The White Spell (28 page)

“Acair?”

“Aye, Léirsinn.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Me?” he scoffed. “Never.”

“Never?”

He looked at her. “Do you think I would admit it if I were?”

She shook her head. He held out his hand and she put hers in it before she could think better of it.

“Go to sleep,” he said quietly. “I'll have a bit of a think, then leave you to your peaceful dreams. And don't worry. I'll keep you safe.”

“Harsh language?”

“
Very
harsh language and the dagger stuck down my boot.”

She supposed others had done more with less. She nodded, then closed her eyes. She didn't want to believe what she had seen and done over the past several days, but it was impossible to deny what it meant.

Magic existed.

She felt as if she were being torn in two. She felt Acair's fingers laced with hers, his hand warm and quite ordinary save for the calluses he had no doubt earned by shoveling so much manure over the past fortnight. Yet if she were to believe what she'd heard, that hand was also capable of wielding mythical, unseen forces to do his bidding whenever he chose, and apparently he had done quite a bit of that sort of choosing over the course of his impossibly long life. She had ridden a horse with gossamer wings that day, a horse who had been nothing more than a horse when his grain had been brought and he'd plunged his soft nose into the bucket to inhale it in typical horse fashion.

Spots of shadow, flying horses, and a man who had seen things that she could see lurking in the back of his eyes. It was so thoroughly not what she'd expected to find filling her life. She wasn't sure she would trade what she had at the moment, though, for what she'd left behind, and that was perhaps the most alarming thing of all.

Sleep was long in coming.

A
cair stood inside the gates of Aherin at a far earlier hour than that which he usually preferred to count as the start of his day, looked at the lord of the keep, and wondered if how he could politely point out that they were, as shouldn't have surprised him at all, back where they'd started.

“My lord,” Acair ventured, “about a horse—”

Hearn shot him an impatient look. “You don't give up, do you?”

“It isn't in my nature,” Acair said. “'Tis what makes me a good mage.”

“You are a
bad
mage, which you know very well.” Hearn folded his arms over his chest. “How is it you can possibly think I would give you a horse?”

“Because I'm asking to
buy
a horse,” Acair corrected. “Well, not with any gold that I have with me at present, but if you'll name your price, when I'm at my leisure to see to it—”

“In another year.”

“Aye, in a year,” he said, trying not to growl as he said it. “In a year, I will happily pay any price you ask.”

“And what if my price is yet another year of your not using magic?” Hearn asked politely.

Acair was beginning to think he had been the topic of conversation at a dinner party with several souls he might or might not have
given trouble to in the past. It had likely taken several bottles of wine for them to have come up with any useful thoughts, but he suspected his current straits were the result of all that inebriation. He looked at Hearn evenly.

“Any price but that one.”

Hearn looked at him with that horse-sight that was past unnerving, then grunted. “I'll give it some thought. Let's discuss first what I've heard from both of you about Mistress Léirsinn's horse. He sees these things we don't particularly want to discuss, then he destroys them?”

Acair nodded, then heard himself describe in a fair amount of detail what had happened when Falaire had encountered one of those spots of shadow. He leaned back against a handy railing when Hearn and Léirsinn called for the horse to be brought to them, then fussed over him for so long that Acair found himself wondering why the hell Hearn never had any sorts of benches placed anywhere where a man might find them convenient.

“I'll walk him to the gates,” Léirsinn said, startling Acair out of his stupor.

“Let one of the lads do that,” Hearn suggested. “One of you at least needs to be awake to hear this.”

Acair hid a yawn behind his hand and forced himself to concentrate on the lord of the hall. Hearn shot him a disgruntled look, which Acair shrugged off. Too much shoveling, not enough sleeping. 'Twas a potent combination.

“Any ideas where that pony came from?” Hearn asked seriously.

Léirsinn frowned. “He was brought to the barn as a yearling, but I didn't investigate his lineage. Why?”

“Because I am fairly certain he's from Sìle of Tòrr Dòrainn's stables,” Hearn said. “There's a thread of elven magic running through his veins that is unmistakable. And that name? Too close to what they call their magic for coincidence, wouldn't you say?”

