A Tapestry of Spells (13 page)

Until she’d gotten a full view of her companion’s face and lost her breath abruptly.

She had decided, after a moment spent recovering from that, that the impossibly handsome man snoozing in the chair before her had to be Ruith, but if that were the case, then he had misled her deliberately about his identity. She’d been perfectly content to repay him a bit for that before she’d become distracted by the headache she could see wrapped around his head in an ever-tightening swath of pain. Once his brow had unfurrowed far enough that she thought he might be equal to answering a few questions, she’d apparently made the mistake of commenting on the burn she’d noticed on his arm. The wound hadn’t been visible in the same way hers was. It seemed as if the magic that had left its mark had been purer somehow... as if it had been something come from a dream.

She had no idea why mentioning it had set him off so. Mages were, as she’d learned over the years, unpredictable and generally foul-tempered. That should perhaps have been enough to tell her all she needed to know about him. Obviously, he was more powerful than she’d feared. How else could he have lived in that house for centuries, yet had none of that living show on his face—

She felt her mouth fall open briefly before she managed to shut it. He couldn’t be one of those damned elves she’d heard tales about once too often, could he? They were, from what she understood, full of magic, majesty, and themselves. She had decided when she’d been ten-and-three and quite empty of anything she considered desirable, that if there were ever creatures to loathe, it was elves.

In this, her mother actually agreed, which Sarah knew should have given her pause, but it hadn’t. She had spent copious amounts of time scorning the elves she’d heard about in Master Franciscus’s tales and feeling perfectly content to do so.

She glanced sideways at Ruith, then shook her head. Nay, he couldn’t be. For one thing, he wasn’t dressed in fine silks and adorned with all manner of precious gems. And he was altogether too familiar with pedestrian means of protecting himself. Elves limited themselves, she was quite certain, to spells. And they were cleaner.

But if he were just a man, and he was indeed the mage on the hill, how was it, then, that he looked so young? Had he killed the old mage and taken his house and his reputation, or had he simply found the place empty and decided it was well suited to his purposes?

The questions burned in her mouth until she thought she would go mad from keeping them to herself. But at the very moment when she thought she just might blurt them out and the potential for being overheard by miscreants be damned, Ruith slowed, stopped, then turned to her. She could see only shadows of his face, but now she—unfortunately—knew what those shadows hid. “I didn’t kill the old mage.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I never suggested that you had.”

He shrugged lightly. “I imagined you might be wondering. I would have been wondering the same thing, in your place.”

“Thank you,” she managed. She was wondering half a dozen other things, but since he didn’t seem inclined to elaborate on more personal matters, she forbore. Again, obviously not an elf, else he would have been willing to talk about himself endlessly.

She cast about for something to discuss that might be less touchy. She put her hands into her apron pockets only to realize she was still masquerading as a lad and had no pockets. She leaned back against a wall and affected a casual pose she most certainly didn’t feel.

“Did you find any sign of Daniel this morning on your walk?” she asked.

He put his hand on a heavy doorway that lay between them and relaxed just the slightest bit. “I heard nothing but the usual gossip of shopkeepers and market men. If he’s here, he’s well concealed.”

She waited, but he said nothing more. She certainly didn’t want to give him any more rein with her affairs than he likely already thought he had, but in truth, she had little idea where to start looking for her brother short of walking up to the town wizard and making inquiries there. She considered, then looked up at him.

“I’m not opposed to suggestions,” she said slowly, “about where to start with all this.”

“Even the noblest of Heroes has the odd, helpful squire,” he conceded.

She frowned. “Are you laughing at me?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” he said, sounding very much in earnest. “And if you’d like the odd, helpful suggestion, I think we should first visit Master Oban. If your brother’s intentions are as he said, he would most likely want to eliminate the competition—or at least attempt to.”

“Any suggestions on where this Master Oban might be found?”

