The Prince of Souls (The Nine Kingdoms Book 12)

by Lynn Kurland

  Slaidear was waiting for them in the garden, on the far side of a crumbling fountain that was half full of putrid water. Unsurprising, but Acair honestly hadn’t expected anything better. There were no ladders in the vicinity, however, which he thought might be a mercy for that fool there.

  He stopped in front of that disgusting fountain with Léirsinn on one side and his wretched spell of death keeping watch on the other and wondered absently if it had been Slaidear to have created the beast that dogged his steps. Perhaps in the end, it didn’t matter. Léirsinn would do what she could to contain it, he would slay the mage across from them, and the world would see sunrise free of one more villain.

  He took a moment to appreciate the improbable nature of his current situation. Normally when someone wanted to slay him, that lad—and the occasional lass—took the time to engage in a proper exchange of written insults delivered via messenger. He was not usually the recipient of a terse outside scrawled on a grubby slip of paper that had been passed from hand to hand down a supper table until it reached him and the word disappeared after it had been read.

  Vulgar, but he supposed that was the best that mage over there could do.

  It was also very unusual to be in an altercation where he didn’t have his full complement of spells available, nor had he ever fought a duel where he’d been far more concerned about a woman standing next to him than he was himself. Indeed, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d fought a duel with a woman anywhere near him, especially one with magic she couldn’t exactly control.

  He glanced briefly at Léirsinn to find she had her hands in the pockets of his evening jacket. Assuming that meant she had transferred her coins from her bodice to where they would be more easily reached, he turned to considering the lay of the land. He was terrible at small talk, true, but he wasn’t opposed to a bit of pre-duel chit-chat just to see which way the wind was blowing.

  He turned a bored look on the mage standing some thirty paces away.

  “What is it I should call you?” he asked politely. “Don’t want to get the name wrong and call you stupid when whoreson will do.”

  Shards spilled out of Slaidear’s mouth along with his curse. Acair had never seen anything like it and had to admit it was profoundly unsettling.

  “Surely you’re not too stupid to choose for yourself,” he hissed.

  Acair fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Very well. Given that Slaidear is but a recent incarnation, we’ll go with Sladaiche. Now, what exactly is it you want, Sladaiche? Besides my thanking you for pulling us away from a merely marginally edible repast, that is.”

  Sladaiche held up a loaded crossbow. Acair found himself surprisingly grateful for decades of yawning in the face of impossible odds because that was the only thing that saved him from gasping aloud at the moment.

  “You shouldn’t have left these behind,” Sladaiche said with a sneer. “It might prove to be your undoing.”

  Damn it, he’d known that was going to come back to bite him in the arse. Bolts were one thing and easily countered, but those arrows there were enspelled with something that had slain mages in Fuadain’s barn with terrible efficiency. He regretted not having taken the time to have a closer look to see what they were made from. He hoped he didn’t pay the ultimate price for not having brought them along to keep them out of the hands of that man there.

  He also wished he’d taken the time to discuss with Léirsinn the particulars of how she would need to contain that damned spell of death on his right, never mind exactly what she should do about fleeing if he fell. He didn’t dare take his eyes off his foe to look at her, so he supposed he would have to rely on her superior ability to remain calm in the face of great, stomping steeds. She would do what she thought best and hopefully they would both still be standing in the end.

  “Well,” Acair said, turning back to the matter at hand, “better undone than knocked off a ladder by a child, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “You didn’t knock me off!” Sladaiche shouted. “There was a flaw in the wood that gave way inopportunely.”

  “And you waited all this time to tell me that,” Acair said with a disbelieving laugh. “How droll.”

  “I waited all this time to repay you for stealing that spell,” Sladaiche snarled.

  “I didn’t steal anything,” Acair said, shrugging carelessly, “I threw it in the fire. Why would I steal something worth so little?”

  Sladaiche drew himself up. “I worked on that for centuries.”

  “Well done you, then,” Acair said, clapping slowly, then he stopped suddenly and put on an exaggerated frown. “Wait. I heard you didn’t create it yourself at all, but rather that you stole—”

  “A filthy lie!” Sladaiche shouted.

  Acair lifted his eyebrows briefly. “As you say, I suppose. It still needs a bit of finishing, though, wouldn’t you say?”

  Sladaiche pointed the crossbow at Léirsinn. “She has what I need. That is why she’s still alive, but you…”

  Acair very rarely found himself frozen in place, but he genuinely wasn’t sure if he should leap in front of Léirsinn, pull her down behind the edge of the fountain out of sight with him, or take his chances with the spell next to him and go ahead and use his own magic.

  Léirsinn pulled coins out of her pockets, but her hands were shaking so badly that a pair of them fell. Acair didn’t stop her from bending to look for them in the dark. Better that she be out of sight when Sladaiche fired his bolt, which he did.

  Not at Léirsinn, nor even at he himself.

  Sladaiche fired the bolt through that damned spell of death that had first made an appearance not very far from where he stood at present, that same spell that had collected pieces of his soul and tried to kill him—

  The spell shrieked and vanished with a keening that was so like the mages Léirsinn had slain in the barn that Acair staggered.

