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

  What he needed to do was get above it. He was in the midst of the maze and there were simply too many possible pathways to see the pattern whilst looking at them from eye level.

  He came to himself to find that he was standing in the middle of his library, staring at nothing. Léirsinn was watching from the doorway, hovering there as if she suspected she might need to make a hasty escape sooner rather than later.

  He sighed. “Forgive me. Lost in thought.”

  “What can I do?” she asked.

  “Distract him so I can fly?”

  She smiled gravely. “Of course.”

  The pleasure of flight was undiminished, he found as he hurtled out to sea as a chilly winter wind. If he ever managed to be free of that damned thing that dogged his steps, he would never take it for granted again. He left his thoughts behind and turned north, out toward the open ocean where there was nothing but sea and sky.

  He flew until the sun began to sink in the west and the shadows started forming over the coastline.

  An unsettling sight if ever there were one.

  He slowed his flight as the winds near the shore buffeted him, bringing some sense back into his poor overworked mind. What he needed, he decided as he kept himself from being dashed against the rocky shoreline to the north of his home, was a holiday. No wonder Soilléir seemed to take them with such regularity. Very restorative, no doubt.

  He wandered over the same landscape he’d looked at the previous day, only things occurred to him that hadn’t before.

  The track that lay to the south of that ruined keep, the keep that most definitely could have been merely the start of a rather substantial settlement, was less faint than he’d thought before. In fact, if the forest hadn’t taken it over, it could still have been considered an easy way to go from that ruin to his house. Perhaps there had been something important on that piece of land where his house currently stood.

  He wondered if he should go have another rummage through that trunk in his cellar.

  He decided that he would do just that before his thoughts carried him off to places where he was quite certain he wouldn’t want them to go.

  It took less time than he was comfortable with to gain his own home. He slipped through his spell of protection and resumed his proper form, though when he moved to dissolve his spell of un-noticing, he hesitated. That might have been courtesy of the sight of his enemy standing a hundred paces away in a spot between his house and the shore.

  That was something he simply couldn’t get past. Admittedly, he and Léirsinn hadn’t been wearing any sort of spell of un-noticing on their way to his house, but Sìle had given them a decent head’s start and he hadn’t seen anything behind them the entire time they’d flown home. In fact, the first he’d seen of that mage there had been when Léirsinn had noticed him standing in the shadows beyond the garden. How was it possible for him to have found them without having had any idea where they were going?

  Unless he’d known the lay of the land himself.

  That thought was startling enough all on its own, but still the question remained: why hadn’t he come before?

  Acair studied the hooded figure standing close enough that a half-decent spell of death would have felled him instantly. It was definitely the mage from the glade. Acair could see shards wrapped around the man’s neck like a scarf.

  Other things, though, struck him now that he was at his leisure to mark them. The man certainly knew how to be still, though perhaps that had been to his detriment. He himself had never been one to mock another for the measurement of their waistline, but that man there had obviously spent too much time sitting and thinking and not enough time rushing about from one bad deed to the next.

  And that was, he had to admit with surprising reluctance, the same man who he’d knocked off his ladder all those many years ago.

  The orchardist had been sporting a close-trimmed beard, if memory served, but not one of a handsome fashion. Too much scruff down the neck and not enough left on the chin, certainly. Even at the tender age of eight, Acair had possessed opinions on the same thanks to his sire. Gair, for all his faults, had at least possessed the commitment to cutting an acceptable figure.

  I’m watching you…

  Watching, not acting? What sort of half-arsed business was that? Watching and waiting for what?

  It wasn’t pleasant to think about, but how many times could that mage there have simply slain him in his sleep? More particularly after he’d been gang-pressed into servitude by those giggling gels who had left him no choice but to comply with their ridiculous and quite perilous demands?

  I’m watching you…

  Not a surprise, he supposed, given what he now realized. The only question was, how long had that man there been watching him, waiting for the perfect moment for revenge?

  He turned and walked into his house, kicking off his spell of un-noticing like a pair of muddy boots just outside the door. He shut the front door behind him, leaned back against it, then sighed deeply. Well, there was one question answered, he supposed.

  Naming the man, however, might be a bit…more…

  Time slowed to a crawl before it simply stopped.

  He felt as green as a village lad on his first journey to a city containing more than one pub. He also supposed that if he didn’t stop having to shake his head over his own stupidity, he was going to be forever lost for anything useful.

  He walked through his house and into his kitchen. He continued on until he was standing by the table where he had honestly eaten only a handful of meals and most of those had been with that beautiful red-haired lass who was so fond of horses.

  A horseshoe lay there, in the place where he’d left it, the single trophy he’d liberated from that bloody trunk languishing in his cellar. He looked at it and several things he hadn’t considered before clicked into place, in exactly the same way that pool of shadow Falaire had destroyed had come back together.

