The White Spell (19 page)

“I'm a pair of years shy of a century,” he said grimly. “Very old indeed.”

She blinked, then she smiled. “You said you always told the truth.”

“It
is
the truth and today I feel every one of those years, believe me.”

She couldn't help a bit of a laugh. She looked at him and shook her head. “I'm not sure how many more fanciful imaginings I can stomach today, but continue if you like. If you think that—” she could hardly call that thing in the corner a
spell
but she had nothing else to name it “that spell won't slay you for it.”

He smiled wearily. “We'll see, I suppose.” He rubbed his hands together. “I suppose we should start at the beginning.”

She pulled his cloak closer around her and smiled. “And thus have always begun my favorite bedtime tales.”

He shot her a dark look. “To begin at the
beginning
,” he said pointedly, “we must discuss magic.”

“Am I going to fall asleep soon?”

He made a sound of exasperation. “Woman, you . . . you have a very bad habit of making light of very serious things.”

“And you don't, which is why my perspective is so valuable to you. Say on, lad. I'll try to stay awake.”

“I will elbow you if you nod off,” he said. “Now, as I was saying, there is magic and then there is
magic
. Even a village alewife is familiar with the former, for every time she seeks out a potion or a
charm or a harmless little spell from the local witchwoman, she is using the first.”

“Like Mistress Cailleach?”

“Mistress Cailleach isn't exactly a harmless village alewife,” he said. He shifted. “She's my great-aunt.”

She looked at him in surprise. “She isn't.”

“She is, and believe me when I say I was no more surprised to find her in Sàraichte than you are to hear of my connection to her, a connection I'm not entirely sure she's pleased about. She cuffed me so hard when I saw her, I think she may have permanently damaged the hearing in my left ear.”

She felt a little faint. “And she is a . . .”

“Witch,” he said.

“Which means your mother is a witch.”

“My mother is most definitely a witch.”

She hoped she would soon be able to stop shaking her head. “I think this just might be a bridge too far for me. Mistress Cailleach sells fish and keeps my box of coins, nothing more.”

“I'm surprised she hasn't tried to trade you a spell or a charm for some of your coins,” he said, “but she likes you so perhaps she wouldn't. I would hazard a guess she's collected plenty of gold from others in Sàraichte.”

Léirsinn put her hand over her heart, then realized what she was doing. She coughed discreetly and patted her chest, lest she have given anything away. A charm lay there, a tiny figure of a mythical beast. Mistress Cailleach had given it to her almost five years ago.

'Tis time you had this, dearie,
she had said.
Remember what it does
.

Léirsinn had tried to pay for it, but Mistress Cailleach had refused to hear of it. It had seemed a pleasant gift, something to keep her courage up. Now, she wondered if it might be something more—

Nay 'twas impossible.

She put her hands back in her lap, then decided they were too cold for that, so she tucked them under her arms. It hid their trembling a bit better that way.

“So, what sort of magic does your great-aunt dabble in?”

“The dangerous kind,” he said, “but perhaps not as of late. Who knows? I wasn't about to ask her. The woman is terrifying.”

“Must be why I like her.”

He smiled briefly. “I daresay.” He glanced at the corner, then continued. “We'll leave those little magics alone, for they're unimportant. The bigger magics are what we'll concern ourselves with now.”

“Oh, please, let's.”

He pursed his lips. “I'll ignore that, because I'm that sort of lad.” He paused, then seemed to be looking for the right words. “Most magic, well, all magic actually, is blood magic.”

“Blood magic,” she echoed, trying not to sound as skeptical as she felt.

He nodded. “It runs through your veins by virtue of your parents, or occasionally the country of your birth, or now and again because of something untoward hiding in the unexamined lives of your progenitors. Taken Ehrne, for instance. He is the king of Ainneamh, of course, but the magic he uses, the magic that is slathered over this place like a vile fog, comes to him through his father and his father's father and so on.”

“Where did it start?”

“I have no idea. Perhaps in the beginning, a group of the first souls to inhabit the Nine Kingdoms sat about a table playing cards and the winner took the best stuff available whilst leaving the rest for the others.”

“I don't think I would be surprised.” If she were going to allow for things of a supernatural nature, why not allow for a ridiculous beginning to them? “So, all this magic has come down through the ages, then what?”

“Mages use it to do what they do,” he said. He looked at her and frowned. “It seems rather commonplace when you think of it that way, doesn't it?”

“Isn't it commonplace?”

He shifted to look at her. “What did you think when your horse sprouted wings?”

She started to toss off a careless reply but found she couldn't. “I don't know,” she hedged.

“I don't know what you thought either, but whatever it was, it was apparently enough to leave you in a faint.” He smiled briefly. “Some magic is good, some is bad, and some simply is. Your horse's magic simply is. Ehrne's . . . well, I suppose we can argue the merits of what he has at another time. I wouldn't call him a black mage.”

“A black mage?”

“Someone who uses evil magic.”

“You?”

“Not of late, if you must have the truth, but previously? Aye.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

He looked at her as if he'd never seen her before. “What a question.”

“Are you going to answer it?”

“I'm not sure I want to,” he muttered. He took a deep breath. “At the moment, I'm not sure I'm enjoying much at all. I suppose there is a fair amount of satisfaction that comes from dealing out just deserts, though I fear I must admit I've done more than my share of dealing out deserts that weren't so just simply because I could.” He shrugged. “As for other magics, in the end, one can generally only use the magic one is entitled to by birth. I suppose, though, that with enough power, one can use whatever one has the stomach for.”

“And you have a very strong stomach, is that it?”

