She pursed her lips, which he supposed said everything he needed to know about her opinions of his activities, but what else could she have expected? For all they knew, he was doing the world a very great service by removing a dangerous book of spells from the grasp of a king with just enough magic to get himself tangled in the proverbial weeds.
Altruistic to the last. He would have that inscribed on a headstone and tuck the damned thing in his mother’s garden for future use. He could do nothing less.
Finding a suitable spot was as difficult as he’d expected it would be, but surely no more than a quarter hour had passed before he was loitering negligently near a lit streetlamp, turning the pages of what he soon discovered were the scribblings of a madman.
Little wonder the kingdom was in shambles.
He tried to make sense of what he was reading, but it was impossible. It was nothing but page after page of notes about everything from what the man had eaten for supper to how visiting dignitaries had been dressed. Acair would have made sport of it if he’d been sitting in a comfortable solar with people who might leap into that sort of gossipy fray with him, but as it was, he was standing in a barely lit alcove, shivering and wishing he were not being chased by the local monarch and his minions. The time for mockery was not the present one.
The one decent spell he found was something that only someone up to their necks in the copying of manuscripts might value. Who else would possibly care about the qualities of inks and how to affect the drying times of the same?
He shook his head in disgust. The lengths he had gone to—and the power he had promised the king—in return for the damned thing . . . well, it was obviously a blessing in disguise that he’d failed.
Léirsinn suddenly put her hand on his arm, then nodded up the street. He pulled himself farther into the shadows, then waited whilst a wheezing piece of royalty staggered along the cobblestones toward them. He reached out and hauled Mansourah of Neroche out of the faint lamplight only to have the man almost collapse at his feet. He dropped the book of spells perforce, but he didn’t drop the prince of Neroche, which he supposed might count as a fair trade. Léirsinn retrieved the book, then reached out toward Mansourah.
“Don’t,” he gasped.
Drunk was Acair’s immediate assessment, then he realized that there was something very odd about the way Mansourah was holding his right arm.
“Battle?” Acair asked sympathetically.
“I fell off the ledge back at the inn,” Mansourah said, through gritted teeth.
“And you couldn’t have changed your shape on the way down?” Acair asked in astonishment.
It was truly a testament to his own ability to see so well in the dark that he was able to make out with perfect clarity the murderous look their feeble companion was giving him.
“I was taken by surprise.” Mansourah took a deep, unsteady breath. “If you tell anyone the same, I will kill you.”
“Well, I doubt you’ll manage that, but let’s set that aside for examination later. What did you do to yourself, land on your arm?”
Mansourah only growled, which Acair supposed was answer enough. He drew the prince out into a bit more light and was forced to acknowledge that the man looked thoroughly wrung out.
“I don’t suppose you would be so good as to fix this,” Mansourah said, sounding as faint as he looked.
Acair would have—a gentleman never bypassed another in need, even if the aid rendered was limited to nothing more than a boost toward that peaceful rest in the East—but his minder spell cleared its throat in a way it absolutely shouldn’t have been able to. Acair ignored the fact that he’d become so accustomed to the damn thing that he hardly noticed it unless it poked its shadowy nose into his affairs, then looked at Mansourah and shrugged.
“Sorry, old bean. Can’t help you.”
Mansourah looked at Léirsinn in desperation. “No magic?”
Acair watched something cross her face, regret perhaps. Leftover tummy upset from whatever Simeon of Diarmailt had served for tea, more than likely.
“I’m sorry,” she said helplessly. “I could set it, if that would help.”
“I need to sit first,” Mansourah said, looking as if he might fall down before he managed it. “Anywhere, even the ground. But perhaps not here, aye?”
Acair couldn’t have agreed more about the somewhat exposed nature of their current locale. He encouraged the prince with soothing words and friendly taunts to take a stroll up the street. He hauled the lad into the first likely alleyway he came to and helped him sit atop the first wooden crate they found. It creaked dreadfully, but there was nothing to be done about that.
He considered the conundrum before him and wondered if it might just be easier to clunk the fool over the head and leave him behind. It was somewhat reassuring to find that that solution left him without a single twinge of conscience. Perhaps he hadn’t lost himself entirely in the endless months of do-gooding he’d endured.
Léirsinn moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, which left him waving a fond farewell to the idea of a rap on the child’s head and a hasty scamper in a useful direction.
“I can’t believe I’m asking this,” she said, looking as if she wished she could scamper away herself, “but why can’t he just use magic on himself?”
“That is a question for someone far wiser than I,” Acair said, “though I could speculate, if you like.”
“Oh,” Mansourah said through somewhat gritted teeth, “please do.”
Acair shot him a look he was certain could have been better appreciated by daylight, but with the right circumstances he was certain he would be able to reproduce it. He looked at Léirsinn and settled for a hasty bit of theological conjecture.
“Men are selfish bastards,” he said, “and I don’t hesitate to include myself in that lot. I suspect that whatever humorless being created the rules of magic-making all those many eons ago simply decided that it would be amusing to watch a mage stagger from one locale to the next with a sore tum, looking for someone to help him.”
