The White Spell

by Lynn Kurland

  “Saving his life.”

  She eased past the unconscious man only because she didn’t want to be blamed for having rendered him senseless. At least she hoped he was merely senseless.

  “Is he dead?” she whispered in horror.

  “He’ll wish he were with the headache he wakes up with. Here’s your horse.”

  She felt a chill start at the back of her head and slide down her spine. She reached out and held on to the very fine wooden door of the stall simply to keep herself on her feet. “I don’t think I want to come with you,” she managed. “I don’t like how you’re doing this.”

  He picked the lock on Falaire’s stall with tools she realized he’d used on the front door, then slid the door open.

  “I told you I was not a good man. I’m saving my life, your life, and this damned horse’s life. I can’t help how ’tis done.”

  She tried to shut the stall door. “The means don’t necessarily justify the end—”

  He turned and faced her. “Listen to me,” he said in a low voice, “and trust me that I know of what I speak. We are dealing with people—” He blew out his breath in obvious frustration. “These men here would slay you with the lifting of a single finger without so much as a flicker of remorse. They would kill me not quickly but over as long a period of time as they could manage. I can guarantee you that neither of us would find the experience pleasant. I cannot fight them in my current state. You might try but in the end you would pay a steep price before your life was snuffed out, again without a second’s thought.”

  She didn’t have very many skills, she supposed, but she knew when someone was lying. Perhaps it came from so many years of living with horses. They were mirrors, she supposed, of men’s hearts. If she had learned anything over the past almost two score years, it was a good deal of horse sense. Acair, whatever and whoever he was, was not lying.

  She looked over Acair’s shoulder to find Falaire sticking his beautiful nose out into the free air.

  He seemed to consider, then he snuffled Acair’s hair. Acair froze.

  “He’s going to bite my ear off, isn’t he?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  Acair reached up hesitantly and stroked Falaire’s nose.

  The stallion tried to eat his fingers.

  Acair winced and pulled his hand away. He wiped his fingers on his cloak, then looked at her. “Come or not, as you like. I can’t force you.”

  “But you’ll steal my horse.”

  He pulled Falaire’s halter off its hook and handed it to her. “I can’t keep either of us safe—and I’m speaking of you and me—or solve the mystery of those spots, or save your grandfather, unless I have a very pointed conversation with one particular man. To get to him, I need your horse.”

  “Then you’re not offering me the choice to stay or go,” she said slowly, taking the halter and clutching it so she didn’t drop it. “Not truly.”

  “I can’t force you,” he repeated, “and I’m not quite sure how to persuade you except to lay the facts out in their unpleasant starkness as I’ve already tried to do.” He considered then shrugged. “If you want my honest opinion, you would be mad not to leap at the chance to be off on an adventure with a lad such as myself, but that is, again, just my opinion.”

  She would have smiled but she was too cold to. “You’re daft.”

  “Pragmatic,” he corrected, “and very fond of my life. Your endlessly hungry horse here is obviously begging to be involved in a fine piece of mischief. I imagine if he could say as much, he would advise you to come along.” He nodded. “Not to be missed, truly.”

  Falaire ducked his head, obviously to make it easier for her to slip his halter over his ears. She clutched at the leather in her hands, taking comfort from the familiar feel of it there. She looked at Acair, but he was only standing there, waiting patiently. She looked at her horse, but he was simply standing there with his head still bowed, sliding her a sideways look. If he could have spoken, she supposed he would have been telling her to get on with things.

  She put his halter on, then buckled it. She had hooked on a lead rope before she realized what she was doing. Years of habit apparently. She stroked his nose, then looked at Acair.

  “I don’t see how we’re going to get him out of the city in the middle of the day.”

  Acair smiled. “’Tis still early yet. Anyone important is still lingering over his coffee. We’ll just march about as if we’re supposed to be here. You know what to do. Look as though someone is paying you to do it.” He stepped back. “You lead.”

  “I imagine that isn’t something you say often.”

  “I imagine it’s something I say never,” he said with a snort. “You see me in reduced and very unusual circumstances. Trust me, they won’t last. Off we go.”

  She took a deep breath, then led Falaire out of his stall. Fortunately, she’d had enough experience in barns that finding her way out the back door wasn’t a problem. She led them past several turnouts and continued on to the furthermost one as if she knew what she was doing, all the while looking for a gate.

  It was found with less trouble than she’d feared, a poor stable lad was invited to turn around and forget having seen them—Acair handed him a pair of gold coins for his trouble at least—and they were outside almost before she realized just what she’d done.

  She’d stolen a horse.

  Whether by design or sheer good fortune, they managed to catch up with a group of travelers who were heading over a bridge to the far side of the river. Falaire was obviously not a cart horse, but no one said anything. Acair didn’t look approachable and she shrugged off the first two questions she was asked.

  She was fairly sure she hadn’t taken a normal breath until they were out of the city, they had left their companions behind, and she was standing with Acair well off the road in a clearing. He left her there and took a little stroll through the surroundings, presumably to make sure they hadn’t been followed. He returned and stood in front of her.

