Of course, he’d been silent as a cat whilst about many of his own nefarious activities over the course of his lifetime, but that had been almost always simply for sport. There was nothing quite like the deliciousness of poaching something valuable from under the very nose of some snoozing royal or other and escaping without being marked.
The inescapable fact, however, was that his life had never hung in the balance during any of those pilferings because there had never been a moment, from the first time he’d set one of his brothers’ knickers on fire, that he hadn’t had magic to use for escape.
That he was currently running for his very life without anyability to magically rescue himself was, in a word—and one he rarely used unless he was applying it to how he was certain he appeared to others—terrifying.
What he wanted perhaps more than anything was to wrap his hands around a certain Cothromaichian prince’s neck, but he knew that wasn’t going to help him at the moment. For all his faults, Soilléir of Cothromaiche was not a liar, damn him anyway. If he claimed he hadn’t fashioned the spell following Acair like a lovestruck princess committed to a spectacular piece of rebellion, he’d been telling the truth.
Not that any of that aided him at present, of course. He was fleeing like a common criminal from an enemy he could sense like a bitter wind but couldn’t for the life of him see, and he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.
He had initially hoped his pursuer might simply be one of his gran’s henchmen taking matters into his own hands, but those lads tended to stay close to home where they could corner their prey without overly exerting themselves.
He had also considered the possibility that the storm behind him was just the usual cloud of black mage out for a bit of exercise on a winter day, but dismissed that with equal certainty. Even after Sianach had plummeted to the ground and their little company had continued to flee on foot, the storm of mage hadn’t gained on them.
Very odd that something that reputedly wanted him dead wasn’t trying to catch up to him and kill him.
And then, very much out of the blue—nay, that wasn’t accurate. With time, after having settled into a swift and steady run, it had occurred to him that what was following him wasn’t a random mage out for a bit of sport or a clutch of lesser lads taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity for retribution.
They were being followed by the mage who had slain his tailor and stolen his spell in Eòlas.
He couldn’t say how he knew that. Perhaps with a bit of time and a decent mug of ale, he could have nailed down why his thoughts led him in that direction, but at present, he didn’t have the luxury for it. He could only continue to run and be grateful for the stamina of his companions.
He forced himself to try to work out in his head exactly where they were, though he didn’t have as much success at it as he would have liked. They had flown for the whole of the previous night and the better part of the current day before he’d decided that attempting to blend into the forest below them might be a way to throw their hunter off the scent.
They had run for what felt like hours, though he was certain it had only been a pair of them. The sun had already begun to sink into the west behind them, which merely left him, for the first time in his life, not relishing the thought of a run in the dark. He had an excellent sense of direction, but the woods they were in were too close to the border of Durial for his taste. It was not a country he wanted to get lost in, for reasons he didn’t particularly want to examine.
He cursed enthusiastically under his breath at the irony of his situation. He was where he found himself in a grander sense precisely because he’d refused to travel to see Uachdaran of Léige, king of Durial, and apologize for a minor piece of mischief that had likely not inconvenienced the king in the slightest. Many monarchs had rivers of power running under their kingdoms. Indeed, he couldn’t think of a one who didn’t have some sort of magic flowing through his land in some fashion.
He considered other likely suspects bearing up under that same sort of strain. Dreamweavers, mage kings, and wizards, tobegin the list. Then there were witches, faeries, and other less welcoming creatures with magic at their fingertips in lands where he didn’t care to go, to be sure. Indeed, what of those poor elves? They were victims of not only magic in their water, but magic that thoroughly drenched every damned bit of their country. Did they complain? Nay, they did not. They boasted of it to anyone who had the ability to sit for long periods of time and listen without pitching forward, asleep, into their suppers.
Acair suspected that the king of the dwarves had other things on his mind that he felt merited an apology, things Acair absolutely refused to apologize for. It wasn’t his fault if the king’s middle daughter—who he should have known was trouble from the start—had used him as a means to escape her father’s iron rule. Indeed, considering what Acair had endured at her hands, the king should have been apologizing tohim.
But given that he suspected hell would freeze over first, he thought it might be best to take stock of where they were and reconsider where a safe haven might be found. For all he knew, the creature pursuing him was Uachdaran himself, out for a bit of kingly vengeance. A detour south to even a marginally friendly elven haven might be just the thing to throw the old bastard off the scent.
He skidded to a halt in a clearing that simply opened up in front of him without warning. He almost went sprawling thanks to Mansourah and Léirsinn running into his back, but caught himself heavily on one leg. He straightened, then looked at the locale into where he’d run not only himself but his companions.
He felt that damned silence descend, as was its wont. He made a vow then and there that in all his other endeavors to come, he would herald realizations of his own stupidity and impending doom with loud and raucous cries.
A man stood there with a faint winter’s sunlight streaming down on him.
“Run,” Mansourah gasped. “I’ll see to this.”
Acair grabbed the prince by the arm. He looked at the man who had accompanied them in spite of his potential misgivings and no-doubt definite dislike of Acair himself, then shook his head.
“We can’t run any longer.”
“Aye, you can.” Mansourah jerked his head toward Léirsinn. “Protect her, at least.”
“Wait—” Acair began, but it was too late.
His hand clutched nothing simply because Mansourah had turned himself into something angry and dark that charged the man in the glade. It didn’t last but a heartbeat or two. Acair watched Mansourah be caught, wrenched back into his own shape, and slammed into the ground at the feet of that mage.
The sight brought him up short. What sort of power was that? He had done the same thing to others, of course, but he was who he was. He’d never seen someone do it to anyone else, and he’d certainly never had the like perpetrated on his own sweet self. It was profoundly unsettling, but he gave that feeling the boot right off. He was nothing if not equal to any fight, no matter who his opponent might be.
He looked at Léirsinn. “Take Sianach and go,” he said urgently. “Fly back to my grandmother’s. She’ll give you a safe haven.”
She was absolutely white with what he imagined was fear, but she wasn’t moving.
“Léirsinn,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and coming very close to shaking her to see if she were enspelled or not. “You mustgo.”
