Highland Dragon Rebel

by Isabel Cooper

  Pain was of no particular significance. He took a long breath and slowly let it out.

  “Lord Madoc?” Antonio’s voice came from the door. “Are you well?”

  “Ah,” he said, startling a little. “Tired, I fear, though I can’t justify it. My lord’s hospitality has been most generous. I cannot complain of my rest, and yet—” He raised his hands and let them drop into his lap, illustrating his weariness.

  In response, Antonio chuckled sympathetically. Madoc heard footsteps and the shh of robes against stone as the other man entered and took a seat. “I think that the calculating of such intricate matters is as tiring in its way as a day’s ride. Though perhaps I only wish to think so, since I am more capable of one than of the other.”

  “I’d be inclined to agree.” Madoc opened his eyes and threw himself into conversation. “I hadn’t expected you back so soon. Not that I’d complain of the company, but I thought you were valiantly attempting to install a few more words of Latin in Master Iestyn’s head.”

  “Ah, but a wise man chooses his battles, does he not? Or perhaps I see myself confronted with too formidable a foe. After all, none of the trivium can compare with the allure of the training ground on such a day—or perhaps with a real Scotsman and his tales.”

  “My apologies?”

  “The fault is hardly yours. To a martial young mind, Master Michael could only be more intriguing if he had a scar or perhaps an eye patch. And he does in truth seem a valiant young warrior. I hope he had no need to prove as much on the way here.”

  Moiread was the last person that Madoc wanted to discuss. Still, the scholar was being not only polite but flattering. “A time or two. No serious injury to either of us, thank the saints for that. I did lose a horse, which was a great pity. My current one is no replacement.”

  Briefly, Madoc considered telling Antonio about the assassins, but held off. He’d told Elian a rough outline, leaving out the demonic elements and the magic. If Antonio’s lord wanted him to know, he knew already.

  “Then let me extend my admiration to your skills as well,” said Antonio. “And how fare your calculations? I confess I’d hoped to come back and find you’d done the greater part of the work, lazy wretch that I am.”

  “Lazy? No, I’d not say that,” Madoc replied. “It’s hardly any of your fight, is it? So it’s quite generous of you to lend your aid, both here and at the ritual itself. I fear that I’m as yet undecided as to the timing. From what you’ve been able to tell me, and what I remember, there are no adverse conjunctions in the near future.” The stars weren’t dramatically favorable either, but a man could wait a year for that. Neutral would suffice. “Thursday would be the best for alliance, governed as it is by Jupiter, but that’s the better part of a week from now. If need be, Tuesday would suffice, with Mars for protection from foes.”

  “I’d say you’d be better to make it Thursday.” Antonio smiled. “As I am certain that a longer visit would please my lord and his family well.”

  “You quite set my heart at ease, good sir.”

  She likes you… Many a couple have started worse.

  Madoc shut his eyes briefly, shaking off Moiread’s voice in his memory, and then picked up the parchment he’d been working on. “If the day is settled, then we should begin work on the hours. I’ve started in on the table here. It shouldn’t take much longer, I hope.”

  “You must look forward to being done with all of this,” Antonio said.

  “Oh…” Madoc shrugged. “I’d not mind staying off a horse for a month or two. But the trip has had rewards other than the obvious. Even if I could have accomplished as much by staying home, I’d not have missed the journey.”

  * * *

  “Have a seat, boyo,” said Tomos. “It’s not so much that you’ve run us ragged, mind, but the body’s got a way of deceiving you when you’re young, you know. If you don’t put up your blade and have a drink, you’ll be barely moving by nightfall.”

  He was right. Moiread had said similar things herself. Still, she put away the wooden sword with reluctance. For a blessed hour or so, she hadn’t thought beyond the next block or thrust. She knew she’d miss that state of mind quickly. There was no getting away to hunt in this castle.

  Physically, the rest and shade were welcome. Sweat plastered Moiread’s tunic and shirt to her back, stuck her hair to the sides of her neck in straggling bits, and ran down from her forehead to sting her eyes. They’d not practiced in armor, saints be praised.

