Léirsinn didn’t want to admit that her hand was trembling, so she ignored it. “Why not?”
Acair’s mother looked at her with eyes that were so clear and knowing, Léirsinn almost flinched.
“Because it would likely burn me to cinders.” She peered at it, then pulled back. “Cailleach never gives anything away, as you know by now. That she gave you this is unusual.”
“It was very kind.”
Mistress Fionne snorted. “That isn’t the word I would use, but I’m more cynical than most.” She looked at the charm once more, then shook her head. “’Tis true that you have no magic, girl, but you will breathe fire.”
“With respect, that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“If I told you what I saw... well, in your case, you’d likely just march on ahead without taking my advice, so why should I offer it?”
Because she was a witch, apparently, and likely knew all sorts of things that might be useful to know. Léirsinn would have asked her to divulge a tidbit or two, but it was too late. The woman reached out and stroked Sianach’s nose, complimenting him lavishly on his propensity to nibble on her son, then walked off humming something that was so terribly out of tune, Léirsinn almost flinched.
She followed more slowly, then paused by Acair’s horse. She stroked his face as well, then found herself completely overtaken by the memory of another hand on a different horse’s forelock. That hand had belonged to the king of the elves—one group of them, actually—who had healed her stallion Falaire of an arrow wound that she was certain had slain him.
Acair’s mother had used a different sort of magic the night before on Mansourah’s arm, but it seemed to have worked equally well.
It was odd, that healing magic.
She leaned against the stall door and allowed herself to consider other things she hadn’t wanted to before. Her grandfather’s illness, for instance. It had come upon him suddenly and left him nothing more than a shell of his former self. It had been so devastating to her as a girl that she’d accepted it without looking for a possible cause, but when she’d told the tale to Acair, he had been convinced a foul magic had been to blame.
She wondered if a less-foul magic might reverse that.
She suspected she might be in the right place to find that out. The witchwoman of Fàs couldn’t be heard any longer, but she had no doubt stridden off to do something Léirsinn was certain she wouldn’t want to know about. She stroked Sianach’s cheek, reminded him to behave himself, then took herself off to see if there might be anyone else with answers for her.
What she found instead was the son of a witch leaning negligently against a sturdy fence post, his nose buried in a small book and a frown marring his perfect brow. She stopped in the middle of the yard partly because for the first time ever she was wearing boots that completely repelled the snow, but mostly because seeing Acair of Ceangail generally resulted in that sort of stopping.
Bad mage he might have been, the sunlight didn’t seem to mind him. It fell from the sky, lightly touched his hair on the way down, then lovingly wrapped itself around him.
She wondered if stepping in that pool of shadow had not only ruined her sight but damaged any last vestiges of her good sense as well. She had to ruthlessly suppress the urge to snort, mostly because she could hear Sianach indulging in a bit of equine laughter behind her and she suspected that pony could read her thoughts.
Acair, however, seemed incapable of doing anything past reading his book. She could have beaned him with a tree branch and he likely wouldn’t have noticed. Perhaps she was more valuable to him on their quest than she’d suspected.
A quest, she reminded herself, that she had found herself unwittingly and unwillingly pulled into, a quest that seemed to have an equal amount to do with righting wrongs and getting rid of that spell she knew without looking was lurking in the shadows of a tree not ten paces from the mage in question. She was still trying to come to terms with anyone beingableto use magic, never mind anyone in particular being trailed by a spell that didn’t want him to use any of that magic.
Magic, she reminded herself, that quite possibly could be used for good.
She jumped a little when she realized Acair was currently watching her instead of his book. He pushed away from his post and crossed the yard to her.
“I was coming to find you,” he said, tucking his book under his arm, “but I became distracted.”
“I was chatting with your mother in the barn.”
“Did Sianach bite her?”
“I don’t think he dared,” she said.
“Did she bite you?”
She smiled slightly. “Thankfully, nay.”
“I’m not sure why I don’t inspire that same deference in either of them, but the day is still young.” He smiled and offered her his arm. “A seat by the fire?”
“It would definitely be a step up from a seat in a dungeon,” she said.
“We can only hope. With my mother, one never knows.”
