He managed to turn himself into nighttime dew and waft to the side before the blade struck, but just barely.
He had the feeling that when he managed to gather himself back to himself, he would find he had not escaped harm altogether.
He watched damply as Adhémar picked himself up, cursing loudly and vigorously. Adhémar drew his sword and sliced though all the air around him. Miach would have clucked his tongue if he’d had a tongue to cluck. Since he did not, he cast himself onto the first available breeze and floated well away from the farmer’s barn.
It was tempting to continue to laze along, but he feared he was so weary that he might forget himself as he lay upon the hard crust of field, turn into frost before he knew it, and be crushed under the hooves of wandering cattle. Or his own Angesand steed. The irony of that would have done him in—if the hooves wouldn’t have.
He resumed his proper form and stared in consternation at the bloody gash in his arm, visible through the rent in his cloak. Well, at least it wasn’t a gash in his chest. He cursed nonetheless as he clutched his arm. Why was it he couldn’t weave a spell of binding on his own self? It would have made things so much easier.
He trudged off with another curse toward the barn. Surely someone in the company would have a needle and some thread and some small bit of skill with both.
He walked into the circle of firelight and endured the gaping stare of Fletcher and the manly looks of comradely pity from Camid and Paien. Glines, however, jumped to his feet immediately.
“What did you do?”
“I cut myself,” Miach said through gritted teeth.
“Got too close to someone else’s sword, eh, lad?” Paien boomed.
“Something like that,” Miach muttered. He looked at Glines. “Have you a needle?”
“The question is, do you want him to ply it?” Camid asked, getting to his feet. “And the answer is nay. Come sit over here, lad. I’ll see to you.”
Miach looked at him. “Do you have any skill with a needle?”
“Oh, aye,” Camid said with a grin. “Haven’t you seen me darning my socks?”
“I haven’t and I don’t want to, but I’ll trust you anyway,” Miach said, sitting down heavily. “Be gentle; I might scream.”
Camid stroked his nose thoughtfully. “I could give you a wee tap under the chin first. You wouldn’t feel a thing.”
“I’ll settle for a leather strap between my teeth, thank you just the same.”
Camid laughed with far more delight than Miach was comfortable with, but dug about in his pack and came out with something that might have resembled a kit for the odd small job of putting things back together. Miach looked at it in alarm.
“Those look to be awfully thick needles,” he said.
“Well, lad, aren’t you thick-skinned?” Camid said, with twinkling eyes.
“Nay, I’m not,” Miach answered promptly. “And when I look at your gear there, I think I might prefer to bleed to death.”
“That’s for my saddle,” Camid said, setting aside one set of needles and pulling out another. “These are for flesh.”
Miach honestly couldn’t see how Camid could distinguish between the two, but he supposed it wouldn’t make much difference. It especially didn’t make any difference when he was treated to the spectacle of watching Morgan and Adhémar walk into camp. The sight of that, the sight of them actually conversing without blades drawn, was enough to have him gritting his teeth so hard, the cracking noise drowned out any grunts of pain he might have made.
“Easy, lad,” Camid chuckled. “I haven’t begun yet.”
“Be about it then, friend,” Miach said, still through gritted teeth, “while I am distracted.”
Camid applied himself to the stitches. “Fond of her, are you?” he murmured.
“Is that really the kind of question”—Miach grunted—“you should be asking right now?” Miach grunted another time or two. It was a more manly noise than yelping. Camid was obviously more suited to stitching saddles than stitching men.
“Your brother is desirable, perhaps,” Camid offered, “but he is not for Morgan. I wouldn’t worry.”
Miach met Camid’s eyes. “Did you think I was?” he said. “Worrying?”
“I have two good eyes. And a fine nose for a romance.”
Miach grunted. “Don’t sniff too hard.”
Camid cinched a stitch with enthusiasm. “I never smell amiss. Ah, Morgan, look at who I have here. Apparently he cut himself training.”
Miach glared at Camid, who only smiled innocently, then looked up as Morgan came near. She bent down to look at his arm.
“You,” she said, meeting his eyes, “need a keeper.”
“He’ll be fine on his own,” Adhémar said smoothly. “Morgan, we should go check on those fine Angesand steeds. Shall we?”
Morgan looked at Adhémar as if he’d suggested a visit to a nearby dung heap. “Thank you, but nay. I’ll wait until Camid has finished with Miach.”
Adhémar looked wounded. “If you must.”
Morgan hesitated, then frowned. “I suppose you can wait as well. If you must.”
“I would like that very much.”
Miach was torn between glaring at his brother, smiling at Morgan’s lack of enthusiasm, and yelping over Camid’s very businesslike attention to his arm. Camid finished the final stitch and packed up his gear. Miach thanked the dwarf kindly, then rose.
“Why don’t I come to the barn with you,” Miach said to Adhémar. “An extra pair of hands is always useful.”
Adhémar, predictably, ignored him.
Miach was slightly gratified to find that Morgan was ignoring Adhémar in much the same fashion.
She took him by the arm and pulled him toward the barn. “Miach, how did you manage this? Did you run into some bit of the farmer’s gear? I should think you’d be more careful than that, being a farmer yourself.”
