by Lynn Kurland
Sianach, that sterling fellow, hopped down to the ground, then changed his shape into a rather slim but eminently terrifying black dragon. Acair caught his eye before he spewed out a bit of fire in the wrong direction, then made a hasty decision.
“You and Léirsinn go,” he said to Mansourah without hesitation. “I’ll follow.”
Léirsinn looked gratifyingly horrified. “On foot?”
“I’ve done it before,” he said cheerfully. “You go on and keep our injured princeling from falling to his death. I’m guessing he can find my mother’s house and keep you covered in a useful spell of concealment, even with his wounded wing.”
“Your mother’s house,” Mansourah said, almost soundlessly. “I thought you were making a poor jest.”
“She’s a very competent healer,” Acair said, “as well as one who sets a delightful table for supper. As long as you check her spells before she uses them on you or slips them into your tea, you’ll be fine. Off you go, lad. Léirsinn, don’t let him fall.”
If he expected an argument, he didn’t get one. What he did have for his trouble, however, was a brief peck on the cheek from Léirsinn and the same attempt made by Mansourah. And damn that bloody middle child of the fierce and irreverent maker of inappropriate jests Desdhemar of Neroche if he didn’t simply laugh and hop up on Sianach’s back with only a minor groan. Acair watched Léirsinn clamber up onto Sianach’s scaly self, then send him a look full of meaning. He supposed since the gloom was so complete, he could read into that look anything he liked.
He scarce managed to duck before Sianach heaved himself up into the sky with a shriek that should have woken half the city. That horse-turned-dragon spewed out a fierce blast of fire in the direction of that vexatious clutch of mages, causing a handful of them to frantically strip off their cloaks and beat the flames into the dirt. Acair watched his companions disappear under a spell of un-noticing and felt a rather unwholesome wave of relief wash over him. They were away and safe. He could hardly ask for anything more.
He was momentarily distracted by a bag of something dropped at his feet—on his foot, rather. He picked it up and hefted it experimentally. He had a look inside as well, because he was a suspicious bastard and it wouldn’t have surprised him at all to have found that the traveling funds Mansourah had obviously left for him were nothing but useless blanks. They were actually Nerochian gold sovereigns that certainly bit as though they were the genuine item, so he tied the purse to his belt and strode out into the courtyard.
Someone had thoughtfully lit a lamp or two, which he supposed would aid him in what he intended to do. He realized with a bit of a start that one of the men carrying a lantern was glaring at that equally irritated group of mages with a fair bit of enthusiasm and that the man was accompanied by a serving maid who was also holding up a light.
He thought it might be a reflection of the state of his life at present that he hadn’t noticed either of them before.
Well, their arrival hadn’t left him as much leisure as he might have liked, so he took matters into his own hands right away.
“The king’s book of spells,” he shouted, holding the thing up. He waited until all of them were looking at him—and recognizing him apparently—before he hurled the book over their heads with as much force as possible.
Mages scrambled to catch it, but they failed. Acair wasn’t prepared to credit his endless amounts of do-gooding for anything, well, good, but he had to admit that perhaps there was something to it. He watched in astonishment as the serving girl plucked the king’s book of spells out of the air as if she’d been using a spell to do the like. She fumbled with it, tossing it up in the air repeatedly as mages fell over themselves in an effort to grasp it.
There was magic afoot. Acair could smell it at twenty paces.
The serving girl seemingly lost control of her juggling and the book went flying into the hands of her master.
“Oh, my lord, don’t steal that,” she pled.
Mages converged on the man as one, flapping their metaphorical wings like a pack of damned vultures. Acair stood there long enough to see the servant look at him, then point rather pointedly at the gates.
Well, he would be damned.
He would have thanked her, but she looked as if she were capable of unleashing a bit of temper on him, so he made her a quick bow and dashed for the gates, keeping as much to the shadows as he could. He wasn’t one to let something as insignificant as a city wall keep him from the sweet freedom of bucolic countryside, so he scaled the wall, rendered unconscious a pair of burly lads with mischief on their minds, then dropped to the other side without breaking any bones.
And with that, the night could quite properly be considered a success.
He had a final look at the city behind him, caught sight of the serving wench slipping past gate guards as if she’d been practiced at the same, and considered going back to ask her if she needed aid. He dithered, something he never did, but there it was again. Too much cozying up to his softer side had definitely done a foul work upon his good sense.
He was still trying to latch onto the cold, calculating, nobler part of himself when he found himself facing a wench who certainly was rather cheeky for her station.
“Are you daft or stupid?” she demanded, shoving her hood back off her hair. “I’ve helped you escape, now go!”
Acair very rarely found himself without a single thing to say, but at the moment all he could do was gape at the woman standing in front of him and wonder how it was that a complete stranger could look so much like Léirsinn of Sàraichte.
“Are you—”
She threw up her hands. “I’m no one! You will be no one as well if you don’t flee.”
