Highland Dragon Warrior

by Isabel Cooper

  Time passed in popping hisses from the fire and gusts of wind from outside the window, in her breaths and Cathal’s. Then he nodded, squeezed her briefly with one arm, and slid out of bed, only to return before she could do more than squeak in protest at the draft. He brought his sword with him, unsheathed, and laid it on his other side.

  “A little misplaced for the tales,” she said, smiling and watching, setting as much of him as she could into her memory, “and a little late too.”

  Cathal laughed. “I’d thought it, before you offered,” he said, gathering her against his body again and then sobering. “But I’ll want it now. Demons.”

  “Oh. Yes.” The thought made her shiver, but it was too late. Drained by cold and fright, exertion and unfamiliar pleasure, she was sliding rapidly down into sleep. “Good thought.”

  “I hope I’m wrong.”

  “Me too,” she said, slurring her words. “You shouldn’t fight demons naked.”

  She felt him laugh again. “Aye, true.” He turned toward her, and his lips brushed across her forehead. “One day I’ll not have to send you into danger, I swear it. I’ll not ask you not to take chances, but…remember I’m waiting. Come back to me.”

  “I will.”

  Getting to Valerius’s world, or the place between them, was bound to take concentration. Sophia held the images in her mind as best she could as she drifted off: falling in blackness, the shapes she couldn’t look directly at, and the dark castle. Even so, the last things she remembered of the waking world were the strength of Cathal’s arm around her shoulders and the sound of his heartbeat beneath her ear.

  * * *

  This time, Sophia landed in the tree. It wasn’t a pleasant landing—she rather thought she’d grabbed for the branch as she’d entered the world, only half able to control her destination even after so much time, and the bark dug up under her fingernails—but no, she didn’t have to bother with running and climbing and shadow creatures that wanted her dead. That was cause enough for gratitude, and she didn’t have time for complaints.

  Next came the bridge, building itself under her sight and the pressure of her will. This one was more unified, with only occasional patches of wood or empty space interrupting the solid chunks of masonry. She jumped no more gracefully than before, and the landing hurt no less, but that was all right: the oozing, stinging patches on her knees and under the ripped elbows of her dress served as proof that the stone was there and solid. I’ve found the purpose of pain, she thought as she walked, half drunk with fear and the use of power. How delighted all the scholars will be.

  Still the edges didn’t line up entirely, still there were sections where she had to hold her breath and grit her teeth in order to walk over nothingness, but the passage across the bridge was a thing done, and therefore possible, and so she reached the other side with almost steady hands and less urge to be sick.

  The castle was different too.

  It was still huge and dark, and the doors were still closed. When Sophia looked at the walls, though, there were spaces that blurred and warped, particularly places she’d seen in the castle in her waking world, and she knew that it wasn’t entirely the same as the one Valerius had crafted in this aethereal realm. The great doors, for instance, were quite forbidding, but their wood in reality was splintering and warping, and the guards had stood in front of them singing drunken songs. They’d been open most of the time, at that. They’d had to be, as the doors of any real castle did when it wasn’t under siege. So, at the seam where these doors met, space buckled like a badly sewn patch.

  Sophia reached out gingerly. Her fingers went into the non-space, and she felt nothing. She pushed, lightly at first and then put her back behind it, and a resistance like a strong wind gave way. The doors swung open.

  That was where the aether-castle gave up pretending to be much like the real thing. Beyond the doors there was no courtyard, no great hall full of surly men and tired women, no smell of cow dung or sound of restless horses. Beyond the doors was only a dark, silent staircase that led up and onward.

  “I am,” Sophia said to the force that pretended to be air, “getting rather tired of always climbing things.”

  Nothing responded, of course, and the staircase was still in front of her—but the complaint made it easier to start the journey upward.

  * * *

  At first, the staircase was pitch-black around her, only the steps beneath her feet telling Sophia that she wasn’t lost in the between-worlds place again. As she ascended, she started to see flashes of light: not the unviewable, unthinkable things from the journey between worlds, but rather flickers and lines that she eventually realized came from under doors. The staircase wasn’t all there was. Landings led off, and there were doors on those landings that could lead to rooms or entirely separate halls.

  Sophia thought she could have opened those doors. She was fairly sure she didn’t want to. What she sought wasn’t there. Behind each door was a distraction at best, and a trap at worst. She kept climbing, one hand out in front of her for protection.

  When she did reach the top, she didn’t need that precaution. The light from under the final door was a sickly grayish-pink that reminded her of rotting entrails, but it was bright enough. She saw the thick wood of the door clearly, the steel of the bolts keeping it shut, and she didn’t believe that it would fall to her as easily as the doors of the castle had. Discrepancy between real and aether wasn’t the key here. This place had no mirror in the waking world.

  The formula here was different.

  Little as she wanted to approach the decaying light, Sophia walked up to the door and put her hand on the latch. “Albert de Percy,” she said. It came out calm and conversational, the tone she might use to introduce one acquaintance to another.

