Highland Dragon Warrior

by Isabel Cooper

  “One of them stabbed you, yes?” Sophia asked. “You mentioned that, I believe, and your shoulder—”

  “Aye. Had it been only a man and a knife, I’d have been back in battle in two days, mayhap a week.” He rolled his shoulder back and forth, remembering. “And it was cold, the knife. Not like winter. Like…deep places, or darkness.”

  Without words, he stopped.

  “Darkness, yes,” said Sophia. She looked away for a moment, and a shiver passed through her body. “There wasn’t much life to them, nor to anything else in that dream.”

  In the pause between words, slightly too long, and the way her hands now clasped each other, Cathal saw the effort her calm words took, and the work behind each smile. He wished he’d had the right to put an arm around her, or even to take her hands in his. Even without the right, he wished Alice weren’t watching, so that he might have done it regardless.

  He didn’t. She was. The world turned on facts, not desire.

  Facts, then, were where he turned, continuing the story. “Two of my men did touch the shades. Skin to skin. There comes a time for fists even in battle, more than once in a while. Baithin’s fist looked as your leg does, after. Tralin’s neck was worse. Darker.”

  “Did it heal?” Alice asked.

  “In time. He’ll bear the scar the rest of his days.” He looked down at Sophia’s leg again, sternly locking away any reaction he might have had as a man, ignoring the shapely outline and the golden-brown color and peering with an attempt at detachment at the wound the shade had left. “I said it wasn’t like winter, their cold, but the marks it leaves are.”

  “I’ve heard of that a little,” said Sophia, leaning forward to investigate, “though I’ve never seen it before…but then, I never would have. Even London was warmer than here.”

  “By some measure. This’ll be unpleasant. I’m sorry,” said Cathal, and he brushed a thumb over the red-and-purple skin. Muscles tensed beneath his hand, and Sophia hissed. “That’s good,” he said, “even if you don’t believe me.”

  “No,” said Sophia, visibly making herself relax. “I do. I’ve read, you know, that if it hurts, that means I can still feel, yes? That the…injury…isn’t too deep?”

  “Aye. It hadn’t looked that bad, but it’s best to be sure.”

  “I had boots on, in the dream,” she said, her face taking on the look of contemplation that Cathal was coming to know well. “It’s a strange thing to think that what I was wearing in the dream could have spared me pain in the waking world.”

  “These things were in the dream, and they caused you pain in the waking world,” Alice pointed out.

  “Oh, yes. But they weren’t human, and I had assumed that. But then, not all my injuries came from them, did they?” Sophia turned her injured palm upward, her eyes lighting up in a way that Cathal would never have thought to see on anyone contemplating scratches on her own body. “So the question is, is it not, whether the shades were only parts of the dream, or different beings in it, as I was? And why the dream could hurt me, and where it came from.”

  “Valerius. I’ve no proof, no,” Cathal said when Sophia started to object. “But who else would want to, who could manage it?”

  “That’s certainly most likely. I’d suppose that my first attempt to cure Fergus established a connection between the two of us. The shades are another strong argument in that direction, unless they’re more common than I think.” She gave him a small smile. “I’ve an idea who my enemy is. Isn’t that the first step in winning a war?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Cathal released her leg and stood up. “He doesn’t have to be your enemy,” he said. His heart ached with every word he spoke and with each one he knew would follow, ached with regret for Fergus and thwarted vengeance, but Sophia had struck her bargain without knowing she’d be making herself a target thereby. Honor, even his battered version of it, demanded he rethink the terms now. “You can go home. I’ll give you the scales. You’ve done all I could ask of you.”

  Color flooded Sophia’s face. “By God, sir…” A look between him and Alice, and she bit her lip, though she still stared up at him with blazing eyes. “I know you mean it kindly, but do you think I’d leave a man with his soul in the grasp of…of that creature? Especially after what I’ve seen? I may not go to war, but I try to have courage, and honor too, and if I have skills that can save a life or a spirit, I know my duty is to use them. What would I be if I turned and ran now?”

  “Alive,” said Cathal. He wanted to kiss her again, to pull her close and know that bold spirit more fully. He wanted to shake her and tell her to be sensible and leave now. As with comfort, he had no right to do either, and he couldn’t deny her argument.

  “Yes, but for what kind of life?”

  “Not necessarily even that,” Alice put in, her own voice dry and detached. “Though it’s a good piece of oratory, Sophia, very inspirational. But if this wizard has a tie to you, why would he find it harder to come at your mind in France than he would here?”

  “The sea might be a barrier,” Cathal said.

  For that piece of speculation, he received an interested look from Sophia and a flat one from Alice. “But it might not,” she said, “and then we’d be well away from anyone who knows the man or his methods. Not a good idea. We’d also have to find our way down out of the mountains, and the roads are still half frozen.”

  “I could carry you both. Easily.”

