Now, though, she looked to be nearer death than he was and he who had toppled thrones and brought terrible mages to their knees could do nothing at all to aid her.
He wasn’t one to trust to time what he could see to himself, but at present, he thought he might not have a choice.
The sooner that changed, the better.
Two
Léirsinn dreamed.
She stumbled through a forest full of fire, struggling to keep to a path that grew fainter with every step she took until it suddenly disappeared and she was left teetering on the edge of an abyss. She spun around only to find the path behind her gone and the trees obscured by heavy smoke that billowed toward her. There was no escape, no way out but forward into darkness.
She turned, closed her eyes and stepped out into nothingness—
Léirsinn woke abruptly and wondered if she’d been screaming. She shifted and deeply regretted it, for even that small movement sent a thrill of fever rushing through her. She felt as if her insides had been pulled out of her, tossed up into a whirlwind, then put back into her in the most painful way possible.
She had no one to blame for it but herself, of course, for she had been the one to make that desperate request to have magic so she might protect a man who had been tasked with saving the world from evil. She suspected, though, that the next time she was faced with the choice between traveling across the wilds of the Nine Kingdoms with a mage and becoming caught up in his madness or marching straight into the jaws of Hell with only herself for company, she was going to put on a pair of decent boots and start walking.
She lay still for another moment or two, then began to wonder if that choice had already been made for her. She didn’t hear the shrieking of the damned, those poor souls who reputedly inhabited those fiery regions below the world, but her entire form felt as if she’d been standing too close to a Hellish bonfire. Even her eyes felt singed.
There was also an annoying buzzing that seemed to come and go in her ears and a smell that rivaled anything she’d encountered in the worst parts of the port town of Tosan.
She carefully moved her fingers against whatever she was lying on. She was more relieved than she wanted to admit to find the softness of a bed and not the rough stone of a dungeon floor. With any luck, her door would be unlocked and she would manage to free a certain lad of her acquaintance who was languishing in the dungeon, then escape with him before the dwarf king was the wiser. The sooner she was seeing to that, the better for them both.
She opened her eyes and stared at the canopy above her head. She thought she recognized it, but to be honest, she wasn’t entirely sure. King Uachdaran had graciously given her the use of a guest chamber, but she hadn’t spent very much time in it. When she hadn’t been sitting outside Acair’s prison door, she’d been either arguing with the king or worrying that Acair would be slain, their quest would fail, and she would never manage to free her grandfather from her uncle’s manor.
When she absolutely hadn’t been able to sleep, she’d allowed herself a moment or two to mourn the loss of an unremarkable existence in her uncle’s barn, assuming she might have found her way back there and encountered anything but his sword in her heart. Then again, perhaps her uncle would think twice about bothering her now that she had the ability to spew out words and have them do something besides sound threatening.
She would have rolled her eyes if she’d had the strength to do so. The unfortunate truth was that she had no idea what to do with whatever magic Soilléir of Cothromaiche had given her, and her attempts to simply waggle her fingers and hope for the best hadn’t gone all that well so far. She suspected she was fortunate that she hadn’t completely burned the king’s hall to the ground, though that at least might have prevented him from sending anyone else to his dungeon.
All of which brought her back to the point where she’d started: there was a man languishing in prison who had vowed to save the world and she was the one who had vowed to help him however she could.
She looked to her left to find a dwarf asleep on the sofa near the fire. She had a vague memory of him hovering over her with medicines, so perhaps he was the king’s physick. His snores were formidable, which solved the mystery of the buzzing.
She looked to her right and discovered the source of the very vile smell she realized had been troubling her even in her sleep. It was an elven prince’s bastard grandson, covered in dungeon leavings and listing so far out of the hard chair he was sitting on that she was half amazed he hadn’t fallen to the floor already.
She sat up with a gasp. “You’re free.”
Acair startled himself awake so badly that both he and his chair went sprawling. She tried to catch him, but that only left her tumbling out of bed onto the floor next to him. She would have reached for him, but he held up his hand to hold her off.
“Don’t let me ruin those lovely nightclothes of yours.”
As tempting as it was to throw her arms around him just the same, he had a point. She had never owned anything so fine as the garb she was wearing, so ruining it with the grime he was wearing seemed a terrible waste. She settled for a deep sigh of relief.
“How did you manage it?” she asked, then she froze. “Should we run?”
“We’re in the clear for the moment,” he said with a faint smile, “so no need to hop out the nearest window and leg it before Master Ollamh wakes himself with his snores.” He nodded toward the bed behind her. “Why don’t you get off the floor so you don’t catch a chill? I’ll give you the entire tale once you’re tucked back in.”
She crawled to her feet, then righted his chair for him. “Let me at least fetch you some wine.”
He heaved himself back up onto his seat, then closed his eyes and breathed lightly. “In a moment, when I think it will remain where I put it. I need to just sit for a bit, if you don’t mind.”
His condition was appalling, which left her suspecting he was very fortunate to still be breathing. She didn’t think the king had left spells below to torment him, but obviously just being locked in that terrible place for so long had been enough to leave him half dead. She wasn’t fully herself, which left her options for how to help him a bit on the thin side, but until he could eat, she could at least give him clean hands.
She walked over to a stand bearing a pitcher and bowl, leaning on various things on her way there when dizziness overcame her. She brought back what she needed, then set everything on the floor and found a footstool to use for a perch. She ignored his protests and washed his bruised and bloodied hands for him. She hesitated, then shrugged and dried his hands with one of the king’s fine towels that would likely be fit only for the rubbish heap.
She set the towel and basin aside, then looked up at him. “Not much better, but at least you’ll be able to eat without gagging.”