R
uith dreamt.
He found himself in a
forest he didn‘t recognize, though that was perhaps nothing noteworthy. There were many places in the world where he hadn’t walked. This, however, was a forest full of things that didn’t normally find themselves growing together with limb and leaf.
The forest was full of sheaves of paper.
He walked under boughs laden with single pages, past treed wrapped entirelyin parchment. He made the mistake onlyonce of reaching for one of those sheaves.The spell apparently written thereon leapt up and wrapped itself around his wrist, crawling up to his
elbow before he could jerk his arm away. He cursed viciously and ripped himself away from the tendrils
that subsequently waved in the wind as if they had been bits of a spiderweb disturbed, or dome sort of monstrous, multilimbed creature determined to wrap ltself around him and
consume him.
He didn’t care for either image, actually.
He continued on for a bit longer until he thought the spells might have gone back to sleep, then he leaned over and looked at what was written on the parchment. He drew back in revulsion, for here cognized not only the hand but the words.
Those were his father’s spells.
He walked away, fighting his gorge and his ire. He’d watched secretly as his father had penned many of those spells, collecting them all like vile, twisted seeds into a single place where he might plant them at will and watch them springup into somethingevil. He, alongwith his brothers,had memorized all of those spells as the opportunities presented themselves, though they had made solemn vows never to use any of them.
He suspected that he might have broken that promise without another thought if he’d had his father in front of him.
He continued on, though he felt himself slowing as here alized that he was no longer in a forest he’d never seen before; he was in a place he recognized.
He looked at the path that continued to wind through those parchment-covered trees. He didn‘t want to follow that path, for heknew very well where it led, and he had no desire to visit that locale ever again. His feet, unfortunately, seemed to have a much different idea, for they carried him where he most certainly didn’t want to go. He steeled
himself for what he knew lay in the middle of the glade he could now
see opening up in the midst of that forest.
Only instead of what he expected to find, there was
something entirely different.
And allthe more horrifying because
of it...
R
uith woke with a start, realizing only as he almost fell over that he was on his feet. Sarah had him by one arm and Ned by the other. They wore identical expressions of astonishment.
“ ’Tis nothing,” he said, his voice sounding rough to his own ears. “Too much rich food from supper last night.”
Ned released him with a shrug and walked off, apparently following his nose to something more interesting. Sarah didn’t let go of his arm, which was likely all that kept him upright.
“You were shouting in a language I didn’t recognize,” she said quietly.
“MY misspent youth,” he managed. “Or, as I said before, too much time alone in the mountains.”
She frowned thoughtfully, looked at him once more rather more searchingly than he was comfortable with, then released his arm slowly.
“If you say so,” she said doubtfully.
He attempted a smile. He supposed it had been rather less of a smile and more of a grimace, but ’twas the best he could manage at present. He watched as Sarah walked away to rouse the fire that someone—Ned, no doubt—had let burn out during the last watch. He bent his head and rubbed his hands over his face, though that was of little use dispelling the horror that hung about him like smoke.
He looked around him in an effort to put himself where he was instead of continuing to be lost in a dream he hadn’t asked for. Ned had been sent off to look for more dry wood. Master Franciscus was preparing what would no doubt be a rather cold breakfast if things didn’t change soon. Sarah was kneeling next to the fire, trying to coax it back to life. Master Oban waved his wand over the fire, but all that business produced was something that grew into a head-sized bubble and floated off. He leapt to his feet, mouthing a silent curse, and ran off to chase what he’d created.
It had been, Ruith could admit without any hesitation at all, a very long pair of days.
He lost his balance slightly as Sarah’s horse-turned-dog leaned up against him, then sat in a friendly fashion on Ruith’s foot and put his head within easy scratching distance. Ruith obliged him gladly. Anything to forget things he didn’t care to dream about and ends to dreams he had no desire to sleep long enough to discover.
He watched Sarah as she fought with her own flint and whatever dry moss Ned had been able to find. And as he watched her, he wondered about her. The witchwoman Seleg had not been without substantial power, or so reliable rumor had said. After all, she’d spawned the illustrious Daniel of Doìre. Sarah should have inherited her share of power as well, yet there she was trying to light a fire in as unexceptional a fashion as he might have himself. She had no reason to shun her magic, yet she did so just the same.
She sat back on her heels, blew her hair out of her eyes, and looked up at him. “It’s hopeless, I think. Too wet.”
“Then why don’t we gather everyone up and take the road,” he said, wanting nothing more than to walk until he’d left his nightmare behind. “We’ll eat as we walk. I think we might manage to catch one of the straggling companies today if we make haste. They might have tidings of untoward happenings in the area.”
She rose and nodded. “How much longer to Firth, do you think?”
“Another handful of days. We’ll buy more supplies there.”
“I’ll go collect Ned and Oban.”
He nodded and watched her go before he stomped out the soggy remains of her attempts at a fire, then went to look for Franciscus. The alemaster was hitching up his ponies to the wagon and had obviously already secured his load. Ruith discussed with the man their plans for the day, then collected his gear and strapped it to himself. He spent another few minutes hiding the details of their camp. Others would know someone had come by, but they wouldn’t have any idea about the number of the company. He wasn’t sure why he bothered. Their trouble lay ahead of them, not following along behind.
He walked off a ways and stood looking over still-sleeping farmland. He could see the faintest outlines of mountains in the distance. Those were the Mealls, the mountains that began as foot-hills, then grew into a protective ring about Lake Cladach before marching north to form the western boundary of Ainneamh. He hadn’t seen them in a score of years. He could hardly believe he might actually set eyes on them again in the near future.
His dream came back to him suddenly, and he wondered about it, though not for long. He had enough to think on with Sarah’s quest.
