Princess of the Sword
Perhaps closer than any of them would have liked.
He also wanted to see if he couldn’t find some trace of Cruadal. Morgan could best the fool with a butter knife whilst half asleep, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t still stir up mischief of some untoward sort. Even but a few hours spent nosing about might tell him where their enemies were.
And thereby save them grief later.
He realized belatedly that Sìle was shouting at him. He looked at the king of Tòrr Dòrainn and frowned.
“What?”
“I want to know when you’re going after her!” Sìle bellowed. “And why you didn’t see this coming!”
Miach leapt back and narrowly avoided finding himself impaled on the end of Sìle’s sword. It was then that he realized Morgan’s grandfather fully intended to try to kill him. And the king of Tòrr Dòrainn was not a poor swordsman, when it came right down to it. Miach clutched the sheaves of paper in one hand and fended off Sìle’s attack with the other.
“Well?” Sìle demanded, his chest heaving.
“I’m thinking on it,” Miach said, sending Sìle’s sword suddenly flying up into the air. He caught it, crunching the sheaves of paper as a result, then stabbed it point down in the dirt with Turah’s. “I feel sure she’s gone to Dìobhail to see what might be found there.”
Sìle gaped, standing there with his hands hanging down by his sides. “Then go follow her, you fool!”
“She told me not to.”
He wasn’t surprised by the volume or the violence of Sìle’s reaction to that. And once the king of Tòrr Dòrainn stopped swearing at him, he looked at him, coldly furious.
“You’ll send her to her death, just as Sarait went to her death,” he spat. “I cannot believe I trusted you with her.”
“Your granddaughter, Your Majesty, is perfectly capable of taking care of herself,” Miach said patiently. “She has sword skill, and spells, and Sarait’s amulet—”
“I knew ’twas a mistake to gift her that!” Sìle glared at him. “You must follow her and make her listen to you. She does not know what’s best for her.” He cursed again. “What would have possessed her to go to such an accursed place?”
Miach wished he’d had a better time or place to give Sìle the tidings, but unfortunately he had neither. He bought himself a bit of time by replacing Rùnach’s work in his pack. Then he straightened and looked at Morgan’s grandfather gravely. “I didn’t tell you who gave me those sheets of spells.”
“I didn’t ask,” Sìle said shortly.
“Nay, Your Majesty,” Miach said quietly, “you didn’t, and I don’t blame you for that. But I think you should know who it was. You’ll recognize the name.” He paused. “There is no easy way to tell you this—”
Sìle blanched suddenly. “Not this again, you dratted boy.”
Miach smiled briefly. “It was Rùnach, Your Grace. He has been hiding at Buidseachd all these years, searching for a way to undo Gair’s evil. And until we’re finished with this task before us, he asked that we keep his secret for him. He has lost his power, though I can’t imagine how. Soilléir is keeping him safe—”
“From Droch,” Sìle said, fumbling for Sosar’s shoulder and leaning heavily on his son. “I should have killed that piece of filth long ago.”
“It isn’t worth the cost to your soul, Your Grace.”
Sìle’s mouth tightened briefly. “There is where you’re wrong, lad, but we’ll leave it there. We’ll see what happens when I go back to Beinn òrain for my grandson.” He straightened and put his shoulders back. “I see the wisdom in it. So, Rùnach, that clever lad, found you things you needed. It was obviously something that sent Mhorghain off on an ill-advised adventure.”
“He thought something useful might be found in the keep at Ceangail,” Miach agreed. “I think he would have a fairly good idea of what was there, wouldn’t you?”
Sìle took a deep, unsteady breath. “That hardly seems worth the risk to Mhorghain, no matter what Rùnach might think he knows.”
“She’ll be safe enough,” Miach said. “She’s very adept at sneaking in and out of keeps.”
“And you’ll leave her unprotected whilst she does,” Sìle said flatly.