  “Wonderful. Then, assuming we didn’t fall off a mile in the air, we’d just have to find a ship that could take us across the channel and hope it didn’t sink. Or you could take us personally and leave everyone here undefended and leaderless for a few days.” Alice shook her head. “Anything could be fatal. I hate to say it, but so far, all Valerius has done is give her bad dreams and a few minor injuries. If that doesn’t get worse, it’s better than risking travel, and if it does, we don’t want to be on the road when it happens.”

  “And it doesn’t matter, regardless,” Sophia said, and then added more gently, “unless you want to go, Alice. You can.”

  “No, nor do I want to. Everything you said applies to me, you know…unless you mean to suggest I can’t be of any help.” Alice made a face at Sophia, affectionate and determined at the same time. “And this place is still more interesting than home.”

  “Be certain,” Cathal said, bending forward. “You might not have boots in the next dream. You might not get away in time.”

  Sophia shuddered, and for a moment Cathal hated himself, but then her eyes cleared and she held up a hand. “Wait. I did have boots. Why would he let me…unless he only intended a warning…but… And then he clearly can’t… Not all of it…and—”

  “Finish a sentence, pray,” said Alice. “Before I pour a basin over your head to bring your senses back.”

  The face Sophia made at her was practiced but also absent, halfhearted at best. “He can’t control all of the dream. I think the shades are separate, his creatures but still themselves, and I think that he had to pull me there, through a place that isn’t entirely his. And I was shaping things in the end. Not very well, but I managed it.”

  “That’s a relief. Obvious, since you’re here, but we’ll take any good news just now,” said Alice.

  “No, but this could be an advantage,” Sophia said, leaning forward. “I mentioned connections. If the dream is his sending, he must put something of himself into it…and if I can shape it, then that much of him is in my power, or it could be.”

  “Like a fight,” said Cathal, trying both to understand and to ignore the way Sophia’s breasts pressed against her gown in her new position. The former helped with the latter, though not as much as would have been genteel or knightly. “Hard to strike without getting in the other fellow’s range.”

  Sophia nodded slowly, chewing on her lip some more as she thought the metaphor through. “Yes. And if I can, oh,
grab his arm and pull him even more forward, then he’s in my power. I can’t fight him directly with magic, any more than I could fight you with a sword…but it’s possible that I could make him fight himself.”

  Cathal actually smiled. “How can we better the odds?”

  “Well, a part of him would be best. A part can change the whole,” she recited, almost singsong, “and a likeness can change what it’s like. If you’d saved the arm, we’d probably be doing very well,” she added with a wry smile of her own.

  “I’ll bear that in mind for the next time.”

  “It’s always better to prepare. A lock of hair, a drop of blood, a true name, all of those have great power…which is, I’d imagine, one of the reasons he goes by that ridiculous alias. To a lesser extent, anything you can find out about him might be an aid. And I’ll contemplate the problem.” She got to her feet. If the ankle gave her any trouble, Cathal didn’t see it. “The world is the divine cloaked in matter. Dreams, which have only will and no matter, should be a midpoint. If I can bring my will into greater harmony… Well, I shall have to see.”

  “See right,” said Alice, gripping her friend’s shoulder, “and study hard. I don’t think this will be the last dream he sends.”

  Sixteen

  For the next few nights, Sophia slept without trouble. She was nervous enough the first night to consider drinking wine before bed, but decided that she’d need unclouded judgment if Valerius did send another nightmare, and spent a good long time staring into the darkness, making herself breathe regularly in and out, before she relaxed enough to doze off.

  Her undisturbed nights after that were not entirely reassuring. Whether Valerius needed to gather strength again or could only send the dreams when the stars were right, every night that progressed without a nightmare was one closer to the next occurrence. Sophia had been granted time to prepare. Knowing that weighed on her, keeping her always conscious that she should be working, and that she could be doing more.

  Then there came an afternoon when she couldn’t.

  The laboratory was full of work. Near the window, the burned remains of the holly, blended with powdered jet and the skin of a snake, sat in a clear glass beaker and caught what sunlight the winter day was able to provide. A little solar energy to go with the saturnine would harm nothing, Sophia had thought, and it was almost always essential to the fermentation phase.

  Where more blatantly solar forces were concerned, she’d nursed a small amount of her precious stock of cloves through the calcination process once more, had transferred it to a blue glass bowl and carefully added water to start the dissolution phase. The topaz was powdered and ready for calcination itself, but there would be several hours before the planets aligned properly for that, or for Sophia to begin any of the other processes that she could manage just then.

  As she always did, and as she had done more often in the days since the first dream, Sophia had turned from action to contemplation, seeking both to strengthen her own will and to bring it into harmony with that of the Most High. Barred by her age, sex, and unmarried state from studying the Sefer Bahir, the book that explained greater secrets of the universe, she’d nonetheless picked up bits from books and teachers, as birds picked up crumbs in the street. She bent her mind to understanding what she could and prayed in all ways she felt might be acceptable.

  At times, as she shaped her lips around the words, she felt her will almost like a hand, capable of reaching out, of grasping or of striking, if she only knew what to do with it. At other times she felt that her mind opened and she saw a light that was only light because she could think of no other word for it, a light that was in reality everything.

