Highland Dragon Warrior

by Isabel Cooper

  The shades around her were dawn-pink, he noticed, but the goblet was more dramatic by far. It, or the substance inside it, or both, glowed as if Sophia held the sun itself in her hand. When she set it to Fergus’s mouth, gentle as she was, Cathal went absolutely still, every muscle tense.

  Enough mind, or perhaps just reflex, remained that Fergus opened his mouth at the touch of the metal. Sophia tipped the goblet forward, as slowly as she’d done everything since they’d entered the room, and the potion flowed bit by bit down Fergus’s throat. His flesh, sparse and translucent as it was, hid the glowing liquid from view, and for a short time there was no sign that anything had happened at all.

  Sophia righted the goblet and stood, her face set in the blank expression of one determined not to let disappointment show.

  Beneath Cathal’s hand, Fergus’s shoulder felt suddenly warmer than it had a moment before. Even as he flexed his fingers, testing whether the sensation was real or his own imagining, the heat grew. A glow, subtler than the potion’s, spread out from Fergus’s throat, banishing the pallor of his skin and turning his flesh substantial where the light touched.

  Not daring to speak, Cathal felt an incredulous smile widen across his face, moving, it felt, with the shining effects of the potion. He heard the sound of a single harp string, faint at first and then growing. The glow reached Fergus’s chin and his shoulders, then passed upward over his cheeks and outward to his arms.

  In an instant, it stilled. The sound cut off. A wind from nowhere brought a chill and the smell of grave dust, and the light of the potion went out.

  Fergus’s eyes opened, a washed-out version of the merry brown ones Cathal had known: washed-out and now wide with terror and urgency. “Hhhh…” His voice came dusty from a disused throat.

  Cathal crossed himself. Sophia stood with her hands at her sides, struck dumb and motionless. Fergus’s throat worked, his lips writhed, and finally he managed speech.

  “He. Wizard. He has me. In his grasp. Grip is…tight.” Those pale eyes found Cathal’s face and focused. “Captain.”

  “I’m here,” Cathal said, and his hand tightened. The flesh beneath it was still more solid than it had been, but what comfort was that next to the horror in his friend’s expression? “We’re…”

  We’re what? He could in truth promise nothing—no rescue, no salvation, not even a quick death, for Cathal knew not what happened to the soul of a man killed under such a spell, and what he imagined was all hideous. He could but promise effort, and what earthly good was that?

  And so he would lie. He’d done that before. You’ll be fine, lad. We turned the bastards. We’re safe. We won. The phrases came to his lips more easily than the paternoster. This time, the words would just be more complicated and not entirely false. They wouldn’t give up; they were working on the problem. All he had to do was leave out a few details.

  Cathal opened his mouth and saw that there was no need to say anything. Fergus’s eyes were closed again, and his jaw hung limp. He still breathed, and he still had the measure of solidity that the potion had given him back, but no more. His hands were yet half fog, his closed eyes pallid wisps in an otherwise solid face, and the spirit that had briefly animated him had vanished once again.

  Now Cathal knew where it had gone or—he feared, more accurately—where it had been dragged.

  Eleven

  In the aftermath, Sophia sagged against the stone wall. The cup hung empty from one hand, droplets of the potion falling onto the floor by her feet. It was far heavier than it had been. Her very bones were heavier than they’d been a few minutes ago, and her head was a boulder, far too large for the neck that was supposed to support it. Sophia let it drop forward and let her eyes drift shut.

  She’d take up her duties again in a moment. Once she regained…she couldn’t say what. Breath? Strength? Life itself, or at least vital energy? She just needed a minute to summon any of those things, and then she knew she’d make herself go on. She’d need to think; Cathal was waiting for an explanation.

  No, he wasn’t.

  His hand clasped her shoulder: a friendly touch, warm and stabilizing, and the sensuality that it sent curling through her, even in her depression, was secondary to the feeling of support. “It was well done,” he said, quiet but fierce, pausing before each word so that it landed in her weary ears and sank in. “It would have worked. It did, some.”

