Free Dreamspinner by Lynn Kurland Page A

at him briefly. “I appreciate the aid, but I’ll be fine on my own from here. Manly business ahead, and all that.”
    “Manly business?”
    “Aye,” she said firmly. “Manly business of a sort I must keep to myself.”
    Well, he couldn’t imagine she could have any business save plying a needle on some poor tunic, so he contented himself with the thought that she was no doubt traveling toward some sort of landhold where she would seek refuge from whatever simple, womanly concern had been too much for her. Nothing else made sense.
    He shouldered his pack, then almost went sprawling. He caught himself heavily on one leg, then turned, his sword halfway from its sheath before he realized it was simply his damned horse nosing him so enthusiastically.
    The subsequent whicker sounded too much like a laugh for Rùnach’s taste.
    The woman next to him gasped. “Where did that come from? You didn’t have him on the ship.”
    “You would be surprised where a man might acquire a horse,” Rùnach said grimly. He took up his journey again, ignoring the way his mount continued to clomp along behind him, and tried to concentrate instead on where he was going.
    He resigned himself eventually to the necessity of depositing his companion at her destination, for it didn’t look as if she would merely trot off the road toward it on her own. He supposed he would also need to think of her as a him for at least the duration of their acquaintance, which he hoped would be very brief. He had business of his own, the business of getting on with his very ordinary, unremarkable life. He had neither the time nor the heart to look after a lass who should have been safely ensconced in her father’s house.
    Time wore on, and his patience wore thin. She didn’t seem to be preparing to leave the road and pick her way through the woods to her aunt’s house, so when the wood had ended, he stopped and looked at her.
    “Don’t you have family in the area, then?” he asked, feeling rather exasperated.
    “Nay,” she said, looking at him in confusion. “Why would you think that?”
    “Then where are you going?” He gestured impatiently to his left. “There?”
    She followed his pointing finger, then her jaw went slack. Rùnach followed her gaze and had to agree. It was one thing to think about Gobhann from the comfort of a decent seat in front of a roaring fire; it was another thing entirely to stand several hundred paces from the place and realize that there was nothing to it save unrelenting grey walls topped by unrelenting grey clouds. Did Weger attract that sort of weather simply by virtue of who he was, or was there a spell set over the place that cast it perpetually into gloom? Rùnach didn’t suppose he wanted to know, though he wouldn’t have been surprised by either.
    Mhorghain had warned him it was a bit sparse, but his sister was obviously a master of understatement. At least at Buidseachdthere had been ample heat, an excellent kitchen, and a generously stocked library. He didn’t dare hold out any hope for any of the three inside what faced him. The walls were sheer, the front gates forbidding, and the general aspect enough to give one pause.
    But if what lay within was the purchase price for the rest of a useful life, he would pay it gladly.
    He looked at his companion, who had turned the color of her hair, which he discovered, thanks to a rapidly lightening sky, was so pale a yellow as to be almost white. She was filthy, as if she’d been rolling in the street and failed to find any sort of mirror to use in ridding her face of the smudges on her cheeks and nose. Her hair looked as if it had been much longer at some point and then cut carelessly with a knife. He started to suggest that she perhaps trot back the way she’d come when she turned and looked at him.
    And then he, who hadn’t dreamed in a score of years, felt himself falling into a dream without any hope of saving himself.
    He clutched at Iteach’s mane and was