Highland Dragon Warrior

by Isabel Cooper

  Douglas cleared his throat. “Perhaps we might stop the bleeding before we converse more?”

  “Ah!” Sophia said, and looked down at her hands. “My wounds are not the important matter here, though of course I thank you for your kindness. I’ll need to get to my laboratory quickly.” As Madoc and Douglas untied her bonds, Sophia was already trying to get to her feet, stumbling upward while she held her hands in front of her.

  “Then I would carry you there, lady, if I may,” said Madoc, bowing quickly. “For our host—who would much prefer the honors—will need assistance himself, and I’ll not manage him as well as his brother might.”

  “Yes, of course,” Sophia said abstractly. Even as Madoc picked her up, she was staring at Cathal. “But…are you well? What happened?”

  “We’d ask you much the same question.” Douglas, much less courtly, draped one of Cathal’s arms over his shoulders and hauled him to his feet. “He’ll live, and probably live well, once he’s had a few weeks’ sleep and about ten dinners.”

  “Thank you kindly,” Cathal said, and smiled at Sophia. “But he’s right in the essentials. I didn’t want to leave you without reinforcements, aye?”

  “You were just in time… I don’t know how much you saw or felt, but…” She could not have been a comfortable armful, for she was sitting upright to talk and keeping her glowing hands well away from Madoc. Nonetheless, Cathal envied the Welshman and cursed his own weakened state. “And Albert is dead. Valerius, that is, and I’m not entirely certain that dead is a sufficient word for his state, but I know none better.”

  “Then you’ve done great work already,” said Douglas.

  “Not enough of it, my lord. Not yet.”

  Douglas’s shoulder bruised Cathal’s sternum, and the uneven way of climbing stairs was far too slow for his liking, but he didn’t try to walk on his own. His legs still felt unsteady, and the walls had a tendency to swim. Besides, the tower room wasn’t very far from Sophia’s laboratory. Cathal wanted to take credit for wisdom in that regard, but knew it was only good fortune.

  A comical bit of rearrangement happened at the door. Douglas left Cathal leaning against a wall while he ducked in front of Madoc and Sophia, opened the latch for them, and then came back to retrieve his brother. “I feel like a side of venison,” Cathal said.

  Douglas snorted. “You’re not half so appealing.”

  They stayed against the far wall of the laboratory, out of the way. Cathal watched Sophia as she cast her eyes about the place, looking over vials empty and full, cold braziers and unused mortars. She bit her lip in thought, then nodded, as if in response to words only she could hear.

  “I’ll need the gold chalice,” she said. “It should be in my trunk, near the top. If you’ll put me down in front of the table—” She broke off and frowned down at her hands.

  “No.” Cathal nudged Douglas in the side. “I’ll hold it for you.” That felt right, though he couldn’t have said why: a half-remembered lesson of his youth, perhaps. “Get me over there.”

  Douglas started to object, then fell silent. His eyes sharpened, reminding Cathal of their father’s. “Aye, that might help. Considering.”

  He didn’t say what he was considering. Cathal didn’t have the energy to ask. His hands were clumsy with the trunk’s simple latch, and raising the lid left him pale and sweating. Thank Christ, the goblet in its white silk wrappings was at the top. If he’d had to dig through the trunk’s contents, he might have lost consciousness. The trip back across the room felt as though it took an age.

  “Are you certain he’s well?” Sophia asked, giving Douglas a stern, searching look. “My lord” was clearly an afterthought, and not a very heartfelt one.

  “Nothing’s certain, madam, as I imagine you know well. But I’m sure that the danger has passed.”

  “I only need rest,” Cathal said, not because he had any way to be certain, but because the worried look on Sophia’s face was a blight in itself.

  Both wounded, each supported by another, they held each other’s gaze across the table. That wasn’t enough, but it was sufficient. Sophia was the first to smile, Cathal not far behind.

  He pulled off the wrapping and twined his hands around the stem of the goblet. Already the metal was warmer than it should have been. Cathal had the sense of a presence, the idea of a hum or a breeze, as he held the goblet out and up so that Sophia could reach it.

