“Souls?” he said hoarsely.
She slapped her hand on the table, sending teacups rattling. “Of course souls, you idiot. Think on it! A mage who never pays a price for his black magic? Your father lusted after power, which would have allowed him many things, but in the end all the power in the world didn’t serve him and it would have eventually destroyed him because of the magic he used. But a mage who can trade others’ souls for magicmaking will never tire, never pay a price for his spells, never find himself in a position where he’s at risk of being stopped.”
“Ye gads,” Acair said faintly.
“Well said.”
He took a deep breath. “Then the purpose of those spots of shadows is made clear.”
“And so it is.” She paused, then shook her head. “I’ve said more than I should have.”
“For once, I believe I agree with you,” he said. He wondered if there might be enough daylight to apply himself to fixing her roof or if some vile spider would slay him if he tried to stack wood in the dark. At the moment, he thought that might be preferable to what he faced. He pushed his chair back. “Thank you for tea, Mother.”
She eyed him over her spectacles. “Off to do foul deeds, my son?”
“Stack wood, rather.”
She nodded and a substantial ball of werelight appeared over his head. “The sun will set eventually,” she said. “Lots of wood waiting for you, of course.”
He nodded his thanks, then whistled for his minder spell to come along with him. If it snarled at him like a rabid dog, so much the better. It was a pity he couldn’t use it to hide behind, but it seemed to be more comfortable hovering behind him. At least he knew what to expect from it.
A mage stealing souls for unlimited power. He shook his head over the elegance of the thought. He wondered why his father hadn’t attempted the same, but Gair was a man with an insatiable desire for praise. Stealing power was messy and loud. This was something else entirely. If Acair hadn’t stepped in one of those spots himself, he never would have noticed them and he certainly wouldn’t have known what their purpose was.
Quiet work indeed.
He paused at the door to the kitchen, then turned and looked at his mother. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas where I might find a few more details about this mage we won’t discuss.”
She shook her head, looking more unsettled than he was comfortable with. “He was an afterthought, truth be told.”
“What made you think of him?” he asked, because he was terribly curious and had no sense of decorum when it came to conversations in his mother’s kitchen.
“I was thinking about your father, if you want to know,” she said stiffly, “and what a right proper bastard he was, wanting all that power that wasn’t his. I started to knit, then one thing led to another, and . . .” She shrugged helplessly. “My mind is ofttimes simply too much for even my knitting to contain.”
“Mother, you are a wonder.”
She blinked, then she colored a bit. “Get on with ye, ye wee fiend, before I toss a spell of death your way just for the sport of it.”
He’d had experience with just that sort of thing from her, so he got on with himself, avoided the sitting room he wasn’t entirely certain didn’t contain the muffled sounds of a prince of Neroche being smothered by women with spells, then crawled out the spell-free window he generally used for that sort of thing. He made his way without hesitation to his mother’s woodpile.
He had things to think on.
There had once been a mage who had created a spell to steal souls and his name meant thief.
He supposed it might be time to start another list.
Eleven
Léirsinn looked at the back door of Fionne of Fàs’s house and wondered just how the hell she was going to get past the spell that was hanging down there, peering at her from where it was apparently lounging outside on the roof.
She scowled, but that accomplished nothing at all except to remind her that that was exactly the sort of thing she’d been trying to avoid since she’d encountered Acair’s mother in the barn the day before. She would admit that she’d managed to keep herself firmly in that uncomfortable place between denying that she’d seen anything at all in the king of Neroche’s garden and telling herself it was simply a waking nightmare. She had reminded herself that she was a stable hand with a fondness for horses and a decent amount of skill in training them. She was neither witch nor mage nor any other sort of daft creature who saw things where things absolutely should not have been.
It hadn’t helped all that much, to be honest.
On the other hand, she’d been very successful at not looking at anything so far that day. Looking, if she dared call it that. She’d refrained from looking at Acair during luncheon lest she see anything about him that might be considered magical. She’d ignored with equal enthusiasm his flirtatious cousins, his mother, and Mansourah of Neroche. She had happily sought refuge in the library after inquiring where the unmagical books might be found.
That her peace should end thanks to wanting to take an innocent stroll in the healthful air outside likely shouldn’t have surprised her.
She glared at the spell she could see perfectly well there, which seemed to impress it somehow. It studied her for a moment or two, then retreated until there was merely a handlike shape lingering there. It waved her through, which she supposed either meant she would survive or the damned thing wanted her to come closer so it might slay her more easily.
She took a deep breath, then bolted through the doorway.
She didn’t stop, choosing instead to walk with an enthusiasm another might have called panic until she reached the edge of the forest surrounding Mistress Fionne’s house. She leaned over with her hands on her thighs and simply gasped in bitterly cold air until she had breathed in too much. She coughed for a bit, which seemed a reassuringly normal thing to do, then straightened and turned back toward the house.
There seemed nothing terribly odd about the scene. There was snow lying in drifts, more particularly in the shadows. Acair was on the roof, hammering and swearing. His mother was wandering about with a basket on her arm, bending every now and again to pick something up. Léirsinn imagined she was gathering the last of the year’s nuts or perhaps a hearty tuber that had survived the snow so far. Surely that was the extent of it.
Surely.
After a moment or two, the back door flew open and out flounced two richly dressed, highly energetic women who looked a great deal like most other noblemen’s daughters Léirsinn had encountered in passing at her uncle’s manor. They were obviously on the hunt and Léirsinn didn’t need to ask for which prince that might be. Acair’s mother spoke with them for several minutes before they walked back inside, their shoulders sagging. Acair’s mother shouted something at her son, up there as he was on her roof, before she too went inside the house.