“Actually, I came here for alist—”
“Which wouldn’t serve you anyway, which is why you’re here for answers,” she finished. “Now, shut up and listen to wisdom.” She started to speak, then eyed him suspiciously. “Are you listening?”
What he was doing, with more commitment to the activity than he was comfortable with, was wondering if his mother had lost her wits. It was a thought that genuinely left him without a single useful thing to say. He could only stare at her helplessly, which he supposed was enough for her.
“Let’s review,” she said slowly, as if she thought he might have reverted to trotting about in short pants. “What happens when a mage uses black magic?”
“Glorious business that leaves every other mage in the surrounding environs wishing he had even half the skill or courage to attempt the same,” he said promptly.
She blew a stray curl out of her eyes. “You wee daft bugger, give me an answer of less than five words.”
Acair rolled his eyes then. “He loses a part of...”
He stopped speaking. He did that because he suddenly found that five words were not quite enough for a proper answer. Along with that came a realization that he supposed he should havebeen clever enough to have made long ago, which was how thoroughly he’d underestimated the woman sitting across the table from him.
He’d done the same thing with his great-aunt Cailleach, of course, and she’d cuffed him so hard for the same that he was fairly sure he would never hear again as well out of his left ear as he had before. But this was his mother, the woman who puttered in her house with her books and her pencils and her quills. This was a woman who spun and knitted and pulled out a cloth now and again to polish her reputation as one of the most terrifying spellweavers in the world.
This was also his dam who chortled over arrogant monarchs laid low and annoying mages brought to their knees with a proper bit of retribution.
He was beginning to think he was more like her than he’d feared.
She was a silent recorder of the madness that went on in the Nine Kingdoms, but he wondered what had made her so. Eulasaid of Camanaë had been a ferocious and constant champion of goodness and right. He wasn’t sure what his mother had dabbled in and he didn’t think he wanted to ask her.
But a fool she was definitely not.
He took a deep breath. “When a mage uses black magic,” he said slowly, “he loses a part of his soul in the bargain.”
She poured herself a bit more tea, then held up the pot with a questioning look. He shook his head and waved her on to her libation. She sipped, then sat back.
“What a fascinating observation,” she said, looking at him as if she were sorely disappointed in his cleverness. She waited, then made a noise of impatience. “I can’t believe you don’t see the connection.”
He couldn’t either, but it had been a very long fall to which he suspected he would add an even longer winter. He was definitely not at his best.
“Connection?” he ventured.
She threw a tea towel at him. “Those damned spots, Acair! Have you forgotten so quickly what they do?”
“I hadn’t, but that doesn’t follow,” he said, grasping desperately for anything useful to say. “Léirsinn didn’t lose a part of her soul when she stepped in one.”
“Well, the feisty little wench certainly lost her peace, didn’t she?” She looked at him sharply. “Have you not talked to her about what happened that night?”
“I haven’t had the courage,” he said honestly. “Nor the time, actually. We’ve been too busy with fleeing from those who want me dead to have a proper chat about anything else.”
“You might want to make time for it.”
He stared at a biscuit hiding behind the teapot, not because he was hungry but because he was trying to give himself time to digest what she’d said. He finally gave up and looked at her.
“So,” he began carefully, “what you’re saying is that those spots are black magery?”
She lifted a shoulder slightly. “I’m not saying anything. I’m simply making an observation.”
He tried a different tack. “You said I needed to go find parts of my soul that I’ve traded for the glorious pieces of business I’ve seen to over the years. Why?”
She shrugged and sipped.
He shifted to another spot on the metaphorical chessboard for a different direction from which to attack. “Are you telling me that I don’t have enough soul to see to this quest?” he asked, trying to dredge up as much offended dignity as he could muster.
“I’m notsayinganything,” she said with a snort. “You have an annoying habit of putting words in others’ mouths.”
