Given that she didn’t much fancy going back down the tree and facing the shadow-things, there was only one other way forward.
Sophia stared at the open space between her and the castle and thought of bridges. She pictured slabs of stone, wide enough for horses and carts to cross; sturdy arches; high railings. Other images came to mind too—rotted, gapped planks, dangling from a few strands of rope—and she tried to ignore them, but they wouldn’t go.
As she focused on the images, she felt herself push with her mind again, and once more was struck by how odd it was, and how little control she still felt she had. How did one learn to work limbs that had never existed before? How did the mind learn that such a sensation means grasp, and another means hit, and a third, elsewhere, means stand? What did that process feel like? Perhaps children forgot so quickly because the memories were so much work.
Logically, her mind couldn’t ache, and thinking couldn’t make her sweat, but Sophia’s forehead was wet by the time the first side of the bridge appeared, and a low, muscular-feeling pain was starting in her temples. Logic didn’t govern everything, particularly not here.
Slowly the bridge took shape. It was a patchwork beast. Sections were stone, others wood, a few like nothing more than solidified light, and the division was not always neat. Looking out across it, Sophia saw a patch near the start where a thin rope handhold supported an immense stone block. Her eyes practically crossed as she looked at it.
She thought it would hold. She hoped it would hold. She hoped that falling in a dream didn’t make one die upon hitting ground, or if it did, that Alice would wake her before that moment arrived. Her hands were sweating too now, and the stomach she didn’t properly have threatened to disgorge a dinner that she’d never eaten in this world.
The edge of the bridge was a few inches away from her, perhaps a foot below. Sophia wished she’d spent more time in trees when she was a girl and less in her books. Holding on with both hands, she let her body dangle from the branch, swung forward, and dropped.
It was stone, and it hurt. Her skirt rode up, letting her scrape skin off her legs from knee down to shin. The impact shuddered its way through her body. But the bridge held firm.
Keep going. You don’t know how long it’ll last.
Her legs weren’t broken. Sophia pushed herself up to her feet and began to make her way across. She went as quickly as she dared, but it still felt slow, particularly on the mismatched parts, putting one foot gingerly in front of the other like a child walking a rooftree.
She knew not to look down, and of course she wanted to, even more than she would have on a normal bridge. It helped not at all that the view straight ahead of her was itself disconcerting. The sky was like a festering wound, and near the edge, where the outlines of the trees and castle showed up against it, Sophia thought she saw movement or perhaps gaps. Not everything joined as it should have. It was no pleasant sight, but there was nowhere else to look, and she didn’t dare close her eyes.
When she set foot on the first translucent part of the bridge, she truly wanted to. The railing and the bridge itself didn’t quite feel real either. They bore her weight and guided her, but there was a softness about them, a sense that they weren’t entirely solid, and every fiber in Sophia’s being screamed that this was a bad idea. Abandoning her better judgment, she crossed that section with more haste than the others; she hadn’t thought that flimsy planks could be such a relief as she then found them.
As if in response, the bridge swayed beneath her weight.
No, Sophia thought at it, even as she grabbed the guide rope and whimpered. She kept walking, though. Stopping would give her too much time to think. It might also show the bridge—or the world, or Valerius—that she was afraid, and she thought perhaps that was a bad idea, as with dogs and horses. Although she was aware of every movement of every muscle, even though she cringed inwardly every time she put her foot down, expecting it to land on empty air, she kept going.
She began to think of the stone sections as islands, places of safety, although she knew logically that there was no reason for it. They weren’t real stone, nor did they have anything in the way of support keeping them up. Sophia tried not to think about that very much. If the stone bits felt safer, she would take safety from whatever corner it came. They certainly felt solid, and they didn’t move. That was enough to be thankful for.
Gradually the distance shrank, until it was a man’s height, then half that, then only a few more steps, and Sophia finally stepped onto solid ground. She wanted to collapse then, just as she’d wanted to run the last few feet, but she didn’t let herself do either. She could see nothing menacing around her, but that didn’t mean nothing was there.
