Highland Dragon Rebel

by Isabel Cooper

  The robes didn’t conceal much, another reason for self-control.

  To all appearances unaware of the struggle within Madoc’s head and loins, Gilrion let go of Madoc’s hands. “Show me what you would give into my keeping.”

  * * *

  It had been a long time since Moiread had taken part in any major spell casting. Whether unfamiliarity made the difference, or being in a foreign land, or simply having exhausted herself on the hunt the day before, she was far wearier than she’d ever remembered being. By the time the spell stopped calling on her power, it was a fight not to lean back against the wall and close her eyes.

  Interest as much as willpower kept her awake. Magic might not have been her primary skill, nor was she the scholar that others in her family were, but the novel means of spell casting were interesting, and the items in the locked chests more so. She watched as Madoc lifted the first chest, unlocked it with a small golden key, and lifted out an object wrapped in white silk, one that turned out to be a small and delicately wrought chalice: dull iron and set with garnets around the rim.

  As when she’d first seen the wings of the Caduirathi, Moiread’s thoughts immediately launched themselves along one path. Speech at such times, unless it was part of the ritual, was often dangerous, so she bridled her tongue, but she stared gape-mouthed until Madoc met her eyes and shook his head with a faint smile.

  “The Chalice of Emellyr,” he said, holding it out to Gilrion with both hands. “Whatsoever any traitor drinks from it will turn to fire in his throat. I give it to you, for your safekeeping and use, until I or one of my kin comes to claim it.”

  “I do so accept.” Gilrion wrapped her hands around the bowl. “I will relinquish it to none but you or your blood.”

  She stared at the chalice intently, her eyes shining. Under that calm metallic gaze, the relic swiftly and suddenly disappeared. It was as if she’d made the air itself a cloak and cast it over the chalice. When Gilrion opened her hands again, nothing fell to the floor.

  Agnes or Douglas would kill to be there. Moiread wasn’t turning her nose up herself. New experiences had become rare for her, but she’d had many in the last few days, and this was becoming the strangest of all. She would have been alarmed, save that Madoc looked pleased by this turn of events.

  After a short time, whether to let the flux of the energies settle or simply to be properly ceremonial, he turned and opened the larger chest. This one held a large chessboard made entirely of gold, the squares either white or rose and the border pure yellow-gold. A silk bag went with it, and after Madoc handed the board to Gilrion, he opened it to withdraw a rook made of glimmering topaz, veined with silver.

  “The Chessboard of Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio. Assemble the pieces, and they’ll play by themselves. Assemble them and think of a battle to come, and they’ll show what will happen, if you can read the signs rightly. I give it to you for your safekeeping and use, until I or one of my kin comes to claim it.”

  Again Gilrion spoke the words of acceptance. As with the chalice, the chessboard and its men disappeared beneath her gaze, and she slowly lowered her hands to her sides. “Is that all we do here?”

  “It is, and it is enough,” Madoc replied. The phrase had a liturgical sound from his mouth.

  “Then it is done,” said Gilrion, and she stepped back beyond the edge of the invisible circle they’d created.

  It broke instantly, but with no feeling of violence—rather, as an apple plucked from the tree, a separation whose time had come. The magic lifted quickly and naturally, and Gilrion laughed. “I can see why, son of my hall, you had no wish to leave such treasures near those who rule your people.”

  “Who rule them for now, Your Majesty,” Madoc said, and smiled. “You have my thanks a thousand times for your aid in this, if I hadn’t mentioned it before.”

  “Not quite so many times as there are stars in the sky, but it will serve. I’ll go far from unrewarded too.” She glanced over at Moiread and made a gesture of acknowledgment with one hand—a bow, from anyone less majestic. “And I thank you for your strength, Lady MacAlasdair. I hadn’t known the feel of your people in such endeavors. It will serve better than otherwise, I suspect.”

  “I’m honored to help, Your Majesty,” Moiread said, though getting her tongue around the words was difficult.

