a smile. “My bastard brothers are vicious, but they don’t have any imagination. If they were looking for us—especially given that they wouldn’t think we would be using magic—they wouldn’t be looking up in the sky. And should they suffer any sort of untoward kinks in their necks and look up in spite of themselves, I’ll have hidden us from view.”
“Flying,” she said, with hardly any sound to the word. “Well, I suppose we don’t have much choice.”
“I won’t let you fall.”
“You haven’t so far.”
“Not recently, at least,” he agreed quietly. He rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his hands together. “We could first make for the farmer’s house where we left your herbs, if you like. Then I think we should head for Léige.”
“To look for your brother?”
Ruith nodded. “I need him to make a proper list of spells. I think I remember most of them, but only Keir would know for sure. If he’s not still there—which he very well could be, with Mhorghain and the rest of them—we might learn where he’s gone.”
She fussed with her pack. “And will the king allow us entrance? I mean me, actually—”
“I was counting on you to sneak me in,” Ruith said with a smile.
She pursed her lips at him, then rose and began to gather her gear together. “I very much doubt I’ll be of any help in that, but I will bribe him with a bit of weaving if possible.” She glanced at him. “I hope your brother is there.”
“I do too,” he said, with feeling, and for more reasons than just Keir’s memory. After having spent even a pair of days with Rùnach, Ruith realized just how much he’d missed his brothers.
“Ruith?”
He looked up. “Aye, love?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
She took a deep breath. “For defending my honor.” She held out her hand. “I appreciate it.”
He walked over to her, took her hand, then bent and kissed it. “It was very willingly done, my lady.”
She attempted a smile, but didn’t succeed. “That’s quite a title for the bastard daughter of an obscure witchwoman.”
“Given by the legitimate son of the black mage of Ceangail,” Ruith said with a huff of a laugh. “We’re a delightfully matched pair.” He squeezed her hand, then released it. “Let’s be off. You know how much I love the opportunities that flying affords me where you are concerned.”
“Lecher.”
“Aye,” he agreed pleasantly, then went to fetch his own gear. It took him longer than it should have. Troubling thoughts did that to a man, he supposed.
It wasn’t possible that someone other than Daniel had left behind a fragment of his father’s spell of Diminishing, a fragment from the part that he himself hadn’t had his hands on less than a month ago.
Was it?
The thought of it was enough to make him feel rather ill. He didn’t suppose he dared hope that the two halves of that spell wouldn’t find each other. The only thing that eased his mind in the slightest was that he felt certain if someone had put the two halves of the spell together, the world would have ended already.
That life carried on was a bit of a relief.
He busied himself with packing up their gear and making sure Sarah was distracted from thoughts of flight. If he was also distracted in the process, so much the better. There would be time enough for thinking terrible thoughts later.
Perhaps whilst he was about the unenviable task of convincing Uachdaran of Léige to allow him inside the gates instead of slaying him on the spot.
Eighteen
Sarah wondered if another day would come when she felt as though she were walking in something other than a waking dream.
She would have happily trailed along behind Ruith and avoided having to look at dwarves with very sharp swords—and a few with very pointed pikes, truth be told—but he had tucked her hand under his arm and seemed determined to keep her next to him. She wasn’t going to argue. She was too busy hoping they wouldn’t be thrown in the dungeon for attempting entrance into a place so fortresslike it made Buidseachd look like a pitched tent. Whatever the dwarves hid in their palace, they wanted it kept safe.
She supposed she would have felt quite comfortable with all the stone and guards and well-crafted steel—and the spells which were enough to give any woman with wit to spare pause—but she wasn’t entirely sure those things wouldn’t be barriers to her escape, should she need to make one.
They were