The Prince of Souls (The Nine Kingdoms Book 12)

by Lynn Kurland

Iseabail looked at him seriously. “You made Fuadain scream.”

  “Only once or twice.”

  Léirsinn found herself the recipient of a pointed look from that mage who loved her, so she took his arm and pulled him down the passageway with her.

  “Thank you,” she said simply.

  “My pleasure,” he said. “I have so little occasion to trot out things from my own nightmares these days.” He put his hand over hers on his arm. “I would have done far worse, but I am, as I said before, trying to make a good impression on the relatives.”

  “How do you feel?”

  He looked at her quickly. “Vindicated and in sore need of a holiday. But first things first. Let’s see to your grandfather, then we’ll decide how to fill the rest of our morning.”

  She put her hand in the pocket of his coat to make certain she had that piece of his soul, then walked beside him to her grandfather’s chamber.

  Nothing had changed except that Tosdach of Sàraichte was no longer her blood relative, though she supposed that was something Acair’s mother and Soilléir’s father could relegate to their histories of the Nine Kingdoms. She had spent so many years claiming him, she thought she might continue on. Besides, her siblings had no idea what the truth was as far as she knew. She would tell them eventually, but not at the moment.

  They gathered to discuss Tosdach’s condition, those souls with magic in their blood. Acair paused, then looked for her. He frowned, then crossed the room to take her hand and pull her into the circle.

  She thought she just might have loved him for it.

  “’Tis a very good spell,” Iseabail said thoughtfully, “though not complicated.”

  “Agreed,” Acair said. “I didn’t look at it closely the first time I saw him. The magic the spell is made from—”

  “Olc?” Tais asked grimly.

  “A permutation of it,” Iseabail said. She looked at Acair. “You’re better suited to unraveling it than I am, no offense intended.”

  “I don’t offend easily,” Acair said with a shrug.

  Soilléir snorted, which earned him a glare. He stepped back. “I’ll leave this to you four and go put my feet up for a moment or two.”

  Léirsinn realized that whatever had been done to her by that enspelled bolt hadn’t been enough to take away her sight. She watched her brother and the man she loved unravel the spell laid over her grandfather whilst her sister continually pulled threads from it until she simply snapped the last one in two.

  Her grandfather blinked, then pushed himself up so he was sitting on the edge of his chair. He looked at them.

  “Iseabail,” he said in wonder. “Léirsinn. Taisdealach. Oh, my dears, you’re all grown up!”

  Léirsinn supposed the man might need to breathe eventually, but he didn’t seem to mind having her and her sister choke him with fond embraces. He only laughed and reached out a hand to grasp Tais’.

  She remained happily involved in a very sweet reunion until the moment came when she knew she needed air. She eased away from her siblings and grandfather and found Acair leaning with his shoulder against the wall by the doorway. He very casually opened the door and lifted his eyebrows briefly. She eased over, trying not to draw attention to herself.

  “I love you,” she murmured as she slipped out the door.

  “How could you not?”

  She waited, then realized he wasn’t coming with her. She pushed the door open, took his hand, and pulled him out into the passageway.

  “I thought you might want privacy,” he said carefully.

  “What I want is to run.”

  “We could shapechange.”

  “Or I could steal a horse.”

  He took her hand and walked quickly with her down the passageway. “This is what consorting with ne’er-do-wells gets a stable lass, I’m finding. Horse thievery? What next?”

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “To find Doghail.” She shot him a look. “Be prepared for an insufferably smug look.”

  “Did he predict our love match?” he asked politely.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Smart man, that Doghail.”

  She supposed he might have been.

  She walked with Acair through the house, back down the stairs, and out through the kitchen. She nodded to Fuadain’s butler, thanked a chambermaid she recognized for her kindness, then walked out into the morning air and took the first decent breath she’d had in weeks.

  She looked at Acair. “Thank you,” she said simply.

  He brought her hand to his mouth, kissed it quickly, then smiled. “Let’s go see a man about a horse.”

  She smiled and walked with him to the barn.

  Twenty-three

  Acair walked along the dusty road that led from the manor house at Briàghde toward the port town of Sàraichte. He supposed he might eventually see his great-aunt, which would give him the chance to tell her that she was right about numerous things.

  That he was trailing after Léirsinn of Sàraichte like a love-sick pup would assuredly be first on that list.

  He watched his lady with her siblings walk in front of her grandfather who was sitting rather comfortably on a marginally well-behaved Sianach. Doghail had the pony well in hand, though Acair supposed that shouldn’t have been surprising. He himself was bringing up the rear with an unusually taciturn Soilléir of Cothromaiche, but perhaps the man was simply enjoying his last few breaths of easily obtained fresh air. That wouldn’t last for long after he himself had recovered from the rather taxing amounts of spell-casting he’d done over the previous pair of days.

  “You’ll never manage it, you realize.”

  Acair would have slid the man a warning look, but he thought that might indicate that he had made even the slightest note of that protest, which he hadn’t. He might not manage it, but that certainly wouldn’t be for a lack of trying.

  “Besides, you can’t have answers if I’m dead.”