  “And now that we’ve thanked each other sufficiently,” Namwynne put in, “food and rest would sit far better than words, no matter how sweet.”

  Moiread chuckled. “I like you, lass,” she said, and tried not to gauge how Madoc looked when he laughed as well.

  Twenty-six

  Gilrion would have welcomed them longer, Moiread knew, and despite missing Madoc’s presence in her bed, she might well have been happy to stay. Good food and good rest went a long way, even without an entirely new world to explore. Yet their quest was only partway done, and as Madoc said, they needed to make their way onward before either weather or politics turned dangerous in their own lands.

  The last feast was festive indeed. Moiread ate her fill of silvery fish and sweet fruit, drank as deeply of the mead as she dared when on duty in a strange land, and sat afterward listening half drowsily to minstrels and conversation alike.

  “A word, my lady?”

  It was Sir Cauldir who spoke, silver hair bound back into a complex arrangement of braids. Up close, Moiread saw that his eyes were reddish-gold, like amber. Like all his people, he pleased the eye. Were she less wary of insulting either the princess or Madoc, Moiread might have chosen to dwell on that in more depth. An empty bed didn’t have to stay that way.

  Ah well. Fortune laughed at all men—or women—from time to time. “Of course,” Moiread said and kept her voice strictly polite.

  “I hope you’ve taken pleasure in your time with us.”

  “A great deal, and I thank you.”

  “Such news gladdens me”—Cauldir elaborated with a graceful wave of jeweled hands—“for I know that you have no childhood attachment to my queen’s lands, such as Madoc does.”

  He glanced over toward the benches where Madoc sat, laughing with the guard from the borders and Namwynne and even dark, quiet Arbelath. Moiread knew she could go and join them. She knew also that her presence would be foreign, a boulder in the stream of the conversation. They would adjust and flow around her, but better they not have to, particularly on this last night. Better to let them speak of old memories and not force them to explain jokes.

  “Aye, well,” Moiread said with a shrug. “Perhaps ’tis better, in a way, that I see with fresh eyes. It’s clear that Her Majesty has been good to him, and that he remembers her court fondly. As well might anyone,” she added.

  “And yet, in truth, he is no real part of it. He must feel that isolation, that distinction, from time to time.”

  Cauldir spoke pleasantly, and his face showed only concern. Inwardly, Moiread cursed. She was the wrong member of her family for the task at hand. “Depends on your point of view, no? Plenty of men make foreign lands their own, with the time and the will for it.”

  “Mortals,” said Cauldir, “and other mortal lands. We are not the same, not in blood or even in flesh.” His wings flapped once, perhaps in emphasis. “And while I welcome visitors and pilgrimages, I can see nothing but hardship for both parties coming from a more permanent connection.”

  He didn’t look back at Madoc and Namwynne, but he didn’t need to.

  “Aye?” Moiread reached for another bit of fruit. It was a little like a pear, but red and dipped in honey. Did Cauldir not know her lineage, she wondered, or did he see that differently? “It could well be,” she said neutrally. “There are tales enough of such in my own family.”

  Cathal aside, it was rare for the dragon-blooded to marry full mortals, but even those with their own magical lineage had occasionally found the alliance trying. One of Moiread’s aunts had decamped to her own family,
and a great-great-uncle on her mother’s side had simply vanished. Chiefly, Moiread remembered her father frowning over the possibility of broken alliances, and a number of elaborate and tense visits of state.

  “Yes,” said Cauldir. “I thought such a one as you would understand.”

  “In a way.” Moiread spread her hands. “Most marriage is a hardship of one sort or another, my lord. Your princess has a choice in hers, which is a great deal more than most get in my world, and certainly more than royalty do.”

  The musicians played on in the background. The melody was slow and unobtrusive, unlike the music Moiread had danced to a few days before. One strain of it swirled high like bagpipes, but with a more metallic note to it, while a steady drumbeat kept up a darker undertone.

  “He’ll perish well before she does,” said Cauldir, no longer pretending to talk at all abstractly.

