She sat up and looked over the edge of the bed to where the poor dwarf had taken cover. She still had to hold onto the headboard to keep herself steady, but she wasn’t pitching out of bed completely. Progress had definitely been made.
The healer’s eyes were watering madly and he was protecting his nose with one hand, but his tiny cup of liquid had been spared. He crawled to his feet, holding his brew aloft as he did so. He handed it to her, waited until she’d drunk it, then took it back.
“How do you fare, mistress?”
She took stock of her poor form. The fires raging inside her had subsided from the enormous heat of a raging inferno to the toasty warmth of a small campfire, which was definitely an improvement. She wasn’t sure she would ever be the same, but perhaps that was something to think about later.
She was trying to hit upon a response that didn’t sound daft when it occurred to her that the king’s healer looked very nervous. He was taking an excessive amount of time to set his cup aside, which she supposed should have made her nervous. If there had been something vile in that draught—
She turned away from that thought before it galloped off with her to places she didn’t want to go. She had never felt particularly at ease in her uncle’s stables, but it had never occurred to her over the course of her time there that anyone would want to murder her. That she considered that more often of late than not was not a habit she wanted to begin.
She looked at Master Ollamh, prepared to thank him for giving her something that indeed left her feeling somewhat better, and realized that he was wearing the expression of a man who had tidings he didn’t want to deliver. She braced herself for the worst.
“Is he dead?” she asked grimly.
The dwarf looked at her in surprise. “Lord Acair? Nay, not that I’ve heard. I am concerned about him, though. He hasn’t returned.”
Léirsinn felt the same panic rush through her that tended to accompany any news that Acair might have trotted off to do something he shouldn’t have, only this time they were in a place where the local monarch had already kept him in the dungeon for days and likely wouldn’t hesitate to return him there.
“How long ago?” she asked, wondering where she might start to look for him and if she might need to tack up her best spell of, well, something to use for, ah, something else.
Magic was, she was finding, harder to manage than even the most difficult stallion.
“He left quite some time ago to attend to, ah, certain needs.” Master Ollamh paused. “I suppose ’tis possible he forgot the way back here.”
She could easily imagine all the things Acair might be off attending to and knew they would have nothing to do with getting lost.
“I suspect,” the king’s healer said in a low voice, “that something foul might be afoot.”
Of course something foul was afoot and his name was Acair of Ceangail. She threw back the covers and motioned for the king’s healer to get out of her way.
“No messengers have arrived boasting of having slain him?” she asked briskly, pushing herself to her feet.
Master Ollamh pointed with a shaking finger at a spot behind her. “Nay, just…ah—”
She kept herself from falling over Acair’s chair thanks to Master’s Ollamh’s gallantly offered arm, then turned to look at the door to her chamber. She realized then that she had definitely crossed some sort of bridge that should have remained unassaulted. That she fully expected to see something dire—evil mage, feisty witch, powerful wizard with mischief on his mind—waiting for her there…well, if that didn’t say more about her state of mind than she wanted it to, nothing did.
What she saw was actually worse. The spell of death that constantly attended Acair was standing with only its upper half inside the chamber, waving and hissing at her. That it was no longer nipping at its victim’s heels could mean only one thing.
Acair was in trouble.
Well, he was trouble, but she suspected it was a bit too late to make that distinction. She was up to her neck in his madness with no way out but forward.
She limped across the chamber toward the door, then had to put her hands against the wall and rest for a bit. That at least gave her an opportunity to glare at Acair’s magical chaperon.
“Did you lose him?” she demanded.
The fiend shook its shadowy head sharply.
“Then show me where he went,” she commanded, reaching for the door’s latch.
“But a dressing gown,” the physick said from behind her. “Shoes, my lady!”
She didn’t have time to look for slippers, and she was most certainly no lady, but she caught the heavy velvet dressing gown Master Ollamh tossed at her just the same. She shoved her arms through the sleeves before she wrenched open the door. Two burly dwarves stood there looking profoundly irritated.
“There were three before,” Master Ollamh offered.
She imagined there had been and didn’t bother asking what had happened to the third of their number. He was likely lying senseless somewhere, which would no doubt be a vast improvement over his condition once he woke from whatever had sent him into oblivion. She suspected that that something had been Acair’s fist under his jaw, but she was slightly cynical when it came to the methods of the youngest son of the witchwoman of Fàs.
The shadowy spell led the way with merciless swiftness. Léirsinn tried to keep up with it, but even with all her efforts it continually turned itself about to snarl at her. She scowled at it and shooed it on, following as quickly as she could. It occurred to her after the third time she had to stop and rest against the passageway wall that it was a bit odd how protective that creature there was of Acair, but perhaps that was by design. There wasn’t much point in having murder as the sole reason for one’s existence if one’s victim had scurried off into the night unnoticed.
She drew her hand over her eyes, reminded herself that those sorts of thoughts were not ones she usually entertained, then pushed herself away from the stone and nodded to Acair’s magical keeper.
She wished absently that she hadn’t refused shoes, but it was too late to remedy that. The chill of the stone beneath her feet inspired her to greater feats of speed, which was likely why she almost plowed into the king of the dwarves himself before she realized she had taken a turn right into his throne room.
The king was holding a candle aloft, though that was no doubt simply for effect. He glanced at her, then in the next moment the entire chamber burst into light that seemed to come from the very walls themselves, throwing the entire place into something that greatly resembled mid-day. She blinked a time or two until her eyes adjusted to the brightness, then she almost wished she hadn’t.
Acair was standing next to the king’s throne itself, delicately holding a doily between thumb and pointer finger and looking profoundly guilty.