  “Stop stealing my best sayings,” Acair grumbled, keenly aware of how often he’d said the same thing whilst in a tight spot, never mind how often others had said it to him, also whilst in tight spots. “You might be surprised what a body is willing to divulge on their way off stage, if you know what I mean.”

  Soilléir only refrained from comment. Too terrified to respond, more than likely.

  “Very well,” Acair said, setting aside thoughts of murder for the moment, “I’ll have the entire truth now that I’m at my leisure to hear it. Let’s start with that damned spell you sent to dog my steps. You remember, the one that almost slew me near Durial?”

  “I remember.”

  “You said you didn’t know who’d made it.”

  “I said the spell wasn’t mine,” Soilléir corrected. “I never said I didn’t know who’d fashioned it.”

  Acair decided it was too early in the day to start gasping with outrage, so he forced himself to take a deep, even breath instead. “Whose was it, then?”

  “Iseabail’s.”

  Acair suspected that if he continued to take in the number of deep breaths the conversation was looking as though it might require, he would faint from too much breathing. He instead wriggled his jaw to keep from clenching it too tightly and nodded. “I see. Did she fashion this spell all on her own?”

  “She might have had a suggestion or two from someone else.”

  “Of course. What was the magic?”

  Soilléir took a deep breath of his own. Acair didn’t hope for any fainting on the man’s part, but he did spare a wish for a chair. He had the feeling he might need one.

  “I won’t bother suggesting that you might find it an amusing diversion to search for that answer yourself,” Soilléir said.

  “Wise,” Acair agreed.

&
nbsp; “The magic is Cnuacach, which is the magic of Ionad-teàrmainn, which is uncomfortably similar to Domhainn, which is the magic of Fàs.”

  “Why don’t I know any of this?” Acair asked, dumbfounded.

  “Because you were too busy looking elsewhere to notice what was in your back garden,” Soilléir said, “if I might be so bold. The spell’s main purpose was to keep you from using magic, for reasons I’m sure you can divine on your own. Its secondary purpose was to aid you in collecting pieces of your soul.”

  “You didn’t send my mother a missive asking her to suggest that rot to me,” Acair said, knowing he should have been appalled but finding himself not. “Did you?”

  “We’ve discussed the idea before in a general sense.”

  “I don’t want to know when.”

  Soilléir smiled. “I imagine you don’t. And to answer, nay, our discussion didn’t have anything to do with Sladaiche. I assumed you would find the answers you needed regarding him all on your own.”

  “Of course,” Acair said, deciding ’twas best not to think about how closely he’d come to never having given that a bloody thought.

  “Do you need to rest?”

  He glared at Soilléir. “Do I look ill?”

  “Pale, rather.”

  “I’m overcome by thinking about all the ways you could be deposited in a ditch in a desolate corner of some untraveled wasteland. All my strength is going to keeping myself from kicking up my heels and dancing a jig.” He walked for a bit more, then frowned. “Did Iseabail know Léirsinn was alive when she fashioned that spell to make my life a misery?”

  Soilléir sighed deeply. “Aye. I’m afraid I’m the one who told her—”

  “Wait,” Acair interrupted. He stopped and looked at his vexatious companion. “You need to start from the beginning. And before you do, I want you to admit that you deliberately put me in a position where I couldn’t save Léirsinn if necessary.”

  “Not with magic,” Soilléir said, “which I’ll admit left Iseabail very concerned.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t.”

  Acair wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or furious. “My reputation precedes me, then.”

  “It does,” Soilléir agreed.

  “I’m still tremendously offended by almost dying, but I’ll try to put that behind me.” He waited until their company had put a bit more distance between them, then he began to walk slowly again. “From the beginning, if you please.”

  “How far back do you want me to go?”

  “Beyond the range of my fists would be my suggestion.”

  Soilléir only smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind. Perhaps I’ll start a bit in the middle with what happened to the children after Sladaiche—”

  Acair held up his hand. “You don’t need to say it.”

  Soilléir nodded. “Thank you.” He sighed. “After they lost their parents. I’ll admit that I, ah…”

  “Made arrangements for them?” Acair finished for him.

  “You know how that is.”

  Acair looked at him narrowly. “Did you beat that knowledge out of my sister or snoop all on your own?”

  Soilléir only shook his head with a grave smile. “I loved Sarait, if you’ll have the truth of it, so I was perhaps more interested in the happenings surrounding her than I should have been. Morgan didn’t tell me, so you can justifiably accuse me of watching things I likely shouldn’t have.”

  There was nothing to be said there. The fact that Soilléir had watched Sarait and several of her children be slain…well, whilst there were things he had to admit he occasionally envied about the lives of others with terrible spells tucked in their purses, he had just rid himself of that feeling about the man walking next to him.

  “I saw to the children,” Soilléir continued, “because I could. I also took the books of faery tales and hid them for safekeeping, because I needed to.”

  “You hid them in your grandfather’s library,” Acair said pointedly, “until you foisted one off on me thanks to whom—Ochadius of Riamh?”

