He found himself enormously grateful for a spell that covered his house with an imperviousness that even Sìle of Tòrr Dòrainn, an elf famous for his own spell covering his realm, might have given a brisk nod of approval to.
At least he hoped it was impervious.
He shook his head sharply. Of course it was. He had poured quite a bit of his own…
He indulged in an impolite epitaph or two and wondered when it was that he would stop encountering realizations that made him want to go have a little lie-down. He had poured a rather decent amount of hissoulinto his spell of protection because it had seemed like a reasonable use of what he had to hand. It also made it rather convenient, as he had so recently noted to himself, when it came time to pop in or out of his own dwelling. Just a bit of shorthand to keep himself from being crushed to death.
He found that he couldn’t speak and Léirsinn was kind enough not to force him to. She was also kind enough to hand him a glass of whisky when he collapsed into the chair in front of the fire in his study.
He couldn’t believe he hadn’t considered it before. A testament to his own arrogance, to be sure. Even Aonarach of Léige had needed to point out to him how unimportant he was in the grander scheme of things. He was tempted to wonder about that lad’s part in the whole damned play, but he dismissed that immediately. Aonarach was a youth and apparently fixated on the sister he thought Léirsinn might still have, not other, more unsettling matters.
“Did you find anything?”
Acair looked at the glorious woman he had considered naught but a simple stable lass and wondered what partshehad to play in the madness.
Not that he couldn’t think of several decent reasons why someone would want her, but he was also hopelessly fond of her for reasons that had nothing to do with magic or shadows or draining the world of anything beautiful.
Why would a mage who made shadows with the express purpose of stealing souls want that lass there?
“I think you need something to eat.”
He nodded, though a turn about the old place to make sure all the corners of his spell were tucked in tightly was definitely going to be called for first.
He followed her to the kitchen, furiously reassessing his strategy for keeping himself—and Léirsinn—safe and whole.
If he couldn’t protect her, he would have to arm her as best he could. He suspected she wasn’t going to like that at all, but he had no choice.
It might be the only way to keep her alive.
Fourteen
Léirsinn wondered if taking the heaviest thing within reach and beaning a black mage with it would be counted as murder or a service to mankind.
“Again,” that black mage said briskly.
She looked at him and wondered where the rather charming, conflicted man she’d fallen asleep next to on the floor of his study the night before had gone.
In his place was an impossible—and impossibly annoying—bastard son of the worst black mage in recent memory who was living up to every nasty thing she’d ever heard about him. If he had been tracking her with evil intentions at the ready, she would have found the first mage-king available and hidden behind his skirts for as long as necessary.
She would have looked around for Sianach to invite him to do some damage to his master, but even Acair’s horse had deserted her. She was simply left with a man who had perhaps lost all his wits during the night.
She should have insisted that he go sleep in his comfortable bed while she stayed in front of the fire. That glorious goose-feather pallet was so much more luxurious than anything she’d slept on in her uncle’s barn, it was as if she were sleeping in one of the palace guest chambers she had recently visited. Acair, however, was no doubt accustomed to much finer trappings.
Then again, perhaps that wouldn’t have mattered. He’d been silent during supper the night before, then seemingly consumed with rereading his grandmother’s notes and his own after that. He’d spent more time than not simply staring off into nothing, only occasionally shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe something.
She’d been afraid to ask what that something might have been.
She’d woken several times during the night to find him either sitting in the chair at her feet, staring into the fire, or gone. If she hadn’t seen the faint light coming from under his library door, she would have thought he’d decided to take a star-lit flight to the ruin up the way.
Dawn had provided her with a taskmaster who hadn’t let her have more than a crust of bread before he’d hustled her out to the back garden. The sun had been up, but had scarce managed to melt away any of the patches of frost. Acair had provided her with a very warm cloak and fine gloves, but that had been the extent of it.
He had then cast up a shield of sorts under his spell of protection. She’d hardly had time to admire it, much less ask why he thought it to be necessary, before he’d been hounding her to take her magic out of the stall and put it to work.
She’d complied because she’d been able to see the wisdom in it. She had practiced calling fire until, to her great surprise, she’d been able to do so without setting the entire garden alight.
But had that been enough? Nay, it had not. Without so much as a nod of approval, that damned mage there had demanded spells of containment.
She’d used the one Uachdaran’s stable lad had given her, which had been sufficient for grain but not entirely enough for that spell of death still trapped out front. It had, however, worked well enough against fire. Finally succeeding at it after countless attempts had earned her only a faint lessening of her spellmaster’s perpetual scowl before he’d turned to other things.