Unless there were mages who had grown into vast amounts of power whilst he’d been ignoring the world on his mountain, there was no one with the ability to take another’s power save the usual suspects and he wasn’t quite ready to think on any of them.
Even if by some miracle Daniel had found the sort of spell to take things that weren’t his, he would never have the ability to use it. The lad couldn’t weave a decent spell of Olc to destroy a house and barn with any flair. He wasn’t going to manage something as delicate as ridding a mage of his voice. Oban still had his power. His loss of voice could be explained easily. Ruith was sure he would get to that explanation when he was at his leisure.
He looked back to find most of the company collected by the wagon. Sarah was standing apart, bent over something she held in her hands. He knew without looking any more closely what she was doing. He’d caught her more than once poking about in that wee purse of hers, counting her coins with a look of intense dismay on her face.
Worry about her situation had kept him quite nicely from thinking about his own, but he knew that couldn’t last for long. There were things swirling around him, things from nightmares, things he was managing to ignore only out of sheer will. It couldn’t last forever.
His recent dream was proof enough of that.
He set himself to shepherding the company in the right direction, then found himself walking next to Sarah, which wasn’t anything unusual. Ned and Oban had taken a liking to each other from the start. The mage gestured wildly in an attempt to make up for the loss of his powers of speech and Ned did nothing but watch him in slack-jawed fascination. A perfect combination, to be sure. Castân trailed along after the pair, clomping steadily and drooling prodigiously. Master Franciscus seemed happy enough to manage his horses and wagon. Ruith couldn’t blame him. It seemed rather the safest place to be.
He looked to his left to find Sarah studying him from out of the corner of her eye. She’d been looking at him in much the same way ever since they’d left Bruaih.
It made him nervous.
“What do you think befell him?” she asked suddenly, with a slight nod at Master Oban. “What of Daniel’s make, I mean.”
Ruith didn’t want to discuss it. He felt as if he were walking along that path through woods he never wanted to see again in what he was fairly certain would be an excessively long lifetime.
“I don’t know,” he hedged.
“A mage cannot steal another’s soul, can he?”
Ruith shrugged. That was all he could manage, given that he was doing everything in his power to continue to breathe normally.
Steal another mage’s soul, indeed. Words could not begin to describe the dread that had sprung up around his heart. It wasn’t possible, of course, but what if Daniel had come by a spell fashioned by a lesser mage, perhaps a spell of Taking? Perhaps he might have, even with his inferior skills, used it well enough to take something from another mage.
Such as his voice.
“You don’t think Daniel was using a spell he found on that page, do you?”
Ruith felt the world grind to a halt. He stumbled to an ungainly halt right along with it, then looked at Sarah slowly.
“What page?”
“The one that attacked me in my mother’s house.”
He swayed. He didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t help himself. “What?” he managed.
She stopped next to him. “I went in his bedchamber to look for a bottle of potion for a customer who had come seeking aid for her daughter. I’d thought I’d simply used that tincture without thinking, but the bottle had been of a particular make, with a tear running down its side.” She looked up at him. “I always thought that particular bottle looked a bit like a well that had somehow become too full and left its contents slipping down its sides.”
Ruith felt a bit like a horse had just kicked him in the gut. It was all he could do not to lean over and suck in air that he couldn’t seem to find whilst standing up straight. He found that all he could do was stare at Sarah, mute, and wish with fervor that she would stop speaking.
“I suspected that Daniel had taken that particular bottle because I saw a thread of his spell in my mother’s workroom in a suspicious place,” she went on, still watching him closely, “so I went into his bedchamber to look for it. It was there that I saw the page lying on his table. I would have thought nothing of it, even considering that it was torn in half and scorched along its edges as if it had been rescued from a fire, but what happened when I reached out to touch it makes me think it was more than a simple sheaf.” She paused. “Odd, isn’t it?”
Ruith couldn’t answer. It was all he could do to remain where he was. He knew with a certainty that made him almost ill that he wasn’t going to want to hear the rest of her tale.
“I reached down to pick up the page,” she continued slowly, “and a spell written there leapt up and wrapped itself around my arm.”
Ruith closed his eyes briefly. It wasn’t possible that she’d had happen to her whilst awake what had happened to him in his dream. The similarities were interesting, but surely not significant.
But if his father’s spell had attacked him in a particular way, and a different spell had assailed her in precisely the same way, could it not be possible that the author of the spells might be the same?
“I wonder if Daniel used a spell from that page,” she mused. “He seemed particularly fascinated with it. Nay, that isn’t the right word.” She paused, then met his eyes. “Obsessed. He was obsessed with it, so much that he was unable to look away from it once he’d cast his eyes on it. ”
“And you think he used the spell from that page on Master Oban?” he asked thickly.
She studied him for a moment or two in silence. “I never said that.”
She didn’t have to. Ruith didn’t want to look at what events pointed to, but he realized he was fast approaching the point where he knew he wouldn’t have any choice. There was only one spell in his father’s collection whose purpose was to take power from another mage. It was almost unthinkable, but what if that spell had found itself in the hands of a fool who had tried to use it—unsuccessfully, fortunately—on a mage he could see walking now thirty paces in front of him?
His father’s spell of Diminishing?
He shook his head, because the thought was too terrible to contemplate. His father never would have let that be found. It had been his most precious possession, a thing of evil he had created at the height of his powers, a loosing of forces that should rather have been left buried and secret.
A bit like that morning at the well, truth be told.
“Ruith, you don’t look well.”
“Sympathy,” Ruith said hoarsely.
She put her hand on his arm. “Do
you
think Daniel is using a spell he found on that page?”