Highland Dragon Warrior

by Isabel Cooper

  “Oh aye,” he said, a bit meeker now. “And what part of the process will that be?”

  “The end of this experiment, I should hope,” she said. “Ash is the devil itself to distill, you might be interested to know, and all the worse when I’m working with dried leaves rather than fresh ones.”

  “Don’t you need holly? Or yew?”

  “I might, in time. Saturn is tricky. Best to restore the solar forces first, if I can, and then proceed from there as needed.” She dared a glance back over one shoulder. “Would you like me to draw up a plan for your perusal, my lord? I can, though it may well change dramatically. I’m very much in unknown waters here, as I believe I mentioned at the first.”

  “No,” he said and cleared his throat. “Won’t be necessary. I just…” He glanced down at his hands. One was a fist with something in it. Cathal stuffed whatever it was into the pouch at his belt. “I wished to know. Not unreasonable, is it?”

  “Wishes have very little to do with reason,” Sophia said sharply, turning back to the apparatus. Then, thinking better of herself, she added, “But it’s a compassionate thing to fear for your friend, and I’ve no objection to telling you. I’d have answered your questions at dinner just as well, if you’d asked them then.”

  “I hadn’t thought to ask before,” he admitted.

  “And now you have,” she said. Had she been able to face Cathal for any length of time, she’d have given him a quizzical look. “I won’t pry…” She of all people could understand the desire for knowledge, and he’d forgiven her own trespasses, or however the Christian prayer had it. “And perhaps I should have told you to begin with, but it’s not safe just to walk in without notice.”

  “No?”

  “I meditate before I start each phase of an experiment. If my mind’s impure or my concentration insufficient”—she gestured outward—“then the process may fail. All beginnings require clarity, particularly in a matter that’s spiritual in itself. Fergus’s cure, if it exists, will involve more than boiled herbs. I must make some contact with greater forces.”

  “What sort of contact?”

  Now Sophia could feel his gaze, startled and maybe a shade uneasy, on the back of her neck. He was a fine one to talk, considering his bloodline. She didn’t point that out, but merely shrugged. “Nothing as blatant as your saints claim. There exists a feeling, a state of mind… Connection is perhaps the simplest way to put it. If I can achieve that before I begin, my work is much more likely to succeed.”

  Cathal was silent. She could hear his breathing, low and regular. Despite the task before her, not to mention her exasperation, her whole body prickled in response to the sound.

  “There are also practical considerations,” she said, breaking the silence. “And those are more dangerous. I work with open flame here, you notice, and at times with volatile substances. I did, I believe, mention the occasional catastrophe. The timing is… There.”

  The substance in the beaker shivered into its final form, turning from orange to the golden-red of the sunrise, clear enough to see through, yet as motionless as the glass surrounding it. Losing track of all else, Sophia seized the tongs, grasped the beaker, and pulled it off the flame. Only then did she let out her breath.

  “We have a minute,” she said, conscious again of Cathal standing behind her. “It must cool slightly first…but only slightly.”

  She set the beaker on the table, put down the tongs, and held her right hand an inch from the glass, feeling the heat pressing against her palm.

  “What is that?” Cathal asked.

  “Powdered topaz, originally. The most difficult of the ingredients, as you might imagine, for it’s most reluctant to give up its form. Indeed, only with the proper state of mind and the right alignment of the planets will any of the stages work on it. It took years before I had either the money or the confidence to handle it at all.” She smiled, remembering how proud she’d been that first successful time, and then realized she was rambling. “Yet its virtue is most potent, and it will heal most merely physical ailments, when its power is applicable.”

  “Oh.” He sounded surprised by the flow of information, but also…amused or admiring. She couldn’t decide which—perhaps both. So many elements made up a human being, and perhaps there were even more in Cathal, blend as he was of human and not.

  The heat had abated. She moved her hand to rest against the beaker and found that she could leave it there for the count of ten seconds. “It’s ready.”

