The Prince of Souls (The Nine Kingdoms Book 12)

by Lynn Kurland

  He ran his finger over it, then looked at her and smiled. “Breathing fire even all those years ago, were you?”

  “Apparently,” she said, ignoring the crack in her voice.

  “Handsome lad there. One could argue that the coast there looks a bit like my bay.”

  “One could.”

  “I hesitate to say it, but your sister was a better artist.”

  She elbowed him in the ribs, perhaps harder than he deserved, but he only huffed out a bit of a laugh before he shifted and put his arm around her.

  “I love you, even if you cannot draw.”

  “I was a prodigious dreamer, though,” she said archly.

  “I suspect you were.” He hugged her briefly, then released her and handed her back her book. “I think you should keep this one. I’ll repay Soilléir for it later by not slaying him whilst he’s asleep. What was the first tale about?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then found she couldn’t. She could scarce believe what she was thinking, but it was undeniable.

  “Léirsinn?”

  She turned a bit and put her mouth next to his ear. “It was a tale about a dragon who had lost his soul and all the things he had to do to recover it.”

  He bowed his head and made a noise that might charitably been termed a laugh had they been in different circumstances. He slid her a look.

  “Did he find it?”

  “I believe so.”

  He leaned his head back against the wall. “Do you remember any of it?”

  “I remember the entire thing.”

  “Then come very close and whisper it in my ear. I think I need something else to think on for a moment besides what’s in front of us.”

  She did, because the tale wasn’t terribly long and because she’d heard it so many times—and read it herself perhaps more—that she thought she might never forget it.

  “Lovely,” he said, sighing. “And it gives me hope for my own black soul—or the pieces that are missing of it, rather.”

  “Why would someone want it, though?”

  He looked at her. “No idea. And why not take the entire book, if one’s fancies run to childrens’ tales?” He shook his head. “Let me have a wee peek at what I have here, then we’ll see what we need to do.”

  She nodded and kept hold of her book. She could see it in her parents’ hands, hear their voices as they read from it, feel the heat from the fire at her back as she sat safe and comfortable with the day’s work finished.

  “We might manage to have those pages back at some point, perhaps.”

  She realized Acair was watching her. She considered, then shook her head.

  “The memories are enough.” She set the book aside and looked at what he held on his lap. “What do you have there?”

  “A history of blacksmithing and some enormous tome on the proper training of horses. I imagine you wouldn’t find anything new in either. There’s a ledger here, but that’s also staggeringly boring.”

  She took it from him and glanced through the first few pages. “This is a stable ledger. ’Tis sloppy, if you want my opinion. Not even my uncle would have allowed anything like it.”

  “Fascinating.”

  She tapped one of the pages. “Look at the dates. Are those actual numbers?”

  He peered at the ledger, then shrugged. “I would say I can scarce believe anyone would care about the incomings and outgoings of a barn a hundred years ago, but you horse people are particular about your doings. I’m guessing this can’t be the only ledger the stablemaster has kept.”

  “It wouldn’t be,” she agreed. “Odd that this was the one that our particular mage has touched, though, isn’t it?”

  He blinked, then shut his mouth. “Or perhaps less odd and more alarming. Let’s keep it for the moment.”

  She took it and put it with her own blue-hued book of dragonlore. She didn’t look at the cover, but she supposed she could be forgiven if she traced the shape there with her fingers just the same. She supposed other than that, she had never seen any of her other possessions from before.

  It was profoundly strange to have something in her hands that had belonged to her in a different lifetime.

  She leaned back against the wall and rested her head on Acair’s shoulder. Magic, she was finding, was a bit more taxing than she would have thought. Not even a full day of riding horses was so draining.

  “But we didn’t find what Soilléir sent you here to find,” she whispered.

  “What he sent me to steal, rather,” Acair said grimly. “I daresay it has already been stolen.”

  “Which doesn’t make any sense either,” she said. “If the spell were already stolen, what would there be left for you to take?”

  “Perhaps he wanted me to make off with his grandfather’s cache of after-supper treats and confused sweets with souls, then completely panicked when he saw how close I was to repaying him properly for what he’d done.” He let out his breath slowly. “I’m not exactly sure what I expected, but you did a fine job finding us these.”

  “A pity we couldn’t use a spell that didn’t need a name.”

  “As in something that vomited out books that had been poorly shelved by unnamed but portly orchardists?”

  She smiled. “Something like that.” She looked at the barn ledger on her lap, then lifted her head and looked at him. “Didn’t Soilléir say that mage we won’t name had treated his ruler’s horses poorly?”

  Acair sighed. “Aye, but I’m guessing there are many who could answer to that charge.” He lifted the ledger and glanced through it. “I’m guessing that if he had anything to do with horses, he didn’t last long near them, but what do I know? Perhaps fine lords don’t care.”

  “Even my uncle cares,” she said seriously, “and he can’t tell a good horse from a bad one. Then again, neither can Slaidear, which my uncle knows, I believe. Keeping him from ruining everything that came through his barn is probably why I was allowed to stay so long before my uncle decided my life needed to end.”

