The Dreamer's Song

by Lynn Kurland

  That was ignoring the heart the matter, but the whole truth was something he didn’t want to discuss. Unfortunately, he couldn’t avoid examining it in his own head.

  The absolute heart of the matter was that he needed something from Odhran of Eòlas’s back workroom that he had put there for an exigency he had never intended to face. That there was a need driving him to seek out that failsafe was profoundly unnerving. He considered a handful of words as they walked until he hit upon the one that best described the sensation that was continually nipping at his heels, threatening to overcome him if he allowed it to.

  Fear.

  He could hardly believe he was even acknowledging the same, but things in his life were not as they should have been. He who had never once since reaching his majority faced off with another being and felt even so much as a twinge of unease? He who had walked places that his father would never have dared go? He who had fought duels with spells and sword that would have had any of his brothers—or any number of other pompous, boasting mages—scampering off with tails tucked?

  He didn’t like the feeling.

  He ducked into another alley with Léirsinn until yet another city guard had passed, then squeezed her hand and continued on. Easier that than standing still and allowing things to rattle about in his empty head. There was a full tally of vapid thoughts endlessly coming from Mansourah of Neroche; he didn’t need to be adding his own to the collective thoughts being considered in the wide, uncivilized world.

  Who will keep Léirsinn safe?

  The man with magic . . .

  The salient parts of that very brief conversation were what he couldn’t seem to stop hearing, try as he might to pay them no heed. It had galled him almost past reason that such was his lot in life at the moment, partly because his pride had been stung and partly because he had feared that if something dire happened, in truth, he wouldn’t be able to keep Léirsinn safe.

  Hence a trip to retrieve something he’d never thought he would ever be in a position to need. He might not have been able to use the power he possessed, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use something that required nothing from him—

  “Here?”

  He looked at Léirsinn and realized he’d come to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Fortunately for them both, the streets were completely empty. Unsurprising given the time of night, but still a little unsettling. He frowned, nodded, then drew her over to the appropriate shop door.

  He knocked softly. There was no answer, but that didn’t trouble him. Ofttimes the man was slow to answer simply because he occasionally worked far into the night, toiling over silks and woolens that were truly enough to make a gentleman of substantial means shed a tear in the privacy of his own dressing closet. Perhaps he had paused in his labors, put his head down atop a pile of fine silks, and descended into a comfortable slumber.

  The puzzling thing was, though, that Master Odhran knew to expect him.

  He put his ear to the wood, but he heard nothing.

  “I can see someone just sitting there.” Léirsinn looked at him. “Just inside, there by the hearth. But there’s no fire.”

  Acair found himself very rarely startled—he was too calculating for that, he would admit—but her words sent a chill down his spine that was not at all pleasant. To be sure, Odhran was very careful about the delicate balance between keeping his shop warm in the winter and burning the place to the ground thanks to a stray spark, but he couldn’t imagine the man simply sitting in front of a stone cold hearth.

  It reminded him sharply of another soul he’d heard tell of, the youngest son of a particular horse breeder who had been reduced to simply sitting and staring. That lad had been rendered thus because of repeated encounters with a certain sort of shadow lying on the ground where shadows shouldn’t have found themselves.

  But surely that couldn’t have anything to do with what was going on behind the door he was currently opening . . .

  “Is there a lock you cannot best?”

  He shook his head, not bothering to make any protestations of false modesty. He let them inside, had the presence of mind to make sure Léirsinn followed him in, then heard her shut and lock the door behind them. He pocketed the tools of his very unmagical trade, then scanned the shop before he walked carefully over and looked at the man sitting there, staring at nothing.

  Léirsinn didn’t move. “Is he asleep?” she whispered.

  Acair put his fingers to the man’s neck, paused, then looked at her.

  “He’s dead.”

  Five

  Léirsinn stood in the front chamber of a dead man’s shop and had to put her hand over her mouth to keep her gasps inside her where they belonged. She wasn’t unaccustomed to death; it was a part of working in a barn. She had never seen a man, though, simply sitting, motionless, in front of his cold hearth as if he’d let the fire go out and been unable to bring it back to life.

  She looked at Acair leaning over his tailor, his expression scarce visible. There were street lamps outside, but so far away from where they were that they were of little use. She had to wonder if that might have been deliberate, given the tailor’s unusual clientele. It certainly hadn’t served him very well that evening.

  “What now?” she croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Can you aid him?”

  Acair straightened. “Your faith in me is gratifying, but this is far beyond my poor art. Death is that final journey from whence no man or woman returns.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “Poetic.”

  He started to speak, then shook his head. “And perhaps not as true as I’d like it to be for some mages who dabble in things they shouldn’t. I’m surprised to find it isn’t anything I wish to think about at the moment.”

  She wasn’t surprised to realize that it was something she would want to think about never. “What will we do now?”

