Sarah watched Ruith draw the blade halfway from the sheath, then felt her mouth fall open. The blade was covered with the same sort of runes as her knives, but there was something else there, something that looked remarkably like a layer of spells. She looked at Soilléir in surprise, but he only lifted an eyebrow briefly in answer.
She shut her mouth and put on her most unaffected expression. Already she could see where discretion was useful for more than just his spells, though that feat was made a bit more difficult by the fact that she suspected what was written on that blade might have as much to do with her as what was written on her knives. She watched Ruith resheath the blade as if he saw nothing especial about it. He thanked Soilléir in a rather perfunctory fashion.
Interesting.
Ruith looked at her. “Ready?”
She nodded, though her mouth was substantially more dry than it should have been. She tucked her hands into her sleeves to try to warm them, but that was fairly useless as well. She walked with Ruith over to the door, then turned to bid farewell to their hosts. Rùnach took her hand and bent low over it.
“Fare you well, my lady,” he said in his hoarse, ruined voice. “It has been a tremendous pleasure for me to watch you weave. I will always be a grateful recipient of any of your castoffs.”
“I’m sure I’ll manage something for you in the future,” she said, feeling a bit more flustered than she likely should have been. She wanted to point out that he had all the glories of Tòrr Dòrainn at his disposal and needed nothing from her, but perhaps he preferred the genteel luxury of Buidseachd.
Ruith scowled at his brother before he embraced him, patting his back several times in a manly fashion.
Rùnach pulled away. “I’ve been invited to Mhorghain’s wedding. Perhaps you’ll be there as well.”
“We will, if we manage what we must,” Ruith agreed. “If we’re late, don’t let them wait for us. We’ll make the journey to Tor Neroche to see them. Afterward.”
Rùnach didn’t ask what Ruith meant by afterward, and Sarah wasn’t about to volunteer any opinions on what might come before—or if she would still be part of Ruith’s life then. She merely thanked Rùnach again for his lovely manners, then followed Ruith and Soilléir from the chamber and down the passageway. And if Soilléir went first and Ruith followed behind her, as if she needed to be protected, she pretended not to notice. She considered the spell Soilléir had given her and was tempted to just repeat it aloud whilst wishing it might work for her, but she didn’t want to potentially set alarm bells to ringing. Better that she save it for another time.
Soilléir led them down to the kitchens and through a door that led outside the keep. There were stables set just a bit away from the castle, which were apparently his destination. Two horses stood there already, saddled, and behaving quite nicely. Sarah looked up at Ruith quickly, but he only frowned.
Soilléir took the reins from a stable lad and sent him off with a nod, then turned to them. “These are yours.”
“But I haven’t paid—” Ruith began.
“Consider them a gift,” Soilléir said, “and consider that gift when you’re overseeing my wallowing.”
Sarah wasn’t sure why that made Ruith smile, but there had obviously been conversations she had missed out on at some point during their stay.
“Very well,” Ruith relented. “You have my thanks.”
“And mine,” Sarah added fervently. “I wasn’t looking forward to walking.”
Soilléir handed her a set of reins. “I will admit, my dear, that I was mostly thinking of you when I considered these fine lads here. They are actually gifts from my father to me, stallions I assure you the good lord of Angesand would salivate to have in his stable, so keep a close eye on them lest you find some enterprising son of Hearn’s stalking you. Yours is Ruathar and Ruith’s is Tarbh.”
Sarah looked at Ruathar and was fairly surprised at the look he gave her in return. Either she had only ridden dim-witted nags before or those ponies in front of her were an entirely different breed of horse. Ruathar didn’t chafe at the reins or try to bite her. He merely stared at her, then turned his head just so, apparently so she might better admire him.
She laughed as she reached out to stroke his neck, then realized Ruith was having an entirely different experience with his mount. There was a battle of wills going on there, one that looked to be breaking Tarbh’s way for a bit, before he grudgingly lowered his head and blew out his breath.
Soilléir smiled, looking pleased. “I thought they might suit. And in case neither of you has noticed, these steeds not only have minds of their own, but shapechanging magic of their own. All you must do is tell them what shape you require and they will assume it.”