  “What’d you leave behind?” asked one of her previous opponents, a middle-aged man with a large beard.

  “What?” Moiread was too tired for politeness, or really for coherent words. She got out half a mumble, half a breath, but the man seemed to understand.

  “A man fights like you do when his life’s not on the line… He’s likely trying to forget something. Either behind or ahead.”

  He handed her a skin of chilled wine and water, which both quenched Moiread’s thirst and bought her time to think. “I’d a girl back home,” she said, settling on that first lie Madoc had told about her, back at Hallfield when she’d thought the trip was going to be just another task for her father. “You’re right. It’s not a matter I like to think on.”

  “Women,” Tomos said sympathetically. “’Tis true they’re the source of all evil, and now of my stiff arms tomorrow. But…” he added, seeing a female figure coming toward them from the kitchens, “nothing is as good a cure as a bit of the sickness, you know. Jenny, girl, is that for us?”

  The kitchen maid, dark-eyed and buxom, held out a dish of plums. “As you’re working so hard in our defense,” she said, “and in honor of our guests.” She aimed a sideways smile at Moiread, not to mention a significant look from under her long eyelashes.

  “Pretty boys that they are,” said Tomos, rolling his eyes amiably.

  “Both the gift and the company are welcome,” Moiread said and made a small courtly bow. “Though I fear we’re none of us fair company for a delicate lass right now.”

  Jenny wrinkled her nose playfully. “You do all seem fair warm. There’s a little lake a short way off, you know. It would be easy enough to find, I’m sure.”

  “If my master needs me for nothing, I may seek it out. I’d not want to distress any of my hosts, aye?”

  “Aye,” said Jenny, and turned with a sway of her hips.

  “As I was saying,” said Tomos.

  “The lure of the foreign,” the man with the mustache said.

  Moiread stifled a sigh. The girl was comely. A bit of a kiss and a cuddle might be nice, and there were enough women glad to stop there, with no risk of discovery for Moiread and none of a nine-month burden for them. It might take her mind off Madoc.

  It might get back to Madoc. She wasn’t sure how either of them would feel about that.

  She shook her head, mostly to herself, and offered the dish to Tomos. “Have a plum.”

  Thirty-eight

  As it happened, Moiread went to see the lake after all, but as a guard for Madoc’s ritual, and Jenny was nowhere nearby. Tomos noted that fact on the way down and shook his head in mock pity.

  “It’s likely for the best,” Moiread replied. “Keeps my mind on the business at hand, aye?”

  They were two of the four guards, all mounted and armed, who would keep watch. That duty included containing Iestyn. While the boy wouldn’t take part in the ritual, Elian had said it would be good for him to listen and know the oaths that bound his people. He would wait with the guards, near enough to hear Elian and Madoc’s voices when they raised them to take vows. Wide-eyed, he rode with straight back and an evident desire to impress all men and gods who might be watching. Antonio had made clear to him the importance of not interrupting the ceremony. Moiread hoped the warning would hold.

  She had to grant that Iestyn, energetic as he was, had been well-behaved enough
so far, and also that he rode almost as well as she did, which fell short of Madoc’s skill but was better than any member of his father’s house other than the guards. Antonio didn’t ride at all—four servants carried him on a litter—while Elian and Bronwyn sat on their horses as if they were animate chairs.

  Generations before them, most with more worldly aims, had worn the dirt smooth and bare on the broad road they traveled. Elder trees flanked them, flowers white against glossy green leaves, mingled with the solid green of hazel. The sky above was clear, the sun bright. It was going to be hot before the day was out. Whatever hours Madoc and Antonio had calculated, Moiread was glad they meant starting at terce, before the sun was yet high.

  “Were there stories about this place before?” she asked Tomos.

  “A few. Come bathe at the dawn of the new year, and you’ll be healthy all year through. If you don’t die of the chill. I think girls see their husband if they look in the water at Midsummer. They may have to be naked.”

