t going to make it if something didn’t change very soon.

“We have to land,” he shouted over the wind.

She almost fell off the saddle. “Why?”

“Because I’m going to be violently ill and don’t particularly want to puke down the back of your cloak.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, then she smiled. “You’re serious.”

“Painfully. Miach gave me a spell, though, that will keep us covered. No one will see us.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve seen it. But that man—”

“Details, later,” he said, closing his eyes and praying he would make it back to the ground before he fell senseless. “Iteach, find a secluded…spot…”

The descent was worse than the ascent, as was the subsequent landing he made directly on his face as he fell out of the saddle.

He was, he decided after he’d finished retching past where any man should have had to in front of a woman he thought he might like to impress, going to have to rethink his strategy when it came to being out in the world. It was obvious that his plan to be a simple soldier was simply not going to work.

And that was the last thought he managed before he slid helplessly into darkness.

A
isling paced in the shadows of what could have charitably been called a glade but was perhaps better termed a very slim parting of trees that seemed determined to close back in above her. If she hadn’t known better, she might have begun to suspect those trees were sentient.

Then again, given all the things that had turned out to be anything but what she’d thought they were, she wouldn’t have been surprised.

She glanced to her left. There in the trees stood an enormous hound of such ferocious mien, she almost quailed. Well, she might have if he didn’t occasionally look at her and wicker, as if to remind her that, aye, he was still, under all that fierceness, merely Rùnach’s horse.

She finally sat down on a half-rotted stump and looked down at the felled son of a black mage who lay at her feet on a bed of pine needles that she hoped were as soft as they looked. She had been convinced that his brush with disgorging whatever it had been
that had ailed him would be what finished him off. He lay where he had fallen simply because he was too heavy for her to move. So she’d drawn his sword and propped it up against her shoulder where she might have a better chance of simply bringing it down on a miscreant’s head and rendering him unconscious enough that he could do further damage.

Now, though, Rùnach’s sword was resting next to her on her right, Rùnach was resting next to her on her left, and she was trying to keep breathing normally instead of gasping in terror.

She did not care for black mages or their unscrupulous get.

She looked off into the trees, unhappily able to recall her encounter with Rùnach’s half brother. She had realized when she’d seen his face that she had made a terrible mistake. And once she’d seen his face, she’d noticed that he wasn’t quite as tall as Rùnach, nor as well built, nor as handsome, though he had been handsome enough. He had invited her to sit on a fallen log, fashioned himself a comfortable seat out of nothing, then created a small fire in front of her. She had supposed at the time she had been fortunate to have heard so many tales of magic or she might have been rather startled at what she’d seen. As it was, she had simply stared at a man she had no doubts belonged in some way to Gair of Ceangail.

Rùnach groaned suddenly, then swore. She knelt down next to him and turned him over, with help fortunately from the patient himself.

“I feel terrible,” he managed.

“You look terrible,” she agreed. “What did you eat?”

“Nothing, unfortunately,” he said. “Here, help me sit up—”

“I don’t think you’re going anywhere for a while,” she said firmly. “Stay where you are.”

He looked up at her, then reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear. “You have,” he said hoarsely, “the most amazing eyes I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re feverish.”

He laughed a little. “Probably so, but not for the reasons you think.” He dropped his hand, but only so he had hold of her forearm. “Thank you for the rescue.”

“What—oh, that.”

“Aye, that,” he said. “The things you can do, woman, with thin air—” He coughed a little. “How long will what you spun last, do you think?”

“I have no idea,” she said honestly. “I’m not even sure what that was.”

“A miracle, wrought by you, to save my sorry arse,” he said, patting her arm, then carefully pushing himself up until he was sitting. He put his hand over his face for a moment or two, then looked at her and smiled. “Thank you.”

“Shall we consider it a trade for my having felled you in your brother-in-law the king’s great hall?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

“I have questions for you.”

He sighed. “I imagine you do.” He slid her a look. “And yes, Aisling, I realize I won’t be having any answers from you. I’m going to save my breath and not bother to ask.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“You find me in a weakened and pitiful state,” he said. “It won’t last, so you’d best take advantage of it.”

“Who are you?”

“You’re not wasting any time, are you?”

She made herself comfortable on the bed of pine needles that she found was not at all sharp. “Talk.”

He leaned back on his hands. “I am Rùnach,” he said with a sigh, “second son of Gair of Ceangail and Sarait of Tòrr Dòrainn.”

“You’re an elf,” she accused.

“Mostly,” he agreed slowly. “Part wizard, if you want to be completely accurate.”

She stopped herself just before she touched him. He caught her wrist before she could pull her arm away, then looked at her with a faint smile.

“Go ahead.”

She shot him a warning look. “You’re laughing at me.”

“I am most definitely
not
laughing at you.”