“Shape?” she echoed incredulously.
“Dragon, hawk, eagle.” Soilléir shrugged. “I imagine they would suffer through the indignity of masquerading as milch cows if necessary, but I would suggest you limit yourselves to more heroic sorts of things to save their pride.”
“Dragon?” Sarah knew there wasn’t any sound to the word but didn’t bother trying to remedy that. She was too busy gaping at her horse and wondering how she was possibly going to manage the rest of her quest when she couldn’t bring herself to put her foot in the stirrup.
Soilléir put his hand on Ruathar’s neck, had some sort of mageish conversation with him, then reached down and picked up the miniature statue that suddenly stood where Ruathar had been. He held it out.
“Put him in your pack, Sarah, my dear, then call to him when you need him and he’ll resume his proper shape. He agreed to travel in this shape as often as you need him to.”
“Handy, that,” she managed faintly, accepting the minuscule statue gingerly. “How did your father teach them to do this?”
“He didn’t,” Soilléir said. “There is, you might say, something in the water at home.”
“Hearn of Angesand would agree, no doubt,” Ruith said with a snort. “I’m equally sure he’s been trying over the course of his very long life to divine what that particular something is.”
“He tries,” Soilléir agreed, “but fails, repeatedly. He’s not much for the shapechanging of animals, but he would readily accept their fleetness of foot, which I daresay will please you two as well.”
Sarah had to admit that that would, though she hoped she would survive whatever else they did long enough for her to enjoy that speed.
Ruith led his pony off a ways, then stopped and looked at it. Tarbh tossed his head, then in the next heartbeat, became a dragon from dreams, glorious, glittering, and absolutely ferocious-looking. If he’d swooped down from the sky toward her, she would have looked for the first handy clutch of brush and dived underneath it to hope for the best. Soilléir only laughed.
“Pray there are no archers in the area. They’ll shoot you out of the sky for the value of the gems encrusting his breast.”
Sarah was less worried about that than she was staying on his back, but perhaps that was something she could think about later, when she was safely back on the ground.
Ruith left the dragon stretching his wings and came back across the little courtyard to embrace Soilléir.
“Thank you,” he said, with feeling. “You have saved us countless hours of dangerous travel on the ground.”
“I did it for Sarah, of course,” Soilléir said smoothly.
“I never doubted it,” Ruith said with a snort, “but I appreciate not being forced to trot along after her, as it were.”
“But,” Sarah protested, because she could hardly believe she was being faced with a saddle that belonged on something far more equine, “I don’t see any, um, reins.”
Ruith shot her a look. “Then ’tis fortunate we’re such good friends,” he said with hardly a hint of a smirk, “that you won’t be unwilling to hold on to me.”
“Did you plan this?”
“Believe me, Sarah, I couldn’t possibly have dreamed up a scheme so perfectly suited to my lecherous preferences as this one. Blame Soilléir.”
Sarah was tempted to, but he’d gifted them things kings would have willingly begged for, so she instead embraced him, thanked him sincerely for all his aid, then watched him walk back inside the keep with the ease of a man who wasn’t currently contemplating a trip off the ground where no sensible soul would wish to be. She was appalled to realize there was a part of her—an alarmingly large part—that wished she were walking back inside with him.
She took hold of her terror, shouldered her pack with her horse inside, then turned to Ruith. “What now?”
“We’ll be off.”
She’d been afraid he would say that. She couldn’t think of any reasonable-sounding reason to dawdle, so when Ruith walked over to their mount, she dragged her feet behind him. He looked over his shoulder, then stopped and put his arm around her shoulders.
“I won’t let you fall.”
“I wasn’t worried about what you would do,” she managed. “I was planning on holding on very tightly and concentrating on not screaming.”
“Already my plan yields benefits,” he said with a small smile. He nodded toward the dragon, who seemed to sense that he was about to be carrying at least one rider who wasn’t precisely thrilled about his shape. “The view will be spectacular, I promise.”
“How would you know?” she asked faintly.
“How do you think I know?”
“What I think is that you are not at all who I thought you were,” she said with a shiver. “But since that seems to be the usual fare where you’re concerned, I likely shouldn’t think anything of it.”
