Vulgar, but he supposed that was the best that mage over there could do.
It was also very unusual to be in an altercation where he didn’t have his full complement of spells available, nor had he ever fought a duel where he’d been far more concerned about a woman standing next to him than he was himself. Indeed, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d fought a duel with a woman anywhere near him, especially one with magic she couldn’t exactly control.
He glanced briefly at Léirsinn to find she had her hands in the pockets of his evening jacket. Assuming that meant she had transferred her coins from her bodice to where they would be more easily reached, he turned to considering the lay of the land. He was terrible at small talk, true, but he wasn’t opposed to a bit of pre-duel chit-chat just to see which way the wind was blowing.
He turned a bored look on the mage standing some thirty paces away.
“What is it I should call you?” he asked politely. “Don’t want to get the name wrong and call you stupid when whoreson will do.”
Shards spilled out of Slaidear’s mouth along with his curse. Acair had never seen anything like it and had to admit it was profoundly unsettling.
“Surely you’re not too stupid to choose for yourself,” he hissed.
Acair fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Very well. Given that Slaidear is but a recent incarnation, we’ll go with Sladaiche. Now, what exactly is it you want, Sladaiche? Besides my thanking you for pulling us away from a merely marginally edible repast, that is.”
Sladaiche held up a loaded crossbow. Acair found himself surprisingly grateful for decades of yawning in the face of impossible odds because that was the only thing that saved him from gasping aloud at the moment.
“You shouldn’t have left these behind,” Sladaiche said with a sneer. “It might prove to be your undoing.”
Damn it, he’d known that was going to come back to bite him in the arse. Bolts were one thing and easily countered, but those arrows there were enspelled with something that had slain mages in Fuadain’s barn with terrible efficiency. He regretted not having taken the time to have a closer look to see what they were made from. He hoped he didn’t pay the ultimate price for not having brought them along to keep them out of the hands of that man there.
He also wished he’d taken the time to discuss with Léirsinn the particulars of how she would need to contain that damned spell of death on his right, never mind exactly what she should do about fleeing if he fell. He didn’t dare take his eyes off his foe to look at her, so he supposed he would have to rely on her superior ability to remain calm in the face of great, stomping steeds. She would do what she thought best and hopefully they would both still be standing in the end.
“Well,” Acair said, turning back to the matter at hand, “better undone than knocked off a ladder by a child, wouldn’t you agree?”
“You didn’t knock me off!” Sladaiche shouted. “There was a flaw in the wood that gave way inopportunely.”
“And you waited all this time to tell me that,” Acair said with a disbelieving laugh. “How droll.”
“I waited all this time to repay you for stealing that spell,” Sladaiche snarled.
“I didn’t steal anything,” Acair said, shrugging carelessly, “I threw it in the fire. Why would I steal something worth so little?”
Sladaiche drew himself up. “I worked on that for centuries.”
“Well done you, then,” Acair said, clapping slowly, then he stopped suddenly and put on an exaggerated frown. “Wait. I heard you didn’t create it yourself at all, but rather that you stole—”
“A filthy lie!” Sladaiche shouted.
Acair lifted his eyebrows briefly. “As you say, I suppose. It still needs a bit of finishing, though, wouldn’t you say?”
Sladaiche pointed the crossbow at Léirsinn. “She has what I need. That is why she’s still alive, but you…”
Acair very rarely found himself frozen in place, but he genuinely wasn’t sure if he should leap in front of Léirsinn, pull her down behind the edge of the fountain out of sight with him, or take his chances with the spell next to him and go ahead and use his own magic.
Léirsinn pulled coins out of her pockets, but her hands were shaking so badly that a pair of them fell. Acair didn’t stop her from bending to look for them in the dark. Better that she be out of sight when Sladaiche fired his bolt, which he did.
Not at Léirsinn, nor even at he himself.
Sladaiche fired the bolt through that damned spell of death that had first made an appearance not very far from where he stood at present, that same spell that had collected pieces of his soul and tried to kill him—
The spell shrieked and vanished with a keening that was so like the mages Léirsinn had slain in the barn that Acair staggered.
Or that might have been because he felt as if he had been the one shot through the heart. He patted his chest on the off chance that was the case, but found he was still safe and whole.
Or perhaps not whole. In truth, he felt a little…unwell.
Léirsinn caught him around the waist. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” he said, forcing himself to straighten. “I’m fine.”
And he was, for it occurred to him quite suddenly that there was now nothing preventing him from using his magic. He leaned closer to Léirsinn.
“We cannot risk another of those bolts.”
“Distraction?”
“That seems fitting.”
He watched that rather shiny coin he’d made for her leave her hand and had several things occur to him in such rapid succession that he wished desperately for time to slow that he might consider them all and sort them into their proper order.
First was that Sladaiche, for all his apparent lingering at the supper trough, was not an unskilled mage. He batted away the spell full of shadows Léirsinn threw at him and sent rats and snakes scattering away from him. Acair destroyed them with a word, but that cost him more than it should have, which led him to his second realization.
In destroying it, I destroy myself. He’d said those ridiculous words to Mochriadhemiach of Neroche as they’d been discussing that accursed minder spell that had been so determined to slay him for the slightest dip of his toes into magical waters. He hadn’t meant them, of course, but that had apparently been a glorious miscalculation on his part.
For the first time in his life, he was afraid he didn’t have enough of himself to work any serious magic.
Lastly, he wasn’t exactly certain what he was going to do with Sladaiche’s soul if he managed to drag it out of the man’s body. He wasn’t his father in more ways than one, apparently.