“Acair,” Léirsinn called, “look. Mansourah says . . . well, look!”
Acair forced himself to focus on the matter before him and knew as clearly as if Mansourah had shouted the same that the prince wanted him to flee. The spells were coming at that great-hearted archer like a rain of arrows shot from scores of bows. Endless, painfully sharp, impossible to elude—
Acair took a step backward in surprise.
He supposed that might have been the worst thing he’d ever found himself doing. He couldn’t even credit it to an unfortunate stumble. It was cowardice, nothing less.
It was intolerable.
He gave himself a metaphorical slap across the face, stilled his mind, and forced himself to think clearly. He had the spell of un-noticing he’d retrieved from under his grandmother’s chair, of course, but that would only buy him a moment or two more. It wasn’t going to be enough.
When it came right down to it, the solution was simple.
What he needed was a spell of death.
He glanced casually behind him and found that his minder spell was standing some ten paces away, watching not him but the mage standing in the middle of the clearing. He took an equally careful look out in the glade and found that their enemy was so wrapped up in his own spells that he wasn’t paying heed to anything but the drivel coming out of his own mouth. He was currently creating a wave of darkness that dropped to the ground and spread out from his feet, slithering as it crawled onward.
Acair wasn’t terribly fond of snakes, as it happened, so he reached for the first thing that came to mind. It was a spell of return, something he had used so often as a child with his brothers that it took no longer than a heartbeat to create it and send it flinging toward the mage there.
His minder spell whirled on him with an angry hiss, but he ignored it. He slipped the spell of un-noticing into his hand from where he’d stashed it earlier—just in case—up his sleeve, looked at Mansourah one more time, then flung that spell up into the air. It fell over him, Léirsinn, and that damned shadow of his like a gossamer layer of sparkling snow. That seen to, he began his most potent spell of death—
Only that same spell didn’t rush away from him, it came at him. He watched his own spell of death be carried aloft toward him by that damned minder spell that certainly should have been more appreciative of how he’d tried to save its sorry arse—
He heard Léirsinn cry out, but he couldn’t seem to turn toward her.
Mansourah fell, and he could do nothing to stop that either.
The only thing that gave him any pleasure at all was watching that mage leap back, fighting off his own creations that had turned on him.
Acair understood that, though he wished he didn’t. He looked at his own minder spell, a spell not created by him but designed for him, and wished he’d had the time to reason with it. He hadn’t done any foul magic, just a simple spell that he wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t used a time or two on his mother’s hens in the springtime when they’d strayed out of the coop. What harm could possibly be assigned to something so innocuous?
That spell of death was perhaps another matter, but he’d talked himself out of tighter spots, to be sure.
He took a deep breath. The game was being played to its very end and he wished he’d had the energy to cry foul and insist on a review of the rules.
Unfortunately, as it was, he could only watch death approach, loom up over him, and prepare to fall on him.
Damn it anyway.
Seventeen
The forest was gone.
Léirsinn supposed it wasn’t, really, but it was as if a wall had slammed itself down in front of them, blocking out nothing but everything at the same time. The cloaked mage in the clearing was still frantically fighting off whatever it was he’d created that had turned around and was rushing back toward him. She had watched Mansourah fall, which likely meant he was dead, and she wasn’t entirely certain Acair wasn’t going to follow him to the grave.
She was sure, however, that she would never forget the sight of Acair facing off with that terrible worker of magic in the glade. Worse still had been actually seeing shards of steel coming out of that man’s mouth, steel that became words that were spells of death and despair and things that made absolutely no sense to her, though she couldn’t deny their reality. Those terrible spells had soon been accompanied by things that crawled without ceasing toward them.
She had watched Acair weave his own spell and wanted to stop him, truly she had, but she hadn’t had voice enough to even try. She had also failed to warn him about the spell that endlessly shadowed him, though she supposed there had been no need. He had known what using magic would mean, yet he had done it anyway.
His minder spell had slammed into him, stealing his breath.
He had fallen.
That damned spell of death now stood over him, studying him as he lay there motionless. It leaned over him as if it wanted to take what faint breath was left—
Léirsinn didn’t stop to consider her plan, she simply threw herself over Acair’s chest and waited for his minder spell to fall on them both and slay them. Acair was still breathing, barely, but it was such labored breathing that she was absolutely sure he would soon draw his last. She felt something very cold on her back and braced herself to lead the way into that place in the east where she’d been told there was no more sorrow or toil. At the moment, she couldn’t have cared less what was to be found there if she could just get there without being in agony.
Yet still she breathed and still that terrible chill rested its bloody hand on her back.
She turned her head far enough to look up only to find Acair’s minder spell looming over her. If she’d had it in her, she would have screamed herself hoarse. She supposed she’d been wise never to look it in the eye, but now that was all she seemed to be able to do.
The horrors mirrored in those soulless eyes were absolutely beyond anything she’d ever imagined.
She knew with a certainty she’d never felt before that she was going to die. She would go first, then Acair, then perhaps the entire world. It wasn’t death so much as the thought that she had absolutely no means of stopping what was about to slay her—
Magic . . .
She looked up at the spell in surprise. She wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t spoken to her, but at the moment she was sure she didn’t care.
Magic? What a ridiculous thought. Her people knew horses, not spells. She was no different from them—
Send for him.
She looked at the spell, startled. “Stop that.” Then she frowned. “Send for who?”
Soilléir . . .
“Why the hell would I want . . . to . . .”
She stopped speaking, because suddenly, everything she remembered hearing about the man came back to her in a rush.