One
When a man was facing death, his mind naturally became consumed with questions of a profound and pressing nature, such as why pursuing his favorite things—murder, mischief, and mayhem—should result in the most fatal of the three being perpetrated upon his own poor self.
Acair of Ceangail leaned his head back against the weeping stone wall of a dwarvish dungeon, ignoring the alarming rattle in his chest, and wished he’d had the wherewithal to find the answer that question deserved. Unfortunately, his strength had been spent on numerous escape attempts, his voice worn hoarse from shouting demands that someone come release him, and his hands left bruised and bloodied far past the point where they might be acceptable at even the roughest of supper tables thanks to his banging them repeatedly against the invisible door of his cell.
He suspected he might be nearing his end.
That he might meet that end in the very last place he’d wanted to be, a kingdom ruled by a monarch he had endured innumerable humiliations to avoid encountering lest that selfsame monarch decide the time had come for him to indeed breathe his last, was almost more than he could bear. If the cold, vermin, and lack of food didn’t finish him off, the irony of that likely would.
Such a terrible fate should have been impossible given the charmed nature of his existence. He had spent decades cutting a gleeful swath through the Nine Kingdoms, tossing himself with abandon into situations that would have given a lesser mage pause and extricating himself from the most impenetrable of strongholds with a wink and a cheery wave. Kings had ground their teeth, mages had hidden behind tapestries, and priceless treasures had leapt out of locked cabinets to take up residence in his pockets.
Why the course of his life had taken such a decided turn toward less desirable locales was—
Well, honesty was, as he reluctantly admitted to those he wasn’t trying to rob or intimidate, his worst failing. If he were to be honest, he could pinpoint the exact moment when his life had veered off the smoothly paved path laid before his exquisitely shod feet and led him to a place that had been the beginning of the end for him.
It had been, if memory served, during the previous spring as he’d been going about his usual business of toppling thrones and attempting to pilfer the world’s supply of magic. He’d been in the right place at the wrong time and found himself a reluctant witness to the sight of a very sharp blade coming directly toward a rather lovely if not perilously powerful maiden fair. His chivalry had risen like gorge, and he’d stepped in front of her to take the blade meant for her into his own black heart.
If he’d had even the slightest inkling how that colossal piece of do-gooding would begin the unraveling of the cloth of his life, he would have nipped off into the shadows and left the wench to fend for herself. But he’d jumped into the fray and the deed had been done. That act of selflessness—and lesson learned there, to be sure—had led to a series of events that had completely derailed his plans for the making of obstreperous hay.
Having his fine form restored to perfection by a piece of elvish rot had only been the beginning of the horrors he’d endured. Good deeds, polite smiles, fawning apologies he hadn’t meant in the slightest: the list of what had taken up the subsequent months had been endless and endlessly trying. He had submitted to the indignities, though, because his freedom had hung in the balance.
Fate had obviously stepped in to take the helm only to set him on a collision course with the one soul before whom he had absolutely refused to bow and scrape, namely Uachdaran of Léige: maker of legendary swords, digger of priceless gems, and papa of one vexatious daughter with plans.
’Twas obvious to him now that he should have made an effort to clear up a few lingering misunderstandings between himself and the king of the dwarves. A rare bottle of elvish wine or an irreplaceable tapestry or two sent at just the right moment might have been the very thing to soften the king’s heart and overcome any reluctance to share one or two of the kingdom’s plentiful treasures. After all, dwarvish mines produced sparkling things he liked very much, and Durial was a place full of useful lakes and rivers.
If he’d helped himself to a handful of gems the king might or might not have missed, then used one—or perhaps several, the details escaped him—of the king’s many rivers for his own purposes, who should have been the wiser?
Well, obviously the king had been, which was why he was rotting belowdecks instead of taking his ease in front of a roaring fire upstairs in the great hall.
Unfortunately for his hopes of luxuriating in fresh air again any time soon, he knew—and never mind how he knew—that not even the most creative of shapechanging would allow him past Uachdaran of Léige’s containment spells. Worse still was knowing—and on that score he was all too happy to recount the ridiculous reason why he knew—that whatever the king’s magic might leave of him after such an attempt, the fiendish spell currently sitting across his cell from him would certainly finish off.
He looked narrowly at that nasty piece of business that was definitely the cause for his being where he was at present and decided that reminding himself of exactly why that was might at least keep him warm for a bit longer.
There he’d been, less than a fortnight earlier, facing a formidable foe and limiting himself to a rudimentary spell of return, when things had taken a foul jog south. The words of his own spell had scarce left his lips before that damned thing presently glaring at him like a surly youth had leapt upon his mostly innocent person like a hound on a meat-covered bone and begun to chew. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of a woman he loved but didn’t deserve and the magical stylings of a prince he loathed but owed his life to, he would have definitely breathed his last.
He’d hardly managed to scamper off to safety with his lady before he’d run afoul of the local monarch who had popped him in a truly awful little prison and promised him a one-way journey to a spot in the East where the king had pointed out quite enthusiastically that Acair wouldn’t be all that welcome.
He sighed as deeply as he was capable of at the moment. ’Twas all too soon for the business of endings. He had mischief to make, the world to save, a red-haired stable lass to woo. If he’d had any heart to break, that noise echoing in his soul would have been the sound of it. He would gladly have gazed upon Léirsinn of Sàraichte’s lovely visage one more time, though he supposed having seen her that morning on the other side of the spell that guarded his door was the best he was going to manage.
Or had she been there yesterday? The day before that? He frowned, reluctantly conceding that it had become increasingly difficult to mark any distinction between dreaming and lucidity. Rousing himself to put events in their proper order, never mind attempting to marshal the strength to put the world back in its proper order, was simply beyond him. A little gloss of hopelessness over any piece of mischief tended to leave him rubbing his hands together with delight, but this was something else entirely. He could feel his breath slowing with every exhale, his strength ebbing with each heartbeat, his very will to live being pulled from him with every moment of imprisonment that passed. The thumping in his ears was likely what was left of his broken heart giving its all before—