Sgath’s eyes widened briefly, then he rubbed his hands over his face. “Hell.”
“Well, I’m afraid that’s what we’ll be living in if I don’t find it.”
Sgath stared into the fire for several minutes in silence, then looked at him with a sigh. “What spell was it, do you suppose, that the lad had found?”
“The spell of Diminishing.”
Sgath’s verbal reaction was quite a bit more vile that time.
Ruith shrugged. “I suppose we’re fortunate that someone laboring under a severe overestimation of his power found it—and that he only has half of it. And I’ll answer what you haven’t stopped swearing long enough to ask. Sarah’s brother, Daniel, has gone from mage to mage, trying out what he has. He’s managed to take one man’s voice—but that only because the mage wasn’t expecting it. The second man lost a bit of his . . .” He shook his head. “I’m not sure how to describe it. ’Twas Seirceil of Coibhneas who was attacked. He didn’t lose his power; he lost his ability—temporarily—to make it do his will. He’s recovered now, mostly, though still unsettled by the experience. But anything else? Nay, Daniel hasn’t managed anything else.”
“Is he making up the end of the spell, or has he looked for another spell of Taking? Perhaps Lothar of Wychweald’s?” Sgath added with a fair bit of distaste.
“I have no idea.” Ruith paused. “Do you think that my father would have purposely scattered his book, or . . .”
“I would choose ‘or,’” Sgath said without hesitation. “I heard a rumor that the library at Ceangail was burned. ’Tis possible that someone found his private book of spells and took it, then perhaps lost it, or fought over it, or hid it intending to come back and fetch it later. Have you any idea where Daniel came by what he has?”
Ruith shook his head. “I understand the spell of Diminishing was found in a peddler’s cart. Daniel stole my father’s spell of Reconstruction in Connail of Iomadh’s hall. That one was, I fear, mostly intact, though I suspect Daniel doesn’t have the power to use it properly. Not as my sire would have used it.”
“Your father’s imagination knew no bounds, unfortunately,” Sgath agreed. He looked at Ruith seriously. “What of those beasts I saw last night? They seemed particularly interested in you.”
“So it seems.” He paused for a moment or two before he could go on. “They are fashioned from some sort of substance that seems ... well, liquid, for lack of a better word.”
Sgath frowned. “Indeed? How many have you seen to know this?”
“I killed my first pair in the mountains, a month ago perhaps. I examined one’s tunic and found it solid, yet not. More unsettling still, it gave off an odor I recognized.” He paused, then met his grandfather’s gaze. “It was the same stench of evil that came from the well.”
Sgath closed his eyes briefly, then looked at Ruith. “Ah, my boy, I’m so sorry.”
“So am I,” Ruith agreed, striving for a lighter tone, “for I daresay it means I should make a visit there to see what’s afoot. Fortunately, I have the diligent Daniel of Doìre paving the way for me, first no doubt to the well, then to Ceangail itself.”
“But you won’t take Sarah to either place,” Sgath said, sounding faintly horrified.
“I don’t think she’ll stay behind,” Ruith said slowly, “though I certainly don’t want her to come with me.” He paused. “In truth, I’m not sure where she would be the safest. As canny as he is, I’m not sure I would trust Franciscus to guard her.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Sgath said, with a faint smile. “You might be surprised at that one’s resource fulness. But I understand your thinking. There is no better guardsman for a lass than a man who loves her.”
Ruith shot his grandfather a look he blithely ignored. Perhaps it was better not to pursue it. Sgath would only bludgeon him the more with demands for offspring.
Sgath sighed suddenly. “ ’Tis a pity my son chose such a path. I grieve for the harm he did to so many others besides himself.”
“Was he ever thus?” Ruith asked, before he thought better of it. It was a question he hadn’t been able to ask in his youth. He’d been far too busy hating the man and looking for every way possible to help him destroy himself.
“That, my boy, is something I ask myself even now,” Sgath said with a weary smile. “Your grandmother and I had seven children, as you know, and Gair was the youngest. One doesn’t particularly want to look at one’s offspring and see darkness, but I will concede that there was even from an early age a lack of empathy. His elder brothers were quick to offer aid when called for, his sisters compassion, but Gair would simply stand to the side and watch, as if the trouble didn’t touch him.”
“How did he ever convince my mother to wed him?” Ruith asked in disbelief.
“He could be very charming, as you well know. He was certainly on his best behavior with her, apparently long enough to sire seven children. I wasn’t unwilling to believe that fair Sarait had wrought a miracle and inspired a change in his nature.” He paused and stared into the fire. “It wasn’t you, or Mhorghain, or even Gille or Eglach who drove him to madness, if that’s what you’ve wondered.”
“Then who? Keir?”
“Nay, it was none of you, yet perhaps all of you together. I think it angered him more with each child that he might have spawned something to rival his power or his place in the world.”
“Do you feel that way about your own children?”
Sgath looked at him in surprise, then he laughed. “Of course not, you wee fool.” He laughed again, then shook his head. “My only complaint with my children is that after all these centuries, you would think they could have provided me with more grandchildren to bring here and teach to fish.”
