Keir’s mouth had fallen open. He shut it with a snap. “You poor fool.”
“Aye.”
He considered for another moment or two. “Mhorghain says she loves you and that Grandfather gave you permission to wed her.”
“I think she does love me,” Miach said slowly. “And ’tis certain that I love her. And aye, your grandfather did give me permission to wed her.” He paused. “I would have asked you for her hand, Prince Keir, if I’d known you were alive. I will ask you now, if it isn’t too late.”
“I imagine it is very much too late,” Keir grumbled, “since Mhorghain seems to consider the matter closed. I don’t suppose I can credit you with enchanting her.”
“I don’t enchant,” Miach said. “Actually, I haven’t even wooed her very well yet. Ask her as much when she wakes.”
“I already did. I understand you made her a pair of blades, which she approved of, and that you braved the gates of Gobhann to bring her to her senses. She mentioned something about hay, but wouldn’t elaborate. Do you care to?”
Miach smiled in spite of himself. “I don’t think I dare. Nothing untoward happened, if that eases your mind any.”
“I’m not sure anything would ease me at present.” He sighed deeply. “Perhaps you might be so good as to distract me with tales of the outside world. If I think on my sister, I will weep. Again.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did, and I imagine your sister is just as overwhelmed. But I’ll happily give you whatever tidings you want. Where shall I begin?”
“I’ve been here twenty years, lad,” Keir said grimly, “with scant contact with the outside world. Anything would be new to me.”
Miach waited, hoping Keir would elaborate, but he seemed disinclined to do so. Once Miach realized that no details would be forthcoming, he helped himself to a glass of wine, sat back, then worked his way from one end of the Nine Kingdoms to the other. Keir merely listened greedily, like a man who had been perishing from thirst without realizing it. He smiled at some things, cursed at others, and shook his head at most everything else.
“Well told,” he said after Miach had finished, “and I thank you for it. It has been many years since I had such accurate reports.” He studied the liquid in his cup for a moment or two in silence, then looked up. “I must now admit to being slightly confused as to why you’re here, you and Mhorghain both. It cannot be mere chance.”
“Nay, Your Highness,” Miach agreed, “it isn’t chance. We’re here for a particular spell.”
“And what is this spell to do?”
Miach knew there was no point in not being honest. “We’re trying to shut your father’s well. I understand there is a book here, a private book that contains all your father’s spells. I hadn’t expected to have you here to help me in finding it, but I’m grateful—”
“It’s gone.”
Miach was fairly certain he’d heard that awrong. “I beg your pardon?”
Keir smiled without humor. “I watched the library downstairs be reduced to ashes soon after I arrived. If the book had been there, it is there no longer. I can personally guarantee it isn’t anywhere else in the keep. I would have found it by now if it had been.”
Miach looked up into the blackness of the vault above him. It had been a brief hope, but perhaps ’twas one better left unfulfilled. If Gair’s lifework had fallen into the wrong hands . . . well, that didn’t bear thinking on. It was better to believe it had been burned.
“I don’t know why you’d want it anyway,” Keir continued, “for it wouldn’t serve you. Only someone with my father’s . . . blood . . .” He looked at Miach in astonishment. “You can’t mean . . .” His mouth fell open. “You can’t mean for Mhorghain to close that bloody well.”
Miach looked at him in consternation. He realized at that moment what that feeling was that he’d had when he first realized Keir was alive.
Relief.
Morgan was no longer the only one with the power to shut the well. Rùnach could not aid them, but Keir was whole and sound.
He wondered, absently, why Keir didn’t look equally relieved.
“That was our plan,” Miach admitted, “but that was before. Now that I know you’re alive—”
Keir threw himself to his feet and walked away with a curse before Miach could finish. He paced about the room in a frantic fashion, much like a man who had just learned a truth so dreadful, he couldn’t take it in. Miach could offer him no comfort. The reality was the well had to be closed and Morgan had been the only one to do it.