“I was distracted,” Miach said under his breath.
He walked along with her and Adhémar as they inspected the horses. He wondered why in the hell he had bothered to say anything to his brother about her. Spite spawned spite, apparently. Unfortunately, he couldn’t imagine that his brother was paying any attention to her out of fondness.
Morgan lingered in front of Reannag’s stall. Then she looked at Miach. She seemed to consider her words quite carefully. She started to say something several times, then stopped; finally she cursed and spewed out what she’d obviously been chewing on.
“Will magic heal that?” she spat.
Miach was momentarily taken aback. “Aye, it might,” he said.
“Do you know any more spells like the one you used on my leg?”
“Spells?” Adhémar echoed. “What spells?”
Miach threw him a warning look. “I disclosed, brother, that you have your own landhold and that I am a farmer. Morgan knows that our mother had a tiny bit of magic which she passed on to us. Useful magic, of the sort you might find on a farm.”
“I have no magic,” Adhémar growled. “Not anymore.”
Morgan frowned. “What does that mean?”
“What it means is that he remembers a spell or two, but he hasn’t used them in a while,” Miach said. “But he could teach them to you just the same. As we discussed at Chagailt,” he said, doing his best to ungrit his teeth. It was very difficult.
Morgan frowned at Adhémar. “I don’t care for magic,” she said shortly, “but I will do this thing. Your brother will slow us down if this plagues him. Let us be about fixing it.”
Miach looked at Adhémar. “Perhaps a spell of binding,” he suggested. “Like one would use with a harness, or a plough.”
Adhémar considered calculatingly. Miach wished quite suddenly that he hadn’t sent his brother plunging into that icy well. Adhémar smiled slowly, then turned to Morgan.
“Let’s try this one,” he said. “It’s crude, but it might do for our purposes.”
Miach sat down on a bale of hay. It seemed
wise, as he simply couldn’t unman himself yet again by showing Morgan any more weakness than she’d seen already. He listened, unsurprised, as his brother taught Morgan the most rudimentary of binding spells. It would bind the edges of the wound together, true, but leave a large, ugly scar. At least it wasn’t being used on a slice down the side of his face. Things could have been worse.
Then again, perhaps worse was the touch of Morgan’s hand on his arm as she said the words.
It burned like hellfire.
Miach looked down at his arm. The wound was closed, without a trace of it having been there. The stitches were gone as well, being unnecessary. What was left was the imprint of five fingers. Burned into his flesh as if they’d been a branding iron.
He gaped.
Adhémar gaped as well.
Morgan looked at the burns in consternation. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Did I do that?”
Adhémar clapped his hands together, then rubbed them enthusiastically. “I say we should be abed early. We’ve a long ride before us. Perhaps tomorrow, Morgan, you would care to ride next to me? We’ll travel quickly and stop early. I wouldn’t mind training with you, if you have a spare moment. Then perhaps you might be interested in another spell or two. Just useful ones. The kind a swordsman of the finest mettle might find handy as he goes about his business.”
Adhémar then made her a low bow, straightened, and favored her with his most dazzling smile.
Miach scowled. Adhémar, being charming. Truly, there was not a more unsettling sight in all the Nine Kingdoms.
Morgan only looked at him blankly. Adhémar tried again with much the same results. He cursed, then spun on his heel and strode from the stables. Miach watched him go, then sighed and leaned back against the stable wall. It wasn’t as if he generally competed with his brother for women. His brother attracted those princesses of the realm who were stunningly beautiful, perfectly mannered, and elegantly begarbed in dresses requiring delicate washing so the jewels might not fall off into greedy servants’ hands.
Miach, on the other hand, tended to find himself being presented with princesses who were coming his way thanks to their fathers’ swords in their backs. There had been the occasional elvish maid admiring him at King Ehrne’s court, but those had been rather adventuresome lassies more interested in his spells than in his person.
It did not surprise him that the one woman with whom he’d had a decent bit of conversation would find herself in his brother’s sights—no matter Adhémar’s true reason for his interest, which Miach suspected had very little to do with Morgan herself and very much to do with her potential as a wielder for Angesand’s sword.
Morgan sat down on the hay next to him. “Well,” she said finally.
“Well?” Miach asked crossly.
She looked at him, then frowned. “Your arm pains you,” she said. She reached out and touched the burn marks.
Miach flinched.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking genuinely so. “I never meant—”
He couldn’t tell her that he hadn’t flinched from pain. He couldn’t tell her that he was presently wasting a great deal of time and energy trying to convince himself that she had no magic. He couldn’t say that he was wasting any further unused energy trying to convince himself that she could not possibly be the wielder.
Because if she was the wielder, that would put her in a kind of danger he couldn’t bear to think on.
He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He couldn’t say anything.
Damn it anyway.
She touched his arm again.
Miach shivered.
“Can I fix that?” she asked. “Those marks I made?”
He looked at her. He cursed. He didn’t mean to, but there were times a man was forced to take drastic measures to protect his vulnerable parts.
His heart, for instance.
“I’m fine,” he said roughly.