  “I wouldn’t be…surprised…”

  She listened to his voice fade and looked around her carefully, wondering if they’d been discovered.

  Then she realized he had become very still. There was something about his stillness, though, that left her feeling something it took a moment or two to identify.

  Fear.

  That was it. Fear.

  She shifted to look at him. “What is it?”

  He looked at her slowly. “Are all stablemasters that inept?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, helplessly. “Slaidear doesn’t ride willingly, but that might be because he doesn’t ride well.”

  “He is a bit thick through the middle.”

  She nodded.

  “So was the orchardist.”

  She scrambled to her feet, but he was there with her, holding her by the arm before she could bolt. She wasn’t certain where she would have gone, but away seemed like a good destination.

  “When did Slaidear come to the barn, Léirsinn?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I can’t remember.”

  He put on a pleasant expression. She knew, because she’d watched him do it with others. It was the same expression he wore when he was trying to put someone at ease, though she supposed he wasn’t doing it with her because he was on the verge of attempting to intimidate her.

  “Think back,” he suggested gently. “Was he there when you arrived?”

  “I think I might be ill.”

  “I think I might join you,” he said frankly, “but later, when we’ve a nicely patterned settee before us and the king nowhere in sight. We’ll puke together down the back of the cushions. I know these are difficult memories, if you can bring them to mind at all. I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t. Do you remember his being there wh
en you arrived? Perhaps the day after your grandfather fell ill and your uncle sent you to the barn? Was he there then?”

  She turned and walked away a pace or two, then looked out into the rich darkness of the king’s library. She forced herself to revisit a time she hadn’t thought of in years. Unfortunately, there was a decent reason they were uncomfortably clear.

  She turned and returned back over the same two paces she’d used to escape what she could scarce face.

  “There was a different stablemaster,” she said slowly. “I went inside the barn to find him beating one of the lads, almost to death. Doghail pulled me behind him and hid me.”

  “Of course he did,” Acair said quietly.

  “He was gone a few days later. That first stablemaster, that is. Slaidear was there next. It could have been a fortnight, perhaps not that long.” She considered, then shook her head. “I don’t remember him doing anything useful, if you want the truth of it. He stopped pretending to train the horses and left them to me years ago. I even decided which ones to buy. I thought it was because he realized he had no eye for them.”

  “I imagine that’s true as well.”

  She looked at him, feeling horror descend. “He isn’t…”

  “Try the spell again, Léirsinn, and use his name instead.”

  “I have to go to the window,” she lied. “I can’t remember the words.”

  He only nodded and picked up the books. He shoved five into a random shelf, kept the ledger and her blue-hued book of faery tales, then took her hand and walked with her to the window. He pulled the slip of parchment from his pocket and handed it to her, then smiled briefly.

  “You’ll be fine.”

  She would have protested that she most certainly wasn’t going to be fine, but the dream she’d had in King Uachdaran’s hall came back to her—rushed at her, actually—in a way that left her realizing that whatever was behind her was on fire and the only way out was to walk off a cliff into darkness.

  “I would hold you,” Acair said very quietly, “but I fear you might pull some of my power to you.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll do this.”

  “Of course you can, love.”

  She stilled her mind, then whispered the words of the spell, using a different name, one she was convinced would do nothing at all.

  A book leapt off the shelf in front of her and fell at her feet.

  Acair picked it up “Damnation.”

  “What is it?”

  He held out a book, then opened the cover.

  All the pages were missing.

  “Well,” she said uncomfortably, “that’s something, isn’t it?”

  “And not a damned thing on the cover to tell us what had been inside. I’m guessing the contents were removed several decades ago.” He looked closely at the cover, then swore and shoved it in the shelf above his head. “Useless. Why this answered to Slaidear and not Sladaiche is something I believe we’ll leave as a mystery for someone else. I think we might be finished here. Can you put these in your satchel for the moment? I’ll carry them later.”

  She shot him a look, but supposed she didn’t need to add that she was accustomed to carrying saddles and hay. He only smiled and handed her the books.

  “Let’s be away before we’re caught. I think we have what we came for.”

  “Is there time to look for that finely patterned divan?”

  He laughed softly. “We’ll befoul it a different time and blame it on Soilléir. Off we go.”

  She wondered, a moment or two later, if they ever might manage to exit somewhere they weren’t supposed to be without having the master or mistress of the house catch them before they could.

  A faint light appeared next the hearth. A fire joined it, blazing to life tidily in that same hearth.

  Acair sighed, then took her hand. “It could be worse,” he murmured.

  She decided to withhold judgment for the moment. A blond man sat there, dressed in well-made but not excessively fine clothing. His boots, however, were very nice, indeed.

  Acair stopped in front of him and made him a low bow. “Your Highness.”

  “My lord Acair.”

  Léirsinn wondered if the day would come when she would stop being surprised by the people Acair knew—and those who knew him.

  “If I might present to Your Royal Highness my beloved companion, Léirsinn of Sàraichte,” Acair said formally. “Léirsinn, this is His Royal Highness, Coimheadair, the crown prince of Cothromaiche.”