  “I need to be more careful about my messengers,” Soilléir murmured.

  “More afraid, rather, of what I’ll do to you when I discover how extensively you’ve meddled, but go on. Where is the third one? You obviously don’t know or you would be crowing about it.”

  “I don’t,” Soilléir agreed. “It has gone missing, but finding it is not my task.”

  Acair almost groaned aloud. If he had to listen to one more recitation of that one’s vaunted code, he thought he just might lie down and bawl like a bairn.

  “Let’s press on,” he said, hopping over the steaming pile of virtue his companion had tried to deposit there in front of him. “How did you know to rescue those children?”

  Soilléir shrugged lightly. “I didn’t.”

  Acair decided he would retrieve his jaw from where it had fallen to the earth later, when he also had a free moment to find the breath he’d just lost.

  “How do you sleep at night?” he asked incredulously. “Lying like that.”

  “Let’s say it was an educated guess.”

  “Let’s not,” Acair returned, “and instead you tell me the truth.”

  Soilléir looked slightly uncomfortable. “Perhaps we should look for somewhere to sit.”

  “That would be perfect,” Acair said crisply, “for it would save me the effort of chasing you down to turn you into a birdbath. I have a pair of cousins who I can guarantee would plop you in their garden without a second thought.”

  Soilléir only smiled, which left Acair torn between admiration that he could so casually know there wasn’t a damned soul in the whole of the Nine Kingdoms who could do anything at all to him and fury that he’d been used so thoroughly without so much as the slightest hesitance.

  He revisited the thought that if Soilléir hadn’t had his fingers in every pie from Tosan to Riamh, he never would have encountered Léirsinn of Sàraichte…

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  He glared at him. “Stop that.”

  “You’re gasping aloud and looking very green.” Soilléir shrugged with a smile. “Another very good guess. As for other things, I knew Sladaiche—”

  “Which you shamelessly lied about in that glade,” Acair said bitterly. “Why didn’t you slay him the moment he looked askance at the first horse in his charge? Nay, never mind. If I must listen to you blather on about your noble doings, I will cut off my own ears.” He waved the man on to further details with a hand that was far less steady than he would have liked, but it had been that sort of morning so far. “You knew Sladaiche, allowed him to live, and then what?”

  “I knew him,” Soilléir repeated, “but there is always the possibility of redemption.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Very well, with some there is no hope, I’ll admit. But it isn’t my place to decide who lives or dies.”

  “If there were no evil, what would there be for good men to do, or whatever the rot is you sick up onto everyone you meet,” Acair said, wondering if he might be soon indulging. Supper from the night before, what he’d managed of it, was definitely still lingering in a very unwholesome way in his tum.

  “At this point you know most all of what you’d ever want to about him,” Soilléir continued. “I have details about other things, though, that you might find interesting.”

  “Another turn in your granddaddy’s solar is what I would find interesting.”

  “Library.”

  “There, too, but go on. Bludgeon me with the minutiae.”

  Soilléir, damn him to hell, only smiled and looked as relaxed as if he might soon be settling in for a pint or two at the local pub.

  “What you likely would have discovered soon enough, but I’ll tell you just the same,” he continued, “is that the author of those wee books of faery tale
s is none other than Tosdach, Léirsinn’s grandfather.”

  Acair knew he should have been surprised, but somehow he wasn’t. “If you tell me that he’s a powerful mage…”

  “Nothing like that, I fear. Just a man with a love for a good story. As for your lady’s family, I believe my father told you as much as he knew about the particulars. I can give you the details he doesn’t know. Niall was slain by Sladaiche, though you may have guessed as much already.”

  Acair looked at him and for the first time in decades of knowing him felt a small stirring of pity. “It must be difficult,” he said, finding the words sliding off his tongue whilst he could only stand there and watch them go. “To simply stand by and watch.”

  Soilléir walked next to him for quite some time before he stopped. He took a deep breath and looked at him. “Not many say that.”

  “They’re too busy plotting how to have your spells.”

  “That might be true. But I appreciate the sentiment just the same.”

  “I’ll deny it if you repeat it.”

  “I would expect nothing less.” Soilléir walked on. “To continue, after a year or so, Saoradh met Muireall and proposed marriage. It was done out of love and the children were never told.”

  “Did he have magic?” Acair asked, trying to digest what he was hearing without a proper libation or a decent chair. “Léirsinn’s true sire, I mean.”

  Soilléir considered. “They do in their line,” he said slowly, “but their magic is a very capricious sort, far more unpredictable than what my family possesses. For the most part, the inhabitants of An Caol can trace their ancestors back to Ionad-teàrmainn. Léirsinn’s sire is a direct descendent of the stablemaster that had Sladaiche banished for abusing the horses.”

  “I see.”

  “I imagine you’re beginning to. Lord Tosdach had found great hospitality in An Caol. Being a lover of horses himself, making the journey back there often was, I’m given to understand, one of the pleasures of his life. When he felt he’d collected as many stories as he could, he bound them all into a trio of books.”

  Acair closed his eyes briefly. “Including, no doubt, at least one from Léirsinn’s sire.”