I’m watching you…
Watching, not acting? What sort of half-arsed business was that? Watching and waiting for what?
It wasn’t pleasant to think about, but how many times could that mage there have simply slain him in his sleep? More particularly after he’d been gang-pressed into servitude by those giggling gels who had left him no choice but to comply with their ridiculous and quite perilous demands?
I’m watching you…
Not a surprise, he supposed, given what he now realized. The only question was, how long had that man there been watching him, waiting for the perfect moment for revenge?
He turned and walked into his house, kicking off his spell of un-noticing like a pair of muddy boots just outside the door. He shut the front door behind him, leaned back against it, then sighed deeply. Well, there was one question answered, he supposed.
Naming the man, however, might be a bit…more…
Time slowed to a crawl before it simply stopped.
He felt as green as a village lad on his first journey to a city containing more than one pub. He also supposed that if he didn’t stop having to shake his head over his own stupidity, he was going to be forever lost for anything useful.
He walked through his house and into his kitchen. He continued on until he was standing by the table where he had honestly eaten only a handful of meals and most of those had been with that beautiful red-haired lass who was so fond of horses.
A horseshoe lay there, in the place where he’d left it, the single trophy he’d liberated from that bloody trunk languishing in his cellar. He looked at it and several things he hadn’t considered before clicked into place, in exactly the same way that pool of shadow Falaire had destroyed had come back together.
Was the mage standing outside his house Sladaiche?
He found it surprisingly difficult to breathe for all the questions that then came at him with the unrelenting ferocity of Durialian dark magic.
Wasthatwhy his grandmother had scrawled that damnable X over his house? Had she known? Had his mother known?
HadSoilléirknown? Wasthatwhy he had intimated that Acair needed to go where he himself could not walk?
Because the answer was in the cellar of his own bloody house?
He heard Léirsinn come into the kitchens and groped for some sort of pleasant expression to put on his face.
“How was the sea?” she asked with a smile as she passed him.
“Glorious,” he said hoarsely. “Not to be missed. You’ll have to come with me sometime.”
“A thrilling prospect, truly.”
“Youhavebeen too long in my company,” he managed. “Listen to you being sardonic with so little effort.”
“’Tis contagious,” she agreed. She nodded at the table. “Starting a collection for your barn or is that something Sianach dragged in?”
He put his hand on the horseshoe because he suddenly felt a bit as if he weren’t precisely where he was, an alarming sensation if ever there were one. He supposed that might be as close as he would want to come to fainting from surprise.
“Um, aye,” he said, scrambling for something to say that sounded reasonable. “Found it in the cellar.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Was there a barn here originally? I looked at your grandmother’s map while you were gone and wondered. If that’s the case, I’m guessing there might have been an arena once where your garden is now.”
Of course. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised.
He didn’t argue when Léirsinn pulled out a chair and gave him a bit of a push down into it. She was, after all, rather strong for a wench.
He drank what she handed him which he found was water, not anything more useful. At the moment, he suspected anything that left him looking as if he were merely sitting in his kitchen for a decent chat before supper couldn’t be a bad thing. He sipped, nodded when he thought her conversation merited it, and tried not to look as blind-sided as he felt.
I’m watching you.
He almost snorted. Apparently that was the case and it left him wondering just how long that had been going on.
