by Lynn Kurland
Coimheadair of Cothromaiche had always been a rather quiet man, but Acair had assumed that came from standing so long in his father’s shadow. Now, he began to wonder if perhaps the prince simply didn’t have the temperament to rule the country.
No wonder Soilléir had gathered up all the spells of essence changing and hidden them away for safekeeping.
“Oh, please go on,” Léirsinn said.
Acair dragged his attentions back to the conversation at hand and wished rather fervently for a notebook and a pencil. There was obviously no fighting it any longer: he had become his mother.
“Your father was Niall of Ionad-teàrmainn, the lone survivor of his particular line, I believe. I’m not certain of your mother’s roots, which is a failure on my part. Tracing lines of that sort is one of my pastimes.”
“Fascinating,” Acair said sincerely. “You must turn up some interesting things.”
Coimheadair huffed a little in pleasure. “I must admit that is the case more often than not. Ionad-teàrmainn is the land across the great bay of Sealladh from Bruadair, but I’m guessing Lord Acair, that you must know that already.”
Acair was grateful he’d had the foresight to plant himself firmly on his stool. No more tipping backward with legs and arms waving frantically in the air. No wonder Sladaiche wanted revenge. He was likely still smarting from having endured the same.
“I just discovered it recently,” Acair managed, wishing that recently meant a score of years earlier instead of just now. He wouldn’t have chosen a different place to build a house, certainly, but he might have been more inclined to have kept watch for former neighbors with murderous intentions.
“I believe in their language, the name means refuge. Their history is full of wars and strife with Wychweald, of all places. Lord Acair, I heard tell you were considering settling there, though ’tis a bit close to Bruadair for comfort, if I’m not wrong?”
“You’re not wrong,” Acair agreed faintly. “And aye, I did build a house there.”
“What did you call it?”
“Tèarmann,” Acair said, ruthlessly suppressing the urge to shift uncomfortably. Naming a home was perhaps a foolish thing, but there was a part of him—perhaps a very large part—that had wished for something…well, something different.
“Sanctuary,” Coimheadair said with a smile. “Apt, if I might be so bold, and very lovely. I didn’t realize you knew any of their tongue, though I’m not surprised.”
“I didn’t,” Acair managed. “I believe I might want to learn a bit.” And by a bit, he meant more than just making a derivative of something he’d found carved into the ruins of a foundation stone he’d had tossed in the rubbish heap before his own foundations had been laid.
“We had a lexicon, rather heavy and substantial, though I’d have to look for it. Their language is almost forgotten, though dredging it up might be something you’d be interested in.” The prince recrossed his legs. “Very fine horse people there, of course, which, Mistress Léirsinn, might appeal to you. Unfortunately, there was trouble several centuries ago. The exact dates escape me, but I could find them later, if you like.”
“Brilliant idea,” Acair put in, deciding he might have to retrieve that lexicon he’d reshelved so badly.
The prince frowned at him, no doubt on principle, then continued. “Tosdach of Briàghde was traveling through An Caol with his son—”
“Tosdach?” Léirsinn. “My grandfather? Er, I mean—”
“Your step-father’s father? Yes, that is correct. His son, your step-father Saoradh, met your mother as he and his father were traveling hereabouts. Your mother was a delightful woman, my dear, and having three young children…” He smiled gently. “I believe, romantic that I am, that it was love at first sight. Saoradh didn’t have your father’s eye for horses, of course, but perhaps that didn’t matter. There is a part of me that always believed that your mother was the keener horsewoman. Not to disparage your sire, of course.”
“Was she from An Caol, then?” Acair asked. He might have thought the prince a very silly man, but His Royal Highness did have a way of sniffing out connections that even Fionne of Fàs might have admired.
“Fògarrach,” Coimheadair said. “Near An Cèin, which I’m sure you know. An Caol was originally settled by the last few stragglers from Ionad-teàrmainn, which you might not know.”
“I didn’t,” Acair said. “Your research is impressive, Your Highness.”
The prince looked pleased. “Fògarrach’s people aren’t elvish, but there are the occasional star-crossed love matches. I believe Ceannairceach of Léige can attest to the lure of that.”
Acair chuckled politely. “I believe she can and I paid a steep price for her happiness.”
“So I hear. Léirsinn, my dear, a glass of sherry perhaps?”
“I’m fine—”
A bellowing in the distance that sounded far too much like the call of a hunting horn had the prince jumping to his feet. Acair was almost tempted to mention that His Highness looked a bit like a fox who knew his time was up, but alas, he had grown soft so he forbore. He was beginning to suspect he would never again be his old self, full of vim, vigor, and acerbic remarks.
“My father,” Prince Coimheadair announced. “You should hide.” He pointed to a tapestry to the right of the fireplace. “There’s a closet behind that. My sire will never look.”
Acair caught the books the prince tossed at him and leapt with Léirsinn toward safety. His Highness held the tapestry for them until Acair managed to find the latch and open the door, then he dropped it. They barely had time to stuff themselves inside and pull the door to before the braying reached the library itself.
