Highland Dragon Warrior

by Isabel Cooper

  “Useful, at times. But aye,” Moiread said admittedly, “rather beautiful too, in its way.”

  She was beautiful. The spell stripped her of her illusion. Her hair lengthened slightly, her figure swelled and narrowed, and her face became a shade more delicate, so that a young-looking woman in men’s clothing sat facing him. In the world of the spell, a pattern of dancing lights played across her body, like diamonds set onto the crisp blue that washed over her skin.

  In this world, her shadow was nothing remotely human. Two vast wings stretched out behind her, the brook running through their shade. When she tilted her head to watch him, the shape of an immense head, on a serpentine neck, separated itself from the larger shadow and turned toward Madoc. The same pattern of lights glittered in the shadow.

  Mayhap it would have been sensible for Madoc to fear her then, but he wished only that he had more time to sit and watch her.

  “A bit revealing, aye?” Moiread asked, clearly aware of where he was looking. To his relief, she sounded amused. “That is why we don’t generally teach the spell. We didn’t come up with it, but we’ve enough luck that not many know it.”

  “Do you care so greatly for concealment?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “It’s no great peril, in my view of things, to be found out. There are already those who know what we are and speak of it with varying degrees of truth. Once more knew, or we were more willing to admit it, or both.”

  “What happened?”

  “To us? Time and duty. The world gets fuller. A clan turns from hunting to farming, and it’s no’ such great use for its laird to spend his days flying in dragon shape. Less use still in court, and we must go there to be part of the greater world, to lead a clan rather than a tribe in a cave. Our sires have other duties, and we as well. Our foes have magic of their own. Dragon shape is no sure victory.”

  “I have heard that,” said Madoc, “and seen a little too. Only ran into one sorcerer myself.”

  “We’ve not fought them often, no’ directly. The English magic turns more toward enchanted weapons”—she rubbed her calf, wincing in memory—“or strengthening castles. Crafty spells.”

  “Like the one I’m doing?” Madoc asked, speaking the words that courtesy would have Moiread avoid.

  “No shame in taking a weapon from your foe,” said Moiread. “We may have fought the people we learned this from”—she gestured around her, indicating the world revealed—“or we may fight them in the years to come. I’m still glad to have it.”

  “So am I.”

  Eight

  Moiread leaned back on her hands and watched Madoc adjust to the new landscape the spell showed him. She’d learned the viseo dei young, renewed it every seven years, and grown to take it for granted. Seeing the wonder on Madoc’s face brought back her own memories—and it pleased her to give him that moment of joy, after he’d spoken so grimly earlier.

  And it could be that she was not so bad a teacher. Doubtless the student made the difference. From all Moiread had heard and seen, Madoc was more familiar with most forms of magic, and the theory of it, than was she, who’d always felt it required too many details and too much standing still.

  “Do you think you could tell if there was anyone nearby using magic to stay hidden?” she asked.

  “That would depend on what sort of magic, I think, but I believe I could. At least, if I spend enough time seeing the world like this, I’ll quickly grow to know what it looks like without other magic, and that may help.”

  “Aye,” Moiread said.

  Birds sang in the trees above her. By her head, the brook ran merrily past, and further out she could hear the quiet sounds of the horses as they chewed grass and flicked their tails at insects. The rock was warm beneath Moiread’s palms and arse. She did not want to rise.

  And yet time waits not.

  She sighed and opened her eyes. “Dismissing the sight is easier,” she said, and spoke the words for it. “And visio dei, to call it back, from now on.”

  “Vision of God?” Madoc asked, lifting dark eyebrows. “Or vision of a god?”

  “Either, as far as I can tell. I didn’t make it up. The spell’s at least as old as my grandfather. But it makes a bit of sense, does it not?”

  “It does that. At least, I suppose it does. I wouldn’t presume to know if it’s an accurate description.”

  Moiread pushed herself to her feet. It was an unfolding sort of task, getting her limbs all lined up in the proper manner. “If you were God, or even the sort of creature they used to call a god, I don’t think you’d have need of a guard.”

  “Need, perhaps not.” They’d been sitting closer than Moiread had noticed, or a trick of footing had brought Madoc closer to her when he rose. She found herself staring into his eyes, no more than a hand’s length away from him. “But it could be that even the divine want company, might it not?”

  “It might. I’m hardly a priest, to say with authority.” There were horses to mount and miles to cover. The first step would be a step away from the brook, and from where she and Madoc stood. Moiread stayed in place.

  Madoc smiled, cocking his head so that he looked aslant at her through long, dark lashes. “And there are many myths about the old gods seeking out mortals, you know,” he said more softly. “To test them, for example.”

  That was far from the only reason, or the main one. Even Moiread knew that. Her body tightened; she slid her tongue over suddenly dry lips. “I’m not mortal,” she said. “But I do wonder if I’d pass such a test.”

  “I’m no god,” Madoc said. He stepped forward slightly. They didn’t quite touch, but Moiread could feel his breath against her face when he spoke again. “Yet I’m sure you would.”

  She thought of half a dozen jokes then: he said that to all the girls, she was waiting for the lightning strike, she’d be rather annoyed if she had to fight a Minotaur before she slept, on and on. None of them made it past her throat.