She made a very reasonable argument, one he was perfectly happy to concede. He would have thanked her for her aid, but before he could even begin, she had melted into the shadows. Whether or not she simply vanished into the morning mist or climbed a tree to watch whatever mayhem might ensue, he couldn’t have said. What he did know was that she had indeed saved his life and left him with the unhappy burden of needing to do yet another good turn for someone else.
He sighed deeply, then considered the journey that lay in front of him. He could run for a great while—and had numerous times in the past when skirting the odd clutch of enemies—but his mother’s house was on the far side of Ceangail and the country between his current locale and her rather unwelcoming abode was not insignificant. It would take him likely a se’nnight of travel on foot to arrive at her hearth and that was time he didn’t have. The only thing he could hope was that Sianach would decide that returning for his beloved master was more important than making a pig of himself in some stack of hay.
He cursed, then strode off into what remained of the night.
Seven
Being in charge of a shapechanging horse wasn’t for the faint of heart.
Léirsinn considered the truth of that as she struggled to keep her seat on a dragon that was flying quite a bit faster than the average dr—er, well, what she thought the average dragon should be . . . ah . . . flying—
She took a figurative step back from the thought, because it was ridiculous. She would have taken a deep breath, but the wind in her face was just short of a gale, even hiding behind Mansourah of Neroche as she was, so she settled for giving herself a hard mental shake and forcing herself to concentrate on what made sense to her.
She spent less than a trio of heartbeats on that path before she gave up there as well. The truth was, she was traveling quite swiftly to a destination she wasn’t sure of, trying to keep her seat on the back of her, ah, conveyance, and all the while holding on to a prince of a royal house so he didn’t pitch off the side into thin air. The fact that it was late afternoon and she could see very well things that should have remained in her nightmares—things such as the ground farther beneath her than should have been poss
ible—was not helping matters any.
The only bit of truth that felt as ordinary as it should have was the realization that she was actually missing Acair of Ceangail and not just for his endless amounts of courage and saucy remarks.
The world was obviously on the verge of ending.
He had told her he would follow on foot, something she hadn’t been in a position to argue with. The man was hardly a child and surely knew the dangers of his situation. All she could do was carry on and try not to think about her future, a future that would likely include first gaining entrance to his mother’s house, then attempting not to wind up in whatever cauldron the woman might be endlessly stirring.
The journey felt interminable, but perhaps that had to do less with the distance than the discomfort her thoughts were causing her. She wished she could have consigned the whole experience to that place where her dreams lived, but it was more difficult than she’d expected. She continued to find herself in places so far out of her realm of experience, she hardly recognized her life any longer.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have agreed so quickly to flee her uncle’s barn so she could save her own sweet neck. She likely shouldn’t have gone with Acair to Beinn òrain where she had then watched her favorite horse sprout wings. She absolutely should have refused to go any farther after she had watched an elven king heal her dying horse in some mysterious way she didn’t want to think about, then listened to that same monarch and his aides make a list of bad deeds committed by one Acair of Ceangail.
She would have been perfectly happy to chalk everything up to weariness, worry, and more adventure than she had ever thought she might be subjected to. That she had lost count of the days she’d spent being a gawking witness to the utter chaos that was Acair’s normal way of living likely said all that needed to be said about the condition of her wits.
She shifted on Sianach’s back and made certain Mansourah was awake before she allowed herself to continue to let her thoughts wander. Unfortunately, they seemed to continually lead her to the same place: a spot of shadow where shadow shouldn’t have been. Once she started thinking about that particular spot, she couldn’t not think about how whatever blindness she had experienced when it came to magical things had been completely stripped from her eyes.
She was no longer an observer; she was a full participant in the madness.
She fretted over that thought until she realized the sun was setting behind them. The only thing that accomplished was to leave her absolutely desperate to find somewhere relatively flat to lie down and sleep. She forced herself not to think about the man who was running to catch up with them. The last thing she suspected Acair would want was sympathy. Flattery, perhaps, or a decent glass of wine to enjoy while describing his latest piece of mischief—
“Down there,” Mansourah shouted suddenly.
She almost fell off Sianach’s back in her surprise. She took a deep breath and looked down to her right, past dragon wings that were only slightly more substantial than a fond wish.
“In the clearing,” Mansourah croaked.
She wondered if Mansourah might be delirious or if he knew where they were. She had told Sianach where they were meant to go, Mansourah had made certain the pony—er, dragon—had some idea of where that spot might be located, and she had trusted that Acair had given the naughty thing decent directions in the bargain.
“Have you ever been here?” she asked.
“Never.”
She wasn’t sure how that was meant to be useful, but she supposed the sooner they were on the ground, the better.
The truth was, something—or someone—had caught up to them a pair of hours earlier. It couldn’t have been Acair because whoever—or whatever—it was obviously possessed enough magic to fly so hard on their heels. That she was simply noting that without shrieking was perhaps the most unsettling realization she’d had in at least a fortnight.
Sianach at least seemed to find that hint of a clearing in the forest to be a suitable place to land. Léirsinn didn’t argue with him. Instead, she closed her eyes and hoped that the damned pony wouldn’t run them into the ground.
