Spellweaver (18 page)

“We’ll manage without it.”

He supposed they’d both managed over the years with less light than they would have liked. He promised himself a decent bit of werelight at the top of the hill, but until then ... well, until then, he would just make do.

A bit like he’d been doing for the past score of years.

He squeezed Sarah’s hand, then started up the path. He felt as if he were walking into a battle, just waiting for the first blow to fall, the first arrow to find home in his chest, the first sound of a knife slicing through the—

Sarah gasped.

He looked up, then froze.

Lights had begun to appear in the trees, faintly where he stood, but more brightly as the path wound upward. The flowers on either side of the path began to glow as well, as if they were, well,
pleased
at something. Ruith struggled to breathe normally.

“They’re doing it for you,” he managed.

“Don’t be daft,” she said without hesitation. “They’re doing it for
you
.”

He wanted to curse, but he thought that might be inappropriate in his current location. He supposed Sarah had seen him at his worst—or very near to it—so there was no shame in a very minor display of emotion. Unfortunately, by the time they reached the top of the hill, he feared he’d wept more than a stray tear or two. He dragged his sleeve across his eyes and looked around himself.

The trees were singing a song of Fadaire in which his name was whispered over and over again, as if they not only recognized him, but had longed to see him and wondered why he had been away. The lights sparkled, clear and warm, casting a beautiful light over the bower. He turned around in a circle, stunned at what he was seeing, then looked at Sarah.

“I can’t believe this,” he whispered. He started to say more, but he couldn’t. All the years he’d spent with his back turned on himself, denying himself the pleasure of family, the beauty of his mother’s magic ... all years apparently wasted. He looked at Sarah helplessly.

“Regret is a terrible thing,” she said very quietly.

“Are you reading my thoughts now as well?” he managed.

“Your face, rather.”

He dragged his sleeve across that face, then attempted a smile. “Well, at least we have light. What do you say to a game of cards?”

“Ruith, surely not—”

“Please,” he interrupted. “I’ll weep in truth if I must think on this any longer. Please let’s discuss food, or steel, or the many and varied flaws of a certain master of Buidseachd who talks too much about some things and not enough about others.”

“I would join you in that,” she said, dabbing at her own cheeks with the hem of her sleeve, “but I haven’t the heart for it.” She looked at him seriously. “I’ll play cards with you, but for every time I win, I want a memory of yours that’s beautiful. Franciscus didn’t know very many tales, but I loved the ones he told me. Despite my loathing of all things elvish, of course.”

“I know many tales—”

“Memories, Ruith. Good ones.”

He took a deep breath, looked over her head at the trees behind her with their lights swaying delicately in their boughs. “Very well. And from you, I’ll have an hour more of your company for each hand I win. Here in the elven king’s garden where his spells will keep you safe.”

“I don’t belong—”

“And I do?” he asked with as much of a careless laugh as he could manage. He felt his smile fade. “Please, Sarah. I’ll help you in the morning if you still want to go. You shall choose a place and I’ll
make
it safe for you. But tonight, I want you to stay.”

“Why?” she asked, pained.

“Because I don’t want you to go, and I’m putting off the misery of it as long as I can,” he said, before he thought too much about it and talked himself out of being honest.

She closed her eyes for a moment or two, then looked at him. “I’m terrified.”

He didn’t need to ask her why. Of course she was terrified because she had an enormous amount of good sense and a very long list of things to be terrified by.

She swallowed. “I’ve been blustering before about it all, but I’m not sure I can ... that I can face ...”

He drew her into his arms before she could reach for blades to place delicately in his gut. When she continued to shiver, he took off his cloak, wrapped it around her, then pulled her close again.

“We’ll put it aside for the night,” he said, hoping he sounded more confident and hopeful than he felt. “You can decide what you’ll do in the morning.”

She didn’t want to give in, he could sense that, but she did. Eventually.

“Be thinking on my prizes,” she said, pulling away finally and dragging her sleeve again across her eyes. “Now, Your Highness, stop dawdling and conjure us up a deck of cards and a place to sit before I turn off your lights with my salty language.”

“Don’t call me that,” he said quietly.

Her smile faded. “I said it before to hurt you. But not now. Not here.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“What shall I call you, then?”

“I suppose
darling
is out,” he said, struggling to capture a light tone, “as is
Your Handsomeness
. I suppose you’ll just have to settle for Ruith.”

“Very well,
Ruith
,” she said, waving him on. “Stop talking and start thinking.”

He had, as it happened, an enormous store of lore in his poor head, most having to do with Heroes trotting off on their trusty Angesand steeds to do marvelous deeds with their swords, but he supposed if he tried hard enough, he might be able to remember a few things he’d read in his grandfather’s library. Or manage a few decent memories of his own for her.

He made them a place to sit, enjoyed the supper Soilléir had packed for them, lost badly at cards, then didn’t argue when Sarah said she thought she could perhaps lose a game or two to save his pride if she stretched out and played with her eyes closed. She was asleep long before the game was finished.

He pulled her cloak over her, but she shivered still. He considered what he might do to remedy that, but realized it could only be solved with magic. He sat up and took a very deep breath. The trees seemed to be waiting for him as well.

“Well,” he said reasonably, “I’m just thinking about her.”

The lights only sparkled pleasantly and the boughs began to sing again, a sweet song of peace. Ruith looked down at his very sensible hands, thought about what they could do, then thought about what they
could
do if he allowed them to.