  Pouring the topaz into the rest of the mixture required steady, slow care, so she grasped the beaker with the tongs once more and took a long breath to keep her hands still. Smoothly she brought the glass vessel up over the golden goblet, and smoothly she turned it, letting the contents begin to pour out.

  Bright touched dark. Sophia heard a sound like a low bell. Then a tongue of golden fire sprang up from the goblet, as wide as the cup itself and half again as high. The top of it wavered just below her hand holding the beaker. She could feel the heat, just as she had earlier, but now it was greater, and far from comfortable. She pressed her lips together and went on.

  At the first appearance of the flame, she’d heard Cathal catch his breath. He was breathing again as Sophia kept still and tilted the beaker further toward the goblet, but his breaths were quicker. He might have stepped closer too, though he was holding still from all she could tell. She didn’t have the leisure to look at him.

  The purified topaz kept flowing into the rest of the mixture. Sophia watched it but couldn’t see how it was blending because the flame obscured the surface of the goblet. It grew and changed, shifting from deep, almost brassy gold to a clearer, paler shade, like midday light in spring. The heat increased too—and then the flame stretched upward, licking at her skin.

  It hurt. She yelped. Dignity had never been of much concern to her. She’d done most of her experiments alone, with none to impress and few to hear. She’d learned to hold herself still and cry out at the same time, and now her hands never moved, even as her voice ascended to a lark-like height and shaped a very unbirdlike “Yeow!”

  Boots moved on stone.

  She felt Cathal’s body, inches from her own, and in the same voice cried out, “No!”

  For a mercy, that stopped him in his tracks. Sophia clenched her free hand in the folds of her skirt, breathed twice through her nose, and finally said in a low but steady voice, “I can’t move yet.”

  “You’re hurt,” he said, though he made no further move toward her.

  “I’ll heal. It’s almost done.”

  Indeed it was. The beaker was almost empty, only a last few drops remaining. Sophia tilted the tongs once more and watched through blurry eyes as they fell in. Pain ran sharp and insistent from the side of her hand up through her arm; tears ran down her cheeks with it. She ran her tongue around her lips and tasted them, mingled with her own sweat.

  And then it was done, the beaker empty. Slowly, wanting to be fast and therefore deliberately taking her time, she pulled her hand away, out of the flame. Slowly she set both beaker and tongs down on the table. With her other arm, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and looked back at the goblet.

  The flames were dying down, now barely dancing along the rim. Inside, the substance had turned to red-gold, translucent and almost glowing.

  She breathed out a prayer in Hebrew: thanks and praise.

  “I don’t know precisely what effect it will have,” she said, turning to Cathal. He was standing rigid, a soldier on parade or a knight at vigil, staring at her. “But I am convinced it will do something. There are bandages in that trunk in the corner and also salve, if you would be so kind.”

  The base of her hand, from the tip of her little finger to the bracelet of tiny lines between palm and wrist, was bright red. Odds were it would blister, and it was a truly awkward place for a burn. Still, it could have been far worse, a
nd she had succeeded. Sophia leaned against the table and let herself grin.

  “That must hurt like the very devil,” said Cathal, coming back with the items she’d requested. He peered from her hand to her face and shook his head.

  Sophia laughed, giddy in the aftermath of both injury and success. “It’s pain. It exists. Then it doesn’t. On this scale, I can exist alongside it; it doesn’t consume me. Surely you’ve felt the same.”

  “Aye, I have,” he said, “but you’re… Nae, never mind. Hold out your hand, please.”

  She did, but couldn’t resist asking, “A woman? A mortal?”

  “And a civilian.”

  “Such heavy weights for me to bear.”

  The salve was cool and instantly soothing; she’d been making it for a long time. The sharp smell of barberry wafted to her nose, reminding Sophia of August days back home, the late-summer sun and the sounds of people passing outside the garden wall. She closed her eyes for a second, and then felt Cathal’s fingers stroking down her wrist past the end of the burn, far more vivid than memory, spreading warmth in their wake that was as pleasant as the flame had been painful.

