“You have a very generous heart, Ruith.”
“I doubt Sarah would agree, though I extended the courtesy of three no-need-to-justify-the-reason begging offs from social functions in return for her having placed on me the burden of becoming acquainted with ten princesses before I am allowed to pursue her wholeheartedly. She used one yesterday. I imagine she’ll be more judicious with them in the future.”
“Pray she doesn’t use one to avoid being at your wedding.”
Ruith laughed uneasily. “I hadn’t considered that, though I should have.”
Soilléir turned and leaned against the wooden window frame. “What will you do now?”
Ruith sighed. “I thought to make for Léige, to see if Keir might have remained behind, or returned there ... after.”
“Will Uachdaran let you in his gates, do you think?” Soilléir asked with what could have been charitably called a smirk.
“I’ll approach on bended knee,” Ruith said darkly. “King Uachdaran might allow me in if he knows I’ve just come to look for my brother. And after I’ve pried what I need to from Keir, I suppose we’ll continue to look for spells and search for Sarah’s brother.” He paused. “I thought perhaps we should leave tonight.”
“Agreed,” Soilléir said. “There is mischief afoot in the world.”
Ruith would have given much for a peep inside Soilléir’s head, but there was no point in asking for it. There was no harm in asking a few questions, though, never mind that he didn’t imagine he would have answers that would ease him any.
“I’m curious,” he said slowly, “and I didn’t have time to search in the library below for anything useful. I don’t suppose you know a mage called Urchaid, do you? Or Franciscus?”
“Franciscus is a fairly common name in the north,” Soilléir said with a shrug. “Unless you’ve more specifics for me than that, I can’t help you. Urchaid, on the other hand, is a fairly
un
common name, of which only a handful of men come to mind. There was Urchaid of Srath, who fought against Cuideil of An-uallach, though I believe he was slain by a serving girl who poisoned his wine. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise knowing the cantankerous nature of the inhabitants of An-uallach.”
Ruith had no experience with them, so he remained silent.
“There was an Urchaid of Tòsan, who was one of the wizards who argued against casting Lothar of Wychweald from the schools of wizardry, but your grandmother Eulasaid would know more about him than I would.” He paused and considered. “The only other Urchaid of note that comes to mind is Urchaid of Saothair.”
Ruith blinked. “Who?”
“Droch’s brother.”
Ruith felt something slither down his spine. “I’d heard that there was another one roaming the world besides Wehr and Droch.”
“And where did you hear that?”
“In a pub,” Ruith said with a snort. “Some drunkard was delighting his companions with gruesome tales of how Dorchadas of Saothair had looked on his eight sons to decide which was the strongest so he might slay the rest. There was universal agreement that he hadn’t been able to choose between Wehr and Droch, but the teller of very tall tales was convinced that another son had escaped whilst his father was otherwise occupied with that decision.”
“’Tis possible, I suppose.”
Ruith considered for a moment or two. “What of Dorchadas? Does he live still?”
Soilléir shrugged. “He’s still alive, I imagine, weaving his webs of evil in some forgotten corner of the world.”
Ruith thought about the Urchaid he knew for a moment or two, then shook his head. For one thing, Urchaid looked nothing like Droch, and the other ... well, he was fairly sure that when Dorchadas of Saothair killed something, he made sure he’d done the job properly. Tales heard in a pub were best relegated to just that. He considered other things for a bit longer, then looked at Soilléir.
“If my father’s spells are out in the world, loose, would Droch want them, do you think?”
“Assuredly,” Soilléir said. “Droch was—is still, I daresay—incoherently jealous of your sire’s power. And to have a collection of his most treasured spells and Gair not be able to stop his using them? Aye, I daresay he would have them if he could lay his hands on them. But you can be sure he is but the start of a very lengthy list of those who would want the same.”
Ruith leaned back against the opposite window casing. “We can be thankful then, that Droch has no idea what I’m looking for.”
