River of Dreams

  Sìle, his son Sosar, and Ruith were sitting at the table, still deep in talk. Rùnach was sitting there as well, but his eyes were closed as if he simply couldn’t bear any more. Perhaps he’d heard all the talk he could stand, perhaps he was simply soaking up the time with people who loved him. She could understand why they did, for there was something about him that was so compelling, she wondered how anyone could not want to be next to him.

  “He has always been that way.”

  Aisling was somehow unsurprised to find Rùnach’s grandmother standing next to her. She looked at her but couldn’t smile. “Has he?”

  Brèagha looked at Aisling and smiled. “There is something unusual about him, isn’t there?”

  “Aye, Your Majesty, there is.”

  “He has always had an elegance far above his brothers and cousins, though he would likely deny it.” Brèagha studied him for a bit longer. “I think he would make a good king.”

  Aisling had to agree, though she couldn’t quite bring herself to give voice to the thought. He was far enough above her as it was.

  “He wouldn’t be interested in such a thing, of course,” Brèagha said. “When he announced to Sìle that he intended to go off and be a lowly garrison knight for some nameless, yet-to-be-identified lord, my husband was not pleased.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Brèagha smiled and put her hand on Aisling’s arm. “Come over to the fire with me, darling, and let’s be comfortable. Have I ever told you the tale of Caileag of Tòsan?”

  “I don’t believe you have, Your Majesty.”

  “Then I shall, if you have the patience for it. Ah, there is Rùnach setting out chairs for us. Shall we?”

  Aisling thought she should perhaps agree. She walked over to the hearth with the queen of Tòrr Dòrainn, accepted a chair provided by that queen’s most elegant grandson, then sat down gratefully next to that grandson.

  “What do you have there?” Rùnach asked politely.

  Aisling handed him the collection of paintings. “Bruadair, painted by your grandmother.”

  Rùnach looked at his grandmother. “May I?”

  “Of course,” Brèagha said with a smile. “They’re poor renditions, but I thought Aisling might enjoy them. They’re not nearly as useful as a strategy session, so be forewarned. But it will keep you occupied whilst I entertain your lady for a bit.”

  “Telling tales, Grandmother?”

  “Caileag of Tòsan and her handsome prince.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that one.”

  “I believe you might find it very interesting.”

  He started to nod, then he froze. Aisling supposed that might have been because he was looking at the first of his grandmother’s paintings. He looked at Brèagha in astonishment.

  “You did this.”

  Brèagha shrugged slightly. “I fell in love. It seemed a shame not to make some sort of tribute.”

  Aisling watched Rùnach glance her way, smile faintly, then turn back to what was in his hands. She looked at the queen expectantly.

  Brèagha smiled. “Caileag is associated with Tòsan, but the truth is, she was instead from a very small, very unimportant town near to it that no one remembers. What they do remember is her deeds, which I won’t relate now, and the man she married.”

  “Elf,” Rùnach said absently, turning another sheaf of parchment.

  “Of course,” Brèagha said, nodding. “Elf.” She looked at Aisling. “She wed an elven prince, you see.”

  Aisling could hardly bring herself to say the words lingering just inside her mouth. “But,” she managed, “elves live forever.”

  “Not forever,” Brèagha said, “but long enough, I suppose.”

  “And what did he do when she died?”

  Brèagha frowned thoughtfully. “You know, I’m not sure.”

  “But surely it must have grieved him.”

  “I think, darling, that the time he had with her was so marvelous that he was forever afterward lost in the dream of her. There never seems to be any passage of time in dreams, does there?”

  “Nay, Your Majesty,” Aisling managed. “There doesn’t.”

  “He loved her very much,” Brèagha said, “and she him.” She smiled faintly. “Some candles burn very brightly for a brief time.”

  “I don’t think I want to burn briefly,” Aisling whispered.

  “Darling, I don’t think that is your fate,” Brèagha said. “But I’ll tell you the tale just the same.”

  Aisling listened to the queen talk about the impossible romance between a simple village girl and an elven prince from Ainneamh and couldn’t help but wish that such a tale could be hers. Caileag had been courageous beyond measure and ferocious in her love for Brathadair of Ainneamh who had fought a terrible battle to rescue her from things Brèagha said were too dark to name so late in the day.

  It would never happen for Aisling, of course, but she couldn’t help but wish it would, just the same.

  She watched Rùnach continuing to study each painting before he turned the page. He reached out and covered her hand as it rested on the arm of her chair, as if he had done the same thing dozens of times before. She supposed he had, though she wondered if he knew what he was doing. She looked at his grandmother, who was watching her with a small smile.

  “My hands are cold,” Aisling explained. “He’s very generous to warm them.”

  “Aye, I’m sure that’s all he’s doing,” Brèagha said with a deep smile. “Very chivalrous.”

  Aisling wasn’t sure if the queen were jesting or not, so she smiled as best she could and abandoned the idea of pulling her hand away from Rùnach’s. The truth was, she liked the feel of his hand around hers, and not just because his hands were always warm.

  Poor fool that she was.

