The Dreamer's Song

  The sight brought him up short. What sort of power was that? He had done the same thing to others, of course, but he was who he was. He’d never seen someone do it to anyone else, and he’d certainly never had the like perpetrated on his own sweet self. It was profoundly unsettling, but he gave that feeling the boot right off. He was nothing if not equal to any fight, no matter who his opponent might be.

  He looked at Léirsinn. “Take Sianach and go,” he said urgently. “Fly back to my grandmother’s. She’ll give you a safe haven.”

  She was absolutely white with what he imagined was fear, but she wasn’t moving.

  “Léirsinn,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and coming very close to shaking her to see if she were enspelled or not. “You must go.”

  “I cannot leave you,” she said hoarsely.

  Well, the sentiment was appreciated, though he thought it extremely ill-advised. He took less than a trio of heartbeats to decide there was nothing to be done save hope she would have the good sense to flee if he fell. For all he knew, she thought he wouldn’t.

  He looked at her one last time, nodded sharply, then strode past her out into the glade before he thought better of it.

  Actually, what was there to think on? That mage there was obviously accustomed to the theatrics of black magery and possessing a few decent spells, but surely nothing more. He had certainly dealt with much worse in the past. He’d been in full possession of his magic, of course, but just because he couldn’t use that magic at the moment didn’t mean he didn’t have it still.

  If nothing else, he would bluster his way through. He’d done it before.

  He stopped some two-dozen paces away from the man and looked at him with as much disdain as he could muster.

  “Face me if you dare,” he said coldly.

  The mage only shifted and looked at him from inside a heavy hood. He said nothing.

  Well, that was annoying, but perhaps a sterner hand was called for. “Nothing comes without a price,” he warned. “You will pay a heavy one for your cheek, I assure you.”

  The mage laughed, a harsh, cutting sound. “There is no price to be paid when I’m the one with all the spells.”

  “And why would you think you’re the one with all the spells?” Acair asked softly.

  “Because I know more about you than you think.”

  Shards of steel suddenly erupted from the man’s mouth as he spoke, a dozen impossibly sharp spikes that remained there, fixed, as his words slid past them.

  Acair caught his breath. The sight was without a doubt the worst thing he had ever seen in his very long life of tiptoeing in and out of places he never should have gone. The spells the mage wove were simple, foolishly so, but they took on something entirely different as they came out of his mouth. They were horrifying.

  Considering how many of those sorts of things he’d used in the past, he thought he might be something of an authority on the same.

  He looked behind him to see if Léirsinn had actually listened to him and fled. He wasn’t surprised to find that she had ignored him, though he genuinely wished she hadn’t. She was staring at the man out in the clearing, looking as surprised as he freely admitted he felt. She looked at him.

  “Who is that?” she mouthed.

  He gave her his best no idea but we’d best run very fast look, which he was certain she’d interpreted properly. A pity that course wasn’t open to him.

  The other thing was, Mansourah of Neroche had suddenly risen to his feet and was throwing spells at that foul mage that left Acair almost blinking in surprise. Mansourah’s command of slurs and insults was lacking, of course, but Acair expected nothing less. Obviously a few suggestions needed to be made.

  The prince’s collection of truly terrible spells, however, was genuinely surprising. That, he decided, was something that might make for a decent conversation over a decanter of very expensive port.

  It occurred to him rather abruptly that whilst he was standing there, babbling nonsense in his own head, that pampered prince from that rustic hovel in the north was doing what had to be done. It was ridiculous and embarrassing and had to stop immediately.

  He tried to think clearly, but for the first time in his life, he found he couldn’t sort through everything before him. He began to feel a bit of sympathy for those mages he’d destroyed in his past, lads he had stalked, terrified, then sent off to their just rewards only after having left them groveling at his feet.

  Damnation, but he was starting to see why there were places in the world where he just wasn’t welcome.

  “Acair,” Léirsinn called, “look. Mansourah says . . . well, look!”

  Acair forced himself to focus on the matter before him and knew as clearly as if Mansourah had shouted the same that the prince wanted him to flee. The spells were coming at that great-hearted archer like a rain of arrows shot from scores of bows. Endless, painfully sharp, impossible to elude—

  Acair took a step backward in surprise.

  He supposed that might have been the worst thing he’d ever found himself doing. He couldn’t even credit it to an unfortunate stumble. It was cowardice, nothing less.

  It was intolerable.

  He gave himself a metaphorical slap across the face, stilled his mind, and forced himself to think clearly. He had the spell of un-noticing he’d retrieved from under his grandmother’s chair, of course, but that would only buy him a moment or two more. It wasn’t going to be enough.

  When it came right down to it, the solution was simple.

  What he needed was a spell of death.

  He glanced casually behind him and found that his minder spell was standing some ten paces away, watching not him but the mage standing in the middle of the clearing. He took an equally careful look out in the glade and found that their enemy was so wrapped up in his own spells that he wasn’t paying heed to anything but the drivel coming out of his own mouth. He was currently creating a wave of darkness that dropped to the ground and spread out from his feet, slithering as it crawled onward.

