He blinked a time or two, then his mouth fell open. “If he had the spell, then he would have used it long before now.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Why buy a horse if you’re not going to ride it?”
He took her face in his hands and kissed her.
She would have commented on that but he had released her and had begun to pace. She put her fingers over her mouth and watched him, not sure if she should laugh or weep. The man was exactly as she’d seen him in the garden at Tor Neroche.
Light and dark, good and evil, all perfectly balanced.
He stopped and looked at her, then froze. “What?”
“You are . . .” She blew out her breath. “I don’t know what you are.”
“Besotted,” he said cheerfully, taking a step toward her.
She held up her hand and stopped him before he came any closer. “You’re distracting, that much I can say with certainty. What do you think?”
“Many things, but I’ll share those later,” he said. “About our present business? I think you’re brilliant. If the mage we’re after had that spell—”
“He would be doing more than making spots of shadow,” she finished. “Is that what you’re thinking?”
He nodded, looking extremely relieved. “If he had the spell in truth, there would be nothing stopping him from using it. Either he is waiting for the perfect moment to spring his evil on the entirety of the Nine Kingdoms, or he doesn’t have the spell.”
“But he stole it.”
“People steal many things.”
“And you would know.”
“I, darling, would absolutely know.” He smiled. “We have just purchased ourselves a bit more time to save the world.”
She shook her head and smiled in spite of herself. “Look at you, rushing off to engage in such a mighty piece of do-gooding.”
He looked a little startled. “When you put it that way, I think I’m a bit unsettled by the thought.”
“I’m sure you’ll make up for it eventually.”
He reached for her hand. “That is a piece of truth I can willingly embrace. Let’s walk a bit more and I’ll comfort myself with the same.”
She nodded and picked her way through the forest with him for a bit longer until they found the path again. It was quiet, she would admit that, and she didn’t feel the presence of a mage with Acair’s demise first on his list of things to do. Then again, what did she know? She was a horse gel who had just had magic shoved into her veins.
Unless she’d imagined it all.
“Perhaps those pools of shadow are the best the man can do at the moment,” Acair said suddenly.
“You mean, that’s all he can remember of the spell?”
“Aye.” He looked at her. “I think if he had that spell, we would all be soulless husks. Given that we aren’t, I suggest that he is missing what he would very much like to have.”
“Do you think he lost it?”
“Involuntarily?” he mused. “It would certainly be a tempting prize.”
“If it was stolen from him, I wonder who did it?”
He shook his head. “No idea, but that might be a question we want to answer sooner rather than later.” He took a deep breath, then looked at her. “I think a journey to Cothromaiche might be in order, but I think I’m in need of a quite utilitarian spell of death I tucked discreetly under a particular kingly throne. I’m not sure I want to use anything else at this point.”
“Well, we know what happens if you do,” she said, hoping that someday she would be able to forget the sight of him overcome by that minder spell’s magic.
“We do,” he agreed. He paused, then shot her an uncomfortable look. “I should warn you that the king of the dwarves is not one of my admirers.”
“And yet you want to visit him?”
“Uachdaran of Léige won’t have a clue I’ve been there,” he said without hesitation, “because he would slay me as easily as to look at me if he did. It’s over the walls for me whilst you hide safely behind a useful spell of un-noticing we’re enjoying thanks to that busybody from Cothromaiche. I can, as it happens, show you how to create the same thing when we’re at our leisure.”
“Will you?”
He stopped and looked at her. “Unwillingly,” he admitted slowly. He paused again, then shook his head. “Magic is a bit like fire. ’Tis easy for it to grow out of control.”
“I won’t let it,” she said confidently. “For all we know, I don’t really have it and Soilléir was just having me on.”
He only sent her a look she couldn’t quite identify, but it seemed a bit like pity.
“What is it?” she asked.
He simply shook his head and drew her into his embrace. “Nothing,” he said hoarsely. “Nothing at all.” He pulled away. “We’d best continue on our way. Soilléir likely distracted that mage only to the count of a hundred before he lost interest and wandered off to the nearest pub.”
She imagined that wasn’t the case, but she didn’t want to linger in the area to find out. “A safe haven would be useful,” she offered. “So you could show me what I need to know, if it weren’t so utterly ridiculous to think I might be able to, well, you know.”
He smiled, pained. “I do know, darling. We’ll find somewhere, right after I nip in and out of Léige.”
“Didn’t you just say that was the last place you wanted to go?”
“It still is, which is why we won’t be making a lengthy visit. In and out with as little notice as possible. We’ll find a safe haven down the road.”
She couldn’t argue with that. She listened to him call for his horse, then prepared herself for another journey much farther off the ground than she wanted to be.
• • •
There was something, she had to admit after a night spent flying on the back of a marginally well-behaved dragon, about conceding that the world was full of things she hadn’t known existed before.