  Iestyn stifled a snicker. Fourteen was like that. Moiread suspected he’d try and hide by the lake in a week or two, possibly bringing a few friends, and all of them probably getting their ears boxed if the stories were true and the girls caught them.

  At the end of the trail, the small valley widened. A meadow of high grass, mingled with white clover and yellow buttercup, spread out around a pool no wider than Moiread was tall, but mirror-clear in a way that suggested depth. Butterflies took flight at their approach, shining blue and yellow in the sun.

  The guards at the head of the procession fell back to join Moiread, Tomos, and Iestyn, while the ritual party stopped.

  “Remember,” Elian said to his son, “do as you’re told. This is solemn work we’re about.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Iestyn said, sounding sincere.

  “Good luck,” Moiread said.

  Madoc smiled. “Thank you,” he replied, and briefly it was as if they were the only two present.

  Then he turned his horse, Bronwyn at his side, and followed Elian and Antonio up to the lake.

  * * *

  Thoughts of Moiread would be a distraction, as would thoughts of anything but the ritual. Madoc was glad that he’d spent so long learning to concentrate. It had been harder to put Moiread out of his head than it had been anything else in his life as a magician.

  He tied his horse to a tree and heard Antonio rising from the litter nearby and giving instructions to his servants. “An hour, no less. Bring wine and food for all of us too.”

  The scholar spoke wisely. The ritual was not likely to be as taxing as scrying on the assassin’s amulet had been, but magic was effort. Madoc almost wished he could have asked for a litter as well, but he possessed no scholar’s title to soothe his pride.

  He stood in the west: ending, receiving. Elian took his position across from him, with Antonio as the aged north and Bronwyn as the younger, vital south. The pieces began to snap into place: sword into sheath, foot into stirrup, the feel of a thing going where it should to do the job at hand.

  Elian stepped forward to the edge of the pool. “Let Earth and Sky, Fire and Water, and all Creation witness what we pledge now. With these holy waters do we swear.”

  He plunged a golden chalice into the pool and withdrew it, holding it up with water streaming down its sides. The man had some sense of a performance. Madoc also strode forward, and the two met on the edge of the lake, the cup now held between them.

  “I, Madoc, heir of Avondos, son of Rhys, son of Aberthol,” he began in Latin. The words were the same as he’d used at Hallfield. The power started feeling the same too, but then it went awry—subtly, like a wrong note or a snag in cloth.

  Keeping his face blank, Madoc paused as if to take another breath. The flaw was definitely there. It was to do with the binding nature of the oath; he couldn’t yet tell precisely what. He did know, though, that he didn’t want to risk going further unless he knew more.

  * * *

  “Are they really doing magic?” Iestyn peered over at the four by the lake, their figures shrunken by distance. Their voices traveled as indistinct murmurs, with a few words surfacing here and there. The moment of the actual vows must yet have been in the future. “Like Merlin?”

  One of the guards shifted uneasily, not willing either to deny events by the lake or to condemn his lord for hosting them, but clearly uncomfortable discussing it. Moiread thought that the others’ hesitation had less to do with the rite itself than with Iestyn. How much had the boy’s father told him, and how much did Elian want him knowing at his age?

  Her pay didn’t depend on Elian’s favor, so she answered forthrightly. “Aye. Though I think they’re all too sharp to get stuck in a tree for the sake of a woman.”

  “Yuugh, no.” Iestyn’s upper lip curled. “Father and Signor Antonio are far too old.”

  “So was Merlin,” Moiread said dryly. A few of the guards snickered at Iestyn’s further grimace of disgust.

  The horses cropped grass, staining their bits with green slime. Shadow flicked his tail at flies. Returning to a less-disturbing subject, Iestyn asked, “How do they do it?”

  “I think they call on the saints, and the archangels, and so on.”

  “But Father Evan does that. And people go on pilgrimages to call on saints when they’re sick. And that’s not magic.”

  “No,” Moiread replied, mindful that the guards were watching her and also that Iestyn wasn’t the most discreet of students. “I think it’s in how you do it. A common man begs a saint for a favor. A priest talks with a friend he knows well, and a magician… Well, for him it’s like knowing a man at court.”