“I don't believe in coincidence,” Acair said through another yawn.

“Neither do I.” Hearn looked at Léirsinn. “I'm not sure it means
anything, but it makes me wonder if his name is a message of sorts. I've now seen how fond he is of those shadows, but I don't think they're doing him any harm.” He shrugged. “He might be of use to you if you could convince him to stay in his own shape long enough to tell you when he sees them.”

“Is he strong enough to carry us both,” Acair asked gingerly, “or do you think his encounters have weakened him?”

Hearn gave vent to a gusty sigh. “He can easily carry our gel here, but you and your enormous ego might just be too heavy for him. I suppose I'll have to send you off on something else.”

“A horse for me?” he asked as casually as possible, trying not to sound anything like the ten-year-old lad he felt at present.

Hearn ignored him and motioned to one of his lads. “Go fetch that monster we discussed earlier.”

Acair felt Léirsinn elbow him. “I think this will be interesting,” she said with the enthusiasm of someone who had actually slept the night before.

Something to remind himself of periodically: never sleep next to a woman who bothered you whilst you were awake. He was a shameless rogue and a terrible womanizer so holding her hand for most of the night shouldn't have troubled him at all. That it had left him pacing in front of that grey demon's stall before the sun was up should have told him something. That he was a fool, perhaps, or that he needed to get hold of himself, no doubt.

He smiled weakly at Léirsinn, then fought not to show any reaction to what was brought to stand in front of Hearn. He supposed it was a horse, but he honestly wasn't sure. It bared its teeth at him, then tried to reach past its handler to bite him.

“Perfect,” Hearn said, sounding perfectly pleased.

“He's spirited,” Léirsinn said enthusiastically.

“He's a devil,” Acair wheezed. “And he's already tried to bite me!”

They weren't listening to him, those two horse people who seemed to find nothing at all untoward about a horse that snarled at him every time it looked his way. He supposed he should have
been extremely grateful that Hearn was deigning to sell him anything at all, but 'twas difficult to thank a man for giving him something that Hell had obviously just recently vomited up on his front stoop.

“What's he called?” Léirsinn asked.

“Sianach, through several lines that I didn't investigate very far. He was sent to me by someone I won't name, and he is a particularly difficult case.”

“Seems like a match to me,” Léirsinn said. “They might be good for each other.”

Hearn laughed. “I thought so too.”

“I can't ride that monster,” Acair said. “He'll kill me!”

“Or just do great amounts of damage to you,” Hearn said. “If that happens, I suppose Mistress Léirsinn will just have to tie you to her saddle and drag you along wherever she goes.”

“I don't like this,” Acair said faintly.

“I would imagine many of your victims have said the same thing over the years.”

“I made certain to render them mute before I did anything to them,” Acair said without thinking.

“You might want to keep that sort of thing to yourself,” Hearn suggested, “before you give that horse any ideas.” He shrugged. “Take him or leave him behind. It's all the same to me.”

Acair looked at the stallion, who looked as if his fondest wish was to kick the life out of him, then looked at Léirsinn. “What do you think?” he asked. “And pray let it be along the lines of,
this beast is not ridable
.”

“I would say he is a challenge,” she said, charitably.

“Which means he frightens you.”

She looked at him from clear green eyes. “Nothing frightens me.”

He could only hope that would always be so. He didn't want to begin to think of all the ways she might be inspired to revisit that declaration.

She turned to Hearn. “Was he mistreated?” she asked.

“Perhaps less mistreated than simply ignored. He was rescued by someone who thought I might want to rehabilitate him.”

“Can he
do
anything?” Acair asked in a last-ditch effort to perhaps hear something that would allow him to be very grateful for the offer of a horse but unfortunately forced to politely decline that same offer. “Do anything besides look at my arse as if he might like to take a piece out of it, that is. And what's his name again, if I'm allowed to ask.”

“Sianach,” Hearn said mildly. “Means
terror
in horsey speak. Or
screaming
, which is what everyone who rides him seems to do.” He shrugged. “I forget which it is.”

Acair imagined Hearn hadn't forgotten anything. “Did he name himself, then?”

