by Lynn Kurland
“I’ll tell her you said so.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll nod briskly as she leaves the arena. That’ll be enough for her.” He shot Acair a look. “Don’t you know anything about horses and their keepers?”
“I don’t like horses.”
“I imagine the feeling is mutual.”
“I prefer dragons, actually,” Acair said, because he thought he should make it clear that he wasn’t opposed to everything going about on four feet. “They possess a certain elegance that is unmatched in other things.”
“You are a terrible snob.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment,” Hearn said, before he turned back to the display going on in his arena.
Acair understood. He, as Hearn had so rightly pointed out, knew nothing about horses save which end tended to bite, but even he could see that Léirsinn was a master at her craft. He realized that whilst Falaire was magnificent, he was simply a reflection of one facet of what Léirsinn could do.
He wasn’t sure how long it took—it felt like hours and left him wishing for a stool of some sort to rest on—but Léirsinn finally convinced Garg that he was not going to push her about. Lead horse and all that, he supposed. He’d thought that sort of business daft at the time, but could see the wisdom of it at present. The horse, a stunning yellowish thing that looked quite a bit like sunlight as he trotted around her, was suddenly utterly obedient to her command. He trotted, he walked, he cantered, and generally behaved himself like a proper gentleman. When she stopped him, handed off the whip, and walked toward him, he merely watched her.
He reared once she was on his back. Once. After that, she kept him so busy, he didn’t have time for any mischief.
“I would worry,” Hearn mused.
“You would?” Acair managed.
“Nay, you. If I were you, I would worry.”
Acair looked at him then. “About what?”
“That she’ll do to you exactly what she just did to that pony.”
Acair had something run down his spine at the sight of Hearn’s smile. “I am not a horse.”
“You know what I’m getting at.”
“I am master of my fate,” Acair said, grasping for just the right amount of conviction with which to tinge that statement. He wasn’t sure he’d succeeded very well.
“Says the mighty one who can’t use any of his equally mighty magic at the moment,” Hearn said with a snort.
“And how do you possibly know that?” Acair asked. “I don’t remember telling you anything—”
“Soilléir was here a few days ago, of course.” Hearn shook his head. “How you’ve managed to survive for so long whilst being so dense, I just don’t know.” He sniffed, then chortled. “Ah, how I love the smell of just deserts. Just the thing for a late breakfast, don’t you agree?”
Acair would have made a cutting reply, but he suspected that would have earned him nothing but a hasty booting right out the front gates. He hadn’t had breakfast, as it happened, and there was no sense in losing a decent meal. “Whatever you say, my lord.”
“I say shut up,” Hearn said absently, having apparently lost interest in anything but a study of the display going on inside his fence. “I believe we’re about to see just what that gel can do.”
Acair watched not because he was comfortable watching but because he simply couldn’t look away. Léirsinn might not have had magic, but she obviously knew what she was doing with a horse. He hadn’t doubted it before, but watching her walk into the keep of Aherin and ride what even Acair wouldn’t have gotten close to for the price of a spectacular spell only convinced him further that she shouldn’t go back to Sàraichte.
Obviously she couldn’t go back to stay, but if she didn’t go there, where else would she go? He wondered if she would want to stay in Angesand, but that seemed rather far away from anywhere he might choose to linger.
He wondered with a fair bit of alarm if anyone might have seen that thought cross his face, but a quick look about told him that anyone with sense was watching the woman out there, riding that pony fashioned of sunlight.
He blew out his breath carefully. She was not for him and he was not for her.
Odd how he had to keep reminding himself of that.
Hearn watched her until she walked out of the arena, leading that damned horse who now merely walked docilely behind her, then he turned and leaned against his fence.
“Where are you off to, Master Acair?” he asked. “I’m assuming you have a list of souls you’re considering robbing or frightening to death or whatever it is you do—nay, wait.” He looked at Acair innocently. “You don’t have any magic to hand, do you?”
Acair forced himself to maintain a pleasant expression. “Not at the moment,” he agreed.
“Which leaves you incapable of foisting your usual nastiness off on others,” Hearn said thoughtfully. “An interesting state of affairs for you, my lad.”
“Isn’t it though?” Acair asked, trying to be as polite as possible. Breakfast was, as he had noted before, hanging in the balance. “As for where we’re going, I thought we would make for Tor Neroche.”
“Think little Miach will protect you?”
“Protect Soilléir, rather,” Acair said, “for when I find him, I’ll kill him.”
“I’m sure he trembles at the thought.”
“He should,” Acair said grimly.
Hearn studied him for far longer than Acair was comfortable with. There was something about those horse people that made him uneasy. They didn’t have that Cothromaichian sight, something he was familiar enough with to know how to disparage, but they had something like it. It was perhaps less grand, but rather more terrifying. When they looked at him, he feared greatly that they were able to see all kinds of things he didn’t want to have revealed.
He didn’t like having his heart laid bare.
“What are you here for in truth?” Hearn asked quietly. “And remember, I know more than you think I do.”