  She let herself rest a moment against his hand; she clung to his words. “It did,” she said. Fergus’s flesh had changed—was changed yet, for when she opened her eyes, he looked even better than the man she’d first seen, and nothing like the half-wraith that had met her eyes on entering the room.

  And he’d come back. Horrifying as he’d been in his desperation—his desiccation—he’d been able to inhabit his body again for those few moments.

  She gathered knowledge like a cloak around her.

  No experiment fails if it tells you why it fails. That had been Roger the Mad, her second teacher, glaring at her across the ruins of an alembic and preparing an avalanche of questions. Her father, a fine merchant and passable poet but no great scholar, had put it more simply: Walking is learning not to fall.

  “So,” she said and stepped forward into the room, raising a finger. “The flaw was not in the potion itself, yes? At least there was no flaw that I saw, nor you? The flaw, if we can call it such, was interference.”

  Not really addressing Cathal, she turned toward him nonetheless. He’d hooked his thumbs into his belt and was watching her, his brow furrowed but a hint of a smile on his lips. “Aye,” he said slowly.

  “Or”—she raised her hand again—“conversely, the flaw was incomplete knowledge of the situation. Restoring the balance of a man’s elements can heal his body and his soul both, but only if both are intact. Had ‘Valerius’ severed your friend’s leg, for instance, no potion nor salve could grow him a new one. None that I know of, at least. Alchemy cannot turn a man into a lizard. Um, begging your pardon,” she added, abruptly remembering her audience and what he was.

  “No need,” he said, still smiling. “There’s no alchemy in that, lass.”

  “Can…” For a second she thought to ask if he did resemble a lizard in that respect, and how injury in dragon form affected his human shape, but this was no abstract lecture. “No. Forgive me. So. In like manner, this sorcerer has captured a portion of Fergus’s soul—his astral, or spiritual form—and keeps hold of it. I’m yet uncertain, and perhaps I cannot be certain, whether the wizard uses this aspect to wound the physical body or whether the absence of that portion of the animating spirit innately causes the body to become less…physical. There may be an element of compensation, or an attempt at such. Regardless.”

  “Regardless?”

  Sophia nodded. “The exact mechanism is immaterial. Fascinating, yes—in a horrible way, of course—but the problem for us, and for Fergus, remains the same whether the deterioration is innate or willed. I cannot replace what’s gone…” She remembered a few passages she’d read, and grimaced. “Not in any sense but those which are abominable, and nothing that would suit your goals besides. You want your friend alive, not…”

  “Not,” he agreed, putting into that word all that she was searching for a way to explain. He’d stopped smiling. “What now?”

  “I’m not yet certain.” She walked back to take a closer look at Fergus’s body before she spoke again, and the sight did confirm her hopes. “Let us then discuss what we do know. First, the potion I made is capable of halting and to some degree reversing the physical transformation. I don’t know how long that will last; it would be well for me to make additional supplies. Second, Fergus’s soul is still in the world. Valerius’s prisoner.”

  “A hostage,” Cathal muttered, shaking his head. “He’s demanding ransom, the whoreson… Sorry.”

  She flicked away offense and apology both with a wave of her
hand. “Quite probably. That implies, though it doesn’t guarantee, that Valerius won’t try to harm or destroy the spirit.”

  “Could he?”

  “It’s implied, in places. I know not what that would mean, or how it would be done, but…it is perhaps possible. I—” Sophia caught herself mid-sentence, before she could digress into lore and theology. Fergus lay behind her on the bed, breathing steadily and shallowly, a young man with at least a mother living and a friend in front of her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching a hand out toward Cathal and then letting it fall to her side. “I…have a way of running through knowledge when I try to puzzle out a problem. I meant no disrespect.”

