Léirsinn looked at him from those leaf-green eyes of hers. “There’s more.”
“So I see, and I’m afraid to ask.”
“Just a few details,” she continued mercilessly. “Location, of course. An opinion on the vileness of the miscreant in question.”
“If you say lost spells that only you can find, darling, I will weep.”
She smiled and handed him his gilded doom. “Read it for yourself, then.” She pushed herself to her feet and headed toward the front door. “I’ll go pack our gear.”
“I didn’t agree to this!” he exclaimed.
I don’t think you’ll want to refuse was what came floating back his way.
Well, he damned well would refuse. He was a vile mage of terrible power. He had spells to steal, priceless treasures to nick, a wife to continue to woo. He’d already begun to plot a way to slip inside Inntrig with pencil and paper and lurk in a wardrobe on the off chance Seannair of Cothromaiche talked in his sleep. One never knew what that sort of babbling might yield.
He also had been toying with the idea of a quick dash across the plains of Ailean to waft over the walls of the schools of wizardry and see just how far he would have to lower himself to earn those seven rings of mastery.
Of course, that might be unnecessary if whilst having a glass of wine with that essence-changing whoreson—if the man could be found actually laboring instead of flitting off on yet another holiday—and if that wine might be tampered with, perhaps spells might be, again, blurted out in the midst of a nightmare or two.
That he might have to shelve those items labeled Nefarious Doings for a bit to see to things that numerous other, less devious mages could likely manage with perhaps unsatisfactory efforts—
“Acair, are you coming inside to pack?”
He sighed, suppressed the urge to fling the missive up in the air and hope it landed somewhere else—perhaps his grandmother’s garden—and pushed himself to his feet.
A quest.
Ye gads!
To catch up on volumes One and Two of Acair and Léirsinn’s adventures:
The White Spell
The Dreamer’s Song
To find out how it all began:
Star of the Morning
For a complete list of titles, visit