  She watched him as he came to the last piece, and then simply sat there for several moments in silence as he looked at the painting of the coastline that had moved her so. He took a deep breath finally and looked at her.

  There were tears in his eyes.

  She felt her eyes begin to burn immediately. Sympathy, perhaps, or relief over finding someone who was touched by something that had touched her.

  “The sea,” he said softly.

  “Apparently so,” she managed.

  “Perhaps we should make a visit there, after we’ve restored Frèam to his throne.”

  “It is beautiful.”

  “And so are you.”

  She smiled. “Ethereal.”

  He smiled, leaned over, and kissed her on the cheek. “Beautiful and ethereal. A very potent combination.”

  “And so it begins,” Brèagha said dryly, “though I have the feeling this began slightly before this moment.” She rose, leaned over, and kissed Aisling’s cheek. “You should sleep whilst you can, darling. And you, Rùnach my love, should seek out your own bed as well. They’ll have a plan ready for you, I’m sure, that you can ignore as you will.”

  Aisling watched the queen move about the room, kissing and patting husband and descendants, before she left, taking a little bit of light with her.

  She looked at Rùnach. “I like her,” she said honestly.

  “She likes you,” he said. He leaned back in his chair. “She’s a remarkable woman. There are many qualities that she possesses without effort that I wish I had. Developing them will, I fear, take a lifetime.”

  Aisling nodded and wondered if it was too late in her life to start a list of qualities she might like to acquire for herself. The one thing she thought she might have already acquired thanks to Brèagha of Tòrr Dòrainn was an awe for the country of her birth, a country she had never seen until she had looked at it through the eyes of an elegant elvish queen who had fallen in love with a land not her own.

  Aisling wondered if she might manage to fall in love with it just as easily.

  Rùnach rearranged the pages, then leaned forward to set them on the table at his elbow. He blinked, then held up a small leather fo
lio folded in half.

  “I wonder what this is—oh, wait. There’s a note.” He unfolded it, then handed it to her. “Sorry. It’s for you.”

  Aisling opened the note and looked at the words written there in the most beautiful hand she’d ever seen.

  Copies of what pleased you, Aisling darling. So you don’t forget what you love.

  Aisling took the book Rùnach handed her, untied the ribbon, then blinked. She looked at Rùnach in surprise.

  “She’s made copies of her paintings for me.”

  “Magic can be handy,” he said.

  “Apparently so.”

  He nodded toward the doorway. “I think we should take my grandmother’s advice and seek our rest. If I’m to leave tomorrow, I might need at least a pair of hours of sleep.”

  She gaped at him. “Tomorrow?”

  “I’m already late for the appointment at Taigh Hall.”

  She found words eluded her. All she could do was follow him from his grandfather’s solar, silently wondering how she was going to slow down events to a pace where she could face them individually and successfully. As it was, she felt as if she were standing in the middle of a raging river, fighting for her balance and knowing she was but one more heartbeat from being pulled under.

  She didn’t care for that comparison, actually.

  She considered what she could say but found nothing, not even when she was standing in front of her bedchamber door and Rùnach was tucking her hair behind her ear.

  “Sleep well,” he said quietly.

  “Why are you doing this?” she blurted out.

  He frowned, looking slightly confused. “Leaving you here?”

  “Nay, going on this quest!”

  He opened his mouth, then shut it. It took him a moment or two before he apparently found what he wanted to say. “Because it needs to be done.”

  “That isn’t a good reason,” she said, though she supposed many quests had been started with lesser reasons.

  “Because you need it to be done.”

  “Those aren’t the reasons. Why are you doing this?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Those seem like perfectly acceptable reasons to me.”

  “For someone else, but not you.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Why are you doing this when it would be so much easier to do something else?”

  “Apart from the fact that my most powerful bastard brother has, for all intents and purposes, put a bounty on my head and I need to find a way to hobble him?”

  She swallowed, but her mouth was very dry so it didn’t go very well. “I’d forgotten about him.” She nodded. “Then you’re off to save the world from him.”

  “Nay, Aisling, I’m off to save Bruadair for you. Saving the world is secondary. And though it might reveal more about my miserable self than I would like, I’m doing it partly for purely selfish reasons.”

  She blinked. “Do you want to be king?”

  He looked at her blankly for a moment, then laughed a little. “Of course not. Can you imagine?”

  “Actually, I can.”

  He reached for her hands, unwrapping her arms as he did so, then kissed each hand in turn. “And that is why the only thing I will mourn on my journey is the lack of your company.”

  She clutched his hands, hard. “Don’t waste any strength on that.”

  He looked at her evenly. “Don’t think you’re coming along.”

  “Of course I’m coming along,” she said shortly. “Do you think I would actually let you wander off into the night without me?”

  “Haven’t we discussed this before?”

  “Aye, and I said I was a craven coward. I’m not a coward any longer.”

  He looked at her for so long, she half wondered if he’d forgotten what she’d said. Then he smiled, a small, grave smile, and pulled her into his arms. She went, because she realized that of all the places she could be, that was where she felt safest. He rested his cheek against her hair and sighed.

