Dreamspinner Read Free

Seanagarra, but I would see nothing of Sìle’s glamour, hear nothing whispering in the wind, feel nothing coursing through my veins besides my dull, unmagical blood.”
    “And that, my lad,” Sgath agreed quietly, “would be terrible.” He paused, then rubbed his chin absently. “And staying here would be intolerable as well?”
    Rùnach sighed, because he had seriously thought about asking if Sgath might need an extra stable hand. He had considered that request for the space of approximately five heartbeats before he had put it aside with other things he couldn’t bring himself to consider. He shook his head. “It wouldn’t, and perhaps I will return one day and beg a patch of dirt from you. But until then, I need to go and do something I can do.”
    “And what can you do, Rùnach?”
    Rùnach would have taken offense at that question from his mother’s sire, but not from Sgath. Then again, Sgath generally went about his life in a most unmagical fashion, wearing any one of a rather large collection of crumpled felt hats sporting fishing lures whilst waxing rhapsodic about the current batch of wine he had pressed himself and left curing in a special root cellar he’d built for just that purpose. If anyone would understand what Rùnach wanted, it would be Sgath of Ainneamh, elven prince and husband to the granddaughter of the wizardess Nimheil. Most people mistook him for a rather rumpled farm holder.
    “I thought,” Rùnach said carefully, because in all the time he’d been contemplating it, he had never dared voice his thought, “that I might take up the sword.” He paused. “In spite of my hands.”
    “Well, your hands are healed well enough, aren’t they?”
    Rùnach found he could do no more than nod.
    “A logical choice, then, given your skill with a blade in your youth,” Sgath said, not sounding in the least bit horrified. “Where will you do this taking up?”
    “Perhaps with some lord who needs another lad in his garrison,” Rùnach said slowly, “though I suppose I would do well to engage in a bit of training first.”
    Sgath only looked at him steadily.
    “Perhaps somewhere where I can regain some of my very disused skills,” Rùnach added.
    “South?”
    Rùnach nodded.
    “An interesting direction,” Sgath conceded. “Many things to the south.”
    “So there are.”
    “How far south are you considering?”
    “South and a bit west. Until there is no more of either.”
    Sgath laughed a little. “Not many places that fit that description, are there? And nay, you’ve no need to elaborate. I know what you’re considering without your needing to say anything. I will tell you I think Gobhann is a mad choice, but one I can’t say I wouldn’t make myself were I in your boots. You do realize it’s a magic sink, don’t you?”
    “Miach said as much, yes,” Rùnach agreed. “I doubt I’ll notice.”
    Sgath only sighed. “Very well, when do you want to go?”
    “Now.”
    Sgath slid him a look. “And how is it I already knew that?”
    “Because I’ve been a terrible guest,” Rùnach said with a sigh. “Prickly, unpleasant—”
    “Snarling, moody, sour,” Sgath finished for him. “Not at all like the very charming, elegant young man who used to be first in the lists in the morning when Sìle would notice and last to come in, again, when Sìle would notice.”
    It had been so long since he’d been anything akin to that, Rùnach felt a little like his grandfather was talking about someone else. He couldn’t say he had ever been charming or elegant, but he had been passing fond of a decently fashioned blade.
    “Eulasaid has prepared a thing or two for your pack,” Sgath continued. “Clothing, delicate edibles, that sort of thing. Sìle made his own contributions, which aren’t, as you might fear, poisonous serpents or rocks.”
    Rùnach managed a faint smile. “Did he?”
    “He did.”
    “Good of him.”
    “He’s been pacing in the great hall, accompanied by a