“Wedding?” Ceannard squeaked.
“To the archmage of Neroche,” Sìle said heavily.
Ceannard’s eyes couldn’t have been wider. “Of course,” he said, nodding enthusiastically. “A fine choice. We’ve always thought very highly of him.”
Morgan watched Miach pull himself away from wherever he’d been, turn, and look at Ceannard in disbelief. The headmaster drew himself up.
“Well, we have.”
Miach grunted, then heaved himself to his feet with a groan. Morgan found herself thereafter with his arm happily around her shoulders as he pulled her away from the table and started on another circle about the chamber.
“Finished?” she asked.
“I have a bit more to do, but I’ll see to it later.”
“Miach, you need to sleep.”
“I’ll do that later, as well. For now, allow me the pleasure of you as much in my arms as I dare with all these chaperons.” He looked at her closely. “How do you fare?”
“Better, now. Time away from this afternoon has helped.” She continued on with him for some time before she could bring herself to voice her thoughts. “What do you think of that spell?” she asked. “My father’s spell?”
“Apart from its very vileness,” he said with a weary smile, “it was brilliantly wrought. Whatever else your sire’s faults might have been, he was certainly a talented mage. I’ll have to look at it a bit longer to see what usefulness can be taken away.”
She shivered. “I don’t know how you can bear to read any of it.”
“Desperation is inducement for quite a few things.”
“But surely this all can’t be as simple as reading the bloody thing backward,” she said doubtfully. “Surely.”
“Much as I would like to believe it is, I dare not—and I think we shouldn’t go to the glade until we’ve at least a fair certainty of what will work.” He tightened his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll find the answer, Morgan. Somewhere.”
She stopped him, then turned toward him and put her arms around his waist. There were a dozen things she wanted to tell him, mostly having to do with the things she loved about him, but all she could do was stand there, hold on to him, and be grateful for what he was sacrificing to help her. She laid her head on his shoulder.
“I’m ready to go,” she said. “Unfortunately, I don’t think the road ahead is any less unpleasant than this place.”
“I don’t think so either, but I think we’ll have an easier time of facing difficult things in the sunlight.”
She had her doubts about that, but she didn’t bother to say as much. She merely stood there for a moment or two longer, then pulled away and started again about the chamber with him.
In time, she found herself with Soilléir’s servant in her sights. Soilléir had taken a place with her family and Turah at the table, so she supposed he wouldn’t notice if they made free with his man. The servant was standing against a wall with his hands down at his sides. The one with the rag tied about it was obviously still bleeding from where he’d cut it on the bottle of wine. Morgan hesitated, then cast caution to the wind.
“Can Master Soilléir not heal that for you?” she asked.
The man shifted. “I do not heal . . . well,” he said, his voice very faint. “Your Highness.”
Morgan couldn’t see his face, so she couldn’t decide if he was uncomfortable because of her scrutiny or uncomfortable around strangers. She could understand both, so she let it pass. She chewed on her words a bit before she dared utter them.
“I have a spell of my grandfather’s that might work just the same,” she offered. She paused. “It might hurt, though. I’m not good at it.”
The man was motionless for an excruciatingly long period of time, then he slowly held out his ruined hand.
Morgan took it in hers, felt a shiver run through him, then she looked up at Miach. “I forgot that my magic is hidden. Can you . . . ?”
“Of course.” He wove an elvish spell of concealment that sprang up and over them, then cascaded down to enclose the three of them within the walls of a translucent tent.
“That’s mine!” Sosar protested with a laugh.
“And you’re surprised?” Sìle demanded. “Damned boy, always pinching spells he shouldn’t.”
Morgan smiled at Miach, carefully undid the Duriallian spell that hid her magic, then sighed in spite of herself at its return. She decided immediately that it was likely better not to examine that feeling too closely.
She unwrapped the rag from around the man’s hand. The wound was bleeding freely, still.
She put her hands over it, then repeated the spell her grandfather had given her to use on Miach in that dreadful battle when Miach had found himself with a very large hole in his chest. That wound had been so severe, it had taken her grandfather’s power as well as hers to heal him. This wound was a paltry echo of that one, but even so, her spell was still inadequate.
She considered as she kept the man’s hand in hers, then looked at Miach. “Shall we try together?”
Miach looked a little winded. “Aye, if you like.”
Morgan nodded and waited for him to put his hands over hers. She wove the spell again, then heard Miach take a quiet breath before he spoke the last word with her.
She heard someone squeak.
She supposed that someone might have been her. The magic that streaked through her was not that white-hot business she’d felt when her grandfather had joined his power to hers. This was a hundred times more powerful, a mighty rushing wind, a wall of water unleashed from a bitterly cold mountain pass, so clear and cold and unexpected that she couldn’t catch her breath.
She felt as if the palace of Tor Neroche had just been dropped on her.
She happily pitched forward into blackness.
She woke at some point during the night. She lay still for a moment, trying to catch her breath. She ached abominably from head to toe and her magic was again hidden, only this time it was not only at the bottom of a well, the well was capped, and the entire thing buried under layers of illusion so thick, she had a brief moment of panic during which she was quite sure she’d lost it all forever.
She was going to have something to say to Miach about that.
She sat up silently and looked around to get her bearings so she could do just that. The fire still burned brightly in the hearth, and pallets had been set up in front of that pleasant warmth. Her grandfather, uncle, and Turah were sound asleep. Soilléir’s servant was stretched out by the fire and even Soilléir himself was asleep there on the other side of the hearth.
