Star of the Morning

  Morgan rubbed her eyes, not because she was weary but they burned suddenly. Damned tears. She’d been plagued with them since she first touched that terrible blade. She rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. “It is late,” she said briskly. “I think I am overtired.”

  “Of course,” Miach said quietly. He fell silent for quite some time. “Thank you for trusting me with your tale.”

  “Don’t babble it about,” she said, turning to look at him severely.

  “I am the keeper of many secrets,” he said simply. “I will keep yours as well.”

  I am the keeper of many secrets. Morgan had to think about that for quite some time, but she realized finally that Nicholas had said the same thing to her. She frowned. She could only hope that Miach wouldn’t present her with something he needed taken to Neroche. At least it wouldn’t be slathered with magic. She considered her memory of him changing out of a hawk’s shape and decided she had imagined it. Perhaps a hawk had been there, then flown away as Miach had walked into the clearing. That was possible and quite a bit more likely.

  She settled herself more comfortably, breathed deeply of the good, earthy stable smells, then put her hand on her sword.

  She fell asleep as easily as if she’d been on that comfortable goose-feather bed in Lismòr.

  Eleven

  Miach reached in a dipper and tasted the water from Hearn of Angesand’s well. He’d tasted worse. He had also tasted quite a bit better. It would have helped if he’d had something to work with initially.

  It had taken him all of the morning the day before to find out which source of the well was making it so sour. He’d uncovered a very old spell laid by a not-unskilled wizard who had apparently been quite a bit fonder of Angesand’s horses than he had been of the mortals there. Perhaps the wizard had borne a grudge toward Angesand’s lord.

  Once Miach had unraveled that spell, which had caused the humans’ water to sour more with each passing year, he’d had to determine all the streams, all the inlets, all the points of moisture that ran together to make up the well water, as well as tending to the stones of the well. That had been his task that morning. He was making good progress, but even a spell to last a decade took time.

  And Hearn wanted this enchantment to last a thousand years.

  Miach had immediately agreed to the bargain. After all, Angesand’s horses were without peer.

  “So, my lord Archmage,” said a low voice from behind him, “how does it taste?”

  Miach turned to face Hearn. “Terrible.”

  “Hence my boundless enthusiasm at the thought of your seeing to it,” Hearn said with a grin.

  Miach smiled briefly. “It’s clear to me now.” He paused. “I appreciate the anonymity.”

  “I assumed you had reason.”

  “I do.”

  “Does the wench know?”

  Miach shook his head. “She doesn’t. And I don’t wish her to.”

  “Why not?”

  Miach paused and considered. He had several reasons, but he could give voice to none of them. “I’m not certain yet. I think it best for the moment to be just another lad.”

  “You’d best have a good reason for the secrecy and be very, very far away when she learns the truth. If it angers her, you are in trouble.”

  “You’ve seen her in the lists.”

  Hearn shivered. “There’s something unwholesome about the way she fights. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He paused. “Well, that isn’t precisely true. I have seen a man of her ilk. Once.”

  Miach sat on the edge of the well. “And?”

  Hearn considered, looked at Miach for a moment or two in silence, then sat down beside him. “What do you know of Melksham Island?”

  Miach shrugged. “It is a minor tributary of Neroche. It would be a tributary of Angesand if the lord there had his way.”

  Hearn smiled pleasantly. “Aye, it would be if I had any ambition—or a lack of feed for my beasts. What else do you know?”

  “There is abundant farmland and quite a few sheep if memory serves. Little magic and no wish for any.”

  “You learned your lessons well, my lord, but you’re missing one of the most interesting things about it. Have you never heard of Scrymgeour Weger?”

  “Weger?” Miach echoed. “Aye. He is a sword master of sorts, isn’t he?”

  Hearn looked astonished. “A sword master only? Surely you jest.”

  Miach shrugged. “A very skilled sword master?”

  “Know you nothing of him, truly?”

  Miach looked off into the distance for a moment or two. He thought back to rumors and tales borne on gossiping tongues, idle speculation in councils of wizards, table conversation during meals with visiting royalty. He looked at Hearn. “He trains assassins,” he said finally.

  Hearn smiled. “You could put it that way, I suppose, but I wouldn’t. He trains men in the art of swordplay, but to a level that most can scarce imagine, much less attain.”

  “Indeed,” Miach said, folding his arms over his chest. “Tell me more.”

  “I can only repeat rumor,” Hearn said, “but I’ve heard that most who enter his gates are flawed in some way. You know, the sort of lad who has nothing to lose and is willing to grind himself into the dust to numb his pain.”

  “Aye, I’ve met a few of those,” Miach said. “Go on. What other kind of man does Weger take?”

  “Those with an abhorrence of magic and mages,” Hearn said with an unholy twinkle in his eye. “I don’t suppose you know any of those kinds of lads. Or lassies.”

  Miach pursed his lips, but refrained from comment.

  “Whatever the state of the lad, it is still not a place for the faint of heart,” Hearn continued. “Few manage to get inside his gates; fewer still leave with Weger’s mark upon their brow.”

  “He marks them?”

