He considered other likely suspects bearing up under that same sort of strain. Dreamweavers, mage kings, and wizards, to begin the list. Then there were witches, faeries, and other less welcoming creatures with magic at their fingertips in lands where he didn’t care to go, to be sure. Indeed, what of those poor elves? They were victims of not only magic in their water, but magic that thoroughly drenched every damned bit of their country. Did they complain? Nay, they did not. They boasted of it to anyone who had the ability to sit for long periods of time and listen without pitching forward, asleep, into their suppers.
Acair suspected that the king of the dwarves had other things on his mind that he felt merited an apology, things Acair absolutely refused to apologize for. It wasn’t his fault if the king’s middle daughter—who he should have known was trouble from the start—had used him as a means to escape her father’s iron rule. Indeed, considering what Acair had endured at her hands, the king should have been apologizing to him.
But given that he suspected hell would freeze over first, he thought it might be best to take stock of where they were and reconsider where a safe haven might be found. For all he knew, the creature pursuing him was Uachdaran himself, out for a bit of kingly vengeance. A detour south to even a marginally friendly elven haven might be just the thing to throw the old bastard off the scent.
He skidded to a halt in a clearing that simply opened up in front of him without warning. He almost went sprawling thanks to Mansourah and Léirsinn running into his back, but caught himself heavily on one leg. He straightened, then looked at the locale into where he’d run not only himself but his companions.
He felt that damned silence descend, as was its wont. He made a vow then and there that in all his other endeavors to come, he would herald realizations of his own stupidity and impending doom with loud and raucous cries.
A man stood there with a faint winter’s sunlight streaming down on him.
“Run,” Mansourah gasped. “I’ll see to this.”
Acair grabbed the prince by the arm. He looked at the man who had accompanied them in spite of his potential misgivings and no-doubt definite dislike of Acair himself, then shook his head.
“We can’t run any longer.”
“Aye, you can.” Mansourah jerked his head toward Léirsinn. “Protect her, at least.”
“Wait—” Acair began, but it was too late.
His hand clutched nothing simply because Mansourah had turned himself into something angry and dark that charged the man in the glade. It didn’t last but a heartbeat or two. Acair watched Mansourah be caught, wrenched back into his own shape, and slammed into the ground at the feet of that mage.
The sight brought him up short. What sort of power was that? He had done the same thing to others, of course, but he was who he was. He’d never seen someone do it to anyone else, and he’d certainly never had the like perpetrated on his own sweet self. It was profoundly unsettling, but he gave that feeling the boot right off. He was nothing if not equal to any fight, no matter who his opponent might be.
He looked at Léirsinn. “Take Sianach and go,” he said urgently. “Fly back to my grandmother’s. She’ll give you a safe haven.”
She was absolutely white with what he imagined was fear, but she wasn’t moving.
“Léirsinn,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and coming very close to shaking her to see if she were enspelled or not. “You must go.”
“I cannot leave you,” she said hoarsely.
Well, the sentiment was appreciated, though he thought it extremely ill-advised. He took less than a trio of heartbeats to decide there was nothing to be done save hope she would have the good sense to flee if he fell. For all he knew, she thought he wouldn’t.
He looked at her one last time, nodded sharply, then strode past her out into the glade before he thought better of it.
Actually, what was there to think on? That mage there was obviously accustomed to the theatrics of black magery and possessing a few decent spells, but surely nothing more. He had certainly dealt with much worse in the past. He’d been in full possession of his magic, of course, but just because he couldn’t use that magic at the moment didn’t mean he didn’t have it still.
If nothing else, he would bluster his way through. He’d done it before.
He stopped some two-dozen paces away from the man and looked at him with as much disdain as he could muster.
“Face me if you dare,” he said coldly.
The mage only shifted and looked at him from inside a heavy hood. He said nothing.
Well, that was annoying, but perhaps a sterner hand was called for. “Nothing comes without a price,” he warned. “You will pay a heavy one for your cheek, I assure you.”
The mage laughed, a harsh, cutting sound. “There is no price to be paid when I’m the one with all the spells.”
“And why would you think you’re the one with all the spells?” Acair asked softly.
“Because I know more about you than you think.”
Shards of steel suddenly erupted from the man’s mouth as he spoke, a dozen impossibly sharp spikes that remained there, fixed, as his words slid past them.
Acair caught his breath. The sight was without a doubt the worst thing he had ever seen in his very long life of tiptoeing in and out of places he never should have gone. The spells the mage wove were simple, foolishly so, but they took on something entirely different as they came out of his mouth. They were horrifying.
Considering how many of those sorts of things he’d used in the past, he thought he might be something of an authority on the same.
He looked behind him to see if Léirsinn had actually listened to him and fled. He wasn’t surprised to find that she had ignored him, though he genuinely wished she hadn’t. She was staring at the man out in the clearing, looking as surprised as he freely admitted he felt. She looked at him.
“Who is that?” she mouthed.
He gave her his best no idea but we’d best run very fast look, which he was certain she’d interpreted properly. A pity that course wasn’t open to him.
The other thing was, Mansourah of Neroche had suddenly risen to his feet and was throwing spells at that foul mage that left Acair almost blinking in surprise. Mansourah’s command of slurs and insults was lacking, of course, but Acair expected nothing less. Obviously a few suggestions needed to be made.
The prince’s collection of truly terrible spells, however, was genuinely surprising. That, he decided, was something that might make for a decent conversation over a decanter of very expensive port.
It occurred to him rather abruptly that whilst he was standing there, babbling nonsense in his own head, that pampered prince from that rustic hovel in the north was doing what had to be done. It was ridiculous and embarrassing and had to stop immediately.
He tried to think clearly, but for the first time in his life, he found he couldn’t sort through everything before him. He began to feel a bit of sympathy for those mages he’d destroyed in his past, lads he had stalked, terrified, then sent off to their just rewards only after having left them groveling at his feet.
Damnation, but he was starting to see why there were places in the world where he just wasn’t welcome.