  “No,” he said. “I want to hear truth without silk over it, and Fergus…he was fond of a puzzle. Is.” He shook his head again quickly, and the smile returned to his face, though now Sophia saw the effort that it cost him. “Besides, I like to hear you talk. You sound as though you should be in front of students at a university—”

  “They’d not even let me through the doors,” she said, but pleasure at the compliment bent her head.

  “Fools. You’re more useful, at that. Perhaps you sound like a general instead, with a map and a table of sand.”

  Sophia laughed. “Fighting ignorance? I like that. Fighting Valerius in this case…and I might wish for better scouts than my memory or better troops than my hands, but I suppose most commanders think so of their forces, yes?”

  “Aye,” he said, and silence fell between them for a long, taut minute. It was almost a disappointment when he spoke again, though his voice was, as always, low and rich and pleasing to the ear. “We’re to get Fergus’s spirit back, then?”

  “Yes. And keep his body in a condition to receive it until we do. We can… That’s part of the good news. The other part is that, well, souls do differ from bodies in some ways. I don’t think I could reattach a leg, not if enough time had gone by, but from what I’ve seen today, I believe that Fergus’s spirit can…reinhabit his body. Once we get it back, that is.”

  “Killing Valerius would have pleased me as it was,” Cathal said. “It would bring me much more joy now. But I’ll need to find him first. Or Moiread will,” he corrected himself, and had the self-control not to sigh or scowl.

  “Perhaps. But there might be other ways. How much do you know about magic?”

  “Some. Not so much as my sister or my father. Not so much as you, I’d wager.”

  Sophia shook her head. “Practically…well, it’s hard to tell. Alchemy, if it is magic, is of a very specific sort, and I’ve not practiced any other kind, nor read very much. There are a few general principles, though, and one of them is that of linkage.”

  “What happens on one side of a connection hits the other, even at a distance, aye. Do you mean Valerius is using that, or that we can, or both?”

  “Possibly the last,” Sophia said, “and hopefully the second.” Channels opened before her, and encouraged by Cathal’s praise, she let her mind race down them. “Alchemy is, in many respects, the art of translating the mind—or the spirit—into matter, of using physical substances as catalysts for the expression of both human and divine will. It should in theory—and does in practice, although the cases are more minor—work in the opposite direction.”

  “Heal Fergus’s body, and we make his spirit stronger?”

  “It’s my hope, yes. That in itself would not, I think, solve the problem, or Valerius wouldn’t have been able to cast his spell in the first place. But it is, maybe, possible that if we strengthen or otherwise empower the body—perhaps in a manner with more of a spiritual connection than that which I tried earlier—or if I find a different manner to connect it to the other planes of existence, a less obvious one, Fergus might be able to extract himself more easily and quite possibly to escape for longer periods of time and tell us more when he does.”

  Cathal started, torn between hope and horror. “God’s teeth, I’d not even thought… He knows. He knows at least a bit of what’s happened to him. What goes on happening.” He rubbed his mouth. “Where is he, do you think? And how much of this world does he still see?”

  “I don’t know,” Sophia said, fighting back her own revulsion at the thought. The possibilities—from those she’d vaguely heard about to those she could only imagine—curdled at the back of her mind. “I believe that a spirit so abducted becomes in some way a part of its captor. I think…I hope…that my source on that was only referring to how the…the forces of the universe might act on it, and not to the spirit’s experience itself.”

  “I see,” Cathal said heavily.

  She wished for better news to give him and could only find plans—and more objections. “As for killing Valerius, that might work, but it may only make the situation worse. Fergus said that the wizard has him in his grasp, and a dying man may break what he clutches.”

  “Or take it with him.”

  “Or that, yes. I would like to think otherwise, that there’s some provision at that final extremity—the world would seem so unjust, if a bad man could take a good one away even from the eternal—but I know nothing in that regard. I would ask your sister or your father, in your shoes, though I know you must have done so already.”

  “Yes,” Cathal said, “but now I’ve more to tell them. They may see a shape now where there were only stars before.”

