She rolled her eyes, then paused. “Well,” she conceded, “that too, but look at this.” She held out her arm.
“Beautiful,” he said, fighting the urge to simply side-step her and head straight for the only thing he thought might save him.
“Nay, look more closely.”
He conceded the battle. There were few others in the world, he was certain, who possessed his unwholesome ability to concentrate on the task at hand until that task surrendered with a wail of defeat, but he thought he might be facing one of them in the person of that glorious red-haired gel there.
He looked at her arm, then at her face. “It pains me to admit as much, but I have no idea what you’re trying to show me except your lovely self which is leading to more thoughts of doing anything but the difficult work that lies before us.”
“I’m flattered,” she said, holding her arm up closer to his face. “Look again at the spot you healed.”
He did, then shrugged, finding himself truly at a loss. “I’m torn between apologizing and telling you that you’re welcome.”
She took him by the hand and pulled him over to the window. A fine mist had already rolled in from the sea, but the soft light that remained was ample to see by.
“Watch what happens,” she said. She pressed on the little pool of Fadaire that lingered there on her skin. “See how it scatters, then pulls back together?”
He put his hand over his chest protectively. “I’m afraid to look in a polished glass now.”
“Nay,” she said impatiently. “Remember how Falaire shattered those shadows, then they drew back together?”
He frowned. “In Sgath and Eulasaid’s barn?”
“Aye. Isn’t that strange? And look at how this does the same thing, only this comes back together in a lovely way. That pool of shadow in your grandparents’ barn was far different.” She looked at him. “Why does evil have all those pointy edges?”
He felt his mouth go dry. “Like shards.”
She nodded slowly. “Odd, isn’t it?”
He felt as if his entire being had become one of those ridiculous pools of shadow that Falaire had stomped to oblivion. The pieces came at him from all directions, then clicked back into a perfectly miserable whole.
Shards, shadows, his spell in Diarmailt that cast shadows, a mage who created shadows that stole souls…
He would have felt his way down into a chair, but he was no fainting miss. He staggered artistically over to his sideboard and poured himself a large glass of whisky. He tossed it back without so much as a gasp and came back up with his throat on fire but his head absolutely clear. He could hardly believe he hadn’t seen it before.
That shard-spewing mage was the one making those pools of shadow.
He leaned his hands on the sideboard, grateful he wasn’t shaking badly enough to leave bottles rattling, and let that thought simply stand there in front of him it in all its simplicity where it might possibly be joined by other useful thoughts.
If that same mage was creating those shadows and the purpose of those shadows was to steal souls, then that mage’s intention was to steal souls.
But if that were the case, why now?
He bowed his head and blew out his breath, then forced himself to start from the beginning and walk again down the path he’d been on, searching for things he might have overlooked.
He’d first noticed the lads following him when they’d left Aherin. He’d been so damned distracted at the time by his fury over Soilléir’s leaving him helpless that he couldn’t have said if the mage outside had been in that pack of jackals or not. The first sense he’d truly had of a single mage with mischief on his mind had been when Miach had handed him that bloody, overdone missive.
He’d realized soon after leaving Tor Neroche that the cloud of mage had turned into a single hunter, but he’d assumed that lone mage had been someone he’d done dirty in the past who had decided the time had come for revenge. Coming face to face with the man and watching spells come out of his mouth in impossibly sharp spears of darkness hadn’t changed his opinion.
I’m the one with all the spells.
Well, that was a ridiculous boast, but if one had a spell to steal souls, perhaps all the other spells in the world simply didn’t matter.
He straightened and rubbed his hands over his face, wishing he’d questioned Soilléir a bit more thoroughly in that glade. He remembered with unfortunate clarity the man rambling on about spells and souls and missing one of the former, but the conversation had been distressingly empty of particulars.
The one thing he thought he could allow to stand as fact was that the mage following him had stolen his spell in Eòlas, which meant he had also likely slain Odhran, and left behind that childish note. If he was also the one making those shadows, then it was obvious that while he claimed to have mighty spells, he was missing at least one piece of the spell he likely wanted the most.
His hands twitched before he could stop them. What he wanted was to put them comfortably around a certain essence-changing prince’s throat, but perhaps that wasn’t a useful thought to be entertaining at the moment. He rubbed his hands together to keep them busy, then continued on the path that seemed to be unfortunately laid out in front of him.
