by Lynn Kurland
A thick layer of dust blanketed everything, something he thought best not to disturb overmuch. There was unfortunately nothing to be done about footprints on the floor.
“There’s something on the tea table,” Mansourah said quietly. “An open book.”
Acair didn’t dare speculate, so he simply walked over to the table set there before the hearth and looked down. He wasn’t sure there was any point in trying to read the damned thing, but his curiosity, as it usually did, got the better of him. He brushed aside the dust that obscured the top page and found a date written there.
“Almost twenty years ago,” Léirsinn said in surprise. “Has the place been empty for that long, do you think?”
“I haven’t been here in far longer than that,” Acair said slowly. “I wonder—”
Léirsinn’s fingers digging into his arm made him wince. He looked at her in time to watch her nod toward a spot next to the hearth. He looked in the direction she was indicating, but saw nothing. He glanced about the great room, but all he saw was his ever-present companion, that damned spell of death, standing a pace or two away from them, watching the hearth as well. Acair didn’t suppose that was any sort of endorsement of anything save of his own blindness, so he looked back at Léirsinn.
“What do you see?” he asked, his mouth as dry as some parched bit of cursed soil in Shettlestoune.
“You,” she said hoarsely. “A very young you.”
“Bollocks.”
She put her hand on the back of his elbow. “Your spell is going over to . . . ah . . . well, that younger you.”
He could see his minder spell, true, but past that, all he saw was Mansourah of Neroche’s shadow almost reaching the dust-covered hearthrug. He would have commented on the untidy condition of the house, but words failed him. He supposed that might have been from shock, but he wasn’t certain he should be the one to offer an opinion on the matter. He watched in astonishment as the spell that followed him stretched out a bony arm toward the hearth.
The damned thing took what he could now see was a shadow of a lad of tender years by the hand—
“Oh, but this is absolute rubbish,” he blustered furiously.
He had to do that because what he was watching was no longer what he was seeing. It was as if he’d been simply plucked out of his currently delightful life and deposited without care into his rather miserable past.
He saw himself at the fire, reaching up to take a spell from off the mantel. That younger him unwrapped the spell, examined it, then tossed it in the fire in disgust. A noise startled that poor, foolish shadow of a lad and he bolted, only a piece of himself caught on the door.
It was as if a bit of his soul remained there, unable to move, trapped in a place that was absolutely not suitable for a boy of ten summers, no matter his parentage.
He watched in what he could only term horror as an old man, the mage he’d knocked off the ladder on his way by, walked into the house, pulled the remains of the spell out of the fire, and shook off the sparks.
Then he turned and looked at Acair.
Not the young him, but the current him that was standing at present in a dust-covered gathering chamber, flanked by a woman he thought he couldn’t live without and a royal princeling he knew he could most definitely jettison without regret at his earliest opportunity.
Or at least he thought the mage was looking at the current incarnation of himself.
It didn’t last very long before the man turned his sights on that poor lad caught at the door. Acair didn’t stop to consider whether or not it was foolish, he simply stepped in front of that young, stupid version of himself and protected the lad. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but the look of absolute loathing he received from that mage by the fire—
Acair came back to himself to find his cheek stinging as if he’d been smartly slapped, which he realized he had been and by that damned Mansourah of Neroche.
“You’ll regret that,” he growled.
“You were shouting,” Mansourah said, looking rather startled. “Don’t do that again, though I won’t deny that I enjoyed the terror in your voice. Still, don’t do it again.”
Acair wondered if they’d lingered too long, but he was too caught up in a dream that had felt a damned sight too much like reality to do anything but stand there and shake.
“Ye gads,” he managed, “I need a drink.”
“I’ll go see if all your shrieking called any of your bastard brothers to come admire the spectacle,” Mansourah said grimly. “Be prepared to flee.”
Acair hardly needed the injunction as he had no desire to remain behind and watch anything else untoward. He ignored the stinging of his cheek—surely Mansourah could have delivered a more gentlemanlike tap—and stumbled out of the small gathering chamber. If Léirsinn had to half hold him up as they left the house, well, he would ignore it and thank her later.
He finally stopped under the eaves of the forest, uncomfortably aware that he’d paused there all those years ago. If there was one thing to be said about the accursed soil he stood on, it was that it hadn’t changed all that much so the spot was easily recognized. He leaned against a tree, concentrating on not looking as if he were desperately dragging air into his lungs. It was difficult.
He tried to look at the house sitting there so unassumingly in the clearing, but all he could see was that poor sniveling child so full of bluster flinging himself into the shape of something with wings. He also couldn’t rid himself of the sight of that piece of his soul being caught on that door.
The worst, though, was the sight of that mage looking at him. At him, as if he had been standing in that gathering room in his present form, facing off with a mage in his current incarnation.
