Dreamspinner by Lynn Kurland Page A

unnecessary attentions she was obviously trying to avoid.
    Odo pursed his lips. “Then ’tis a good thing I’ve seen that
he
gets upstairs without incident.” He considered Rùnach for a moment or two. “You remind me of someone.”
    “Do I?”
    “Your sister, I imagine.” Odo drew his sword and handed it to Rùnach. “We’ll see if you make as good a showing as she did on her first day. Give that back later, if you’re alive to do so.”
    Rùnach accepted the blade. “Thank you.”
    “Well,” Odo said with a small smile, “you might not say the same a handful of hours from now, but then again, perhaps you might. That’s a mighty set of scars you bear.”
    “They help me remember what not to become.”
    “I daresay.” He looked over Rùnach’s shoulder. “I’ll see to your mount.”
    “He would likely appreciate that.”
    Odo waved him on. Rùnach would have thanked him yet again—he had decent manners, even in trying circumstances—but he suddenly found that whilst his companion had been waved through the gauntlet, he most definitely wasn’t going to be enjoying that same concession. The bellow of a war cry approximately two handsbreadths from his ear almost left him leaping out of his skin.
    He turned and lifted his sword, hoping his attempt at reaching the uppermost courtyard wouldn’t end right there.

F our

    A isling made her way up the stairs, finding it very difficult indeed to keep her filched sword upright. Thank heavens she had no intention of becoming a mercenary. Better that she consider something that didn’t require doing anyone in with a blade or being startled by the unexpected. She almost went sprawling thanks to a young lad slipping by her and racing up the stairs. Perhaps he was going to tell Weger he had guests.
    She didn’t want to think too hard about how that set her heart to racing.
    She climbed many long flights of steps, some broken in half by passageways that led to places she didn’t want to investigate, some briefly bursting out into courtyards only to wind back into darkened stairwells. She decided then that when she started her own life, she would begin a regimen of healthful trots about whatever village she settled on. She was wheezing already, and she was sure she had only climbed four or five flights of stairs.
    But she climbed on because she had only until midnight to dowhat needed to be done to save not only her country but her own sorry neck. She would have had more leeway, of course, if it hadn’t been for the inclement weather that had turned a three-day voyage on that rickety ship into almost six. Admittedly, she could have perhaps calculated amiss—
    Nay, that wasn’t possible. She had counted the days as if her life had depended on it, which it did. The third se’nnight ended at the stroke of midnight that night. Her task was set out before her and the time appointed mercilessly.
    That she had managed to get past the gate was heartening. Perhaps it would be easier than she thought to simply continue on until she could go no further, at which point she could only assume that she would come face-to-face with either Weger himself or one of his aides. She would ask for a private audience, state her business, then be on her way. Perhaps Fate would smile on her and she would find a mercenary desperate enough to travel to Taigh Hall with only the promise of a princely sum as inducement.
    She paused at the top of the sixth flight and looked over her shoulder. To her surprise, the man who had so generously paid her passage, then subsequently and rather inadvertently loaned her his sword, was fighting his way up the stairs behind her. Perhaps he had borrowed a blade from someone else. She considered telling him that assaulting Weger’s men at every turn wasn’t going to win him any affection from the lord of the keep, but perhaps it was better to keep her mouth shut. Obviously he had business in the keep just as she did, so perhaps it was better to carry on