  “Likely,” said Moiread. “It often happens that way.”

  “Among your people, or among mortals?”

  “Both. There’s been many a lass whose husband was her father’s age—or the other way around, especially when matters of alliance are concerned—and if childbirth doesn’t carry her off, she’ll likely have a pleasant widowhood before long. Even a young man can perish easily enough of plague or war or misadventure. Dust we are, and to dust we shall return, and all that.”

  “That isn’t our way.”

  “So I hear.” Moiread chuckled. “I’d envy you if I thought there was any profit in it.”

  “Then there’s naught about this”—he gestured to the table—“that troubles you?”

  “It’s not mine to find troubling or not, my lord,” Moiread replied. “In truth, I wouldn’t be quick to take a mortal to husband, but matters between my people and humans are not as they are with yours, and I doubt husband means quite the same in your world as mine, and it’s of no matter regardless. This is a matter for my lord and your princess, and for their kin. I’m none of those and have no stake.”

  She stopped. Ordinarily such a pause in the conversation would have called for another drink of mead, but Moiread wanted all her wits about her. This was taking a turn, and she knew not where it would lead.

  Silent for a little while, Cauldir sat back on his bench, silver brows drawn together, fingers resting motionless on the tabletop.

  A new song began, this one a duet of two female singers, with a harp playing in the background. Another woman’s laugh rang out over the whole proceeding, clear and almost as musical as the song itself. The magical lights shone down from the walls, never flickering or flaring as torches in Artair’s hall would have done.

  “And if I were to give you a…stake?” Cauldir finally asked. “A reason to take an interest?”

  Careful.

  Moiread slowly slipped a curious smile onto her face. “What would you offer, and for what sort of an interest? Your queen has already granted us considerable aid.”

  “Aid to Madoc, yes. And I would by no means betray her, or deny him those favors, but there is some power in my own grasp as well, both of arms and of magic.” The red-gold eyes watched her for reaction. “I could aid your land, if need be, or I could do a service for you yourself.”

  War had not been so long ago. Famine ruled in many parts of the country, and the MacAlasdairs’ magic could only keep Loch Arach from the worst of it, not guarantee comfort. Moiread herself was a warrior, and she had her enemies. Fey magic could be helpful—perhaps lifesaving—and there was always guest right, the chance to spend more time in this lovely new world.

  “If?” she asked. “What do you imagine I could do, if I were so inclined?”

  Cauldir smiled. “I wouldn’t ask you to harm the mortal lord, mind—”

  “Good.”

  Her voice was a growl. One or two of the courtiers turned their heads, and Moiread gave them the best innocent smile she could manage, given that her mouth wanted to grow fangs just then.

  That hit, if only for a moment. Cauldir sat back, one hand dropping to his waist but not quite to the hilt of his sword. In the next breath he was smiling again, though more thinly than before. “Indeed, your loyalty is to be admired. Yet it would hardly be disloyal for a friend to persuade, would it?”

  “You’d promise me favors just for a word in his ear?”

  “More than one word, surely. Whatever he decides, he’ll go back to your world until the end of his quest. All know that much. You’ll be traveling together. There would be time to convince him.” Cauldir tapped a long finger on the table. “And journeys, especially those in mortal lands, oft take longer than the travelers expect.”

  “Ah,” said Moiread. “Long enough for her to believe herself abandoned and turn to you, you mean? It’s a shabby sort of a trick, my lord.”

  Color flared in Cauldir’s shining pale cheeks, and his lips went thin. Anger—and guilt—looked the same in both races, it seemed. “I use the arts that I can, madam, nor do I scruple when the welfare of my princess and my kingdom is concerned.”

  “And both mean her marrying you? Regardless of her own mind, or her mother’s will?” Moiread shook her head and sighed. “Were I a cynical woman, I’d say that was awfully convenient for you.”