  Looking up at Madoc, she saw that the breeze had disarranged his hair. Not falling in his face, it nonetheless hung over one eye. Slowly Moiread reached up and brushed it back. It was like heavy silk beneath her fingertips.

  “I do value your confidence,” she said.

  “It seems the least I can offer.” Madoc’s voice had fallen to a murmur, the kind that invited her to lean in closer. She shifted her weight, not taking her hand from Madoc’s face.

  Off at the other end of the clearing, the gelding snorted and then neighed in protest. Madoc and Moiread both spun around, each grabbing for weapons, and then both relaxed when they saw the cause—a minor territorial dispute over a good patch of grass, settled when Rhuddem nipped her companion sharply on the shoulder.

  The sound had broken the moment, though, scattered the water before a vision could emerge, and that might have been well. They were alone and outdoors, with a destination yet some way ahead and probably men abroad who wanted to kill them.

  “We should be off,” she said, and hoped she hid both the arousal and the disappointment in her voice.

  “Wise,” said Madoc.

  He spoke briefly. That was well. Otherwise, Moiread might have spent more time trying to determine what his voice held, and what he might be concealing.

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon, as the sun was touching the tips of the mountains and turning the stone to gold, Moiread asked, “What is it you want to happen?”

  They were riding through gentler hills, forest and stone giving way to field and orchard and more villages than they’d passed before. Madoc had been watching the landscape change and letting his thoughts drift. At Moiread’s question, he turned to her with a briefly blank mind.

  Sunset suited her. The light gilded her skin as it had the mountains and called crimson glints forth from her dark hair. She rode with straight back and square shoulders. The sleeves of her brown tunic, fallin
g from beneath her mail shirt to ruffle in the breeze, were the only part of her that didn’t look straight and still, honed so that there was almost nothing left to spare. She seemed at home on the empty road, her shadow—human now—her lone necessary companion.

  In response to Madoc’s temporary silence, she shrugged and explained, “What you want to stop is a horror, aye. But there’s more than stopping matters from getting worse. You said you didn’t want rebellion now, that your people would be unprepared. Are you planning for ten years gone?”

  “I am, and then I am not,” Madoc said.

  “Is that a way of telling me to be about my own business?” she asked with good humor in the question as far as Madoc could tell. “Right enough if so.”

  “No,” he said quickly, “no. It’s only that the rest of it takes longer to explain, and I want to put it into words rightly. I’m not sure I quite managed at home.” His father had understood; his father was also aging and had reason to want to believe his heir wise and sensible. His mother had been more skeptical.

  With that memory closer to hand than he’d like, Madoc began. “Any rising of my people is likely to be more than ten years in coming, if it ever does. It may not be in my lifetime, or my children’s—or your children’s, for that matter. It may be that we’ll not ever be our own nation again.”

  “You’re a sight calmer about that prospect than I would be,” she said.

  “It’s been a while now for us,” Madoc replied. “Two generations more or less, and longer in places. After a time, men stop thinking of what might have been and turn their thoughts instead to what is, and how to live within it.”

  “And do you think that’s as it should be?”

  “At times,” he said. “Not at others. To accept ill use merely out of habit, to let the familiar keep you from striving for better…that is wrong. Yet to spend all your strength, and your people’s, in fighting when there’s no hope or use to the cause may be as bad.”

  “I know that you pick your moment, and you choose your fight. ‘A time for war and a time for peace,’ as the priests have it. Only…” She shook her head. “When the damned English ruled us, I hated them. I wanted to fight, though I knew we couldna’ manage it then. But then, I wasna’ born into the conquest.”

  Madoc nodded. “Then too,” he said, “the Romans reached only a little way into Scotland, and not for very long.”

  “My grandfather was a Roman,” Moiread said, and then chuckled. “But I don’t think he was acting for the empire when he settled at Loch Arach. He just fancied a local lass and a quiet country life, or so he always told us. What have the Romans to do with the matter?”

  “We were occupied, were subjects, for a few hundred years. Not such a great length of time for you, I understand,” he couldn’t resist adding teasingly, “but more than a few generations of man. We fought, yes, sometimes, and other times we made peace and bent to their rule, and we remained ourselves. And then the empire fell and its legions departed, and there we were. Our own people once more.”

  “Huh,” Moiread said.

  They crossed a bridge, the horses’ hooves clattering loudly over the timbers and the river rushing past the dark rocks beneath them, fast and full enough for the spray to wet Madoc’s face.

  On the other side, once the noise had receded enough, Moiread said, “You speak of endurance.”

  “When I must. And I’ve not the authority to speak at all, truly. My father lives, and when he doesn’t, I’ll be only a lord, one among many. Nor am I so certain that my people would care greatly who rules them in the end. Kings are distant creatures to a man whose longest journey is to market thrice a year, and what does it matter whose face is on the coins when you see few of them?”

  Her face darkened. “There’s a shade more to it than that, you know.”