  Before she thought about what she was doing, she leaned toward him, her body alive to his presence and, as if of its own accord, seeking more warmth and contact. Cathal’s hand on her wrist went still in response, and she heard him make a sound low in his throat, not quite a hum but not yet a growl.

  When he let go of her hand, she opened her eyes. Cathal hadn’t drawn back. He stood a few inches from her still, and she was staring at the hollow of his neck, where his collar parted to show pale skin. Sophia couldn’t make herself lift her eyes to his face. Her own cheeks were already starting to flame, both with embarrassment and with the desire that she could neither deny nor banish. She didn’t want to read rejection in his eyes, and God forbid she see kindness there.

  When he took her hand again, this time to wrap it in bandages, Sophia made herself stand very still and think about formulas. That didn’t work entirely, but it kept her from doing anything else foolish, even if she was far too aware of every brush of his skin against hers. As he knotted the bandage, she tried to think of a single dignified thing to say—and couldn’t.

  Then she realized that Cathal still held her hand, his fingers light around hers. He did step back as she watched, but only so that he could bow low over it, then brush his lips over her knuckles. It was only a second, but the feeling ran through Sophia like flame itself, taking the breath from her lungs.

  “I don’t ask that you injure yourself in my service,” he said, “but you have my deepest gratitude, lady.”

  The words were polite—more courtly, even, than she would have expected. His voice was rough, though, and his eyes blazed green into hers.

  Don’t assume, Sophia told herself. If you’re wrong, you’re embarrassed—and if you’re right, you’re in far over your head.

  She cleared her throat. “Be grateful once we’ve seen the results,” she said.

  Ten

  At the best of times, Loch Arach was a large place. Now the halls and stairs stretched themselves out, almost infinitely long, taunting Cathal with their distance. Given what he’d just seen, he knew the sense of Sophia’s request that her laboratory be far from anyone’s lodging. All the same, as he strode through the corridors, he wished for a minute that he’d denied it and quartered her in one of the rooms next to Fergus, explosions be damned.

  Sophia herself kept up better than Cathal would have thought. Potion covered, wrapped, and held firmly in both hands, she was only a foot or two behind every time he glanced back toward her. She didn’t complain or ask him to slow down either, though he did the first time he noticed that her speed came with a price. She was taking two or three steps to every one of his, and by the time they’d descended the staircase, she was showing it. Black curls were emerging from the sides of her wimple, her cheeks were flushed red-bronze, and her breasts rose and fell rapidly.

  Even hurrying, even with two layers of wool and some pretense at courtesy in the way of his view, Cathal noticed these things. The lust that had started in the laboratory, at the nearness of her body and the feel of her small hand in his, still sent its tendrils outward through his body. He could ignore them better when he was walking. When Sophia had leaned toward his touch, eyes closed and lips parted in relief, his body had come to full wakefulness after the winter’s sleep. With an urgent errand before him and the castle full of people around him, he was still half hard from looking at her, still conscious of every breath of hers that reached his ears.

  Triumph fed desire. He’d known that for years.

  Had he forgotten the feel of it? He didn’t remember the aftermath of battle ever being quite so heated, or quite so intoxicating. There had been joy, yes, and lust when the women were willing and comely, but the temptation of Cathal’s memories had never been quite as intense as what filled him on the way to Fergus’s chambers.

  Then again, he’d always been able to satisfy those urges quickly. The women he wanted had always been available. Since leaving youth for manhood, he’d taken care to ensure that. He’d been careful where he set his eyes and where he let his thoughts stray; he never stood too close or talked too long to a woman whose affections weren’t for sale in some way. Poets could talk all they wanted of courtly love, but pining after the moon was a silly modern notion. It would never last, and it, by God’s eyes, wasn’t for Cathal.

