The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(57)

Whether by design or sheer good fortune, they managed to catch up with a group of travelers who were heading over a bridge to the far side of the river. Falaire was obviously not a cart horse, but no one said anything. Acair didn’t look approachable and she shrugged off the first two questions she was asked.

She was fairly sure she hadn’t taken a normal breath until they were out of the city, they had left their companions behind, and she was standing with Acair well off the road in a clearing. He left her there and took a little stroll through the surroundings, presumably to make sure they hadn’t been followed. He returned and stood in front of her.

“Let’s lay out our journey,” he said briskly. He picked up a stick and drew in the dirt. “Here we are. Neroche is there. The place we need to reach is in the northwestern corner of that country.”

“That far?”

“Aye, ’tis several hundred leagues, even as the crow flies.”

“You’re going to ride all the way—” She pointed to the far corner of his map. “—there.”

“Nay, I’m going to fly all the way there.”

She wondered if too much skulduggery had done a foul work on his wits. “On what?” she asked skeptically. “A bird?”

“A horse, actually.”

She could hardly bring herself to spare the energy to snort at him. “You’re mad,” she said. “Horses can’t fly.”

“Droch wouldn’t want this horse without very good reason, so I suspect he can do quite a few things your average fellow can’t do.” He looked at Falaire uneasily. “I need to ask him a question or two, but I’m not sure he’ll answer me.” He looked at her. “You ask.”

“Ask him what?”

“Ask him if he can shapechange.”

She blinked. “Do what?”

“Shapechange,” he said. “You know, change his shape.”

She suppressed the urge to stick her fingers into her ears. The man was daft. “He could change his shape into a barrel with legs,” she said, starting to feel a little irritated, “but only with enough sweet spring grass.”

He made a sound of impatience. “What I want to see is if he has magic in him. Most horses don’t, but there are some who do. I can’t believe Droch would want a horse that couldn’t at least do something besides take hay in one end and expel it out the other.”

She blew out her breath. Perhaps ’twas best to humor him before she clunked him over the head with the heaviest branch she could find so she could get herself back home. “And you want me to tell him all that?” she said as patiently as she could.

“I think he’s already heard it and he looks like he would like to repay me for it with a bit of a nibble.” He moved closer to her. “Show him an idea in your head of a pegasus or some prancing, frilly thing with wings on his hooves. Something that flaps . . . off . . .”

Léirsinn let go of the lead rope quite suddenly. She did that because not only had Falaire pulled it out of her hands, surprise had left her unable to clutch it any longer. Actually, surprise hadn’t just left her without a rope in her hands, it had left her with a numbness that had started at the top of her head and seemed to be working its way downward.

Falaire had trotted around in a circle, come to a stop several paces away from them, then reared. When he came back to ground, he was wearing wings. Er, he’d sprouted wings. Ah, there were things protruding from his back that looked like wings.

He was whinnying. Acair was purring.

She was fainting.

She felt arms go around her as she started to fall.

“Ah, not this, I beg you!”

She looked into sea-green eyes, nay, blue-green eyes, with flecks of gold—

“Léirsinn!”

“I can’t take anymore,” she murmured.

Then she closed her eyes and let darkness descend.





Twelve





Acair stood in a clearing not nearly as far away from Beinn òrain as he would have liked to have been and was, frankly, rather relieved to be standing on the ground having gotten there of his own volition instead of being dropped there. During their recent and rather unpleasant journey, he hadn’t been all that certain that Léirsinn hadn’t been about to elbow him off the back of her horse. Given the way she’d shrieked for him to get them back on the ground after she’d regained her senses, he hadn’t been at all certain that damned Falaire wouldn’t have happily aided her in that endeavor.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t ridden things with wings before, but he tended to prefer dragons. They were arrogant, showy creatures who always seemed to be more concerned with keeping their riders on their backs than scraping them off at the first opportunity. Pride of the guild, no doubt, and all that.

Horses, though. He shook his head. He wasn’t terribly fond of them—various parts of his form agreed—and he wasn’t at all sure that damned Falaire wasn’t snickering at him every time he whinnied, but he supposed that was the least of his worries.

He had a horse miss standing ten paces away from him, looking as if she might come undone entirely if he didn’t do something very soon.

He had no experience with women on the verge of losing their sanity. The women he knew were cold, calculating shrews who thought nothing of incurring their collective fathers’ ire to be seen dancing with him or sitting next to him at table. He was accustomed to mages in skirts who had ambition to match his own and were willing to meet him head-on.