  “Neither,” said Cauldir, and Moiread had to admit that even in anger his voice was melodious, “permit elevating a mortal lord’s son to my queen’s family, nor letting the ruling bloodline of our land so debase itself.”

  The voice from behind them was quiet and, on the surface, amused, but it was a cold humor. “Should I ask my cousin, sir, whether he considers himself debased? Or my mother whether our land has fallen into ruin in the generations since that marriage?”

  By the guilty start he gave, Cauldir hadn’t heard Namwynne approach. Moiread would have felt smug about that, but she hadn’t either. The princess had perhaps been floating, and the hall was far from quiet, but mostly Moiread had been distracted. She kicked herself for it, mentally.

  “Your Highness, I—” Cauldir began.

  “In future schemes of this sort, you would do well to study your history beforehand. It would save you embarrassment, and what I suspect will shortly be a great deal of inconvenience.”

  A look passed between them, and steel shone beneath the violet of Namwynne’s eyes. She hadn’t moved, nor spoken further, when Cauldir bowed his head. “I’ll depart tomorrow. Please believe that I had your interests at heart.”

  “Would that either of us could command belief so easily,” said Namwynne. She stood watching as he departed, then sat down by Moiread in the place he’d vacated. “I extend you my mother’s apologies, though she knows nothing of this, and I would rather it remain so. While I would never say her wrath is unjust, it can often be intemperate, and I care not for such scenes. Cauldir will go, and he will not act against you or yours. I give you my word on it. But I’ll not stop you bearing this tale to higher ears, if that is your wish.”

  “No,” said Moiread. “I’ve met his like among mortals. It’s mostly more trouble than it’s worth to seek vengeance, even when they stay dead.” She shifted uneasily, crossing her ankles over each other. “How much did you hear, my lady?”

  “Enough to thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Your Highness, but I didn’t refuse for your sake, not mostly.”

  “No.” Namwynne smiled. “But refuse you did, and you kept him speaking long enough to reveal his true nature. That is not without worth. Then too, I am myself fond of Madoc Firanon and disposed to thank any who keep his interests in mind.”

  “Ah, well, I did promise as much. He’s a good man too. I’m not of the mind that marrying a mortal is certain disaster, though I’ve also not given it much consideration. If it’s your will…” Moiread hesitated. I can vouch for his skill in the bedchamber was not politic, and she felt strangely cold as she went on speaking. “Well, I’ll back you, if you want, and I’ll try to bring
him back safe this way when his quest’s done.”

  Namwynne laughed quietly, shaking her head. “No, lady. No, though I thank you again for the kindness. I spoke truth when I named Madoc the brother of my hall. In my heart, he could be another of my mother’s children. I truly made my choice long ago.” She looked back over her shoulder at Lord Arbelath, and now Moiread saw a glimmer in her eyes that she’d missed before.

  “Oh,” said Moiread, not giving voice to any of her thoughts.

  The princess might have guessed a few anyway, but her smile remained. “He is restfully quiet and knows when to pursue his own devices and leave me to mine, and he rides most well. And I have loved him, and he me, since before my hall brother left us.”

  “Your mother will be relieved, I expect.”

  “Not her. She’s known almost as long, but she wouldn’t have the Sea King or his son too certain of their chances. It always suits her ill to be taken for granted, be it by her oldest friends.” The violet eyes actually rolled a little. “Were she otherwise, we might have all spared ourselves trouble, but I cannot wish her different than she is.”

  “I know that feeling well,” said Moiread, remembering Artair. She let out her breath and the tension in her back, and leaned against the table. “By the way, what does ‘Firanon’ mean? He’s got another name in my world.”

  “Oh!” said Namwynne, surprised but glad to be able to share knowledge. “It’s the line of the cousin I spoke of. He wed a mortal woman and went to her world, and came back when she died, though he himself has been in the mountains of late, far from this hall. She was one of Madoc’s ancestors. I could not count how many generations back…far enough that the marriage would not mingle close kin, else my mother would not have suggested it. They’ve all looked mortal for years.”