  Acair wasn’t terribly fond of snakes, as it happened, so he reached for the first thing that came to mind. It was a spell of return, something he had used so often as a child with his brothers that it took no longer than a heartbeat to create it and send it flinging toward the mage there.

  His minder spell whirled on him with an angry hiss, but he ignored it. He slipped the spell of un-noticing into his hand from where he’d stashed it earlier—just in case—up his sleeve, looked at Mansourah one more time, then flung that spell up into the air. It fell over him, Léirsinn, and that damned shadow of his like a gossamer layer of sparkling snow. That seen to, he began his most potent spell of death—

  Only that same spell didn’t rush away from him, it came at him. He watched his own spell of death be carried aloft toward him by that damned minder spell that certainly should have been more appreciative of how he’d tried to save its sorry arse—

  He heard Léirsinn cry out, but he couldn’t seem to turn toward her.

  Mansourah fell, and he could do nothing to stop that either.

  The only thing that gave him any pleasure at all was watching that mage leap back, fighting off his own creations that had turned on him.

  Acair understood that, though he wished he didn’t. He looked at his own minder spell, a spell not created by him but designed for him, and wished he’d had the time to reason with it. He hadn’t done any foul magic, just a simple spell that he wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t used a time or two on his mother’s hens in the springtime when they’d strayed out of the coop. What harm could possibly be assigned to something so innocuous?

  That spell of death was perhaps another matter, but he’d talked himself out of tighter spots, to be sure.

  He took a deep breath. The game was being played to its very end and he wished he’d had the energy to cry f
oul and insist on a review of the rules.

  Unfortunately, as it was, he could only watch death approach, loom up over him, and prepare to fall on him.

  Damn it anyway.

  Seventeen

  The forest was gone.

  Léirsinn supposed it wasn’t, really, but it was as if a wall had slammed itself down in front of them, blocking out nothing but everything at the same time. The cloaked mage in the clearing was still frantically fighting off whatever it was he’d created that had turned around and was rushing back toward him. She had watched Mansourah fall, which likely meant he was dead, and she wasn’t entirely certain Acair wasn’t going to follow him to the grave.

  She was sure, however, that she would never forget the sight of Acair facing off with that terrible worker of magic in the glade. Worse still had been actually seeing shards of steel coming out of that man’s mouth, steel that became words that were spells of death and despair and things that made absolutely no sense to her, though she couldn’t deny their reality. Those terrible spells had soon been accompanied by things that crawled without ceasing toward them.

  She had watched Acair weave his own spell and wanted to stop him, truly she had, but she hadn’t had voice enough to even try. She had also failed to warn him about the spell that endlessly shadowed him, though she supposed there had been no need. He had known what using magic would mean, yet he had done it anyway.

  His minder spell had slammed into him, stealing his breath.

  He had fallen.

  That damned spell of death now stood over him, studying him as he lay there motionless. It leaned over him as if it wanted to take what faint breath was left—

  Léirsinn didn’t stop to consider her plan, she simply threw herself over Acair’s chest and waited for his minder spell to fall on them both and slay them. Acair was still breathing, barely, but it was such labored breathing that she was absolutely sure he would soon draw his last. She felt something very cold on her back and braced herself to lead the way into that place in the east where she’d been told there was no more sorrow or toil. At the moment, she couldn’t have cared less what was to be found there if she could just get there without being in agony.

  Yet still she breathed and still that terrible chill rested its bloody hand on her back.

  She turned her head far enough to look up only to find Acair’s minder spell looming over her. If she’d had it in her, she would have screamed herself hoarse. She supposed she’d been wise never to look it in the eye, but now that was all she seemed to be able to do.

  The horrors mirrored in those soulless eyes were absolutely beyond anything she’d ever imagined.

  She knew with a certainty she’d never felt before that she was going to die. She would go first, then Acair, then perhaps the entire world. It wasn’t death so much as the thought that she had absolutely no means of stopping what was about to slay her—

  Magic . . .

  She looked up at the spell in surprise. She wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t spoken to her, but at the moment she was sure she didn’t care.

  Magic? What a ridiculous thought. Her people knew horses, not spells. She was no different from them—

  Send for him.

  She looked at the spell, startled. “Stop that.” Then she frowned. “Send for who?”

  Soilléir . . .

  “Why the hell would I want . . . to . . .”

  She stopped speaking, because suddenly, everything she remembered hearing about the man came back to her in a rush.

  He had spells of essence changing.

  She blinked, then had to force herself not to shrink back from the thought that suddenly presented itself to her. If he could change things, change them permanently, could he not change her into a mage, or a witch, or some species of maid who could at least wave a wand and induce something besides laughter and eye-rolling in those so gestured at?

  She pushed herself off Acair and heaved herself to her feet. She wrapped her arms around herself and wished more desperately than she ever had before that she was the sort who faced terrible things and managed them by bursting into tears.