  Was the mage standing outside his house Sladaiche?

  He found it surprisingly difficult to breathe for all the questions that then came at him with the unrelenting ferocity of Durialian dark magic.

  Was that why his grandmother had scrawled that damnable X over his house? Had she known? Had his mother known?

  Had Soilléir known? Was that why he had intimated that Acair needed to go where he himself could not walk?

  Because the answer was in the cellar of his own bloody house?

  He heard Léirsinn come into the kitchens and groped for some sort of pleasant expression to put on his face.

  “How was the sea?” she asked with a smile as she passed him.

  “Glorious,” he said hoarsely. “Not to be missed. You’ll have to come with me sometime.”

  “A thrilling prospect, truly.”

  “You have been too long in my company,” he managed. “Listen to you being sardonic with so little effort.”

  “’Tis contagious,” she agreed. She nodded at the table. “Starting a collection for your barn or is that something Sianach dragged in?”

  He put his hand on the horseshoe because he suddenly felt a bit as if he weren’t precisely where he was, an alarming sensation if ever there were one. He supposed that might be as close as he would want to come to fainting from surprise.

  “Um, aye,” he said, scrambling for something to say that sounded reasonable. “Found it in the cellar.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Was there a barn here originally? I looked at your grandmother’s map while you were gone and wondered. If that’s the case, I’m guessing there might have been an arena once where your garden is now.”

  Of course. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised.

  He didn’t argue when Léirsinn pulled out a chair and gave him a bit of a push down into it. She was, after all, rather strong for a wench.

  He drank
what she handed him which he found was water, not anything more useful. At the moment, he suspected anything that left him looking as if he were merely sitting in his kitchen for a decent chat before supper couldn’t be a bad thing. He sipped, nodded when he thought her conversation merited it, and tried not to look as blind-sided as he felt.

  I’m watching you.

  He almost snorted. Apparently that was the case and it left him wondering just how long that had been going on.

  I’m watching her…

  Acair heard something shatter. He realized as he looked down that it was his glass that was lying there in shards at his feet.

  Shards. Ye gads, would the word never cease to torment him?

  He thought he might understand how it felt to be kicked by a stallion. He couldn’t have lost his breath any more thoroughly or abruptly if he had been. He would have staggered, crediting the same to a little foray into his cook’s hidden bottle of sherry, but his recent encounter with fierce ocean winds had left him perfectly sober.

  Frighteningly sober and apparently lacking in the good sense that grounded a black mage to his higher purpose of making life a misery for everyone he came into contact with.

  What if that mage hadn’t been chasing him?

  What if that mage had been after Léirsinn all along?

  “Don’t move.”

  He wasn’t sure he could. He sat there and watched stupidly as Léirsinn started to clean up the glass. He came back to himself as she reached for a particularly large, jagged piece, then sent the lot into oblivion with a quick and dirty spell. She blinked, sat back on her heels and looked up at him.

  “Aren’t you handy,” she said slowly.

  He could only look at her, mute. He rose, pulled her to her feet, then pasted on a smile.

  “Would you do me a favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ah,” he said, casting about for something to say, “could you find me a bottle of wine? From the cellar?”

  She looked at him as if he’d lost his wits. He understood. If he could have caught enough breath to agree with her, he would have.

  “Anything special?” she asked.

  “Whatever suits,” he said. “I left my boots at the front door. I need to go fetch them.”

  He turned and walked away before he had to say anything else inane, realizing as he opened his front door a handful of moments later that he was already wearing his boots because he’d never taken them off to begin with.

  He didn’t think, he simply walked down the pathway and through his spell.

  He supposed he might later have the presence of mind to be relieved that his ever-present spell of death had detached itself from the spell protecting his home and come to stand next to him. That would no doubt be tempered by the knowledge that it was only standing so close because ’twas a bit easier to slay something if one had that something within arm’s reach.

  The mage facing him, that rotund little man with the terrible power but so little imagination, merely stood there, a hundred paces away, doing nothing.

  Saying nothing.

  Simply watching.

  “Acair?”

  The mage turned his head sharply and looked in the direction of that voice.

  Acair continued on with his newfound habit of not thinking. He merely stepped back inside his spell, ignoring the shrieking of his deathly shadow as it couldn’t follow him, and walked up to the front door. How he managed a smile he hoped was confident and unassuming, he wasn’t sure. Years of practice at theatrics, no doubt.

  “Darling, ’tis cold outside,” he said, shooing Léirsinn inside and shutting the door behind them. If he locked it with a resounding click, so much the better.

  “What were you—”

  “Lost my spell there for a moment,” he said, lying with an abandon that might have almost rivaled his recent realizations for sheer awfulness. “A drink, love, don’t you think? Chilly out.”

  She looked at him as if she’d never seen him before. He understood. He hardly recognized himself, either.