“I doubt he’ll be in the dark about that for long,” Soilléir said dryly, “particularly if your half brothers exercise their notoriously loose tongues about it.”
Ruith sighed. “I wish he’d never written that book.”
“Could you write down what you remember of it?”
Ruith shot him a look. “I could, but I will not.”
Soilléir smiled. “Just testing.”
Ruith found himself being studied in a way he didn’t particularly care for, but it was Soilléir after all, and there was nothing he could do but endure it and swear a bit to make himself feel better.
“Were all his spells contained in that book, do you suppose?” Soilléir asked.
Ruith looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”
“I just wonder if he was working on other things that perhaps weren’t quite perfect enough to write down. It was your father, after all.”
Ruith looked over his shoulder to see if someone had opened a door or a window or if the fire had gone out. Surely that was the only reason for the sudden chill that brushed against his neck. “He was forever honing spells into something vile, which you well know. What sort of other things do you think he was contemplating?”
“I don’t know,” Soilléir said, looking at him with clear, innocent eyes. “What do
you
think?”
Ruith pushed away from the window and walked away, because he didn’t like what he’d heard and he liked even less the thought of having to contemplate what madness his sire had been considering during the last days of his life.
Other spells?
He shuddered to think.
He paced to the doorway and back before he stopped again in front of the window and looked at Soilléir.
“The list could be long.”
“Or very short.”
Ruith swore. “Why are you pursuing this?”
“Because I fear,” Soilléir said quietly, “that there are things out in the world that truly
will
undo it unless they’re found and destroyed. Things loosed that should be contained. Spells and thoughts and schemes that I cannot see and couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop even if I knew where to look.”
Ruith turned to stare out the window until the faint light of dawn stretched across the sky. “There are times,” he said finally, “when I profoundly regret walking out my front door and putting my foot to the path waiting for me.”
“I imagine you do. But then you wouldn’t have met Sarah.”
Sarah
. Ruith blew out his breath. It was one thing to contemplate taking Sarah along with him when the journey was comfortably far away; it was another thing to be facing that moment and realize what it would mean. He looked at Soilléir. “I’m going to leave her here.”
“Nay, Your Highness, you are not.”
Ruith closed his eyes briefly, shot Soilléir a warning look, then turned to find Sarah awake and standing behind him, watching him with her arms folded over her chest.
“Sarah,” he began, dragging his hand through his hair.
“I’m almost finished with my cloth,” she said briskly. She looked at Soilléir. “I might need needle and thread, if I could trouble you for both.”
“I think I can do better than that and even dredge up a seamstress or two,” Soilléir said with a smile.
She glared at Ruith, then walked off to her loom. Ruith watched her go, then turned to Soilléir and lifted an eyebrow.
Soilléir shrugged. “She’s formidable. And you need her, for more things than just her sight. You’ll just have to keep her safe.”
“I don’t want her to come along,” Ruith said grimly.
“And what is your other choice?” Soilléir asked. “Leave her behind with me? You have the power to protect her. I daresay even your father would find you a difficult opponent now.”
“My mother was his equal,” Ruith said, “and yet she failed to stop him.”
“And she failed because his power had been augmented by your brothers’ magic, which you well know. If you could turn back the wheels of time and face him as a man, I think you might be slightly more cynical about what he might do than your mother was and act accordingly. Though, in her defense, she was balancing trying to stop him with trying to keep her children safe.”
“I regret that she had to face that,” Ruith said quietly.
“As do I.”
Ruith imagined Soilléir would have stopped the entire thing if he’d been able to—and he was equally sure it hadn’t been a lack of capability so much as a self-imposed vow of discretion that included not interfering in the choices of others.
“I can’t imagine,” Ruith said quietly, sure Soilléir would know what he intended by it.
“I sincerely hope, my friend, that you never have to,” Soilléir said.
Ruith sighed, then caught sight of Sarah sitting at her loom. He could safely say that any regret about his current path lasted only as long as it took him to look for her in any given chamber.