  “I understand they consider it a high honor, those who are so marked. It is a very exclusive band of those who have managed to leave his tower at all. Perhaps every time they touch their foreheads, they feel a rush of gratitude for their lives.”

  “What does he do with the failures? Toss them over the wall?”

  “I imagine he does,” Hearn said seriously. “You know, his keep is on the coast. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he feeds the sharks with those who cannot keep up.”

  Miach shivered in spite of himself. “What has this to do with Morgan?”

  Hearn considered, then shrugged. “Perhaps nothing. I was merely thinking of a man I knew briefly who bore Weger’s mark. There is something about the way your woman wields a sword that reminds me of him.” He shrugged. “I find it merely curious that a woman should fight so well.”

  “Many women fight well. And she is not my woman.”

  Though he had to admit, the thought was not an unpleasant one.

  Hearn looked at him. “No woman I’ve ever met could fight that well. Hell, I don’t know any men who can fight that well. And I daresay we haven’t seen what she can truly do. Did you watch her last eve with Carney?”

  Miach could still see Morgan in the lists, engaging Hearn’s most skilled guardsman and making him look as if he were a page with no training at all. And then she had battled pairs and trios of other men in much the same fashion, seemingly making little effort to either keep them at bay or best them.

  Yet somehow, it had not been an insulting thrashing. She was simply doing what she apparently did best and doing it at a level none of her opponents could possibly hope to match. She hadn’t boasted loudly as she had been about her work, as Adhémar would have done, she had simply done.

  It had been spectacular and terrifying, all at the same time.

  “Aye,” Miach said finally. “I saw.”

  “She was not sweating, my lord Mochriadhemiach. She might as well have been picking flowers for the effort she made. And my men are not unskilled.”

  Miach sighed. “Perhaps your men were afeared to truly engage her.”

  H
earn looked at him with pursed lips. “Think you?”

  “In this matter, I try not to,” Miach said dryly. He shook his head. “I cannot believe that a woman of her beauty would subject herself to whatever tortures Weger perpetrates in his keep.”

  “Believe what you like,” Hearn said easily, “but I would think twice about irritating her. You will pay, and dearly I’d say.”

  “I’m hoping to have befriended her by the time she learns the truth.”

  “Ha,” Hearn said with a snort. “You’d have more success taming an asp, my lord.” He stared off into the distance for a moment or two, then turned back to Miach. “I would speak to you of something else.”

  Miach could just imagine what that might be, but he nodded just the same. “Go on.”

  “I’ve heard rumors. Rumors of darkness, rumors of magic lost, rumors of someone being sought.”

  Unsurprising. “Has everyone heard these rumors, or is it just you?”

  “I have ears in many places, so take that as you will.”

  Miach studied the older man. “It is rumored that your horses spy for you and that you can understand their speech.”

  “Fanciful imaginings,” Hearn said dismissively. “But,” he added in a conspiratorial whisper, “do not mistreat any of my beasts, or I’ll hear of it.”

  Miach laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind, my lord.” Then he sobered. “As to what you’ve heard . . . aye, there is some truth to it.”

  “Which is why you are here and not at Tor Neroche, minding your spells,” Hearn noted. “You’re attempting to find someone to wield a particular piece of metal?”

  Miach looked at him evenly. “I don’t need to be at Tor Neroche to mind my spells. And aye, that other reason is why I am here.”

  Hearn grinned. “I was teasing you, lad. I never doubted you could be about your business at any location while beleaguered by any type of distraction. And speaking of that distraction, why is she here?”

  “Morgan?” Miach asked dryly. “Well, she is here merely for a horse. Not that there are any mere horses here, of course.”

  “Nay, there are not,” Hearn agreed. “And I suspect there is much more to it than that, but I’ll not press you. To your work, Buck.” Hearn shot Miach a look, then laughed heartily and rose and walked away. “Buck, indeed.”

  Miach pursed his lips. He might have seen humor in it, but that was obscured by the fact that he was tired, moving further away from the comfort of breakfast as he breathed, and it was beginning to rain.

  He hoped that was not indicative of any future success.

  He spent most of the day at his enchantment. There was a part of him that suspected that Hearn of Angesand had purposely ordered an enchantment of bitterness laid upon that water to torment him, for despite all his work of unraveling the day before, the water was still almost undrinkable. Progress was made slowly but there were times when he despaired of having any lasting success. He was bone weary when the sun set, too weary for supper. He limped directly to his luxurious place in the hayloft. Morgan was already there, stacking her blades in a particular order next to her.

  Not on the side of her where he would be lying, if anyone was interested.

  He sat down and looked as she considered a particularly small but lethal-looking dagger.

  “A successful day in the lists?” he asked.

  “The lads are improving,” she said simply. “I cannot make them over in a pair of days.”

  He studied her long enough that she finally looked up at him. He wanted to shake his head in disbelief, but he didn’t dare. What drove a woman of her beauty to take up the sword as her life’s work? She could have had any man she wanted, surely, and enjoyed any number of comforts of home and hearth. Why had she chosen a life of discomfort, cold, and death?

