A Tapestry of Spells by Lynn Kurland

had been more appealing than she’d suspected.
    “So,” he said, lifting his head finally, “you want my aid, do you? In return for what? A handful of coins and a clean table?”
    She stopped brushing crumbs off the table onto the floor and put both her hands behind her back. “I’m nervous.”
    “I intended you to be.”
    “I imagine you did.”
    “I don’t like company,” he said shortly.
    “You’ll like even less what comes crawling up your pathway once my brother creates another of what he fashioned in my mother’s house.”
    The mage sat back and folded his arms over his chest. “Your brother?”
    “Daniel of Doìre.” She attempted a dismissive wave, but succeeded only in tipping over a mug she then had to rescue from tumbling off the table onto the floor. She set it back down on the table carefully, then took a deep breath. “He vows to destroy the world.”
    “The whelp of a village witch?” the mage said with a humorless laugh. “I don’t think I’ll lose sleep over the thought.”
    “You didn’t see what he created to raze my mother’s house and barn.”
    He snorted. “Surely any witch’s get could have managed the like. And since you’re one, why didn’t you stop him?”
    “I thought it might make a better impression on him to have someone swoop down and beat sense into his very thick head,” she said honestly. “Someone with a terrifying reputation.” She paused. “Someone like yourself, actually.”
    “I don’t swoop.”
    She reached out and straightened a stack of books on his table that was nigh onto tumbling over. “Whyever not?”
    “ ’Tisn’t dignified.”
    “Then change yourself into a bloody dragon and singe him from tip to tail—”
    She gasped and realized that her wrist was again on fire only after she saw why. The mage had leaned forward suddenly, caught her by the hand, and shoved her sleeve up to her elbow before she could protest. The pain winded her.
    “What,” he asked in a garbled tone, “is that?”
    It took her a moment to catch her breath. “A spell,” she gasped. “I touched—”
    He released her so suddenly it was as if he too had been burned. He stood up, cursing viciously, then took her by the arm and pulled her across his floor only to push her out his front door.
    “Seek aid elsewhere,” he said curtly.
    The door slammed shut behind her with a resounding bang.
    Sarah gaped at the door for a moment or two in astonishment. Then she felt her eyes narrow.
    “But I have nowhere else to turn,” she shouted.
    “Go away,” came his voice quite audibly through the door. “You won’t like what opens the door the next time you knock.”
    “I need your help!”
    Only silence answered her.
    Sarah stood there for several minutes, torn between wishing he would change his mind and open his door and hoping he wouldn’t so she wouldn’t catch an eyeful of something she wouldn’t want to see. That was balanced nicely with her fury over the lazy, bad-mannered oaf’s unwillingness to spend even half a day tracking down her brother and convincing him of the inadvisability of the course he currently contemplated.
    Damn all mages to hell, where they could stay and rot.
    She spun on her heel and strode away, leaving Castân to trot along after her. That stomping helped keep her warm for a bit until she reached the forest again and the chill began to bite. She looked back over her shoulder at the mage’s house. Whereas it had a handful of moments ago looked merely rugged, now it took on other, more unsettling shapes. Well, one thing could be said for that ancient, crusty knave: he could weave a decent spell.
    But he was obviously not going to weave one for her. She pulled Castân’s blanket more closely around herself and reluctantly faced the rest of the hard truth: she was going to have to find her brother and stop him herself. As she had just seen, mages were unpredictable and, based on her experience, not particularly altruistic. Perhaps the man