She wasn’t now.
Keir finally came to a halt in front of him. “You cannot be serious.”
Miach looked up at him, confused. “But I am. That well is still spewing evil even after a score of years. Lothar has found it and is using what evil still seeps forth to create monsters to hunt those with Camanaë magic, as well as those with Gair’s blood in their veins. I have reason to believe that Lothar is actively looking for a way to open it. Worse still, I fear there are others with the same idea. I must shut it before Lothar—or anyone else—is successful. Can you imagine the devastation that would cause otherwise?”
“Actually,” Keir said curtly, “I can.”
Miach closed his eyes briefly. “Forgive me, Your Highness. I spoke without thinking.” He paused. “I know you’ve been away from the world, but surely you’ve heard tell of those creatures roaming through Neroche—through all the Nine Kingdoms now. Have you seen none of these monsters of Lothar’s make here at the keep?”
Keir cast himself back down in his chair. “No one comes here,” he said flatly. “There is a very substantial, if not a bit tatty, spell of aversion laid over the keep. I’m surprised you didn’t feel it.”
“Oh, I did,” Miach admitted. “I just ignored it.”
Keir looked at him. “Who told you to come here?”
“Your brother, Rùnach. He’s hiding at Buidseachd.”
Keir shook his head, wearing again a faint look of wonder. “I didn’t dare hope anyone else had survived, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m also not surprised he made his way there. I take it he’s lurking in the library?”
“Aye, whilst also posing as Soilléir’s servant.”
“That surprises me even less,” Keir said with a sigh. “Soilléir is likely the only one who has the power to protect him from Droch. Not that he has any power left for Droch to take.”
Miach watched Morgan’s brother again study his cup, as if it contained answers he couldn’t bring himself to look for elsewhere. Miach looked up and watched the shadows dance from the light of the fire and wished for a few answers himself. Why hadn’t Keir been able to stop book-destroying mages who had surely been inferior to him in both power and skill? Why was he hiding in Dìobhail, and why had he had no tidings of the outside world?
He also wanted to know why Keir hadn’t gone back to the well and tried to close it himself before now.
“Do you know anything about that day?”
Miach pulled his attention back to Keir. “At the well?” He waited for Keir’s nod, then shook his head. “I’ve heard your sister’s memories and read your uncle Làidir’s diary. I have a letter your mother sent to Sosar detailing her plan. But as to the actual events, nay, I don’t know enough.” He paused and wished for a better way to ask the question that burned in his mouth. “My lord, perhaps this is an impertinent question, but I can’t help but wonder why you couldn’t simply shut the well your—”
“I have no power.”
Miach blinked. “What?” he asked, astonished.
“I have no power,” Keir repeated. “My father stripped it from me—or most of it, rather—just before he opened the well.”
Miach rubbed his hands over his face, then blew out his breath. He wasn’t sure what was more devastating: entertaining even briefly that someone besides Morgan might be able to see to the task before them, or imagining how Keir must have felt to have lost something so integral to who he was. Having seen Lothar do the like countless times over that very unpleasant year passed in his dungeon, Miach had more familiarity than he wanted to have with what that snatching of power did to a mage. He could hardly imagine having it happen to himself.
“I’m very sorry,” he said quietly. He paused, then looked at Keir. “Would it grieve you overmuch to give me the entire tale?”
Keir shook his head. “Nay, not now.” He bowed his head briefly, then looked back up at Miach. “My mother goaded him into the whole thing, of course. He had become so . . . agitated. Nothing pleased him. Worse still, he became convinced that we were plotting against him. My mother felt she had no choice but to push him into doing something foolish and hope that he would destroy himself. I suppose we could have brought ourselves to kill him eventually—since he threatened the same against us so often—though it wouldn’t have been easily done. My father’s power was formidable, and he wasn’t one to be caught unawares.”
