Acair blinked. “You what?”
“I need you to steal a spell.”
Acair spluttered. He spared a moment to wonder if he would manage to take the dull dagger down his boot and bury it in Soilléir’s gut before the man turned him into a slug.
“You want me to steal a spell,” he repeated in disbelief.
Soilléir looked at his hands for a moment or two, no doubt deciding whether or not he should wring them, then looked at Acair and nodded. “Yes.”
“Without my magic.”
“Considering where you’ll need to go to begin the hunt for it, I don’t think magic would serve you.”
Acair felt his eyes narrow. “And where, if I might be so bold, does this spell find itself—or do I even need to waste the breath it would take me to ask?”
Soilléir lifted his pale eyebrows briefly, but said nothing.
Acair realized he was on his feet pacing only because he ran into a rock so abruptly that it felt as if he weren’t wearing boots. He cursed at the pain that shot up his leg, then cursed a bit more because the moment seemed to call for that sort of thing.
He finally gained control enough of himself that he thought he could look at his fiendish foe without wanting to throttle him. He clasped his hands behind his back where they wouldn’t get him into any trouble by way of uncontrollable, rude gestures, then looked at the hapless grandson of the king of Cothromaiche.
“Where is this spell?” he asked.
“A better question might be,where did this spell once find itself?And the answer is my grandfather’s library.”
Acair thought it might serve him to refrain from shaking hishead any more that day. He feared his wits were beginning to rattle around inside his skull in a manner that was unhealthy.
“And you can’t go looking for this spell yourself?”
“From my grandfather’s own solar?” Soilléir asked, looking horrified.
“Library,” Acair said shortly. He dismissed Soilléir’s look as badly done theatrics. The man would pinch his grandfather’s nightcap off his head if it served his vaunted purposes.
Soilléir smiled. “Aye, library.”
“You haven’t hit upon the idea of simply walking in and asking for it?”
Soilléir shifted. “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?”
“Don’t tell me your grandfather doesn’t know it’s missing.”
“My grandfather doesn’t know it’s missing,” Soilléir agreed.
Acair felt his way down onto a different log from the one where Léirsinn sat so unsteadily. Unfortunately for him, his arse’s aim was terrible and he missed the whole damned thing. He lay on his back for a moment, looking up at the sky and wishing he were admiring it from several hundred feet off the ground instead of from a pile of rotting pine needles, then heaved himself back up and perched on that traitorous piece of wood.
“And what, again if I might be allowed to ask, does this piece of magic your grandfather doesn’t know is missing actually do?”
“That’s an interesting question,” Soilléir said slowly, “but more interesting are the circumstances that seem to surround the theft.”
“I can scarce wait to hear the details,” Acair said, though he could think of several things he would rather be discussing. He paused, considered that, then shook his head. That wasn’t true. If what Soilléir wanted from him included a trip inside Seannair of Cothromaiche’s private nest, perhaps he was more interested than he wanted to admit.
“The spell is gone, but the rest of the book is intact. It was as if someone simply went into the solar—”
“Library,” Acair exclaimed.
Soilléir smiled. “Just making sure you hadn’t forgotten. It’s as if someone merely walked in and cut a page from a particular book.” He paused. “Not that you would have any experience with that.”
Acair ignored the barb and concentrated on the matter at hand. “And you can’t remember what the spell says?”
