She wasn’t a coward, but she couldn’t say she was anticipating with pleasure encountering either the trolls Lothar had created or her father’s well. She was also not a fool, which was why, the moment she’d had the chance, she’d put on the amulet her grandfather had fashioned for her mother. Its power had enveloped her like a cloak that had been warmed by the fire. She had sighed in spite of herself. That she should have been reduced to relying on a piece of jewelry instead of her blade . . . well, it was galling.
She’d actually taken the thing off at one point and forced Miach to try it around his neck. He’d paused for a moment as if judging its efficacy, then draped it back over her head. He’d assured her that he would manage quite well without it. She supposed he would, but that didn’t lessen her feeling that she was walking into a battle where she would be the only one who wouldn’t have that battle touch her.
She stopped at the edge of the firelight and looked at the souls gathered around it. Turah was sharpening his sword, pausing between each handful of strokes to gauge how the firelight slid along the blade. A handful of blades lay on the ground next to him, waiting their turn. She nodded her approval of the activity when he looked up. He winked at her, then went back to his work.
Her grandfather was sitting on a tree stump, clad in simple traveler’s garb, looking about him every now and again as if he measured the strength of the glamour he’d woven about their camp. When not about that noble labor, he was watching the other two souls there who were currently arguing in less-than-dulcet tones.
“I cannot believe you’re not going to let me look,” Sosar was saying, incredulously.
Miach dragged his hand through his hair. “The spells are very unpleasant.”
“You idiot,” Sosar said, throwing up his hands, “don’t you think I know that already? I might actually be of some
help
to you.”
“Sosar—”
“I sat with you for
three
days in the library at home, Miach, filching things from father’s private books.”
Sìle rolled his eyes and sighed.
“I think you can trust me with what you have there,” Sosar added pointedly. “Don’t you?”
Miach looked at Sosar for several long moments in silence. “I’m trying to warn you.”
“You succeeded. Now, don’t be a fool. Hand over a bit of that and let us be about this business so we might be finished with it.”
Miach sighed deeply, then handed Sosar half the stack sitting in front of him.
Or almost half.
Morgan supposed if she hadn’t been watching Miach so closely, she never would have seen the sleight of hand he used to slip the bottommost sheaf of paper back under what he was reading. The question was why, but it was one she suspected she could readily answer. Miach was again trying to save those around him by keeping the most terrible things of all to himself. It hadn’t worked out very well for him a fortnight ago. She didn’t suppose it would work out very well this time either.
All the more reason to have a peek at that sheaf at her earliest opportunity.
She walked about the edge of the camp for another hour, long enough for Miach and Sosar to stop arguing and start discussing quietly what the spells they’d found might mean. She paused, leaned against a tree, and watched them for a bit, grateful that both of them had become a part of her life when she hadn’t expected it.
Sosar’s hair was as fair as Miach’s was dark, as golden as his father’s crown. He was light and laughter and, as Master Soilléir would have said, full of all the shimmering dreams that made up his father’s realm. He didn’t seem to mind getting his hands dirty, though, for he didn’t hesitate to discuss with Miach spells that made Sìle turn up his kingly nose in disgust.
Miach presently sat with one knee bent, his other on the ground, alternately dragging his hands through his hair and rubbing them over his face. He cursed a great deal as well, but he didn’t seem any more inclined than Sosar to give up the discussion.
It was actually one of the more polite exchanges she’d listened to over the past se’nnight. There had been a marked lack of pleasantries when they’d been just inside the border of Tòrr Dòrainn and Miach and her grandfather had been discussing their destination. Morgan had stood with Làidir and listened to her grandfather and her betrothed argue very loudly about whether or not Sìle should just go back home. Miach had been quite serious about leaving her grandfather behind, and her grandfather had been equally adamant that he continue on with them to Durial.
The impasse had lasted a full half hour before Làidir had finally simply started to fill his father’s saddlebags with fresh supplies for their journey.
The discussions since then about destinations and dangers hadn’t been as antagonistic, but the topics for discussion had made up for it with their sheer unpleasantness.
Morgan sighed and took another turn about the camp. She paused and admired Turah’s blades, then paused behind her grandfather and took his hand when he reached up for hers.
“You should sleep, Mhorghain,” he said quietly. “Whilst you can.”
“I don’t think I can, my liege.”
He released her hand, then rose and began to make her a bed by the fire. He put his hands on her shoulders, kissed her forehead, then turned her toward the blankets. “Try.”
Morgan relented and lay down partly because she was exhausted and partly because she thought it might pass a bit of time to at least pretend to sleep.
She wasn’t sure why she wanted time to pass, however, given that every minute that marched by brought her closer to somewhere she didn’t want to go, without what she needed to have.
She surprised herself by waking as the sky grew light overhead. She sat up and found her uncle and grandfather asleep, Turah gone, and Miach sitting in the same place she’d left him. He was still staring down at the pages laid out in front of him, as if he expected them to suddenly leap up and tell him what he wanted to know.
He looked up and smiled at her. “Good morning, love.”
“You haven’t slept.”
“I couldn’t.” He held out his hand for her, then pulled her over to sit in front of him. He began to carefully work the tangles from her hair with his fingers. “I worked on my spells for a bit, then spent the rest of the night watching you sleep.”
“You didn’t.”
