The Prince of Souls (The Nine Kingdoms Book 12) Read online

  She smiled in spite of herself, but couldn’t bring herself to speculate. She picked up the golden disk and watched the way the firelight glinted off it, giving no indication of what terrible spell it contained.

  “How many stalls for your ponies?”

  She put his rune on the table and slid it across to him, then gathered her courage. “I couldn’t let you build me a barn,” she said, though those words cost her quite a bit. “I have a little money saved with Mistress Cailleach, though.”

  “I see,” he said slowly. He twisted his rune of death over his knuckles, one by one, for a moment or two, then looked at her seriously. “I understand the need to be independent.”

  “I could learn to play cards.”

  “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

  “That was before I saw the ocean a hundred paces from your front door, then looked back and saw that you came along with it.”

  He blinked, then bowed his head and laughed. “You are going to be the ruination of me.” He shook his head and smiled. “What if I gave you the land, I build you stables to go on it, and you use your powers of persuasion with the good lord of Angesand to convince him to sell us a few steeds? You can breed them and sell them thereafter for eye-watering prices whilst I keep my hands in my own pockets, not in your clients’. Best behavior and all.”

  She rose, gathered up bowls, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “That is an interesting proposal.”

  “I’m thinking about more than horses,” he protested.

  She could hardly believe he might be, but as she’d reminded herself earlier, she was completely out of her depth. That place was less uncomfortable than it had been before, though.

  She put things in the sink, then felt her hand be taken by a man with terrible spells who had come to stand next to her. She looked at him gravely.

  “I have a little money—”

  “Nay,” he said.

  “Shall I offer you maudlin sentiments instead?”

  “And have you burn not only my house but my sweet self to cinders?”

  She shook her head. “Perhaps just your heart.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, then pulled her closer and wrapped his arms around her tightly.

  “Damn you,” he said, sounding as if he were suffering from a bout of emotion himself. “You must cease with these vicious attacks on my good sense. There won’t be anything left of me to see to this questing business if you don’t leave me be.”

  “I have the feeling you’ll survive,” she said wryly.

  He released her only far enough to put his arm around her. He kissed her hair briefly. “I’ll keep you safe,” he murmured.

  She looked up at him quickly, but he only smiled.

  “Maps and whisky. ’Tis our only hope.”

  She thought he might just be right about that.

  Eleven

  Acair suspected that if too many more mornings passed when he was up before dawn without a nefarious reason as inducement, he might as well resign himself to never having a decent morning’s lie-in again.

  He came to himself to realize he was sitting at the table, pencil in hand, and a notebook was open in front of him. Worse still, a list had been made of all the things that vexed him, yet he had no memory of having made it.

  Ye gads, he had become his mother.

  He pushed the tools of her trade away from himself, rose, and began to pace. He walked along the walls, running his fingers occasionally over books that he had been collecting over decades of—mostly—lawful activities. No carefully made lists of evil mages flew off the shelves from their spots inside dust jackets. No tomes full of vile spells spewed out their contents so he had no choice but to catch hold of them. No massive volumes of Important Nerochian Virtues fell off shelves to clunk him on his head on their way to perhaps land on a toe and cause him pain.

  He leaned against a shelf and wondered briefly what would happen if he chucked the whole business into the closest imaginary rubbish bin, gathered up his delightful horse miss, and decamped for some lovely piece of shoreline in the south where they might luxuriate in the sunshine and make inroads into many bottles of the local drink of choice.

  After the previous night’s foray into matters of the heart, he suspected a better idea had never occurred to him.

  Unfortunately, behind altruism and honesty, his next most prominent virtue was industry. He couldn’t leave the world to the whims of a lesser mage when there were stones he could be nudging aside. He blew out his breath, pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and walked back over to his table where the fray awaited.

  The first thing he encountered was that damned map his grandmother had made him, which left him mentally back at her front gates, wondering what the hell she was up to. Cruihniche of Fàs never did anything without good reason, especially if she thought it might stick a staff in the proverbial spokes of someone’s heavily laden cart. He was beginning to fear that the spell she had given him had been less a gift than a means of sending him turning in circles, questioning every piece of magic he’d made over the course of his very long life.

  That wasn’t to say that he hadn’t early on in his career as black mage extraordinaire taken a look at his grandmother and sized her up as a potential possessor of magical goods. It was a testament to his youth and arrogance that he’d noticed nothing past the rather ordinary business a pair of her daughters used to make lace and keep bees.

  In his defense, he’d had no reason to expect anything more. His mother had power, of course, but she generally used it to torment houseguests and her various progeny. He couldn’t think of a single spell guarding her house that hadn’t come from someone else’s collection. Familiarity bred contempt, or so the saying went, and he’d launched himself out his mother’s front door without a backward glance, his sights set on the magic of the high and mighty of other lands. It had honestly never occurred to him that Fàs might have its own version of the same.