Acair didn’t doubt that. He pointed to the bird still clinging to his shoulder. “I have a question or two about this thing here.”
Hearn peered at the bird who wasn’t a bird, then let out a low whistle. “Your ear is bleeding.”
“He bit me.”
“I believe he’s rather proud of the fact that it wasn’t the first time.”
“I imagine he’s proud of several things,” Acair said. “He is, as I’m sure you realize, Léirsinn’s horse. He doesn’t like me.”
“A wise pony, that one.”
“We wanted to ask your opinion about his proclivities,” Acair said. “He has become very fond of a certain sort of thing that I find . . . odd.”
“I can only imagine.”
Acair let that pass. “Then I was thinking that perhaps if you had an older, well-behaved horse in need of a small adventure, I might attempt to come to an understanding with you.”
“That is why you came?” Hearn asked, looking genuinely startled.
“To be honest, nay. The thought only came to me just now.” And that thought had come to him because he was half afraid Hearn would want to trade Léirsinn that demon sunlight horse for the bird sitting currently on his shoulder and he would be damned if he ever got on something that uncontrollable. “What could I give you for one? Any black mages you’d care to have me encourage to give up their chosen trade?”
“Besides yourself?” Hearn asked with a snort. “Don’t think so, lad. And given that unavoidable bit of truth, I daresay you’ll be using your feet for quite some time to come.” He studied Acair for several minutes in silence. “But whilst you’re here inside my gates, I think I have something you should see.”
Acair hadn’t wasted any time hoping for an Angesand steed, which left him not sparing any effort to be sorry he wasn’t going to have one. In truth
, he would only have been surprised if Hearn had been willing to part with one of his horses, for any price.
He sighed, flicked Falaire off his shoulder—ignoring the subsequent offended chirping—and followed the lord of Aherin across his courtyard.
He saw the spot of darkness before Hearn stopped a fair distance away from it and looked at him pointedly. He felt Léirsinn come to stand next to him, then watched as horses avoided the spot without fail. Most of the men in the keep did the same. Most, that was.
One lad walked right into the darkness. Acair watched with horrified fascination as the boy stood there for a moment or two, perfectly still, seemingly perfectly content. He walked on eventually, but the manner of his leave-taking, if that’s what it could have been called, was passing odd. What Acair realized with a start was that the lad hadn’t pulled away because he’d chosen to, he’d remained where he was until the darkness had allowed him to go.
Interesting.
“Odd,” Hearn said finally. “Isn’t it?”
That too. “Is he the only one who’s walked through that shadow?” Acair asked.
“One other lad,” Hearn said slowly. “Had to send him back to his mother.”
“Homesick?”
Hearn looked at him. “He went mad.” He nodded toward the young man who had just paused in that spot. “That one, though, not sure what to say about him. Everyone else seems to avoid that patch of ground but him. He walks through it every chance he has.”
“He likes it?” Léirsinn asked in surprise.
“He seems to crave it,” Hearn said. “If I could use such a term.” He shrugged. “Don’t know what to make of it, but I imagine someone might find an opinion to offer.” He looked at Acair. “You, maybe. Perhaps after a bite to eat and a decent mug of ale.”
Acair wasn’t sure he wanted to offer any opinions, but he had the feeling he was going to have to. He thought about how Falaire had spent so much time and effort fussing with one of those shadows and felt something settle in the pit of his stomach that couldn’t have been termed unease but likely wasn’t indigestion.
What sort of mischief was afoot in the world? Worse still, why did it seem to be appearing wherever Léirsinn went?
Perhaps it wasn’t just Léirsinn.
“Acair?”
He realized she was still standing with him in Hearn’s courtyard and they were alone. Well, as alone as anyone ever got in that hive of equine activity, he supposed. He looked at her.
“I apologize,” he said absently. “Lost in thought.”
“I understand,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t like this.”
He wasn’t sure that began to adequately describe his opinion on the matter. He could hardly believe what he’d gotten himself entangled in so innocently, or how anxious he felt knowing there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about what he was seeing. Being a mere mortal was highly annoying. He wasn’t sure how so much of the world managed to haul themselves out of bed each day, when that was how they had to carry on their lives.
“Magic is the answer,” he said confidently.
“A dodgy answer, wouldn’t you say?”
She had no idea, and he thought it best not to enlighten her. However dodgy the business of magic might have been, any business where it wasn’t involved was far more perilous. His lack of the same was something he was definitely going to have to remedy without fail and as quickly as possible.
Perhaps if he humored Hearn to a never-before-imagined level, the man might find a nag he was willing to part with. Two horses were better than one, he supposed, when one had a pressing quest before him and a great need of haste.
He would do what he could inside the gates, then be about solving what looked to be unpleasantness that was affecting more than just him and Léirsinn of Sàraichte.
What a great, whacking piece of do-gooding that would likely count for.
• • •
Several hours later, he was mucking out stalls he was fairly sure had been done at least twice already that day. He hadn’t dared protest. If it meant he could sleep somewhere save a pile of manure—he had heard more than one tale of that being the proffered accommodation—and perhaps buy him a bit of goodwill from the lord of the keep, he was willing to shovel all day.
