Ollamh didn’t look terribly convinced, but he did look as if he might soon lose whatever luncheon he’d ingested earlier. Acair shooed him out into the passageway, offered a friendly wave to his keepers holding up the far wall, then shut the door before they could offer any greeting in return.
He walked back over to the fire, knelt down to peer under the bed, and came as close to fainting as he ever had in his life. Finding himself sprawled rather suddenly with his face against the floor and his arse up in the air was an indignity he could have done without. It took more effort than he was happy with to retrieve Léirsinn’s book from under the bed, then very gingerly ease himself back up to his knees.
He crawled up onto the divan with all the energy of a black mage properly breathing his last thanks to a lifetime of bad deeds, then had to simply close his eyes and wheeze until he thought he might manage to look at his surroundings and find them doing something besides galloping wildly around him.
No more dwarvish dungeons. His next stay in one was going to kill him.
He was grateful his hands were cleaner than they had been and refused to grow misty-eyed over the woman who had offered him such a tender service. The insults to the divan, however, were definitely going to be extensive. He likely should have been appalled by the condition of his clothing and what it would do to Uachdaran’s furniture, but given that the man hadn’t allowed him even so much as a quarter hour outside near a well, perhaps he had no need to be fastidious about his sofa-perching.
He waited until his head cleared a bit more, then turned his attentions to what he held in his hands. It was an unassuming thing, perhaps a bit bigger than his outstretched hand, just the size his mother preferred for her endless scribblings. He had the feeling the woman would choose an empty book over a last meal.
What made what he was looking at presently so desirable was the fact that his mother’s mother had taken the time to jot down a few things she no doubt thought would unnerve him. A fair trade, perhaps, for forcing him to leave behind what he’d broken into her solar to steal. If he ever had the chance to scamper off with thatBook of Oddities and Disgusting Spellshis mother had advised him to acquire, he absolutely would and not suffer a single twinge of regret. He’d had a quick peek at its contents and wasn’t quite sure he’d yet recovered from what he’d read there.
He’d also had a hasty glance at what he held in his hands, but he wasn’t sure if he could trust his memory where its contents were concerned. If his grandmother had seen fit to share even a handful of disconcerting things, he would be penning her a flourishy thank-you as well. He took as deep a breath as he could manage at the moment, then opened the thin tome, prepared to give the scribblings there a proper study.
It hadn’t seemed as if she’d been at her labors very long, but apparently he’d been more distracted by wondering how to escape her solar than he’d realized. Her notes were simply bursting with nastiness. If he hadn’t been so damned tired, he might have indulged in a chortle of delight. Unfortunately, things were what they were at the moment and all he could do was drag in ragged breaths and try not to leave faintly grubby fingerprints behind as he continued to gingerly turn pages and shake his head over what he found there.
Spells were laid out, vile mages were listed—his name wasn’t to be found anywhere on that roster which he supposed should have stung a bit—and a handful of oddities that apparently intrigued her had been jotted down for his perusal.
He sighed and turned another page, expecting to find that she would have nothing more to say to him save a wish that he speedily meet his end. Instead, he found himself facing a spell of reconstruction that left him almost recoiling, he who had spent the bulk of his life foisting vileness off onto almost everyone he met.
The thing was absolutely appalling, merciless in its workings and rather more permanent than what he was accustomed to using. It was something, he had to admit, that he might have hesitated to use unless absolutely necessary.
He reread the spell twice before it sank in what he was looking at. It wasn’t essence changing in the usual sense, but it came as close as anything he’d ever seen. The idea that he might mold something into a shape it didn’t particularly want to take and hold it there for far longer than a simple spell of reconstruction should have been able to manage was astonishing.
Ye gads, what was his grandmother about and why didn’t she have better locks on her hidden cubbies?
He continued on past that thought before he had time to speculate on what his brothers might do with such a thing. He had his own way of taking bits of his own power and infusing them onto whatever talisman suited him, but that was less essence changing than it was essence slathering. There he was simply taking the same sort of energy he would have thrown behind a spell and more or less wrapping it around his chosen bits and bobs.
This, however…he took a deep breath. This particular spell made his own look like a village witch’s charm. He could hardly stop himself from trying it out to see just exactly where its limits might lie. He looked to his right and found his ever-present companion crouched on the floor, peeking over the arm of the divan at him as if it might be suffering a bit of unease.
He understood. The spell was terrifying.
He memorized it without hesitation, of course, then repeated it silently, checking himself against what he was reading. He mouthed the last word and found himself rather glad, all things considered, that he’d memorized the bloody thing before the damned page caught fire.
He was so startled by that turn of events that he flipped the book up in the air and thoroughly failed at making a grab for it on its way down. It landed, quite fortuitously, face-down against the rug there. He supposed there was no sense in not smothering the flames by means of his boot placed gingerly atop the cover.
He waited until he thought a proper amount of time had passed before he picked the book up and turned it over, then swore when he realized that the whole business had been nothing more than the words having burned themselves off the page. The paper bore absolutely no sign of having recently been alight.
Theatrics. It ran in the family.
He ignored that damned spell next to him, squeaking as it hid, and considered what his grandmother’s purpose had been in giving him something so dangerous. Even merely repeating the words in his mind set up a merry dance between them and whatever Cothromaichian spell Soilléir had used to bring him back from the brink of death. Perhaps Cruihniche of Fàs had simply wanted to make him miserable.
Essence changing or essence meddling. He could hardly wait to have the time to investigate the difference between the two.
He turned another page, fully expecting to find there a few words of comfort and encouragement.
Instead, he found a map.
He was, as it happened, not unfamiliar with maps. He was also not unfamiliar with the making of maps. He had taken his half-brother Rùnach’s book of spells, removed those valiant attempts from inside the covers, then inserted a map of his own making in their place. That map had been a curious one, he had to admit, full of scratches that he’d made based on a few furtive glances over the shoulder of a very famous cartographer, Casan of Frith-rathad. The man lived far too close to Bruadair for his comfort, but it had been worth the fraying of his nerves to pose as a servant long enough to eavesdrop for a fortnight.
He didn’t suppose it was a place he would venture again without very good reason indeed.
A furtive tap sounded against the door. He frowned, torn. There were things on his grandmother’s map that he suspected he needed to investigate further, never mind that they left him feeling as if he might like a lengthy lie-down sooner rather than later.
But perhaps trouble was afoot. He heaved himself up from the sofa, paid the price in a robust sway that almost left him cracking his head against the footpost of Léirsinn’s bed, then staggered over to answer the knock. He held his Gran’s scribblings casually behind his back and opened the door, hoping it was someone with food.
It was instead someone with a book.
