Forty

Silence reigned in the tower room. Douglas and Madoc had finished their chanting, Cathal feared to disrupt the spell, and Sophia neither spoke nor moved except to breathe. The time might have weighed more lightly on Cathal if she had. Little as he liked the thought of her in distress, it was even more unsettling to see scratches appear on her arms while she sat as placidly as a nun at prayers.

It was fortunate that Cathal’s energy was draining away, fortunate too that the process clouded his mind. He was a patient man, but he knew not how he might have acted, waiting at such a time in the fullness of his strength. Even his willpower wasn’t infinite. Weakness made the minutes easier to endure.

The floor swayed beneath him, but he stayed sitting upright. His feet went numb, and then his hands, but he didn’t move. Dimly he knew that his mouth was dry and that his body ached in muscle and bone, as well as on a deeper level that he couldn’t have named. Cathal let all such knowledge enter his mind and then depart. None of it could make any difference.

Lost in hazy vision and the struggle to hold on, he wasn’t the one who noticed the change. Madoc’s quick inhalation and Douglas’s low curse alerted him. He blinked, forcing his eyes to clear briefly, and then saw a dark red-brown glow, the color of rust or autumn leaves, surrounded Sophia’s hands down to her elbows.

Fergus, he thought. Then…?

He couldn’t begin to guess. Neither profanity nor prayer came to his mind. He couldn’t think of a word that would have sufficed for that interlude, when he saw the change and knew not what it meant nor what came after. Hope would have tempted fate.

All at once the silver ribbon coming from Sophia’s head blazed, sunlight bright. Cathal’s eyes closed instantly, the body’s mindless protection coming to the fore. When he opened them again, her hands looked the same, but the cord was gone.

He no longer felt the outflow of strength. What little reserves he had were his; the connection between them had no pull any longer.

Balanced between fear and hope, with no idea which way to turn, he seized Sophia’s hands in his. The russet glow surrounded Cathal’s fingers as he interlaced them with hers, and briefly he felt Fergus’s presence as well, as it had been during a hundred nights sitting by campfires.

Good man.

“Oh.”

By himself, Cathal would have thought he’d imagined her voice. It was faint, no more than a whisper, but Madoc met his eyes and nodded, and Douglas, off to the side and dispassionate, was the one who managed to reply.

“Madam, we welcome you back. We’ll have you free shortly, and your wounds tended.”

“Am I back?” She blinked. Her eyes, staring up into Cathal’s, were dark and liquid and lovely, the awareness in them perhaps the most beautiful thing he’d seen in more than a century of life. “I—”

Embracing her was not possible in their position. Cathal settled for squeezing her hands. “You’re here. You’re with us.” He remembered then that she hadn’t been conscious for any of their journey and added, “At Loch Arach.”

She smiled. “You were with me,” she said. “I saw you.”

“I’d never have it otherwise,” said Cathal.

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.”