He looked at her arm, then at her face. “It pains me to admit as much, but I have no idea what you’re trying to show me except your lovely self which is leading to more thoughts of doing anything but the difficult work that lies before us.”
“I’m flattered,” she said, holding her arm up closer to his face. “Look again at the spot you healed.”
He did, then shrugged, finding himself truly at a loss. “I’m torn between apologizing and telling you that you’re welcome.”
She took him by the hand and pulled him over to the window. A fine mist had already rolled in from the sea, but the soft light that remained was ample to see by.
“Watch what happens,” she said. She pressed on the little pool of Fadaire that lingered there on her skin. “See how it scatters, then pulls back together?”
He put his hand over his chest protectively. “I’m afraid to look in a polished glass now.”
“Nay,” she said impatiently. “Remember how Falaire shattered those shadows, then they drew back together?”
He frowned. “In Sgath and Eulasaid’s barn?”
“Aye. Isn’t that strange? And look at how this does the same thing, only this comes back together in a lovely way. That pool of shadow in your grandparents’ barn was far different.” She looked at him. “Why does evil have all those pointy edges?”
He felt his mouth go dry. “Like shards.”
She nodded slowly. “Odd, isn’t it?”
He felt as if his entire being had become one of those ridiculous pools of shadow that Falaire had stomped to oblivion. The pieces came at him from all directions, then clicked back into a perfectly miserable whole.
Shards, shadows, his spell in Diarmailt that cast shadows, a mage who created shadows that stole souls…
He would have felt his way down into a chair, but he was no fainting miss. He staggered artistically over to his sideboard and poured himself a large glass of whisky. He tossed it back without so much as a gasp and came back up with his throat on fire but his head absolutely clear. He could hardly believe he hadn’t seen it before.
That shard-spewing mage was the one making those pools of shadow.
He leaned his hands on the sideboard, grateful he wasn’t shaking badly enough to leave bottles rattling, and let that thought simply stand there in front of him it in all its simplicity where it might possibly be joined by other useful thoughts.
If that same mage was creating those shadows and the purpose of those shadows was to steal souls, then that mage’s intention was to steal souls.
But if that were the case, why now?
He bowed his head and blew out his breath, then forced himself to start from the beginning and walk again down the path he’d been on, searching for things he might have overlooked.
He’d first noticed the lads following him when they’d left Aherin. He’d been so damned distracted at the time by his fury over Soilléir’s leaving him helpless that he couldn’t have said if the mage outside had been in that pack of jackals or not. The first sense he’d truly had of a single mage with mischief on his mind had been when Miach had handed him that bloody, overdone missive.
He’d realized soon after leaving Tor Neroche that the cloud of mage had turned into a single hunter, but he’d assumed that lone mage had been someone he’d done dirty in the past who had decided the time had come for revenge. Coming face to face with the man and watching spells come out of his mouth in impossibly sharp spears of darkness hadn’t changed his opinion.
I’m the one with all the spells.
Well, that was a ridiculous boast, but if one had a spell to steal souls, perhaps all the other spells in the world simply didn’t matter.
He straightened and rubbed his hands over his face, wishing he’d questioned Soilléir a bit more thoroughly in that glade. He remembered with unfortunate clarity the man rambling on about spells and souls and missing one of the former, but the conversation had been distressingly empty of particulars.
The one thing he thought he could allow to stand as fact was that the mage following him had stolen his spell in Eòlas, which meant he had also likely slain Odhran, and left behind that childish note. If he was also the one making those shadows, then it was obvious that while he claimed to have mighty spells, he was missing at least one piece of the spell he likely wanted the most.
His hands twitched before he could stop them. What he wanted was to put them comfortably around a certain essence-changing prince’s throat, but perhaps that wasn’t a useful thought to be entertaining at the moment. He rubbed his hands together to keep them busy, then continued on the path that seemed to be unfortunately laid out in front of him.
Soilléir’s had said that the spell stolen from his grandfather’s library was the same spell—a copy, no doubt—that Acair had tossed into the fire all those decades ago. That was a spell for stealing souls, however, not creating shadows.
But if—if—the mage outside was the same one who had stolen Seannair’s spell—whatever its true purpose was—then that made that man standing under the trees of his forest the orchardist that he himself had insulted all those many years ago.
Ninety years was a very long time to wait for revenge.
It wasn’t as if there hadn’t been ample opportunity for the man to see to it long before the present moment. He himself had spent decades going about in the open, walking along dusty roads with no one guarding his back, gliding across ballrooms with naught but a woman’s gown to hide behind.
So many opportunities to execute a deft piece of payback, so why not before now?
Unless that mage outside didn’t want revenge.
He would have said that he couldn’t understand that, but unfortunately he did, all too well. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have had to look much further than his own family tree to find Gair of Ceangail perching there as the absolute embodiment of patience whilst about the vile work of herding his prey along an ever-straitening course that led to the end of the maze where there was no escape. There were others, to be sure, but he thought he might need to take a seat before he began scrutinizing that list.
Nay, he was missing something and he scarce had the stomach to wonder what.
What he needed to do was get above it. He was in the midst of the maze and there were simply too many possible pathways to see the pattern whilst looking at them from eye level.
He came to himself to find that he was standing in the middle of his library, staring at nothing. Léirsinn was watching from the doorway, hovering there as if she suspected she might need to make a hasty escape sooner rather than later.
He sighed. “Forgive me. Lost in thought.”
“What can I do?” she asked.