“Do you even have an accurate count of your grandchildren any longer?”
“Forty-nine,” Sgath said with a smug look, “and that doesn’t include their very fine mates, or their children, or their children’s children. And even though I keep building on, they keep reproducing. ’Tis an endless task for me, but a welcome one. I will say, however, that there are several little ones who insist on sleeping with your grandmother and me when they visit.”
“How terrible for you.”
“I’ll send them to sleep with you after you finish your quest and you can suffer their toes digging into your back all through the night.”
Ruith was torn between pain at the thought of being the only of his family alive to visit, and a surprising feeling of happiness that he might actually have a place to go where he would be welcomed for who he was. He looked at Sgath. “I’ll come.”
“Alone?”
Ruith dragged his hand through his hair. “Stop matchmaking.”
“I like her.”
Ruith sighed. “So do I.”
“Finish your quest, then woo her.”
“I’m not sure she’ll want me once she learns who I am.”
“You are not your father,” Sgath said seriously, “but that’s a conversation for another day as well. Go see to your quest, find that fool of a brother your lady has, and stop him, but keep in mind that you have a place to come to when you’re finished.”
Ruith nodded, because he couldn’t speak.
“And if there turns out to be more to this quest than stopping Daniel of Doire, remember that there are still those in the world who would aid you without question.”
“You?” Ruith asked quietly.
Sgath’s eyes glistened suddenly, but he snorted quickly—no doubt in an effort to distract from it. “Me? Of course not. I’ll be building on more chambers for your children. I was thinking you might try some of your mother’s kin, actually. I’m certain Sile is always up for a decent adventure.”
Ruith smiled in spite of himself. “If he can drag himself away from his supper, that is.”
“I want it noted that you said that, not I, though that is the reason I never go on quests. It disrupts the digestion.” He put his hands on his knees and rose. “
Go to bed, son. I’ll walk about the place and see to our tranquility.”
Ruith looked up at his grandfather. “Don’t you have spells for that sort of thing?”
His grandfather only laughed and ruffled Ruith’s hair on the way by just as he’d done dozens of times in the past. Ruith scowled at his back.
“Is there an age at which you stop doing that to your grandchildren?”
“Four hundred ninety-nine,” came the answer over Sgath’s shoulder.
Ruith smiled to himself, then rose and stretched. He took his mug back into the cabin, set it in the sink, then went to look for a blanket. He found one easily, then stretched out in front of the fire with his head near Sarah’s. He leaned up on one elbow and looked at her, asleep with her hands curled under her chin and an expression of complete peace on her face.
He looked for quite a while, truth be told.
She stirred after a bit. “You smell like fire and night,” she murmured.
“And you’re so beautiful it hurts me to look at you.”
Her eyes opened and he realized she hadn’t been quite as asleep as he’d thought.
“Strange,” she said very gravely. “I think that about you too.”
He closed his eyes briefly, then laid his head down, brushing her hair out of the way first. If there was a finger’s width between the tops of their heads, he would have been surprised.
He knew he should have thought about his plans, or considered his father’s madness, or invented some other plan that might have been useful in saving the world.
Instead, he reached up and laid his hand on the floor and hoped he wasn’t making a terrible mistake. In truth, he was taking a terrible risk, but there was no turning back now. Not from the path that led into darkness, not from the path that might possibly lead to the ruin of his heart.
She put her hand in his.
He closed his eyes and slept.
Dreamlessly.
Seventeen
Sarah sat atop her horse and looked back down the path. The trees were too thick to give her a perfect view of the lake, but there was enough there to please her. Snow was still on the ground in the higher elevations, but along the shore she could see the rich soil giving way eventually to a particularly lovely beach. She knew she shouldn’t have been surprised. The entire place seemed charmed somehow, as if there were someone watching over it who loved it very much.
“Ready?”
She looked at Ruith and shook her head. “Another moment or two, if you don’t mind—” She winced. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about you. You must be anxious to put it behind you now the decision to carry on has been made.”
Not that he’d seemed particularly anxious that morning. She’d woken to find him sitting on the floor at her head, talking to his grandfather, who sat next to the fire. They had been engaging in a friendly discussion about who was a more reliable producer of drinkable wine, the brewers of Penrhyn or the elves of Ainneamh. They didn’t seem to come to any conclusion, but during the discussion, she had her hair brushed and braided by a man who had seemed perfectly content to linger over the task.
His mien did change after he and Sgath had had a quiet word apart down by the lake. She had left them to it, mostly because she had felt uncomfortable intruding on their time as much as she had. That, and she hadn’t wanted discussion of the world outside Lake Cladach to color her memories of it—
“Sarah, there was never any doubt about what I intended to do,” Ruith said quietly.
She pulled herself back to the present and looked at him, his dark hair shining in the sun, his too-beautiful face wearing a very serious expression, and found it was all she could do not to fall off her horse, bid him do the same, and fling herself into his arms.
The past day had been very hard on her heart.
“Look your fill, my lady,” he said gravely. “I don’t blame you.”