“Do you think so?” she asked.
Acair shrugged. “I have no idea, in truth. All I know is that magic comes with limits, no matter how much we wish it didn’t. Perhaps ’tis for the best. A mage who could heal himself could heal himself endlessly. If he were a very bad mage—”
“Know any of those?” Mansourah interrupted tightly.
Acair spared the lad the cool look he deserved only because he was already suffering enough. “If he were an evil mage,” he repeated, “then his evil would always triumph. No chance of a plate of bad eggs giving the rest of the world a chance to balance the scales, as it were.”
Léirsinn frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense. If Mansourah can change his shape—and I’ll deny this conversation if you repeat it—then why can’t he just change his arm back to what it was before he landed on it?”
“An excellent question,” Acair said, “and I believe we may have touched on this fascinating subject before.”
“I’m sure I ignored you.”
He didn’t doubt it for a minute. “A shapechanging spell is only a temporary change, no matter how long it lasts. ’Tis a bit like donning a suit of clothes. You put the shape on, you take the shape off, but underneath, you’re still the same strapping, terribly handsome lad you were before you used the spell. Healing isn’t a temporary change.”
“Is it like essence changing?”
“What have you been telling her?” Mansourah gurgled.
Acair ignored him. “It is exactly like essence changing,” he said. “That, I’m certain, was a gift from someone back in the mists of time lest the whole of mankind perish because we’re too stupid to take care of ourselves.”
He watched Léirsinn send Mansourah a rather pointed look and thought it might be less-than-sporting if he didn’t join her. He suppos
ed the only reason Mansourah didn’t spew out a complaint or two was because he obviously was in a great deal of pain.
“So, anyone can use a spell of healing?” Léirsinn asked. “As long as you use it on someone else?”
“Aye,” he said, though for the first time in his life, he wondered if that was as true as he’d always thought it to be.
It was a staggering thought, actually. If a mage could endlessly heal himself, by himself, then what was to keep a worker of magic from living forever? That damned Soilléir of Cothromaiche seemed ageless. Then again, so did his own grandmother, Eulasaid, but she was surely a soul worthy of a lengthy life.
“What about what you were looking for in Master Odhran’s shop?”
Silence, as seemed to be its habit of late, fell. Acair wondered if that would be his lot in life as long as that life included the woman next to him. She said the damndest things, things that he was thoroughly embarrassed not to have been thinking right along with her. He looked at her.
“I see.”
She shrugged helplessly. “Would it work?”
“For the sake of the world? I certainly hope not.”
She smiled. He was half tempted to join that mewling babe there on that crate and weep right along with him. Ah, damn that Soilléir of Cothromaiche and his cohort Rùnach of Tòrr Dòrainn. The two of them had likely foreseen the exact moment Acair would find himself standing in currently and had had a right proper guffaw over the sound his heart was making as it shattered into more pieces than a black heart ever should.
“I am,” he said in all seriousness, “not worthy of you.”
Mansourah blurted out a string of curses that should have alerted any and all night watchmen in the area to their whereabouts, but fortunately for them all, he descended rather quickly into a fit of wheezing. A broken arm perhaps did that to a man.
Acair decided action was more useful than speech, so he took his knife and cut off a strip from the bottom of his tunic. He laid it on the frost-covered cobblestones at Mansourah’s feet, then slid his knife back down the side of his boot.
“What madness is that?” Mansourah croaked.
Acair squatted down in front of him because he thought it might terrify the lad less if he did so. “Enspell that with whatever rot you use for healing, wrap it around yourself, and let’s be off.”
Mansourah looked utterly confused. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Take a spell,” Acair said slowly, “infuse it into this piece of rather fine weave my sister gifted me, then add a bit of your own power so it stands on its own. Put it over your arm and there you have your cure. Unless you haven’t any idea how to do the same, which is what I suspect.”
Mansourah glared at him. “I’m no neophyte.”
“You’re worse,” Acair said briskly, “because you’ve no idea just how much you don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand it,” Léirsinn said. She looked down at Acair and shrugged. “I don’t believe it either, but you already knew that.”
Acair did and at the moment, he had no time to attempt to convince her otherwise. He rose and looked down at Mansourah.
“I cannot heal you, nor can Léirsinn, so you’ll have to do it yourself. This is all I can think of on short notice.”
“You want me to take some of my power and put it on that strip of linen?” Mansourah asked blankly.
“Have you never done this before?” Acair asked, finding himself genuinely astonished.
“Why would I need to?”
Acair opened his mouth to make a list of several reasons why a man might want to keep a goodly amount of his treasure far from where he slept, then he reminded himself with whom he was dealing. Mansourah of Neroche had likely never had a subversive thought in his life, so why would he need to prepare for that sort of contingency?
“Because, my young friend,” Acair said, “there might come a day when you are skulking about where you shouldn’t be, keeping your magic under wraps to avoid detection, and the ability to fling a bit of distraction or mayhem in the direction of your enemies might save your life. Or heal your arrow-grasping arm, which I’m assuming is the one you shattered.”
