He had spells of essence changing.
She blinked, then had to force herself not to shrink back from the thought that suddenly presented itself to her. If he could change things, change them permanently, could he not change her into a mage, or a witch, or some species of maid who could at least wave a wand and induce something besides laughter and eye-rolling in those so gestured at?
She pushed herself off Acair and heaved herself to her feet. She wrapped her arms around herself and wished more desperately than she ever had before that she was the sort who faced terrible things and managed them by bursting into tears.
Instead, all she could apparently do was shake.
She dropped to her knees and groped at Acair’s belt for his purse before she thought better of it. If he’d been alive, he would have made some lecherous comment, of that she was sure. That he said nothing, but continued to lie there, seemingly not even drawing in breath any longer, was the most alarming thing she’d seen in a string of absolutely devastating sights.
She found the leather purse, then found she couldn’t get it open. A long, spindly finger that wasn’t shadow and wasn’t bone came and touched the knot.
The knot vanished and the purse opened.
She thanked the creature that put its hand again on her back, chilling her to the marrow, then yanked out everything Acair no doubt considered precious. She dropped it all on his chest, ignoring the pattern all that power made over him, then pulled up the single, golden rune that seemed to be fashioned of sunlight.
It wasn’t the piece of business he’d pulled from under his grandmother’s chair. This was something entirely different. She took the rune and held it up. Acair’s minder seemed torn between hissing in anger and murmuring in pleasure. It reached out that same bony, shadowy finger toward the sparkling rune—
“Nay,” Léirsinn said, covering it in her hand. She pushed herself to her feet, stood over Acair, then looked at the spell. “You may not have him.”
The spell pulled back a pace or two, folded its arms over its chest, and sent her a look of challenge.
You have no magic.
She was going to change that sooner rather than later.
She took a deep breath, then cast the rune up into the air.
The world seemed to hold its breath for an endless moment, then it shuddered. Léirsinn watched Acair’s minder spell back away from her until it finally curled itself up into a little shape that crouched at Acair’s feet. It hissed a final time, then fell silent.
Léirsinn felt the world part behind her. She spun around, steadied herself, then gaped at a place where a doorway had opened where no doorway should have been.
A blond man walked out of nothing and stood there, ten paces away from her.
She looked—very well, she looked at him and thought her eyes might catch on fire. Not in the way Acair tended to inspire—unrepentant flirt that he was—but simply because she felt as if she were staring straight into the sun that had fallen to the earth. She drew her sleeve across her eyes and the brightness was gone, but the impression of staggering power remained. She could see it stretching up toward the sky and down into the ground, as if the man in front of her had been some sort of tree fashioned of crystal and sunlight and spring rains that were endless and glorious—
She decided abruptly that she needed to make her home in a place with trees. Perhaps if she had them to hand where she could lean against them and have them send showers of needles and leaves atop her head, she might stop seeing them in places where only mortals should have been standing.
Or perhaps she simply needed to stop associating with mages and their ilk.
The blond man looked at Acair, then back at her. “Léirsinn of Sàraichte,” he said mildly. “You called for me.”
“Are you—” Her voice cracked, but she supposed that wasn’t unexpected. She had been yelling at Acair’s spell quite vigorously for longer than she likely should have. “Are you Soilléir?”
He smiled. She frowned because he was altogether too handsome and too young to command what imaginary power he was credited with, but she couldn’t deny what she’d seen and how he’d simply walked out of nothing.
“I am,” he said. “How may I aid you?”
She felt her mouth fall open, then she managed to retrieve her jaw and glare at him. She gestured furiously at Acair. “Well, look at him! How do you think you can aid me?”
Soilléir peered at Acair from a distance, something that seemed thoroughly unhelpful. “He looks senseless, but his spell is still over there keeping watch so I assume he isn’t dead. What will you have me do for him?”
She threw up her hands because that seemed preferable to taking them and strangling the man in front of her. She’d heard Acair express that desire more than once under his breath and she was starting to understand what he meant by it.
“I don’t know,” she exclaimed. “Do whatever it is you do.”
Soilléir studied her for a long moment. “That isn’t why you called me, is it?”
She didn’t want to tell him what she’d been thinking, mostly because it was beyond ridiculous. Men were men, stable lasses were full of good sense, and the whole of her life recently felt a great deal like a waking dream.
She looked around herself for a distraction but only wound up looking at the place where the rune had somehow carved a spot in the world. It should have seemed like nothing past a bit of fresh air after the dust and fear that evil mage had stirred up and sent crawling after her, but somehow it was something altogether different. She could see the fabric of the world, see the threads of time and dreams and something that looked a great deal like gold—
She stepped backward and sat down, hard, right on Acair’s belly. That he didn’t move was alarming. What she was seeing in front of her was worse.
She forced herself to look at the man standing in front of her. Whoever, whatever he was, Soilléir—she couldn’t bring to mind at the moment where he called home—was full of magic so terrible and beautiful, she could hardly look at him. He was the one, she reminded herself, who changed things and changed them for good. And if he could change things—events, crowns, destinies—perhaps he could change even her.
It was, after all, why she’d called him to where she was. She had thrown that damned golden rune into the air because she had deliberately set aside the part of her that disbelieved that he could do what she needed him to do.
She was going to trust.
She scrambled to her feet and took a pace or two toward him. “Change me.”
He frowned. “I beg your par—”
“Change me,” she said impatiently. “Change me into a mage. Then I can help Acair and save my grandfather. Change me.”
He didn’t look at all startled, which led her to believe that he hadn’t expected anything else.