by Lynn Kurland
Acair rubbed his hands over his face. Damnation, would the torment never end? He had a drink of ale to purchase a bit of time for thinking, then decided there was no point. He should have been paying more heed to the chess game he’d become an unwilling part of the all those many months ago. As it was, he now found himself pinned into a corner of the board where the only way out was forward. He looked at his half-brother and wondered if a last-ditch bit of honesty might save him.
“I can’t go to Léige,” he said.
“Can’t,” Rùnach asked, “or won’t?”
“Does it matter?” Acair returned shortly. “I’ve paid especial attention to that old whoreson over the years, vexing him at every opportunity, carrying on the long and glorious tradition of my fathers. He doesn’t like me.”
“King Uachdaran has a fair number of companions in that activity,” Soilléir noted.
“I also may have spirited away one of his daughters for a fortnight of ale-quaffing,” Acair admitted. “Several years ago.”
Soilléir blinked several times—a sure sign of surprise. “Ale-quaffing?”
Acair shrugged. “She was beautiful and I have a weakness for handsome wenches. Decent ale too.”
Rùnach looked at him, then laughed. Acair cursed them both but that didn’t seem to leave much of an impression.
“He doesn’t like me,” Acair said stiffly, “and that is all you need to know. I will not set foot in Durial.”
Rùnach was apparently having difficulty breathing. “Please tell me your dealings with that poor gel were limited to pub crawls.”
“Hardly even that,” Acair said grimly. “She called me a very unkind name at the first establishment, clunked me over the head with a chair, then scampered off with an elf from your mother’s homeland, an opportunistic lad who will remain unnamed for his own protection.”
“Though you would spew out his name in a heartbeat if you thought it would save you,” Rùnach said, still grinning like the idiot he was.
“Well, of course I would,” Acair said. “You would too—you can’t deny it.”
“Depends on the elf,” Rùnach said, then he looked at Soilléir. “I had wondered what had happened to her.”
“Middle child,” Soilléir said wisely. “Trouble in the making.”
“Apple of her father’s eye,” Acair corrected, “which is why Léige is the last place I will go. Perhaps your memory fails you, Rùnach my lad, but I didn’t go with you half a year ago when you wanted company. Now you know why.”
“Ah, but the king has since made a special request that you come for a visit,” Rùnach said. “Who am I to deny him his whims? Either go, or be without magic for a century.”
Acair could scarce believe he was having his current conversation. “Have you lost all your wits?” he said incredulously. “I’m not going to give up magic for a fortnight, much less . . . well, I’m not even going to dignify that suggestion by repeating it.” He looked at Soilléir narrowly. “I suppose that leaves you with only one choice, which is to take it from me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Acair grunted, not believing that for a moment, then considered the pair thoughtfully. There was something else afoot, something he didn’t care for. Those two there had dragged him with them all over the Nine Kingdoms for months, showing him off like a prized monkey, humiliating him at every turn. Surely they’d had enough of that sort of entertainment to suit even their unwholesome need for the same.
Nay, there was something else going on.
But simply asking certainly wouldn’t provide him with answers. He would have to play the fool for a bit longer. Unpleasant, but he obviously had no choice. The things he had been forced to do . . .
He made a production of nodding knowingly. “I see where this is headed. You do indeed fear my mighty power and despite your fine words you want it for yourselves.”
Rùnach only lifted his eyebrows briefly. “An interesting thought, but nay. I have enough magic of my own, thank you just the same. I would suspect my lord Soilléir feels the same way.”
Acair couldn’t believe Rùnach would be satisfied with anything that wasn’t more, but what did he know? Soilléir likely had too much of it, but what decent mage wasn’t interested in adding to his cache of spells?
Nay, mischief was being made right there in front of him and he didn’t care for it when he wasn’t the one at the helm, as it were. But if he’d learned anything over the past several months, it was that his companions were tight-lipped about their plans. He was going to have to pretend to go along with their plans until they made a misstep and he could see what they were truly about. Patience wasn’t anything that came easily to him, but if having it at present would win him freedom from the meddling ways of the two alewives sitting across from him, he would use any last bits of it he might still possess.
He would pay the price, but not gladly and he would certainly take note of every pesky moment of it for use later. He didn’t like to admit any sort of defeat, but he knew when to pause and retrench. The inability to do that was his sire’s fatal flaw, a flaw he had no intention of allowing to take root in himself.
“Very well,” he said heavily, “let’s have this over with. To spare myself an endless existence on the front stoop of some mindless faery, as well as secure the guarantee that I’ll never have to encounter either of you again unless there are spells of death involved, I will agree to a month without magic.”
“A century, Acair,” Soilléir said mildly.
“Absurd,” Acair said. “Two months and no more.”
Soilléir only looked at him. Acair managed to keep himself from rubbing his arms against the sudden chill that blew over him but damn it if he couldn’t keep himself from shifting.
“Very well, a year,” he snarled. “And not a heartbeat longer.”