  Or that might have been because he felt as if he had been the one shot through the heart. He patted his chest on the off chance that was the case, but found he was still safe and whole.

  Or perhaps not whole. In truth, he felt a little…unwell.

  Léirsinn caught him around the waist. “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” he said, forcing himself to straighten. “I’m fine.”

  And he was, for it occurred to him quite suddenly that there was now nothing preventing him from using his magic. He leaned closer to Léirsinn.

  “We cannot risk another of those bolts.”

  “Distraction?”

  “That seems fitting.”

  He watched that rather shiny coin he’d made for her leave her hand and had several things occur to him in such rapid succession that he wished desperately for time to slow that he might consider them all and sort them into their proper order.

  First was that Sladaiche, for all his apparent lingering at the supper trough, was not an unskilled mage. He batted away the spell full of shadows Léirsinn threw at him and sent rats and snakes scattering away from him. Acair destroyed them with a word, but that cost him more than it should have, which led him to his second realization.

  In destroying it, I destroy myself. He’d said those ridiculous words to Mochriadhemiach of Neroche as they’d been discussing that accursed minder spell that had been so determined to slay him for the slightest dip of his toes into magical waters. He hadn’t meant them, of course, but that had apparently been a glorious miscalculation on his part.

  For the first time in his life, he was afraid he didn’t have enough of himself to work any serious magic.

  Lastly, he wasn’t exactly certain what he was going to do with Sladaiche’s soul if he managed to drag it out of the man’s body. He wasn’t his father in more ways than one, apparently.

  But it wasn’t his life that hung in the balance and that made his decision far easier than it might have been otherwise.
r />   He looked at his foe and spat out the spell Léirsinn had given him from her tale only to have Sladaiche laugh.

  “You don’t have it all!” he announced triumphantly.

  “Don’t I?” Acair drawled. “Well, allow me to give it another try.”

  He glanced at Léirsinn, the words duck behind me, darling on the tip of his tongue, only to realize he shouldn’t have looked away. He heard the second bolt of that deadly crossbow be cranked home and fired before he managed to look back at his opponent.

  Time chose that horrific moment to slow to a crawl. He saw the bolt coming toward him and knew that he might step aside, but it would still strike him.

  What he hadn’t anticipated was having Léirsinn leap in front of him.

  He caught her as the bolt slammed into her chest.

  He looked at Sladaiche. “You bloody bastard,” he gasped.

  Sladaiche started toward them, his face contorted in fury. “She must live. Give her to me!”

  Acair sank to his knees, cradling Léirsinn in his arms. She groped for his hand.

  “Hurry,” she whispered.

  Acair looked up and spat out his grandmother’s spell of essence meddling at the mage stomping through the dregs of water left in that fountain. Sladaiche froze in place as surely as if a very useful spell of essence meddling had rendered him motionless. Even Cruihniche of Fàs might have been impressed.

  Acair looked down at Léirsinn and found her watching him with a faint smile.

  “Stop dripping on my face,” she whispered.

  He blinked rapidly. “You talk too much,” he said, his voice breaking. “Let’s be about our work before you wear yourself out, aye? You can yammer at me later.”

  She smiled faintly, but closed her eyes. Acair ignored the flash of panic that swept through him, not for the world, or for the spell that required the woman in his arms, but for the possibility that he might, at almost a century, lose the very thing that he thought might make the rest of his years worth living.

  He pulled himself away from that place of fear, looked at Sladaiche, and repeated the dragon’s spell of soul thievery. He looked at Léirsinn. “Your turn, darling.”

  She coughed, then whispered four of the words, then paused. Acair watched her eyelids close and thought he might have made a noise that sounded a bit like a howl.

  And that had absolutely nothing to do with the finishing of that spell.

  He felt hands on his shoulders, one on each side.

  He looked up and found that red-haired gel from Eòlas standing on one side of him. A man sank down to his knees on the other. The man looked at him from eyes that were Léirsinn’s.

  “Ye gads,” he wheezed. “Relatives.”

  “Hurry,” the red-haired wench said. “She must wake and finish.”

  Acair had several thoughts about that, but the most unfortunate was that she was right. He leaned over and kissed Léirsinn’s forehead.

  “Darling,” he said softly. “Two more words, my love.”

  Her eyelids fluttered, then she looked at him.

  “Last two,” he said with the best smile he could muster. “Then you can rest.”

  She nodded, and breathed out the final two words of the spell.

  Acair watched as Sladaiche soul came out of him and slipped to the ground, forming a pool of shadow. He wondered briefly what he would need to do with the man’s corpse, but the ravages of time and evil deeds had apparently been waiting to see to that. Sladaiche’s form faded to ashes that slowly scattered into the night.

  “Attend to his soul later,” the red-haired woman said, “and heal Léirsinn now. We’ll help you.”

  Acair wanted to ask her how the hell she thought she was going to do anything but watch him weep as he watched his love perish, but he was too distraught to do anything but nod. He felt their hands on his shoulders still, as if they were there to lend him their strength.

  He thought, however, that the healing of the woman in his arms would require quite a bit more than moral support.