  He was beginning to think that oversight on his part had been a grave mistake.

  He set aside the map with its unsettling X drawn with many flourishes over his own damned house, tossed into the same pile a random sheaf of paper that had a series of rather rude doodles drawn alongside a decent representation of a fierce dragon spewing out lethal flames toward a certain essence-changing prince, and decided that perhaps a different approach might be called for.

  He sat, pulled out a fresh sheet of paper, and started a list of people, not events. The cast of players in the drama that had become his life was haphazard, to say the least. It ranged from those he could name—Aonarach of Léige, his own grandmother, Soilléir, Léirsinn—to others he had no name for—the mage following them so relentlessly, a portly orchardist from his past, and a mage who had seemingly made the stealing of souls his life’s work.

  He set aside the easier things first. Aonarach of Léige, that unruly royal spawn, had obviously spent too much time in his grandfather’s mines and the lack of air had led him to imagining things that couldn’t possibly be true. The boy’s spell had been unsettling only because it was so close to his own grandmother’s. The request for an introduction to Léirsinn’s sister had been nothing short of daft. Perhaps a carefully penned note suggesting the virtues of taking healthful air in the palace gardens would be the kindest thing he could offer.

  His grandmother had more than enough incentive to want to keep him busy and out of her linen closet, which likely explained why she wanted him wandering in remote paths. He couldn’t think of any reason past that why she would find herself embroiled in his current quest, so he tucked her comfortably back in her solar where she couldn’t trouble him further.

  He’d already consigned Soilléir to a fiery fate, if only on paper, which was no less than he deserved. At least the man wasn’t knocking on the front door, delivering more quests.

 
Léirsinn was last on that short list, but certainly not last in his thoughts. He was tempted to go check on her simply to have an excuse to look at her, but she was likely catching up on some very well-deserved rest. He would leave her in peace until he’d found at least one answer.

  He turned to the collection of souls he couldn’t put a name to and considered each in no particular order.

  First was the orchardist he had bumped off his ladder all those many years ago. His most vivid memory of the spell he’d tossed into the fire was his disappointment over its lack of desirability. Soilléir had insisted that it was the same spell that someone—presumably the orchardist—had cut from one of the books in his grandfather’s library, but Acair could hardly believe that.

  For one thing, he couldn’t imagine anyone having bothered to steal what he remembered as a paltry spell of thievery. Second, if the spell had done what it had been intended to do, why hadn’t the orchardist used it long before now?

  There were only two answers that made any sense: either the spell continued to be as pedestrian as he’d found it to be all those many years ago or it simply didn’t work at all.

  But if the latter were the case, why wrap it up and use it to lure a bastard son of the black mage down the road into his house to steal it?

  Acair had no illusions left about his father’s character, so whilst altruism would never have found itself on any list that applied to him, pride certainly would have. If someone had taken something of his—children, spells, his favorite dinnerware—Gair would have retaliated immediately and with a devastating fury. Only a fool would have provoked him thus.

  Nay, either Soilléir was mistaken, something else had been stolen, or, as he feared, there was another, more unpleasant quest in the offing. Something about the whole thing didn’t smell quite right, but he couldn’t bring himself to start sniffing in that direction quite yet.

  He looked at the second entry on that particular list, namely the mage who wanted the power of souls so badly. If that man was actually Sladaiche, as his mother had intimated, then tracking him down would take time, but it wouldn’t be impossible. After all, discovering secrets that didn’t want to be revealed was one of the things he did best. That, he suspected, might actually entail a lengthy troll through Seannair’s library. Heaven only knew what sorts of things that man had hiding amongst extensive studies on the art of taxidermy and the cultivation of root vegetables. Acair decided that could be penciled in near the top of his next to-do list for that reason alone.

  Last on the list but perhaps the most pressing item there was the mage who stood outside his house, that uninspired worker of pedestrian magic who spoke in shards and seemed to be waiting for something. He hadn’t robbed anyone recently, nor had he rifled through any chests of spells. The only thing that made any sense at all was that he had crossed paths with the fool at some point in the past, done him dirty—and given the quality of the man’s spells, he had likely done him a great favor there—and now the mage so slighted had decided the time was ripe for a bit of revenge.

  Unpleasant, but not life-threatening. If he had to keep a step ahead of the man for the next year until he had his magic under his hands again, so be it. He was capable of biding his time as well.

  There was a blank space on that large page and he watched his hand as it wrote down what he realized he had been avoiding thinking about seriously. It was perhaps the least of the things that should have vexed him, but he found it was the one that left him with the most discomfort in the vicinity of his heart.

  Who had slain Odhran of Eòlas and had that same man then stolen the spell he himself had hidden in his tailor’s workroom?

  He sat back and looked up at the ceiling. He considered himself fairly discreet, but he was the first to admit that boasting of his mighty magic had been a failing he’d engaged in more than once.