Also, as good as solid ground was in comparison to the swaying bridge, the ground beneath her feet was even worse than it had been back in the forest: softer, wetter, more redolent of decay. Sophia didn’t want to get any closer to it than necessary, and her first few heaving breaths of relief quickly became much shallower and further apart.
Ugh.
Up close, the castle was huge and dark. Not only did nobody come out to meet Sophia—although she wasn’t certain she would have wanted that—but she couldn’t spy so much as a light in any of the windows. The great doors were closed, and the portcullis was down. If there’d been a drawbridge, she thought it would have been up.
Why wasn’t there a drawbridge? If Sophia had been making a castle in a dream world, she’d have put a moat around it. She’d have gone ahead and put in some sharks too, or mayhap vitriol instead of water. One couldn’t be too careful.
Instead, she could walk right up to the castle walls. That might have come down to arrogance, but it suggested more what Sophia had been starting to think: this was a place where Valerius had less control. The castle most likely mirrored some counterpart in the waking world—at least to a degree. The actual place probably was inhabited and guarded, and she doubted that the walls felt spongy to the touch.
UGH.
Wiping her hands on her skirt did little good. The doors felt just as awful, and they didn’t budge when Sophia tried to push them open. Reluctantly, she knocked on one, but received no response.
Standing back, she contemplated the building, thinking of it now not just as a physical object. Half through what few laws she’d observed of the world, and half through a feeling she couldn’t put into words, Sophia thought that the castle was an anchor—the inalterable center from which all alterations spread, mirror of and clue to the man behind the dream.
From Cathal’s first description, she’d known Valerius for a vain and petty man. Moiread’s information had only confirmed that much, but now Sophia thought of lines of descent and pacts forged in blood, strands of information knotted together into a fishing net. Valerius was not isolated, not even as much as another man might be. He had connections; there would be an opening, or—
—there.
Near the base of one wall, a brick had crumbled. Whether it had always been so and Sophia had only just noticed it or whether she’d worked her will on the castle just then, she didn’t know. Later it would make an interesting theoretical question. Just then, she knew what she needed to do. The brick was not an opening, but it might be what she needed.
Bending, for she still didn’t want to kneel, she plucked the pieces of brick one by one off the bare earth and held them in her cupped hands. Against her skin, they seemed almost to move, or to pulse with a faint and foul heartbeat.
Sophia gritted her teeth, closed her hands tightly around the stones, and woke herself up.
This time there was no disorientation. It was morning. Alice was sitting beside her, watching and frowning. Her face cleared as soon as Sophia opened her eyes, but not entirely. “Your hands are glowing,” she said, “and I don’t like the look of it.”
Indeed, a nimbus of dull light surrounded both Sophia’s hands. Any but a c
lose observer might not have noticed, but it was there, and the same red-gray as the sky in Valerius’s world. It was repulsive; it was satisfying.
“Bring me”—Sophia bit her lip, held her hands away from her that she might not touch anything with that sickly energy, and thought—“the branch I took the holly leaves from. Please. I think it might be helpful.”
Twenty-five
This time the potion was dark brown, with threads of black and gray swirling through it. The vessel was lead. To magical sight, the whole thing had a dark glow to it, an impression of being more solid than anything around it, and a nasty strand of red-gray that Cathal was relieved to see dull and muted by comparison. Standing at Fergus’s bedside, Sophia frowned down at him, then up at Cathal and Sithaeg, and her hands were tight on the cup’s sides.
“It’s the appropriate day and hour,” she said, not clearly speaking to anyone in the room but herself. “Yes, and the logic stands.”
Still she hesitated. Watching from the other side of the bed, Cathal saw her eyes dart up to his, then again to Sithaeg’s. Her mouth opened. “This…” she began, and then stopped.