  Liking the metaphor, she smiled. “Indeed. And I, for my part, shall see what my notes and experiments can bring forth. Practically”—she raised a hand—“and I swear this is no ruse, a stronger catalyst may even be able to improve the potion I just tried. Dragon scales, for instance.”

  “That could be.” Cathal nodded slowly, while Sophia watched his expression for suspicion or offense. She saw none. That didn’t mean none existed, but she didn’t think Cathal would bother to conceal either, not from her, and so she relaxed a little. “Would you need them now?”

  “No, nor yet tomorrow… I’ll need to work out the rest of it. Adding a new substance, especially one as powerful as I believe this to be, requires a very careful balance.”

  “Explosions again?” he asked with a quick grin that lightened the air in the room.

  “Quite possibly,” she said, teased into mirth for a second and then subsiding, “or a substance whose effects are more bane than balm, at least as far as you and Fergus are concerned. I doubt either of you would wish him to…grow scales himself, perhaps, or start breathing fire. If you do that.”

  “I can,” said Cathal, “and I wouldn’t wish that, no.” He stepped toward her, stopped himself after that one movement, but held her still as firmly with his gaze and the solemn question on his face as he could have done with his hands. “Do you truly think this can succeed, madam? Knowing what we know now?”

  Sophia considered it: turned the question over to look at its other sides, prodded the soft spots of her own doubts and fears, and finally nodded. “I told you before that I make no promises, and I hold to that. But I’m not a woman for blind hope. Valerius has your friend in his grasp, yes…but men and kingdoms have slipped away before or broken free. We may yet find Fergus a way around the hold.”

  “Or make him strong enough to break some fingers?”

  Cathal’s smile was wolfish this time. In theory, it might have been frightening; in reality, Sophia found herself smiling back and felt a sympathetic heat in her chest. “Or that,” she agreed.

  Twelve

  More messages; more time on the roof of the tower, talking to spirits of the air; and little enough in reply. Douglas spoke of waiting and intrigue, and expressed regret but couldn’t help. Moiread didn’t write at all. Cathal could only hope that was carelessness on her part, not inability.

  Some of the men have heard tales of an English necromancer. I’ll find what more I can, said the letter from Artair, but Cathal didn’t expect very much, nor a quick arrival. His father was deali
ng in the fates of lords and nations, not of one man, and even his time was limited.

  A letter to Agnes got a response as well, though she was busy with her own home and affairs. All the same, she wrote, I am loath to think of a loyal retainer like Fergus suffering such a fate, or of this man having the presumption to dictate to you. Souls and their capture are unfamiliar to me, but I shall look to the library here and to my contacts elsewhere. It does sound, she added, as though your alchemist has the right idea of it.

  Even as Cathal read to the end of the letter, he kept looking back to those two words, your alchemist, and glaring at the paper. He couldn’t have said why, save that he could hear Agnes’s voice as it had been in their childhood when she would frequently imply that he, if he made an effort, might not be completely and hopelessly stupid. Over the years, she’d stopped doing so maliciously, just as Cathal had stopped pushing her into the horse trough when she was wearing her best gown, but the echoes still lingered.

  She has a name, he thought, and then, And you’re but five years older than me. Our sire doesn’t speak of mortals as pets, not often. Stop showing off.

  And yet he was certain she meant no harm.

  Family: they never quite stopped needling you, even by accident. It had been a while since Agnes’s affectations had bothered him—but then, Cathal knew, he’d grown touchy enough over the past few months. Doubtless it was only that.

  Yet, when Sophia asked him to show her the holly he’d mentioned, he felt a certain incipient smugness toward Agnes and a hope that whatever Sophia discovered would work on its own, that this human scholar was good enough to solve the problem herself, without any assistance from a condescending quasi-mortal sorceress. She didn’t have as many years as Agnes had, and she had not the bloodline of Cathal’s mother’s side, but all the same, he was beginning to suspect Sophia could hold her own in argument with any of them.