The Prince of Souls (The Nine Kingdoms Book 12)

by Lynn Kurland

  “Would you prefer to have the lamps brighter?” he asked quietly.

  She shook her head. “You’re very beautiful by firelight.”

  “I was just going to say the same thing about you.” He put his arms more securely around her and sighed deeply. “I’m sorry about this morning—and no comments about all this apologizing being the ruination of my code of conduct, if you please. I’m keenly aware of how far down the path toward syrupy sweetness I’ve strayed.”

  “If it eases your conscience any, I’ve been harder on horses that I loved,” she offered. “And I apologize for being rude to you.”

  “Aren’t we just the picture of polite, almost connubial bliss.”

  “More treacle from you, my lord?”

  He smiled that small smile she imagined got him more things he wanted than awful spells ever had, but he apparently found no need for any for comment. He simply combed his fingers through her hair with one hand and kept his other arm around her. It was, she had to admit, surprisingly comforting.

  She only wished it were enough.

  “What will I do?” she asked, finally.

  “You can make fire—”

  “Call fire, you mean.”

  He nodded. “An important distinction. You can call fire and contain things. Very useful skills, those.”

  “Do you have other short spells?”

  He smiled gravely. “A few.”

  “How many?”

  “I’m too weary to count them all, but I’ll make you a list in the morning.”

  “We could go collect more of your soul,” she said, knowing it was a last-ditch effort to keep herself from having to use what she’d asked for. “Then you would have what you needed, aye?”

  He looked at her seriously. “I’m not sure we have the time, if you want my thoughts on it.”

  “Then what will we do?” she asked miserably.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking,” he said slowly. “We have a spell of death that requires nothing from either of us.” He shrugged. “It might be worth making a handful of others for use in a pinch.”

  “Won’t that cost you bits of your soul?”

  “There isn’t all that much left to take. I’ll make a few, sleep like the dead for a day or two, then we’ll be off and doing.”

  “And what am I to do while you’re doing that?” she asked, pushing aside her unease over the thought of being alone inside with that mage lurking in the forest outside.

  “Refrain from burning the house down?”

  “What about a spell of werelight?” she asked. “Could I do that?”

  He smiled. “I imagine you could.”

  “Let’s go, then.” She pushed off his lap only to have him catch her and pull her back. “What?”

  “You don’t need to go outside to practice that,” he said. “I think we should stay right here by the fire where it’s warm.”

  She imagined he was less concerned about staying warm than he was staying out of sight, but she suspected she didn’t need to acknowledge that.

  “I can only manage five words,” she warned.

  “Fadaire will do it for you in three.”

  “Oh?” she asked in surprise. “What will King Sìle think?”

  “He’ll never know.”

  “I’m beginning to suspect that might not be as true as you would like.”

  “I’ll take responsibility for you. But let’s try it later. I think I might need a nap soon.” He paused, then looked at her seriously. “About this morning—”

  She shook her head. “I know what you’re capable of.”

  “Nay, about pushing you so hard.” He sighed. “Listen to me apologizing as easily as if I’ve done nothing else for the whole of my life.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “Please don’t tell anyone. And, you know, forgive me.”

  “You were trying to keep me safe, I imagine.”

  He only nodded, closed his eyes, then gathered her more closely to him.

  She lost him to hopefully peaceful dreams shortly after supper, so perhaps all that magick-making was more draining than he wanted to admit. She had no idea what the hour was, but it was full dark outside and a faint new moon had already risen.

  She found she didn’t care for being alone. That was odd considering how alone she had been up until she’d met a black mage who taught her elven magic so she could hopefully not set his house ablaze.

  She jumped a little at the shadow that appeared at her elbow, then realized it was simply Sianach having assumed the form of a great, hulking hound. He put his snout on her knee and looked at her pointedly.

  She scratched him behind the ears. “Don’t bare your teeth at me,” she warned.

  He lifted his head and displayed longer canine teeth than any hound should have had.

  “Sianach,” she said in disapproval. “That isn’t reassuring.”

  He licked her hand, then lay down and put his head on Acair’s foot. She supposed that if anyone came inside, he could snarl at them to discourage anything untoward. Short of that, she had no idea what she would do to protect any of them. Elvish werelight likely wasn’t going to be much use, so perhaps Acair had the right idea about other spells that would work all on their own.

  She got up after a bit because she couldn’t sit still any longer. She wandered through his library, looking for anything that didn’t lay out spells or relate tales of mythical beasts and men. She was tempted by a treatise that discussed the trade routes through Tosan, but settled for a history of Fearranian lacemaking.

  She tucked the book under her arm and walked through the house a final time, an enormous hound suddenly walking next to her with his head under her hand. There was nothing stirring, but she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. Acair’s spell was reputedly impenetrable. If she took a little detour to the kitchen and fetched the largest knife she could find, well, she suspected he would understand.

