The Mage's Daughter (35 page)

She cursed silently, more because it made her feel better than any anger it released. She wasn't angry. She was cold and discouraged. What she wanted was to find a hayloft and sleep in Miach's arms. She didn't fear her dreams; she hadn't dreamt of Gair since Lismòr. She did, however, dread going in her bedchamber alone.

“At least let me stay with you whilst you see to your spells,” she said quietly.

He shook his head. “I'll see to them on the way. If I leave now, I'll be back before supper tomorrow.”

“You're going
now
?” she asked incredulously.

“The sooner I go, the sooner I'll be back.”

“Miach, I—”

She would have had quite a bit more to say, but he kissed her. In fact, he kissed her long and so well, she had a hard time remembering just what it was she'd wanted to stay. By the time he lifted his head and looked down at her, she could hardly keep her eyes open or keep herself on her feet.

“Wait for me,” he whispered.

“Please be careful,” she said. “Miach, if anything happened—”

“It won't.” He stepped away from her. “I love you.”

She could hardly see him for her tears. “Please hurry.”

He nodded, then disappeared. Morgan felt a breeze stir her hair, wrap itself around her for a brief moment, then rush away. She stood there for quite some time until the last tree in Sìle's inner garden rustled and was still.

She was tempted to follow, but she'd given her word.

She went inside her chamber to look for another cloak to put on, though she supposed it wouldn't do anything for the chill that settled upon her heart.

She would give him the day, but no more.

If he wasn't back by supper on the morrow, she would go after him.

M
iach wondered, as he flew along as a bitterly cold wind, why he didn't fly that way more often. It was a substantially more difficult change than merely something with wings, and he tended to feel a little scattered whilst he was at it, but it was much faster.

He focused his thoughts with an effort. He had told Morgan that he was simply off following a hunch. Aye, it was a hunch, but it had basis in a terrible reality.

He had found the location of Gair's well.

Simply finding the directions to it had been more difficult than he'd imagined it would be. He and Sosar had spent hour after fruitless hour in the books behind the velvet rope, enduring the screeches of Leabhrach the librarian and the silent, watchful stare of Làidir, who had suddenly taken an inordinate amount of interest in their doings. Miach had pored over maps, over histories, over obscure journals full of travels in unpleasant places. Sosar had done the same, delving through books that even Làidir warned him he shouldn't be reading. They had found it that morning, just after dawn.

But the directions hadn't been in the library.

Miach had been gingerly turning pages in a book on dwarvish travel routes to Durial that some enterprising elf had obviously pilfered at some point when he'd looked up and found Sosar gone. Làidir had shot him a long look, then turned and left the library as well.

Sosar had returned minutes later with a letter in his hands. He'd given it to Miach and said that he'd forgotten all about it until something he'd read just then had jostled his memory.

Miach had opened the letter and almost dropped it.

It was from Sarait.

Sosar had said he'd found it on his bed the morning Sarait and her children had left Seanagarra for the last time to make the long journey to Ceangail. Miach had been surprised to find that the letter hadn't been opened.

“What was the need?” Sosar had asked wearily. “I knew what she planned to do.”

Miach had begun to read. He hadn't read but one paragraph before he'd realized what he'd just been given.

Directions to the well and as much of Gair's spell as Sarait had been able to piece together herself.

She warned that it wasn't the complete spell. Gair had been notorious about guarding his magic and extremely stingy with his knowledge. Sarait had suspected that he'd found something useful on one of his journeys to Beinn òrain and she'd included a list of masters she suspected might have helped him.

Sosar had cursed viciously. Miach had joined him. It was better that than to weep over events that were a score of years behind them and couldn't be changed.

But he could change the future.

He blew north until sunrise. Ceangail was on the western slopes of the Sgùrrach Mountains, so it was still in shadow when he reached it. It reminded him somewhat of Riamh, desolate and uninviting. There was a castle there, built on the side of a cliff, hovering over a valley of ruined soil. The keep was unrelentingly grim, devoid of any but the most rudimentary of windows. Miach could only imagine the darkness that dwelt inside.

