Star of the Morning (27 page)

Miach closed his eyes briefly. “Even the little girl?”

“Nay, not the little girl.”

“Why not?”

Morgan took a deep breath. She had to take several. She was clutching his hand so tightly, it was starting to become a little painful. But he didn't move.

Morgan looked at the brush. “The little girl said those words, the ones I used on that brush.” She looked at him. “The evil swept by her without seeing her.”

Miach looked into her eyes as time slowed to a halt. A thousand questions clamored for answers, but they were naught but noise that distracted him from what he truly needed to know.

How had a shieldmaiden from a backward island famous for bickering peasants and too many sheep dreamed a spell that she managed to weave without possessing any magic at all?

Unless she had magic.

Unless she dreamed memories.

He looked away first, released her hand, and rubbed his hands over his face. Then he turned back and smiled at her. “We'll find answers.”

“Are there answers?”

“There are always answers. The difficulty lies in knowing where to look.” He nodded toward the brush. “Can you undo that?”

She shuddered. “I haven't the faintest idea how.”

He waited. He could have unwoven the spell, of course, but he wasn't going to do it without her permission. He wasn't even sure he wanted her to know that he could. Her distaste for mages was clear.

Heaven help him if she ever found out who he was.

She frowned thoughtfully. “You wouldn't know how, would you? I mean,” she said quickly, “being a farmer and all.”

It was what he had told her, of course. And he was a farmer—of sorts. He grew all kinds of things in his garden, things that made his brothers uneasy and terrified the servants. And those were just the flowers. Aye, he farmed. He planted spells all over the kingdom and watched them grow and flower into enchantments of beauty and ward and defense.

“Well,” he said finally, “a spell of un-noticing is a handy thing for anyone to know. When you have tender radishes growing that you don't want the pigs to find. When you have a particularly tasty cluster of grapes that you'd prefer to save for yourself after a long day of harvesting. That kind of thing. But you also have to know how to undo it or fairly soon your entire garden is invisible.”

“Then you know the spell?”

“Aye.” Several of them, actually, in several languages of wizardry. But he had to admit, he liked the one from Camanaë the best.

“Well,” she said, “spit it out!”

He hoped he could pretend a look of concentration mixed with a little doubt well enough to convince her. “You wove it thusly. You unweave it this way.”

He gave her the words. She took them from him as if he'd handed her a bowl of steaming dung, then spat them back out as quickly as possible in the direction of the brush.

There was a substantial rending sound as the spell tore itself apart.

The brush was revealed, in all its dusty glory.

Actually, all three brushes were uncovered. The others lay in the dirt across from them.

Morgan leaped to her feet. “Let's run.”

Miach found himself taken by the hand and pulled from the stables. He was long since past the time where the mere touch of a woman's hand was enough to bring him to his knees, but somehow, his poor self had seemingly forgotten that.

“Doesn't your leg hurt?” he managed.

“Not enough to stop me.”

Unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, he soon found himself running alongside Morgan as she fled across a farmer's field. He counted himself fortunate that he had passed so much of his life outrunning his demons in the same way she had, else she would have left him on his knees, panting, leagues behind her. It did, however, take all his self-control not to whisper a few of his favorite words and exchange legs for wings and so he could outfly what troubled him.

He wondered if Morgan could change her shape.

He suspected he would do well not to ask.

There came a time, after the moon had risen, peaked, then begun to sink, that he suspected he might simply fall over if she did not stop. He took her arm and pulled her back as he stumbled into a walk.

“You have bested me,” he said, gasping for breath. “I can go no farther.”

She was breathing deeply as well, but it was a very even, measured bit of business. “We have doubled back. The barn is just ahead.”

“Good. You can carry me there.”

She looked at him in surprise for a moment, then she laughed. It was not a loud laugh, nor a long one, but it finished him as the run had not. He hung his head and prayed for sanity.

“You're killing me,” he wheezed.

She patted him quite firmly on the back. “You're soft, Miach. Pick up a sword now and then along with your ploughshare.”

He heaved himself upright and caught up with her as she started toward the barn. “I'll remember that.”

She was silent until the barn was within reach. Then she stopped and looked at him. “How did you know those spells—really?”

He shrugged. “I heard them somewhere.” And that somewhere was the schools of wizardry at Beinn òrain. Actually, it might have been earlier than that. He suspected his mother might have taught them to him. “From my mother, perhaps.”

“Did she have magic?”

“A little.”

“I do not care for magic.”

“I know.”

“I have not said it strongly enough. I loathe it. It is a weak, foolish, unmanly way to conduct a body's business. I prefer steel.”

“I know,” he said again.

She seemed to have more to say, but it was long in coming. She chewed on her words, sighed, cursed, then glared at him.

“This was not in my plans.”

“I imagine it wasn't,” he said dryly.

“It might just be a little magic, this business that troubles me,” she said, sounding as if she didn't dare hope the same might be true.

“It might be.”

“Indeed,” she said, apparently warming to the idea, “it's possible that there is merely some village witch lurking amongst my ancestors. Perhaps she passed this weakness down through the generations to me.” She put her shoulders back. “An aberration. That's all it is.”

“Very likely,” he said, though he didn't exactly agree.

