some reason.
Simple. Unmagical. Very far away from anything to do with mages. Aye, that was the life for her. She finally gathered enough strength from that thought to push away from Ruith—
Only to step forward, then fall flat on her face. She realized at that moment that she was so ill, she wasn’t entirely certain she wouldn’t sick up her breakfast on the first thing that moved in front of her eyes. She had never drunk anything stronger than Master Franciscus’s mildest ale—and that sparingly—but she had once smelled something her mother had brewed which had made her almost as ill as she felt now, as if she couldn’t scrub the smell or its terrible after-effects out of her skull.
Ruith’s hand was suddenly against her forehead, smoothing her hair back from her face.
“I can’t move,” she whispered.
“’Tis the spells.”
“I’m going to be ill.”
“Well, we’re in front of Droch’s door,” Ruith said quietly. “It might be fitting.”
She would have heaved herself to her feet and bolted, but she found she could only rest her cheek against the cold stone passageway floor and keep her eyes closed. Ruith continued to stroke her hair, as if he sought to comfort her.
And then suddenly, he was pulling her up and into his arms. “Hold on.”
Sarah felt the world spin wildly, but she’d heard the shouting as well and had no desire to find herself sprawled in the passageway in front of Droch’s door whilst Droch was trying to get inside his chamber to put his feet up in front of the fire and grumble about conquests unmade. She clapped her hand over her mouth and kept her gorge down where it belonged through sheer willpower alone.
Ruith stopped eventually and used his foot to bang on a door. The door opened, then a man gasped. Ruith pushed into a chamber, sending that someone stumbling backward. Sarah didn’t protest as Ruith carried her a bit longer, then set her down in a chair. She leaned her head back against the wood and kept her eyes closed, trying not to tremble.
She failed miserably. She shook so hard, her teeth chattered. She wasn’t sure what had been worse, being so beguiled by Olc that she had come within a heartbeat of casting herself into its depths or finding herself suddenly aware of just what she had thought so beautiful.
She wondered if Gair had ever been in that place, or if he had realized all along what he was doing, chasing after the illusion that was Olc.
She opened her eyes and looked at Ruith, who was sitting on a low stool in front of her, watching her closely. The worry in his eyes was difficult to look at. Worry, and something else, actually.
Shame.
She would have told him that wasn’t necessary, but she found she couldn’t speak. And that was because she was suddenly seeing things she had never seen before in her life, things she’d never dreamed existed.
The man sitting in front of her was Ruith, true, but he was suddenly somehow much more than that. He was his house in the mountains, built from rock that had sent down taproots deep into the earth, immovable, stark, implacably resolute. Yet beside that house, around it, under it, were springs that should have bubbled up and flowed down to form a mighty, rushing river full of magic. She could see the place where the river should have been running through his soul, where the magic would laugh with delight as it tumbled over rock and falls, always pure and full of the birthright of generations of his ancestors who had been full of magic themselves. Aye, there was Olc as well, but it wasn’t part of him. It had fixed itself to the windows of his house, crowding out the light, making things seem other than they were.
But it wasn’t part of him.
She heard the door slam behind her and flinched at the riotously colored spell of protection that sprang up all along the ceiling, draped immediately down all the walls, spread out instantly over the entire floor. It was lovely, true, yet hard as steel and just as impervious.
“Damn him to hell,” Soilléir snarled as he strode over to the fire-place. “I vow one day ...” He swore a bit more, then cast himself down into a chair by the fire and let out his breath slowly. He put his fingers over his eyes. “Hate is unhealthy.”
Ruith only pursed his lips.
Sarah found she couldn’t look at Soilléir with any