“Four,” he said. “Or thereabouts.”
“What does it do?” she asked, pulling back far enough to look at him. “And realize I don’t really care.”
“I know,” he said. “This is another of those spells that would be terribly useful for all sorts of things, though. Revealing where you might have left your house key or your favorite pair of boots. You might even use it to track down a particularly fine pony who had escaped to look for better victuals.”
“Did you steal it from King Uachdaran?”
“How easily that word trips off the tongue,” he said. “And to refute the slander, nay, I most certainly did not steal it.”
She pulled away from him and sat on the edge of one of the chairs in front of the hearth. Easier that way to ignore that her knees were unsteady beneath her. “Tell me the tale.”
“You’re stalling, but I’ll humor you, as always.” He leaned back against the mantel and clasped his hands behind his back. “It was given to me by the king’s daughter.”
“When you were stealingher,” she pointed out.
“I wasn’t stealing her, I was liberating her, and the wench is very persuasive. You might like her, should you ever meet. Her hair is more the color of vast amounts of dried blood, but there you have it. You gels from that corner of the palette seem to share a propensity to bend yours truly to your wills and pleasure.”
“You said you didn’t know any red-haired women.”
“Her hair isn’t red,” he pointed out. “And to continue, the king has some substantial locks on his gates, but even the locks are hidden. She thought it best not to use any magic to undo those locks, which I agreed with, so she traded me a spell of revealing for my skill with exiting whilst using only my wits and two hands.”
“So, what exactly does this spell do?”
“It uncovers things that don’t want to be found. I’m guessing our good dwarf-king uses it to sniff out the best veins of silver and gold, but we’ll use it to see if it will give any tome our enemy has touched a bit of nudge out from its fellows.”
“I might bring the whole library down on us.”
“You might,” he agreed, “so be ginger. Don’t give my spectacular visage and enviable form another thought until you’ve finished with your work. Then lust away.”
She had to admit he was very handsome and had the right idea when it came to how that might be distracting. She took a deep breath and let him pull her to her feet.
“I’ll try.”
He retrieved a slip of parchment from a pocket. “Here’s the spell.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Did you plan this?”
“Not in any nefarious way,” he said easily. “I had a wee think back in my study whilst I was making your coins and suspected this might come in handy. I’m unfamiliar with Seannair’s safeguards, so I thought it best that I not even whisper the words of any spell lest even that identify me.”
She supposed she didn’t need to point out that Prince Astar might already have rushed off to find his grandfather and tattle, so perhaps all she could do was set aside her unease and do what needed to be done.
She followed him across the beginnings of the library shelves to a deep-set window. She took the paper he handed her and looked at what he’d written.
“Four words,” he said. “Drop the appropriate name—you know which one—right in the middle, and there you have it.”
She read them to herself and was absolutely appalled to realize they made perfect sense to her. She looked at Acair, open-mouthed.
He smiled. “You see.”
“I do.”
“Try it, then, and let’s see what comes of it.”
She took a deep breath, forced down a vague feeling of dread, then repeated the words, inserting Sladaiche’s name where Acair had told her it should go.
She was certain the whole library would come down on top of them and bury them, but she only heard a handful of books drop in the distance and a trio right next to where they were standing. It definitely could have been worse.
She realized only then that she had actually used a spell that had done what she’d asked it to without any complaint. She felt a little ill, but she supposed that might have been from the magic, not from her surprise.
