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 possible—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.