Star of the Morning (38 page)

“What were we discussing?” she asked.

“Spells,” he said promptly. “And the need for them in a warrior's life.”

Morgan frowned. “I do not agree.”

“The king has magic,” Adhémar said.

“I would like to believe he doesn't use it very often,” Morgan said.

“And if your king asked you to learn a spell or two?” Adhémar asked archly.

“Morgan would tell him to go to hell,” Miach said shortly. “Adhémar, shut up and let us have a bit of peace. It has been a very long day and you are only lengthening it. Why don't you go have a watch and let us have some quiet?”

Adhémar glared at him. “How dare—”

“Go!” Miach bellowed.

Adhémar rose with a curse, cuffed his brother so hard on the way by that the sound ricocheted in the stillness of the air, and stomped off into the darkness. Morgan looked at Miach, aghast.

“You allowed that?”

“I'm hoping he will bare his arse to the wind tonight and fall backward upon a patch of nettles,” Miach said, rubbing his ear crossly.

Morgan laughed. The thought was so singularly appealing that she laughed again.

When she finally controlled her mirth, she dragged her sleeve across her tearing eyes and looked at Miach. He was staring at her as if he'd never seen her before, but a smile was playing about his mouth.

“What?” she asked.

“I've never heard you laugh before.”

“Haven't you?” she asked. She smiled again, just for the pleasure of it. “You know, I can't remember the last time I did. But that was quite possibly the most fitting revenge I've ever heard of.”

“I thought you liked him,” Miach said mildly.

“You know, I don't. I never did. I was confused during our initial encounter, but then he sat up and began to bray.” She looked at him and shrugged. “I can't say I'm surprised by my first thoughts about him. I have no experience with men. I mean, that kind of experience,” she added. “Well, save Glines, of course, but he does not truly love me.”

“I daresay he does,” Miach said with a smile. “Hopelessly, no doubt, but he does.”

“He is a fool.” She looked down at her hands. “Your brother is a different kind of fool. I'm certain he does not want me for me.” She looked at him. “Does he?”

Miach stared at her openmouthed. Then he shut his mouth and patted himself suddenly. “Why is it I never have a blade on hand to sharpen when I want to change the subject?”

“I could loan you one of mine.”

“Yours are already too sharp.” He looked at her. “Cards?”

“Are we changing the subject?”

“Aye, we are. Have you coin in that small purse of yours, or do we wager something else?”

“I have a coin or two,” she said, “but that does not seem a very interesting wager.”

Miach looked up thoughtfully into the night sky, then back at her. “I'll wager a useful spell against an hour of training with you.”

“Miach, I'm dreaming spells even during the day. I'm not sure I want to know any more.”

He reached out and covered her hand with his. “Poor girl,” he said quietly. “I wish I could take this from you.” He paused. “Do you want me to? Take the blade for you to Tor Neroche?”

She caught her breath. It was quite possibly the single most devastating temptation she had ever faced. Every league brought her closer to the end of her quest, but each league seemed to bring her closer as well to the end of her sanity. Darkness covered the journey before her.

But it also covered the distance behind her.

She squeezed his hand. He did not flinch, even though she quickly could not feel her fingers anymore.

“You cannot take this from me,” she managed.

He looked at her for several moments in silence. Indeed, Morgan felt the world fall away until it was nothing for her but looking into those palest of blue eyes and wondering if she would ever find herself again.

And then Miach lifted her hand, kissed it roughly, and put it back in her lap.

“A useful spell, then,” he said harshly. “Werelight, or some other such rot.”

“The ability to cause nettles to grow in a short time?” she asked lightly.

He looked at her, then laughed suddenly. “Aye,” he said, clearing his throat. “Aye, that one I might manage.”

“All right, then,” she said, “but it is absolutely the
last
spell I'm going to learn. I've learned more than I ever intended to and I'm weary of it.”

“As you will,” he said.

“I had best win this hand quickly,” she said, “for I daresay I'll need that very last spell before the first watch is finished.”

Miach looked at her from under his unreasonably long eyelashes, laughed again, and dug about in his pack for cards.

Morgan rubbed her arms and moved to sit closer to the fire. She waited until Miach had dealt out their hands before she spoke.

“Thank you,” she said seriously.

“For what?”

She considered her cards for some time before she looked at him over them. “I don't sleep well. Somehow, every time I wake, you are not sleeping either. Instead, you are either sitting next to me, or watching me.” She paused. “I appreciate the company.”

“It is the very least I can do, Morgan,” he said. He glanced down at his cards, then smiled. “I daresay you'll owe me an hour of training for this hand.”

“Do you
want
to win?” she asked.

“Not really,” he said, and he laughed again. “I think I would very much like to lose, that you might have the prize of that very useful spell for speeding the growing of a nasty herb or two.”

Morgan smiled as well. In truth, she wanted no more of magic and spells, but the thought of a little something to give Adhémar a rash to concentrate on was welcome indeed.

Besides, Miach's mirth kept the darkness at bay yet a little longer.

She was very grateful for it.

Twenty-one

Miach stood in the pale morning sunlight and watched Adhémar train with Morgan. That did not trouble him. Morgan could have cut Adhémar to ribbons without an effort, but she seemed to be humoring him. Sadly enough, Adhémar had no idea. Miach enjoyed that. He shouldn't have, but he did.