“I never said that. Please, Your Majesty, do as Mhorghain asks and go to Durial. We’ll be along in a few days.”
“I most certainly will not!”
“Your Grace,” Miach said patiently, “if you come with me, then those who might be following us will continue to follow us. If you go—loudly—to Durial, they might assume your granddaughter and I are still traveling with you. I will be discreetly about a bit of my own business, find Mhorghain, then join you hopefully before you reach Uachdaran’s kingdom.”
Sìle started to speak again, then shut his mouth. He stared at Miach in silence for several very long moments. “I’ll think on it,” he said finally.
Miach nodded. He supposed he couldn’t expect anything else. “Perhaps it would be wise to go in different directions entirely,” he said. “To throw our enemies off our scent.”
Turah blinked. “Think you we’re being followed?”
“I don’t think so,” Miach said slowly, “I know so. We have been since we left Beinn òrain.” He didn’t say by whom, but he had his suspicions. He turned to his brother. “Turah, I think you should go home. You might see how Adhémar fares.”
“In Lothar’s dungeon?” Turah asked, blinking in surprise.
“Nay, not there,” Miach said impatiently. “Go home and ask Cathar what he’s learned. Tell him what we’re doing and that I’ll be along when I’m able. It will ease his mind.”
“I think seeing your lovely face will be the only thing to do that,” Turah said with a smile, “but I’ll do as you ask. Do you want me seen, or not?”
“Aye, be very visible,” Miach said. “And fly hard.” He turned to Sìle and Sosar. “If you two could take up your journey north in the same very visible manner, I think it would be of great use. Your glamour would hide the number of your company, yet lead whoever might be following on a merry chase.”
Sìle sighed heavily, then looked at Sosar. “Well? Do we march, or do we fly? Perhaps leaving our horses behind was a mistake.”
“Fewer mouths to feed,” Sosar said with a shrug. “I say we walk for a day or two, Father, to give Miach and Mhorghain time, then fly the rest of the way. Durial is perhaps, what, five days’ hard march from here?”
Miach nodded. “And the countryside is inhospitable, to say the least.”
Sìle pursed his lips, then spelled his sword into oblivion and went to fetch his pack. Sosar put out the fire and went to find his own gear. Miach handed his brother back his sword.
“Be careful.”
“I’m not the one with the well in front of me, brother.” He paused. “Are you certain you don’t want me to stay? I haven’t been of any aid to you, I don’t think. Well, besides vexing you whenever the opportunity presented itself.”
“Which made all seem right with the world,” Miach said with a faint smile. “Thank you for that. Your company was greatly appreciated. Now, go hold Cathar’s hand and tell him we’ll be there as soon as possible. Reassure him that I’m still minding the spells of defense.”
“I will.” Turah embraced him roughly, then took several steps backward and turned himself into an enormous eagle. He leapt up into the sky, cried out in a harsh voice, then turned and wheeled toward the west.
Miach looked to find Sìle watching the sky with resignation.
“He isn’t an elf,” Sìle said to no one in particular. “Not a full-blooded one, at least. He doesn’t know any better.”
Miach smiled and made Sìle a low bow. “We’ll meet you in Durial, Your Grace. A safe journey to you and Sosar both.”
“Take care of Mhorghain.”
“I will.” He exchanged a look with Sosar, then turned himself into a bitter wind.
“Disgusting,” Sìle said loudly.
Miach suppressed
the urge to ruffle the king of Tòrr Dòrainn’s hair in response, then rose swiftly into the air. He paused and searched briefly for Morgan’s essence. He wasn’t looking in Neroche or any of her territories, so he wasn’t terribly surprised that he couldn’t sense her.
Well, that and all of Ceangail was covered with spells of confusion and aversion.
He would be about his business quickly, then search by more pedestrian means.
Dawn was just breaking when he reached the glade containing Gair’s well. It wasn’t a place he returned to gladly, for he’d been there a fortnight ago and had unpleasant dreams about it ever since.