The cot next to her, however, was empty.
Morgan had no doubts that Miach had gone to the library. Why he thought it was a good idea to go alone when he was in the same keep with Droch was something she would discuss with him—loudly—as soon as she found him.
She rose silently, pulled her cloak up from the foot of her bed and wrapped it around her, then crossed Soilléir’s chamber soundlessly. Hoping that just opening his door wouldn’t set off alarm bells, she left the chamber, then pulled the door closed behind her. She considered, then turned to her right. The library was in the bowels of the university, so surely if she continued downward, she would find it eventually.
She hadn’t gone fifty paces before she realized she was being followed. She didn’t dare turn and see who it might be—not that it would have done her any good considering the gloom in the passageway. She tucked her hands in her sleeves and took hold of the blades there. Comforted by the feel of cold steel in her hands, she stopped the first student coming her way and leaned in close.
“Library,” she said in her huskiest voice.
“Left after the apothecary’s chamber, down the stairs, then continue on ever downward,” the lad said absently.
Morgan pursed her lips. That much she had supposed without aid. She thanked the lad just the same, then brushed past him, hastening down the passageway as if she truly had some urgent bit of business to be about.
Unfortunately whoever was behind her had the same sort of haste.
She ducked into a stairwell and bolted down the circular stairs, wondering as she did so which she dared do first: stab the lad following her, or rip the covering off her magic and send the entire school into a panic.
A heavy hand clapped onto her shoulder as she exited the stairwell. Before she could protest, she was dragged under a torchlight and the hood was shoved back away from her face. She had her blades up in front of her before the man she faced had gasped in surprise.
She understood the feeling, though she supposed her surprise was more of an unpleasant sort.
Master Droch stood there, looking at her in absolute astonishment. “Sarait? But nay, that is impossible.”
Morgan would have stabbed him, but he caught her by the wrists before she could. She was so repulsed by the combination of his handsomeness and his absolutely vile magic that she could hardly think clearly. She grasped for Weger’s strictures only to find them slipping away from her as if she’d only glanced at them, not burned them into her soul.
Droch released her hands and stepped backward. Morgan realized with a start that her knives were no longer in her possession. She heard them clattering down the hallway to her right. She pulled one of Turah’s knives from her belt, flipped it so she was holding onto the blade, and flung it.
He raised a hand and the blade bounced harmlessly off the wall behind him.
“Mhorghain,” he said and even the sound of her name from his lips was abhorrent. “I thought you were dead.”
“Apparently not.” She looked at him for a moment, feinted left, then turned and fled right. She didn’t make it five paces before he’d caught her and slammed her back against the wall. She looked around frantically for aid, but saw only someone scuttle into the safety of the circular stairway she’d just exited.
She tried to wrench herself away from Droch, but with no success. “Let me go,” she spat.
“When I have Gair’s daughter here, with all her power within my grasp?” he asked with a smile. “You must be mad.”
Morgan reached for the word that Miach had given her to undo the dwarvish spell, then realized that Droch was looking for the same thing. And in that moment, she realized with startling clarity what he would do if either of them managed to release her magic.
He was going to take it from her.
“Well, aye,” he said pleasantly, “I will. And if you think that brat from Neroche could possibly have given you anything to stand against me, Your Highness, you are sorely mistaken. The easiest thing for you to do is simply hand your power over to me.”
“You underestimate me,” she managed. Never mind that what he underestimated was her ability to do anything with her magic besides try to ignore it most of the time. It was probably better that he not know that.
“I think you’ll find it’s in your best interest to surrender voluntarily,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “I can take your power from you, of course, but you wouldn’t care for that. At least I’m offering you a choice. Your father didn’t even do that.”
“You’ll have nothing from me,” she said with as much coldness in her tone as she could muster.
“I think you’re wrong.”
Morgan saw darkness spring up around him, darkness that was full of things from the worst of her nightmares. She fumbled for the pendant around her neck, the amulet that her grandfather had made as a protection for her mother, only to remember that she’d left it in her saddlebag at the inn lest it reveal her presence inside Buidseachd.
She cursed Droch, but found she was fast losing the ability to do anything but struggle to breathe and stop herself from screaming. Damnation, she should have at least brought her sword. It might have been some protection from the man who simply stood a handful of paces from her, smiling, waiting for her to give in.
She kicked him full in the belly before she allowed even the thought to take shape in her mind. He cursed her and stretched out his hands—no doubt to throttle her. Morgan held up the knife she’d jerked from her boot, the knife Mehar of Angesand had made to go with her sword.
It burst into a song of Camanaë.
Droch drew back in disgust, but only for a moment. He didn’t take the knife from her; he simply smothered the knife’s song in a song of his own, a melody that wove itself around her blade and began to crawl up her right arm, a melody so discordant that she almost clapped her hands over her ears in an effort to block it out.
And still the darkness increased.
“You know why Gair killed your aunt, don’t you?” Droch remarked pleasantly.
“I don’t care,” Morgan said through gritted teeth. The spell had slithered up her arm, around her neck, and now was crawling down her other arm toward her wrist. She frantically tried to wipe it off, but it was impossible to dislodge.
“You might find it interesting. Lismòrian’s eldest son, Reil, found one of Gair’s complete spells, a spell for draining a mage of his power. Gair called it Diminishing, but I always thought that to be too tame a term for it.”