  Léirsinn opened her eyes. “Is it…finished?”

  He thought he might have made a different noise that was less like a howl and more like a sob, but perhaps he could slay the two on either side of him later if they noised that about.

  “Aye, darling,” he said. “’Tis finished and all the credit goes to you for it.”

  “That was six words.”

  “Indeed it was, my love. Well done, you. Now, close your eyes and rest. We’ll see you made whole.”

  “Hurry,” the woman said fiercely.

  He watched the man take hold of the bolt, then he nodded sharply and used that same Fadairian spell he’d used on Léirsinn’s arm at his house. The man pulled the bolt free as he spoke the last word. The wound was healed, he could see that through the rent in her shirt, but she didn’t stir.

  He did howl then.

  He saw a different hand reach out and rest on her head. He looked up and found Soilléir of Cothromaiche kneeling there next to that flame-haired wench.

  “Again,” he said quietly. “I’ll help. ’Tis the bolt, Acair, that has caused the damage.”

  “If I had more soul,” Acair said, knowing he sounded as broken as he felt, “that wouldn’t matter.”

  Soilléir nodded. “There is truth in that, but we’ll see to remedying that later.”

  “I don’t care about myself, damn you!”

  “I know,” Soilléir said. “You’ll need to use your grandmother’s spell this time. It will call to the magic in Léirsinn’s veins and do what’s required. Leave me room before the last word to add something of my own.”

  “I’ll memorize both.”

  “Of course you will.”

  He realized that Soilléir wasn’t waiting for him, he was already weaving something of his own over Léirsinn. He waited, not because he wanted the man’s spell, but because he wanted the woman in his arms to be whole.

  Soilléir looked at him expectantly, so he began his grandmother’s spell of reconstruction. He felt the magics surrounding his heart leap through his hands to join his grandmother’s spell in a way that left him, frankly, breathless. He paused for Soilléir to add his bit, then carried on and was rather grateful to have the prince speak the last word of his own spell along with him.

  He saw after the fact exactly how Soilléir had turned his grandmother’s spell into essence changing and wondered if that whoreson there knew what he’d revealed.

  Léirsinn gasped as if she’d been struck, then let out her breath as slowly and peacefully as a babe. She breathed a time or two, easily, then opened her eyes and looked at him.

  “I feel better.”

  He gathered her into his arms and added Soilléir to the list of people he would slay if they ever spread about the way he sobbed into the hair of the woman who had so thoroughly stolen his black heart.

  He thought he might have wept for rather an embarrassingly long time.

  It occurred to him eventually how uncomfortable she had to be, so he stopped smothering her and helped her sit up.

  She looked around herself, then froze. Acair supposed that might have been courtesy of what was visible thanks to the werelight Soilléir so thoughtfully provided. He would have crawled to his feet and helped her to stand, but he found she needed no aid. She leapt to her feet so quickly, she almost toppled him over in her haste.

  If she hauled him to his and almost knocked him into the fountain, he couldn’t blame her.

  She looked from the woman to the man and back.

  Then she gasped out a hearty curse.

  Well, that seemed to be the thing to do, apparently. He stepped back and watched as the three of them became one mass of weeping humanity. He wished heartily for a place to sit, but supposed the edge of the fountain was definitely not going to be his perch of choice. H
e looked at the pool of water there and found even just the sight of it to be profoundly disturbing. He looked at Soilléir.

  “Any suggestions?”

  Soilléir shrugged. “Mop it up?”

  Acair started to tell him to go to hell, but found himself instead with a better idea. “I have just the thing.”

  He used Simeon of Diarmailt’s spell to hasten the drying of ink and watched as the water simply disappeared. Unfortunately, the spell did nothing for what it left behind, which looked far too much like one of those damned pools of shadow for his taste.

  He looked at Soilléir. “Your turn.”

  Soilléir considered, then silently turned the fountain into a birdbath.

  Acair almost laughed. “You bloody bastard.”

  “At least I have a sense of humor.”

  “So you do. Enjoy it whilst you may because when I’m more myself, you will spend too much time fleeing from my wrath to find anything amusing.”

  Soilléir only smiled. “As you say. Oh, look, there is a bench. You should sit. You don’t look well.”

  Acair was simply out of words, perhaps one of the more alarming states in which he’d found himself over the past year. He didn’t, however, see any reason to shun a chance to recover a bit, so he shuffled over to that slab of stone Soilléir had fashioned out of nothing and sat with a deep sigh. He didn’t protest when his primary tormenter joined him there.

  “You have questions,” Soilléir said slowly.

  “I’ll beat the answers out of you la—ah, damn it all. What next?”

  Well, the king of the elves was what next, apparently. He wasn’t sure why that bit of magick-making he and his lady had indulged in had attracted such an audience, but perhaps he would investigate it later. For the moment, he thought he might want to just concentrate on surviving the next quarter hour. Given the expression on Sìle of Tòrr Dòrainn’s face, he suspected that might not be easily done.

  Perhaps he had nicked one too many spells from the old elf and used them with a bit too much impunity.

  He leaned over toward Soilléir. “Why is he here?”