  Léirsinn attempted a curtsey to go along with Acair’s very posh accents, but it didn’t go very well. That was definitely something she was going to have to work on when she had a bit of free time.

  “Sàraichte,” Prince Coimheadair said with a frown. “Don’t you mean An Caol?”

  “Your Highness?” Acair said.

  Léirsinn realized the prince was looking at her, but she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say.

  “Don’t you know who you are, little one?”

  Acair caught his breath, almost so quietly that she would have missed it if she hadn’t been doing the same thing.

  “Your Highness, why do you say that?” Acair asked.

  “Well,” the crown prince of Cothromaiche said with a shrug, “because I knew her mother, of course.”

  Nineteen

  Acair spared a moment to wonder when he was going to manage to exit a solar without running afoul of its owner.

  He shook his head wearily. Yet another thing to add to the list of things to avoid in the future. No more quests, no more flinging his possessions up in the air when taken by surprise, no more unexpected revelations about the people around him, and definitely no more lights springing to life thanks to the current landlord’s hand.

  He realized Léirsinn had been invited to sit. He hadn’t, but he hadn’t expected anything less. Prince Coimheadair, for all his slightly odd quirks, was in the end a king in waiting. Other men simply did not sit in his presence. Acair was perfectly happy to stand behind Léirsinn’s chair and look deferential whilst he determined when and how they might escape with not only their lives, but the books they had filched still in their possession.

  Slaidear.

  He could scarce believe it. Why the hell hadn’t he seen that coming his way?

  He watched Léirsinn hand over the spoils and wondered if he should just give the quest up for lost right there or plead for another hour or so to mourn the saving of the world that might not happen.

  He realized the prince was giving him a look that he had absolutely no trouble interpreting. His chances of avoiding death by some painful Cothromaichian method were very slim indeed.

  The prince looked at the book of faery tales, then at Léirsinn.

  “My child,” he said slowly, “why this?”

  She was sitting with her back ramrod straight, her hands demurely folded in her lap. Acair would have shifted slightly to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but he suspected she wouldn’t need it.

  She was a wonder, that lass.

  “The book is mine,” she said.

  “How did it come to be in our library?”

  “A very good question, Your Highness,” she said politely. “I believe I would count it a fortunate rescue, nothing more.”

  Acair would have laughed, but he caught the tail-end of another cool look sent his way by his primary tormenter’s father. What he wouldn’t have given to have had Soilléir right there where he could have given the whoreson a wee shove into his papa’s comforting arms, then caught his horse gel’s hand and bolted from the library at a dead run.

  The prince handed it back to her. “I will discover why it was unfortunately no longer in your possession and see that the miscreant is punished. Until that time, accept my apologies for the apparent theft.”

  “Oh,” Léir
sinn said, sitting back the slightest bit. “Very generous, Your Highness, but I’m sure it was nothing more than a happy accident that it found its way here. Please don’t make a fuss on my account.”

  “My dear, I couldn’t think to do less. Your mother was a frequent guest here before your brother was born and I bought many a horse from your father. I met him several years before they wed, of course.”

  Acair supposed no one would notice if he simply leaned a bit on Léirsinn’s chair to keep himself from pitching forward over the back of it onto her lap.

  Her mother? Her father?

  “I’m surprised,” Léirsinn said faintly.

  Acair thought gobsmacked was perhaps a better word, but he didn’t imagine anyone would care what was running through his head.

  “Why is that, my dear?”

  “Well,” Léirsinn said slowly, “I didn’t realize he had traveled so far north of Briàghde before he wed my mother.”

  “Oh, I was speaking of your father,” Coimheadair said with a fluttering of the fingers of one hand, “not your step-father.”

  A book landed on the floor. Acair reached around to pick up the faery tale book that had slid off Léirsinn’s lap, then caught the prince’s eye and sent him a pointed look. The prince nodded for Acair to sit, so he pulled over a fireplace stool—no sense in not keeping up the appearance of respect—and sat down next to Léirsinn.

  “I believe I’ve stepped in it now,” Prince Coimheadair said, looking genuinely distressed. “Did you not know, child? Lord Acair, what of you?”

  “Hadn’t the foggiest,” Acair said, too rattled to pull out his best courtly manners and give them a snap to rid them of any residual wrinkles. “Would Your Highness permit me the familiarity of taking my lady’s hand?”

  Coimheadair waved him on, then turned back to Léirsinn. “I won’t add to your discomfort, Mistress Léirsinn, for I can see these tidings come as a surprise. I suppose they would, given how young you were when your sire was slain. Oh, and there I go again, speaking out of turn.”

  Acair would have shaken his head, but that wouldn’t have done. A few things became clear to him, however, that hadn’t before. Seannair seemed to be clinging rather firmly to the crown he never wore, which Acair had always credited to the stubbornness of a crotchety old bastard who simply hadn’t hunted enough pheasants over the centuries and was determined to live long enough to fill his tally and then some.