Well, that made his non-appearance on the roster even more painful, but he made a note of the author’s name to pass along to his mother just the same. Perhaps he would find himself sitting across the table from that man at some future supper where he could offer a gentle rebuke about omissions that had surely been nothing more than simple oversights.
Included on our list of mages who paired arrogance with foul deeds like another might pair a fine red wine with perfectly cooked beef is a man named Sladaiche—
“Is there anything you require, my lord Acair?”
Acair caught the book he had thrown upwards in surprise, rather thankful it had been a book and not one of the king’s very fine crystal whisky glasses. Damnation, he had had enough of slinking about like a mere mortal. Things in his life had to change.
He looked at the trembling bard standing just inside the library door. “Nay, Master Eachdraidh,” he said, wishing he sounded less hoarse and more annoyed. “I am well. Very kind of you to ask.”
Master Eachdraidh bobbed his head and retreated, looking positively thrilled to be escaping. Acair found his place again in the king’s book and had another look at the words that seemed to be glowing with a bit of their own importance.
Naturally, there was little patience for the petitions of Sladaiche, but such was the nature of the king of—
Acair blinked, then swore. Why, that was a damned smudge right there in the bloody book, just where it didn’t need to be! He scanned the pages on either side of that salacious tidbit and found that there wasn’t a single reference to the country in which that worker of perilous magic had been found. If he hadn’t known better, he would have suspected that the whole bloody world was marshaling its forces for the sole purpose of causing him grief.
He reread the pages before and after the one with the smudge—put there, no doubt, by Uachdaran himself—but still found nothing of substance. As usual, he would have to poke his nose into places it shouldn’t go and find out what he needed without help. He indulged in a hearty curse or two, then forced himself to turn another page.
Rumor has it he mistreated his horses, which earned him no affection from the stablemaster.
Horses. Of course. He should have known it would wind round to them in the end.
He considered things he hadn’t had time for earlier. First, it wasn’t possible that Uachdaran didn’t realize what he’d ordered delivered. Acair suspected there wasn’t a damned sliver of the worst quality quartz lingering in the most distant wall in his worst mine that Uachdaran didn’t hear calling his name and asking permission to be carried off in some dwarvish pouch or other.
Nay, the king knew. Why he’d thought Acair needed to have it was perhaps a much more interesting question.
Second was the strange coincidence, something he rarely believed in, that he should be keeping company with a horse miss when the apparent maker of substantial mischief had run afoul of those noble beasts…
He closed the book, then stared at the fire for a bit, allowing his thoughts to gallop about without attempting to rein them in.
He had started out on the final leg of his penance tour expecting to face nothing more taxing than blisters on his hands from shoveling too much horse manure. Instead, he had found himself saddled, if he could use that term without any irony at all, with a quest to save the world from a man with plans to stockpile souls for his own nefarious purposes. He’d been gifted a collection of grandmotherly scribblings fit to undo the peace and quiet of innumerable mages of all stripes, then been handed another list of things to do that included a quest to find a missing page from a particular book of spells.
It was a formidable selection of things to see to whilst at his best, but he’d been given no choice but to attempt everything whilst operating under vastly reduced circumstances.
He set aside the king’s book, then opened up the little notebook his mother had gifted Léirsinn and his grandmother had filled with appalling things. He found the map she’d made and wondered if that aggressively drawn X resting right over his house might be something more than a pointed reminder that he hadn’t yet invited her to supper.
Whilst ’twas true his house was spectacular, it was also rather too close to the border of Bruadair for comfort and he honestly couldn’t think of a damned reason why he would want to travel so far north in the middle of winter. As a brisk, non-descript wind, the journey was nothing. In his present state, with at least one angry mage on his heels, the very thought made him want to reach for another glass of the king’s finest, then go straight to bed.
Perhaps he was getting old before his time. All the excitement was giving him a tummy upset that he suspected would only be cured by completing his quest, donning a dressing gown, and retiring to a comfortable spot in front of the fire for the spring. Hot soup would be involved, he was certain.
Well, he might not see morning if those shouts he could hear coming suddenly from outside the door boded ill. Politely inquiring about the cause of the kerfuffle wouldn’t serve him if the result was his being shown the way back to his dungeon abode. He knew he was likely being overly suspicious, but experience had taught him to be cautious.
Also, he just might manage a wee visit to places he shouldn’t go whilst the king’s relentless gaze was fixed elsewhere, so there was no sense in not making his own elegant exit offstage.
He heaved himself to his feet, shoving both books into the belt of his trousers, and walked briskly over to the wall where Aonarach had indicated the second egress from his current locale was located. He chose a shelf at random and ran his finger over the books until that finger came to rest on a heavy leather volume emblazoned in gold with the title,Famous Durialian Swords and Their Makers. A likely suspect, to be sure. He blew out his breath, then pulled on the book.
He wasn’t past admitting surprise when necessary, so he freely gaped at the bookcase as it creaked toward him. He didn’t think, he simply consigned himself to nowhere good, leapt behind it, and pulled the case closed. The click that echoed was altogether unwholesome sounding, but what else could he have done? There was pompous trumpeting going on in the king’s library accompanied by the particular sorts of shouts guardsmen on the hunt tended to make. Uachdaran might have been getting in a final dig whilst he could, but there was no reason to be involved in it. Obviously it was time to gather up his companion, saddle his horse, and ride off into the arms of his Noble Quest.
Normally, his sense of direction was very good, but he had to admit after a quarter hour that he was thoroughly lost. The floor was perhaps a bit smoother than he would have expected, which served him well considering he didn’t dare fashion so much as a marble-sized ball of werelight. In time, he came to a fork in the passageway. He didn’t stop to consider, he simply took the right-hand path and within ten paces had encountered a latch just hanging there, attached to the wall.
He tugged and a door opened. He wasn’t a fatalist, truly, but there was a part of him that fully expected to find himself missing his head as he poked that head out into what he immediately realized was a main passageway. There were no guards roaming about, so he made a quiet exit from his former safe haven then jumped a little when the door simply shut behind him without his aid. He was somehow unsurprised to find there was absolutely no indication that the door existed.
He considered, then decided that whilst he was at liberty to open and close doors, there was no reason not to pop by His Majesty’s solar and see if a bit of his soul might be lingering there. He wanted to dismiss his mother’s injunction that he needed to collect pieces of himself for use down the road, but the more he thought about the maker of those shadows and what he wanted, the better the idea began to sound.
He walked down the passageway as if he had every right to and realized soon enough where he was. A quick turn or two and ducking into a doorway to avoid a clutch of dwarves on their way to supper was enough to allow him to soon put himself in front of the king’s solar. If he’d accidentally put out the nearest torch by dropping it and grinding out the flame with his boot, perhaps he could apologize for it later.
Burgling was best done as simply and unobtrusively as possible, which had been his guiding principle over decades of the same sort of activity. He preferred picking locks with a bit of complexity, but perhaps that would come back to haunt him at some point in the future. At the moment, what was haunting him was his own stupidity at having left his gear for his current activity in Léirsinn’s bedchamber.
He sighed as silently as possible. Whilst it was tempting to just step back and give the door a good kick, he suspected that would not gain him entrance. He patted himself for anything useful to use in besting the door in front of him, then realized that was going to be unnecessary.