  “Slip out of here before anyone thinks we’re responsible,” he said without hesitation. “But I must have a look in the back first.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “For shirts?”

  He sent her a look she couldn’t begin to decipher, so she didn’t bother to try. She was torn between wanting to fling herself out the front door and run until she couldn’t any longer and wanting to stand right where she was and see if Acair did anything to redeem himself. At the moment, he seemed a right proper bastard with absolutely no heart at all.

  He reached out and closed his tailor’s eyes.

  “Sleep well, Odhran of Eòlas,” he said quietly. “You will be missed.”

  If he added, and avenged, she suspected he didn’t want to be heard. She closed her mouth when she realized it had been hanging open and decided abruptly that trying to judge Acair of Ceangail was an impossible task. Hadn’t she seen that already when she’d been faced with that terrible vision of him in the king’s garden at Neroche? A perfect balance of light and darkness, something she suspected he wouldn’t have acknowledged if he’d seen it himself. He was vowing to avenge his tailor one moment, then off on the hunt for other clothing the next.

  He walked around the deceased, put his hand under her elbow, and leaned close enough to whisper against her ear.

  “I fear we aren’t alone,” he murmured. “I need something specific from his workroom, but feel free to be as outraged as you like to distract those potential watchers whilst I search.” He pulled back and smoothed his hand over his hair. “Of course, shirts,” he said huffily. “Why else would I come to a tailor’s shop in the middle of the night?”

  Her mouth was very dry, but she found that she could spit out a bit of fury just the same.

  “A man is dead,” she said, ignoring the crack in her voice, “and all you can think about is what you’re wearing?”

  “Or not wearing, which is precisely the point,” he said. “A black mage’s best accessory is his garb.”


  She babbled something that she tried to tinge with as much disgust as possible. It distracted her from the almost overwhelming urge to look around her to see who might be there, lying in wait to kill them both.

  Acair took her hand. “Let’s go into the back. You can tell me if you approve of the cut of my fresh garments. Master Odhran was truly without peer in his craft.”

  His fingers were cold, which led her to believe he was perhaps feeling as unsettled as she was.

  “What I’m most interested in,” she managed, “is a pair of shears to stow in your black heart.”

  “You look for those whilst I am about the heavier labor of seeing if there might be a decent pair of boots set aside for me. I am simply shattered by the figure I’m cutting in what I’m wearing at present.”

  He stopped at the doorway to what was apparently the workroom and released her hand. She would have protested that, but saw soon enough that he had simply gone back out in front for a candle and a match. He paused next to her, bent, and struck the match against the stone floor. She would have asked him why he didn’t just use a spell, but the sudden sight of his minder spell standing behind him almost left her shrieking. She stood, shaking, in the tailor’s back room and decided that while there were many things she didn’t care for, that list was topped by shadows, things that made loud thumps in the dark, and lingering in a shop where the owner was no longer present in the current world. The sooner they were gone, the better.

  “Did Master Odhran hide a record of your foul deeds here?” she wheezed. She wished she could have sounded a bit more irritated and quite a bit less terrified, but things were what they were. She supposed Acair was fortunate she was still on her feet.

  “Oh, his workroom is hardly large enough for that,” he said, setting his candle down on a tall worktable. “A brief list of the more notable pieces of mischief, perhaps, but nothing more.”

  Léirsinn would have advised him to look instead for a hook on which to hang that light, but a pair of things stopped her. First, she had absolutely no desire to look around Master Odhran’s workroom for anything on the off chance she saw many somethings she wasn’t going to care for. The other thing was, there was apparently no need for worry. Whatever else the tailor had done with his time—several unsavoury and dangerous things came more easily to her mind than she would have liked—Master Odhran had been extremely tidy. His worktable was spotless.

  The rest of the room was less so. The wall to her left was lined with shelves on which were stacked an endless number of boxes and many piles that listed in various directions. The wall to her right boasted row after row of various threads and tools, some of which had definitely not been put back properly. She was fairly certain if she’d wanted to plunge a pair of shears into Acair’s chest, though, she would have managed to find whatever she required over there without too much trouble.

  Another long workbench was pushed up against the wall facing her, and the window above it ran almost the entire length of that bench. One of the panes of glass there reflected the light of the candle, something she found thoroughly unsettling. Who knew who might be standing outside that window in the shadows, watching them?

  She looked at Acair to see if he might be just as bothered by it only to find him standing in front of a shelf, still as stone.

  She ignored the window and moved to stand next to him. “What is it?” she asked. “Nothing here to suit your finicky tastes?”

  “It occurs to me,” he managed, “that one of my brothers has no doubt decided to have a good laugh at my expense by filching some of my spare cravats.”

  She realized at that moment that she had seen several expressions on his ridiculously handsome face, but genuine surprise had never been one of them. It wasn’t a pleasant surprise, though, which was more alarming than she would have thought it might be. Worse still was the icy nature of his fingers when he casually laced them with hers.

