Why she hadn’t used some of that magic she’d inherited from her reputedly quite powerful mother to stop her reckless brother was something he honestly couldn’t fathom. Had the fool convinced her that she was not his match? Had she been intimidated enough to believe it? He couldn’t imagine it, but he’d learned the hard way that the world was full of quite a few things he never would have imagined in his youth.
He rose, fetched his cloak, then spread it over her carefully. She shifted, sighed, then fell back into slumber. If she dreamed, she didn’t show it.
He envied her.
He didn’t envy himself, however, when he woke to a tremendous crash. He leapt up, then clutched his head in his hands as the chamber spun violently around him. He didn’t have headaches often, but they were terrible when they came and they were usually brought on by dreams of magic.
Or screeching players with no sense of pitch.
He froze at the feel of steel against his throat.
“Sit down, you villain.”
He sat back down without hesitation, then managed to pry his eyes open far enough to find it was Sarah standing at the other end of his sword, far enough away that he couldn’t reach her without impaling himself on something he’d sharpened quite thoroughly himself not a fortnight earlier. The crash had, he suspected, been a tray full of pewter bowls dropped on the floor to purposely wake him.
“Don’t move,” she said in a low, deadly voice, “or I’ll kill you.” He was happy to be as still as she wanted him to be. He peered at her blearily. “Do you know how to use that? Perhaps you should put it away before you hurt yourself—”
He shut his mouth abruptly at the look on her face.
“I don’t particularly feel like putting the blade away,” she said in that same very dangerous tone of voice, “and, aye, I can use this quite well, thank you very much.”
He suspected that might very well be true. She hadn’t been without skill in the forest, even caught as she had been, unawares and exhausted. The tables were well and truly turned now and he imagined she wouldn’t be interested in any talk of Nerochian rules of engagement.
“Now that we understand each other, you’ll want to give me answers to my questions, beginning with what you’ve done with my mage.”
He took a careful breath. “I am he—”
She moved more quickly than he’d anticipated. Before he could so much as utter a peep in protest, he found himself sitting with one of his knives driven into the chair a hairsbreadth from his ear and the other an uncomfortable finger’s width from his throat. His sword was quivering where it had been thrust into the floor, well out of reach of any of his limbs.
“I see no blood spilt,” she said, sounding greatly displeased, “nor spells wrought, but he is gone and you are here.”
He gingerly reached up to still the blade still twitching next to his ear. He didn’t attempt to move the other bit of steel so close to his skin he could smell it. In his current condition, he likely couldn’t have brushed it aside before she’d slit his throat.
“Are you paying for the damage to the wood,” he asked lightly, “or am I?”
She wasn’t amused. “It seems a pity to waste such a face as yours, but I will if I must. Now, give me the truth whilst I’ve the patience to hear it. Who are you and what have you done with my mage?”
He would have, he decided, given her whatever she wanted if she would just stay where she was long enough for him to uncross his eyes and look at her properly. But since it was all he could do simply to squint at her, he supposed he would have to content himself with her outrage over someone having absconded with, well, his own poor self.
Her mage, indeed.
“ ’Tis a bit complicated,” he began, mustering up the most trustworthy look he could.
“The truth is rarely complicated,” she said shortly, “unless you have something to hide, which I suspect you do.” She looked at him coolly. “You sound like Ruith, but you cannot be him. For one thing, you’re supposed to be centuries old, which you most certainly are not.”
And he was saved from answering by the sudden pounding on the door. The next thing he knew, his other knife was residing in the arm of the chair, between the fingers of his left hand.
“I’m not paying for that,” he said faintly.
She shot him a displeased look. “Don’t move. I’m not finished with you, and I have my own blade.”
He imagined she did. He closed his eyes gratefully, then winced as she stepped on his foot, hard, before she walked over to the door. She managed to convince the souls clustered on the other side of the door that she had had a nightmare and knocked mugs and things to the floor in her fright.
He understood that.
He listened to her ask for a brief list of herbs, then heard the door shut quietly. He supposed he should have watched her to make certain she wasn’t going to kill him for vexing her, but all he could do was lean his head back against the chair and concentrate on breathing carefully. He heard his knives come free of the wood near his ear and hand, and his sword from the floor. The table was then pulled to one side. He knew he should have offered aid, but he found he couldn’t. It was all he could do to keep his eyes closed and allow himself the pleasure of sounds of company.
It was slightly unnerving how much he enjoyed it.
He had just decided he should be about hardening his heart when he felt a touch on his knee. He opened his eyes and found Sarah sitting on a stool at his feet.
“Drink.”
He realized only then that he had dozed off, for he didn’t remember having heard her brew anything. He accepted the cup she handed him, then sniffed. “What is it?”
“Something that will reveal your true wizened, wrinkled, impossibly ancient and unpleasant self,” she said curtly. “Drink it and be thinking on a very believable tale that will explain why it is you aren’t the old gent I was led to believe you were.”