“I’m looking for pointed ears.”

“I know.”

She reached out and tucked his hair behind his ears, one side at a time, just as he’d done to her so many times in the past. She met his gaze.

“No telltale signs there.”

“I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it, then,” he said solemnly.

She touched his scarred cheek before she thought better of it. He merely closed his eyes, which she supposed was just as well. That way, he wouldn’t have to watch her try not to weep.

“You were at that well, weren’t you?”

He opened his very green eyes and looked at her. “Unfortunately,” he agreed. “It was a bit dodgy, truth be told.”

She could only imagine. Mistress Ceana had given her the entire tale whilst they had been sorting through black woolen locks, though she hadn’t divulged names. Aisling had thought that just as well. She knew the number and kind of the children, knew what had happened to Sarait and three of the brothers, heard that the youngest brother and wee gel had both disappeared into places that had hidden them for years.

“What happened to you there?” she whispered.

“Ah, well, nothing very interesting,” Rùnach said with a shrug. “You know what my father did there, I believe. Someone—either my mother or my older brother—brought the cap of that damned well down on my hands without realizing it. I don’t remember anything after that, though I suppose someone pulled my hands free. I knew there was nothing I could do for anyone. My younger brothers and my mother were dead, Keir was gone, my father washed away with the evil from the well—or so we thought—and Ruith and Mhorghain nowhere to be found.” He smiled. “I found a place to land and there I’ve been for several years, making a nuisance of myself.”

“Then why does your sister have magic and you don’t?”

“My father took mine,” he said, as easily as if he spoke of losing a pair of socks. “It was no great loss, I assure you.”

She imagined it was, though given that just speaking of magic
felt strange, she thought she might be better off not to comment. “Is that what that man was talking about?” she said, gesturing back the way they had come. “Taking magic?”

“’Tis what black mages do.”

She looked at him searchingly. “Did he try to do it to you? There in that glade?”

“Hmmm,” he said. “Passing unpleasant, that ransacking.”

“Oh, Rùnach,” she said quietly. She put her arms around him.

She felt his arms go around her and his breath catch.

“Damn you, woman,” he said with a miserable laugh, “you’re going to be the first person in a score of years to reduce me to tears.”

She held him tightly. “I never weep either.”

“Your eyes were red the other night.”

She pulled back and looked at him with a frown. “They were not.”

He smiled, took her face in his hands, then kissed the end of her nose. He released her, then staggered to his feet, as if he thought she might clip him again under the chin if he didn’t. He swayed once, steadied himself, then held down his hands for her.

“Let’s be off, wench, before we both wind up weeping. You’re maudlin enough, I daresay, for the both of us.”

She scowled at him. “You cad.”

He laughed as he pulled her up to her feet and into his arms. “Thank you,” he whispered against her ear. “For holding me together.”

All she could do was return the embrace. It was impossible to tell him how often she had been comforted by his doing the same for her.

He released her, then very deliberately reached up and tucked her hair behind both ears. He studied her ears closely, then smiled into her eyes.

“I think I might see a smidgeon of pointy-ness there.”

She pursed her lips. “Fetch your sword, lad, before you think too hard about it and hurt yourself.”

He smiled in that particular way that showed off his dimple in
its best light, fetched his sword, then looked at her. His smile faded. “We must decide on a destination, Aisling. And what to do.”

“I don’t know what to do now,” she said slowly.

“
Stop poaching my horse
would be my first suggestion,” he said, “for it makes it very difficult for me to follow you. As for where we go now, I think you might have a suggestion.”

“The library at Diarmailt?”

He nodded. “I assumed that was where you were headed.”

She stopped and turned to face him. “I have to know the truth. About—” She looked at him helplessly. “Well, about…you know.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “I’ll help you look.”

“I’m afraid the answers might get us both killed.”

“Well, what’s the use of a miserable fortnight spent in Gobhann if we can’t trot out our fierce fighting skills to fend off feisty librarians now and again?” He cocked an ear toward the hound in the trees, then looked at her. “What shape shall Iteach take? He wants to know your preference.”

She blinked. “Is he asking me?”

“He is asking you.”

She hadn’t but begun to imagine how he might look as…as a glittering black dragon, fierce and terrifying.

He was spectacular.

He scarce fit into the glade, which necessitated their backing up into the trees to give him room to properly spread out his wings. Aisling felt her mouth go dry. She looked up at Rùnach.

“Ah—”

He laughed. “Your choice, not mine.”

“He’ll terrify everyone we meet.”

“Which will suit him perfectly,” Rùnach said, “though Miach’s spell of Un-noticing will unfortunately rob our good steed of as many howls of terror as he might otherwise enjoy.” He reached for her hand. “Let’s be off. I think you may be holding me for a bit of this trip. I’m still feeling a little faint.”