She looked thoroughly disappointed. “You are a rock. What have we been discussing?”
“Magic.”
“Black magery,” she said pointedly, “for which there is a terrible price.”
“I haven’t paid a terrible price,” he pointed out.
“I’m not sure you’ve paused long enough in your wild swath-cutting through the Nine Kingdoms to know what sort of price you have or have not paid,” she said seriously. “Or it might be that whilst you trumpet your deeds as if they were fashioned of the depths of hell itself, you don’t use all that much dark magic.” She looked at him. “Or do I have that awrong?”
“I use what’s expedient—”
“Which is generally not Olc,” she said pointedly, “or Lugham, or a trio of other magics that I don’t even like to mention. General naughtiness, Acair, is not black magery in a proper sense, something you should understand by now.”
“I’m trying to turn over a new leaf,” he muttered.
“One could hope so,” she said with a gusty sigh, “which is why what I’ve told you is so important. Sift through all the knowledge I’ve put in that empty head of yours and tell me what you learned today.”
“A black mage loses a piece of his soul every time he uses an evil spell,” he said wearily. “So?”
She threw her napkin at him. “So?”
He set her napkin aside and suppressed the urge to swear. “What difference does it make? There is a price to be paid for using any magic. There is no possible way to avoid that. The only thing one could hope for was an endless supply . . .”
He stopped speaking. That happened, he supposed, when one actually listened to what was coming out of one’s mouth.
His mother only shook her head, no doubt in despair.
“There is no final price paid when one has an endless supply of something that sustains him,” he managed faintly.
“Such as what the country of Neroche gives its deliciously gallant young king,” she said, nodding. “I’d think twice about going up against Mochriadhemiach of Neroche, me lad. He has the entire reserves of that enormous country as his underpinnings and if you think he doesn’t know that perfectly well by now, you’re mad. He could throw all manner of spells at you for decades before he was even forced to yawn.”
“He does seem rather perky,” Acair conceded.
“As would any black mage with a proper supply of . . . well, what shall we call it? Power? Enthusiasm?”
“Souls?” he said hoarsely.
She slapped her hand on the table, sending teacups rattling. “Of course souls, you idiot. Think on it! A mage who never pays a price for his black magic? Your father lusted after power, which would have allowed him many things, but in the end all the power in the world didn’t serve him and it would have eventually destroyed him because of the magic he used. But a mage who can trade others’ souls for magicmaking will never tire, never pay a price for his spells, never find himself in a position where he’s at risk of being stopped.”
“Ye gads,” Acair said faintly.
“Well said.”
He took a deep breath. “Then the purpose of those spots of shadows is made clear.”
“And so it is.” She paused, then shook her head. “I’ve said more than I should have.”
“For once, I believe I agree with you,” he said. He wondered if there might be enough daylight to apply himself to fixing her roof or if some vile spider would slay him if he tried to stack wood in the dark. At the moment, he thought that might be preferable to what he faced. He pushed his chair back. “Thank you for tea, Mother.”
She eyed him over her spectacles. “Off to do foul deeds, my son?”
“Stack wood, rather.”
She nodded and a substantial ball of werelight appeared over his head. “The sun will set eventually,” she said. “Lots of wood waiting for you, of course.”
He nodded his thanks, then whistled for his minder spell to come along with him. If it snarled at him like a rabid dog, so much the better. It was a pity he couldn’t use it to hide behind, but it seemed to be more comfortable hovering behind him. At least he knew what to expect from it.
A mage stealing souls for unlimited power. He shook his head over the elegance of the thought. He wondered why his father hadn’t attempted the same, but Gair was a man with an insatiable desire for praise. Stealing power was messy and loud. This was something else entirely. If Acair hadn’t stepped in one of those spots himself, he never would have noticed them and he certainly wouldn’t have known what their purpose was.
Quiet work indeed.
He paused at the door to the kitchen, then turned and looked at his mother. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas where I might find a few more details about this mage we won’t discuss.”
She shook her head, looking more unsettled than he was comfortable with. “He was an afterthought, truth be told.”
“What made you think of him?” he asked, because he was terribly curious and had no sense of decorum when it came to conversations in his mother’s kitchen.
“I was thinking about your father, if you want to know,” she said stiffly, “and what a right proper bastard he was, wanting all that power that wasn’t his. I started to knit, then one thing led to another, and . . .” She shrugged helplessly. “My mind is ofttimes simply too much for even my knitting to contain.”
“Mother, you are a wonder.”
She blinked, then she colored a bit. “Get on with ye, ye wee fiend, before I toss a spell of death your way just for the sport of it.”
He’d had experience with just that sort of thing from her, so he got on with himself, avoided the sitting room he wasn’t entirely certain didn’t contain the muffled sounds of a prince of Neroche being smothered by women with spells, then crawled out the spell-free window he generally used for that sort of thing. He made his way without hesitation to his mother’s woodpile.