He finished with the last stall, dragged his sleeve across his forehead, then realized Hearn was watching him.
“I’ve seen worse work,” Hearn remarked, peering over the stall door. “Not often, but now and then.”
Acair leaned on his pitchfork. “Give me another few months and I’ll be an expert.”
“I wouldn’t dare hope for that, but ’tis a better work than your usual business, I suppose.”
“I daresay.” He paused and looked at his reluctant host. “I suppose an apology to you might not be welcome.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hearn said with a shrug. “Try it and see.”
Acair took a deep breath. “I apologize for breaking into your solar. If it makes it any better, I didn’t take anything. I’m not sure any practitioner of magic who aspires to true greatness could possibly overlook what comes from your stables and the attached rumors of your own vast, if not unusual and very desirable, magic. The temptation is absolutely irresistible.” He paused. “Put simply.”
“You talk too much.”
Acair, quite wisely to his mind, quickly chose silence.
Hearn shifted slightly. “If we’re being completely honest here, I can’t say I didn’t do my own bit of snooping when I was young.” He leveled a look at Acair. “You, however, have been snooping for far longer than you could possibly be considered young.”
“But there are so many secrets in the world,” Acair said. “I fear I won’t have time to discover them all.”
“Considering how old your father is, I’d say you had plenty of time to poke your nose in all manner of places where it shouldn’t go,” Hearn said. He opened the stall door. “You may live to regret it.”
Acair took advantage of the courtesy and didn’t curse when Hearn almost shut the door on his arse. The more he’d thought about it, the more convinced he’d become that he needed a horse for himself. He wasn’t about to ruin any chances for an Angesand steed with a few extracurricular talents, so to speak, by offending his host.
He handed the pitchfork off to a young lad, thanked him profusely, then put on his most pleasant smile for Angesand’s lord. “I appreciate the work.”
Hearn pursed his lips. “Flattery will not earn you a pony, so you may as well leave off with it. But you can tell me why you’re really here. You’ve given me a handful of reasons, but I’m still unconvinced. Are you come to sniff out my equine genealogies or something more sinister?”
Acair looked at him seriously. “It is as I said, my lord Hearn. I am on my way north, I have no ability to use my magic, and I genuinely wanted a safe harbor and not just for myself. Léirsinn is horse mad and I thought since she has no memory of any place save that hellhole of Sàraichte, I would at least bring her to your front gates and see if you might allow her to peek inside.”
“She does recognize a good horse.”
“Do you have any bad horses, my lord?”
Hearn lifted an eyebrow. “You might be surprised, my wee mageling. I don’t think your lady would be, though. She’s an excellent horsewoman.” He glanced at the spell loitering in the corner. “And that?”
“A spell of death that follows me courtesy of Prince Soilléir. I’m surprised it isn’t charged with turning me into a lawn ornament, but there you have it. Soilléir has a marked lack of good taste.”
“But a dab hand with a powerful spell,” Hearn said thoughtfully. “Interesting thing, that.” He considered a bit longer, then looked back at Acair. “What do you make of that spot of shadow?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet,” Acair said slowly, “but I will
tell you that when I put my foot in one in Sàraichte just to see what it was about, it ripped off a piece of me somehow.”
“Flesh?”
Acair shook his head. “I would say it was part of my soul, but that seems too poetic, even for me.”
“Was it painful?”
“Excruciating.”
“Good,” Hearn said. “You deserve it.” He considered, then glanced at Acair. “You can leave her here, you know. If you can convince her to stay.”
“I’m not sure it would take much convincing,” Acair said, “and I appreciate the offer more than you’ll know. She has a mind of her own, though. I’ve tried to tell her what to do and she’s told me to go to hell.”
Hearn smiled. “I like her.” He rubbed his hands together. “Clean up, my boy, and come inside for supper. Your lady will be taking her ease there.”
“She’s not—”
He didn’t bother to finish his protestation. Hearn never lingered anywhere, or so it seemed, and the present moment was no exception. He had walked off with a purpose before Acair could properly formulate a denial of anything of a romantic nature.
Acair sighed, then went to seek out water for himself. He didn’t imagine he would be allowed to use what was reserved for the horses, but he managed to find something that seemed clean. He dried his face on his shirt, dragged his hands through his hair, and wished quite desperately for a decent bath, but that was obviously out of reach at the moment. Truly, he was operating under reduced circumstances in many things.
He walked out into the twilight and looked up at the sky. He wasn’t sure what sort of magic Hearn possessed, if any, and his clandestine foray into the man’s solar all those many years ago hadn’t provided him with any answers. There was definitely something there, though, some sort of something that draped itself over the keep. ’Twas hardly noticeable but seemed to keep at least a storm brewing to the east at bay. Perhaps that was all Hearn wanted, to keep his horses dry and warm. There were worse uses for a spell, and Acair considered himself one who would know.
He shrugged his shoulders to work out a bit of stiffness, then walked across the courtyard to the great hall. At least he wouldn’t be shoveling in the rain.