In his defense, he had arisen at an appalling hour and that after a journey that had been beyond unpleasant. Running for leagues had been nothing out of the ordinary. Having his horse find him, refrain from biting him long enough for him to heave himself up onto its back, then subsequently turn itself into a bitter, screaming wind that had left him on the verge of screaming himself had been another thing entirely.
Truly, things had to change in his life very soon.
That was precisely why he found himself where he was, trying to make a thorough search of books he had apparently preferred to use as a resting place for his visage. He was likely fortunate the lamp he’d lit earlier hadn’t burned the entire place to the ground. He supposed he’d been asleep long enough to render a lamp useless, which would no doubt save his eyes a decent amount of strain, but he didn’t imagine it would do anything to relieve the pains in his head. At least he’d managed to sleep in peace and security.
His choice of safe havens was, as he tended to tell anyone who would listen, rather limited. The odd armoire of one or two more notable wizardesses, a discreet guest chamber belonging to a rather feisty and morally questionable queen, and the wine cellar of a rather nearsighted king were the only places he could count on without fail. He had known his mother wouldn’t be any happier to see him than anyone else—something that he supposed would have hurt his feelings if he’d had any feelings to hurt—but he certainly would have engaged in a hefty bout of groveling—or shoveling, which would likely be the case and brought him back full circle to those rather unpleasant days spent in Léirsinn’s barn doing just that—to buy them all some peace. He suspected he might be engaging in that activity fairly soon, so there was no reason not to get it out of the way as soon as possible.
He sighed deeply, opened his eyes, then squeaked in spite of himself.
His mother, a woman who inspired that sort of squeaking in most people she encountered, was sitting on a comfortable chair not a handful of paces away from him, watching him thoughtfully.
He looked up above his head on the off chance a spell was waiting there to fall upon him, checked both sides of the field, as it were, then straightened carefully.
“Mother,” he said politely. “Good morning.”
“What do you want?” she asked without preamble.
He shifted in a vain attempt to ease the unpleasant stiffness in his back, then heaved himself up and onto a stool that was mostly used to reach the upper shelves. He wondered if honesty or subterfuge would serve him better, then decided there was no point in not continuing on with his greatest of failings.
“I’m here for a list of evil mages.”
“List,” she said with a snort. “A list of several books full of that sort of thing, you mean.”
“Well,” he said, “aye, though I would settle for that volume of mine that contains all father’s enemies of note, as well as all the lads I’ve bothered to consider.”
She harrumphed, then reached over and pulled out a slim leather book just to the right of the one he’d stopped at. He looked at her.
“Mother,” he chided. “You put that there whilst I was napping.”
“You deserve it,” she said shortly. “You never write, never come to visit—”
“I’m visiting now,” he pointed out. “And I chopped wood for you last year.”
“Rùnach chopped wood for me last year,” she said, “whilst I was about the heavy labor of making certain his dreamspinning lady didn’t unravel me entire house.”
“Well, I must agree that Aisling of Bruadair is terrifying,” he said, suppressing the urge to shiver. He’d had more to do with Bruadairians over the past pair of years than he had ever wanted to. If he never saw another one, it would be too soon.
“Rùnach is up there on the same shelf with her, love.”
“Which is the only reason I didn’t slay him the last time I saw him. Not,” he added quickly, “because I feared his puny powers, but because I didn’t want to grieve his bride and upset the balance of the world.”
“Good of you.”
“I thought so.”
She handed him the book. “I don’t know what you think you’ll find, but there it is.”
He opened it just to make certain his dam hadn’t decided to liberate the proper pages and replace them with detailed notes about the grooming habits—or lack thereof—of his brothers. Finding everything as it should have been, he closed the book and smiled at his mother.
“Delightful,” he said. “Just what I needed.”
She looked at him narrowly. “You could have made that list from memory, my lad. What are you looking for truly?”
He would have invented some lofty-sounding errand to throw her off the scent, but it was his mother and he’d inherited from her the whole of his ability to obtain details from even the most reluctant of victims. Distracting her from ferreting out the truth would be difficult, if not impossible.
He sighed deeply. Where to start? He was there for answers to several vexing questions, beginning with who was creating those pools of shadow he seemed to be finding in untoward places and ending with who had created the spell that continued to prevent him from delighting and astonishing everyone around him with his mighty magic.
It also might have been useful to know who was chasing him, particularly since he had the feeling it wasn’t just the usual collection of workers of substandard magic he tended to offend.
If he happened to help himself to a few spells he’d jotted down and left folded up beneath tins of healthful herbs he was positive his mother would never disturb, so much the better. It could count as a bit of housework, which might earn him a kind word or two.
“I don’t know, Mother,” he admitted. “I am besieged by a handful of vexing mysteries. More shocking still, I find myself without a decent idea of where to turn.”
“Take the path leading to that red-haired wench,” she said wisely.
“Do you think so?”