And the rest of the truth was, he had spent a score of years hiding, but also pacing in place, as if he’d waited for a task he’d somehow known he was destined to take on. And if that task sent him into his father’s darkness, so be it. He supposed it hadn’t been happenstance that the majority of the books in his library had been books of spells, gathered from obscure sources, and for the most part incomplete. He had passed the years stretching his mind in directions it hadn’t perhaps been meant to go, pushing himself to think in ways he’d never anticipated he would even want to.
He was, he could admit with a fair bit of distaste, a bit like his sire when it came to that sort of thing.
But to consider things his father had been creating near the end of his miserable life?
It would take an event of monumental proportions to inspire him to do that.
He thanked Soilléir for the pleasant conversation, paced about the solar a score of times, then came to stand next to Sarah. She paused in her work, scowled at him, then shifted just the slightest bit so he would have a place to perch. He did, with his back to her work but still so he could see her face.
“I want you to stay here.”
“You don’t,” she said without hesitation. “Not in truth.”
He had to sigh a little. “Very well, I don’t in truth, but I also don’t want you to come where I fear we’ll need to go.”
“You need me.”
“Well, that is true as well,” he agreed. “But for more than just your sight.”
She elbowed him rather firmly in the ribs. “Concentrate on what route we’ll take.” She continued to work, though a bit more slowly. “I dreamed last night.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “I was caught up in it.”
She almost dropped her shuttle. “Then you saw the spells?”
He shook his head. “I saw fires, but I couldn’t tell you where they were.”
She took a deep breath. “I could.”
“I suspected as much.” He watched her continue on with her cloth, a greyish green that he imagined would blend in quite well in whatever landscape they found themselves. It shimmered with something that wasn’t precisely earthly, so he imagined that the yarn had been enspelled somehow. “I was thinking we should retrace our steps,” he said slowly. “North.”
Her hands stilled for a moment, then she continued her work without speaking.
“I would like to find Franciscus, if finding can be done,” he ventured. “I have a few questions for him, which I imagine you do as well.”
“Very pointed ones,” she agreed.
“The other person I would like to find is Urchaid. Soilléir gave me an idea or two about lads with that name, but he doesn’t seem to be any of them.” He couldn’t bring himself to wonder if Urchaid the fop might have somehow escaped the heavy hand of his father’s filial jealousy. He certainly wasn’t going to speculate aloud with Sarah listening. “Whoever he is, he is up to no good, I daresay.”
“I daresay,” she murmured. “What do you think he want—nay, never mind.” She looked at him. “They all want what Gair had, don’t they?”
“I’m afraid so. And I fear we’ve only begun to unravel the web being woven.” Which was why he wanted her nowhere near any of that web, but as Soilléir had once said, Soilléir wouldn’t be her jailor. Better that she be where he could protect her than trapped in the schools of wizardry where she didn’t dare venture out into the passageway.
“How will we travel?” she asked. “On foot?”
He pulled himself back to the task at hand. “I’ll find horses somewhere and pay the seller with a few spells. Perhaps Soilléir will gift us food for the start of the journey. We’ll make do as we travel.”
She concentrated on her weaving for a bit longer, silent. Ruith didn’t interrupt her. He merely sat next to her, considering the women of his family, powerful in their own right, endowed with magic that commanded respect even among the mighty ones of the world. He wondered, absently, what his grandfather would say when he brought home the very unmagical daughter of the witchwoman Seleg and announced that he’d inspected the required ten princesses, and would Sìle mind putting on three luxurious banquets so Sarah could only refuse two of them before she was forced to attend and listen to a proposal of marriage. Surely Sìle wouldn’t roar at a woman. Ruith imagined that his own ears would be ringing for quite some time.
Somehow, he rather thought he would have preferred to take her to Lake Cladach where Sgath dressed in homespun and Eulasaid tended her gardens herself and had a great appreciation for what two hands could fashion from finely spun yarn.
Sarah finished with her cloth, then paused and looked at him. “We’ll leave tonight?”