He fell silent. Miach waited for him to continue, but he seemed to be lost in some unpleasant memory and only stared into the distance as if he witnessed events only he could see.
“Your Highness?” Miach prompted when he dared.
Keir focused on him. “Rùnach and I stood with my dam in that accursed glade to protect her,” he continued, as if he’d never stopped talking. “Brogach, Gille, and Eglach distracted my father whilst Ruithneadh and Mhorghain went into hiding. I had assumed my father would try to harm my mother first, but instead he attacked Rùnach, taking all his power with a single word. Brogach’s as well. Gille and Eglach he simply slew. He then attacked me just as he began to open the well. My mother deflected his spell that it didn’t kill me as well, but it cost her, which was a disaster for us all. She had counted on me for added strength to fight him.”
Miach could only imagine Sarait’s panic. She had been powerful in her own right, but facing a mage of Gair’s strength who had just increased that power—not only by the stealing of his son’s but by the evil contained in the well itself . . . it was a miracle she had managed to shut the well as far as she had.
“The evil sprang up,” Keir went on, “then fell upon my father. My mother deflected it from me and Rùnach, though because of that it caught her fully. She managed to pull the cap back down most of the way—on Rùnach’s hands unfortunately. I pulled him free with the last of my strength.” He paused for quite some time. “I am ashamed to say I then fainted. I’m not certain how long I lay there, but it must have been at least most of that day, for the sun was sinking when I woke. My mother was dead, as were my brothers who had apparently been washed away in that first wave of evil. I tried to look for Mhorghain and Ruithneadh—Rùnach, as well—but I couldn’t find any of the three and I was too weak to manage a decent search.”
“Are you certain your father was killed?”
“Of course,” Keir said without hesitation, then he paused. “He couldn’t possibly have survived the initial spewing of the well. He is dead and rotting in some place where I hope he will suffer forever.”
Miach couldn’t help but agree with that sentiment. “What then?”
“I crawled off to find aid, then I made my way here. And so you don’t have to ask any particulars, I’ll tell you freely that I can still conjure up werelight, light a fire, and use a spell of un-noticing. Things any witch gel can do once she can speak. I can still weave a bit of elven glamour, but nothing else.”
Miach wasn’t quite sure what, if anything, he could say, or should say. He closed his eyes briefly. “I’m sorry.”
Keir shrugged. “I won’t say it doesn’t gall me, because it does, but there’s nothing to be done about it.”
“Indeed?” Miach asked in spite of himself. “Why not? Could I not undo the spell?”
Keir smiled without humor. “Know you nothing of this vile art?”
“I’ve watched Lothar do it a time or two.” That was an understatement, but there was no point in dredging up his own past at present.
“Lothar’s spell for the like is but a shadow of what my father could do,” Keir said frankly. “Lothar claims to drain his victims of their power, but at best he might capture half of what they have. My father could strip a mage of every drop of his strength, completely, wholly, mercilessly.” He shot Miach a look. “That’s why Droch hated my sire so intensely. Because he could steal power and Droch cannot. Droch tried many times to have the spell, by bribery, by threat, by merely asking politely, but my father never humored him.”
“Your father was notoriously stingy with his spells.”
“Thankfully, I daresay, or we would all be nothing but shells of ourselves.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, that leaves me of no use to you.”
Miach frowned. “I don’t mean to be obtuse, but I don’t understand why I or your grandfather—or both of us, for that matter—couldn’t restore what you lost.”
“Because only the mage who took the power can give it back,” Keir said, “and that because he alone holds what is yours. That is the nature of the spell and the reason it is so powerful. And believe me when I tell you that by the time the mage has used the spell even once, he does not have any interest in giving back what he’s taken. He would no doubt prefer death first. Not that any of it matters. I don’t have the spell of closing you’re looking for and I have no power to aid you. And,” he said, shooting Miach a look of warning, “I will not allow my sister to do that work in my stead.”