It wasn't even what his brother was saying that troubled him. It would appear that Adhémar had finally become convinced, by some unfathomable leap of logic that Miach had been certain his brother could never make, that Morgan was indeed the wielder. Miach had warned him repeatedly not to overwhelm her with too many spells or she would bolt. Besides, how was he to explain to Morgan that a mere landholder such as Adhémar was purported to be should know so much about magic?

Adhémar ignored him.

Adhémar was also, predictably, suffering from a rather nasty rash. Nettles would do that to a body. Morgan had won the first hand of cards and proved to be quite adept at his nettle-growing spell.

Nay, it wasn't any of those things that troubled him.

It was that he loved her.

Miach paced, smiling, then found that his smile was fading. It was easy enough to consider Morgan, viewed by the light of the fire, and think of her as nothing more than a beautiful, if deadly, shieldmaiden. It was easy enough to look at Morgan, the pale winter sunlight shining down on her dark hair, and think of her as a beautiful woman. It was easy to think of her as a perfect comrade with a smile that would have made a lesser man's knees a little unsteady beneath him.

It was not so easy to think of her as the wielder.

Miach wondered when he'd first known—that he loved her, not that he might have found the answer to the kingdom's troubles. He cast back over the recent past and suspected that it might have been from that first night, when he had caught her in his arms and carried her back to the inn. She'd been lovely and remote, the image of a queen of old.

Then she had woken and looked at him.

Somewhere, somehow during the past endless succession of days, he'd lost his heart for good. His mother had warned him there would be peril in his future. Why hadn't she warned him of the potential for peril to his heart?

“Another spell,” Adhémar commanded, shifting uncomfortably as the aftereffects of his sitting apparently caught up with him again. “I'm sure you'll find it useful.”

Morgan yawned. “When you can best me,” she said, “then I will think on it.”

Miach watched his brother throw himself back into the fray with all his strength and force. Even Miach had to credit him with a valiant effort.

Unfortunately for him, king of Neroche or not, he was simply not Morgan's equal. Morgan finally rid him of his sword in disgust.

“I'm finished,” she said, resheathing her sword with a scowl. “You be finished too.”

“A spell, just the same,” Adhémar cajoled.

Miach was on the verge of telling him to just be silent or he would find himself helped to silence when he caught wind of a change in the air. He turned and looked behind him to see the rest of their company riding as if the very demons of hell were after them. Morgan walked over to him.

“They look unsettled,” she remarked.

“Is it Glines outrunning a disgruntled gambler?” Miach asked, trying for levity.

“I wonder,” Morgan murmured.

Paien thundered up and jumped down off his horse with the energy of a man half his age. He ran up to Miach, panting hard.

“We must away.”

Miach looked at him in surprise. “Why?” What had he missed? He'd been concentrating on the border, true, but surely he would have sensed something coming toward them with evil intent. Then again, given his experience near Chagailt, he knew he shouldn't have been surprised by anything. Apparently, there were things going on in the realm that he was not marking.

An unsettling trend, to be sure.

“Ghouls,” Paien said succinctly. “Tales of them everywhere. We heard they were searching for something.”

“Or someone,” Glines said, coming to stand next to Paien. He looked at Miach seriously. “We saw a few. Not many, but terrifying just the same. We outrode them easily, but that safety will not last. I daresay we would do well not to camp in the open unless we are prepared to be assaulted.”

Miach nodded, considering furiously. Someone was being stalked. He could only assume it was Adhémar. Lothar couldn't possibly know anything about Morgan. It was he and Adhémar who drew the evil to them. The sooner that they were away, the better it would be for Morgan.

The safer for Morgan.

The truth of it sank into his heart and refused to move. He tried to turn away, but found he couldn't. He wanted to walk away, but his feet remained rooted to the ground. The reality of it was as bracing as a blow across the face.

The farther north they rode, the more danger Morgan unwittingly rode into.

Perhaps Lothar did not seek him; it was a certainty Lothar sought Adhémar. That did not begin to reckon anything about the magic Miach still couldn't identify. It was a treacherous mire of danger Morgan walked into without any idea of what she faced. She thought she simply carried a blade to the king of Neroche.

Miach knew better.

He wrenched himself away from where his body seemed to want to remain and started to pace. Perhaps he was wrong about her, about all of it. Just because she had dreamed once of the Sword of Angesand didn't mean that she was destined to be the wielder of it. Just because she dreamed dreams of Gair of Ceangail that were so detailed she could repeat while awake the spells she'd heard while asleep did not mean she possessed magic enough to wield the Sword of Angesand. Just because he was certain that she was Gair's daughter didn't mean she was destined to wield that sword.

He could take Nicholas's knife for her.

He could send her far away from Tor Neroche.

What he could not do was send her to her death.

“Let us ride, then,” Morgan was saying to Paien.

Paien didn't move. “Morgan, lass, you know I'll follow you anywhere, but don't you think 'tis time you told us where we're going?”

Morgan bowed her head for a moment, then lifted it and looked at him. “I'm going to the palace of Tor Neroche.” She paused. “I can say no more.”

Paien did not look all that surprised. The man was canny indeed. “No more needs to be said,” he said briskly. “Let us be off.”

“Are you too weary to ride?” Morgan asked.

“We aren't. And the horses will do as we ask.” He shook his head in wonder. “Magnificent beasts.”

“Great-hearted,” Morgan agreed. “We'll break camp and be ready to ride immediately. Miach?”