From the past few months, Cathal recognized the impulse she felt in that moment. Sophia had already presented the facts to them, as best she could with their limited understanding. Saturn would confer strength and bind Fergus’s body more to the world of matter. The bit of Valerius’s will—or soul, or whatever had gone from dream to Sophia to holly branch—should give Fergus power over the wizard. With matters as they stood, the reverse shouldn’t be a worry. She couldn’t be certain.
Sophia had told those things to him and Sithaeg. Neither had objected, and Cathal didn’t think she had any new information. What she wanted now was to lay the case in front of them again and have them decide to go forward, or not, so that the blame wouldn’t fall entirely on her shoulders if the results were dire. She wanted what most men did from their leader or their lord: freedom from decision. Christ knew he’d longed for it often enough.
He was about to step forward and speak—Go ahead, lass—when Sophia shook her head. Her shoulders went back and up; her spine straightened. “This one should not explode,” she said, “even should it fail. But you might both wish to stand back, in case I’m in error.”
Instead, Cathal went to her side. Sithaeg’s presence would be chaperone enough, even were the work ahead of them insufficient; his greater physical strength was justification. The hand he put on Sophia’s shoulder had no such excuse, but he regretted it not at all. Beneath gown and kirtle, her muscles were taut as lute strings, and he could do nor say nothing just then to relax her, only hope that his presence and the warmth of his hand rendered the moment easier to bear.
He kept his other hand on the hilt of his sword, the blade half an inch out already. The wards should hold; the time wasn’t right for demons, but he’d take no chances.
Sithaeg retreated back to the wall, lips moving in quiet prayer as the beads of a rosary slipped through her fingers. Her face was gray even in the morning light, tense with hope and the refusal to hope.
There was more of Fergus now. The other, more mundane potions hadn’t brought him back, but they’d kept the gains that Sophia’s first mixture had given him. Sithaeg and a few maids had propped him up in bed, with cushions at his back and his hands folded in his lap, so it was easier for Sophia to set the vessel to his lips.
She went very slowly: almost a drop at a time at first, with a few seconds’ pause between each when she leaned back and watched every detail of Fergus’s face, the rhythm of his breathing, and the nails of his motionless hands. Cathal almost did the same, but he switched his attention back and forth from Fergus to Sophia herself, noting how precise each movement she made was, and how little she was breathing.
Rather than a glow, this time Cathal’s magical vision showed Fergus’s body taking on the same heightened solidity as the goblet. His brown hair and the stubble of his beard looked darker, his pale skin at once paler and more vivid in its pallor. The rust-colored aura around him deepened and lost a few of the gray-white streaks that had been winding through it. At Sithaeg’s half-choked exclamation, Cathal switched his vision back to the mortal world and saw that Fergus’s hands, which had still been largely misty after the previous experiment, were regaining flesh as the seconds passed.
The sound was deeper this time, and more complex. The phantom-plucked string that made the sound wavered in places, or there was more than one being played. Douglas would have known. Cathal didn’t feel warmth this time, but he saw Fergus’s body settle deeper into the pillows and Sophia’s wrists tremble with the sudden weight of the cup, empty though it was.
Cathal reached down and wrapped his free hand around hers.
You’re at the source of your greatest strength, his father said in his memory. The land knows you.
Cathal only vaguely knew how to reach for that power, and not at all how he might send it to either Sophia or Fergus. He reached clumsily anyhow, and clumsily willed it through him to both of them, and while he knew not if that bore any fruit, it still contented him somewhat that the strength of his arm was there for Sophia.
Movement, even thought, slowed. The dance of dust in a sunbeam became a stately march. For an instant, all lines sharpened, all shadows became darker. Cathal could hear every beat of his heart and every breath that escaped him. When he looked to Sithaeg, each word of her prayers was stretched, exaggerated: Ave…Maria…gratia…
Though slow, Cathal suspected those prayers were more urgent now. Her eyes were huge and terrified. He himself felt the hand on his sword hilt tighten in instinct that far outstripped mere thought.