  The door didn’t open this time; it crumbled suddenly and completely, revealing a tiny five-sided room lined with small chests. Each was dull gray, none was locked, and none was any longer than her hand. Albert—she would not think of him as Valerius here—might have been able to distinguish between them. To Sophia’s eyes, they were all alike, and her intuition gave her no guidance.

  It did tell her that she had little time. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up, whether they existed or not, and the mouth she might or might not have was dry. Before long, she wouldn’t be alone.

  Sophia knelt and started flipping up lids.

  Inside the first chest was a miniature lake, frozen to glassy green stillness—not what she sought, though it pained her to leave it without further investigation. When she opened the second, a gust of blue and silver feathers flew up into her face, scratching it with their surprisingly sharp edges. Sophia put up her hands to guard herself and by instinct grabbed onto one of the feathers as the rest dispersed, blown hither and yon on nonexistent wind. She slid the feather into her belt; when she got out, it might be useful or simply interesting.

  Third came a single ember, sitting at the bottom of its chest with no fuel and glowing steadily red regardless. As the chest lid opened, the ember flared, and sparks flew out to land and fizzle against whatever metal the boxes were made of. Sophia almost felt sorry for it.

  She moved onward to a single white rose that looked as if it grew out of the chest bottom, with no bush or bramble in sight: pretty, but nearly sad in the same way that the ember had been, and she could spare no time for pity or curiosity. The feeling of awful anticipation was getting stronger. Had she been in the waking world, she might have heard footsteps approaching.

  Before she could raise the lid of the next chest more than a hand’s width, the thing inside sprang at her, snarling: a twisted ape face with the slit pupils of a goat and razor teeth, and the impression of a body at once powerful and sinuous, all of it far too large for the chest. Sophia screamed and slammed the lid back down with both hands. The jolt as the thing hit the lid would haunt her, she knew, but not near
ly as badly as the glimpse of that face—and the malign intelligence she’d seen there.

  Another element of the stories verified. Wonderful.

  After that, she approached the sixth chest with even more fear. Her hand trembled as she touched the lid, and she opened it only a bit at a time, ready to shove it back down in an instant—but nothing jumped out at her. The chest opened quietly, and inside was a rust-colored object about the size of her fist, not quite spherical but in its shape suggestive of both an apple and a heart.

  This, she thought, and it wasn’t entirely her mind, nor true thought at all. Not entirely willing to trust such instinct, Sophia reached in and touched the sphere.

  When her fingertips met its surface, Fergus’s face rose up before her eyes. She knew him in an instant, better than his own mother could have—and only avoided more because she cringed back from the contact, wanting none of such forced intimacy with another mind. She knew too that his strength was fading; even the potions couldn’t keep his body going forever.

  “Cling just a little while longer, hmm?” she told him, slipping the soul-sphere into the bodice of her gown. The proximity was embarrassing, but the location more secure than anything else she could manage.

  She turned, and the space in front of her parted with a shriek: not the sound of the passage, but of what charged through it.

  The figure was a man—more or less. In the world of flesh and bone, he might have looked entirely like one, but this world didn’t only reflect the physical. Like Cathal and his family, Albert de Percy hadn’t been entirely human for longer than Sophia had been alive. Unlike them, he’d made the changes himself, not seamlessly, and now, whether because of the place where they stood or because of Sophia’s intrusions, he was falling apart.

  One arm was too long, started too low, and ended in a withered hand whose yellow fingernails were claws. His body was otherwise that of a man in his prime, but his face was ancient, with skin like parchment and sunken cheeks. One eye was clouded and blue, the other huge and red, with the goat pupil of the thing in the box.

  He came through screaming—no words, only shocked anger. Sophia might have sympathized—this place was the core of his power, her presence an outrage—had he been less vile, and if she’d had time. But he was grabbing for her at once. His normal hand fell far short of her, but the claw swiped through the air only a hairbreadth from her shoulder.

  Sophia hurled the feather at him.

  She’d had no thought save that there was little within her reach except that and the heart. If she’d hoped for anything, it was that the feather would cut his face as it had scratched hers. She certainly hadn’t expected it to blast them both away from it, but it did, the wind stronger than those that had pulled at her when she’d ridden Cathal through the storm. It flung her backward, onto the floor. The stone still hurt to land on, but as she scrambled to her feet, she saw that Albert was lying against the far wall.

  Her path to the stairs was clear.

  She ran, holding her skirts in both hands, heeding the stairs only that she might not trip. However Albert’s strength might be failing him, however breaching his defenses and freeing the elements might have hurt him, she feared to fight him at the center of his power.

  In truth, she feared to fight him regardless, but she was no longer certain she’d be able to escape that.

  On the first landing, hearing the footsteps running after her, she nonetheless took Fergus’s soul into one hand and tried to wake herself up as she’d done before.

  The world wavered around her, shimmered—but stayed.

  Sophia wished she could even feel surprised.

  Thirty-eight

  Waiting was far from new for Cathal, yet so much of it in quick succession scraped at even his patience.

  As Sophia fell asleep, he switched to the vision of the otherworld. The room looked much the same as it had before, but the woman at his side lay in a nimbus of sunset pink, with shades of gold closer to her face. Unlike the time in Fergus’s room, a small ribbon of silver wound its way out of the space just above her head, only to vanish—not broken, he didn’t think, but stretching off beyond his sight.