What he did know was that he would never admit to having toppled into a pile of snow when Mansourah stepped up next to him. Worse still was that he wasn’t sure the lad hadn’t materialized in the usual magicless way. The prince reached out and hauled Acair to his feet.
“Nothing to be seen,” he said quietly, “but I don’t like the feeling here. Where to now?”
“You know where to,” Acair said, trying not to gasp for breath. “We’ve already discussed this at length.”
“I thought you were trying to torment me,” Mansourah muttered. “Are you certain?”
The truth was, there was only one other place in the whole of the Nine Kingdoms he wanted to visit less than he wanted to skip off to his maternal grandmother’s house, but things were what they were.
“Of course,” Acair said. He reached for Léirsinn’s hand. “I’m sure we’ll be invited in for tea.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Mansourah said honestly. “Any more cousins I need to keep a watch out for?”
“And by telling you as much, rob any of those cousins of the opportunity to pursue your charming self?” Acair said. “I think discretion is the order of the day.” He looked at Léirsinn. “Let’s be off, shall we? More delightful adventures await.”
She said nothing, but he could tell she was worried. He would have reassured her that he had everything under control, but the truth was, he didn’t.
He started to march off with a cheery spring to his step, but it was difficult. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he felt absolutely shattered by what he’d seen. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find inside that house, but it hadn’t been what he’d seen. Damned unnerving, that.
He also didn’t appreciate that rubbish his dam had foisted off on him about his needing to collect bits of his soul that he’d left behind. Surely an insignificant piece of naughtiness such as the one perpetrated in that house didn’t count. If he’d left anything behind, it had been his dignity, courtesy of his hasty flight away from the bloody place.
But the worst thing of all was his inability to shake the sensation he had of being watched.
He gl
anced casually at Mansourah only to find the prince of Neroche studying him with a hint of a frown creasing his noble brow. He prided himself on his ability to carry on an unspoken conversation across a ballroom, so he saw no reason not to attempt the same at the moment.
Do you sense that we’re being observed? was what he would have asked but imagined he didn’t need to.
Dolt, what do you think?
Acair mouthed a vile insult and had a smirk in return. He turned away and shook his head. What was the world coming to when he could exchange friendly banter with an insufferably virtuous royal of that stripe and not have tummy upset afterward?
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
What he did know, however, was that whoever was watching them was playing a terrible game of chess. Perhaps it wasn’t even as lofty as that. He felt a bit like a mouse in a stall, darting frantically about whilst being watched by a fat, lazy cat who blocked the only exit. Time was being bided, and he had the feeling he was intended to know the same.
All the more reason not to be absolutely helpless in the face of that deadly game.
He would see what his granny’s inner sanctum had to offer in the way of details he might need. He wasn’t sure at the moment if it was more critical to identify who was stalking him or who had made the spell that was also stalking him. It was odd how both seemed to be about the same foul work. He didn’t want to believe that both were linked to the same mage, but what did he know?
Nothing was what he knew, nothing past the need to keep Léirsinn safe and unravel the threads tightening around him.
He set his face forward and carried on.
Thirteen
There were strange things afoot in the Nine Kingdoms.
Léirsinn could scarce believe she was considering the like. She who had never given thought to anything past what the port town of Sàraichte might hold for her, now contemplating the state of the entire world? It was almost too ridiculous to be believed.
She wasn’t sure that word didn’t apply itself rather handily to the whole of her life at present. Her current circumstances were proof enough of that.
She had recently flown—flown, not ridden—for endless hours on the back of a black dragon who tended to nip if his master got too close but who liked to nudge her hand or warm her feet with his remarkably soft, fire-snorting nose. She was wearing clothing gifted her by a witch who seemed to believe she might be engaging in nefarious doings in her future and should be dressed appropriately.
That same witch had sent her son on a quest to search for lost parts of his soul, though what he was supposed to do with them if he found them was anyone’s guess. She had listened to Acair and his mother discuss the particulars on the way out the door the morning before and only her own vast amounts of self-control earned over years of refraining from snorting had kept her from doing the same then.
Or at least it had until she’d gone to that dusty, deserted little house and had a good look inside. A look, if she could term that business properly.
She’d been a little surprised by the lack of spells, true, or anything that might have indicated it was a mage’s house. What had left her speechless had been seeing that lad of ten summers, or, rather, the faintest shadow of a lad of about ten summers, trapped on a piece of wood that had seemingly splintered off the main door.
She’d suspected that she’d been looking at a part of Acair’s soul.
The strangest thing of all had been watching Acair’s minder spell reach for that piece of soul’s hand and pull it along with them as they fled—
She pulled herself away from that memory before it unnerved her more than it had originally. She forced herself to concentrate on the business at hand, which seemed limited at the moment to standing a few paces away from two men who alternated between insulting each other and—an admittedly recent development—considering nefarious plans together. If she’d been a more frivolous woman, she might have decided that she had stared at their painfully handsome selves a bit too long and it was time to look for somewhere to sit before she swooned into a snowbank.