Inside the half-circle of his arm and body, Sophia stood with her face turned down to watch Fergus and her hands outstretched around the lead cup. What triumph or terror showed in her expression was hidden from Cathal’s view, but she stood without moving, her breathing slow and regular, and there was no tremor in her body at all now that he was helping her bear the cup’s weight.
It came to him that she was not fully there, or not only there—that her wizard-sent dreams were not the only time when she touched other worlds. More than metal and herbs was at work in alchemy, and had been even before the addition of Valerius’s maybe-soul. Stars, he thought, and angels, or gods: beings an order above even those whose blood ran in his veins. He wondered how much of that she knew.
He stepped closer. He couldn’t put his body between her and what real danger might threaten; nonetheless, he would make the gesture, and hope that whatever sent its power through her now would witness it.
Fergus’s hands opened.
The short, sturdy fingers drew back from each other, spread apart, then came back together. The hands flexed, gripping invisible objects, and turned, and opened again. One hand plucked at the sheets, investigating by touch.
Sithaeg cried out in joy and ran forward, emotion countering the slowness of spell and age alike. Sophia stayed motionless, whether still entranced or, like Cathal, knowing too much to rejoice at once. He himself saved thanks and action both—but he didn’t stop Sithaeg when she knelt by the bed and took her son’s hands in hers, nor point out that Fergus’s eyes were still closed. Let them have this moment. If it lasted, God be praised, and if it didn’t, they’d still have had it.
Fergus’s hands stilled, but only briefly. Cathal thought the moment was just long enough for Fergus to feel the size of the fingers gripping his, the calluses of sewing and cooking, the raised veins and swollen joints of age, long enough for recognition. The rosary beads fell over their intertwined right hands. Cathal wasn’t sure whether Sithaeg had kept hold of them out of hope or forgetfulness, but they looked right.
With evident care, care that he probably didn’t need to take after so long, Fergus squeezed his mother’s fingers in response. “Mam?” he asked. His voice was barely stronger than a whisper, the word only slightly more articulated th
an a sigh.
“Aye,” Sithaeg said, clear and loud through her tears. “It’s me, love. I’m here. Don’t try… Lie still. You’ll be a while recovering, but you’ve come back to us—”
With an obvious effort, Fergus shook his head, a slight back-and-forth movement against the pillows that took forever and a day. “Can’t stay.”
“You can’t?” she asked, lifting her head to look into Sophia’s face, than Cathal’s, in the vain hope that one of them would offer a contradiction. When none came, her lips went thin, and anger flushed her graying skin. “Why not?”
As if in answer, the chill wind Cathal remembered swept over them again, the smell of the grave almost a conscious taunt. He snarled back into it, feeling his teeth turn to fangs and his nails lengthen, but it did no good. The smell and the wind passed on, unresponsive, and in their wake Fergus’s hands lay in his mother’s grasp, lifeless once again.
The sense of weight and slowness was gone too. Everything went at its normal speed, which seemed too quick, just as Cathal felt both the cup and his own hand to be far too light. Nothing was substantial enough.
“But his hands are still…better,” said Sithaeg, responding to the statement none of them had made. She raised one of Fergus’s unresponsive arms. “You see, my lord?”
Indeed, there was solid flesh where there had once been misty half-substance. Fergus’s hands were too pale and soft with disuse to belong to the man Cathal had fought beside, too motionless to be a part of anyone still living, but they were there, entirely there, as they hadn’t been before he’d swallowed the potion.
Quickly—everything was quick just then—Cathal switched his vision. The pale streaks hadn’t reappeared in Fergus’s aura. He still looked, in this sight, to be more solid than the rest of the room, and certainly more so than he had been earlier.
“We make progress, then,” Sophia said and turned to Sithaeg. “I know it to be slow, and…and halting, and it must be all the more so for you, but we do make progress.”
Highland Dragon Warrior Page 17