He had said those words to Sarah on their journey toward Ceangail. And he had meant it. If he’d had a family, a wife he adored, sons he wanted to show how to be honorable men, daughters he wanted to keep safe, he would have protected them to the very limits of his endurance and power. That he hadn’t done so for Sarah on their journey was inexcusable.

He took another in a very long series of deep breaths, then put his hand out into the darkness.

He could have sworn he felt his mother’s hand there, waiting for him.

He dragged his sleeve across his eyes one last time, then very carefully conjured up a cloak fit for a princess and spread it over Sarah, then set spells of ward, Fadairian spells that the garden approved of, just inside his grandfather’s glamour.

Which had been refreshed quite recently, as it happened.

He would have considered that a bit longer, but he realized with a start that he wasn’t going to manage to stay awake long enough to do so. He stretched out next to Sarah, then put his arm over her and contemplated the events of the evening.

He had walked in his grandfather’s garden and found himself accepted.

He felt years fall away as if they’d never been there, leaving him with his magic and his memories and a freedom from the burden of hiding he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. He supposed if he’d had any sense at all, he would have been terrified.

But he wasn’t.

He closed his eyes and fell into the first dreamless sleep he’d had in twenty years.

Ten

Sarah woke to singing.

It wasn’t the sort of singing she was accustomed to, that off-key bit of warbling her mother had engaged in, peppering the ends of her phrases with curses and snorts. This was glorious, a hint of something she couldn’t quite hear, as if it lingered on the edge of memory or dreaming.

It was definitely elvish.

She opened her eyes and looked up at the canopy over her head made by those trees that no longer twinkled with lights not of this world but were no less beautiful in spite of it. They were beginning to bloom with fragrant white flowers that were particularly lovely. And all through their rustling flowed their song, one of magic, woven with names she didn’t recognize—and some she did. Sìle, Brèagha, Làidir, Sorcha, Athair, Sarait, Ruithneadh: the list was endless and spoken with love.

Fadaire was draped over everything like a particularly lovely snow, intertwined like ivy around the trunks and through the boughs of the trees. She stared at it for quite some time, watching the colors of not only leaf and flower shift with the gentle breeze, but the magic as well. She allowed herself to wonder, as she rarely did, what it would have been like to have been an elven maid with that loveliness to call one’s own every day. To have had that sort of magic to string on a loom made from air and fire and use to weave tapestries of such beauty and perfection—

She sat up abruptly, because it was either that or weep over what she could never have, a sentiment which she realized she was suffering from enough without any sentient botanical aid. She looked at the cloak draped over her. It was spectacular, fashioned of a green silk the color of her eyes and lined with the softest white wool she had ever put her hand to. She thought at first that perhaps the garden had conjured it up for her, then she remembered that Ruith had released his magic the day before at the gate. She had seen him do it, which had surprised her, then watched it wash over his soul like a river over dry, cracked earth, healing it.

She envied him.

She knew she should have gotten up and walked or run or done something to escape her useless thoughts, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She was sitting in a garden more beautiful than even her rampaging imagination could ever have conjured up, and she was being serenaded by trees. If she’d had any sense at all, she would have sat for another moment or two and committed the moment to memory.

Which she did. She smoothed her hands over the silk of the cloak spread over her, watched the threads of Fadaire it was fashioned with shimmer as she touched them, and listened to the names that trees continued to weave in and out of their song. She became familiar with them, though she found herself growing slightly amused, as time went on, that the trees seemed particularly fond of Ruith’s mother’s name for they whispered it again and again.

And then she frowned, for the name that figured so prominently into their song wasn’t Sarait.

It was Sarah
.

She found her hands were buried in her cloak, clutching it in a way that would likely take a hot iron to smooth over, but there was nothing to be done about it now. She looked up at the trees, feeling hot tears stream down her cheeks.

They knew her
.

Hard on the heels of that realization came another one.

She couldn’t run. Not away from her past, or her present, or her future, because if she ran, the time would come when places like the garden she was in would be overcome. She had no doubt that Daniel was alive—he’d always had an uncanny ability to land on his feet—and she knew what he could do. He wasn’t Ruith’s half brothers, of course, but he wasn’t a village whelp either. If there was something she could do to stop him, she had to.

No matter the cost—

She had to turn away from that thought before it robbed her of the last of her breath. She crawled abruptly off Ruith’s cloak, then picked it up and shook it out. She hesitated, then picked up the cloak he had made for her and pulled it around her shoulders. She knew she would pay for it eventually, but for the moment she would allow herself the very great pleasure of wearing something she never would have dared weave for herself, and damn the consequences.

Ruith was nowhere to be found, but she didn’t imagine he had left her to herself. She found a handy bench sitting under the trees at the edge of the little glade and made herself at home on it. She wished she’d had something useful to do, such as wind yarn or knit, but as she didn’t, she simply sat with her hands folded in her lap and tried not to think. That was difficult given that she was in a place where her entrance had been granted thanks to a man she was trying to forget.

I want more than an hour, Sarah
.

She closed her eyes and bowed her head, partly to shut out the almost overwhelming sight of the magic-drenched garden in front of her and partly to shut out his words. He wanted her for what? To find his father’s spells for him? To keep him company as he plunged into darkness? She couldn’t imagine it was for any more romantic purposes, not that she was interested in anything of that nature with him. He was an elven prince—