even more like your grandfather. Stubborn, fierce, and utterly loyal. And so beautiful, I can hardly stand to look at her.”
“Spare me the details,” Ruith said with a grimace. “If you wax rhapsodic about my sister’s charms, I truly will do damage to you.”
Miach only smiled. “I wouldn’t blame you. Now, tell me what you’re about and why you’re taking Soilléir’s cousin to places she shouldn’t go?”
“I’m collecting my father’s spells.”
Miach nodded. “I wondered what had happened to them.” He studied Ruith for a moment or two. “I suppose there is no one else to do it, is there?”
“Keir might have been able to, but . . .”
Miach looked at him gravely, his face full of understanding. “He died helping Mhorghain close the well.” He put his hand on Ruith’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Ruith shook his head sharply. “Uachdaran already told me, so don’t fret over it. It is what he would have wanted, which you well know. He was determined to protect both her and Mother at all costs. I’m not sure he could have lived with himself if he had failed Mhorghain—especially if that failure had come because of something my father had spawned.”
“A sentiment you share,” Miach noted. “How are you looking for your father’s spells?”
“Sarah can see them.”
“I’m not surprised,” Miach said quietly. “I knew her parents had been slain, but I had no idea she was alive.” He shrugged. “I always wondered what it was that Franciscus found in Shettlestoune to occupy his time after his very suspicious disappearance.”
“Brewing ale, watching over his granddaughter, and how the hell do you know all this?” Ruith demanded. “What don’t you know?”
“Where you’ve been, apparently,” Miach said with an apologetic smile. “Or where your father’s spells are to be found.”
Ruith sighed. “Don’t worry about that. You could, however, worry about the fact that I’m also finding pieces of the first half of his spell of Diminishing cunningly shredded and scattered in my path, as if someone either knows where I’m going or wishes to lead me in a certain direction.”
“And where is the second half?”
“Taken from me just outside Ceangail, but that is another tale entirely.”
Miach smiled. “And you’re hoping the possessors of both halves don’t meet over tea?”
“That thought had occurred to me, aye.”
Miach held up his hands. “Don’t look at me for aid. I have enough to do without meddling in your affairs.”
Ruith studied him for several minutes in silence. “Why are you here?”
Miach rubbed his hands over his face suddenly, then sighed deeply. “To give you tidings.”
“What have you seen?”
“My boundaries are set,” Miach hedged. “What would I know of anything in the wide world?”
Ruith snorted. “Please, Miach. Even as a lad you were poking your questing nose into places it didn’t belong.”
“Following your example, of course.”
“Tidings, Miach.”
Miach chewed on his words for several moments. “Tell me more about your plan to find these spells, then I’ll tell you what I suspect.”
Ruith leaned back against the wall. “Sarah made a map of them in Léige. We made note of where they lay, and we’re collecting them one by one.” He pursed his lips. “There was, if you can believe it, a pattern to it all.”
“Was there?”
Ruith suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. If anything surprised Miach of Neroche, it would be death sneaking up on him unexpectedly. “Aye, there was. The spells are seemingly being called. Either that or someone has arranged them in a way that is causing us to follow them.”
“Where?”
“North.”
Miach looked at him evenly. “Not much in the north that’s pleasant, is there?”
“I don’t know,” Ruith said shortly. “I’ve confined myself to the hell that is the south. Perhaps you can add to my knowledge.”
Miach shrugged. “I wouldn’t recommend a journey there, but I don’t think you’ll have a choice.” He paused. “I would be careful.”
“And you came all this way to tell me that?”
“Nay,” Miach said slowly, “I came to tell you who I think has made himself a comfortable nest in the north, in a place where none but those with a great tolerance for Olc dare tread.”
Ruith looked at him in silence.
And then he knew.
He pushed himself away from the wall, then shook his head.
“Impossible.”
“You know it isn’t.”
Ruith almost had to look for a place to sit down. It had never occurred—
Nay, that was a lie. He had often wondered over the years if others besides himself had escaped the ravages of the well. Mhorghain had, obviously, and Keir, and Rùnach.
But his father?
He leaned back against the wall and