Twenty-five

This time the potion was dark brown, with threads of black and gray swirling through it. The vessel was lead. To magical sight, the whole thing had a dark glow to it, an impression of being more solid than anything around it, and a nasty strand of red-gray that Cathal was relieved to see dull and muted by comparison. Standing at Fergus’s bedside, Sophia frowned down at him, then up at Cathal and Sithaeg, and her hands were tight on the cup’s sides.

“It’s the appropriate day and hour,” she said, not clearly speaking to anyone in the room but herself. “Yes, and the logic stands.”

Still she hesitated. Watching from the other side of the bed, Cathal saw her eyes dart up to his, then again to Sithaeg’s. Her mouth opened. “This…” she began, and then stopped.

From the past few months, Cathal recognized the impulse she felt in that moment. Sophia had already presented the facts to them, as best she could with their limited understanding. Saturn would confer strength and bind Fergus’s body more to the world of matter. The bit of Valerius’s will—or soul, or whatever had gone from dream to Sophia to holly branch—should give Fergus power over the wizard. With matters as they stood, the reverse shouldn’t be a worry. She couldn’t be certain.

Sophia had told those things to him and Sithaeg. Neither had objected, and Cathal didn’t think she had any new information. What she wanted now was to lay the case in front of them again and have them decide to go forward, or not, so that the blame wouldn’t fall entirely on her shoulders if the results were dire. She wanted what most men did from their leader or their lord: freedom from decision. Christ knew he’d longed for it often enough.

He was about to step forward and speak—Go ahead, lass—when Sophia shook her head. Her shoulders went back and up; her spine straightened. “This one should not explode,” she said, “even should it fail. But you might both wish to stand back, in case I’m in error.”

Instead, Cathal went to her side. Sithaeg’s presence would be chaperone enough, even were the work ahead of them insufficient; his greater physical strength was justification. The hand he put on Sophia’s shoulder had no such excuse, but he regretted it not at all. Beneath gown and kirtle, her muscles were taut as lute strings, and he could do nor say nothing just then to relax her, only hope that his presence and the warmth of his hand rendered the moment easier to bear.

He kept his other hand on the hilt of his sword, the blade half an inch out already. The wards should hold; the time wasn’t right for demons, but he’d take no chances.

Sithaeg retreated back to the wall, lips moving in quiet prayer as the beads of a rosary slipped through her fingers. Her face was gray even in the morning light, tense with hope and the refusal to hope.

There was more of Fergus now. The other, more mundane potions hadn’t brought him back, but they’d kept the gains that Sophia’s first mixture had given him. Sithaeg and a few maids had propped him up in bed, with cushions at his back and his hands folded in his lap, so it was easier for Sophia to set the vessel to his lips.

She went very slowly: almost a drop at a time at first, with a few seconds’ pause between each when she leaned back and watched every detail of Fergus’s face, the rhythm of his breathing, and the nails of his motionless hands. Cathal almost did the same, but he switched his attention back and forth from Fergus to Sophia herself, noting how precise each movement she made was, and how little she was breathing.

Rather than a glow, this time Cathal’s magical vision showed Fergus’s body taking on the same heightened solidity as the goblet. His brown hair and the stubble of his beard looked darker, his pale skin at once paler and more vivid in its pallor. The rust-colored aura around him deepened and lost a few of the gray-white streaks that had been winding through it. At Sithaeg’s half-choked exclamation, Cathal switched his vision back to the mortal world and saw that Fergus’s hands, which had still been largely misty after the previous experiment, were regaining flesh as the seconds passed.

The sound was deeper this time, and more complex. The phantom-plucked string that made the sound wavered in places, or there was more than one being played. Douglas would have known. Cathal didn’t feel warmth this time, but he saw Fergus’s body settle deeper into the pillows and Sophia’s wrists tremble with the sudden weight of the cup, empty though it was.

Cathal reached down and wrapped his free hand around hers.

You’re at the source of your greatest strength, his father said in his memory. The land knows you.

Cathal only vaguely knew how to reach for that power, and not at all how he might send it to either Sophia or Fergus. He reached clumsily anyhow, and clumsily willed it through him to both of them, and while he knew not if that bore any fruit, it still contented him somewhat that the strength of his arm was there for Sophia.

Movement, even thought, slowed. The dance of dust in a sunbeam became a stately march. For an instant, all lines sharpened, all shadows became darker. Cathal could hear every beat of his heart and every breath that escaped him. When he looked to Sithaeg, each word of her prayers was stretched, exaggerated: Ave…Maria…gratia…

Though slow, Cathal suspected those prayers were more urgent now. Her eyes were huge and terrified. He himself felt the hand on his sword hilt tighten in instinct that far outstripped mere thought.

Inside the half-circle of his arm and body, Sophia stood with her face turned down to watch Fergus and her hands outstretched around the lead cup. What triumph or terror showed in her expression was hidden from Cathal’s view, but she stood without moving, her breathing slow and regular, and there was no tremor in her body at all now that he was helping her bear the cup’s weight.

