“Do you think so?” she asked.
Acair shrugged. “I have no idea, in truth. All I know is that magic comes with limits, no matter how much we wish it didn’t. Perhaps ’tis for the best. A mage who could heal himself could heal himself endlessly. If he were a very bad mage—”
“Know any of those?” Mansourah interrupted tightly.
Acair spared the lad the cool look he deserved only because he was already suffering enough. “If he were an evil mage,” he repeated, “then his evil would always triumph. No chance of a plate of bad eggs giving the rest of the world a chance to balance the scales, as it were.”
Léirsinn frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense. If Mansourah can change his shape—and I’ll deny this conversation if you repeat it—then why can’t he just change his arm back to what it was before he landed on it?”
“An excellent question,” Acair said, “and I believe we may have touched on this fascinating subject before.”
“I’m sure I ignored you.”
He didn’t doubt it for a minute. “A shapechanging spell is only a temporary change, no matter how long it lasts. ’Tis a bit like donning a suit of clothes. You put the shape on, you take the shape off, but underneath, you’re still the same strapping, terribly handsome lad you were before you used the spell. Healing isn’t a temporary change.”
“Is it like essence changing?”
“What have you been telling her?” Mansourah gurgled.
Acair ignored him. “It is exactly like essence changing,” he said. “That, I’m certain, was a gift from someone back in the mists of time lest the whole of mankind perish because we’re too stupid to take care of ourselves.”
He watched Léirsinn send Mansourah a rather pointed look and thought it might be less-than-sporting if he didn’t join her. He supposed the only reason Mansourah didn’t spew out a complaint or two was because he obviously was in a great deal of pain.
“So, anyone can use a spell of healing?” Léirsinn asked. “As long as you use it on someone else?”
“Aye,” he said, though for the first time in his life, he wondered if that was as true as he’d always thought it to be.
It was a staggering thought, actually. If a mage could endlessly heal himself,byhimself, then what was to keep a worker of magic from living forever? That damned Soilléir of Cothromaiche seemed ageless. Then again, so did his own grandmother, Eulasaid, but she was surely a soul worthy of a lengthy life.
“What about what you were looking for in Master Odhran’s shop?”
Silence, as seemed to be its habit of late, fell. Acair wonderedif that would be his lot in life as long as that life included the woman next to him. She said the damndest things, things that he was thoroughly embarrassed not to have been thinking right along with her. He looked at her.
“I see.”
She shrugged helplessly. “Would it work?”
“For the sake of the world? I certainly hope not.”
She smiled. He was half tempted to join that mewling babe there on that crate and weep right along with him. Ah, damn that Soilléir of Cothromaiche and his cohort Rùnach of Tòrr Dòrainn. The two of them had likely foreseen the exact moment Acair would find himself standing in currently and had had a right proper guffaw over the sound his heart was making as it shattered into more pieces than a black heart ever should.
“I am,” he said in all seriousness, “not worthy of you.”
Mansourah blurted out a string of curses that should have alerted any and all night watchmen in the area to their whereabouts, but fortunately for them all, he descended rather quickly into a fit of wheezing. A broken arm perhaps did that to a man.
Acair decided action was more useful than speech, so he took his knife and cut off a strip from the bottom of his tunic. He laid it on the frost-covered cobblestones at Mansourah’s feet, then slid his knife back down the side of his boot.
“What madness is that?” Mansourah croaked.
Acair squatted down in front of him because he thought it might terrify the lad less if he did so. “Enspell that with whatever rot you use for healing, wrap it around yourself, and let’s be off.”
Mansourah looked utterly confused. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Take a spell,” Acair said slowly, “infuse it into this piece ofrather fine weave my sister gifted me, then add a bit of your own power so it stands on its own. Put it over your arm and there you have your cure. Unless you haven’t any idea how to do the same, which is what I suspect.”
Mansourah glared at him. “I’m no neophyte.”
“You’re worse,” Acair said briskly, “because you’ve no idea just how much you don’t understand.”
