“Well, I doubt you’ll manage that, but let’s set that aside for examination later. What did you do to yourself, land on your arm?”
Mansourah only growled, which Acair supposed was answer enough. He drew the prince out into a bit more light and was forced to acknowledge that the man looked thoroughly wrung out.
“I don’t suppose you would be so good as to fix this,” Mansourah said, sounding as faint as he looked.
Acair would have—a gentleman never bypassed another in need, even if the aid rendered was limited to nothing more than a boost toward that peaceful rest in the East—but his minder spell cleared its throat in a way it absolutely shouldn’t have been able to. Acair ignored the fact that he’d become so accustomed to the damn thing that he hardly noticed it unless it poked its shadowy nose into his affairs, then looked at Mansourah and shrugged.
“Sorry, old bean. Can’t help you.”
Mansourah looked at Léirsinn in desperation. “No magic?”
Acair watched something cross her face, regret perhaps. Leftover tummy upset from whatever Simeon of Diarmailt had served for tea, more than likely.
“I’m sorry,” she said helplessly. “I could set it, if that would help.”
“I need to sit first,” Mansourah said, looking as if he might fall down before he managed it. “Anywhere, even the ground. But perhaps not here, aye?”
Acair couldn’t have agreed more about the somewhat exposed nature of their current locale. He encouraged the prince with soothing words and friendly taunts to take a stroll up the street. He hauled the lad into the first likely alleyway he came to and helped him sit atop the first wooden crate they found. It creaked dreadfully, but there was nothing to be done about that.
He considered the conundrum before him and wondered if it might just be easier to clunk the fool over the head and leave him behind. It was somewhat reassuring to find that that solution left him without a single twinge of conscience. Perhaps he hadn’t lost himself entirely in the endless months of do-gooding he’d endured.
Léirsinn moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, which left him waving a fond farewell to the idea of a rap on the child’s head and a hasty scamper in a useful direction.
“I can’t believe I’m asking this,” she said, looking as if she wished she could scamper away herself, “but why can’t he just use magic on himself?”
“That is a question for someone far wiser than I,” Acair said, “though I could speculate, if you like.”
“Oh,” Mansourah said through somewhat gritted teeth, “please do.”
Acair shot him a look he was certain could have been better appreciated by daylight, but with the right circumstances he was certain he would be able to reproduce it. He looked at Léirsinn and settled for a hasty bit of theological conjecture.
“Men are selfish bastards,” he said, “and I don’t hesitate to include myself in that lot. I suspect that whatever humorless being created the rules of magic-making all those many eons ago simply decided that it would be amusing to watch a mage stagger from one locale to the next with a sore tum, looking for someone to help him.”
“Do you think so?” she asked.
Acair shrugged. “I have no idea, in truth. All I know is that magic comes with limits, no matter how much we wish it didn’t. Perhaps ’tis for the best. A mage who could heal himself could heal himself endlessly. If he were a very bad mage—”
“Know any of those?” Mansourah interrupted tightly.
Acair spared the lad the cool look he deserved only because he was already suffering enough. “If he were an evil mage,” he repeated, “then his evil would always triumph. No chance of a plate of bad eggs giving the rest of the world a chance to balance the scales, as it were.”
Léirsinn frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense. If Mansourah can change his shape—and I’ll deny this conversation if you repeat it—then why can’t he just change his arm back to what it was before he landed on it?”
“An excellent question,” Acair said, “and I believe we may have touched on this fascinating subject before.”
“I’m sure I ignored you.”
He didn’t doubt it for a minute. “A shapechanging spell is only a temporary change, no matter how long it lasts. ’Tis a bit like donning a suit of clothes. You put the shape on, you take the shape off, but underneath, you’re still the same strapping, terribly handsome lad you were before you used the spell. Healing isn’t a temporary change.”
“Is it like essence changing?”
“What have you been telling her?” Mansourah gurgled.
Acair ignored him. “It is exactly like essence changing,” he said. “That, I’m certain, was a gift from someone back in the mists of time lest the whole of mankind perish because we’re too stupid to take care of ourselves.”
He watched Léirsinn send Mansourah a rather pointed look and thought it might be less-than-sporting if he didn’t join her. He supposed the only reason Mansourah didn’t spew out a complaint or two was because he obviously was in a great deal of pain.
“So, anyone can use a spell of healing?” Léirsinn asked. “As long as you use it on someone else?”
“Aye,” he said, though for the first time in his life, he wondered if that was as true as he’d always thought it to be.
It was a staggering thought, actually. If a mage could endlessly heal himself, by himself, then what was to keep a worker of magic from living forever? That damned Soilléir of Cothromaiche seemed ageless. Then again, so did his own grandmother, Eulasaid, but she was surely a soul worthy of a lengthy life.
“What about what you were looking for in Master Odhran’s shop?”
Silence, as seemed to be its habit of late, fell. Acair wondered if that would be his lot in life as long as that life included the woman next to him. She said the damndest things, things that he was thoroughly embarrassed not to have been thinking right along with her. He looked at her.
“I see.”
She shrugged helplessly. “Would it work?”
“For the sake of the world? I certainly hope not.”
She smiled. He was half tempted to join that mewling babe there on that crate and weep right along with him. Ah, damn that Soilléir of Cothromaiche and his cohort Rùnach of Tòrr Dòrainn. The two of them had likely foreseen the exact moment Acair would find himself standing in currently and had had a right proper guffaw over the sound his heart was making as it shattered into more pieces than a black heart ever should.
“I am,” he said in all seriousness, “not worthy of you.”
Mansourah blurted out a string of curses that should have alerted any and all night watchmen in the area to their whereabouts, but fortunately for them all, he descended rather quickly into a fit of wheezing. A broken arm perhaps did that to a man.
Acair decided action was more useful than speech, so he took his knife and cut off a strip from the bottom of his tunic. He laid it on the frost-covered cobblestones at Mansourah’s feet, then slid his knife back down the side of his boot.