“Oh, I did,” he said, sounding as if he were smiling, “and not simply because I had stopped seeing what was written here before me. You looked very peaceful.”
She felt him begin to braid her hair. “Then when you’re finished with that, you take a turn.”
“We need to leave—”
“Miach, an hour or two of sleep won’t make any difference to our journey. It likely won’t make any difference to you either, but it won’t hurt you.”
“As you will,” he said, finishing her hair. “Have any interesting tales to tell me to send me off to blissful slumber?”
“Aye, one about an archmage who fell off his horse, dashed his head against a rock, and angered his betrothed so much because of it that she healed him just so she could kill him for the trouble he’d caused her.”
He laughed and put his arms around her. “Indeed.”
She leaned her head back and kissed his cheek. “Indeed. Go to sleep. I’ll watch over you this time.”
He sighed deeply, then reached out to gather the sheaves of parchment into a pile.
She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “I’ll see to it.”
“Almost finished anyway,” he said, shuffling things together. He tucked away the papers in his pack, then plumped that pack to use as a pillow. He stretched out and smiled up at her. “My tale?”
She pursed her lips and reached out to brush her hand over his eyes. “You wouldn’t want that one I threatened you with. It would just give you a headache.” She dragged her fingers through his hair slowly. “Sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
He reached for her hand, closed his eyes, and was asleep within moments.
Morgan waited another quarter hour, just to be certain, then looked about her. Her grandfather and uncle were still sleeping soundly and she couldn’t see Turah in the forest. She supposed it was safe enough for what she intended to do. She disentangled her fingers from Miach’s, then rose silently to her knees and inched her way alongside him. She didn’t hesitate before she slipped her hand into his boot and carefully removed what she’d watched him unobtrusively slide into it earlier.
She rose quietly and walked away to find a bit of privacy. She stopped under a tree and made herself a discreet bit of werelight. She held the sheaf up to it and looked at the spells written there. She couldn’t say that they made any sense to her. They were merely bits of things—Olc, Camanaë, and perhaps even Fadaire—though she was the first to admit she could only guess at that and not be certain. The wobbly writing reeled drunkenly across the page. It was obviously the product of her brother’s hand.
She had to pause for a moment to come to terms with that. It was one thing to realize that she had grandparents and aunts and uncles still living. To have a brother . . . well, that was something else entirely.
All the more reason to be successful at the current business, that she might return to Beinn òrain and convince him to come to Tor Neroche with her.
She flipped the sheaf over to read through the unsteady lines there as well. Nothing made any more sense there than did the business on the other side. She half wondered why Miach had thought it so important to keep it to himself. Or at least she did until she reached the very last handful of lines, things that surely hadn’t been added as an afterthought—
“Aid! To me!”
Morgan shoved the paper down her boot and drew her sword almost before the echo of that shout registered. She reached Turah just as Miach did to find him fighting off a handful of trolls. She slew two without hesitation, watched Miach do the same and Turah finish the one in front of him. There was only one left, one shrieking, misshapen creature, drooling in his fury. Morgan found her mother’s amulet in her hand without remembering having reached for it. She held it in one hand and her sword in the other and approached the beast.
He threw his hand over his eyes and fell back, crying out in fear.
Morgan only hesitated slightly before she drove her sword through his heart. There was nothing else to be done, of course, for it wasn’t as if he had once been a man and subsequently turned into something abominable. He had been created, so Miach had said, out of her father’s evil.
Still, she couldn’t help but stand there and look at him, felled at her feet, and feel a small bit of regret that such an existence had been his.
“That was interesting,” Turah said, breathing rapidly.
“Didn’t you see them coming?” Miach asked pointedly.
“Of course I saw them coming,” Turah said with a snort. “But they didn’t see me until I stepped outside the king’s glamour. Well, that isn’t accurate. I think they
thought
they could see me, for they stared my way rather intently. But when they started to move off and test the strength of the king’s spell in other areas, I thought it best to engage them. Bloody disgusting characters, aren’t they?”
“Very,” Miach agreed.
Morgan allowed him to take her sword out of her hand and clean it on the grass. She looked at him when he handed it back to her and found her thoughts reflected in his eyes.
“We must stop the evil,” he said quietly. “For many reasons.”
She nodded and resheathed her sword. She tucked the pendant back down inside her tunic, then looked at him. “Your rest was short-lived.”
He smiled. “I’ll survive. I think, though, that we should break camp and move before we have any more uninvited guests.”
Morgan nodded and followed him back to camp, wondering how she was going to get the paper she’d shoved into her boot back into his. She finally decided that perhaps a bald-faced lie was her best choice. Miach was so bad at them himself, he likely wouldn’t recognize one if it announced itself to him as such.
She waited until they’d reached the fire before she leaned down and pretended to pick something up off the ground.
“You dropped this,” she said, handing him the sheaf.
He was obviously sleepier than he wanted to let on because he only nodded, took it back, and put it with the others in his pack. Morgan supposed he might realize later that he’d been duped, but by then she would have decided what she was going to do with what she’d learned. The last words written in that untidy scrawl came back to her unbidden:
I didn’t have the strength to attempt a search myself. Not after what happened at the well.
Aye, she had quite a bit to think about.
It took her until the following afternoon to decide on a course of action.
She was going on a little explore—and she was going alone. Much as she might have wanted to believe differently, when everything was weighed and measured, she was the only one who could manage what she planned.