“Give you magic, you mean?” he asked quietly.
She could hardly speak for the terror that had lodged in her throat. She knew she had come to the place where she was for exactly the step she was preparing to take, but that didn’t make that step any easier. If she continued on the way she intended, she would never be able to turn off that path. Her life would be altered in a way that could never be undone.
She knew it was a choice she had to make, one she needed to make, one she would make freely and call the consequences her own.
“Aye,” she managed. She pulled out the charm that Mistress Cailleach had given her. “Acair’s great-aunt told me I could breathe fire, so I shall. You can help me.”
Soilléir smiled faintly. “I don’t think you want me to turn you into a dragon.”
“Nay, but you could give me magic, then I could turn myself into a dragon.”
“I don’t think you understand—”
“What I understand,” she said shortly, “is that.” She stepped aside and gestured toward Acair. “I understand that. I understand that Acair used magic to try to save us and this is the price he paid. Mansourah of Neroche is likely dead and there’s a damned mage over there where I can no longer see him who would likely slay us before he took the trouble to find out our names.” She glared at him. “Look you what’s become of us all. I can’t save Mansourah, but I can save Acair.”
He looked at her gravely. “There is a price and that price is dear.”
“I know that,” she said, through gritted teeth. “A piece of my soul or some other such rot. I don’t care. We’re in a bit of a rush here, if you haven’t noticed. I think Acair is still breathing, but I’m afraid that won’t last unless I do something fairly soon.”
Soilléir considered. “There are many types of gifts, Léirsinn.”
“I’m speaking of magic.”
He nodded. “I know. And if you want the truth, there is none in your blood. No magic in the sense you’re talking about. Sight, perhaps, but that is all.”
“Then change that!”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “I could instead give you a handful of spells—”
“And if we encounter something that those spells won’t see to, what then? Acair used that sort of thing and look where it got him.”
“I imagine he didn’t limit himself to a spell that worked on its own,” Soilléir said with a faint smile.
“Does it matter?” she asked, hearing her voice break but finding herself unable to care. “This might count as his good deed for the day. I cannot stand by and see him repaid with death.”
He sighed deeply. “I do this so rarely—”
“Make this one of those times.”
He smiled very faintly. “You are persuasive.”
“Terrified, rather,” she said frankly. “And desperate to save those I love.”
“I daresay,” he said gently. He took a deep breath. “You should know that changing one’s essence can produce results that I cannot foresee.” He paused, then shook his head. “Let me rephrase that. I can change your essence and I might be able to see how it will affect you, but there are also things that might happen that I cannot control. You may find yourself facing parts of yourself that you don’t necessarily care for.”
“I’m traveling with Acair of Ceangail,” she said pointedly. “Can I be worse than he is?”
He lifted his eyebrows briefly. “Time will tell, I suppose. I believe you are fond of him.”
“Quite possibly, which is why I would prefer to have him alive. Since I don’t think you’re interested in coming with us on this journey, I need to be able to help him myself.”
She realized she was talking more than she wanted to, but the truth was, she was almost out of her head with fear. Any hope of telling it to go off and linger in the verge was long gone. Fear was right next to her, with its arm around her shoulders, occasionally blowing down her neck with a cold, hard, unrelenting breath of ice.
She looked at Soilléir. “A favor first.”
He tilted his head and looked at her in surprise. “What?”
She gestured toward Acair. “Heal him—but slowly. He’ll try to stop me if he awakens too quickly.”
Soilléir closed his eyes briefly, as if the thought pained him, then he opened his eyes and nodded. He walked over, knelt, then put a hand on Acair and wove his spell. Léirsinn supposed that if she’d been serious about becoming a mage she would have memorized what he was saying, but she couldn’t. All she could do was listen to the words he spoke, words that caused bones to knit together and blood to run in its proper course, and the very essence of Acair of Ceangail to find its home in the usual way inside his admittedly superior form.
Then Soilléir rose, put his hand on her arm to draw her aside a bit more, then looked at her with pity in his eyes.
“Are you—”
“Aye.”
Aye, she was certain, because there was only one path laid out before her, one way to escape a barn full of locked stalls and blocked passageways. The only way out was forward and she was the only one who could walk that path.
She looked at him and nodded, once, sharply. It was the best she could do.
He lifted his eyebrows briefly, then he began to speak. She supposed he did that for her benefit, mostly because she suspected he didn’t need to give voice to the words he was saying. He might have spoken but a handful of words, or scores. She had no idea and felt no passage of time. All she knew was that she felt as if her soul had been turned inside out.
It was excruciating.
At one point, she found herself reaching out for something to hold on to. Acair’s minder spell was there in its usual spot at her elbow. It nodded politely to Soilléir, then offered her its arm. She didn’t think to find it strange that it had an arm or that she could use it to lean on. Or that might have been Soilléir’s. She honestly couldn’t tell.
“I need to breathe fire,” she whispered.
She knew she had said those words, but she could hardly hear them for the song in her head. It felt familiar, as if she’d heard it before, but she couldn’t place it.
“Let’s start with simply calling fire. Here is a spell for that.”
Soilléir’s voice sounded very far away and small, but she memorized the words anyway. She wasn’t particularly good at memorizing things, but she supposed that would need to change. She repeated the words faithfully, then heard a loud snap.
“Léirsinn!”
She looked up to find the entire forest alight with flame. She realized someone was calling her name. She was fairly confident it wasn’t Soilléir because he was still standing there, simply watching her. She supposed it might have been Acair, but she was so tired, she couldn’t keep her eyes open long enough to tell.
She felt arms go around her, which was very handy because they would likely save her from a nasty fall.
She fell just the same.
Eighteen