She blinked. “Are you asking my advice?”
“Ye gads, nay.” He paused, then considered. “I wouldn’t completely discount it if you cared to give it.”
She felt about in her hair for what he could only hope wasn’t a dagger or a witchly wand of some sort. She pulled a pencil free, licked the tip of it, then drew forth a notebook from the pocket of her apron, all the while watching him as if she expected him to suddenly leap up and rush off.
“What are you doing?” he asked carefully.
“Making a note of this historic moment. I’ll find out later whether or not the world cracked in two during the same.”
He pursed his lips. “I am not above the occasional bit of humility.”
She blinked, jotted down something, then looked at him again. “I would guffaw—indeed, I imagine I will after you go—but I’m too stunned at the moment to indulge.”
“Indulge away,” he said wearily. “It won’t be the worst thing I’ve endured so far this year.”
“I understand you’ve been on an apology tour.”
“From whom do you understand that?” he asked politely.
She shrugged lightly. “Can’t say I’m able to bring to mind the exact teller of that tale. Word gets ’round, you know.”
He imagined it did and whilst he wasn’t sure he wanted to know who was spreading that word around, he thought he might be able to latch on to a name or two just the same if pressed.
“I’m assuming you’ll give me the details,” she continued, “considering I’ve given you refuge.”
“Happily,” he said. He couldn’t say he cared for gossip—well, if he were to be completely honest, he didn’t care for silly, useless gossip, but tales of riches and rumors of things that might be useful in the odd spot of blackmail, aye, he wasn’t above bending an ear for that sort of thing. His mother cast a wider net for items of note, but her days
of making as much mischief as he indulged in were perhaps discreetly behind her.
Perhaps. With Fionne of Fàs, one never knew.
“It is true,” he conceded, “that I’ve spent the last several months spreading sunshine and happiness from one end of the Nine Kingdoms to the other. I imagine I can find things you’ll want to make a note of, but you might want to wait until I’m better rested lest I forget important details.”
“Hmmm,” she said studying him. “I would certainly prefer that you be at your best for the grilling, so we’ll leave it for the moment. As for the other question that you tried to so neatly sidestep, why are you here? Past the obvious need to show me that feisty little miss of yours, of course.”
He suppressed a snort. If Léirsinn still wanted to speak to him after having encountered his mother, he would be fortunate indeed. The other thing, though, he wasn’t above addressing.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard,” he said slowly, “and want even less to find out who’s been yammering on about my activities, but the truth is, I am looking for a particular mage. I might need a rather lengthy look through your books to find him.”
She waved her pencil at him. “You’re starting in the middle, which you know annoys me. Begin at the beginning and concentrate on your troubles, something I’ll thoroughly enjoy. I’ll keep an ear cocked for details you might inadvertently reveal. Before you get yourself launched, however, I will tell you that I heard that that delicious prince from Cothromaiche had you for supper a month or two ago.”
“He invited me for supper,” Acair corrected. “He and that meddling half-brother of mine, Rùnach, lured me to a pub where they were very unkind to me, never mind scarce having the manners to pay for my ale.”
“Rùnach chopped wood for me—I believe I mentioned that before—so I’m not inclined to disparage him. Besides, I understand he saved your life in Beul.”
“Unfortunately,” Acair said, rubbing his chest to ease the sudden tingling there. It was as if the damn spell Rùnach had healed him with had heard itself being noticed and was clamoring for more praise. “I took a blade meant for Rùnach’s bride and he restored me with some elvish rubbish instead of mercifully letting me die. I’m still troubled by the aftereffects of it.”
“Fadaire?”
He nodded grimly.
She licked her pencil again and waved him on. “Continue.”
He supposed if anyone would understand the terrible affliction of his straits, it would be his mother, so he obliged her.
“As you’ve obviously heard,” he said, settling in for a decent recounting of his continuing nightmare, “I’ve spent the past many months—I try to forget the exact count in deference to my mental state—going about apologizing to various offended crown-wearers in order to make reparations for a modest piece of business, the particulars of which slip my mind at the moment.”
She only pursed her lips and continued to scribble in her book.
“I had thought my days of prostrating myself before kings, ministers, and their puffed-up ilk were over, but, as you heard, I found myself summoned to supper with both Rùnach and Soilléir.”
“I would have given much to have been eavesdropping on that conversation.”
“No need, for I’ll give you the details freely. There was very little chitchat and no inquiries about my health. I had scarce begun to imbibe a rather undemanding pint of ale when I was put off my drink by their telling me that my days of acting against my nobler nature were not yet over and that there was more for me to do to bring peace and justice to the world.”
“Beginning in Sàraichte,” she said slowly, looking up from her notes. “Or did I mishear that rumor?”
“Nay, you have that aright.”
“Auntie Cailleach told me she’d seen you in the market, trailing after that lass of yours like a lovesick pup.”