  She looked at the empty box he had laid down on a workbench and couldn’t begin to imagine how he had decided one unmarked box amongst dozens of unmarked boxes was his, but perhaps the idea wasn’t so farfetched. She knew when tack went missing, so why not neckwear?

  “I’m sure you’ll shed tears over their loss,” she said.

  “Buckets,” he agreed. “One never knows when the right bit of silk at the throat will turn the tide of a seduction.”

  She would have smiled, but found that she simply couldn’t. “You are an honorless bastard.”

  “I’m offended,” he said, squeezing her fingers gently, then releasing her hand. “I have a great deal of honor when it comes to exploits in and out of the bedchamber and taking my place in the center of any dance floor. You are at liberty, of course, to inquire about any of them.”

  “I’m not sure I want to,” she said seriously. She looked at him as casually as possible. “Are you certain you have the right box?”

  “There’s one way to tell, isn’t there?”

  “I imagine your tailor is too dead to care whose goods you rifle through,” she muttered, “so search away.”

  He lifted his eyebrows briefly, then nodded. She had no idea what to look for, so she settled for putting boxes back in their places after he’d searched them. She couldn’t help herself. Riding was so much more pleasant when one could easily find one’s boots and gloves.

  He came to a stop near the window and looked at her. She thought he looked a bit as if what he truly wanted was to find somewhere to sit down.

  “Gone?” she asked.

  “Every last bloody piece of anything I left here,” he said with a heavy sigh. “A travesty, truly.”

  She didn’t bother to ask if he were certain or not, because she’d just watched him go through an entire wall of goods. He sighed heavily as he walked over to the other side of the chamber where his tailor’s tools were stored. He pulled a stool over to a cabinet in the corner, then stepped up onto it and opened the uppermost door.

  Léirsinn watched him take a deep breath, then reach inside. She half expected something to leap out at him, but apparently the only thing to be flying at the moment were curses. Those curses were soon joined by the things that Acair started flinging onto the table. She made a grab for the candle and held it out of the way scarcely a moment before a pattern—or so she supposed it was—landed atop the flame. She was rather surprised by his sudden change of mien, but perhaps he saw no reason to be subtle any longer. Whoever had chosen his gear from all the things in that work chamber obviously hadn’t done so by accident.

  If she had expected him to stop flinging once the cabinet was empty, she would have been mistaken. She tidied the piles of patterns on the worktable as she watched him continue to feel around inside the cabinet as if he actually expected to find something still there.

  “Is this not everything?” she asked finally.

  He swore enthusiastically, then stepped down off the stool and came back around the corner of the worktable. He started shuffling through the patterns there, but with an unusual lack of care. She put her hand on his arm to stop him.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Something besides an invitation to your wedding to Mansourah of Neroche,” he said grimly.

  She smiled in spite of herself. “I don’t think you’re in any danger there.”

  “I hardly dare hold out any hope.” He shook his head. “Well, there’s obviously no reason to hide my true reason for being here given that I’ve obviously been robbed.” He put his hands on the table and took a deep breath. “I’m looking for a spell.”

  “Of course,” she said, knowing she shouldn’t have expected anything else. “Is this spell written down on one of these patterns?”

  “Nay,” he said slowly. “You’re right to assume what you have, but the truth is, this spell is of a different sort. It might or might not look like a very thin wafer made from a cobweb sp
un by a very particular, artistic sort of spider. I think ’tis golden in appearance, but I vow it’s been so long since I laid eyes on it, I’ve forgotten.”

  She smiled, prepared to chide him for having her on, then realized he was perfectly serious. She looked at him in surprise. “You’re mad.”

  He smiled very briefly. “Believe that, my gel, if it lets you sleep more easily at night.”

  “I haven’t been sleeping at all at night, which is absolutely your fault and not for any less gentlemanlike reasons,” she said pointedly. “As for the other, I don’t believe you.”

  She waited for him to agree that she had every reason to think he was utterly daft, but he only stood there, watching her gravely.

  “But spells don’t just lie about like abandoned pieces of tack,” she protested. “Do they?”

  “If you are truly interested—”

  “I’m not.”

  “Which is why you’ve asked,” he finished. He took a pile of patterns, then very carefully started to sort through them. “In general, you have it aright. Most spells are simply words until a mage puts his power behind them. If a local wizard is exceptionally clever, he might write one of his spells in a book and add a bit of magic to it should he ever not feel quite up to making a full effort to sling that same spell at a bothersome youth or crotchety old sorceress.”

  She supposed that since she was already knee-deep in the madness, there was no sense in not continuing to wade farther from the shore. “Is that what you did with your book in the library?”

  He shook his head. “That was simply a spell of un-noticing layered over a very businesslike spell of protection. What I’m talking about is writing down a spell and depositing a bit of power along with the ink.” He glanced at her. “So the spell has a life of its own.”