“Consider me your very dear friend with a tumultuous past,” he said, turning her toward him. “And since we are such dear friends, perhaps you’ll indulge me in a friendly embrace to settle my nerves.”
“Your nerves,” she huffed, then found she couldn’t say anything else. It was a miserable start to what she was now convinced would be a miserable journey. If she couldn’t even set foot to the path, how was she to continue on it when things became truly dangerous?
She didn’t want to hold on to Ruith so tightly, but she did
not
like heights of any sort and the thought of clambering onto that dragon’s back and not screaming when he leapt up—
“I could clunk you over the head with my sword and spare you any undue anxiety,” Ruith offered.
She was more tempted by that offer than she wanted to admit. “I don’t think Soilléir’s sword would care for that treatment—oh,” she said in dismay. “I left without the bow you made me. And you forgot yours.”
“Both are stowed in my pack,” he said. “Slightly altered in form for the moment.”
She shivered again. “You have become appallingly accustomed to magic in a very short time.”
“The truth is hard to deny,” he agreed ruefully, “but I’ll admit that if my magic serves us, I’ll use it without hesitation.” He pulled her hood up over her hair. “Shall we go?”
She couldn’t spew out anything that sounded like an assent, but she managed a nod, because the way was clear there before her feet and she had no choice but to walk it. She supposed she might have been forgiven legs that felt like noodles straight from the pot under her. Ruith pretended not to notice, and he did her the enormous favor of hooking her pack onto what was apparently going to serve them as a saddle. Then he helped her up and onto that saddle as if she’d been a feeble old woman.
She realized, as he settled himself in front of her, that she couldn’t breathe. She suspected that if the choice had been between facing his brothers, his father back from the dead, and Droch himself, or facing the thought of that dragon leaping into the air, she would have chosen any of the former three—or all of them together—without hesitation.
Ruith hesitated, then swung suddenly off the dragon. She looked at him in surprise.
“What is it?”
“You steer. I’ll clutch.”
She forced herself to make a noise of humor—it couldn’t have been even charitably termed a laugh—instead of sobbing like the terrified woman she was. “You are a lecherous knave,” she managed.
“But a
friendly
one,” he said, motioning for her to move forward. “Hurry up, gel. I’m envisioning all sorts of groping whilst you’re busy being terrified.”
She shifted to sit on the forward part of the saddle, which she wasn’t sure was an improvement as it left her looking over the dragon’s neck and ... down. At least the pommel was rather high, which might prevent her from tumbling off the front. Ruith’s arms around her made things better still, but not by much.
“You know, Tarbh would consider it an appalling blow to his dignity if you were to fall off.”
“How do you know?” she asked, her teeth chattering.
“He told me so, of course. He said that all you need worry about is not flinging yourself off his back. He will make certain to keep you in the saddle.”
“Are you trying to be helpful?”
His laugh rumbled in his chest against her back. “We’ll both keep you safe, Sarah.”
“Ah,” she began, then she had no more breath for speaking because Tarbh had apparently decided it was time to take off, as it were, whilst she was otherwise distracted by Ruith’s babbling.
She supposed he was doing his best not to terrify her, but even so, she imagined she was going to consign the first handful of moments of that very bumpy ride to the place where she put her nightmares when she was finished with them.
She was fairly sure she hadn’t wept, but she wasn’t at all sure she hadn’t screamed a time or two and laughed hysterically the rest of the time. Or at least she did until Tarbh leveled himself out and began to flap his wings in a less frantic manner.
“It wasn’t frantic,” Ruith said loudly. “It was measured.”
“Are you reading my thoughts now?” she managed.
“You were shouting them aloud, I’m afraid.”
She imagined she was. So to keep herself from doing so any further, she who hadn’t clutched a pommel in a score of years clutched the pommel of her saddle, because she didn’t dare let go of it. She did manage, after what seemed like a small slice of eternity, to open her eyes. She realized with a bit of a start that they were covered in some sort of spell. It didn’t seem to trouble their steed, flowing as it was around them as they flew. She found the presence of mind to see what it was made of.