Light and dark, good and evil, all perfectly balanced.
He stopped and looked at her, then froze. “What?”
“You are . . .” She blew out her breath. “I don’t know what you are.”
“Besotted,” he said cheerfully, taking a step toward her.
She held up her hand and stopped him before he came any closer. “You’re distracting, that much I can say with certainty. What do you think?”
“Many things, but I’ll share those later,” he said. “About our present business? I think you’re brilliant. If the mage we’re after had that spell—”
“He would be doing more than making spots of shadow,” she finished. “Is that what you’re thinking?”
He nodded, looking extremely relieved. “If he had the spell in truth, there would be nothing stopping him from using it. Either he is waiting for the perfect moment to spring his evil on the entirety of the Nine Kingdoms, or he doesn’t have the spell.”
“But he stole it.”
“People steal many things.”
“And you would know.”
“I, darling, would absolutely know.” He smiled. “We have just purchased ourselves a bit more time to save the world.”
She shook her head and smiled in spite of herself. “Look at you, rushing off to engage in such a mighty piece of do-gooding.”
He looked a little startled. “When you put it that way, I think I’m a bit unsettled by the thought.”
“I’m sure you’ll make up for it eventually.”
He reached for her hand. “That is a piece of truth I can willingly embrace. Let’s walk a bit more and I’ll comfort myself with the same.”
She nodded and picked her way through the forest with him for a bit longer until they found the path again. It was quiet, she would admit that, and she didn’t feel the presence of a mage with Acair’s demise first on his list of things to do. Then again, what did she know? She was a horse gel who had just had magic shoved into her veins.
Unless she’d imagined it all.
“Perhaps those pools of shadow are the best the man can do at the moment,” Acair said suddenly.
“You mean, that’s all he can remember of the spell?”
“Aye.” He looked at her. “I think if he had that spell, we would all be soulless husks. Given that we aren’t, I suggest that he is missing what he would very much like to have.”
“Do you think he lost it?”
“Involuntarily?” he mused. “It would certainly be a tempting prize.”
“If it was stolen from him, I wonder who did it?”
He shook his head. “No idea, but that might be a question we want to answer sooner rather than later.” He took a deep breath, then looked at her. “I think a journey to Cothromaiche might be in order, but I think I’m in need of a quite utilitarian spell of death I tucked discreetly under a particular kingly throne. I’m not sure I want to use anything else at this point.”
“Well, we know what happens if you do,” she said, hoping that someday she would be able to forget the sight of him overcome by that minder spell’s magic.
“We do,” he agreed. He paused, then shot her an uncomfortable look. “I should warn you that the king of the dwarves is not one of my admirers.”
“And yet you want to visit him?”
“Uachdaran of Léige won’t have a clue I’ve been there,” he said without hesitation, “because he would slay me as easily as to look at me if he did. It’s over the walls for me whilst you hide safely behind a useful spell of un-noticing we’re enjoying thanks to that busybody from Cothromaiche. I can, as it happens, show you how to create the same thing when we’re at our leisure.”
“Will you?”
He stopped and looked at her. “Unwillingly,” he admitted slowly. He paused again, then shook his head. “Magic is a bit like fire. ’Tis easy for it to grow out of control.”
“I won’t let it,” she said confidently. “For all we know, I don’t really have it and Soilléir was just having me on.”
He only sent her a look she couldn’t quite identify, but it seemed a bit like pity.
“What is it?” she asked.
He simply shook his head and drew her into his embrace. “Nothing,” he said hoarsely. “Nothing at all.” He pulled away. “We’d best continue on our way. Soilléir likely distracted that mage only to the count of a hundred before he lost interest and wandered off to the nearest pub.”
She imagined that wasn’t the case, but she didn’t want to linger in the area to find out. “A safe haven would be useful,” she offered. “So you could show me what I need to know, if it weren’t so utterly ridiculous to think I might be able to, well, you know.”
He smiled, pained. “I do know, darling. We’ll find somewhere, right after I nip in and out of Léige.”
“Didn’t you just say that was the last place you wanted to go?”
“It still is, which is why we won’t be making a lengthy visit. In and out with as little notice as possible. We’ll find a safe haven down the road.”
She couldn’t argue with that. She listened to him call for his horse, then prepared herself for another journey much farther off the ground than she wanted to be.
? ? ?
There was something, she had to admit after a night spent flying on the back of a marginally well-behaved dragon, about conceding that the world was full of things she hadn’t known existed before.
Barn work was a sturdy, reliable bit of business that had shaped her days and given meaning to her life. She had relished the chance to ride glorious horses and, for the most part, avoid the doings of men much loftier than she was herself. Her life had been simple, predictable, and ordinary.
Then she’d watched Acair of Ceangail fumble with a pitchfork and known instinctively that her life would never be the same.
She had seen elves and kings and runes that sparkled with a light of their own. She’d survived a night or two in a witch’s Lesser Parlor and slept uneasily on the back of a horse who had turned himself into something just slightly more substantial than a gust of wind. She had seen things that shouldn’t have been there, but had been in spite of anything she thought.
She had set trees on fire with magic that had been dropped into her veins like a plague.
She still wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about the latter, or if she even believed it. She had set trees on fire thanks to repeating words given to her, but that could have just as easily been something Soilléir had done to make sport of her.
With all she’d seen, she had to admit that she was as she’d been before.
Skeptical.
She turned her head and rested her cheek against Acair’s back, primarily to block out the wind, but partly because it was comforting. She looked at the spell she could see hanging over them like a fine mist. It was something Soilléir had done, that much she knew. Un-noticing, she thought he had called it.