He had things to think on.
There had once been a mage who had created a spell to steal souls and his name meant thief.
He supposed it might be time to start another list.
Eleven
Léirsinn looked at the back door of Fionne of Fàs’s house and wondered just how the hell she was going to get past the spell that was hanging down there, peering at her from where it was apparently lounging outside on the roof.
She scowled, but that accomplished nothing at all except to remind her that that was exactly the sort of thing she’d been trying to avoid since she’d encountered Acair’s mother in the barn the day before. She would admit that she’d managed to keep herself firmly in that uncomfortable place between denying that she’d seen anything at all in the king of Neroche’s garden and telling herself it was simply a waking nightmare. She had reminded herself that she was a stable hand with a fondness for horses and a decent amount of skill in training them. She was neither witch nor mage nor any other sort of daft creature who saw things where things absolutely should not have been.
It hadn’t helped all that much, to be honest.
On the other hand, she’d been very successful at not looking at anything so far that day. Looking, if she dared call it that. She’d refrained from looking at Acair during luncheon lest she see anything about him that might be considered magical. She’d ignored with equal enthusiasm his flirtatious cousins, his mother, and Mansourah of Neroche. She had happily sought refuge in the library after inquiring where the unmagical books might be found.
That her peace should end thanks to wanting to take an innocent stroll in the healthful air outside likely shouldn’t have surprised her.
She glared at the spell she could see perfectly well there, which seemed to impress it somehow. It studied her for a moment or two, then retreated until there was merely a handlike shape lingering there. It waved her through, which she supposed either meant she would s
urvive or the damned thing wanted her to come closer so it might slay her more easily.
She took a deep breath, then bolted through the doorway.
She didn’t stop, choosing instead to walk with an enthusiasm another might have called panic until she reached the edge of the forest surrounding Mistress Fionne’s house. She leaned over with her hands on her thighs and simply gasped in bitterly cold air until she had breathed in too much. She coughed for a bit, which seemed a reassuringly normal thing to do, then straightened and turned back toward the house.
There seemed nothing terribly odd about the scene. There was snow lying in drifts, more particularly in the shadows. Acair was on the roof, hammering and swearing. His mother was wandering about with a basket on her arm, bending every now and again to pick something up. Léirsinn imagined she was gathering the last of the year’s nuts or perhaps a hearty tuber that had survived the snow so far. Surely that was the extent of it.
Surely.
After a moment or two, the back door flew open and out flounced two richly dressed, highly energetic women who looked a great deal like most other noblemen’s daughters Léirsinn had encountered in passing at her uncle’s manor. They were obviously on the hunt and Léirsinn didn’t need to ask for which prince that might be. Acair’s mother spoke with them for several minutes before they walked back inside, their shoulders sagging. Acair’s mother shouted something at her son, up there as he was on her roof, before she too went inside the house.
All perfectly normal. Not a spell in sight.
Léirsinn wondered if she were beginning to lose her wits in truth.
She put her hand out to steady herself on the tree next to her only to realize she’d put her hand on a person. She jumped in surprise, then realized it was only Mansourah of Neroche, hiding like the very sensible man he was.
He put his finger to his lips. “I’ve escaped.”
“Not for long, I’ll warrant.”
He shuddered. “You’ve no idea.”
“Actually, I’ve been listening to them for two days now, and I think you’re caught.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it and shook his head. “I am not interested in marriage at the moment and if I brought home one of those gels, assuming I wasn’t slain and divided as spoils between the two of them first, my brothers would finish me.”
She smiled. “Are they so awful, then?”
He put his hand on the tree and sighed. “Acair’s cousins? Nay, in truth, they aren’t. I would just prefer to watch all my brothers march on doggedly toward wedded bliss before I make the journey myself. What of you? Any black mages roaming about who tempt you?”
“Oh, not at all,” she said, hoping she sounded confident and a bit aloof. “I have horses to train, manure to shovel, grain to prepare. No time for anything else.”
He looked at her skeptically. “So if I were to wish very sincerely for that bastard atop the house to fall off and dash his head against a rock, what would you do?”
“Rush over to catch him, of course.”
“Just as I thought.” He nodded knowingly. “Whether you want to admit it or not, you have a rather bad case of heartburn for that lad there.”
“I don’t,” she protested. “I’m just here to keep him safe.”
“And that, my gel, is probably exactly what he needs.”
Léirsinn couldn’t imagine why, but she wasn’t going to argue the point. She watched Acair on his mother’s roof and it struck her just how ordinary he looked. There was honestly nothing about him except things she had seen in his eye a time or two—and what she might or might not have seen in the king of Neroche’s garden—that would have convinced her that he was anything more than he appeared: an exceptionally handsome, terribly elegant man.
She looked at Mansourah. “Am I losing my mind?”
He smiled sympathetically. “What makes you say that—or do I need to ask?”