  She went back to his study, shut the main door and the door leading to the library, then set the kitchen knife on the mantel, back so far that it wouldn’t fall off accidently yet be within reach if necessary.

  She turned to her reading for the evening, a sleeping mage and terrifying hound at her feet, and hoped she could distract herself from the reality of her life until she was too weary to even dream about it.

  That mage out there wanted her.

  She couldn’t imagine why.

  Fifteen

  Acair walked through his house with a fair bit of unease, understanding in that moment what Hearn of Angesand might feel if he woke to find one of his barn doors open.

  Whilst he suspected such a thing likely never happened to that good horse lord, he feared he might not be so lucky. He also suspected Hearn never waited until the morning sun was streaming through his great hall before being about his business. Perhaps there was a lesson there for him about the hours kept by horse people, more particularly a gel who hadn’t been sleeping peacefully next to him when he’d woken not a quarter hour earlier.

  He paced through his house not because he feared Léirsinn had run away during the night but because it was a fine distraction from other lessons he might or might not have learned recently.

  For instance, who would have thought that his arrogance—something he had never considered a flaw before—would have blinded him to the fact that perhaps he was not the one being pursued across the whole of the Nine Kingdoms? The idea that someone would see him and not want to kill him was something he wasn’t sure he cared for. One tended to reach a certain status in life and learned to appreciate the opportunities that came with that position. Being able to sneer at all those who wanted him dead was a simple pleasure, but one he’d come to enjoy.

  But how was he who had never once considered the safety of another going to keep a magick-making horse miss safe?

&nb
sp; He’d planned for it, of course, but—also something he had to admit with a fair bit of shame—as a corollary to his own neck-saving. That Léirsinn should be the primary target of a mage with the sort of vicious nature the lad in the woods seemed to possess was something he had completely missed.

  He could hardly bear to think about all the other things he might have missed.

  At the very least, he thought he might have a name for their enemy. He also supposed he could credit the man, Sladaiche, with having stolen his spell of shadow making from Odhran of Eòlas, for all the good it would do him. It had been meant as a distraction, not a means of stealing souls, though it did artistically scatter rats and snakes and other things he didn’t particularly care for in all directions when used. Perhaps he would suggest that Sladaiche hold onto it given that he would never have the imagination to create anything like it himself.

  He might also suggest that Sladaiche accept that it would be the very last thing he saw before he was repaid for the slaying of a certain tailor of their acquaintance.

  He turned away from thoughts of revenge and pressed on to things he had definitely missed in the past. According to Soilléir, whose busybody’s ways would certainly make him an authority on it, Sladaiche had lived next to Ceangail at least long enough for Acair to have knocked him off his ladder after having found his spell to be worthless, the same spell that Sladaiche had apparently stolen from Seannair of Cothromaiche’s library decades earlier, a theft that Soilléir couldn’t seem to solve himself.

  Did no one make copies of anything any longer? He despaired for the world, truly he did. Even his mother duplicated her endless notes. He was fairly certain she had a copy or two of Diminishing hidden in her house, which was likely why the place was crawling with spells even Acair had made a point of avoiding.

  The last thing that troubled him more than he wanted it to was why he was still so damned out of sorts over the thought that when Léirsinn had seen books that her parents had owned, her first thought had been to suspect him of stealing those tomes and her second had been that he might have been the one to murder her parents.

  It was enough to make a black mage weep into his silk-lined cape, oy.

  Then again, what else was she to think? Wasn’t he the one who had told her that after his stint of do-gooding was done, he fully intended to return to his life of villainy?

  He realized he was staring stupidly out the glass walls of his front parlor into the blinding rays of a just-risen sun. He wondered if that damned Ubhan of Bruadair was sending him nightmares to be enjoyed during the daytime now. His house was just too close to their border. Who knew what sorts of nasty things leached over the same to vex and annoy?

  Things had to change. He wouldn’t survive the spring with the way events were carrying on, dragging him along in their wake. The bouts of self-reflection alone were about to do him in.

  He made his way back through the house, looking in various chambers with increasing amounts of unease, until he finally found himself opening the kitchen door to the garden. If he didn’t find Léirsinn soon—

  He ignored the wave of relief that almost brought him to his knees, merciless, untouchable lad that he was.

  Léirsinn was standing there, looking at the pile of wood they’d left there the day before.

  He staggered outside and sat down on the top step not because he thought he might fall there if he didn’t, but because he thought it might make him look a bit more relaxed and carefree.

  The garden was still full of shadows, of course. Again, horse people seemed to have an unwholesome relationship with dawn, something he had definitely discovered thanks to his experience of trying to keep up with a certain one of their number. He smoothed his hand, magically speaking, over the curtain of invisibility he’d set inside his own spell, then lit discreet lamps in the parts of the garden that needed them. Léirsinn startled, then visibly relaxed.