Soilléir and Rùnach exchanged a look. Acair sensed a softening of the resolve of the pair, something he didn’t dare disturb with even a mild epitaph.
Soilléir looked at him. “Very well, then,” he said. “A year. Upon your honor.”
Acair refused to respond to that. “I assume you are leaving me free to roam where I choose to,” he said. Considering the number of souls he had been less-than-friendly with in the past, the list of places where he might find sanctuary was very short indeed. There was, of course, no use in pointing that out. The two fools across from him knew that very well.
“Oh, nay,” Rùnach said, with a feeble attempt at solemnity, “we wouldn’t dream of leaving you so—how shall I put it, my lord Soilléir?”
“Exposed,” Soilléir said.
“Exposed,” Rùnach agreed. He smiled. “We wouldn’t want you to be vulnerable, of course, which is why we’ve selected an appropriate destination for you. Lots of opportunities there to do good. You’ve become so adept at that sort of thing, we thought you might want to keep on with it for a bit longer.”
Acair thought many things but decided it would be best if he didn’t voice any of them. He would have attempted a smile but found it was simply beyond him. He settled for something just short of a grimace. “Where?”
“Sàraichte,” Rùnach said, looking terribly pleased with himself. “A stroke of genius, if I do admit as much myself.”
Acair was past surprise. “Indeed.”
“I suggest a labor of some kind,” Soilléir said thoughtfully. “With your hands.”
Besides wrapping them around your neck? was what came first to mind, but Acair decided that was perhaps something also better left unsaid. If he didn’t get away from the pair of imbeciles in front of him, he was never going to be able to speak again.
“I don’t need a labor when I can . . .” He paused and frowned. It was going to be a bit difficult to feed himself if he couldn’t pluck the odd piece of Nerochian gold out of thin air now and again. “I’ll need magic t
o conjure up funds from time to time.”
“Use it and become a conversation piece for a faery,” Rùnach said. “Isn’t that right, my lord Soilléir?”
“That did seem to be our bargain.”
Acair wriggled his jaw to loosen it. There had been no bargain; there had simply been a chess game that he’d played very badly. But Sàraichte? Could there be a place in the whole of the Nine Kingdoms less appealing?
Well, he supposed there could be and he could name several of them without effort, so perhaps he would be better off to simply keep his mouth shut and carry on as if he were bested yet again. He looked at his companions coolly.
“Very well, I’ll go,” he said with as much politeness as he could muster. “I don’t suppose that as a courtesy you two would spot me a sovereign or two to help me on my way, would you?”
Meager funds were produced and pushed across the table. Acair collected them—he was a pragmatist, after all—and pocketed them. Obviously, he would be sleeping under the stars more than he cared to, but he couldn’t see how anything could be done about that at present. But later? Aye, there would be retribution. He stood up and pulled his cloak around his shoulders.
“Don’t make this any worse for yourselves,” he warned. “And you know exactly what I mean by that.”
Rùnach lifted his cup up in salute. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Oh,” Soilléir said, holding up his hand, “one more thing. You are forbidden to reveal your identity to anyone who doesn’t already know you.”
Of course. Acair glared at Soilléir. “Anything else?”
“If I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”
Acair snarled a curse at him, sent his half-brother a look of promise, then stomped out of the pub and into the twilight. He might have enjoyed the rustic view, but he had the feeling he was going to be seeing far too much of that kind of thing in the future, more particularly from his vantage point on the ground. The pleasures of flying along as a terrible wind were obviously lost to him for the moment.
But damnation, what choice had he had? The past half year had truly been an unsettling one, full of unpleasant experiences he would have preferred to forget, and all because of a rather innocent piece of magic he’d decided to attempt after a rather tedious and uninteresting decade. The idea had come to him as he’d been wandering about a library in a locale he didn’t care to visit again and he’d stumbled upon a book of—
Well, perhaps it didn’t matter what the book had contained given that it was now safely tucked behind an impenetrable wall of his own spells, spells apparently he couldn’t unlock for at least a year. He would have pointed out that fact to Rùnach—it was Rùnach’s book, after all—but he’d been too damn distracted to.
A year without magic. Absolutely preposterous.
And all because he’d simply attempted a rather substantial theft of the world’s magic and failed spectacularly. If that hadn’t been enough, he’d taken a blade to the chest and almost lost his life. Rùnach had been the one to heal him with some damned elvish rot that Acair was convinced had left something untoward behind where the wound had been. He’d been suffering ever since from foul dreams and the like. Add that to the sad truth that Soilléir had been stalking him for the past several months, threatening him—still—with life as an inanimate object if he didn’t grovel before a lengthy list of offended busybodies . . . well, as he’d reluctantly admitted before, those lads from Cothromaiche gave him pause. He didn’t know their spells, but he knew what they could do.
He didn’t fancy life as a rock.
Given that was the case, he would trot off loudly into the Deepening Gloom, looking appropriately contrite no matter what it cost him, then duck off the road when he could and slip off to some exotic locale where he would lie low until his year’s sentence was up—
Or, perhaps not.
