Acair of Ceangail made a very pleasant sight in spite of his apparent ability to pull terrible spells out of his pockets. She supposed the king of Durial had no room to criticize there, for his magic had been just as full of shadows. Watching the two of them go at each other the night before had been more than a little unsettling.
Then there had been that strange business with the king’s grandson, something she would have rushed out to stop if the king hadn’t caught her by the arm and shaken his head slightly. Watching that spell stretch across the chamber and reach toward Acair’s soul had been horrifying. She’d waited for the king to stop the madness, but he had only watched it all as if he’d planned the whole thing.
Whatever she thought she might be able to do with the magic she couldn’t control was nothing compared to what she’d seen, which left her wondering what in the hell she’d been thinking to ask for any of it in the first place. If Aonarach of Durial had come at her with that piece of nastiness, she would have simply fainted from terror.
In all honesty, it had been that last spell to send her out to the barn before dawn that morning. Busying herself with ordinary work that she knew how to do had seemed like a good way to forget what she’d seen.
She’d groomed three horses before she’d realized she had acquired a keeper in the person of that painfully handsome man over there. He had started the morning sitting on that bale of hay, but as time had worn on, he’d listed further and further to his right until he’d simply fallen over, asleep. At the moment that was fairly handy because it gave her a chance to watch him for a change.
Very well, so she’d knownofwhat he could do because everyone he met seemed determined to remind him of all his bad deeds. But those had, in the end, been nothing but words.
Seeing it for herself the night before had been terrifying.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t encountered frightening things before. A handful of stallions that could have stomped her to death, surely. That shapechanging monster she’d lunged in Hearn of Angesand’s yard, definitely. But in an arena, she knew how to tell her fear to take a seat and wait until she’d done what she needed to do.
But magic and that man there who had so much of it? That was something else entirely. She could hardly believe she’d insulted him so freely without having any idea of what he was truly capable of. Very well, so she had seen,seen, what warred within his soul in the king’s garden in Tor Neroche, but she hadn’t understood just what the dark contained. She half wondered if he knew.
It left her wondering what the other half of his soul might be holding within itself.
She knew what buckets held, though, and the one that had been set precariously on the saddle tree near him was about to lose what it contained right onto his head.
She had hardly begun to leap forward to grab it before she heard words be blurted out next to her, words that left the grain stopping in its tracks.
The stable lad she hadn’t noticed standing nearby was obviously as quick with his hands as he was with a spell. He caught the bucket before it landed on Acair, scooping the grain back into it as he did so, while she stood in the aisle with her hands outstretched. She realized how foolish she looked and brushed off the front of her clothes in yet another attempt to look busy at anything unmagical.
“Good day to ye, mistress,” the lad said breathlessly, setting the bucket on the ground. “Wouldn’t want to wake such a one as this one here, aye?”
“Probably not,” she agreed. She watched the boy hurry off, then walked over and felt her way down onto Acair’s roost.
Things were occurring to her that hadn’t before.
If an innocent stable hand could use a spell such as that with such success, well…why couldn’t she? It wasn’t a mighty magic, obviously, but she was never going to be a powerful mage.
She might manage something simple, though, and that simple thing might be enough.
Besides, that was the sort of business that would serve her well in many situations. She could watch a bag of oats burst, then mumble a few words and save herself looking for a broom. She could keep the contents of buckets where they belonged. If she took a notion to experiment with something darker, she could corral flies and do them in all at once, saving any number of horses endless torment.
For all she knew, she might be able to keep a certain spell of death sitting on its hands while a man she thought she might just love did what he needed to do.
She reached over absently to settle Acair’s cloak over him more thoroughly. He murmured something that sounded likethank you, then drifted off again. She watched him for a moment or two, not begrudging him his slumber. Every time she’d woken the night before, she’d found him standing at the window staring out into the darkness, no doubt contemplating things she hadn’t wanted to know about. She imagined no one would be looking for him in a barn, so perhaps he was safe enough on his own for a bit.
She looked about herself casually for a particular stable boy. It didn’t take long to spot him, mostly because he was the one lad there who looked as if he’d just narrowly missed sending a black mage into a towering temper.
Not knowing exactly how one went about the pilfering of a spell, she supposed the best she could do was simply ask. The lad in question didn’t bolt at her approach, which was promising. She stopped and leaned back against the wall next to him.
“What was that spell?” she asked casually.
He gulped. “Spell?”
She gave him the look she normally reserved for lads lying about having done their chores and hoped it would be enough.
“I learnt it at my ma’s knee,” he said. “Child’s magic. Useful for keeping hens where they’s meant to stay, aye?”
“Very useful,” she agreed. “Can you teach it to me?”
“Oh, mistress,” he protested, “’tis below the likes of you.”
“I’m always on the hunt for new spells,” she said, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. “If they’re less than five words, so much the better.”