  Such moments were few. They were brief. They almost always left her weary, as though she’d been running uphill or lifting heavy loads rather than just standing and focusing on words. Pushing herself too far in contemplation, as with anything else, could be disastrous. She knew that from both teaching and instinct.

  Besides, there were hours for contemplation too, and once she’d added water to the topaz, the timing would be wrong.

  One wanted to become part of the right harmony, after all. She’d heard a few stories about what could happen otherwise. Opening those doors under the wrong circumstances could let in beings Sophia hoped never to encounter.

  So she found herself standing in a room where she could do nothing, with the afternoon ahead of her, and feeling more alert and restless than she would have expected. It might have been the approaching spring—it was hard to tell with the snow, but the days were getting longer, the air a shade less frigid.

  At home, the snow would have melted weeks before. By now, at least the first tightly furled crocuses would have come up. There might be grass and the earliest buds on the rosebushes and in the trees. Mother would sit outside on the first day of real sun and risk scandal by uncovering her hair. I’m an old woman, she said, and God made the spring breeze. He’ll understand.

  Memory hit Sophia in the pit of her stomach.

  It was spring, and the remembrance of other springs. It was Alice saying, Someone should tell your parents. It was Passover approaching. She’d accommodate, if she was still here, doing what she could and trusting that her work would justify her failures in the end, but she didn’t want to adjust, to make do or leave out. She wanted the preparation, her father’s voice at the table, all the small rituals that marked the greater one, that marked off the passage of time and the smooth turning of the world.

  Alice had always liked watching the city celebrate Lent around them, observing the same way she listened to songs out here: This is not mine, but that doesn’t matter. The celebrations in the street had always made Sophia feel a touch left out, but back home that had been a minor, momentary pang. She’d had her family, her friends, her own part of the world.

  Here, there were just her and Alice, and a good fifty people who, kind as they were, might turn much less so if they knew precisely what kind of women lived under their roof. But then again, the Scots weren’t necessarily the English.

  Everything was cold here, and alien.

  Sophia looked down at her skirt and found her fists clenched in the black wool. Foolishness, she told herself, sentimental foolishness, and you’re too old for that. She’d left home knowing that her absence was apt to be long, and that she was going among strangers. Her mother had wept, and her father had cleared his throat more than necessary, but every child leaves eventually. She might have married and moved to Holland, as one girl they’d known had done. As it was, if she didn’t die, she’d at least return in a year or so.

  Uncurling her fingers, she told herself that Cathal knew her and was still kind. (More than kind, and that memory wisped across her body with a tingling pleasure, but that was not the point.) His people had been kind too, and friendly enough, given that she was still clumsy with the language, and perhaps inclined to accept anyone Edward of England had wronged. She didn’t know. She didn’t have to find out.

  She was here with a task, and she was here to learn. Once those goals were complete, she’d go home, and Loch Arach’s inhabitants could think as they wished. Standing about moping wouldn’t help.

  Out of both habit and caution, Sophia made a last inspection of her vessels, made sure that progress was steady and that neither instability nor contamination was a danger. Then she descended the staircase, walking briskly and not giving herself time to think very much.

  The hall was crowded as always: benches pushed back against the walls between meals, servants cleaning or changing tapers or simply going hither and yon on various errands, and a few people with more leisure sitting by the fire. Sophia spotted Alice’s blond curls among the last crowd. She sat listening to an old man play the harp. The tune was one that Sophia recognized by now, and she found, as she heard Alice’s voice mingle with both the old man’s and the sound of the harp itself, that she could even pick out a few of t
he words: eat and I, know, and lady.

  She didn’t know enough to follow the song, not as quickly as they were singing it, and she had no taste just then for standing by and watching, but she smiled as she passed by, glad to see the intent look on Alice’s face. At least her friend was gaining something from the journey, other than freezing and worrying about Sophia; she’d always claimed to, but it was good to see impartial evidence.

  Out of the great hall, Sophia descended into the kitchen, welcoming the heat that almost immediately surrounded her. When her experiments demanded flame, the tower was warm enough, but otherwise it became quite chilly—the small hearth that could fit into the room didn’t quite make up for the height of the place and the age—and Sophia stretched out her hands in pleasure.

  “Lady,” said Matain, the dark-haired page she’d slightly met on her first morning in the castle. He came toward her quickly, smiling. He was a helpful one, or well trained, or just eager for a change in routine. He also might have been glad for an excuse to stop turning the spit—there was sweat running down his face. “Are you hungry?”

  It was one of the sentences she knew, but he still spoke slowly and as clearly as he could, given the noise of the kitchen: a considerate lad.

  “If you have anything,” Sophia said, and for a moment she could tell herself that it was because she didn’t want to waste his time, and that mayhap a good meal would put her in a better mood, even if she felt not at all like eating just then.

  “Half a meat pie,” he said. “From dinner. But—”

  His hesitation told her what she’d already guessed would happen: a few of the servants, at least, had realized that she ate no flesh. “No, that will be good,” said Sophia.