He sipped gingerly. The moment the infusion slid down his throat, he felt the edge come off his pain. The tea wasn’t enspelled, but somehow it didn’t need to be. He felt the crease on his brow lessen just as easily. He let out a deep, rather unsteady breath.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“How did you know my head pained me?”
“You were squinting. Let me have your hand.”
He surrendered it because she gave him no choice. She pinched an excruciatingly painful spot between his thumb and pointer finger, which left him gasping until he realized after a rather brief period of agony that his hand had ceased to pain him and so had his head.
He finished his tea, because he thought he would be wise to, then looked at her in astonishment.
“You are a witch.”
“A lowly brewer of teas, rather,” she said, releasing his hand and sitting back, “but you are most certainly not what you’re purported to be. Who are you?”
“I told you who I was.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I can give you that headache back, you know, if you persist.”
He almost smiled. “You cannot.”
“The hilt of your sword might have a different opinion.”
He did smile then. He didn’t imagine that even with having taken care of a farm for her mother—for he assumed Daniel hadn’t been of any help at all—and her perfectly adequate skill with a knife, she would manage to do any damage with his blade. And he couldn’t believe she had the heart to slaughter anything that wasn’t required for supper, her fierce words aside.
And she still had hair the color of cognac lit by fire.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
He met her eyes. “I imagine not.”
“Stop stalling,” she said sternly. “How old are you?”
“How old are you?”
“A score and five and I’m not the one answering the questions.
“Aren’t you?”
She glared at him. “I want answers. Stop your bloody smirking and give t
hem to me.”
He sobered himself as best he could, then reached out and took her right hand in both of his. He ignored, also as best he could, the fact that an inordinate and unlikely amount of pleasure went through him at such a simple thing. He didn’t have to push her sleeve up her arm to see the damage because the spell that had burned a trail in her skin had left an echo of its mark on the white of the fabric.
“Tell me again where you came by this?” he asked quietly.
“Likely the same place you acquired yours.”
He froze and met her eyes. “What did you say?” He tried to ask it carefully, but he feared it had come out rather harshly.
She reached out to touch his right wrist. “ ’Tis a mirror of mine.”
She looked at his skin with a detachment he couldn’t possibly match.
He leapt up out of his chair so suddenly, he tipped it over and almost knocked Sarah off her stool. He caught her, steadied her, then released her as if she’d burned him.
Which she had, actually.
“Let’s go walk,” he said, even though he would have preferred to run.
She looked up at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted horns.
He couldn’t offer any explanation or excuse for his behavior. He sorted his gear into piles, put his cloak on, and strapped his knives to his back. The rest could be left behind without incident. His sword was too distinctive to be easily resold and his bow and arrows were etched with the symbols of his making. There was, at least in Bruaih, some honor still left amongst thieves.
He saw out of the corner of his eye that Sarah was putting her hair back under Ned’s cap, then covering her attempts at looking like a lad with his cloak. A hopeless case, but there was no point in telling her that. She went to stand by the door as he secured the window a final time, then crossed the chamber.
“It was a spell,” she said quietly. “That which burned me. I touched something on my brother’s table, just a simple—”
“It’s all right,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t want to know any more.”
And he didn’t. He didn’t want to know any more, because he feared he already knew too much. The only question that remained was how she, a simple village witch’s get, could see something that had happened to him in his dreams. The question of why the burn on her arm mirrored his was one he wasn’t going to answer, even if his life depended on it.
He opened the door and walked with her out into the passageway, leaving the conversation behind in the chamber where he didn’t need to look at it any longer.
Seven
Sarah walked along with Ruith of wherever he’d come from and looked unhappily at her surroundings. She didn’t care for crowds, especially rough ones full of thugs for which not even the admittedly intimidating man next to her was deterrent enough for the more opportunistic souls. She had, in the time it had taken her to walk from the inn down one street and up another, fended off three attempted poachings of her feed bag and a very enthusiastic youth looking for a kiss.
He’d gone away sporting a bloody lip.
Ruith hadn’t lifted a finger to help her with that lad, though he had unbent far enough to give a particularly evil-looking man who’d gotten too close to her a hearty shove. After that, he’d merely walked between her and the press of humanity with his hood pulled up over his head far enough to shield his face and his hands tucked into his sleeves. She wasn’t sure if what she’d said about his arm had sent him scampering back into a terribly unyielding silence or if it had been merely the temporary loss of his blades that had distressed him enough to render him so implacably unapproachable.
She had no regrets for her actions. She’d woken back at the inn, warm and comfortable, only to sit up and find that she was locked in her chamber with a complete stranger. She considered the possibility that he’d killed her mage and found the exertion to be such that a wee nap had been necessary, but that had lasted only until her head had cleared and she’d decided that if he had killed Ruith, he likely would have killed her as well—and she was still breathing.
Until she’d gotten a full view of her companion’s face and lost her breath abruptly.
