Three undeniably well-fed, obviously well-exercised guardsmen were leaning against the opposite wall, their eyes fixed on him. He smiled politely, then eased back inside the chamber and closed the door.
Damnation but Uachdaran of Léige was a suspicious bastard.
He put his hand on the wood to steady himself, then considered what else he could do that day with his strength at such a low ebb. He’d already addressed the easy item of a flourishy thank-you. More difficult would be fetching something he’d left stuck to the underside of Uachdaran of Léige’s kingly seat. Retrieving his grandmother’s prized doily—something he remained convinced was made from his grandfather’s wails of terror spun into thread—from its place of honor on the king’s side table was going to be the most difficult feat of all.
He needed the damned thing, though, so fetch it he would. It was one thing to have a mysterious mage with terrible power chasing after him, intending to slay him. It was another thing entirely to have his Gran setting off with the same idea.
A loud thump startled him, but he realized it was only Master Ollamh rolling off the sofa. He hurried over to offer the man assistance. If he happened to make a quick investigation of the underside of one of the sofa cushions, retrieve a small notebook, then drop it to the floor and kick it under Léirsinn’s bed whilst he was offering said assistance, surely the king’s healer wouldn’t be the wiser.
“I believe, my good man, that you need a bit of fresh air,” Acair said. “And look, there is a door conveniently placed in the wall for the setting off on just such a restorative adventure.”
Master Ollamh looked equal parts confused and alarmed. “But I’m not to leave you here alone.”
Acair helped the man over to the door—leaning rather heavily on him, true, but that wasn’t to be helped—opened it, then gestured at the aforenoted trio of very burly guardsmen established against the far wall.
“Those lads there have me well in hand, wouldn’t you agree?”
“But your magic,” Ollamh said uneasily. “I know what you said before, but I’ve heard reports—”
“Which I would be delighted to either confirm or deny for you after you’ve taken a lengthy walk in the king’s garden,” Acair said. “I promise to keep all my spells unused and my tales untold until you return. Upon my honor.”
“And the young miss?” Ollamh drew himself up and put on what he obviously thought was a stern look.
Acair refused to be offended, mostly because ordinarily the healer would have been thoroughly justified in his concern.
“I am on my best behavior,” he said seriously. “Mistress Léirsinn is safe in my company.”
Ollamh didn’t look terribly convinced, but he did look as if he might soon lose whatever luncheon he’d ingested earlier. Acair shooed him out into the passageway, offered a friendly wave to his keepers holding up the far wall, then shut the door before they could offer any greeting in return.
He walked back over to the fire, knelt down to peer under the bed, and came as close to fainting as he ever had in his life. Finding himself sprawled rather suddenly with his face against the floor and his arse up in the air was an indignity he could have done without. It took more effort than he was happy with to retrieve Léirsinn’s book from under the bed, then very gingerly ease himself back up to his knees.
He crawled up onto the divan with all the energy of a black mage properly breathing his last thanks to a lifetime of bad deeds, then had to simply close his eyes and wheeze until he thought he might manage to look at his surroundings and find them doing something besides galloping wildly around him.
No more dwarvish dungeons. His next stay in one was going to kill him.
He was grateful his hands were cleaner than they had been and refused to grow misty-eyed over the woman who had offered him such a tender service. The insults to the divan, however, were definitely going to be extensive. He likely should have been appalled by the condition of his clothing and what it would do to Uachdaran’s furniture, but given that the man hadn’t allowed him even so much as a quarter hour outside near a well, perhaps he had no need to be fastidious about his sofa-perching.
He waited until his head cleared a bit more, then turned his attentions to what he held in his hands. It was an unassuming thing, perhaps a bit bigger than his outstretched hand, just the size his mother preferred for her endless scribblings. He had the feeling the woman would choose an empty book over a last meal.
What made what he was looking at presently so desirable was the fact that his mother’s mother had taken the time to jot down a few things she no doubt thought would unnerve him. A fair trade, perhaps, for forcing him to leave behind what he’d broken into her solar to steal. If he ever had the chance to scamper off with that Book of Oddities and Disgusting Spells his mother had advised him to acquire, he absolutely would and not suffer a single twinge of regret. He’d had a quick peek at its contents and wasn’t quite sure he’d yet recovered from what he’d read there.
He’d also had a hasty glance at what he held in his hands, but he wasn’t sure if he could trust his memory where its contents were concerned. If his grandmother had seen fit to share even a handful of disconcerting things, he would be penning her a flourishy thank-you as well. He took as deep a breath as he could manage at the moment, then opened the thin tome, prepared to give the scribblings there a proper study.
It hadn’t seemed as if she’d been at her labors very long, but apparently he’d been more distracted by wondering how to escape her solar than he’d realized. Her notes were simply bursting with nastiness. If he hadn’t been so damned tired, he might have indulged in a chortle of delight. Unfortunately, things were what they were at the moment and all he could do was drag in ragged breaths and try not to leave faintly grubby fingerprints behind as he continued to gingerly turn pages and shake his head over what he found there.
Spells were laid out, vile mages were listed—his name wasn’t to be found anywhere on that roster which he supposed should have stung a bit—and a handful of oddities that apparently intrigued her had been jotted down for his perusal.
He sighed and turned another page, expecting to find that she would have nothing more to say to him save a wish that he speedily meet his end. Instead, he found himself facing a spell of reconstruction that left him almost recoiling, he who had spent the bulk of his life foisting vileness off onto almost everyone he met.
The thing was absolutely appalling, merciless in its workings and rather more permanent than what he was accustomed to using. It was something, he had to admit, that he might have hesitated to use unless absolutely necessary.
He reread the spell twice before it sank in what he was looking at. It wasn’t essence changing in the usual sense, but it came as close as anything he’d ever seen. The idea that he might mold something into a shape it didn’t particularly want to take and hold it there for far longer than a simple spell of reconstruction should have been able to manage was astonishing.