“Fadaire can be a bit of a bother sometimes,” he said casually. “My half-brother Rùnach healed me with a piece of it, as you know, and I vow I’ve been given to all sorts of uncharacteristic displays ever since. Tears, maudlin sentiments, the overwhelming desire to write Nerochian questing poetry and bore everyone in the vicinity with my droning readings of the same.”
She put her hand in his, which he supposed was promising.
“I suppress it all, stellar soul that I am,” he continued, “simply because my overarching purpose in life is, as you know, to make the world a better place. Now, let me go fetch our gear, then we’ll find something hopefully edible and sleep in peace. If I use any magic, I’ll do it aloud so you might be properly dazzled by my mighty skill.”
She stopped him. “Must you go outside?”
He decided at that moment that perhaps she was less afraid of him than she wasforhim.
That was almost worse, actually.
“I promise you that I will return,” he said seriously. “Here, stand at the door and watch.”
She looked none-too-happy about the idea, but she released him and nodded just the same.
He stepped outside and walked down the path to collect their packs. He ignored the death-dispensing spell suspended in his very useful and businesslike piece of protective magic, then scanned the path to the shore, looking for mages who wanted him dead. He saw nothing, but that was somehow not all that reassuring.
He walked back inside his house, shut the door firmly, then wove a simple spell of imperviousness over it. He left a delicate tassel hanging from the doorknob, then looked at Léirsinn.
“If you feel the need for fresh air, just give that a tug and off you go. Perhaps you heard your name mentioned amongst those fine words which means that you’ll be able to come back inside, no pulley needed.”
“And no one else can?” she asked, looking rather less comfortable than he would have hoped. “Come inside, that is.”
He slung their packs over his shoulder, then reached for her hand. “No one,” he assured her. “Well, save a master of epicurial delights who comes to stay from time to time, but even he would need to knock thanks to that new lock.”
“You have a cook,” she said in disbelief.
“Occasionally,” he said. “You might be interested to know that offering him a position with my vast and impressive entourage almost started a war, but to pacify the short-tempered monarch I stole him from I’ve arranged a sort of share-and-share-alike bargain. Sadly, I’ve been off groveling so often over the past few months that I felt it only fair to release the man to appease the monarchial palate until called for again.”
“Good of you.”
“I thought so,” he agreed. “He does keep up with the larder just the same, so there might be bits of dried fruits and cured meats with perhaps even a hastily scrawled recipe or two lurking there. If he’s been particularly diligent, we might find things still resting comfortably in the garden.”
He continued talking about things he was fairly certain might even have caused the current monarch of Gairn, a man notorious for his complicated culinary stylings, to indulge in a yawn, dropped their gear just inside his study, then carried on with her to the kitchen. He saw her settled near the fire and made his way out the back door to the garden.
He looked at the lovely, orderly collection of rows and boxes and hedges and acknowledged that even though he visited on occasion, he had never once pulled anything out of that ground to eat.
Carrots and potatoes were what he needed, though, so he used a quick spell of revealing to encourage his garden to cough up the same. Veg leapt out of the soil and arranged itself in a tidy heap. He collected everything, then looked over his shoulder to find Léirsinn standing on the landing there. He would have asked her if anything else sounded appealing, but realized that she wasn’t watching him.
She was looking beyond him to the shadows under the trees.
He knew what she was seeing without having to look himself.Bloody hell. He hadn’t expected anything less, which should have left him insisting that Léirsinn remain inside. More the fool was he that he hadn’t taken his own inklings to heart. He took a quick tour of the spell laid over his house and the surrounding environs, but found it undisturbed.
He strode back up the pair of steps leading to his house, ushered Léirsinn inside, then shut the back kitchen door. If he dropped a spell over it that would have taken a score of dwarvish miners a year with both axe and spell to chip through, he didn’t imagine anyone would blame him.
He subsequently cleaned, chopped, and boiled his findings in the usual fashion, shooing Léirsinn back to the fire after she dropped his knife and almost impaled his foot with it. He rummaged through the larder and found cheese, apples, and a very nice bottle of wine. That, he supposed, was going to be the best he could manage.
He suspected his companion wouldn’t taste any of it.
He cleared off the table after supper, then decided there was nothing to do that couldn’t wait until the morning. He banked his fire in the normal way, gathered Léirsinn up with her gear, then showed her to his very best guestchamber.
“Oh,” she said, “this is much too…” She stared at the chamber for a moment or two, then nodded and looked at him. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” he said, ignoring the crack in her voice. “I’m only a pair of doors down the way if you need me.”
She nodded.
He refrained from begging her not to run off during the night because self-control was, as King Uachdaran had so wisely pointed out recently, one of his most desirable virtues.
