was provoking her intentionally. “You great bloody bully.”
“Which is exactly what you need, you vexatious, headstrong wench.”
A pity he’d said the last with a quick, affectionate smile that left her truly undone. She dragged her sleeve across her eyes. “Don’t be kind to me. I can’t bear it. Not now.”
He reached for her hand and held it, hard. “Then let’s finish this, quickly, and go somewhere where I can be kind to you. And to humor you, I’ll tell you what I can see. This,” he said, pointing to the topmost spell of illusion, “is an everyday spell of Olc, fashioned to conceal and repulse at the same time.” He studied the nasty web spread across the page a bit longer. “I can’t see the complete composition of what’s underneath, but there appears to be a bit of Caol—” He shot her a look. “The queen’s magic, as it happens. The other I can’t discern.” He pointed to the four corners where the spell was attached to the floor, then to a spot where other magics were oozing out. He looked at her. “Can you improve upon that, friend?”
“Olc,” she said hoarsely, “holding down the four corners of the concealing spell. Suarach—or it claims it is called—is indeed coming out from underneath it on that side, for it announces itself as it does so, but you missed the Lugham underneath that and a rather vile perversion of Croxteth over there.” Her hand shook only a bit as she reached out and pointed to the farthermost corner of the spell of concealment. “That is Seiche, whatever that is. There is Wexham and something from Léige, mixed together in an unwholesome way.” She looked at him. “Not that I would recognize it as such if the language of the spell wasn’t woven into the spell itself.”
“Is it?” he asked, peering at it thoughtfully. “An interesting combination. The dwarves have, as you might imagine given their riches, a compelling interest in keeping things hidden from unfriendly eyes. The dwarvish bit is there, I would imagine, to leave anyone resourceful enough to get that far feeling as if they were imagining what they were seeing.” He looked at her. “Clever, isn’t it?”
“Diabolical,” she agreed. She paused. “What do we do now?”
“You slit the spell with your knife, we pull the page out, then you tell me how to repair the damage.”
She was silent for a moment or two, then she met his eyes. “You truly cannot see what’s there?”
“Nay, Sarah, I truly cannot see what’s there.” He smiled gravely. “That’s your gift.”
“I think I would rather be doing something.”
“And I would rather be sitting happily upon my arse with my feet up, watching you doing something.”
She fought her smile. “A bully, and a lazy one at that.”
“Aye,” he agreed cheerfully, then his smile faded abruptly. “We must hurry. We’ve been here too long.”
She nodded, drew her knife, then reached out and carefully slit a few of what he assumed were threads holding the spell to the ground. She heard no alarms go off, so she assumed they were safe enough. She pulled the page free, then looked down at it.
“There’s something on it—”
“No time to look,” he said.
She held it out on the tip of her knife. “You should be careful with it, unless you want the barbs going into your shin. And you’ll have to patch the hole. I cannot.”
He patched quickly, then rolled the spell up and stuck it down the side of his boot. Sarah supposed he was going to need to find a better place to stash spells than that, but now wasn’t the time to look for it. She heard footsteps coming their way. She looked at Ruith in alarm, but he merely put a finger to his lips and pulled her behind him. He waited until the guard was within arm’s reach before extending a greeting.
The guard never saw Ruith’s fist coming toward him.
He fell without a noise, thanks to Ruith’s catching him, and no doubt had several hours of pleasant rest to look forward to behind the ale kegs. Ruith took her hand.
“Where for the next spell?”
“Up,” she said, but there was absolutely no sound to the word. It was bad enough to have descended into the kitchens. The thought of going anywhere else in the keep was nothing short of terrifying.
But it was what she’d committed herself to doing that morning in Sìle of Tòrr Dòrainn’s garden, so she reminded herself that Ruith’s mother had put