“Your lady might ask him that after she's seen what he can do.”

Acair would have said that his lady, who was assuredly not interested in being the like even if he had been—but was absolutely not—interested in a red-haired horse miss who ruined his sleep, was absolutely not going to get anywhere near that beast who had obviously just stepped from someone's worst nightmare, but he realized he wasn't going to have a chance to offer his opinion. Léirsinn was already tucking her hair up under a cap she had apparently borrowed from someone. The cap looked rather fresh, so perhaps Hearn had a selection of them for just such an exigency. Acair supposed he might not want to ask.

He also refrained from commenting on how Léirsinn led that damned horse away without trouble, but that might have been because he was preoccupied with not making an ass of himself by wringing his hands. She was a grown woman who knew her business very well. She didn't need his aid.

He had to remind himself of that several times.

Sianach followed her happily and seemed to be just as fascinated by a bit of her hair that had escaped her cap as any other lad with two good eyes. She stopped, turned, and gave him a look that had him backing up a pace. She tucked that snuffled lock under her
cap, then clicked for the horse to follow her. He ducked his head and walked docilely behind her.

“And all is as it should be,” Hearn murmured.

Acair shot him a look full of as much irritation as he dared use, then turned back to look at exactly what he was apparently about to saddle himself with. Léirsinn put a rope around the horse's neck and started to run him around her in the usual circles. Acair watched for a moment or two, then realized things were not going to go exactly as they usually did.

The pony reared, roared, then came back to earth as a dragon. He shot Acair a pointed look, snorted out a bit of fire in the same direction, then folded his wings up and trotted—well, waddled, actually—in that same circle around Léirsinn.

She only took a deep breath, then snapped a whip against the dirt behind his long, scaly tail.

From there, the shapes only became more outlandish and substantially more terrifying. Dragons, things that slithered, nightmares on four feet. Acair was actually fairly impressed—and a little unnerved, frankly—by what he was seeing.

“Ah, watch how she manages him,” Hearn said, sounding pleased.

Acair shot him a dark look. “Don't suggest she's planning the same thing with me.”

“Lad, I don't think she's planning
anything
with you, something which you would be mourning if you had the good sense the gods gave a cockroach.”

“I think I should be offended.”

“The truth can be painful.”

Acair studied him, then nodded knowingly. “I see where you're going with this. I've heard you're a terrible matchmaker.”

“Nay, I'm a very
good
matchmaker.”

“My father would say I should wed a princess.”

“Then why haven't you?”

Acair shrugged. “I have an unsavory past. Your average crown-wearing papa doesn't care for that sort of thing.”

Hearn glanced his way. “You also have the ability to conjure up staggering riches at any time. For all I know, you have an enormous pile of things you've pinched from various places hiding in some hillside bolthole.”

“That would be my father, and his collection collapsed in on itself,” Acair corrected.

Hearn snorted. “And you're telling me you didn't liberate all the originals and puts forgeries in their places?”

Acair knew his mouth had fallen open, but he was powerless to do anything about it. He retrieved his jaw with difficulty. “You horse people frighten me.”

“We should.” Hearn tapped his forehead. “We have sight the lads from Cothromaiche dream about.” He smirked. “You would think a princess of breeding would be tempted by your largesse, ill-gotten or not, and in spite of her father's wishes.”

“You would think.”

Hearn studied the horse in the arena who was still trying on the shapes of various mythical creatures apparently in an effort to see if any of them suited him. “He might have you for supper if you're not careful.”

Acair looked at Hearn. “And yet you'll allow me to buy him?”

“Lad, I'm begging you to take him off my hands.”

That perhaps should have been some sort of warning that all was not as it seemed, but Acair ignored it. “I must pay you something, truly.”

Hearn studied him. “That's an interesting notion, coming from you.”

“I'm not completely without honor, such as it is.” He looked at the lord of Aherin seriously. “What will you take for him?”

Hearn blew out his breath. “I will tell you something, but it is strictly in confidence. Spread this about and I will kill you.”

“I believe you.”

Hearn looked about himself casually, then nodded for Acair to move closer. “Find out who creates those shadows.”