  Iestyn worked that out, twisting his fingers in his horse’s yellow mane. The guards looked curiously at Moiread. She thought it was only curiosity, but it would do no harm to reinforce her role. “But I’m far from an expert, aye? You could ask Lord Madoc to explain more of it, or Signor Antonio.”

  “He only explains tedious things,” Iestyn said, much put-upon as only a stripling expected to learn Latin verbs could be.

  “Does he, now? Might it be that you’ve never asked after the ones that aren’t tedious?”

  “No.” Iestyn made a face. “I asked about the scar on his neck once, and he just said it happened a long time ago and wasn’t a fit subject for a young gentleman.”

  The world paused. Moiread chose her words carefully, sounding as casual as she could. “Scar on his neck, you say?”

  “Oh yes. About here.” Iestyn tapped his collarbone. “A whole ring. The robes mostly hide it, but I talk with the pages, and Alan—not the guard, but the boy who brings water for baths—has seen it plenty. That’s how I know. But Signor Antonio won’t tell me.”

  Any man could have a scar on his neck. But Moiread recalled the questions Antonio had asked and the conversation she’d overheard, and she felt her other shape flex and roar within her. Still she hesitated, not knowing the truth and afraid to disrupt the rite—until a surge of power twisted itself on the hill. One of the human outlines there started to blur and twist.

  “What in God’s name?” Tomos asked, seeing it too.

  “Nothing in God’s.” Moiread kicked out of her stirrups and leapt off Shadow. “Get the boy to safety. The castle, if you can make it. If not, find distance and cover from the air. Now.”

  She slapped the gelding’s rump hard, and he bolted away. The slap was almost unnecessary, since the horse was already nervous. He scented the transformation to come.

  * * *

  Madoc didn’t have long. Even having started the ritual so recently, he’d invoked power. A stone falling downhill became harder to stop with each passing second, and so it was with a spell that had not reached its end. More than that, the other three participants would notice his hesitation before too much time had passed. If they doubted him, their concentration could waver, making the whole endeavor harder.


  Quickly he reached out. The power tied into the land. He’d grown familiar with the land over his evenings at the castle, so navigation was a simple enough matter. There, near him, was a loop when there should be a straight line, so to speak. Madoc tugged gently, but the entanglement didn’t budge.

  On closer inspection, it felt as if the flaw in the magic would also catch Antonio, standing next to him. The exact structure, and thus the way through, remained unclear. Antonio’s face was blank with focus, and Madoc didn’t want to alarm him.

  He needed better vision. He could manage that.

  “Visio dei,” he breathed.

  As his vision changed, he felt a sudden rush of power toward him. A snag at one end had come loose. Warmth rushed through the land and out of the pool, spreading out around the four of them. Outlines shivered. Grass, trees, and sky all took on sharper edges, more brilliant colors.

  Antonio staggered. Catching the motion, Madoc turned, only to stand aghast at what the spirits revealed.

  A red line twined through the earth and around Madoc’s foot, growing up his leg like a vine. The other end lay just out of Antonio’s reach.

  It lay, indeed, in the dark, glittering shadow that surrounded him, the same sort that hovered over Moiread: wings, tail, serpent’s neck. Dragon.

  The shadow writhed. The neck twisted, sending the head open-jawed toward the sky. Antonio bared his teeth and hissed at the air, ignoring the three faces gaping at him in alarm.

  Then his shadow flexed, rippled, and flowed like oil over his body.

  Thirty-nine

  As it had with Moiread, the change happened fast. Antonio vanished into his shadow. Madoc had a moment to see his outline flicker, and there was a dragon in his place, a vast blood-red beast larger than Madoc remembered Moiread being. Crouched, it snarled again.

  “Oh, God in heaven defend us,” Elian said, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

  God was providing neither defense nor information, leaving Madoc unsure what to do. Draconic form didn’t necessarily mean malice, as he knew well, and as suspicious as the red strand between them had looked, there might be an innocent explanation. “Antonio,” he began, raising a hand.