She had decided, after a moment spent recovering from that, that the impossibly handsome man snoozing in the chair before her had to be Ruith, but if that were the case, then he had misled her deliberately about his identity. She’d been perfectly content to repay him a bit for that before she’d become distracted by the headache she could see wrapped around his head in an ever-tightening swath of pain. Once his brow had unfurrowed far enough that she thought he might be equal to answering a few questions, she’d apparently made the mistake of commenting on the burn she’d noticed on his arm. The wound hadn’t been visible in the same way hers was. It seemed as if the magic that had left its mark had been purer somehow... as if it had been something come from a dream.
She had no idea why mentioning it had set him off so. Mages were, as she’d learned over the years, unpredictable and generally foul-tempered. That should perhaps have been enough to tell her all she needed to know about him. Obviously, he was more powerful than she’d feared. How else could he have lived in that house for centuries, yet had none of that living show on his face—
She felt her mouth fall open briefly before she managed to shut it. He couldn’t be one of those damned elves she’d heard tales about once too often, could he? They were, from what she understood, full of magic, majesty, and themselves. She had decided when she’d been ten-and-three and quite empty of anything she considered desirable, that if there were ever creatures to loathe, it was elves.
In this, her mother actually agreed, which Sarah knew should have given her pause, but it hadn’t. She had spent copious amounts of time scorning the elves she’d heard about in Master Franciscus’s tales and feeling perfectly content to do so.
She glanced sideways at Ruith, then shook her head. Nay, he couldn’t be. For one thing, he wasn’t dressed in fine silks and adorned with all manner of precious gems. And he was altogether too familiar with pedestrian means of protecting himself. Elves limited themselves, she was quite certain, to spells. And they were cleaner.
But if he were just a man, and he was indeed the mage on the hill, how was it, then, that he looked so young? Had he killed the old mage and taken his house and his reputation, or had he simply found the place empty and decided it was well suited to his purposes?
The questions burned in her mouth until she thought she would go mad from keeping them to herself. But at the very moment when she thought she just might blurt them out and the potential for being overheard by miscreants be damned, Ruith slowed, stopped, then turned to her. She could see only shadows of his face, but now she—unfortunately—knew what those shadows hid. “I didn’t kill the old mage.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “I never suggested that you had.”
He shrugged lightly. “I imagined you might be wondering. I would have been wondering the same thing, in your place.”
“Thank you,” she managed. She was wondering half a dozen other things, but since he didn’t seem inclined to elaborate on more personal matters, she forbore. Again, obviously not an elf, else he would have been willing to talk about himself endlessly.
She cast about for something to discuss that might be less touchy. She put her hands into her apron pockets only to realize she was still masquerading as a lad and had no pockets. She leaned back against a wall and affected a casual pose she most certainly didn’t feel.
“Did you find any sign of Daniel this morning on your walk?” she asked.
He put his hand on a heavy doorway that lay between them and relaxed just the slightest bit. “I heard nothing but the usual gossip of shopkeepers and market men. If he’s here, he’s well concealed.”
She waited, but he said nothing more. She certainly didn’t want to give him any more rein with her affairs than he likely already thought he had, but in truth, she had little idea where to start looking for her brother short of walking u
p to the town wizard and making inquiries there. She considered, then looked up at him.
“I’m not opposed to suggestions,” she said slowly, “about where to start with all this.”
“Even the noblest of Heroes has the odd, helpful squire,” he conceded.
She frowned. “Are you laughing at me?”
“I wouldn’t dare,” he said, sounding very much in earnest. “And if you’d like the odd, helpful suggestion, I think we should first visit Master Oban. If your brother’s intentions are as he said, he would most likely want to eliminate the competition—or at least attempt to.”
“Any suggestions on where this Master Oban might be found?”
Ruith took his hand off the door. “The entrance to his house is never found in the same place, which leads to merriment and hilarity for those who seek him.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “You don’t care for that sort of thing.”
He rubbed his hand over his face suddenly and shook his head sharply. “Nay, I’ve little patience for the silliness of some mages. But, as that is how Oban manages his affairs, we’re left with no choice but to subject ourselves to his antics.”
“Where do we start?”
“He could be hiding anywhere. ”
Sarah looked down the street behind Ruith, then at the door he’d been leaning on. It was a heavy wooden door, rough-hewn and sturdy, but quite unremarkable.
And then she blinked.
She blinked again, but the vision didn’t disappear. She reached out and trailed her finger along the doorframe.
“There’s something on the door behind you.”
Ruith looked, then shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”
“ ’Tis covered with runes.”
“Is it indeed?” he asked, sounding faintly surprised. “Where?”
She ran her fingers over the doorframe, but that didn’t bring the characters into better focus. She supposed she should have been surprised she could see them at all if Ruith couldn’t. What she did know was that they were of a most magical sort and she didn’t care to look at things covered with magic—for more reasons than just her aversion to mages and their ilk. She took a deep breath and pushed aside the usual thoughts that accompanied that one, ignored the fact that she had no sight, nor special gifts, nor ability save what allowed her to tell chartreuse from apple green, and had a better look. The sooner she described them, the sooner she and Ruith would be about her business.