Barn work was a sturdy, reliable bit of business that had shaped her days and given meaning to her life. She had relished the chance to ride glorious horses and, for the most part, avoid the doings of men much loftier than she was herself. Her life had been simple, predictable, and ordinary.
Then she’d watched Acair of Ceangail fumble with a pitchfork and known instinctively that her life would never be the same.
She had seen elves and kings and runes that sparkled with a light of their own. She’d survived a night or two in a witch’s Lesser Parlor and slept uneasily on the back of a horse who had turned himself into something just slightly more substantial than a gust of wind. She had seen things that shouldn’t have been there, but had been in spite of anything she thought.
She had set trees on fire with magic that had been dropped into her veins like a plague.
She still wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about the latter, or if she even believed it. She had set trees on fire thanks to repeating words given to her, but that could have just as easily been something Soilléir had done to make sport of her.
With all she’d seen, she had to admit that she was as she’d been before.
Skeptical.
She turned her head and rested her cheek against Acair’s back, primarily to block out the wind, but partly because it was comforting. She looked at the spell she could see hanging over them like a fine mist. It was something Soilléir had done, that much she knew. Un-noticing, she thought he had called it.
“I think we should land,” Acair said, shouting over the wind. “I might fall out of the saddle, else.”
She had no reason to disagree, so she patted his shoulder in answer, then held on as Sianach did a respectable job getting them out of the sky and onto a decent-looking road. She clambered off his back and had to stand there for a bit before she thought her legs would work as they should.
“Where
are we, do you think?”
“Hopefully outside the king’s border,” he said wearily. “I think Soilléir’s spell will provide enough anonymity that we might cross through the land without worry. The place is bloody cold, but we’re dressed well enough for it. Let’s walk for a bit, then we’ll take wing again, pop in and out of the palace, then be off on our errand before another day passes.”
She nodded and walked with him along the road. The air was chilly, but the sky was cloudless. She discovered that if she looked carefully enough, she could see the spell that surrounded them. She reached out and touched it, then jumped a little as she realized she could feel it. It was an odd thing, as if threads of silk were draped down in a curtain around them, floating along with them as they walked. It was beautiful, though, and she found herself becoming slightly disoriented as she looked at it.
It made her wonder if that was its intent.
She wasn’t at all certain how long she walked in the morning sunlight, but it was long enough that she managed to take one of the threads and wrap it around her finger. The magic didn’t seem to mind and given that she felt as though she were walking in a dream anyway, she supposed she didn’t mind.
Walking into Acair’s outstretched arm, though, brought her back to herself with a start.
She looked in front of them and found that they were sharing a road with people she hadn’t noticed before. She supposed they were dwarves, though she wasn’t entirely sure how to tell. Some of the men were of a shorter stature, others rather tall. They were sharp-eyed, those lads there, and carried weapons that mostly seemed to include battle-axes and the occasional highly polished sword.
A man stood in front of them all. He was shorter than the rest, but that was more than made up for by the height of the crown he was wearing. He was looking at them, yet not seeing them apparently.
“Uachdaran of Léige,” Acair murmured.
She jumped in spite of herself. It was that moment, she supposed, when things truly began to go south for them.
It should have occurred to her that she was holding on to a thread of Soilléir of Cothromaiche’s spell and that any sort of violent movement on her part would result in something untoward happening to that spell. Of all the things she expected, though, having the whole damned thing fall down in a heap around them was definitely not it.
The king’s eyes widened and he pointed a finger sternly at Acair.
“You!”
“Ah,” Acair began, “Your Majesty. A pleasure as always. Allow me to introduce my companion, Léirsinn of Sàraichte—”
“Seize him,” the king commanded, then he paused and looked at Acair closely. “I heard you are forbidden to use your magic. Is that so?”
“Well,” Acair said smoothly, “that is a bit of a—”
“Seize him!” the king shouted.
And that, Léirsinn supposed, was that. She looked at Acair as the king’s men swarmed around him.
“Sorry,” she mouthed.
He lifted his eyebrows briefly, but that was the last she saw of him as he disappeared under a cloud of dwarf and spell.
She reached for her own magic, but it was as if someone had handed her the reins to a mythical beast with six feet and fangs. She fumbled a bit with things she had absolutely no idea how to use, then finally looked at the king of the dwarves. He was watching her narrowly.
“Haven’t figured out how to use it yet, eh, missy?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
He grunted at her. “Come along, then. If you’re keeping company with that little wretch from Ceangail, I’m not sure what I’ll do with you, but you’ll be safer inside my walls than out.”
Léirsinn supposed he had a point, but she wasn’t sure she was looking forward to discovering where he thought to house her.
Life was, as she had reminded herself more than once over the past pair of weeks, so much simpler in a barn.
Twenty
Acair sat in Uachdaran of Léige’s dungeon and thought he might want to consider a new and goodly work of perhaps going about the Nine Kingdoms, extolling the virtues of forgiveness.