  For just a few breaths, he saw her lips move, forming words in a language he didn’t think he knew. Then she put one glowing hand on each side of the chalice’s bowl, and the rust-colored aura began to vanish.

  The metal itself looked the same. Even when Sophia’s hands only looked mortal again, illuminated by nothing other than the pallid morning sunlight, there was no change in the goblet itself. It shone a little, but only the light of sun on metal, and Cathal knew alarm. Had they failed at the last? Had they done the wrong thing?

  Sophia smiled again, and her whole face lit with the expression. “Look,” she said, and lowered the goblet.

  The bowl, which had been both empty and dry, was half-full. The contents reminded Cathal of wine, somewhat faded, or of November leaves, except that they still glowed. He could see the sides of the bowl clearly.

  With immense care, aware of every motion of his hands, he put the goblet back down on the table. “Do we take it to Fergus now?”

  Sophia shook her head. “We have his soul… He’ll need that which lets it settle back into the body. The first potion I made for him, I believe, or a version of it, and that I fear, will take a few days longer.” She looked down at herself and made a face. “Nor can I do it with such a recent wound. The influences would be entirely wrong.”

  “You’ll have your few days,” Douglas said. “Now that Albert is gone, it’s only Fergus’s body we need to worry about. That’s lasted until now.”

  “And I’ll see to it that he endures long enough.” Madoc smiled and shrugged, as much as one could shrug with an armful of woman. “The ways of my people are older even than this castle. Mastery of most is beyond me, but what I do know will, I think, suffice to be a safeguard in this case.”

  “Good,” said Cathal. It was one of a few words that remained within his grasp. His head was drooping, his eyelids lowering.

  “Cathal,” said Sophia, checking herself in a forward motion that would likely have upset Madoc’s balance entirely.

  He smiled at her again and brought forth the other word that came to him. “Bed.”

  Forty-one

  Three days later, Sophia saw Cathal again for the first time.

  After they’d both been carried away to separate beds, Sophia had slept, truly slept, for a day and a half, then woke to Donnag’s wondering ministrations, Alice’s brusque relief, and her weight in bread, butter, and honey, with a fish stew afterward.

  Alice’s ankle was recovering, but she still could do no more than hobble a few feet on crutches. It hadn’t improved her temper at all—“I’m glad you didn’t gravely injure yourself while you were gone,” was the first thing she’d said after she’d embraced Sophia and they’d both wept a little—but she’d occupied herself with writing down the songs and legends she’d learned at the castle. “I’m thinking I’ll become a wandering scribe,” she said. “It can’t possibly be any worse.”

  When Sophia reached the part in her story about staying in the inn with Cathal and skipped straight from there to her decision to hunt Albert in dreams, she knew she blushed, and she knew Alice could read her face. That hadn’t changed. But Alice looked at her silently, smiled, and asked, “What happened then?”

  Sophia told her. Alice shivered over the description of the castle, made properly repulsed noises at Albert’s appearance, and shook her head at the end of it all. “Vile excuse for a man. I agree with Lord MacAlasdair. The world’s better for not having him in it.”

  “Y
es,” Sophia said sincerely. She felt the weight of her deeds on her and suspected she ever would, that she would carry the memory of his screaming dissolution to her dying day. That was right. Albert had been a person once, and even good deeds shouldn’t happen lightly when they involved human life. But she meant what she’d said, and it was a comfort to her in itself.

  She’d discovered a potion, and she’d pared away a bad part of the world. In doing so, she hoped, she’d made life better for Gilleis, Harry, and the frightened people of their lands as well. Whoever inherited could be no worse than Albert. Plenty of people had accomplished less in their lives.

  Yet what she’d told Douglas was still true. Whatever came later, Sophia still had one great task immediately in front of her, and it was no trifle.