He wasn’t about to tell her that he would bear the marks of her fingers on his arm for the rest of his life and never regret it for an instant.
She looked at him for a moment or two in silence, then rose, just as silently. Miach sighed deeply after she left. This was his own doing. When would he learn to take his own advice? He should have made certain Adhémar was well, then returned immediately to the palace. He could have been standing in his own comfortable tower chamber, contemplating the affairs of the realm and looking over a list of terrified brides whose fathers were determined to see them wed to him. There was great appeal in that, truly. Who knew but that he might find a woman who would actually remain conscious when presented to him at court?
Stranger things had happened.
The sound of a soft footfall distracted him. He looked up from his contemplation of the hay beneath his feet to find Morgan standing next to him. She put her pack on the bale of hay and arranged it. She looked at Miach.
“Lie down.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Lie down, you fool, before you fall there.”
Miach did so only because he was too startled not to. He put his head on her pack then watched in complete astonishment as she covered him with her cloak. She came close to patting him, he was almost certain of it. She did look down at him with something akin to concern in her eyes.
“The blade is still singing,” she said. “Will it disturb you?”
Miach listened. He could hear it too, now that it was so close to his ear, but it was a pleasant, soothing song, so it did not trouble him.
It was a song of Camanaë.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Thank you.”
Morgan sat down on another bale of hay at his feet. “I’ll keep watch.”
“The horses will be fine.”
“I wasn’t talking about the horses,” she said. “Go to sleep, Miach. I vow you need it. Your eyes are very red.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“You will tonight.” She rose, drew her sword, then sat and laid it over her knees. “Sleep in peace.”
“Don’t let Adhémar take a turn without waking me,” he said. “I’ll pay for it, else.”
She smiled. He saw her do it. “I won’t. Now, shut up and go to sleep. I have much to think on.”
He imagined she did.
Acid-tongued, ruthless, unyielding girl.
Good heavens, he was lost.
Twenty
Morgan looked at her hands as they held Reannag’s reins and wasn’t sure she recognized them anymore. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought that. Indeed, she’d spent an inordinate amount of time considering them over the past month.
But how could she not? She had gone from using them to hold a sword to using them to weave a bloody spell. Was it any wonder she could scarcely stop herself from looking at them?
Spells, swords, calluses, chipped nails—she had them all. And not that she cared, but no man in his right mind would want anything to do with her hands.
She paused. Perhaps that wasn’t completely true. Miach didn’t seem to be all that frightened of her or her hands. He’d held her hand in his in Hearn’s stables when her dreams had troubled her; he’d squeezed it briefly now and again when she’d been overwhelmed by her dreaming; he’d held it the night he’d told her of Catrìona of Croxteth.
She wondered if he might ever do something so foolish as to ask for her hand in marriage.
“Morgan?”
She realized with a start that he was looking at her. “Aye?” she managed.
“You look unwell,” he said with a frown.
Unwell? Daft, was more like it. She had a quest, for pity’s sake, then other adventures to pursue. She had no time for a marriage.
Especially to a man who could render her quite sensible self equally insensible by a simple touch of his hand on her hair.
She straightened. “I am well. Just distracted by the noise.”
He nodded. “I agree.”
The noise was, as fate would
have it, the polite discussion going on in front of her. They sat at a crossroads and there was, from all accounts, a difference of opinion on which path might lead in a northerly direction. Well, apparently both would eventually lead one north, but the left-hand way was a straight shot and the right-hand way a more circuitous, interesting route that led past taverns frequented in the past.
Morgan suspected left was the way to go, but she was in unfamiliar country now. It was difficult to truly know which way was best when she had spent the whole of her life on a small island hundreds of miles to the south.
Well, almost all of her life.
The part of her life she remembered, the simple part that had nothing at all to do with her life now—that life that was full of dreams and darkness and wishing she need have no more part of either.
“I say a jaunt wouldn’t be out of the question,” Camid pointed out loudly. “It would be brief.”
“It would have to be,” Paien said with a grin. “I daresay you left quite an impression on the locals the last time you were there.”
“And how would you know that?” Camid asked.
“They’re still speaking of it,” Paien said. “At least they were the last time I was here, oh, ten years ago. Deeds worthy of song, my friend. I vow I might be able to find the precise tavern where I first heard the most impressive tale. Shall we search for it?”
Camid stroked his beard and chortled modestly. “How could I refuse? They might want me to scratch out my mark for them. On the wall, or a table, or some such place.”
“The keg behind the bar, no doubt,” Glines said. “And after that tavern, we’ll search out a more respectable part of town where I might replenish my funds. My purse is feeling quite light.”
“How could that possibly be the case?” Adhémar asked crossly. “Given that so much of my gold finds home in it?”
“Some day I may find myself unable to game properly,” Glines said earnestly. “I’m seeking to put a little away against such a time.”
Morgan snorted. She hadn’t meant to be involved in this conversation, but the thought of Glines not being able to lighten any and all purses within a five-league radius of himself at any moment and leave those bearing the lightened purses feeling as if they’d had a wonderful time at cards was almost more than she could bear.