He walked for another half-league before he finally turned around and stared at what had been following him.
A spell.
He wasn’t unfamiliar with spells, as it happened, having a truly staggering collection of them at his fingertips. He created his own spells, of course, though he generally thought it a better use of his time to simply appropriate what he needed. But never in his long life of encountering magic had he ever seen a spell that simply stood there and watched him, as if it had legs. It was an odd spell, though, one that didn’t seem to want to reveal its purpose. For all he knew, it was designed to watch to make sure he followed Soilléir’s instructions to the letter.
He made a rude gesture at that nasty piece of magic, ignored the snort that answered him, then turned and started off toward a destination he absolutely didn’t want to visit.
Sàraichte. Ye gads, what a hellhole. If he’d had so little to do that he would have needed to amuse himself by making a list of places to visit, he suspected that port town in the middle of nowhere would have had very few other locales competing with it for last on the list.
Damnation, it was going to be a very long year indeed.
One
The port town of Sàraichte was a locale with absolutely no redeeming features.
The list of its flaws was long and well-examined. It wasn’t as large as Tòsan, nor as elegant as Taohb na Mara; it was a city of unremarkable size that one tended to forget as quickly as possible in order to erase the unfortunate memory of having passed through it. Its harbor was endlessly needing a good dredging whilst its inhabitants seemed to be perpetually needing a good bath. The food was terrible, the accommodations disgusting, and the scenery flat and uninspiring. There was only one thing about the place that spared it from the need for a good razing.
The stables of Briàghde.
Léirsinn of Sàraichte leaned against an outer wall of Briàghde’s labyrinth of stalls and considered the truth of that. She wasn’t one to be effusive with praise or stingy with censure, which left her looking at the bare facts to judge them on merit alone. And the simple fact was, the horses that came from the stables in which she stood were absolutely beyond compare.
She knew this because she was responsible for it.
It wasn’t something she thought about very often, actually, for a variety of reasons that left her feeling rather uncomfortable if she gave too much thought to them. But the weather was brisk, the barn cats feisty, and the horses very full of themselves. If that had infected her with a bit more spirit than she usually dared allow herself, so be it. Besides, she was the only one inside her head, so perhaps she could be permitted a bracing bit of truth to enjoy privately.
And the truth was, she was damned good at working horses. It was in her blood, or so she understood, which she supposed helped quite a bit. The rest of it was simply years of seeing horse after horse come through Fuadain of Sàraichte’s stables and watching how they matured. She’d had the good sense to know which horsemen to listen to in her youth and perhaps even better sense to keep her mouth shut when it would have been easier to call other men who thought they knew horses idiots.
She was growing rather tired of that last bit, actually.
But biting her tongue allowed her to continue to watch what came and went in Lord Fuadain’s stables and, better still, quietly have charge of their training. Of course she never spoke her opinions aloud, but she and the stable master, Slaidear, had come to an understanding a decade ago. He would stroke his chin and consider the beast on display before him, glance her way to see if she raised a single eyebrow or not, then take her opinion as his own and offer an aye or nay as necessary.
Many fine animals were turned away as a result, left with no choice but to find homes with lesser masters. Only the most spectacular beasts were invited to stay to either be bred or trained, sometimes both. The fees charged for either privilege were so high, Léirsinn was frankly amazed anyone managed to pay them. But they seemed to, and gladly.
Of course, she saw no share
of that gold, but she couldn’t have realistically expected anything else. Fuadain was her uncle, as it happened, but she was one of his much lesser relations by marriage. She was fortunate to have a roof over her head and enough to eat. She had incomparable horses to train, though, which made up for quite a bit.
As did the sea, which was perhaps the one redeeming feature of Sàraichte. She could see the faint sparkle of it from where she stood. If she’d had money enough, she would have built a house near it, with an enormous barn and a path that led to the shore where she could have ridden a different horse each day along the edge of the water. She would have had peace and quiet and the freedom to think whatever thoughts she cared to without having to guard her expressions.
With any luck she would have that, though perhaps not as quickly as she would have liked. She looked down at the coins she held in her hand. It was her se’nnight’s pay, those three coins that would scarce buy her a decent meal at the worst pub in town. But she would add them to the rest of what she had, as usual, and continue on as she always did.
She pushed away from the wall and walked into the stables, noting the condition of the floors between rows of stalls—one might eat off them if one were so inclined—and the condition of the horses housed inside those stalls—one might ride them to the ends of the earth if one were so inclined. She tried not to think about that possibility very often, lest the temptation prove to be more than she could bear.
The stables were less populated by lads than usual, but perhaps they’d snuck off for a bit of rest. She couldn’t blame them. The work was endless and they didn’t have the privilege of riding any of the horses they tended. The work was endless for her as well, but she was at least allowed to ride what she tended. If she generally limited herself to riding the finest horses in the barn, who could blame her?
She made her way without undue haste to her private tack room. In truth, the damned place was no larger than her uncle’s smallest wardrobe, but it was hers alone and there was a lock on her door. She was fortunate to have that much and she knew it.