It was no wonder Morgan had had nightmares in the fall.
He allowed himself to seep through the spells of illusion that still covered the forest, but he didn’t dare resume his proper shape when he reached the ground. He simply kept himself intermingled with the dank air there.
He merely watched for several minutes, waiting to see if anything had changed from his last visit. The well was still slightly open, still oozing evil. Miach watched as the evil dropped bit by bit into a depression made in the earth directly in front of the opening. In time, when enough evil was gathered there, a creature began to form itself from a spell that had been laid there for that exact purpose.
It was a spell he had destroyed a fortnight earlier. That it had been repaired since then said that Lothar had been busy whilst Miach’d been off doing other things.
Miach had no sense of him there at present, but that wasn’t a guarantee of anything. Lothar was not an apprentice and he had spent centuries perfecting the art of lurking in darkened corners where he might work his foul arts in peace. Miach could understand Sìle’s loathing of Droch, but his own hatred of Lothar of Wychweald made Sìle’s pale by comparison. It wasn’t something he thought on often, which was probably for the best. He wouldn’t be unhappy, however, to thwart Lothar in the piece of iniquity before him.
He very slowly and with great care floated across the glade. The creature who was now fully formed paid him no heed, which boded well. Miach allowed it to go its way unmolested, then he hung over the well and looked down to see if there might be anything useful there. It took him a moment to realize that the well’s cap was not as he’d left it.
Admittedly, the last time he’d been there trying to shut the thing, he’d been chased off by trolls. It was conceivable that he was remembering things amiss—but he would have bet gold that the cap had been tampered with. As if someone were trying to open it.
He cursed. There was surely nothing Lothar would have wanted more than to have opened that bloody thing fully and taken all its power to himself. It was, after all, what he did best.
And he might have managed to harness the power of the well now that most of that power had been lost a score of years ago when Gair had opened it. At least it wouldn’t erupt so violently that Lothar would find himself crushed beneath its contents as Gair had. Miach had no way of knowing what was left, but the fact that it was even trickling twenty years later said there was at least enough to make the effort of having it worth the price to be paid.
He started to float away, then something caught his eye. He looked more closely and saw that someone had indeed been trying to pry the cap off.
With a sword.
The marks were there, scratches in the rock that hadn’t been there before. Miach would have gaped if he’d been able. He looked a bit longer, saw not only the marks from a sword, but little bits of ash as if someone had tried to burn the rock itself. Two people trying to remove the cap? Those attempts were nothing Lothar would have stooped to. Those were the marks of someone without any useful magic and a decided lack of patience and good sense. He considered, then decided to call the effort what it was.
Completely daft.
He supposed Cruadal might have been frustrated enough to try to set the cap on fire, but he couldn’t imagine him trying to use a sword to open Gair’s well. He looked around carefully, but saw nothing in the glade save the troll who was now walking into the trees. No sign of either black mage or irritating elven prince. Indeed, there was no sound at all, as if nothing living could bear to remain nearby. He could understand that very well.
He looked about the glade, made certain it was as empty as he’d found it, then forced himself to float up and through the spell above without any haste whatsoever. He’d proved to himself that Lothar was indeed still obsessed with what the well could do for him, found something that was too ridiculous to even be taken seriously, and come to the conclusion that leaving Morgan alone was a very bad idea indeed. There was no guarantee that Lothar was in the area . . . but there wasn’t any reason to believe that he might not be either.
Miach turned and bolted east.
Eleven
Morgan sat next to a very small fire she’d built in an equally small clearing and permitted herself a brief moment of reflection on the undeniable truths she was currently faced with.
First, she was not and never would be very good with a map—especially a map that had been drawn in the dirt and erased before she could truly commit it to memory. She was fairly certain she had been going in the right direction for the past two days. She could, after all, still tell east from west and she felt fairly safe in betting that as long as she went up into the mountains, she was going north. Then again, she didn’t remember Ceangail’s keep being due north from where they’d been, so for all she knew, she was headed off toward paths she wouldn’t particularly care for.
