Soilléir shook his head. “I’m not sure I can bring to mind—well, actually you know I can but I don’t wish to—from whence he hailed, but the country bordered Bruadair. Take that for what it’s worth.”
Acair wasn’t unhappy to have Léirsinn put her arm around his shoulders, even if it was likely to keep herself upright. It was damned chilly and that in spite of the fire in front of them.
“He was exiled from his country hundreds of years ago for misuse of power,” Soilléir said slowly. “Rumor has it he died a beggar.”
“I’m suspecting that is wishful thinking,” Acair said sourly.
Soilléir studied him for far longer than Acair was comfortable with. “If Sladaiche and this theft are linked in any way, I would be extremely careful—”
“I have no magic!”
The words hung in the air, there over the fire, where they crackled and popped as if they’d been a terribly dry branch full of sap. He looked at them until they faded, studiously avoided looking at Léirsinn, then fixed his glance on Soilléir.
“I have no magic,” he repeated quietly.
“But you do have a quest,” Soilléir said.
“I alreadyhada quest!”
“This is an extending of that goodly work,” Soilléir said mercilessly. “Your task is to find out where that spell has gone. I would suggest you pinch the original book for the companion spells, but that’s only a thought.” He paused. “I have the feeling that when you find that spell, you’ll also solve several other mysteries that are keeping you awake at night.”
“You should have told me that months ago!”
Soilléir only looked at him steadily.
“If you tell me you’ve been waiting for me to be ready for this new, unusual, and very unwelcome addition to something I was already doing under extreme protest,” Acair said coldly, “I will stab you.”
“You won’t manage it.”
“Oh, I will,” Acair promised. “When you least expect it, you will find me standing over you, spell in hand, and you’ll be powerless to stop me from sending you off to hell.”
“Well, if anyone has the courage to try, it would certainly be you.”
Acair wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult, then decided he might not want to think about it too much. “Why don’tyousteal the damned book yourself?”
“It wouldn’t do—”
Acair was sure he hadn’t howled, because a gentleman never howled except discreetly when the port he was sipping wasn’t quite the thing, but whatever noise he’d made had come damned close to something that felt as if it had come straight from his soul.
What was left of that soul, apparently.
“You know,” Soilléir said carefully, “it’s an interesting spell that’s missing.”
“It’s a terrible spell that’s missing,” Acair shouted. “Howcould you possibly let something like that slip out of your own damned library?”
Soilléir looked a bit more helpless than Acair was comfortable with.
“My grandfather can be somewhat absentminded.”
Acair found that there were simply no words left in what was left of his mind to use in describing his disbelief over what he was hearing.
He was also desperately regretting his lack of magic at the moment given what he thought might be a fortuitous breach in the bulwark around those Cothromaichian treasures, but he used a firm hand and all the terrible things all those months of do-gooding had caused to fester inside him to push himself away from that profoundly tempting thought.
It was a thought he would, of course, revisit at his earliest opportunity.
“Odd what those spots of shadow do, isn’t it?”
A sharp verbal riposte was halfway out of his mouth before he realized it hadn’t been Soilléir to speak, it had been Léirsinn. He looked at her in astonishment.