  Had some enterprising soul overheard him trumpeting his own magnificence at supper in Eòlas, then made inquiries about the establishments he frequented or where he bestowed his coveted commerce? And if the latter had intrigued anyone, would there have been any trouble discovering Master Odhran at the top of his list of sartorial destinations?

  He shook his head at his own stupidity. There he’d been, not a trio of weeks earlier, heedlessly sending a message to that self-same tailor, advising him to expect a visit at some point during his stay. He had then made that promised visit only to find his tailor dead.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to look again at that evening with detachment. His tailor had borne no marks from a commonplace weapon, so the likelihood of a spell having been what finished him was very high. The goods in his workroom hadn’t been tossed about, which suggested that it hadn’t been a random burglary. That his own spell of distraction had been stolen suggested that someone had either known beforehand it was there or suspected it might be there and forced Odhran to reveal its location.

  He supposed a third possibility was that finding that spell could have been simply good fortune, though it would have taken a mage with decent abilities to have recognized it for what it was.

  Then there was that damned note Léirsinn had found that had announced, I’m watching you, but you knew that. Unoriginal and uninspired, but he was, sadly, accustomed to lesser offerings.

  He supposed those words could have been dashed off by any noblewoman within a hundred-league radius of the city, but the uncomfortable truth was that they were almost identical to the missive he’d received whilst he and Léirsinn had been taking refuge in Tor Neroche. There had been no doubt in his mind that those words had been penned by a man with magic.

  Nay, the author had been the same, which likely meant that they had been written by the mage who had stolen his spell.

  Why was the question he simply couldn’t answer.

  He rubbed his hands over his face, aching for the freedom of flight in a way that left him almost unable to draw breath.

  “Acair?”

  A soft knock startled him, but he managed not to fling anything in the air or knock over any of what he could see had become a rather alarmingly large collection of cups and glasses.

  “Come in,” he called.

  Léirsinn leaned in past the door. “Supper?”

  He blinked and turned toward her. “Is it that late already?”

  “I’d call it a very late lunch,” she conceded. “I’m just not sure you’ve eaten anything today. And if you make any untoward remarks about my cooking, I will throw something heavy at you.”

  He heaved himself up out of his chair, gathered up half a dozen cups and glasses, and crossed over to her. “I’m still unsure where it was I went wrong with you. No one dares speak to me so carelessly.”

  She only smiled and went to fetch the rest of the evidence of how long he’d been at his current slog. He staved off the impulse to ask her to carry him as well and followed her to his kitchen where she had set up a very respectable collection of edible things.

  He ate without tasting anything and had no idea if he’d made decent conversation or not. His head was full of impossible questions and his eyes were full of mountain ranges and coastlines and the courses that rivers took through plains and valleys.

  What he needed was a better vantage point.

  He came to himself to find he was holding a knife in his hand and staring at nothing. He blinked and focused on Léirsinn sitting around the table from him. She was simply sitting back in her chair, watching him thoughtfully.

  “Forgive me,” he said, the words feeling, unsurprisingly, as familiar as a pair of well-worn slippers. “My mind is elsewhere.”

  “I’m sorry you can’t, you know.” She made flapping motions with her hands.

  “As am I,” he agreed. “I would very much like—”

  He stopped speaking because the possibility that occurred to him suddenly was almost enough to still even the continual str
eam of terrible thoughts that ran through his mind like a mighty Durialian river.

  He could shapechange.

  “Acair, you worry me.”

  He pushed back his chair. “Let me help you with these dishes, then I believe I’ll go stretch my legs.”

  She nodded and rose as well, but she was watching him far more closely than he was comfortable with.

  His inability to make idle chatter was coming back to haunt him at the moment, for he had no means with which to distract her. Hardly had he dried the last plate and stacked it again before he realized that she had placed herself between him and the doorway that led to the rest of the house. She was wearing a look he imagined had inspired countless stable hands to blurt out their plans for mischief before she had even asked.

  “I’m going to have a little look up the coast,” he admitted, finding himself, metaphorically speaking, standing there in dung-covered boots and holding onto a pitchfork.

  “Are you mad?” she asked incredulously. “You know what’s out there!”

  “I’ll slip out the back. He’ll never know.”

  “And what will I do if you don’t come back?”

  “Well,” he said, wondering what sort of list might be best. “You’ll tell Sianach to take a winged shape, then you’ll walk out of my spell and fly to somewhere that appeals. Cothromaiche, if you like. Seannair is daft as a duck, but still a decent fellow. The schools of wizardry—nay, Tor Neroche. Better still, Angesand. Hearn will give you a choice refuge with all the horses you can stand to ride.”

  “Nay,” she said, “what will I do without you?”

  It took him a moment to realize what she was getting at. He looked at her then, that glorious red-haired woman who had been ripped from the life she knew, thrown into a life she’d never asked for, and sacrificed what would no doubt be the peace she might have looked forward to in order to keep him safe, and he wondered if he’d heard her wrong.