He wished he’d had the chance to discuss the same with the king of their current locale before the man had sized him up for any magical tools, then left his lads to wrap him in a spell of fettering and carry him off to a place where there were no doors. Not that there needed to be any doors on his current cell. The spells were, as it happened, impenetrable.
Was that a light?
His heart leapt at the hint of something besides unrelenting darkness, though he wondered why. The king was likely having him hauled upstairs so he could be summarily put to death.
He was rather surprised when, after his eyes had stopped burning, he looked out of his cell to find Léirsinn standing there. She sank down to her knees and set the candle aside.
“Are you hurt?”
“Me?” he croaked. “Never been more fit and full of good humors. You?”
“He offered me a guest chamber,” she said uneasily. “I pointed out to him that his favorite mount had thrush.”
“You’re handy.”
“You’ve no idea.” She paused. “I might also have come close to setting his audience chamber on fire. I believe it unnerved him.”
Acair smiled in spite of himself. “Do tell.”
She shifted. “I lost my temper. I think one of the tapestries nearest his hearth might still bear a singe mark or two as a result.”
He would have laughed, but he wasn’t sure he had the energy for it. “And then?”
She looked at him. “He’s going to put you to death.”
“Is he?” Acair asked lightly. “Such a pity.”
“He doesn’t like you.”
“The feeling, as it happens, is quite mutual.”
She looked at him with a frown. “I thought all was forgiven, forgotten, and left in the past. What did you do to him?”
Acair shifted. “The tale is long and tedious.”
“I’m completely free of engagements for the afternoon, so say on.”
He leaned his head back against the wall. It was freezing, which was a boon for the state of his pounding head. It was also damned cold, which was less pleasant for his backside, but he didn’t imagine he was in a position to complain.
“The truth is,” he admitted, “I may or may not have spirited away one of his daughters for a fortnight of pub crawling.”
She rolled her eyes. “He has daughters?”
“Several. A son or two as well, I think. Terrifying souls, all.”
“And?” she prodded.
“Are you curious about the results of too much quaffing of ale or how Papa Uachdaran reacted?”
She smiled. “I suspect there is much more to the story than a few mugs of ale.”
“I refuse to admit to it.”
He refused in part because he’d failed but mostly because he didn’t want any eavesdropping guardsmen to remind the king about his true offenses.
He looked at her, looked at her hand that was so close to his but so completely out of reach, then leaned his head closer to her.
“I believe I need to teach you some spells,” he whispered.
“What if I destroy the underpinnings of the palace?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time someone had tried,” he muttered, but he supposed clarifying that wasn’t the best thing to do at the moment either.
He also imagined he could refrain from pointing out that Uachdaran of Léige wasn’t as much of a purist as he might have wanted the rest of the world to know. That one knew spells . . . well, Acair wasn’t one to recoil at much of anything save a poorly cooked plate of roast potatoes, but the dwarf king’s spells—
Well, they were almost as vile as the ale he brewed, and that was saying something.
He look
ed at her seriously. “I had hoped we wouldn’t find ourselves in such straits.”
“I’ll muck out a few stalls in the morning,” she said. “Perhaps that will be enough.”
He didn’t hold out any hope for that. The truth was, he could only see one path in front of him and it wasn’t one he particularly wanted to walk. He was going to die, Léirsinn was full of magic she couldn’t control, and the fate of several no doubt critically important social events was in a total shambles.
Never mind the world and the chance to watch it continued to turn.
He was faintly surprised by how desperately he wanted to be a part of that. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see how that was going to be possible unless something miraculous occurred.
He looked down at Léirsinn’s hand on the other side of that invisible spell that locked him in the dungeon, then realized if he put his hand just so, it almost looked as if their hands were touching.
“It’s very dark here,” she said quietly.
“I’ll give you a spell for werelight,” he said with a sigh. “If you are determined to beat it out of me, I might tell you how to add a few things to it that scatter shadows of rodents about, just for the sheer sport of it.” He met her eyes. “If you like.”
“You are a very bad mage.”
“I am a very good mage at bad magic,” he said, wishing he’d been better at it. “But I’ll only teach you virtuous and lovely spells, if that would ease your mind.”
“I think I might like the one laced with rodent shadows.”
He smiled in spite of himself. Murder, mayhem, mischief. He knew Léirsinn would never embrace any of them fully, more particularly the murder part unless she entertained thoughts of the same with regard to Soilléir of Cothromaiche, but she might be willing to get her hands a bit dirty for the good of the cause.
“Are the king’s spells here strong?” she asked.
Ah, and there was the sticking point. He sighed deeply, then leaned his head back against the absolutely icy stone. “Unfortunately.”
“Then we’re going to die.”
“Possibly.”
“Are you honestly giving up this easily?”