The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(121)
Damn the wench if she wasn’t about to reduce him to tears again. He nodded, though he suspected that where he was going, no aid could follow.
He watched his sister go back inside her husband’s fortress, then turned his face toward the sunrise and hoped it wouldn’t be the last one he saw.
Twenty-three
Léirsinn stood in the courtyard of Tor Neroche and looked off into the late morning sun. It had been a horrible night’s sleep, but that was perhaps all a woman could hope for when she knew that the man she suspected she might love was about to abandon her and go off alone into the Deepening Gloom to chase after evil things.
She had missed catching Acair before he left, but that was because he had stuffed those damned coppers he’d earned in Sàraichte between her door and its frame, effectively locking her in. It had taken a solid hour of shouting before someone had finally come to her aid, then more time still for them to determine what was keeping her inside, then yet more time to remedy the situation because obviously there wasn’t a damned person in all of Tor Neroche with enough magic to simply make those coppers disappear as if they’d never been there.
She had suspected everyone was in league with Acair to keep her from following him.
She wondered if they might have it aright. If she’d had any sense, she would have asked Miach for an escort back to Angesand and left Acair to his own devices.
Only she didn’t have any sense, apparently.
She hadn’t been asleep the night before in Miach’s solar. Well, she had been asleep for a bit, but she’d been awake enough to hear several things she honestly wished she hadn’t.
Who in the hell had written that note?
It seemed like something her uncle would have done, but she didn’t think Fuadain had magic and she was certain he had no idea where they were. She wasn’t sure who that left on a list of mages who might want both her and Acair dead. All she knew was that the thought of someone watching them both terrified her. She wasn’t sure how Acair carried on from day to day, if that was the sort of thing he faced with regularity.
As she had told Miach the day before, she didn’t know nearly enough about the world in general and nothing about the world she was suddenly moving in. Gair had been terrible, reputedly, but surely he hadn’t been the only mage in the history of the Nine Kingdoms to have had the idea of making others miserable. Where that left Acair, she didn’t know.
She had seriously considered, as she’d been pounding on her door for aid that morning, simply going back to Sàraichte to take her chances with her uncle. She could return to what she knew and understood. Horses, stable lads, the routine of caring for noble beasts; that was the sort of thing she could count on. There was peace and safety in things she could rely on to never change. Even the buyers who would come to look at horses weren’t unexpected and she knew how her uncle would behave.
Only the truth was, nothing was as it had been before. Some of it had to do with her uncle, some of it with Acair, and some of it with what stepping in that shadow the night before had done to her soul.
The inescapable truth was, she couldn’t go back to where she had been because she had changed. She might manage to convince her uncle not to slay her, she might avoid an angry Droch of Saothair, who was likely wondering where his magical pony had gotten to, and she might even manage to learn to play cards well enough to afford to liberate her grandfather and find a place for them both to live out their lives in peace. But she would never forget the sight of Acair of Ceangail standing in the gardens of Tor Neroche with his soul drenched with magic and his face full of fear that he wouldn’t be able to save her.
Nay, she couldn’t go back.
She could only go forward, which was exactly what she intended to do. Exactly where that was going to lead her was something she still had to decide.
She pulled her cloak more closely around her and knew very well that she had Morgan to thank for it. She also could likely tender more thanks to Morgan for the pack she’d found just outside her door that morning, a rucksack full of, among other things, light but very well-made clothing that would see her in and out of places with a minimum of fuss and in absolute stealth. She wasn’t sure how that would possibly serve her in the future, but perhaps Morgan knew more than she did.
She walked over to her horse and attached her pack to his saddle. She put her hand on his neck, looked at him, then shook her head. It was an astonishing thing to think he could fly.
“He can do more than fly, but I suspect you already know that.”
She squeaked, then looked over Falaire’s neck to find Miach standing there. “Do you think?” she managed.
“I do.” He smiled at her. “He’s a beautiful horse.”
“I’m afraid he’s about to pull up lame,” she said seriously. She paused, then leaned around Falaire’s nose. “It has been a difficult journey here,” she said slowly. “Difficult for him to be chased by things, if you know what I mean.”
His smile faded. “Clouds of black mages?” he asked.
“As you saw,” she agreed. “I’m not sure how that bodes for the future.”
He studied her. “That’s an interesting thought.”
“I wasn’t asleep last night, you know.”
He smiled briefly. “I suspected as much. I’m sorry you had to hear our discussion.”