  When she could leave her bed, she went to the laboratory. There, at the proper hours, she distilled and recalcified, measured and ground. There, at the proper hours, she prayed. There, in her brief free time, she ate and slept. Except for servants with trays of food, none disturbed her. “Douglas gave orders,” Alice said when she intercepted a servant and brought food. “And I wouldn’t defy that man for all the riches of the Orient.”

  “I don’t need the riches of the Orient,” said Sophia, who was beginning to think of a few matters on which she’d risk Douglas’s displeasure.

  * * *

  Douglas’s orders were one of the reasons she was surprised to come out of her laboratory and find him standing there, calm and still. “Are you finished for the moment?” he asked. “I would speak with you.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, “though not inside… The mixture’s at a sensitive stage. Is Cathal all right? I know his method of coming to my aid was an unfamiliar one, and if there’s anything I can do—”

  Douglas held up a hand. “No. That is, he’s hale enough to plague those nearby. He’s not a man for idleness, my brother. Though not a man for the wars these days either, I’m suspecting.”

  The direction he was going was obvious. Sophia considered saying that Cathal hadn’t told her of a decision one way or the other, then thought that his proposal likely counted, then wondered if he’d expect her to come on Crusade with him. All the while, remembering both the proposal and the circumstances surrounding it had her blushing fiercely, and she settled for just asking, “My lord?”

  “Ach, for heaven’s sake. Marry the man.”

  “I—”

  “If he’s not asked yet, tell me and I’ll beat him until he finds the courage. I know damned well he wants to. The entire castle knows it.”

  Sophia bit her lip. “He has, my lord. I told him I wanted to, but I wished to give us both time to think. Him especially. It was…a situation in which I didn’t know that we were thinking clearly,” she said, feeling quite able to boil water on her face, “and I know that he has many duties.”

  “Ha,” said Douglas, rolling his eyes. “He’s done more of his duty in the last five years than the rest of his life combined. If he marries a girl with a sound head and a good spirit, I’d call it a damned miracle. The castle will be in good hands, should he leave,” he added, and went on before Sophia could speak in Cathal’s defense, “and I’ll talk Artair around. Not that I’d imagine it’ll take much. The youngest child’s hand in marriage is generally the prize for services like yours in tales…but you’re not getting half our lands. They’re small enough as it is.”

  He turned then, a man who’d discharged one duty on a list of fifty that day, and left Sophia stunned and blinking.

  The next day she woke at dawn to the bath she’d requested, then to a white linen gown that was doubtless another of Agnes’s castoffs. Sophia didn’t bother taking this one in, simply rolling up the sleeves and kilting the skirt before she went back to the laboratory. She stopped a page on the way.

  “Tell Sir Cathal he can expect me a little after noon,” she said, barely noticing how the Gaelic came from her lips now. “Assuming, of course, that nothing goes amiss.”

  Sophia knew that he stared at her, and that he kept staring after she left, but the knowledge was remote and immaterial. The possibility of amiss worried her a good deal more, but she didn’t dare dwell on that either. She focused on the details instead: each breath and footstep, then the weight of mortar and pestle or the circulation of steam.

  This time she was more careful of the angle when she poured the topaz into the potion, but it turned out that she didn’t need to be. The flame stayed low and spread out, covering the mouth of the goblet from edge to edge, and its heat wasn’t as fierce as the other had been.

  This is right, she thought, knowing it as she’d known that this potion, altered so and thus, was the way to reintroduce Fergus’s soul to his body. Such knowing had been easier ever since she’d come back from the aether—no mysterious certainty, but rather as if she were a seamstress considering a dress, knowing that the line she wanted required such a set of the sleeves.

  She wondered if that was how Cathal felt about battle. She wanted to ask him. There was, Sophia was finding, no end to the things she wanted to ask him.

  When she carried the potion into Fergus’s room, Cathal’s face was briefly the only thing she saw.

  Soon enough her mind recalled itself to her purpose. She looked to Fergus, pale and unconscious on the bed, and she thought of Douglas and Sithaeg waiting a few yards outside the door, just far enough for probable safety. Sithaeg had darted one look upward as Sophia passed. Her eyes had been frozen rivers, torrents forcibly held in abeyance.