Mansourah shut his mouth around whatever it was he had obviously planned to say—Acair couldn’t imagine it had been polite—then took a deep breath.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll attempt it.”
He wove a very sturdy, businesslike spell of healing over the cloth, then stopped short. He stared at the cloth at his feet for several moments, then looked up.
“I haven’t got a bloody clue what to do now. How do you do it? Why can you do it?”
Acair looked at him evenly. “’Tis all that black magery, my boy,” he said. “I’m accustomed to leaving bits of my soul behind, or isn’t that common knowledge?”
Mansourah looked a bit unwell. “I didn’t think.”
“Most people don’t.” He blew out his breath, then realized he didn’t have a bloody clue how to explain to that man-child there how one went about trading parts of one’s essence for power. Soilléir likely could have waxed rhapsodic about the whole business for hours on end, but the thought of that was enough to leave Acair wanting to flee. In truth, he wasn’t entirely sure how he did it either, something he might need to remedy if he were to leave behind important notes for the betterment of the world.
“I could set it,” Léirsinn offered quietly, “though I think it would be best if we could escape the city first.” She paused. “Just in case.”
Acair understood what she was getting at and thoroughly agreed. Mansourah looked as though he might soon become senseless, and they were, as it happened, still within a city full of mages who weren’t setting the table for a friendly evening of supper and cards.
He looked at the wounded prince of Neroche. “We’ll have to escape first. Your Highness, if you can stand?”
Mansourah might have been a fool, but he wasn’t stupid. He accepted a hand to his feet, then didn’t spurn the offer of a shoulder to use as a crutch. Acair looked at Léirsinn from around Mansourah’s chalky visage and nodded.
“We’ll make for the barn and collect my horse. After that, we’ll make do.”
“Where are we headed?” Mansourah wheezed.
“Somewhere safe.”
Mansourah grunted. “You’re off on the hunt for another book you can’t fetch, aren’t you?”
“Aye and this one is cunningly hidden in my mother’s library behind The Noble History of Heroes from Neroche, which I imagine is covered with at least an inch of dust. My offering will have remained undisturbed, I assure you.”
“Your mother’s library,” Mansourah gasped. “I should slay you for suggesting the same. Save us all a great deal of trouble.”
“Your code forbids your slaying a defenseless man.”
“You aren’t a defenseless man, you’re a damned black mage with a reputation almost as vile as your sire’s—”
“Almost?” Acair huffed. “I’m insulted.”
“And still breathing, something I would like to remedy.”
“What surprises me is that you’re still talking,” Acair said, though he was rather relieved by that fact. Whatever else their failings might have been, those lads from Neroche were cut from sturdy cloth. Acair could bring to mind several very dangerous mages who would sit on the edge of the closest flowerpot and weep over a hangnail.
He pulled up short at the sight of the gates squatting there in front of him, sooner than he’d expected. He propped Mansourah up against a wall, then peered around the corner at the stables. Léirsinn looked over his shoulder and caught her breath.
“Mages,” she said.
He smiled in spite of himself. “You’ve become suspicious.”
“At any other time,” she murmured, “I would have thought them only ordinary travel
ers. Tonight, I find myself looking at any man hiding behind the shadows of a hood with a jaundiced eye and an immediate suspicion of their potential for magic-making.”
“Very wise,” Acair agreed, then hardly managed to catch himself before Mansourah’s hand on his shoulder almost sent him sprawling.
“Your sort of lads?” Mansourah said hoarsely.
“They could only dream of it,” Acair said without hesitation. “It does present something of a problem for me at the moment, however, given that I’m not at liberty to engage them.”
“I could try to attract their notice, then lead them astray.”
“Subversion,” Acair said approvingly. “Look at you, lad, walking in less than fastidious paths.”
“Crawling along them, you mean,” Mansourah said faintly. “I’m not sure what would be left of me if I shapechanged at the moment.” He leaned heavily on Acair’s shoulder. “You certainly disturbed a few unpleasant sorts here.”
“I’m beginning to think so,” Acair agreed. More interesting still would be finding out who those men were, but he supposed that pleasure would need to wait for a bit.
“How fast can your pony go?” Mansourah asked.
Acair glanced at his wounded companion. “Faster than a princess of Meith running from tidings of your arrival to court her.”
Mansourah looked at him with a bit more warmth than perhaps the moment merited. Warmth, fury, who could tell the difference in the gloom?
He looked back at the lay of the land and wondered how best to proceed. It was, as he’d noted several times recently, extremely inconvenient to move about as a mere mortal. If he’d been at liberty to do what he did best, he would have stridden out into the courtyard of the stables, fought a delightful little duel with those lads there—singly or in a group, as it suited them—then swept off as a bitter, screeching wind toward the promise of more mischief in another place.
As it was, he could only be appallingly grateful, if not a little surprised, when his horse landed on his free shoulder and nipped at his ear.
He sighed. Some things never changed.