“I draw the line at prissy elven rot,” he said firmly. “But anything else? Aye.” He shrugged again. “As I said, when one has enough power, there isn't much out of reach. I'll describe a few of those things for you—”

She could scarce believe she was listening to what he was now going on about, much less taking any of it as anything but a very large pile of horse manure. He seemed to believe it, which she supposed said something. He also seemed convinced that that thing in the corner
was watching him, which she supposed she could understand as well. Whatever it was, it seemed to want to keep Acair in its sights. She was half tempted to ask him to trot out one of his spells to show her, but she thought she might have seen enough over the past few days. What she thought she wanted to do was have a bit of a rest.

“That's all very interesting,” she said with a yawn.

“You haven't been listening to anything I've been saying, have you?”

“I've reached my limit of unbelievable things for the day. I heard something about history and books, and then I lost interest.” She smiled. “Sorry.”

He shut his mouth, which had been hanging open. “You are the damndest woman.”

“Thank you. Now, why don't you leave off with all that other rot and tell me just about you. What was the first naughty thing you ever did? That will hold my interest, I'm sure.”

He smiled. “Very well, if you insist. I think the first spell I ever used was one that set my oldest brother's trousers on fire.” He looked at her knowingly. “A spell of just five words. Quite a feat for a lad just starting out.”

She smiled. “I don't believe it.”

“Would you believe three words?”

“Aye,
that
I would believe,” she said dryly. “I'm talking about something besides familial pranks. Some glorious thing you did that you shouldn't have done.”

He studied her. “I believe you're having a bit of sport at my expense.”

“Again, you need someone who isn't intimidated by your terrible reputation or your vast amounts of mythical power to help you not take yourself so seriously.” She pulled his cloak more closely around her. “Impress me.”

“If I haven't managed to impress you without having to sing my own praises, there is no hope for it. But if I'm able to stretch my memory back so far into my innocence—”

She snorted before she could help herself.

“My
innocence
,” he said pointedly, “I would have to say the first bit of true trouble I got myself into—and out of brilliantly, I must admit—was a rather pedestrian excursion into the back garden of a neighbor who I will admit intrigued me simply because of the things he was growing where nothing should have grown. And once I'd helped myself to several of his peaches, I couldn't resist a wee peek into his solar.”

“Where you found him snoozing in his chair before the fire?”

“Nay, I found a spell sitting on his mantel.”

She looked at him with a frown. “How does a spell sit?”

He pointed to the corner. She had to admit that thing wasn't so much sitting as it was slouching, but perhaps mages didn't make distinctions about that sort of thing.

“It was wrapped in other spells,” Acair continued, “which to a lad of eight summers was an irresistible temptation. I unwrapped, examined, then panicked and fled past the man out through his garden.” He paused. “I fear I might have knocked him off a ladder on my way by.”

“On purpose?”

“I refuse to answer that,” he said promptly. “I escaped home as a nasty little crow and didn't say a word to anyone, mostly my sire, when the man came calling to see if we had seen a short, highly skilled thief in the area.”

“He never caught you?”

“Never.”

“What did the spell do?”

Acair shook his head slowly. “Honestly, I don't remember. It was so terribly disappointing after all the things it had been wrapped in that I believe I tossed it into the fire and it went up in smoke. I'm not sure I could begin to remember what its original purpose had been.”

“So you began to look for better spells.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “Lesson learned. No green peaches and no boring spells. Others have done much worse with lesser codes of conduct.”

She supposed they had. “So,” she asked, because she was chilled and frightened and talking about ridiculous things was rather soothing, all things considered, “what's the difference between a witch and a mage?”

“Levels of snobbery.”

She smiled. “Is that so?”

“It is so.” He shrugged. “A witch will have a fair amount of power or not, depending on her position in life, but neither a witch nor a warlock will have the sort of power a mage can boast. Then you have your garden variety wizards, who are generally nothing but pompous blowhards, endlessly trumpeting their complicated spells which are absolute rot.”

“What does that leave?”

“Oh, a never-ending list of other practitioners of magic of various kinds including elves, dwarves, dreamspinners, and others who do things in places you wouldn't want to go.”

She watched him in silence for a moment or two. “And did you do all those terrible things they say you did?” she asked finally.

He took a deep breath. “Aye.”

“Should I be afraid of you?”

“I've never done worse to a woman than insult her gown, if that eases you.”

“You called my hair red.”

“Your hair
is
red.”

“Did you truly try to take all the world's magic?”

“
Try
is the word you should concentrate on there.”

She shook her head, then laughed because she simply couldn't believe any of it. Elves, dwarves, dragons, magic, it was all absolute fantasy created no doubt at one point by a pair of very desperate parents with overactive imaginations who couldn't get their children to sleep. The shadows she had seen on the ground were nothing but
her
imagination, Ehrne upstairs was a pompous ass, and the man sitting next to her . . . well, he looked capable of several things. She just wasn't sure she was ready to believe any of those things.

His hand was on her arm suddenly. “Don't move.”

“Why not?

“I hear something.”

She felt her heart stop briefly. “At the door?” she managed. “Have they come for us?”

He shook his head, then pointed at the window where there seemed to be a bit of a shimmer. He put his finger to his lips and rose, pulling her up with him. She found herself backed up against the wall with Acair standing in front of her. He might have been a black mage of the first water, but he did display a decent amount of chivalry when it was called for.

She held her breath as she listened to . . . absolutely nothing. Acair didn't move, though, which she wondered about. She finally looked around his shoulder to see a slender shape slither into the dungeon through the window where bars had been before. The slight figure landed in a crouch on the stone under it, straightened, then hopped off the bench as if he did that sort of thing every day.

“A rescue?” Acair asked carefully.

The man pushed the hood of his cloak back and Léirsinn realized she had seriously misjudged what she'd been seeing. That wasn't a man there, it was a silver-haired woman of advanced years. She didn't move like an old woman, though. Perhaps magic was involved.