Poor Sarait. How had she borne such a place, she who had spent all her life in the beauty and luxury that was Seanagarra? He pitied her as he never had before.

He scanned the countryside for landmarks, then saw, even from a great height, a hint of a path that wound through a forest—a forest that tended to slip away out of his vision if he didn't concentrate on it fully.

Much like the magic that was assaulting his spells.

He would have caught his breath if he'd had breath to catch. So his suspicions had been right. He promised himself a good bout of surprise later. He swirled downward, slipped through the spell that covered the forest, and resumed his proper form on that path. He was immediately assailed by a chill so profound, he shivered in spite of himself.

There was more to that chill than just a forest in shadow.

He was not fainthearted, but even he hesitated. He had spent a year in a dungeon full of horrors meant to drive a man mad and walked in half a dozen other places where Olc reigned supreme and no light was possible, yet he had to force himself to walk forward here.

He saw, as he walked, why it was a man would pass the forest and never take notice of it. It was covered by the most extensive spell of un-noticing he'd ever encountered. Layer upon layer of distraction, illusion, and confusion hung in great tatters from the trees, yet now that he was under it, Miach could see how it was still intact above. A man would trudge past that forest every day of his life and never notice it unless he somehow had the misfortune to accidentally blunder under the eaves of the spell.

Miach wondered if he'd just managed to fall through a hole in it or if his magic had been enough to penetrate it.

He didn't particularly want to examine which it might be.

He continued on, feeling the remains of Gair's spells press in on him more with every step. He finally had to stop and simply breathe for a few minutes. He lifted a part of the spell that blocked his way. It moved easily, so he supposed that he wouldn't have trouble removing the entire thing if he needed to.

Though even having to touch it in any fashion was abhorrent.

He tried to ignore how it fell down through the trees like rancid bits of sunlight. The evil was everywhere, making it difficult to think, difficult to walk, difficult to breathe. Miach stopped thinking about Sarait, Morgan, or any of the rest of them having been anywhere near the place.

He hoped Gair had suffered a bloody great bit before he died.

It took what felt like hours to reach the end of the path, though he supposed it hadn't been that long. He walked out into a glade and had to lean over and stare at the ground to keep from puking.

It was so much worse than he'd thought.

The glade itself was dripping with tentacles of evil that hung down from the sky above. The air was heavy with a stench of rotting things that lay below the surface of the worst of his nightmares. It took him several minutes of desperately sucking in air before he thought he could straighten without heaving.

He managed it, eventually, then dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and blinked away the mist that blinded him. He looked in front of him.

The well was there.

It was actually a rather unassuming thing, perhaps six feet in diameter, and built up from the ground with three feet of rock. Miach would have thought it a simple country well if he hadn't known better.

And if he hadn't been able to see the evil trickling from it still.

He willed his gorge back where it belonged, then walked across the glade. He stood ten feet away from that well and watched as what should have been water but wasn't bubbled up, caught hold of the rock, then clawed its way up and over to drop onto the ground with a distinct
plop
.

Miach watched in astonishment as that evil began to take shape. There was a spell there, just under where that vile, putrid bit of watery substance fell. The spell waited patiently until enough had been gathered, then it shaped that evil into a formless creature that grew, filled in, then straightened.

And became one of the nightmares that had been hunting them.

Miach drove his sword through its heart as it flung itself toward him.

He pulled his sword free and stepped aside as the creature fell to the ground, fortunately quite dead. He walked over to the well, his sword still in his hand, and looked down. The stench there almost knocked him flat. He looked down and knew with a sickening bit of certainty that this was what had been undermining his spells. How the water, if that's what it could be called, had gotten from Ceangail to the borders of Neroche was a mystery, but he had the feeling he knew who was behind it.

He squatted down and looked at the spell in front of him. He could see the strands of it as easily as if they had been threads woven there by some untidy spider. The spell was saturated with a vile magic that was all too familiar. Miach swallowed his revulsion and sorted through the strands, looking for how it was fashioned and what the purpose was.