To her surprise, he landed with a surprising amount of care, folded his wings, then dipped his head. Léirsinn didn’t bother to comment. She simply sighed, then tumbled off her mount and landed on Mansourah who had wound up sprawled atop a decent amount of snow.
She got to her knees, which seemed to be as far as her shaking limbs would take her. Sianach stretched out his neck and rested his head next to her which gave her the excuse of scratching him behind his scaly ears until she had caught her breath.
Feeling that things were likely as peaceful as they were going to get, she ventured a look around. There was a house to her right; that much she could tell by the light streaming out the open front door. A woman who looked remarkably like a slightly younger incarnation of Cailleach of Cael stood there, apparently waiting for company to arrive.
Léirsinn left Sianach to his own devices, then helped Mansourah up into a sitting position. He cradled his arm against his gut and shivered.
“We’ve arrived,” he said.
Léirsinn didn’t dare ask any details, so she kept her hand on his back and wondered if it might leave her looking cowardly if she used him as something to hide behind.
“I understand the witchwoman of Fàs has spells at all her doorways,” he murmured, sounding as if he very much wished to avoid encountering any of them. “I suppose if I offer to share secrets of state with her, she won’t slay us.”
Léirsinn found that her mouth was suddenly quite dry and it had nothing to do with hours of, er, flying. “Do you think so?” she managed.
“I have no idea, actually,” he said. “The rumors of her magic are many and terrifying.”
“Worse than her son’s?”
He glanced at her. “I’m not sure I’m equal to comparing the two, actually, but I would say they are definitely cut from the same cloth.”
That’s what she was afraid of. “Then how do we proceed?”
“I’ll make introductions and we’ll hope for the best.”
Léirsinn wasn’t sure there was anything else to be done, so she nodded and helped Mansourah get to his feet. She hardly flinched at all as their dragon jumped up in the shape of his own surly equine self, but it had been that sort of day so far. She pulled Mansourah’s good arm over her shoulders, then walked with him across the front yard toward a woman who was watching them with only mild interest.
Acair’s mother had no witchly wand to hand, but perhaps she didn’t need sticks to do her business with.
The resemblance to Mistress Cailleach, the fishwife she knew in Sàraichte, was uncanny. To learn that Cailleach was not the ordinary old woman selling her wares Léirsinn had believed her to be but instead a witch had been ridiculous.
That Acair’s mother was Cailleach’s niece and therefore possessed a full complement of otherworldly skills was absolutely believable.
Mansourah made the woman a low bow and almost went pitching forward onto his face for his trouble. Léirsinn hauled him back upright and steadied him. Mansourah coughed a time or two, then carefully inclined his head.
“Mistress Fionne of Fàs,” he said faintly, “if I might introduce myself—”
“No need for that, young prince of Neroche,” the woman said. “I know who you are.”
“Then my companion—”
“I know who she is as well.”
Léirsinn had no idea what one was supposed to do when making the acquaintance of a reputed witch, but she decided a brief curtsey couldn’t go wrong. Acair’s mother lifted her eyebrows briefly, then looked her over from head to toe.
“Hmmm,” was apparently the result of that looking.
“That’s your son’s horse,” Léirsinn said quickly, hoping that might help them curry a bit of favor. “Your son, Acair.”
The witchwoman of Fàs made a noise of disgust. “The little rotter. He never writes, never comes to visit. I’m left to gather tales of his mischief-making from other, less reliable sources.”
“That must be a terrible disappointment,” Mansourah managed. “I can assure you, Mistress Fionne, that he has done you proud out in the great wide world. He has left a trail of vile deeds and terrible spells from one end of the Nine Kingdoms to the other.”
The witchwoman of Fàs considered that for a moment or two, then nodded. “I’m interested in the more notable escapades as always, even given secondhand.” She turned toward her house. “Bring in the young prince of Neroche, my wee horse miss. We’ll see to his arm by the fire.”
Léirsinn didn’t bother to ask the woman how she had any idea where she’d passed the greater part of her life, mostly because she didn’t want to know. Acair’s mother was welcome to her speculations and their uncanny accuracy.
She squeezed Mansourah’s arm. “Don’t faint.”
“I’m very near to it,” he said, looking as if that might be the case. “Keep your fingers crossed that she doesn’t slay us the moment we cross her threshold.”
“At the moment, I’m not sure it wouldn’t be a relief,” Léirsinn said half under her breath. She smiled briefly at Mansourah. “I don’t mean it, of course. I’m happy to clip you under the chin, if you’d rather face the rest of the evening senseless.”
“It would be the kindest thing you could do—and I have to assume you didn’t learn that from me.”
“Life in a barn has its perils.”
She didn’t care to describe them and he didn’t ask her what they were. That might have been because he was trying to stay on his feet. She followed Acair’s mother into her house, trying not to look around as desperately as she wanted to, and stopped at the entrance to a modest but comfortably appointed kitchen. There was a round table precisely in the center of the room, with a large hearth to one side of it and cupboards and other things to the right. The witchwoman of Fàs pulled out a chair at the table and nodded.