  He found himself enormously grateful for a spell that covered his house with an imperviousness that even Sìle of Tòrr Dòrainn, an elf famous for his own spell covering his realm, might have given a brisk nod of approval to.

  At least he hoped it was impervious.

  He shook his head sharply. Of course it was. He had poured quite a bit of his own…

  He indulged in an impolite epitaph or two and wondered when it was that he would stop encountering realizations that made him want to go have a little lie-down. He had poured a rather decent amount of his soul into his spell of protection because it had seemed like a reasonable use of what he had to hand. It also made it rather convenient, as he had so recently noted to himself, when it came time to pop in or out of his own dwelling. Just a bit of shorthand to keep himself from being crushed to death.

  He found that he couldn’t speak and Léirsinn was kind enough not to force him to. She was also kind enough to hand him a glass of whisky when he collapsed into the chair in front of the fire in his study.

  He couldn’t believe he hadn’t considered it before. A testament to his own arrogance, to be sure. Even Aonarach of Léige had needed to point out to him how unimportant he was in the grander scheme of things. He was tempted to wonder about that lad’s part in the whole damned play, but he dismissed that immediately. Aonarach was a youth and apparently fixated on the sister he thought Léirsinn might still have, not other, more unsettling matters.

  “Did you find anything?”

  Acair looked at the glorious woman he had considered naught but a simple stable lass and wondered what part she had to play in the madness.

  Not that he couldn’t think of several decent reasons why someone would want her, but he was also hopelessly fond of her for reasons that had nothing to do with magic or shadows or draining the world of anything beautiful.

  Why would a mage who made shadows with the express purpose of stealing souls want that lass there?

  “I think you need something to eat.”

  He nodded, though a turn about the old place to make sure all the corners of his spell were tucked in tightly was definitely going to be called for first.

  He followed her to the kitchen, furiously reassessing his strategy for keeping himself—and Léirsinn—safe and whole.

  If he couldn’t protect her, he would have to arm her as best he could. He suspected she wasn’t going to like that at all, but he had no choice.

  It might be the only way to keep her alive.

  Fourteen

  Léirsinn wondered if taking the heaviest thing within reach and beaning a black mage with it would be counted as murder or a service to mankind.

  “Again,” that black mage said briskly.

  She looked at him and wondered where the rather charming, conflicted man she’d fallen asleep next to on the floor of his study the night before had gone.

  In his place was an impossible—and impossibly annoying—bastard son of the worst black mage in recent memory who was living up to every nasty thing she’d ever heard about him. If he had been tracking her with evil intentions at the ready, she would have found the first mage-king available and hidden behind his skirts for as long as necessary.

  She would have looked around for Sianach to invite him to do some damage to his master, but even Acair’s horse had deserted her. She was simply left with a man who had perhaps lost all his wits during the night.

  She should have insisted that he go sleep in his comfortable bed while she stayed in front of the fire. That glorious goose-feather pallet was so much more luxurious than anything she’d slept on in her uncle’s barn, it was as if she were sleeping in one of the palace guest chambers she had recently visited. Acair, however, was no doubt accustomed to much finer trappings.

  Then again, perhaps t
hat wouldn’t have mattered. He’d been silent during supper the night before, then seemingly consumed with rereading his grandmother’s notes and his own after that. He’d spent more time than not simply staring off into nothing, only occasionally shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe something.

  She’d been afraid to ask what that something might have been.

  She’d woken several times during the night to find him either sitting in the chair at her feet, staring into the fire, or gone. If she hadn’t seen the faint light coming from under his library door, she would have thought he’d decided to take a star-lit flight to the ruin up the way.

  Dawn had provided her with a taskmaster who hadn’t let her have more than a crust of bread before he’d hustled her out to the back garden. The sun had been up, but had scarce managed to melt away any of the patches of frost. Acair had provided her with a very warm cloak and fine gloves, but that had been the extent of it.

  He had then cast up a shield of sorts under his spell of protection. She’d hardly had time to admire it, much less ask why he thought it to be necessary, before he’d been hounding her to take her magic out of the stall and put it to work.

  She’d complied because she’d been able to see the wisdom in it. She had practiced calling fire until, to her great surprise, she’d been able to do so without setting the entire garden alight.

  But had that been enough? Nay, it had not. Without so much as a nod of approval, that damned mage there had demanded spells of containment.

  She’d used the one Uachdaran’s stable lad had given her, which had been sufficient for grain but not entirely enough for that spell of death still trapped out front. It had, however, worked well enough against fire. Finally succeeding at it after countless attempts had earned her only a faint lessening of her spellmaster’s perpetual scowl before he’d turned to other things.

  She was starting to have sympathy for those horses she’d worked without pause until they’d been forced to acknowledge she was master.

  “I’m tired,” she said, because that was understating it badly. She was so exhausted, she could hardly see the garden in front of her.