Ruith took his hand off the door. “The entrance to his house is never found in the same place, which leads to merriment and hilarity for those who seek him.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “You don’t care for that sort of thing.”

He rubbed his hand over his face suddenly and shook his head sharply. “Nay, I’ve little patience for the silliness of some mages. But, as that is how Oban manages his affairs, we’re left with no choice but to subject ourselves to his antics.”

“Where do we start?”

“He could be hiding anywhere. ”

Sarah looked down the street behind Ruith, then at the door he’d been leaning on. It was a heavy wooden door, rough-hewn and sturdy, but quite unremarkable.

And then she blinked.

She blinked again, but the vision didn’t disappear. She reached out and trailed her finger along the doorframe.

“There’s something on the door behind you.”

Ruith looked, then shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”

“ ’Tis covered with runes.”

“Is it indeed?” he asked, sounding faintly surprised. “Where?”

She ran her fingers over the doorframe, but that didn’t bring the characters into better focus. She supposed she should have been surprised she could see them at all if Ruith couldn’t. What she did know was that they were of a most magical sort and she didn’t care to look at things covered with magic—for more reasons than just her aversion to mages and their ilk. She took a deep breath and pushed aside the usual thoughts that accompanied that one, ignored the fact that she had no sight, nor special gifts, nor ability save what allowed her to tell chartreuse from apple green, and had a better look. The sooner she described them, the sooner she and Ruith would be about her business.

“They’re written in Croxteth,” she ventured.

“That’s interesting,” Ruith said, sounding intrigued. “Can you make out what they say?”

Sarah had the same sensation she’d had as she’d stepped away from the forest earlier that morning, as if a layer of wool had been pulled from her eyes. She supposed there were more layers still, but even so she had a definite clearing of her sight.

Odd.

Perhaps it was nothing more than the leagues she had put between herself and Doìre. To be sure, her heart had lightened with every step.

She pulled herself back to the task at hand and studied what she could almost see.

“I think most of them have to do with power and magnificence and the superior quality of the cloth used in Master Oban’s robes.”

Ruith made a noise that might have passed for a bit of a laugh in someone else. “How fortunate we are that your mother did not neglect your education in the tongues of magic, else we might still have questions on that score.” He leaned against the door again. “What other secrets are you hiding?”

She felt a thrill of fear rush through her before she could begin to stop it. Too many years of hiding who she was had obviously taken a toll. But since there wasn’t any possible way Ruith could know even the first thing about her, she had to believe his question was an innocent one.

“Oh, just the usual things a witch’s daughter can do that no mage would lower himself to,” she said lightly. “I’ll tell you one of my secrets for every one of yours you reveal.”

“I suppose that will leave us discussing the weather.”

She imagined so. She studied the runes trailing up and down the doorframe and winding around the latch like a vine. “I can actually get along in quite a few tongues,” she conceded, “though not as many as I would like. What of you?”

“The same,” he said easily. “I had to do something during all those centuries of hiding in the hills, didn’t I?”

“If you’re a score and ten,” she said with a snort, “I would be surprised.”

He tilted his head slightly. “Do you think so?”

“You don’t really want to discuss this right now, do you?”

“Nay, I do not,” he agreed. “I think we should rather be about this business and see what it yields.”

Sarah supposed she might have hit closer to the mark than he was comfortable with, though he didn’t retreat back into the silence he’d wrapped around himself earlier. Perhaps she would wear him down eventually and discover all his secrets—

Which would leave her open to his discovering an equal amount of hers. Fortunately, she had no plans to be traveling with him long enough for any of that. She had plans of her own that didn’t include a man wearing more weapons than necessary and sporting a face that was distracting in the extreme. She had her duty to the Nine Kingdoms to fulfill, then she was going to be about her own future. Ruith would no doubt wish to return to his house on the hill where he could retreat back behind his terrible reputation and have his own measure of peace, though how he could find it in Shettlestoune, she couldn’t imagine. She wouldn’t have set foot in the place again if her life had hung in the balance.