  “Let’s lay out our journey,” he said briskly. He picked up a stick and drew in the dirt. “Here we are. Neroche is there. The place we need to reach is in the northwestern corner of that country.”

  “That far?”

  “Aye, ’tis several hundred leagues, even as the crow flies.”

  “You’re going to ride all the way—” She pointed to the far corner of his map. “—there.”

  “Nay, I’m going to fly all the way there.”

  She wondered if too much skulduggery had done a foul work on his wits. “On what?” she asked skeptically. “A bird?”

  “A horse, actually.”

  She could hardly bring herself to spare the energy to snort at him. “You’re mad,” she said. “Horses can’t fly.”

  “Droch wouldn’t want this horse without very good reason, so I suspect he can do quite a few things your average fellow can’t do.” He looked at Falaire uneasily. “I need to ask him a question or two, but I’m not sure he’ll answer me.” He looked at her. “You ask.”

  “Ask him what?”

  “Ask him if he can shapechange.”

  She blinked. “Do what?”

  “Shapechange,” he said. “You know, change his shape.”

  She suppressed the urge to stick her fingers into her ears. The man was daft. “He could change his shape into a barrel with legs,” she said, starting to feel a little irritated, “but only with enough sweet spring grass.”

  He made a sound of impatience. “What I want to see is if he has magic in him. Most horses don’t, but there are some who do. I can’t believe Droch would want a horse that couldn’t at least do something besides take hay in one end and expel it out the other.”

  She blew out her breath. Perhaps ’twas best to humor him before she clunked him over the head with the heaviest branch she could find so
she could get herself back home. “And you want me to tell him all that?” she said as patiently as she could.

  “I think he’s already heard it and he looks like he would like to repay me for it with a bit of a nibble.” He moved closer to her. “Show him an idea in your head of a pegasus or some prancing, frilly thing with wings on his hooves. Something that flaps . . . off . . .”

  Léirsinn let go of the lead rope quite suddenly. She did that because not only had Falaire pulled it out of her hands, surprise had left her unable to clutch it any longer. Actually, surprise hadn’t just left her without a rope in her hands, it had left her with a numbness that had started at the top of her head and seemed to be working its way downward.

  Falaire had trotted around in a circle, come to a stop several paces away from them, then reared. When he came back to ground, he was wearing wings. Er, he’d sprouted wings. Ah, there were things protruding from his back that looked like wings.

  He was whinnying. Acair was purring.

  She was fainting.

  She felt arms go around her as she started to fall.

  “Ah, not this, I beg you!”

  She looked into sea-green eyes, nay, blue-green eyes, with flecks of gold—

  “Léirsinn!”

  “I can’t take anymore,” she murmured.

  Then she closed her eyes and let darkness descend.

  Twelve

  Acair stood in a clearing not nearly as far away from Beinn òrain as he would have liked to have been and was, frankly, rather relieved to be standing on the ground having gotten there of his own volition instead of being dropped there. During their recent and rather unpleasant journey, he hadn’t been all that certain that Léirsinn hadn’t been about to elbow him off the back of her horse. Given the way she’d shrieked for him to get them back on the ground after she’d regained her senses, he hadn’t been at all certain that damned Falaire wouldn’t have happily aided her in that endeavor.

  It wasn’t that he hadn’t ridden things with wings before, but he tended to prefer dragons. They were arrogant, showy creatures who always seemed to be more concerned with keeping their riders on their backs than scraping them off at the first opportunity. Pride of the guild, no doubt, and all that.

  Horses, though. He shook his head. He wasn’t terribly fond of them—various parts of his form agreed—and he wasn’t at all sure that damned Falaire wasn’t snickering at him every time he whinnied, but he supposed that was the least of his worries.

  He had a horse miss standing ten paces away from him, looking as if she might come undone entirely if he didn’t do something very soon.

  He had no experience with women on the verge of losing their sanity. The women he knew were cold, calculating shrews who thought nothing of incurring their collective fathers’ ire to be seen dancing with him or sitting next to him at table. He was accustomed to mages in skirts who had ambition to match his own and were willing to meet him head-on.

  This was something else entirely.

  “Léirsinn,” he began, dredging up his most reasonable tone, “we’ve come too far to turn—”

  “You should have given me the choice!”

  “I tried—”

  “You did not!”

  He shut his mouth and scowled. Aye, this was what the rescuing of a damsel in distress got a man. A prickly, unpleasant—ah, nay, not tears. He shifted uncomfortably. “Um, the weeping—”

  “I’m not upset,” she spat, “I’m furious!”

  He considered that. “So you’re weeping instead of reaching for a blade—oh, you don’t have a blade—”

  “Weeping seemed a more reasonable thing to do than kill you, which was my first choice!”

  Well, the woman was terribly proficient with a pitchfork, but he suspected she didn’t have the heart to inflict any serious sort of damage on anyone. At the moment, though, she looked as if she might be capable of quite a few things. It was likely best to simply humor her and see if they couldn’t get that pony back up in the air and be on their way.