She shot him a sharp look. “Weger would be disgusted.”

“Hmmm.”

“He would likely take back his mark.”

“Does he do that?” Miach asked in surprise.

“There's always a first time,” she said darkly.

“Well,” he said, putting his hand briefly on her shoulder, “we'll try not to let him know. Perhaps the magic only comes when you've had too little sleep.”

“Think you?” she asked, without hope.

Miach patted her shoulder, then took his hand back before she cut it off. “Stranger things have happened.”

“I suppose,” she muttered, then she hesitated. “It looks as if your brother is looking for you.”

“Or you,” Miach said under his breath. For all he knew, that was true. After all, what man with eyes could not look at Morgan and not find her lovely?

Would it be unsporting to place a hex of thorough ugliness upon her?

Miach thought not.

Adhémar glared at him as he approached. “Where have you been?”

“Out for a run,” Miach said easily.

Adhémar grunted, then looked at Morgan. “And you? What is your excuse?”

“Do I need one?” she asked tartly.

“You'll fall off your very expensive horse if you do not sleep.” He nodded toward camp. “Take my spot. I'll go watch the horses.”

Miach watched as Morgan nodded a little unsteadily. She did pause, however, at the edge of camp and look at him.

“Thank you,” she said simply.

“Thank you,” Adhémar echoed. He looked after her as she walked away, then turned to Miach. “Thank you for what? What did you do for her?”

“Why do you care?”

Adhémar drew himself up. “I like to know what's going on.”

Miach opened his mouth, then shut it. There was no place to begin that Adhémar would have the patience for and even if he did have the patience for it, Miach wasn't certain he wanted his brother to know anything about the direction in which his thoughts were going.

“Nothing,” Miach said, pushing past his brother. “Go see to the horses, would you?”

“How dare—”

Miach didn't stay to hear the diatribe. He walked into camp, found his pack and a bit of ground that was relatively free of rocks, and rolled up in a blanket.

It was an extremely odd dream, that dream of Morgan's. It was obviously vivid enough that she could recall spells from it. The possibility of her dream actually being memories was a tantalizing one, but one he couldn't begin to take seriously until he had more information. But where to find it—

The chamber of scrolls at Chagailt. Aye, that was the answer. Chagailt was not far. He could slip in, do a bit of searching in the musty manuscripts, then rejoin the company before they went much farther north.

He considered north for a moment or two. There was only so much country before north ended in Lothar's land, or the sea. Just where was Morgan planning to go anyway? And why had she chosen such a journey?

Miach sighed deeply and closed his eyes. Too many questions and not enough answers.

It was an astonishing turn of events.

Fourteen

Morgan rode slowly with her company, realizing that she was going to have to make a course decision soon. She thought about Miach's map and knew that though Angesand was large enough and Neroche substantially larger, she would eventually have to bear west to reach Tor Neroche. Her route would bypass most of the places Camid and Paien were looking forward to.

They would not be pleased.

She sighed and looked down at her hands. They were the same hands she had possessed the whole of her life. Sure. Steady. Comfortable with a blade. Then how was it that after six-and-twenty years of life, her hands should suddenly be capable of something so completely foreign and abhorrent to her?

She had woven a spell of un-noticing.

She had undone that spell as well.

She touched the mark over her brow. It had burned like hellfire when it had been made, and continued to burn for days afterward, as if there had been something put into the wound to make it so. But during those days of discomfort, she had not resisted the pain, knowing that it would burn not only into her flesh but into her soul just exactly what she had become and what she was capable of.

How was it, then, that this magic should catch her so unawares and slip into her being with such little fanfare?

She thought back over the past several months. Her mercenary activities were nothing notable. Her journey to Lismòr was unremarkable—

She froze. Unremarkable?

She realized with a start that it was her journey to Nicholas's orphanage that had started it all. Actually, it was touching the blade at Nicholas's orphanage that started it all. It was then that she had begun to dream, dreams of swords and spells and darkness.

But mostly darkness.

But why? Why would something that was entrusted to her by a man who she
knew
beyond all doubt loved her and never would have wished her ill cause her such grief?

She couldn't fathom it.

The knife in her pack was silent now, but that wasn't always the case. Indeed, as she gave it more thought, she realized that it tended to sing to her when all else was quiet—when she was preparing to sleep. Likely while she was asleep as well.

But what was she to do? Leave it behind? She could not. Though it was tempting to fling it as far away from her as possible, she knew she could not. She had been charged with protecting and delivering something to the king of Neroche that was obviously quite powerful. She could do nothing less than her duty where it was concerned.

No matter the personal cost.

She suspected that the personal cost might be quite high.

Unless she could find out more about it. Perhaps if she knew whose blade it was, or how it fought, she might be able to fight it in turn. She wished for another visit to the chamber of records below Nicholas's university.

A pity that was impossible.

By the time her company had made camp, she had almost convinced herself that she had passed too much of the day thinking idle thoughts. Her heart was heavy and her head hurt from too much speculation on things she didn't understand. Apparently she wasn't the only one who had a temper shortened by the journey. She watched Adhémar and Miach walk off into the forest, arguing already. While that wasn't new, there was an edge to Adhémar's voice that was more than simply an elder brother taking his younger to task.