Second was a puzzle of a slightly more unsettling nature. She was being followed. She’d realized it within hours of leaving her companions behind. She would have credited it to Miach simply being perverse by following her in a guise other than his own form, but the shape—or lack thereof, as was the case—was covered in Olc. And if that hadn’t been unsettling enough, she’d been almost positive that the first shape had been joined by another sometime during the previous night, but she was the first to admit that she wasn’t at her best at present and it had much to do with the fact that she hadn’t slept very much in the past two days.
And that lack of sleep had everything to do with the companions she’d acquired.
She lifted her head and looked around her at the lads who sat in a circle just outside the light of her fire. Monstrous trolls, the lot of them. The first ones who’d stumbled upon her had tried to capture her, then howled when they realized that for some reason, they dared not. She had put several of that batch out of their misery without hesitation. The remainder had stopped shouting, apparently preferring to merely snarl at her. Morgan had stared at them for several minutes, Mehar’s knife in one hand and her sword in the other, until she realized what had probably been saving her. She had slipped Mehar’s knife back into her boot, then reached under the neck of her tunic and pulled out her mother’s amulet.
The trolls had shrieked in fear and fallen back.
That might have been a boon if they’d actually scampered off to bother someone else. Unfortunately, they seemed to find her to their liking. They had followed her as she had taken up her journey again, collecting fellow brutes on the way, until she found herself with quite an escort as she made her way into the mountains. It must have been a terrifying sight, but she supposed it had likely saved her from more unsavory hands.
Well, save that lad covered in Olc who seemed to be following her just for the sport of it.
She hadn’t dared sleep except in very brief fits. Every time she’d woken, the creatures had been sitting just as they were now, in a circle around her, just out of the light of her fire, just out of the reach of the magic contained in her mother’s pendant.
Damnation, what was she going to do now?
Well, she was going to do what she’d done in the past. She was going to sneak inside the keep, catch the lord unawares, then put a knife to his neck and threaten him with acute harm until he gave her what she wanted. If Ceangail was full of darkness, the lord should be full of spells, and he should have a
good idea of where the worst spells his library had to offer were kept. And perhaps he was as susceptible to a blade in his back as the next evil lord.
She had to believe it. She had no other choice.
She got up, stomped out the flames of her small fire, then considered her options. She supposed she could continue on with her companions, but it wouldn’t help her any to arrive at the keep with a score of terrors at her heels announcing her presence. She looked at the creatures that were now on their feet as well, their gazes locked on her. There was, she supposed, no point in trying to reason with them or tell them what she planned.
She took a deep breath, then leapt up suddenly into the air as a hawk. She chose that because she only knew how to change her shape into two things and she supposed dragonshape might not be all that inconspicuous. As an afterthought, she drew a spell of un-noticing over herself, then flapped off away from the sunlight that was now beginning to spread from the east.
The trolls were not pleased. She supposed any hope of secrecy had been ruined by their howls of dismay. She couldn’t say that she was going to miss them particularly—they were spectacularly frightening-looking—but she had become accustomed to them. Weger would have been appalled.
Then again, knowing what she knew about him now, perhaps he wouldn’t have been.
She decided, an hour later, that taking wing had been a wise choice. The only reason she found the keep was because she saw it in the distance—well to her left, not in front of her.
She landed carefully atop a bit of parapet that was still intact. Perhaps flying had been the wisest choice for more than one reason. It was a miracle that any of the stones still remained standing atop each other. Trying to scale that wall would have been nigh onto impossible.
She hopped down onto the walkway, then resumed her proper shape, flattening herself against the stones until a guardsman walked past her, yawning. She had hoped for a keep full of drunkards so she might be about her business whilst they slept off their stupor, but the lad who walked past her was unfortunately quite sober. Perhaps she would have better luck inside.