“You don’t have it all!” he announced triumphantly.
“Don’t I?” Acair drawled. “Well, allow me to give it another try.”
He glanced at Léirsinn, the wordsduck behind me, darlingon the tip of his tongue, only to realize he shouldn’t have looked away. He heard the second bolt of that deadly crossbow be cranked home and fired before he managed to look back at his opponent.
Time chose that horrific moment to slow to a crawl. He saw the bolt coming toward him and knew that he might step aside, but it would still strike him.
What he hadn’t anticipated was having Léirsinn leap in front of him.
He caught her as the bolt slammed into her chest.
He looked at Sladaiche. “You bloody bastard,” he gasped.
Sladaiche started toward them, his face contorted in fury. “She must live. Give her to me!”
Acair sank to his knees, cradling Léirsinn in his arms. She groped for his hand.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
Acair looked up and spat out his grandmother’s spell of essence meddling at the mage stomping through the dregs of water left in that fountain. Sladaiche froze in place as surely as if a very useful spell of essence meddling had rendered him motionless. Even Cruihniche of Fàs might have been impressed.
Acair looked down at Léirsinn and found her watching him with a faint smile.
“Stop dripping on my face,” she whispered.
He blinked rapidly. “You talk too much,” he said, his voice breaking. “Let’s be about our work before you wear yourself out, aye? You can yammer at me later.”
She smiled faintly, but closed her eyes. Acair ignored the flash of panic that swept through him, not for the world, or for the spell that required the woman in his arms, but for the possibility that he might, at almost a century, lose the very thing that he thought might make the rest of his years worth living.
He pulled himself away from that place of fear, looked at Sladaiche, and repeated the dragon’s spell of soul thievery. He looked at Léirsinn. “Your turn, darling.”
She coughed, then whispered four of the words, then paused. Acair watched her eyelids close and thought he might have made a noise that sounded a bit like a howl.
And that had absolutely nothing to do with the finishing of that spell.
He felt hands on his shoulders, one on each side.
He looked up and found that red-haired gel from Eòlas standing on one side of him. A man sank down to his knees on the other. The man looked at him from eyes that were Léirsinn’s.
“Ye gads,” he wheezed. “Relatives.”
“Hurry,” the red-haired wench said. “She must wake and finish.”
Acair had several thoughts about that, but the most unfortunate was that she was right. He leaned over and kissed Léirsinn’s forehead.
“Darling,” he said softly. “Two more words, my love.”
Her eyelids fluttered, then she looked at him.
“Last two,” he said with the best smile he could muster. “Then you can rest.”
She nodded, and breathed out the final two words of the spell.
Acair watched as Sladaiche soul came out of him and slipped to the ground, forming a pool of shadow. He wondered briefly what he would need to do with the man’s corpse, but the ravages of time and evil deeds had apparently been waiting to see to that. Sladaiche’s form faded to ashes that slowly scattered into the night.
“Attend to his soul later,” the red-haired woman said, “and heal Léirsinn now. We’ll help you.”
Acair wanted to ask her how the hell she thought she was going to do anything but watch him weep as he watched his love perish, but he was too distraught to do anything but nod. He felt their hands on his shoulders still, as if they were there to lend him their strength.