He didn’t want to know where that conversation had taken place or what else had been said. “’Tis true, that.”
“Where did you meet your horse miss?”
“That is an interesting wrinkle in this otherwise very dull piece of cloth,” he said, watching her to see if she might want to make a note of how poetically he was stating things. She snorted, which he supposed was the best he was going to get, so he moved on. “I had encountered Léirsinn because as part of my continuing punishment for, again, I haven’t a clue what, I was informed I would be spending a year in a barn, shoveling horse droppings and waiting for someone to steal my best pair of boots. That, by the way, happened before a single day had passed.”
His mother glanced at his feet, then lifted her eyebrows briefly. “Poor you,” she said unsympathetically. “So, you were in a barn, you met that red-haired beauty, then what?”
He made himself as comfortable as possible on his perch. “I’ve gotten ahead of myself, actually,” he said. “To rid myself of those two profoundly irritating busybodies—you know which ones—I agreed to a year without magic to avoid having to forgo giving the stuff up for a century.”
His mother gasped. “A century?”
“Appalling, isn’t it?” he asked. “’Tis no doubt why Soilléir opened the negotiations with such a span of years. I bargained it down to the aforementioned and equally preposterous year, but you can imagine my thoughts about that. After I left that whoreson and Rùnach trying to come up with funds to pay for their drinks and mine at that truly dire little pub in the middle of nowhere, I trotted off into the gloom, fully intending to duck off the road and scamper away to lie low until they’d forgotten about me.”
“Then to resume your usual business of making glorious mischief?”
“Exactly,” he said, feeling a rush of affection for that terrifying woman there. “Unfortunately, I hadn’t gone but half a league before I realized I was being followed by something vexatious.”
His mother glanced at the spell that was currently curled up in the corner, feigning sleep. It was starting to alarm him a bit more than usual, that thing there. He’d always felt it possessed some sort of shape, but the longer it followed him, the more it began to resemble a shadow of a youth. There were times he suspected it was making rude gestures at him from behind his back, but he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. Whoever had created it had had a very rudimentary and juvenile sense of jest.
“What does it do?” she asked.
“I understand that its sole purpose is to do damage to my innocent self should I dare breathe out so much as a word of a spell.”
“Shocking,” she said, looking genuinely startled. “And if you, as they say, slip up?”
“That spell will slay me,” he said.
“Why the hell did you agree to such a stupid thing?” she asked in astonishment.
“I didn’t agree to it,” Acair said shortly. “I only agreed to the bargain of no magic and that only because your beloved Soilléir threatened to turn me into a birdbath if I didn’t.”
She pursed her lips. He wasn’t altogether sure she wasn’t trying to keep from laughing, but there it was. His situation was ridiculous.
“Well, he definitely could,” she allowed.
He looked at her suddenly, wondering why he’d never thought to ask her the question that had clouted him so suddenly on the side of his head. “Could you turn him into a birdbath?”
She clutched a pearl necklace she wore, something that he wasn’t entirely sure wasn’t made from calcified souls of those she’d frightened the very hell from, and manufactured what he imagined she supposed was a look of horror.
“Why would you ask?” she hedged.
“Because your dear aunt Cailleach said I possessed power that left Gair’s looking like rubbish,” he said. “Or words to that effect.”
“She exaggerates.”
He suspected his great-aunt didn’t do anything of the sort, but it was obviously going to take more effort than
simply asking to have an answer from his dam.
“I’m not going to let that go,” he muttered.
She looked slightly pleased, if such a thing was possible for her, then tapped her pencil against her chin. “I have to ask—because I’m a bit pressed for anything interesting to do at the moment—why you find yourself somewhere besides Fuadain of Sàraichte’s barn, if that’s where you were meant to serve out your sentence.”
He wasn’t sure if she didn’t know or if she were simply trying to dig a few details out of him, but he supposed in the end it didn’t matter. Answers were the price for being allowed to hide under her very utilitarian but terrifying spells of protection, spells he would certainly be having a closer look at whilst she was napping.
“The tale is long,” he warned.
“I have all day.”
He started to thank her for having cleared the decks for him, as it were, when he was interrupted by trills of laughter coming from the front parlor. He was absolutely certain that wasn’t Léirsinn making that noise, though not altogether certain Mansourah of Neroche wouldn’t make that sort of noise if pressed, but he paused just the same and looked at his mother.
“Who is that?”
She smiled blandly. “I invited a pair of your cousins to come to take in the view. You’ll hit upon which ones without having to peek around the corner, I imagine.”
“Ah,” he said, wishing he weren’t so damned tired. “I remember Léirsinn having said something about that.”
“I wasn’t going to keep that handsome young prince all to myself.”
“Generous of you.”
“One of my greatest faults,” she said seriously. “Besides, I owe Fiunne a favor. Actually, I might want a favor from those two rapacious gels at some point, so no sense in not doling out those sorts of chits whilst I’m able, don’t you agree?”