  Now, perhaps, life had forced him into the situation he’d tried to avoid. That wouldn’t be new. At least there were advantages to this particular unlooked-for complication. If Sophia wasn’t for him, still she was pleasant to look at, and temptation was as enjoyable as satisfaction from time to time. If the potion worked, she would be gone before desire became torment.

  In his right mind, Cathal told himself, he would find that an unmixed blessing.

  Less mixed, at any rate. He wasn’t a saint or even a monk, had never had any aspirations along that line, and a strictly practical life would have been boring.

  He grabbed the reins of his thoughts and pulled them away from his groin just before he and Sophia reached the doorway to Fergus’s room.

  Either a helpful friend or her own exhaustion had sent Sithaeg elsewhere. The girl beside Fergus was Janet, one of the kitchen wenches. She gave Cathal and Sophia a startled look but spoke no word, only rose, bowed, and got out of the way.

  “You should likely leave,” Sophia said with an apologetic smile, “just in case.”

  Neither did Janet ask in case of what? If she was a smart girl, she probably didn’t want to know. With another bow, she was out the door before Sophia and Cathal made it to the side of Fergus’s bed.

  Duty, weariness, and his own aversion to watching futility had kept Cathal from visiting more than once in the last few days, and that had only been a swift look in. He’d felt guilty about that. Now he thought it had been wise. In the aftermath of Sophia’s cool annoyance, not to mention the proof of how dangerous her task could be, he saw that Valerius’s note had clouded his judgment, as the sorcerer might have intended. Had Cathal spent more time watching his friend’s decline, cloud might have become full eclipse.

  In the afternoon light, even dimmed and scattered by the windows, he could see through Fergus’s skin. The shapes of muscle and tendon in his hands were milky and vague; his bones were more solid, like tiny chips of pearl caught in ice. The flesh of his arms was more translucent yet.

  Fergus’s face was a skull, only faintly veiled, and his closed eyes were pools of milky water.

  Cathal swore in Gaelic. Beside him he heard Sophia gasp, as she’d done the night she’d first seen Fergus, but her voice was less startled and more appalled when she spoke. “God’s wounds!”

  “You don’t believe in those,” Cathal said, unsure whether it was joke or accusation, only reaching for anything that wasn’t the man before hi
m.

  “Belief has nothing to do with profanity,” she replied, and Cathal could hear her controlling her voice, going from ragged to clipped with every word. “I’ll need you to hold him up, since I sent the maid away.”

  “Aye,” Cathal said and knelt. The floor was hard and cold on his knees. He welcomed the solidity, even the pain; he cursed the contrast between it and the body he took hold of. Putting an arm around Fergus’s back was still possible, but the flesh itself had a wispy feel, and while Cathal’s hand didn’t go through his old friend’s shoulder, it felt as if it might at any moment.

  Only the barest movement, the faintest sound, indicated that Fergus still breathed.

  Have you reconsidered yet?

  His whole body clenched, chest and throat and guts, a feeling he knew well from the heart of battle.

  Fighting would do no good now. He wished, bitterly, that the situation were otherwise, that this was a problem he could solve with fist in face, sword in chest, teeth in throat. Remembering where he was, keeping his hands and arms gentle was all he could manage.

  Physically, propping Fergus’s head up was no effort at all. Sophia could have managed it. A child might have been equal to the task. For Cathal, it was a joke. He had only to kneel, and wait, and keep still. Unable to look at Fergus’s face for very long, he watched Sophia instead. Also kneeling, across the bed from him, she unwrapped the potion with deliberate care.

  This was not the time or place to get slipshod. Haste wouldn’t help anyone.

  Telling himself these things helped a little. Cathal took a slow breath in and let it out, on impulse letting it power a series of quick words in Latin, phrases that he’d learned in youth and used rarely. The world shifted around him: magic overlay familiar objects in washes of color and light. Magic was no weapon of his and didn’t come easily to his hand, but he knew enough to let it provide warning in case the potion flamed up again, or exploded, or attracted unwelcome attention. Glancing at Sophia’s bandaged hand, he wished he’d thought to do as much earlier.