It came to him that she was not fully there, or not only there—that her wizard-sent dreams were not the only time when she touched other worlds. More than metal and herbs was at work in alchemy, and had been even before the addition of Valerius’s maybe-soul. Stars, he thought, and angels, or gods: beings an order above even those whose blood ran in his veins. He wondered how much of that she knew.

He stepped closer. He couldn’t put his body between her and what real danger might threaten; nonetheless, he would make the gesture, and hope that whatever sent its power through her now would witness it.

Fergus’s hands opened.

The short, sturdy fingers drew back from each other, spread apart, then came back together. The hands flexed, gripping invisible objects, and turned, and opened again. One hand plucked at the sheets, investigating by touch.

Sithaeg cried out in joy and ran forward, emotion countering the slowness of spell and age alike. Sophia stayed motionless, whether still entranced or, like Cathal, knowing too much to rejoice at once. He himself saved thanks and action both—but he didn’t stop Sithaeg when she knelt by the bed and took her son’s hands in hers, nor point out that Fergus’s eyes were still closed. Let them have this moment. If it lasted, God be praised, and if it didn’t, they’d still have had it.

Fergus’s hands stilled, but only briefly. Cathal thought the moment was just long enough for Fergus to feel the size of the fingers gripping his, the calluses of sewing and cooking, the raised veins and swollen joints of age, long enough for recognition. The rosary beads fell over their intertwined right hands. Cathal wasn’t sure whether Sithaeg had kept hold of them out of hope or forgetfulness, but they looked right.

With evident care, care that he probably didn’t need to take after so long, Fergus squeezed his mother’s fingers in response. “Mam?” he asked. His voice was barely stronger than a whisper, the word only slightly more articulated than a sigh.

“Aye,” Sithaeg said, clear and loud through her tears. “It’s me, love. I’m here. Don’t try… Lie still. You’ll be a while recovering, but you’ve come back to us—”

With an obvious effort, Fergus shook his head, a slight back-and-forth movement against the pillows that took forever and a day. “Can’t stay.”

“You can’t?” she asked, lifting her head to look into Sophia’s face, than Cathal’s, in the vain hope that one of them would offer a contradiction. When none came, her lips went thin, and anger flushed her graying skin. “Why not?”

As if in answer, the chill wind Cathal remembered swept over them again, the smell of the grave almost a conscious taunt. He snarled back into it, feeling his teeth turn to fangs and his nails lengthen, but it did no good. The smell and the wind passed on, unresponsive, and in their wake Fergus’s hands lay in his mother’s grasp, lifeless once again.

The sense of weight and slowness was gone too. Everything went at its normal speed, which seemed too quick, just as Cathal felt both the cup and his own hand to be far too light. Nothing was substantial enough.

“But his hands are still…better,” said Sithaeg, responding to the statement none of them had made. She raised one of Fergus’s unresponsive arms. “You see, my lord?”

Indeed, there was solid flesh where there had once been misty half-substance. Fergus’s hands were too pale and soft with disuse to belong to the man Cathal had fought beside, too motionless to be a part of anyone still living, but they were there, entirely there, as they hadn’t been before he’d swallowed the potion.

Quickly—everything was quick just then—Cathal switched his vision. The pale streaks hadn’t reappeared in Fergus’s aura. He still looked, in this sight, to be more solid than the rest of the room, and certainly more so than he had been earlier.

“We make progress, then,” Sophia said and turned to Sithaeg. “I know it to be slow, and…and halting, and it must be all the more so for you, but we do make progress.”

The older woman wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve and at first said nothing. The room sent back the rustle of cloth as she rose and the click of wooden beads as she picked up her rosary. “You’re sure,” she said finally, speaking slowly in Gaelic and looking straight into Sophia’s eyes. “This will work. He’s not just suffering more. You’re certain.”

Cathal wished that Sophia hadn’t stepped away from him to address Sithaeg. When she flinched, he would have given much to put his arms around her. The weight of the question could crush a man, and there was nothing he could say in response. His certainty wasn’t what Sithaeg looked for.

He watched Sophia draw her hand across her mouth and heard her speak carefully, in measured tones and at a slow pace that had little to do with her command of the language. “I’ll make no false promises. I can’t be certain that it will work. This is a new thing we do, and a powerful man who opposes us, and I”—she raised her hand and let it drop—“I know less, far less, than I would like in this matter. I am certain that we have a chance. I wouldn’t leave a man in pain if I thought otherwise.”

Neither of them looked at Cathal, nor even seemed to remember that he was there. Sithaeg stood as a woman in a rainstorm, letting the words hit her and sink in. “Aye,” she said. “Very well.”

They both bowed to the old woman when they left. It seemed the thing to do.

Out in the hall, the door closed behind them, Sophia sighed and leaned against the wall. With her guard coming toward them—Edan, this time—Cathal could still make no gesture of comfort. Words had never been his strong suit, but he tried nonetheless. “Progress. You said it yourself.”

“True. And…maybe we won’t need his name, though I begin to think it’ll be required, and perhaps another planet—” She broke off and shook her head. “I ramble. Forgive me. And I ramble because of what I wish not to say: that we know our progress. I don’t believe that Valerius is idle.”