  Instead, all she could apparently do was shake.

  She dropped to her knees and groped at Acair’s belt for his purse before she thought better of it. If he’d been alive, he would have made some lecherous comment, of that she was sure. That he said nothing, but continued to lie there, seemingly not even drawing in breath any longer, was the most alarming thing she’d seen in a string of absolutely devastating sights.

  She found the leather purse, then found she couldn’t get it open. A long, spindly finger that wasn’t shadow and wasn’t bone came and touched the knot.

  The knot vanished and the purse opened.

  She thanked the creature that put its hand again on her back, chilling her to the marrow, then yanked out everything Acair no doubt considered precious. She dropped it all on his chest, ignoring the pattern all that power made over him, then pulled up the single, golden rune that seemed to be fashioned of sunlight.

  It wasn’t the piece of business he’d pulled from under his grandmother’s chair. This was something entirely different. She took the rune and held it up. Acair’s minder seemed torn between hissing in anger and murmuring in pleasure. It reached out that same bony, shadowy finger toward the sparkling rune—

  “Nay,” Léirsinn said, covering it in her hand. She pushed herself to her feet, stood over Acair, then looked at the spell. “You may not have him.”

  The spell pulled back a pace or two, folded its arms over its chest, and sent her a look of challenge.

  You have no magic.

  She was going to change that sooner rather than later.

  She took a deep breath, then cast the rune up into the air.

  The world seemed to hold its breath for an endless moment, then it shuddered. Léirsinn watched Acair’s minder spell back away from her until it finally curled itself up into a little shape that crouched at Acair’s feet. It hissed a final time, then fell silent.

  Léirsinn felt the world part behind her. She spun around, steadied herself, then gaped at a place where a doorway had opened where no doorway should have been.

  A blond man walked out of nothing and stood there, ten paces away from her.

  She looked—very well, she looked at him and thought her eyes might catch on fire. Not in the way Acair tended to inspire—unrepentant flirt that he was—but simply because she felt as if she were staring straight into the sun that had fallen to the earth. She drew her sleeve across her eyes and the brightness was gone, but the impression of staggering power remained. She could see it stretching up toward the sky and down into the ground, as if the man in front of her had been some sort of tree fashioned of crystal and sunlight and spring rains that were endless and glorious—

  She decided abruptly that she needed to make her home in a place with trees. Perhaps if she had them to hand where she could lean against them and have them send showers of needles and leaves atop her head, she might stop seeing them in places where only mortals should have been standing.

  Or perhaps she simply needed to stop associating with mages and their ilk.

  The blond man looked at Acair, then back at her. “Léirsinn of Sàraichte,” he said mildly. “You called for me.”

  “Are you—” Her voice cracked, but she supposed that wasn’t unexpected. She had been yelling at Acair’s spell quite vigorously for longer than she likely should have. “Are you Soilléir?”

  He smiled. She frowned because he was altogether too handsome and too young to command what imaginary power he was credited with, but she couldn’t deny what she’d seen and how he’d simply walked out of nothing.

  “I am,” he said. “How may I aid you?”

  She felt her mouth fall open, then she managed to retrieve her jaw and glare at him. She gestured furiously at Acair. “
Well, look at him! How do you think you can aid me?”

  Soilléir peered at Acair from a distance, something that seemed thoroughly unhelpful. “He looks senseless, but his spell is still over there keeping watch so I assume he isn’t dead. What will you have me do for him?”

  She threw up her hands because that seemed preferable to taking them and strangling the man in front of her. She’d heard Acair express that desire more than once under his breath and she was starting to understand what he meant by it.

  “I don’t know,” she exclaimed. “Do whatever it is you do.”

  Soilléir studied her for a long moment. “That isn’t why you called me, is it?”

  She didn’t want to tell him what she’d been thinking, mostly because it was beyond ridiculous. Men were men, stable lasses were full of good sense, and the whole of her life recently felt a great deal like a waking dream.

  She looked around herself for a distraction but only wound up looking at the place where the rune had somehow carved a spot in the world. It should have seemed like nothing past a bit of fresh air after the dust and fear that evil mage had stirred up and sent crawling after her, but somehow it was something altogether different. She could see the fabric of the world, see the threads of time and dreams and something that looked a great deal like gold—

  She stepped backward and sat down, hard, right on Acair’s belly. That he didn’t move was alarming. What she was seeing in front of her was worse.

  She forced herself to look at the man standing in front of her. Whoever, whatever he was, Soilléir—she couldn’t bring to mind at the moment where he called home—was full of magic so terrible and beautiful, she could hardly look at him. He was the one, she reminded herself, who changed things and changed them for good. And if he could change things—events, crowns, destinies—perhaps he could change even her.

  It was, after all, why she’d called him to where she was. She had thrown that damned golden rune into the air because she had deliberately set aside the part of her that disbelieved that he could do what she needed him to do.