  Sithaeg’s expression was enough to damp the giddiness uncurling within Sophia’s chest, but only barely. Had she doubted, it might have hit harder, but she came to Fergus’s side with the cup in her hands and the craftsman’s certainty of his masterpiece.

  It didn’t make her careless. She knelt slowly and smoothly. The potion rippled with her movements, and little waves hit the sides of the goblet, but not a drop spilled over. On the other side of the bed, Cathal propped Fergus up with equal concentration. Their movements took on a rhythm, a call-and-response. The narrow bed and the man within it became the center of a ritual no less formal than any official rite.

  A wedding, for instance.

  Sophia didn’t blush to think about it any longer, nor did she instantly reject the notion as impossible. The thought was there, and there it sat, while she tipped the goblet carefully forward, felt the potion’s weight shift within it, and watched Fergus’s throat to see that he swallowed and didn’t choke.

  Halfway through, that all became much more difficult.

  The warmth Sophia remembered from the first potion bloomed in the air around Fergus then, and the chord without a source filled the room. Neither ended this time, but grew until the heat was almost unpleasant and the beauty of the sound nigh unbearable. Mortal frames were no more meant for such joy than fragile glass was meant to hold hot liquid. There would come a moment of breaking, regardless of goodness or courage on either part.

  Sophia held on. She saw Cathal’s hands, tight around his friend’s shoulders. The sight helped her will steadiness into her own arms, and she had the sense that it went both ways, each of them giving strength to the other.

  A glow like sunrise unfurled itself just over Fergus’s heart. It swept over him, giving radiance to every inch of his wasted body and all the pale skin that showed over the bedclothes. Where his arms and legs had been solid but withered from disuse, they gained flesh, until he looked no worse than a winter of idleness might have left him. The light moved upward, giving substance to his neck and face, settled in pools onto his closed eyes, and finally covered the top of his head.

  All the room was still. Stillness was all. Either word or act was unthinkable, though Sophia yet retained enough idle curiosity to wonder if the whole world had gone quiet. It felt possible, and if it were so, fitting.

  The chord swelled and faded. The glow died. Both were swift, yet g
radual, not the abrupt end of an unfinished process but a due conclusion to all that had come before.

  Fergus opened ruddy-brown eyes, more than a trifle dazed but as full of life as Sophia’s own. He blinked up at Sophia, then at Cathal. “Christ’s wounds,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “You did it.”

  “She did it,” said Cathal. “I helped a bit.”

  He sprinted to the door, and Fergus turned to Sophia, moving slowly and awkwardly, yet not with the impediments she would have expected from a man so long inactive. “I saw you. Here, once, but also…wherever he had me.”

  “Yes,” Sophia said. She put the empty goblet down on the nearby table. Soon, she’d clean it with all due reverence…or as much as one mostly ignorant human woman knew how to provide. She was beaming; she didn’t think she could stop. “He’s gone.”

  “I’d bloody think. Who are you?”

  “Sophia Metzger. I came here from France, while you were—” She gestured. “I’m an alchemist. And a sort of magician now, perhaps.”

  Fergus shook his head, but never got to say what was on his mind. Sithaeg rushed through the door then, moving like a woman half her age, and threw her arms around her son.

  The time for explanations was past, or yet to come. Sophia slipped through the crowd and out of the room, making her way to the small door that led outside.

  * * *

  Winter’s chill yet lingered, and the rising sun hadn’t had much time to warm the air, but Sophia stood on the battlements and could feel spring approaching. The breeze that ruffled her wimple was gentler, lacking the knife-edge of winter days, and she could see a few brave leaves unfurling on the trees below her.

  Come spring, Loch Arach might actually be rather beautiful.

  Fergus would live to see it. In time, Sophia would tell him how, or Cathal would. For the moment, she was minded to let him have the moment: the reunion with his loved ones, the simple joy of living once more.

  The landscape in front of her blurred, and she wiped her eyes—on her sleeve, as she’d not had the foresight to bring a handkerchief, but nobody was there to see.