  Poor gel.

  He didn’t move, though, because he’d slept with her in his arms for the whole of the night without even the most chaste of kisses and he was, after all, only full of so much self-restraint. If he wrapped her in a fond embrace at the moment, he feared he might not be able to release her.

  She turned and walked over to him, then knelt on the step below his and put her hands over his arms, crossed as they were atop his knees.

  “I’m not sure I believe this,” she said, looking terribly hopeful. “What could he want with me? And why now? I’ve been in a barn, unprotected, for years.”

  He slipped one of his arms from beneath her hands, then reached out and tucked a lock of flaming hair behind her ear. He leaned forward and kissed her for good measure, but not nearly as thoroughly as he would have liked. Self-control was, as at least one monarch had pointed out recently, one of his most desirable virtues.

  “I don’t know the answers to any of those questions,” he said carefully, revisiting the idea of pulling her into his arms and keeping her there for several decades. At least that way she would be safe.

  “Who is he, do you think?”

  “Sladaiche.”

  She pulled back, looking as if she’d seen something very vile writhing in a pile before her feet. He understood that more fully than he wanted to admit. She took a few steadying breaths, then looked at him.

  “Does he want me because I want you?”

  He almost fell off his perch. “Damn you, Léirsinn, give a little hallo of warning before you say that kind of thing.”

  She smiled, but she looked rather ill, to be honest.

  “You’re charming when you’re startled.”

  “Well, stop it,” he said crossly. “I like to look fully in control of myself and everyone around me at all moments.”

  “Frustrating that you aren’t, isn’t it?”

  “All part of my master plan, darling. Lull the rabble to sleep, then take over the world. Not,” he added, “that I’ve had any success so far at controlling you. I haven’t given up the fight yet.”

  “You’ll never manage it.”

  “I’m coming to terms with that in my own way. Don’t twist the knife.”

  Her smile faded. “I don’t have anything anyone wants.”

  “I assume you’re not lumping me in with that lot of uneducated cretins.” He reached out and looped his arms loosely around her shoulders. “Obviously I have work yet to do in convincing the loveliest, most courageous, decent, and, dare I say it, most discerning woman in the whole of the Nine Kingdoms that she might have drawn the attention of someone besides my own sweet self.”

  “I am nothing more than a stable hand.”

  “And I’m nothing more than a bastard.”

  “Your mother is a witch and your father a prince’s son.”

  “Your father is a lord’s son and I didn’t ask my mother to delve into your dam’s genealogy yet. Who knows what we’ll find?”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  He nodded slightly. “I might be.”

  “What could he want from me?” she whispered.

  “Come sit next to me and keep warm, then we’ll noodle it around a bit and see what comes up.”

  She looked absolutely devastated. “How can you be so calm—never mind. This is what you face every day.”

  He pulled her up to sit next to him, then drew a warm cloak out of thin air and wrapped it around the both of them.

  “Aye, well ’tis all too true,” he said easily, “but the difference is, I deserve it. You don’t.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “We could go inside, if you prefer.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She was shivering, but perhaps she hadn’t noticed. He had another look at the spell he’d cast up to shield them from prying eyes, then turned to the pile of wood there in front of them. He considered for a moment the sort of fire he could make that would be warming but beautiful. L�
�irsinn had seen enough from him that hadn’t been so beautiful, to be sure.

  “What are you thinking?”

  He looked at her, her lovely visage so close to his that he found himself a little dazzled by the leafy greenness of her eyes.

  “I’m having trouble holding a thought,” he admitted.

  She smiled and elbowed him gently. “I’m sure you aren’t. Are you going to build me a fire?”

  He supposed he could do a little experimenting with things that intrigued him. Since he was definitely going to be completely flattened by the end of the day anyway, no sense in not taking his Gran’s spell out for a brief canter about the old place. He imagined weaving it aloud was a very bad idea indeed, so he settled for a few theatrical hand wavings and a silently recited spell of essence meddling.

  Léirsinn gasped.

  He had to admit, he did too.

  “What is that?” she said faintly.

  “I believe most people call it fire.”

  She shot him a half-hearted glare. “I meant, what magic was that?”

  “Can’t remember,” he said.

  “You’re a terrible liar and that is an exceptionally lovely bit of work there.”

  He leaned closer to her. “Granny’s magic,” he murmured in her ear. He straightened and put his arm back around her shoulders. “I’m not sure why I’m surprised, but I am. I expected it to light me on fire.”

  “There are dragons in the flames.”

  “Are there? Hadn’t noticed.”

  “Did you do that?” she said, watching the flames with an expression of wonder on her face.

  “Might have.”

  She turned that look on him. “For me?”

  “Well, I don’t see any other red-haired lassies who breathe fire hereabouts.”

  She smiled. “Who are you?”

  “Today, darling, I have absolutely no idea.”