She watched Acair for a bit longer, then turned to him. “Have you ever seen him, well, you know.” She waved an invisible witch’s wand. “That.”
“Ah,” Mansourah said slowly. “That. As a matter of fact, I have.”
“I’m not sure I believe it.” She said that, but she supposed she might have to continue to repeat those words before she believed them. She might never have seen Acair work so much as a single spell, but she’d had a peep at his soul and she was absolutely clear on what she’d seen there.
Mansourah leaned his shoulder against his tree and watched Acair for a bit before he looked back at her and smiled. “He’s a very bad mage, you know.”
“Bad at maging,” she managed, “or just bad in general?”
“The latter, assuredly. He’s very good at the former.”
“Do you truly think he’s as terrible as everyone seems to claim?”
“Not that my opinion matters,” he said carefully, “but I’ll give it to you since you’ve asked. I’ve crossed paths with him several times in the past and been quite happy to have a full dining table separating us. He has very pretty manners, but he is not a man I would want to meet on the field.”
“Yet you faced him over swords in that inn’s courtyard, in Eòlas.”
Mansourah smiled. “I didn’t say I was excessively clever, did I? That was also a battle with ordinary weapons, which leaves us on equal footing. I could choose a freckle on his nose and put an arrow into it from three hundred paces without any effort, which he knows very well. But I would do everything including tucking my tail between my legs and bolting not to face him over spells. Again,” he added half under his breath.
She smiled. “Details.”
He snorted. “You’re unkind to force me to embarrass myself, but I’ll indulge you this once. Acair and I once had a rather warm disagreement that I don’t remember with pleasure. I was younger then and very overcome by my growing affection for a woman he had escorted to supper. We sat down at the gaming table after supper where I subsequently accused him of cheating at cards.”
“Was he?” she asked in surprise.
“I don’t think he needs to,” Mansourah said ruefully. “And to answer your question, nay, I don’t think he was. It was several years ago, I was far stupider than I am today, and he is who he is. I thought it might do him good to learn a lesson about what true power looked like.”
She felt her mouth fall open a little. “You didn’t.”
“I am a prince of the house of Neroche,” he said haughtily, “and he is a bastard.” He paused, then laughed a little. “There you have my thinking at the time, which I freely admit was outrageous. The folly of youth, I suppose, but I was determined to prove a point. We exited our host’s private solar, took up places in his back garden, and there I was taught a lesson in humility. The only reason I escaped Acair’s elegant and very lethal spells—including a very nasty spell of death—was because his supper companion tempted him with a very fine glass of port, distracting him long enough for me to bolt. He followed me all the way home, of course, and ’tis only thanks to the superior quality of my family’s spells that I managed to get inside the front gates and slam them shut before he slew me.”
“Would he have killed you, do you think?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’m not worth the effort. Someone else, though?” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to speculate. I will say this, though: whoever has sent lads after him has only done so because they know Acair has no magic. I can’t think of anyone who would dare otherwise.”
“Will they kill him if they find him unprotected, do you think?”
“Absolutely.”
“Yet you’ve helped him so far.”
“I’ve helped you,” he corrected, “though I will admit I haven’t actively hindered him.” He glanced at Acair, then shook his head. “’Tis difficult to change when those around you don’t want you to. Miach offered him a bed inside the walls a
nd my sister-in-law the queen asked me to come after you both and keep watch, which says much about their opinions. I suppose the least I can do is afford him the same chance I would want in his place.”
“And if he never changes his ways?” she asked with a faint smile.
“I’ll wait for an opportunity to put an arrow through his eye,” Mansourah said with a smile, then his smile faded abruptly. “Damnation, I’m caught.”
Léirsinn looked at the back door as it opened and Acair’s cousins spilled out. They had obviously steeled themselves for another round of hunting.
“I’ll go keep those two busy if you’ll do me the very great favor of hurrying your lad along with his labors,” Mansourah said seriously. “I would very much like to escape this place at first light tomorrow, not that any future locales will be any less perilous than this one. At least in some foul lord’s dungeon I won’t find myself fighting off witches eyeing me as a potential husband.”
She supposed that might be preferable, but she also thought she might like to avoid any other dungeons. She’d already passed several hours in an elven king’s pit and she had no desire to repeat the experience.
She watched Mansourah walk off to collect his admirers, then leaned against the tree and thought about what he’d told her. A part of her wished she hadn’t heard any of it.
The less cowardly part of her decided that she couldn’t carry on any longer denying the truth.
She had latched on to every reasonable explanation for her recently acquired ability to see otherworldly things, everything from losing her eyesight all the way to losing her wits. Unfortunately, she currently found herself with no choice but to accept the undeniable and quite uncomfortable conclusion that the world around her was not at all what it seemed to be and she had no means of managing that.
She was beginning to have a painfully thorough amount of sympathy for Acair.