She looked about herself casually for a particular stable boy. It didn’t take long to spot him, mostly because he was the one lad there who looked as if he’d just narrowly missed sending a black mage into a towering temper.
Not knowing exactly how one went about the pilfering of a spell, she supposed the best she could do was simply ask. The lad in question didn’t bolt at her approach, which was promising. She stopped and leaned back against the wall next to him.
“What was that spell?” she asked casually.
He gulped. “Spell?”
She gave him the look she normally reserved for lads lying about having done their chores and hoped it would be enough.
“I learnt it at my ma’s knee,” he said. “Child’s magic. Useful for keeping hens where they’s meant to stay, aye?”
“Very useful,” she agreed. “Can you teach it to me?”
“Oh, mistress,” he protested, “’tis below the likes of you.”
“I’m always on the hunt for new spells,” she said, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. “If they’re less than five words, so much the better.”
“If you say so,” he said doubtfully.
“Do I have to wave any wands or make shooing motions at the victim—er, at the hens, or oats, or whatever is being, um…”
He looked as if his doubt might soon blossom into outright panic. “Nay,” he said faintly, “just the charm.”
She patted herself, but found she had nothing to use as a bribe. Her satchel was back in her bedchamber and she suspected Acair had not only her notebook but his spell of death secreted somewhere on his person. She was starting to see why he tended to acquire the odd item for use in the current sort of business. The best she could do was a roll she had begged from the kitchens earlier and put in her pocket just in case. She retrieved it and held it out.
The boy shook his head. “I’ll give it ye freely, as ’twas given me.”
Léirsinn put the roll back in her pocket for later use, then braced herself for some unintelligible bit of gibberish. To her surprise what the lad said made perfect sense to her. It was as if all that was required was to choke out a handful of words that wove themselves together like a net and caught whatever was trying to escape. Very useful in a barn, to be sure. Perhaps just as useful outside it, under the right circumstances.
She thanked the boy for his gift, then considered where she might test the spell without destroying everything around her. She repeated the words silently as she wandered out of the barn into the courtyard. The air was very cold and the sky full of heavy clouds, which she supposed was a good thing as it seemed to have driven most sensible souls indoors.
It was a perfect day to be about foul deeds.
She looked about herself for a likely victim, ignoring the fact that she felt like Acair of Ceangail on a less-murderous errand, then noticed a rather innocent but sturdy horse trough not twenty paces from where she stood. It had been recently filled, obviously, and the ripples from that filling were leaving water sloshing up against the sides.
Well, there was no time like the present to make an utter fool of herself. Besides, if a simple stable lad could do what she contemplated, why couldn’t she? At least she was working with water, not fire.
She found a bucket lying tipped over next to a wall, an untidiness she never would have allowed in her barn, and tossed it into the trough. As the water was splashing over the sides of the stone, she quickly said the appropriate words.
She was slightly surprised to find most of the water was then contained inside the edges of the trough where it belonged. The bucket, however, was flung up into the air with far more force than she’d used tossing it into the water thanks to a geyser of water pushing it there.
Unfortunately, other streams started to tear randomly through her…ah…well, she supposed she could term it her spell, but even just the words sent a shudder through her that left her feeling decidedly not herself.
What she could say with certainty was that in the end, her spell hadn’t done a very good job of containing anything.
She soon found herself surrounded by stable hands gaping just as she was at what was going on there with the water. She was starting to understand why Gair had had so much trouble with that damned well. Magic was more capricious than she’d suspected.
A single word was spoken from next to her. She watched, unable to move, as the water retreated back to where it had come from and the bucket fell down toward her upturned face. A hand reached out and caught it before it likely would have broken her nose. She took a deep breath, then looked to her right, fully expecting to find Acair there.
It was Aonarach, the king’s grandson.
He handed her the bucket. “Might want to work on that,” he said mildly.
She clutched it and watched him walk off toward the palace where he would no doubt enjoy a hot fire, cold ale, and vats of magic he could likely control without any thought. If she’d been one prone to envy, she might have indulged.
“You’ve been busy, I see.”
She found that the king himself was standing next to her. She would have apologized for plying her dastardly trade on his courtyard, but he shook his head before she could even begin.
“Water was a good choice,” he said approvingly. “And not entirely bad work there, missy. Striking out on your own, are you?”
She realized she’d given him the look she usually gave to cheeky stable hands only because he huffed out a brief laugh.
“I deserved that, I daresay,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I think, though, that you’ve avoided proper lessons long enough this morning. ’Twould be a pity to use that spell of containment on good Master Acair’s wee companion and have it fail.”
“It would, indeed,” said a voice behind her.
Léirsinn caught the look of disgust the king directed toward the man apparently standing behind her and supposed Acair had definitely endured worse. She wondered, though, how long he’d been there and how much he’d seen.
“Luncheon,” the king announced, “then a bit of work for you Mistress Léirsinn. Not that I care overly for the condition of your would-be lover there, but I do have strong feelings about the state of the world as a whole. Come along, lass, and we’ll leave that mage there to follow us.”
Léirsinn would have protested, but she couldn’t come up with a decent excuse why she shouldn’t agree to both so she simply fell in alongside the king as he tromped back through the puddles she’d left in his courtyard. Perhaps he considered those an improvement over smoldering ruins.
He paused on the steps leading up to his hall doorway, then looked at her thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose Prince Soilléir told you what it was he put in your veins.”