Ruith knocked on that door that was covered in endless praises to Master Oban and his marvelous magic. A small square slid open and a long nose appeared protruding from it.

“What do you want?”

“An audience with His Magnificence,” Ruith said politely. “We bear gifts.”

Two eyes looked down that nose skeptically. “What sorts of gifts?”

“Small, round ones.”

“Let me see.”

Ruith produced two gold coins, then handed them into fingers that had replaced the face in the opening. The fingers fondled the coins for a moment or two, then retreated back into darkness. The door over the little window slid shut.

Sarah waited for a moment or two, then looked at Ruith. “Perhaps the wizard is not receiving visitors.”

“Could be.”

“Do you think Daniel threatened the mage?”

“So Oban won’t open to us?” he asked in surprise. “Of course not.

“He can be intimidating.”

Ruith snorted. “Your brother is nothing more than a very small annoyance in a world too large for his power. I have the feeling he will try to intimidate a mage or two, find himself slapped for his trouble, then slink off in shame and set himself up as a village wizard in some obscure locale to the south where neither you nor I will need travel to find him.”

She wanted to believe him. She would have given all the gold in her purse plus whatever she might have earned over the rest of her life to have believed him. But she couldn’t.

She had seen what Daniel could do.

Ruith pushed away from the wall. “We’ll work harder at chatting up this lad here and see if I’m not right about the other.”

He knocked again, deposited another three coins into the gatekeeper’s questing fingers, and was informed that was enough for a single entrant. Ruith stuck his foot in the door when it opened, then pushed it open far enough for Sarah to go in first. He followed, shutting the door securely behind him. The gatekeeper eyed him warily, then scuttled back into what apparently served as his sitting room.

Ruith started along the passageway. Sarah followed him, loosening the knife in the back of her belt as she did so. She was prepared to find any number of souls loitering about with her death on their minds, but to her surprise she saw no one save a kitchen lad who took one look at Ruith, squeaked, and fled.

They saw no one else until they reached a door on the upper floor that was covered with the same sorts of runes that adorned the front door below. Sarah looked at Ruith.

“I think he’s here.”

Ruith tried the door handle, but it was locked fast. He picked the lock with tools he produced from some pocket or other, then he very carefully turned the knob. Sarah leaned up on her toes and looked over his shoulder.

The chamber was exactly as she imagined it would be, full of very fine furniture, an enormous, elegant hearth, and cases upon cases of expensive things to dust. There was a man sitting in front of the fire with his back to the door. The wizard, obviously, judging by the height of his pointed hat and the robes that flowed over the sides of the chair and cascaded down to the floor. He was, quite thankfully, alone.

Ruith motioned for her to stay behind, which she chose to do without hesitation. She stood in the shadows and watched him pad silently over to the man. He stopped to the mage’s left, well within his line of sight, and made a low bow.

“Master Oban?”

The wizard threw himself to his feet, but the motion seemingly overbalanced him. Before Ruith could reach out and take hold of him, he’d gone sprawling on the floor. Sarah hurried over and pulled his very heavy chair back a bit whilst Ruith righted the side table that had taken a tumble along with its master.

The mage looked up at them, then began to scream.

Silently.

Ruith took hold of the man and pulled him to his feet. The mage fought him, but he wasn’t any match for Ruith in size and strength. Ruith set him with surprising gentleness back into his chair, then pushed his own hood back from his face and looked at the wizard gravely.

“What befell you, Master Oban?”

Sarah was ready to ask the same thing, but then she had a decent look at the mage’s face. He wasn’t so much disfigured as he was slightly... empty. As if something that had been there before had been removed—and not very well. He mouthed spells, but nothing happened. He picked up a very ornate wand, golden and sparkling, and waved it frantically at Ruith. Sarah watched a poorly woven and exceedingly slow-moving spell waft its way through the air like eiderdown. Ruith stepped aside, leaving the spell whispering harmlessly past him.