It was as all Lothar's spells were, crudely wrought but effective nonetheless. Miach saw how the creatures were made from the watery spewings of the well and realized without surprise what they were to do.

Hunt down those with Camanaë magic and kill them.

He caught sight of something just before he stood. He looked closer, then found himself having to lean quite thoroughly upon his sword.

They were also to hunt down Gair's descendants and carry them to Riamh.

Miach straightened and resheathed his sword. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised by either. Lothar's idea of sport was to leisurely track down any with but even a hint of Camanaë in their blood and kill them slowly, if possible. 'Twas a certainty he wouldn't have wanted any of Gair's descendants interfering with his plan to rule the Nine Kingdoms.

But he didn't want to think on what Lothar planned to do with them in his keep.

He closed his eyes briefly. No wonder they had been coming for Morgan. He supposed it also explained why Adhémar had been hunted on the borders in the fall. Obviously, Lothar had been somewhere nearby, watching Adhémar huffing and puffing as he rode the northern border, then helped himself to the king of Neroche's power simply because he could. Adhémar was too stupid to ever protect his magic, and he had paid the price as a result. Miach had never, even in his youth, been that foolish. He might have spent a year in Lothar's dungeon, but Lothar hadn't been able to touch his power.

He rose and looked at the well itself. Though the cap wasn't completely covering the opening, it had been pulled over almost all the way. That said a great deal about Sarait's power.

But she had failed.

He had planned to see if he couldn't succeed where she had not, and flattered himself that he would manage it, but now he wondered if he had been overconfident.

Well, there was nothing to be done except to try. He wove a spell of concealment over himself and the well, thicker and more impenetrable than Gair's. What he intended to do would render him quite vulnerable, and he had no one to guard his back.

He set spells of ward along the spell of concealment, then added other spells that would incinerate anything that came close to him. He finished by diverting the trickle from the well so it didn't touch the magic waiting there to receive it and mold it into something else.

Once that was done, he set to work. He very carefully wove the first spell that he'd read in Sarait's letter. He threw all his own power behind it and spoke the final word with an additional word of Command attached to it.

The ground trembled beneath his feet, but the cap of the well didn't budge.

He tried the other two spells he'd found in Sarait's letter with exactly the same results. At that point, he put aside what Sarait had used and settled for things of his own make. He spoke other words of Command, he wove complicated changes of essence, he tried to seal the opening with an impenetrable spell of Binding.

The evil oozed through the last spell as if it hadn't been there.

And then his spells of ward began exploding around him.

He tore his attention away from the well and found himself surrounded on all sides by trolls. They couldn't break through his protection, fortunately, and that had apparently driven them mad. They were flinging themselves at his spell, shrieking with rage and fear.

Miach didn't have the luxury of a lengthy contemplation of what to do next. He had the feeling that even if he pulled the entire mountainside down on the well, it wouldn't do anything but bury the evil. It would bubble up eventually. It had to be capped, permanently, but it would take the proper spell.

He refused, absolutely refused, to consider the postscript of Sarait's letter.

Gair uses his own blood in all his spells. I fear that it will take one with Gair's blood to succeed. If I fail…

Gair's blood, or enough power. He didn't consider himself particularly arrogant, but he had a fair idea of what he could do. Perhaps Sarait hadn't been able to close the well; with the right spell, he was certain he could. He had to. He could not ask Morgan to do it for him.

Nay, he would look for the spell and see to it himself. But he wouldn't have the luxury of finding that spell if anyone knew he'd been there, poking his nose where he shouldn't have. He removed his spell that diverted that business seeping out from under the well's cap, then changed the dead troll nearby into harmless and unremarkable dirt. He then gathered up all the edges of his spells of protection. One of the trolls slipped under and rushed toward him.

He flung himself up into the air as a bitter wind, destroying his spell and sending it into untraceable oblivion. He sliced through Gair's spell, leaving behind a large contingent of furious demons. He looked down as he floated higher, watching the forest shimmer with its coating of disregard. He left it in the same state he found it. Truly, it was better if no one managed to get themselves lost there.