Part 3 (1/2)
”Well,” he said at length. ”Apparently you have a gift. I daresay you have it from your mother.”
”Why do you say that?”
”Because Camanae is a matriarchal magic. If your dam had it, then so would you. Do you have sisters?”
She looked up at him. ”Aye.”
”Then they have it as well, unless they're completely dim-witted.”
”I'll have to think on that,” she said. ”I tried a spell of un-noticing on them and it failed miserably. I thought it was because I'd woven it poorly, but perhaps they merely possessed the wherewithal to see through it.” She smiled, chagrined. ”I never credited them with any skill at all beyond the ability to attend to their potions and beautifiers for great stretches of time. Perhaps I misjudged them.”
”Perhaps, or they might be totally lacking in any imagination at all,” he conceded. ”In which case it would take a great need to awaken whatever magic is in their blood. Have they any great needs?”
”None beyond accurate looking gla.s.ses,” she said dryly. It was quite an extraordinary thought, though, to imagine that her sisters might have inherited something from their mother besides her perfect beauty.
It was also a marvel to find herself tracing lines on a table, beautiful lines that looked as if a wizard had done the like, yet they had come from her humble, work-roughened hand with its chipped fingernails and cracked skin.
”Well,” she said, finding herself at quite a loss. Then she looked at Gil and found herself traveling even farther down that uncharted path to complete bewilderment.
How could she have known two weeks ago that a fortnight pa.s.sed in fear would find her sitting in the palace at Neroche, at the high table no less, sketching bits of magic on that royal table and having it come to her hand as if it found her pleasing to its purposes?
”I think I like this,” she said finally.
He smiled. ”I imagine you do.”
She gestured at the table. ”My lines are better than yours.”
He laughed. ”Aye, and so they would be, for my magic is not of Camanae, lady. And that is a good thing, else we would have no ... else we would be-”
She watched him squirm as he found himself pinioned quite thoroughly by a lie he was obviously not equipped to spew forth.
”Magic? You have magic?” she asked politely. ”What kind? Educate me, good sir.”
He pursed his lips. ”I inherited a few bits from my sire.”
”A little prevarication, that,” she noted.
”And a bit more from my dam.”
She waited patiently.
”All right,” he grumbled, ”a great bit from both parents, but I'll not tell you more until you tell me why a woman of your beauty travels alone to the king's palace on a horse Angesand himself would salivate over, with a book of magic that dark mages far and wide would kill her for, and she hides her name as if revealing it to a soul as trustworthy as myself might endanger her to just those sorts of villains.” He looked at her crossly. ”You tell me that first.”
Beauty. Had he said beauty? Mehar found herself with an alarming redness creeping with unnerving speed up her throat and onto her cheeks.
Gil nodded in satisfaction. ”I agree. 'Tis quite embarra.s.sing when one realizes that one is being unnecessarily stubborn.”
”I told you there was a price on my head,” Mehar said evenly, her blush receding at the thought, ”and how do I know you wouldn't find it a sum worthy of your attention? It isn't as if you're dressing yourself in embroidered silks and reclining upon cus.h.i.+ons of uncommon softness with covers woven of cashmere.”
He looked at the table and traced her pattern with his own. The lines faded after his pa.s.sing, but they didn't disappear. Instead, they glowed a deep blue, shot with silver.
That was an uncommon magic, his.
But then he brushed his hand over the wood and the lines disappeared. He looked at her.
”There is no sum that I would consider to be worth your head.”
”Are you so rich?” she asked.
”Nay, I am so honorable.”
She pressed her hand flat on the table, over the place where they'd both woven her mother's spell, but found no adequate reply to his words.
”And if you would learn them from me,” he continued, ”I can teach you a spell or two of ward, another of strengthening whatever weapon you have to hand, and perhaps one or two that might aid you when someone is set to come upon you.”
”Where did you learn all this?” she asked. ”You, a simple peasant.”
He smiled at her and a dimple appeared in his cheek, a mark of such easy charm that she found herself quite enchanted. It was with an effort that she looked away from it.
”Haimert of Wexham, the court mage, wasn't always about the king's business,” he said. ”When he had a free moment, I bribed him for knowledge with Cook's most easy-to-carry pasties. It seemed to us both a fair trade.”
”Do you have great power?”
He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it, and smiled at her. ”Enough for my purposes, and telling more would tell you all-” He stopped and looked up as Alcuin came into the hall and walked quickly over to the table. ”Aye?” he asked.
Mehar watched Alcuin's gaze flick to her and back to Gil. Gil turned to smile at her.
”Perhaps you would care for a bit of peace,” he offered, ”in that luxurious chamber I promised you.”
She was tempted to tell them she would rather stay and listen, but she forbore. ”I'll leave you lads to your plotting,” she said as she rose, ”though what two peasants would have to plot about I can't imagine, unless you're bent on making off with the king's finest silver in which case I should likely put a stop to it. Are you planning thievery?”
Alcuin snorted. ”Nay, we are not.”
”Nay, nothing untoward,” Gil a.s.sured her.
Well, it was obvious they had business together, and as she just couldn't believe anything foul of Gil truly, her first impressions aside, she left the grand hall with an untroubled heart. Soon deep whispers were sliding along the walls to either side of her and rising up to flutter against the ceiling, whispers that carried the hint of subterfuge.
There was more to those peasants than met the eye.
She threaded her way through the rubble in the corridor, wandering down pa.s.sageway after pa.s.sageway, becoming hopelessly lost, but she suspected that had less to do with Gil's directions than it did with her own distracted state.
She had woven a spell from her mother's book and had it fall easily from her hand.
She felt as if she had just put her foot to a path that had been laid out before her all along; she just hadn't been able to see it. It was, on the whole, a vastly unsettling feeling, but even that had an air of familiarity that sent chills down her spine.
She paused before the door she thought might be the correct one, then eased it open and peeked inside. The chamber was empty. She entered it, then slowly shut the heavy door behind her. The ruin here was not so terrible as it was in other places. The tapestries, for the most part, were still intact. The furniture was merely overturned, not destroyed. She pushed away from the door and wandered about the chamber, putting things to rights. She sat on the bed and wondered just whose chamber she was in. The king's, perhaps?