  Did that mean she’d reached her destination? Cathal wished his vision extended that far, or that he’d taken more of an interest in magic. Nothing to do about it now, though, but watch where he could and thank God no demons were coming out of the walls yet.

  He wasn’t sure how much time passed. The wind and rain outside gradually quieted. He heard an owl once after that. Those were the only things that changed for what felt like hours. Cathal stood on occasion, paced the room to keep himself awake, then sat back down and watched Sophia.

  The fourth time he did so, the aura around her looked different: not dramatically, but the furthest end he could see of the silver ribbon looked darker than the rest, more like lead. Unless he imagined it, the room was colder too.

  Yet he hesitated. The fire had died down—he knew not what the change in shade meant—and Sophia might not have another such opportunity. She’d not thank him for pulling her away before she had a chance to accomplish her task. Cathal’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword, but he waited and watched.

  Darkness and dullness advanced. Sophia’s chest rose and fell as calmly as ever, and she showed no signs of distress. Even when shallow cuts drew themselves across her face and hands, she made no sound, moved not at all.

  Cathal, on the other hand, swore in three languages and stopped himself at the last instant, his outstretched hand above her face, poised in a long moment of indecision.

  A wind from nowhere blew through the room, and the smell of open graves filled his nose. He snarled.

  Enough.

  “Enough,” he said aloud, more gently but clearly. He knelt by Sophia’s side and spoke into her ear. “Wake up, lass.”

  She didn’t respond. Blood oozed from the scratches on her face, that and the motion of her breasts the only signs that she still lived.

  Right: sounds might not reach her. He should have expected that. It was no reason to be alarmed. Cathal told himself that as firmly as he’d ever calmed a nervous beast or a new squire. He felt not much more in control than one, nor of much more use.

  When a gentle shaking of her shoulders, then a harder one, got no result, alarm looked more justified. When bathing her face in cold water brought no result, Cathal knew he was right to fear.

  At the final extremity, holding back as much of his strength as he could and hating himself nonetheless, he slapped the side of her face once, briskly. The mark of his hand turned red, but that silent reproach was the only change. She didn’t even wince in her sleep.

  Her aura itself was darker now, and the silver ribbon had gone completely dull. Where it reached Sophia’s face, bands of gray were beginning to ripple out of it.

  Cathal swore again, regularly and viciously under his breath in every language he knew. To the tune of the profanity, he picked Sophia’s damp kirtle off its drying place by the fire and wrestled her limp body into it. He thought he managed not to hurt her, though he heard the cloth rip twice; the cloak was easier, yet still a clumsy job. It didn’t matter. They would be enough decency—and enough protection—for the journey ahead, and anything else be damned.

  Downstairs, the inn was dark. A few men in the common room snored regularly, but none seemed to wake as Cathal carried Sophia to the door.

  Outside, it had stopped raining. That would make his task a shade easier. He hurried away from the building, toward the nearest open space, and only noticed the boy when he spoke.

  “What are you doing?”

  The lad was fourteen or fifteen, his eyes huge. A village boy, Cathal thought, probably come to earn a few coins caring for horses, maybe to hear a few stories. He’d have one after this.

  Cathal didn’t care. “Enough, please God,” he said, not breaking his stride. In
his arms, Sophia weighed nothing at all; a few yards more and he’d be in the trees, and the clearing wasn’t far from that. “Don’t get in my way.”

  Of course the boy tried to tackle him. Cathal would have, in his place. It was a valiant effort, and when Cathal flung him off, he hoped the lad didn’t break anything.

  He yelled too loudly to be badly hurt, at any rate.

  That did it. Everyone in the damned village would be out shortly. There was no time. Cathal set Sophia on the ground in front of him, braced himself, and transformed.

  The boy stopped yelling and started screaming.

  Dragon form didn’t swear well. The mouth wasn’t shaped for human speech, and the words slipped away from the mind itself. The best Cathal could do, as he carefully picked up Sophia in one claw, was an ongoing hiss. Steam curled from between his teeth and into the night air, and the man who’d come to the door with a lantern almost dropped it.

  Cathal leapt into the sky and away, hearing the panic spreading in his wake. It was nothing, he was certain, to his own fear. He knew what he faced, and what he could lose.

  * * *

  When Cathal landed at Loch Arach, the sky was beginning to lighten in the east, the wind was warm, and he was weary through every scale on his body. The flight had been more peaceful than fleeing through the storm and shorter than he’d feared, and yet it had been too long, as he strained every other muscle to go faster while keeping his forelegs relaxed and his talons away from Sophia’s body. He’d watched her aura keep darkening and her breathing continue, steady and slow, just as Fergus’s had done.

  No distance would have been short enough to suit him.

  He didn’t bother to hide his return. Douglas was waiting in the clearing and took Sophia into his arms with a startled look but no hesitation. Practically, it was a relief to let her go. Douglas had far more strength just then and was far less likely to hurt her by accident. Cathal squelched any urge to cling.