Léirsinn’s fingers digging into his arm made him wince. He looked at her in time to watch her nod toward a spot next to the hearth. He looked in the direction she was indicating, but saw nothing. He glanced about the great room, but all he saw was his ever-present companion, that damned spell of death, standing a pace or two away from them, watching the hearth as well. Acair didn’t suppose that was any sort of endorsement of anything save of his own blindness, so he looked back at Léirsinn.
“What do you see?” he asked, his mouth as dry as some parched bit of cursed soil in Shettlestoune.
“You,” she said hoarsely. “A very young you.”
“Bollocks.”
She put her hand on the back of his elbow. “Your spell is going over to... ah... well, that younger you.”
He could see his minder spell, true, but past that, all he saw was Mansourah of Neroche’s shadow almost reaching the dust-covered hearthrug. He would have commented on the untidy condition of the house, but words failed him. He supposed that might have been from shock, but he wasn’t certain he should be the one to offer an opinion on the matter. He watched in astonishment as the spell that followed him stretched out a bony arm toward the hearth.
The damned thing took what he could now see was a shadow of a lad of tender years by the hand—
“Oh, but this is absolute rubbish,” he blustered furiously.
He had to do that because what he was watching was no longer what he was seeing. It was as if he’d been simply plucked out of his currently delightful life and deposited without care into his rather miserable past.
He saw himself at the fire, reaching up to take a spell from off the mantel. That younger him unwrapped the spell, examined it, then tossed it in the fire in disgust. A noise startled that poor, foolish shadow of a lad and he bolted, only a piece of himself caught on the door.
It was as if a bit of his soul remained there, unable to move, trapped in a place that was absolutely not suitable for a boy of ten summers, no matter his parentage.
He watched in what he could only term horror as an old man, the mage he’d knocked off the ladder on his way by, walked into the house, pulled the remains of the spell out of the fire, and shook off the sparks.
Then he turned and looked at Acair.
Not the young him, but the current him that was standing at present in a dust-covered gathering chamber, flanked by a woman he thought he couldn’t live without and a royal princeling he knew he could most definitely jettison without regret at his earliest opportunity.
Or at least he thought the mage was looking at the current incarnation of himself.
It didn’t last very long before the man turned his sights on that poor lad caught at the door. Acair didn’t stop to consider whether or not it was foolish, he simply stepped in front of that young, stupid version of himself and protected the lad. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but the look of absolute loathing he received from that mage by the fire—
Acair came back to himself to find his cheek stinging as ifhe’d been smartly slapped, which he realized he had been and by that damned Mansourah of Neroche.
“You’ll regret that,” he growled.
“You were shouting,” Mansourah said, looking rather startled. “Don’t do that again, though I won’t deny that I enjoyed the terror in your voice. Still, don’t do it again.”
Acair wondered if they’d lingered too long, but he was too caught up in a dream that had felt a damned sight too much like reality to do anything but stand there and shake.
“Ye gads,” he managed, “I need a drink.”
“I’ll go see if all your shrieking called any of your bastard brothers to come admire the spectacle,” Mansourah said grimly. “Be prepared to flee.”
Acair hardly needed the injunction as he had no desire to remain behind and watch anything else untoward. He ignored the stinging of his cheek—surely Mansourah could have delivered a more gentlemanlike tap—and stumbled out of the small gathering chamber. If Léirsinn had to half hold him up as they left the house, well, he would ignore it and thank her later.
He finally stopped under the eaves of the forest, uncomfortably aware that he’d paused there all those years ago. If there was one thing to be said about the accursed soil he stood on, it was that it hadn’t changed all that much so the spot was easily recognized. He leaned against a tree, concentrating on not looking as if he were desperately dragging air into his lungs. It was difficult.
He tried to look at the house sitting there so unassumingly in the clearing, but all he could see was that poor sniveling child so full of bluster flinging himself into the shape of something with wings. He also couldn’t rid himself of the sight of that piece of his soul being caught on that door.
The worst, though, was the sight of that mage looking at him. Athim, as if he had been standing in that gathering room in his present form, facing off with a mage inhiscurrent incarnation.
What he did know was that he would never admit to having toppled into a pile of snow when Mansourah stepped up next to him. Worse still was that he wasn’t sure the lad hadn’t materialized in the usual magicless way. The prince reached out and hauled Acair to his feet.
“Nothing to be seen,” he said quietly, “but I don’t like the feeling here. Where to now?”
“You know where to,” Acair said, trying not to gasp for breath. “We’ve already discussed this at length.”
“I thought you were trying to torment me,” Mansourah muttered. “Are you certain?”