“Pitiful,” Acair whispered. “No copies and no decent sense of subterfuge. ’Tis a wonder the whole damned place hasn’t been overrun before now!”
The words were scarce out of his mouth before he realized a rather unsettling fact.
They were not alone in their closet.
A faint ball of werelight appeared over their heads and he looked to his left to find none other than Soilléir of Cothromaiche, youngest son of the crown prince and possessor of a countenance that was just slightly green, standing there looking profoundly guilty.
“You!” he exclaimed, understanding at that moment why he was the recipient of that greeting so often.
“My lord Acair,” Soilléir said, inclining his head politely. “Mistress Léirsinn. We might want to forgo pleasantries for another moment or two.”
Acair clamped his lips shut simply to keep himself from wasting breath swearing. That was a welcome distraction, given the straitness of their quarters. He was himself not a small man. Soilléir, unfortunately, was not a slight fellow either. He supposed if either of them had tended to portliness like Sladaiche, the current arrangement might have been a bit more tolerable. At least that way they could have elbowed pudge instead of muscle.
The single thing that saved his annoying companion from death was the fact that he’d had the good sense to put Léirsinn on his right as they crowded into that bloody closet. If he’d had to contemplate that damned whoreson being closer to her than was polite…
“You’re growling,” Léirsinn breathed.
It could have been much worse, he supposed, but he decided that wasn’t worth mentioning at the moment, either. For all he knew, any breathing out threats, no matter how richly they might have been deserved, would leave them all suffocating before Seannair managed to finish complaining about his latest hunt and trundle off to bed.
“Death,” he mouthed at Soilléir.
Not so much as a snort in return. Perhaps the prince had heard that threat more than once.
Eventually, silence fell out in the library. Acair elbowed Soilléir with perhaps a bit more vigor than the moment called for.
“Go look.”
“I’m not suppose
d to be here.”
“You live here!”
“Sshh,” Soilléir said, sounding more like a guilty youth than a man of mature years full of spells that gave the rest of the world nightmares.
“You cannot tell me you’re afeared of your grandsire,” Acair whispered furiously.
“He’ll cut me from his will.”
Acair heard Léirsinn laugh softly which was likely the only thing that saved the mage to his left from a proper throttling. He suspected Soilléir was vexing him on purpose, but there was no room to get his hands up and around the man’s throat, so perhaps there was nothing to be done but keep a tally of abuses to be repaid later.
He concentrated on simply breathing lightly until the silence had gone on for what felt like hours. He glared at Soilléir.
“Do you need a wee glass to scry the scene to make certain they’re gone or are your ears enough?”
Soilléir said nothing, but Acair flattered himself that if the werelight had been brighter, he would have been able to see a flicker of fear in the man’s eyes.
He was a dreamer, but there it was.
Soilléir eased the door open, listened for a bit longer, then pushed opened the door fully.
“All safe,” he said, stepping out and holding the tapestry away from the wall.
Acair invited Léirsinn to follow him as he made certain Soilléir’s ears weren’t failing him, then he saw her settled in her chair there by the fire. He set his burdens of the written word by her feet, then turned his attentions to the man who had caused him so much trouble. He folded his arms over his chest slowly, hoping to send the message that he was choosing not to commit murder right there on Seannair’s library hearthrug.
Soilléir sat down in his father’s recently vacated chair and smiled faintly. “I see you’ve made it this far.”
“No thanks to you.”
“You might be surprised.”
“Did you know?” Acair demanded.
“Know what?”
“Who I was meant to be looking for,” Acair snapped.
Soilléir lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “I know many things.”
Acair patted himself figuratively for something sharp to plunge into that damned essence-changer’s chest but, as was his lot in life at present, managed nothing but a noise that came far too close to mewling babe for his taste.
“You useless whoreson,” he said.
Soilléir only shrugged, something he seemed to do with frightening regularity. “I am a pragmatist.”
“I am a pragmatist,” Acair shouted, then remembered where he was and with what secrecy he was supposed to be there.
“Then perhaps we are more alike—”
“Do not even start with that,” Acair growled. “If you tell me that you’ve sent me scampering over the whole of the damned world simply to bring me here where you could tell me what you could have told me anywhere else, I vow I will cast aside my better instincts and slay you where you sit.”
“There were conclusions you needed to come to on your own,” Soilléir said simply.
Acair shook his head in disbelief. He realized with annoyance that he had shaken his head so often over the past year that he had acquired a permanent crackle in his neck. He blamed Soilléir and Rùnach. He would also be damned if he would ask them to see to repairing the damage. Who knew what sort of sparkling rot they would leave rampaging about his fine form in the process?
“You could have told me and saved me all this trouble—”
He stopped speaking. It was becoming an alarming habit, that realizing that he was on the verge of saying things he shouldn’t. Admittedly, he had a far better guard over his tongue than most of his family, but he had never shied away from flinging a well-conceived barb or a hastily slung-together insult and the consequences be damned.
