The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(110)

He forced himself to take a deep, even breath. “Why did you send me to Sàraichte?” he managed.

“To walk where I cannot.”

“Walk?” Acair echoed with as much disdain as he could drape over the word. “Aye, all I can do is walk because I can’t bloody shapechange—and apparently you can’t make that any different for me!”

The faintest of smiles crossed the man’s face. “You know what I mean.”

Acair looked at him and felt as though he were looking at him for the first time. He leaned on his sister for a moment or two, then felt some of his old enthusiasm and strength return. He ceased holding on to her as if she were the only thing keeping him on his feet—which she had been, he had to admit—and simply kept his arm around her shoulders in a casual sort of brotherly way. “I vow I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” he said, attempting a yawn.

If he’d sounded as if he were choking, so be it. He was not at his best and he was hearing things he didn’t like.

“You will.”

“Without putting too fine a point on it, Your Highness, I don’t want to know what you’re talking about. That, and I would very much like to take my sharpest spell of death and plunge it into your chest.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

He considered several things, wished more desperately than he had ever in the whole of his life for a spell of Diminishing so he could have rid Soilléir of all his magic and schemes, then stepped away from the proverbial edge of the abyss and tried to make sense of what he was hearing.

He could walk where that one there could not?

“Are you saying,” he began slowly and very quietly, “that you sent me on a quest?”

Soilléir nodded.

“To places you can’t go . . . or you won’t go?”

Soilléir only looked at him in that way he had, as if he could see things that truly should remain unseen.

“You underestimate who you are,” he said quietly, “and what you can do. Discovering that is your work, not mine.”

Soilléir then flipped a coin up in the air. Acair realized he was meant to catch it only because he was forced to stop it from clouting him on the nose. He looked at it, expecting it to be a sovereign, only to find it was something else entirely. He gaped at it for a moment or two, then looked at the man standing there.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Tòrr Dòrainn isn’t the only place with magic and Sìle not the only one with runes to dole out,” Soilléir said quietly. “That, my friend, is something of mine, fashioned from my own magic.”

“And what in the bloody hell am I to do with it?” Acair said, holding it gingerly between his thumb and pointer finger. “Well, besides try to pull it apart and see what sort of spell you used to fashion it.”

“Put it in your purse for the moment. When you need aid that only I can offer, use it.”

Acair would have protested that the damned thing would surely collapse under the weight of all the coppers in the purse at his belt, but he could see already that it wasn’t so fragile. What it was made of, he couldn’t have said, but he would certainly do everything within his power to find out.

He watched Soilléir embrace Mhorghain briefly, shoot him one more look full of meanings he didn’t want to try to identify, then turn himself into a bit of swirling wind that didn’t waste any time scampering off.

Acair stood there in that bit of clearing near the inn and considered what he’d heard. It had rocked him to his very foundations, truth be told, but he would be damned if he let anyone see as much. He took a deep breath and looked at his sister.

“What a ridiculous bit of drama that was,” he said patting her on the shoulder before he settled his cloak. “I vow I don’t know what he was getting at with that business.”

“Don’t you?” she asked.

He considered, then shook his head. “It’s not coming to me and I’ve no interest in investigating. Let’s turn for your castle. I fancy a journey as a bit of brisk autumn wind. What say you?”

“As you will.”

He could scarce believe he was trusting another soul with such a change in his own sweet self, but he thought he might almost be past surprise where his own actions were concerned. He gave his sister the spell and hoped he would remember to thank her for not simply slamming the words into him and leaving him in pieces. If she added a few Fadairian sparkles to him, well, what could he do?

Well, he could face the fact that those bits of heart-stoppingly beautiful glamour hadn’t come from Mhorghain, they had come from inside him. Damn that Rùnach of Tòrr Dòrainn. That spell was going to be the death of him.

He spared one final thought for things that made him uncomfortable. So, Soilléir had sent him south because he hadn’t wanted to send himself. Obviously, he’d had business that needed to be seen to that he hadn’t bloody wanted to face, no matter the reason he’d given, and he’d tasked Acair with seeing to that business whilst not having the common courtesy to tell him what he was walking into.

Literally, apparently.

He didn’t want to admit it, but he was absolutely shattered by the thought. There were things afoot in the Nine Kingdoms that were past evil and he’d just been told how unwittingly embroiled he was in those things. Dangerous things. Things he absolutely wasn’t going to allow Léirsinn of Sàraichte to be any closer to than she had been already.