  “Nay.”

  “Aye.”

  “Very well.”

  She pulled back and looked at him in surprise. “That easily?”

  “Did you think I would go off without you?”

  “Ah—”

  He shook his head. “I don’t like it, of course, but unfortunately this quest is just as much yours as it is mine. As for anything else, you might be interested in knowing I went down on bended knee before my grandfather and begged him for spells that come with their own power, that I might keep you safe.”

  She closed her eyes briefly. “You didn’t.”

  “Oh, I did. Earlier, when you escaped the madness in his solar. He limited himself to a spell of protection wrapped in his own terrible glamour, but I think it will serve us well enough.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go sit under the trees one last night. You can sing with them if I bore you.”

  She imagined that wouldn’t happen any time soon, but she didn’t say as much. She was too taken aback by the things he’d just said.

  He had begged a spell to keep her safe.

  “I’ll give you the absolute truth.”

  She winced. “Can I bear any more truth?”

  “I think, love, that you can bear more things than you think you can.” He took one of her hands in both his own, looked at their hands together for a few moments, then looked at her. “I think, apart from anything else, that if you don’t see this thing done, it will eat at you until there is nothing left of you but regret.”

  She attempted a light laugh. “You credit me with too much sentiment for a place I do not love.”

  “Do you not?”

  She started to tell him she most certainly didn’t, then found that she couldn’t quite get the words out.

  “I saw your face, Aisling,” he said very quietly. “When you watched me look at those paintings of my grandmother’s.”

  She could only watch him, mute.

  “There is something in Bruadair, love, that has been lost or stolen or simply drained away. I don’t know what it is, and I’m not sure we’ll manage to find it before whoever has taken it has killed us, but I think we have to try to restore it. I think, if I might be so bold, that you have to try.”

  She found that her mouth was utterly parched. “I am no one.”

  “Aren’t you?” he mused. “Funny, then, that you were the one who had so much help getting across the border. Even stranger that you were the one charged with this quest.”

  “Coincidence,” she said.

  “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “Neither does your grandmother.”

  “I learned it from her,” he said with a grave smile. “I don’t believe you were chosen to fulfill this quest because there was no one else available. I don’t believe that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I believe that if we were to look deeper into your past, we would see that there were those who knew exactly what was in your heart and kept you safe until the moment when the time was right for you to find the tools you needed to save your country.”

  “But I’m no one—”

  He shook his head sharply. “Aisling, you are not a soul who could live and die and no one would notice. I would notice. My family would notice. And I have the feeling that there would be people in Bruadair who would notice.” He laughed a little, a sound that was equal parts exasperation and wonder. “In a country of weavers, love, you can spin. In a country of those who haven’t the means or the courage to do something, you can weave dreams.” He slid her a look. “I can attest to that personally, I believe.”

  She pursed her lips. “Did your grandmother tell you?”

  “That you wove a crown of dreams and draped it over my poor head? Nay, I figured it out all on my own, clever lad that I am.” He shook his head and smiled wryly. “I haven’t dreamed in a score of years, yet I woke from slumber in my grandmother’s garden and couldn’t decide for several minutes if I were awake or still dreaming. Perhaps you don’t have mag
ic in the usual sense, but I have to admit there is something about what you spin that comes perilously close to it.”

  “I imagine many can spin,” she said quietly. “Perhaps in places other than the Guild where they are free to do so.”

  “Perhaps or perhaps not. I think that might be something we want to find out. All I know is that there has been something missing in the world for the past twenty years. Part of that might be Frèam having been exiled, part of it might have to do with your Sglaimir grinding the populace into the dust. I suspect that it has more to do with Bruadair as a whole than who might be the rightful sitter on that throne.”

  She looked at the topmost painting on her lap, the copy of the original that Brèagha had created for her, shimmering as it was with elven magic. “It does seem as if it might have perhaps been lost in a dream.”

  “Or perhaps lost without dreams, which I think is what the world is missing.” He looked at her seriously. “There is mischief afoot in the world, Aisling, and I have the sinking feeling Acair of Ceangail has all ten of his questing fingers in the middle of it. I can’t imagine that it has anything to do with Bruadair, but perhaps it does.”

  “Do you think so?”

  He sighed. “I have no proof nor any real reason to think so, but I can’t shake the feeling that there are things he is doing that are . . .” He shook his head. “I’m not sure what to call it. He wants my father’s spell of Diminishing, that much I know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Remember how Gàrlach tried to take my power—my nonexistent power?”

  “That’s what black mages do,” she said, then met his gaze. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Unfortunately,” he agreed. “I don’t know what spell Gàrlach was using. Some rot of his own making, I daresay. My father, on the other hand, had a spell for it—Diminishing—that could strip a mage of every last drop of his power.” He rubbed his hand over his face before he covered hers with it again. “Lothar calls his Taking, I believe. Droch of Saothair calls his Gifting, but to my continual surprise he does have at least a decent sense of irony. There are other things out there in the world for the same purpose, but nothing to equal Diminishing.”