She found that quite suddenly she couldn’t see as much as she would have liked. Perhaps she was weary. Perhaps it was just that she had felt, for the first time in her life, at peace and safe. Leaving it behind had been more difficult than she’d suspected it might be.
“I never imagined such a place could exist,” she said, shrugging helplessly. “The flowers ... well, they glow. And the trees whisper when you walk under them. The water laughed as your grand-sire and I waded out into it. And over it all is laid some sort of magic that seems to wrap itself over and around the entire place to keep—.” She shut her mouth suddenly. “I suppose you knew that already.”
He shook his head slowly, his eyes wide. “I don’t think I would have heard any of that, or seen it, even if I had been paying attention.”
“What were you doing the last time you were there?”
“Flinging knives into targets I’d strapped to trees.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “I imagine you wouldn’t have wanted to hear what they said during that.”
“I imagine not,” he agreed. “I was a lad of ten summers. I was more concerned about keeping up with my brothers than anything else.”
“How many did you have?”
“Five elder,” he said with a shrug. “All gone now, save me.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling altogether sorry she’d asked. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I should have told you sooner. I won’t give you the rest of the tale now, but I will someday. For now, tell me what else you saw,” he said abruptly, “and I’ll see if it matches my memories.”
She was very happy to describe all sorts of things for him, flora, fauna, and animal life that seemed to be so much more aware than she’d imagined they could be. She was torn between looking at him and looking back at the land behind her.
She was surprised to realize she wasn’t sure what she wanted more.
Her dream lay behind her. Sgath had promised to introduce her to whoever owned that little cove he’d showed her, the one that lay to the south where the sun was just right for growing all sorts of things. She could easily imagine a little house there, with sheep grazing on the hill behind it and a garden to the side. She would have been close enough to Gilean to sell her weaving, but far enough away that no one would have troubled her.
Odd, but it sounded far more lonely than it should have.
“What did you think of Sgath?”
She looked away from the lake and turned to Ruith. She smiled. “He was ... ” She had to think about the word for moment or two. “He was whole.”
Ruith looked at her with a puzzled frown. “How do you mean?”
“I mean he was who he is, though I think he possesses a great deal more magic than he lets on.” She shrugged. “I’m not good at seeing much, though I am better than I was before.”
“What do you see in me?”
She pursed her lips. “I think you’re fishing for a compliment.”
He blew his hair out of his eyes. “And I would deserve what I had in return, believe me.” He shook his head. “I even slept quite well last night, but here I am asking ridiculous questions.”
“It isn’t,” she protested. She had seen many things, but most of them had to do with the perfection of his face. She supposed those weren’t what he was asking. She studied him for a moment or two in silence, then smiled faintly. “You are the sun behind a cloud.”
He blinked. “What?”
“A very large, intimidating cloud, if that makes you feel any better.”
His eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “You, whatever you are and whoever you are, are hidden behind something rather intimidating.” She shrugged again, because it sounded completely daft. “I slept quite well too, but perhaps it wasn’t enough.”
Actually, she’d slept less well than she would have liked to claim. The pallet was marvelously soft and comfortable, the fire seemingly always at the perfect temperature, and the protection that enveloped the house a tangible thing. Even holding Ruith’s hand in front of her face
hadn’t been a burden.
On the contrary.
She was fairly sure she’d slept a goodly amount, but not particularly a goodly quality. She couldn’t even credit it to sleeping so close, albeit chastely, to a man, something she’d never done before. It began and ended with the fact that Ruith disturbed her. She thought about him when she should have been thinking about her quest, or her funds, or what would happen after her quest was finished.
Actually, after having spent the night with his hand wrapped around hers, she supposed she was finished before the quest had a chance to do the same to her.
She met his eyes. He looked no less startled than he had before, but added to that was something else. She shifted uncomfortably.
“What is it?”
He shook his head slowly. “You are a remarkable woman, Sarah of Doìre,” he said. He smiled faintly. “Have you looked enough, or shall we stay a bit longer? I’m talking about the lake, of course. You, fortunately, have me to look at anytime.”
She felt her mouth fall open. “Why, you vain peacock.”
He laughed and it was like sun streaming out from behind that very dark cloud that obscured much of who he was. “I’m teasing you.”
“I don’t think you are,” she said archly. “And aye, I was thinking on the lake.” She looked over her shoulder one more time, then she had to turn away before the tears that had sprung suddenly to her eyes overwhelmed her. It had nothing to do with the beauty she was leaving, or the uncertainty before her, or the man who seemed to be wrapped up in both.
Especially not him.
She felt her hand be taken, gently of course. It was the hand Daniel’s page had ruined. Nay, that wasn’t right. It had been Gair of Ceangail’s page to assault her, for what reason she couldn’t fathom. She looked down at her hand in Ruith’s, then up at him.
“I should have asked your grandfather to look at this before we left this morning,” she said, “though it is better than it was, somehow. Perhaps there is healing in the woods.”
“I daresay there is. And I’ll admit I’m loath to leave these woods, as well. There is something here that is very ... safe.”