She wasn’t one to feel fragile very often. It took a certain amount of spine to face off with four-footed stallions. She was accustomed to correcting ponies with a sharp tongue and keeping stable lads in check with nothing but a look. Those two there were definitely not stable hands, however, and she was so far out of her normal routine that all she felt capable of at the moment was staring at them stupidly and wondering how anyone managed to get anything done with them in view.
Mansourah had lost the very regal-looking clothing Fionne of Fàs had so kindly gifted him the morning before and was dressed in simple hunter’s garb. If she had been a maid looking for a husband, she would have happily entertained his offer. No wonder Acair’s cousins had been so dazzled by him.
Acair’s gear was suited more to nefarious deeds than a visit to a prospective father-in-law, though she supposed she shouldn’t have expected anything else. He wasn’t in the market for a woman any more than she was in the market for a man, especially one who looked like he did.
Or so she continued to tell herself with an increasing lack of enthusiasm.
At the very least, they made a very dangerous pair, those two. They were also conversing instead of threatening to kill each other, which she thought might be an improvement over their usual interactions. She wondered what they’d been discussing while she’d been lost in thought, then decided perhaps it wouldn’t be that difficult to guess. The endless chewing on the same topic had been what had left her daydreaming in the first place.
“We cannot,” Acair said, sounding faintly exasperated. “She’ll sense anything you use.”
“I’m not sure how we accomplish this without it,” Mansourah said. “I have spells—”
“Your Highness, what you have are children’s charms,” Acair said seriously. “Do you honestly not know who she is? She’ll see through anything you think you’ll hide behind, then you’ll gravely regret your cheek when you find yourself at her supper table, if you land at her table, which I can’t guarantee. She might serve you supper, or she might have you for supper. Trying to sneak into her house will likely result in the latter, no matter your parentage.”
“So, you’re suggesting I hide in the woods like a common criminal whilst you trot off to do a bit of snooping.”
“My stock in trade.”
“Well, that at least is something I agree with,” Mansourah said, with feeling. “As you will, then. Léirsinn and I—”
“Wait,” Léirsinn said, putting her hand up, “I’m not staying behind.”
Mansourah looked at her in surprise. “I think it would be terribly unwise for you to venture farther here. I wouldn’t go near Cruihniche of Fàs without being prepared to use both arrows and many powerful spells, no matter what Acair says.”
“But I can see things,” she protested.
“So can he,” Mansourah said briskly.
“Parts of his soul that he’s lost?”
Mansourah shut his mouth apparently around whatever else he’d planned to say, then looked at Acair. “This is daft.”
“But apparently quite a thing,” Acair said. He pursed his lips. “I’m not enthusiastic about what thing this might be, but I fear Léirsinn has a point.”
Mansourah sighed deeply. “I don’t like this and I hope we don’t regret what this stirs up. Well, you’ll need werelight—”
“We’ll manage,” Acair assured him.
“Or spells of defense, at the very least,” Mansourah finished pointedly. “You know I can’t save you inside those walls.”
Léirsinn fully expected Acair to toss off some cheeky remark about spells, sword skill, and Mansourah of Neroche’s lack of both, but he only shook his head and clapped Mansourah on the shoulder.
“We’ll manage,” he repeated with a brief smile. “Don’t worr
y yourself into a state whilst we’re away or my sister will shout at me. Besides, I’m a terrible black mage with a foul reputation, remember? This is the kind of thing I do for sport.”
“With a woman in tow?”
Léirsinn stepped between them before Acair could answer, mostly because she already knew what he would say and the subject had been discussed too much already. She was going to help him however she could and continue to tell herself it was simply because she needed his aid in the future.
She embraced Mansourah briefly, then turned and walked away before she could see his expression. Acair had said he needed a peek at one of his grandmother’s books, so to his grandmother’s solar they would go.
Though she could hardly believe he had been willing to come so far for only that.
Acair caught up to her immediately, then continued on with her into deeper shadows. She realized after a bit that whatever else he could do, the man could certainly walk without making a sound. She gave up counting the times he put his hand out to stop her, then nodded for her to follow him around some hazard or other. Obviously, he’d done that sort of thing before.
In time, the forest began to seem a bit more regimented, as if the trees had been instructed to grow in a certain pattern and they hadn’t dared argue. She could make out a hint of a road in the distance, but Acair didn’t lead them to it. He continued to walk a path that he seemed very familiar with for reasons she imagined she could divine without any help.
The lines of trees ended suddenly, and an enormous clearing appeared. She stumbled to a halt, then gaped at the sight of the large, stately home there in front of them. It made her uncle’s manor house seem like a potting shed. She wasn’t sure it looked like a very welcoming sort of place, but it was definitely grand.