  And what of Hearn’s other tidings . . . was it possible Morgan had actually trained with Scrymgeour Weger? He could hardly believe it, but he also could not deny that she fought in a manner that left chills coursing down his spine—and he was not unskilled nor afraid. Was she so without hope, then? Or was it just that she detested magic?

  If it was the latter, it did not bode well for him.

  It also did not bode well for the possibility of her having wielded Adhémar’s sword. Perhaps, then, it had been nothing but necessity that had forced the blade to reveal itself. Miach supposed he should be grateful and just move on.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to. Not yet. Just a day or two more with this woman who had a collection of blades that Cathar would have salivated over.

  Just another day or two.

  “Have I grown horns?”

  Miach blinked, then smiled. “My apologies. I was just thinking.”

  “Apparently too hard.”

  “It was a perplexing subject.”

  “Do I want to know what it is?”

  He smiled. “Likely not. But I will tell you some of it, if you like.”

  “I feared you would.”

  He laughed. “Do not stick me with any of your very sharp daggers there, but I wondered what it was that made you choose your profession.”

  She shrugged. “I know nothing else.”

  “Yet you lived at the university for several years, did you not?”

  “Aye. I was there from my twelfth summer until I turned ten-and-eight.”

  “Was the scholar’s life not for you?”

  “What, scribbling, scratching, reading, and nothing else? Nay,” she said, shaking her head, “it was too tedious a life for me. I love a good tale by the fireside as well as the next soul, but I would prefer my days to be full of activity and purpose.”

  “I can believe that. So, you left Lismòr at ten-and-eight. Did you begin your mercenary endeavors then, or . . . ?” He looked at her questioningly.

  She looked at him, clear-eyed and unconcerned. “I chose ‘or.’”

  He waited.

  She only stared back at him, perfectly comfortable in her silence and apparently waiting for him to squirm first.

  He did, finally, and laughed in appreciation of her technique. It was something he used quite often as well, his favorite way to make nosy souls regret their prying questions. “Very well, I understand. You’ve no mind to divulge any of your secrets.”

  “I’ve divulged an appalling number of my secrets to you already,” she grumbled, “and I’m not sure why. You remind me a little of Lord Nicholas.”

  A compliment. Miach decided that he would happily trade that for any more of her secrets. “Thank you.”

  “You’re comfortable,” she mused, tilting her head to look at him.

  “Indeed,” he said, feeling more pleased than he should have, no doubt.

  “Much like a favorite pair of boots.”

  He blinked. “Boots?”

  “Boots,” she agreed placidly, then turned back to her daggers.

  Miach couldn’t credit her with teasing—he had never seen her anything but straightforward and painfully blunt—so he had to assume that she spoke the truth.

  Boots were better than the dung on the bottom of them, perhaps.

  “How did you meet your companions?” he asked, casting about for another subject. “You seem to be quite loyal to each other.”

  “Aye, we are,” she said.

  “Have you traveled together long?”

  “A pair of years,” she said. “Fletcher is a more recent acquisition.”

  “And Adhémar?”

  “He follows us like a bad smell,” she said without hesitation. “I would rid myself of him, but he seems determined to follow along.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that, him being your kin and all.”

  “I am not blind to his faults.”

  “I don’t know how you could be.”

  Miach laughed and wondered to himself if she was this cheeky with Adhémar. He suspected she was and the thought of it amused him greatly.

  “I will admit, though it pains me to do this,” she said slowly, “
that he is quite a showy, attractive sort of man.” She paused and looked at him. “Don’t you think?”

  What he thought wasn’t fit to say. He cleared his throat. “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged helplessly. “I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but when I first saw him, I thought him terribly handsome. I could not bring myself to look away. He was a bit like a bright sword that you cannot resist. Like a handful of gems that blind you with their beauty.”

  Like a shovelful of dung you find suddenly tossed upon your boots, Miach thought sourly. Boots. He should have known it would end there.

  “And then?” Miach asked, against his better judgment.

  “He came to and opened his mouth.”

  Miach laughed in spite of himself. “I understand, believe me.”

  Morgan made herself more comfortable on the hay and began to examine one of her daggers. “Have you ever found yourself in those straits? Seeing something you know you shouldn’t want and cannot have, but yet finding that you are powerless to resist it?”

  “Oh, aye,” Miach said, with feeling. And that something was sitting not two paces from him.

  “It was a most unsettling bit of weakness on my part,” she said, sticking her dagger into the hay. “I may have to fight three at a time tomorrow. If the lads can bear it.”

  “You could help me if you’d rather,” he said, listening to the words come out of his mouth and wondering what in the hell he was thinking. Oh, aye, that was what he wanted—to be close to this woman during the day as well. Was the nighttime not torture enough?

  She looked at him pityingly. “Trouble?”

  “The well is a difficult case.”

  Her look of pity turned to one of faint alarm. “Will you manage it, or do you lack the skill?”

  “Ah—”

  “We can find other horses,” she said, though it sounded as if that might be a last resort in her mind. “We must have steeds, I daresay, but perhaps these are too far above us.”

  Miach wanted to tell her that he could have sweetened every spring within a hundred leagues of Angesand with a single spell, sweetened them so that everyone would look for bitter greens to soak in their cups before they dared sip the water. All it would have taken was one spell.