  “As a man, yes, I do,” Madoc said. “I’d have fought and gladly, had I been a man in our wars. If it comes to another war, I’ll go. If there comes a time when war will do us more good than harm, then so I’ll counsel. Until then, I gain nothing from bitterness, and as my father’s heir, I must think of my people before my pride.”

  Moiread fell silent again. “It was different for us, you know,” she started and then shrugged, her armor clinking and creaking with the motion. “But then, it was different for you twenty years back, aye. I take your meaning.” She didn’t sound like she agreed, or not entirely, but neither did she sound angry. “My father and his father said similar. That it’s the way of men and nations to seek conquest. You fight when you can and bend the knee when you have to, but there’s no more faulting them for it than there is faulting a hawk for stooping on a pigeon.”

  “I’m not so certain about that last,” Madoc said slowly and then impulsively added, “and while your father and your grandfather are honorable company, I’d rather you didn’t think of me in the same light.”

  Laughter crinkled the corners of Moiread’s eyes. “I promise,” she said, holding up a hand, “I never have before, and I doubt I will again.”

  “I’ll do my best to prevent it,” Madoc said.

  The implications of their teasing came to mind then, combined with the moment by the brook earlier, and he shifted uneasily in the saddle, all the more so when Moiread bit her lower lip. She looked away from him—at the road ahead—and cleared her throat. “If you’re not planning for rebellion…” she said in a forcibly casual voice that became genuinely curious as she went on. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I think that an occupied people should have places to go, or powers to call on, that their rulers neither know of nor control.” Madoc spread his hands. “What I do now may help us fight the English in ten years, or a hundred. It may help us fight another foe entirely, should one arise. Or these ties, these bonds may simply help us do as we did with the Romans: preserve enough of ourselves to remain ourselves, no matter what land claims us as its own.”

  He stopped and rubbed at the back of his neck, then added, “And then, it’s also what’s within my power to do. I’m fond of the old customs and treasures for themselves. I’d not see them perish whether the foe was England or simply time and change.”

  “Endurance again,” Moiread said thoughtfully. “Things never remain quite as they are, but trying to carry the vital parts forward… Aye. I think I understand.”

  Nine

  Although she hadn’t spent much time there, Hallfield was passingly familiar to Moiread, and the Colquhouns—Calhouns, now—who ruled there more so. She’d passed through a few times during the wars, and before that when she’d been young. Four days’ ride wasn’t so distant, particularly not when she’d been able to fly most of the way and transform in a convenient bit of forest.

  “Will you want to go in undisguised?” Madoc asked when he heard.

  “No, it’d confuse folk. And I’ve not properly visited the castle in years.” She glanced at the fields they passed: wet, brown earth fresh plowed from spring planting, strips neatly divided to go with the neat cottages that lined the road ahead of them. “There’s not nearly as much convenient forest as there once was.”

  Everything had been wilder in her youth. It still was, in her mind, and she felt the difference. The growth of fields and houses made her feel not only exposed but old.

  Still, the castle was mostly as she remembered: a round wooden tower at the top of a hill and a small castellum below it, all surrounded by a wide moat and a thick wall. Two men stood on each end of the bridge, carrying spears and watching Moiread and Madoc as they approached. The wars hadn’t been over long, and they’d gone harder here than in the north.

  Out of habit, Moiread noted both the men’s alertness and their posture with approval, caught herself nodding satisfaction, and chuckled quietly.

  “Hmm?” Madoc asked.

  She grinned at him. “A bit used to command. And a bit slow to realize what’s not my problem any
longer. Is there any baggage you’d keep with us, by the way?” she asked, slowing her horse slightly as she thought of the question. “We’ll likely not be able to put the beasts up ourselves here.”

  “One bag,” he said. “Treasures of my people, and a few other items I’d as soon keep by my side.”

  “I’ll take that, unless you’ll need it here.”

  “No, that’s unlikely.”

  They halted in front of the bridge. “Who comes?” asked one of the guards. He and his companion stood in the center. Their comrades behind them fanned out to the sides of the bridge, where each had a good line of sight if he needed to throw his spear.

  “Madoc of Avondos, and my squire, Michael. I sent word to the Calhoun of my visit.”

  “Aye, my lord,” said the head guard. “Enter and be welcome.”

  He and his fellow stood aside. The way in was only wide enough for one to ride, so Moiread took the front, reflecting briefly that the portcullis was left raised for the first time in years, as far as she could recall: another sign of peace.

  The buildings inside the round castellum were the same as Moiread remembered, and much the same as in the courtyards at Loch Arach: kitchens, chapel, smithy, storehouses, and the stables, where she and Madoc surrendered the horses into the care of two youths and a grizzled man with a limp, and most of the baggage to a small assortment of pages, to whom Moiread tossed small coins.

  It never hurt to gain favor, particularly with the people who’d have their eyes on her mount and her gear.

  Following behind Madoc took getting used to. Even such short experience as she had at being a bodyguard suggested strongly that she take the lead, wary for ambushes and traps. Calm yourself, girl, she said silently. You’re on friendly territory now. It didn’t help much. She managed to follow Madoc up the stairs to the keep at a proper remove, and to keep her free hand from her sword while she did it, but it was a conscious effort and a struggle against her reflexes.