  “I appreciate the concession,” he said. There, that ought to do it. “Very kind,” he added, on the off chance the former hadn’t been enough.

  Er, it hadn’t been enough.

  She was looking around for a weapon. At least they’d left her crossbow and bolts somewhere behind them, likely back in Sàraichte. Well, there was no time to go back to get them, which he hoped wouldn’t come back to haunt him in the future.

  “You cannot go back,” he said with another attempt at sounding reasonable. “Remember what lies in wait.”

  “My uncle making a bad jest,” she said dismissively.

  “And those mages who tried to slay me?”

  “Lads with the right idea,” she said shortly. “I should have let them have at you.”

  “We can argue that point later if you like,” he said carefully, “but let’s look at the bigger picture—”

  “Aye, the one in which I push you off the back of my horse and ride back home!”

  He looked at her standing in the last rays of sunlight that streamed over the plains of Ailean and had to pause to wonder at her hair. Whilst he was wondering, he wondered how it was he’d missed the true nature of its color for so long. He realized that for the most part, she had worn it tucked up under a knitted cap, no doubt to keep it out of her way, or perhaps so all the lads in the barn didn’t stare at her as stupidly as he was doing at present, trying to decide what to call her hair.

  He settled on red.

  It wasn’t a deep red, like fine port viewed by firelight in perfect crystal. It wasn’t a pale red that could have charitably been called blonde. Her hair was red, simply red, like the depths of a fire on a bitterly cold night when a man could appreciate that sort of thing whilst warming his hands against it.

  Apparently with that red came a temper.

  “What in the blazes are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Trying to decide what to call your hair. What are you doing?”

  “Looking for a rock to use—nay, let’s do this.” She looked at him purposefully. “Show me what you did to that lad in Falaire’s barn, the thing where you rendered him senseless but not dead.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can do it to you!”

  He found himself, surprisingly enough, rather glad that she had no magic. If she had, he suspected she would have turned him into something small, then squished him under her boot.

  He cast about for something useful to say. He was accustomed to foul-tempered mages, angry monarchs, and outraged wizards with spells and finely honed senses of justice. A flame-haired barn gel in a towering temper?

  He hadn’t a clue.

  “And look,” she said, pointing to Falaire with a shaking hand. “What is that?”

  “That,” he began carefully, “is a horse.”

  “He has wings!”

  “He’s masquerading as a pegasus,” he offered. “They generally have those sorts of appendages.”

  He suspected wings weren’t all that pony could conjure up given the right incentive, but he supposed that might not be anything to put on a list of useful things to say at present. ’Twas no wonder Droch had wanted him.

  The question that had nagged at him over the past several hours was how Droch had known what he could do and where to find him. Very curious, that.

  “Wings!” Léirsinn repeated. “Wings that aren’t merely for decoration!”

  “So it would seem,” Acair ventured. “Would it ease you any and perhaps leave things seeming a bit more familiar if I bent over and let him take a generous bite from my arse?”

  She looked at him for a moment or two, then she went very still. To his horror, she started to weep in truth. It wasn’t the loud, boisterous sort of thing most women he knew indulged in order to garner the maximum attention possible. It wasn’t the s
ort of weeping he was accustomed to from mages who generally found themselves on their knees in front of him, begging him for mercy.

  He sighed. He was not a pleasant sort.

  Nay, this was a different sort of weeping entirely. Léirsinn stood there as still as stone with tears simply rolling down her cheeks. There weren’t very many tears, but he suspected each one cost her a great deal.

  He took a deep breath—and his life in his hands, no doubt—and walked over to her slowly. She didn’t move; she simply watched him with those bright green eyes that were seemingly dry except for the tears they continued to produce. He stopped in front of her, then considered. She didn’t have a dagger, so he thought he could safely assume his gut would remain unpierced. Her hands were down by her side and clenched, which he supposed boded well for her not having a rock to bean him with. That didn’t address all the other things she might try, which gave him pause.

  “You look like I might bite you.”

  He smiled. “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “I don’t need comfort,” she whispered. “I need a sharp something so I can be rid of you and your schemes. I don’t like either of you.”

  He could only hope she wasn’t entirely serious. He took a deep breath, then reached out and put his arms around her.

  It was badly done, he would be the first to admit it. His experience with women, which included the aforementioned terrifying creatures, was limited to courtly activities, dancing, and battles with spells. He wasn’t sure that he had ever, in his long and illustrious career as black mage extraordinaire, offered one of those women comfort. Wine, a coveted seat at table, and perhaps an elegantly wrapped spell, but comfort?

  Never.

  He patted Léirsinn’s back. He patted her hair, once, then ceased immediately when she growled. Or at least he thought she had growled. The truth was, he had no idea what she was doing until she let out a shuddering breath, then leaned her forehead against his shoulder.

  Well, he was going to catch his death from the damp, obviously, but perhaps it would count as his good deed for the day.

  He patted a bit more, avoiding commenting on the color of her hair, then waited until she had stopped weeping, if that’s what it could have been called. And once she was simply standing there, breathing raggedly, he thought he might attempt a bit of speech.