Trouble, however, at his current juncture included a red-haired stable gel who had sacrificed not only her momentary peace of mind but likely her future peace as well simply to keep him alive. He didn’t dare look at her lest he see her reaction to his heart sitting so prominently, as the saying went, upon his sleeve. He knew as he had seldom known anything in the past that Soilléir had known what he would find in that barn. He shook his head slowly.
“Impossible.”
“Is it?”
“You didn’t.”
Soilléir smiled very faintly. “There is a rich history of that sort of activity in my family. I’m not sure you need worry, though. She might not be interested in you given that I don’t see any sort of betrothal ring on her fingers.”
Acair glanced at the woman in question’s fingers and almost suggested a rude gesture she might make with at least one of them, but perhaps that was an insult better saved for later.
“I’m working on it,” Acair said. “Why are you here?”
“Unforeseen circumstances,” Soilléir said succinctly.
Acair realized he’d finally reached a point with the mage across from him where he was simply past surprise.
“I didn’t intend to be,” Soilléir added, looking the faintest bit unsettled. “Events—or uncontrollable players in those events, if you will—took a turn I didn’t anticipate.”
Acair felt one of his eyebrows go up and he heartily agreed. “A wench,” he said in awe. “A wench has thrown you for the proverbial loop.”
“What is it your mother says about your untoward deeds?”
“If you can’t name them, I won’t claim them,” he said. “Pithy, but a bit too much on the rhyming side. My mother, as you might imagine, doesn’t care.”
“She doesn’t,” Soilléir agreed, “and she’s right about many things. Also, you two should go now.” He paused. “Please.”
Acair would have looked around himself in an exaggerated fashion, then made some cutting remark about the state of the world as a whole, but the truth was, he was just too damned unsettled to.
“You’ll need to help us out the back gate.”
“I wouldn’t think to do otherwise,” Soilléir said.
Acair suppressed the urge to swear at him. “Let me be more specific. You’ll need to get us over the border, invisible, with a distraction to draw eyes off us—on the off chance your damned spell isn’t enough.”
“A distraction won’t be a problem,” Soilléir said, “and my spell will be enough.”
“For more than one journey through the air.”
“I’ll give Léirsinn the key to use in removing it so you might use it as long as you like.” He rose and held down his hand for Léirsinn. “A safe journey to you, my dear.”
Acair was surprised she didn’t clout him on the nose, but that gel had more restraint than he did. He refrained from muttering threats under his breath because they were, after all, trying to go about in secret.
He retrieved the lexicon on the off chance he might need to use it as a weapon in a pinch, dared Soilléir to make any comment about removing it from his grandfather’s library—which he very wisely did not—and invited the man to join them in making a discreet exit out Léirsinn’s window after they retrieved their gear from her chamber.
The one thing he could say—and he did so with only a slight gritting of his teeth—was that whatever else his faults might have been, Soilléir of Cothromaiche was as good as his word. Within minutes they were safely in the air under cover of a spell that was so beautiful, he thought he might have to remove an item or two from the Reasons to Slay a Certain Essence-changing Whoreson column of Soilléir’s ledger after having heard the man weave it over them.
He’d memorized it, of course, because that was what he did.
A charmed life and a terribly courageous woman with whom to enjoy it.
He thought things just might be looking up.
The sun was setting as they walked through the village of An Caol, still cloaked in that sp
ectacular spell. He’d studied it as they’d flown and realized at some point during that flight that it was the same spell Soilléir had used in that rustic little pub in Neroche. At the time he had found the magic odd, but he couldn’t have said why. Now, he knew better.
It was the magic of Fàs.
He was definitely going to be having a wee visit to his grandmother’s solar, bribes in hand, to tattle on Soilléir. With any luck at all, there would be a battle of words and spells between the two of them that would be decent entertainment for the summer. He would, of course, be sitting by with notebook in hand. His posterity would thank him, no doubt.
He also wondered why he hadn’t taken the trouble to make note of that magic earlier. He was beginning to suspect that the magic of Fàs, honed to perfection in that tiny duchy of Fearann, hid behind honey and cones of thread to throw inquisitive mages off the scent. He had no idea what the stuff was really used for, but he would definitely be giving it a closer look when he was next at his leisure.
That might come after he’d unraveled what it was that Soilléir had so carefully placed in Léirsinn’s veins and the reason why.
He realized she had stopped. Sianach, currently wearing his drooling, hell-hound shape, had slipped his once equine head beneath her limp hand and given it a nudge. She patted him absently, but said nothing. She was simply looking at the very modest little house in front of her.
It had to have been her parents’, that much was certain. Acair wasn’t sure what the proper thing was to do at the moment, but didn’t wince when she groped for his hand and held it a bit too firmly. She looked away from the open doorway and met his gaze. He expected to see agony in her eyes, but there was only a solemn sort of peace.
He hardly knew what to think. She was so…whole. He was perhaps a bit too accustomed to rubbing shoulders with people who wanted as much from him as he wanted from them. That woman there, though. That red-haired, lovely, courageous gel who had put the fate of the world before herself was unlike anyone he had ever met.