Lady of Magick

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  Finally she drew the bedclothes up again and, lying down again atop them, on the nearer side of the bed, composed herself to wait.

  No more than a quarter of an hour had passed, or so she judged, when the tense breathing silence of the house was broken by a knock at the door—a strangely syncopated rhythm, which after a moment her mind’s ear absently identified as the characteristic snap of a strathspey reel. An odd thing to remark upon, at such a time; Sophie let her mind focus on it, hang a melody upon that snatch of rhythm and build up harmonies around it, the better to keep up the pretence that she remained bespelled.

  Since waking from that first baffling oblivion, she had puzzled over the nature of this spell for hours, locked within her uncooperative body, even her voice answering to someone else’s will in place of her own. Only once had she experienced anything even remotely similar, and that was at the hands of the priests of Apollo Coelispex, who wielded the god’s power in his name. This did not feel like that calm, suspended stillness, nor like the treacle-toffee grip of the spell known as Arachne’s Web, but like a firm grip on the back of her neck, anchoring a chain which allowed her freedom of movement but could be pulled fatally tight at any moment.

  Had she had the full use of her talent, she might have thrown it off, if not easily, then at any rate without material strain, but Lucia MacNeill’s magick was ebbing, and her own not more than half recovered—and, besides, she could not silence the voice in her mind that murmured, They will take you where Gray is.

  And when, hours into the early-falling spring night, the spell at last gave up its last grip on her, that voice only grew the more persuasive. Only pretend, it said, only submit, and they will bring you within sight of your goal, to their own undoing. You are Ulysses in the belly of the horse; this is an opportunity not to be wasted. Whether or not she had gauged their purposes aright, Gray’s captors were collecting up powerful mages; Gray was still alive (Sophie ruthlessly quashed the new, unwelcome mental voice which tried to add the caveat when last you were able to find him), and thus, logically, it followed that whatever they wanted with Sophie, it was not her immediate demise. Joanna and Gwendolen, on the other hand, were not powerful mages, but were—or could be—witnesses who might carry tales, and thus were, at present, in more danger than she was herself.

  Sophie knew very well what the others thought of her scheme of infiltration by surrender, and she had been prepared to bow to their wishes, but the thing was so close to being accomplished now, and if she could persuade Joanna to allow it, and to follow behind—

  The door of Rose Neill MacTerry’s spare bedroom opened quietly, and through slitted eyelids Sophie watched Rose Neill MacTerry herself step cautiously into the room.

  “Elinor Graham,” she said, her contralto voice so low as to be almost a hum of sound. “Come here.”

  Slowly, deliberately, Sophie rose from the bed and obeyed.

  CHAPTER XXX

  In Which Joanna and Gwendolen Experience a Setback

  The men did not treat Sophie roughly or cruelly, though neither were they particularly solicitous of her comfort. She offered them no resistance; she was not appreciably stronger in body than she had been when they left Din Edin, and what strength she had, whether of body, mind, or magick, was better husbanded for whatever might be to come than wasted on struggles which she was doomed to lose.

  She was escorted down the hill, therefore, in an almost restful silence, treading the same path which her feet had stumbled up and down so many times already since the previous morning, and boosted aboard a tall horse—brown or black or bay, though in the moonlight she could not tell which—after which one of her three captors swung up behind her, taking the reins in his left hand and tucking his right arm snugly about her waist.

  It was at once an impersonal and a distressingly intimate gesture, and for the first time Sophie had real difficulty in maintaining her pose of pliant, unresisting stupor.

  They spoke very little amongst themselves—perhaps they were as weary as she was—and she took care not to react to any of their words. She could not know what Rose Neill MacTerry (or, for that matter, Teàrlag MacAlpine or her mother) might have told them, but if they could be persuaded that she had no Gaelic, there was some possibility of her overhearing something useful.

  The journey would not have been long as the crow flew (as the owl flies, Sophie thought, and gritted her teeth to keep her silence), but the terrain was craggy and rough, and their route seemed to lie always steeply uphill or down, except where the horses were forced to pick their slow way around the side of a hill, along a rocky outcrop. It was after dawn, therefore, when their little procession drew to a halt at the heavily guarded gate of a small castle.

  Castle MacAlpine, such as it was, perched at the top of a rocky promontory, looking out to sea. Sophie and her captors had approached it from the east; to the north and west, a small forest—unexpected in this sheep-cropped, windswept place—pressed in towards its walls, its edges lit by the rising sun, dark and grey and brown and green with the full branches of pines and the just-unfurling new leaves of aspens.

  The riders and the pikemen at the gate traded greetings with the ease of long acquaintance, yet still the latter demanded the day’s watchword before signalling for the gate to be opened, and the former awaited its countersign before kicking their horses into motion once again.

  Once inside the courtyard, they dismounted without ceremony, and Sophie’s saddle-mate helped her to dismount as well, not roughly though quite without tenderness. She had not spent so much time on horseback for many months, and when he set her on her feet, her limbs wobbled under her and her knees threatened to buckle. The man whose arm had held her pinned against him all those long hours of the journey now wrapped big hands around her elbows, supporting her weight until her muscles and joints consented to do their work again. She risked a glance up at him, and before dropping her gaze again she glimpsed a ruddy-brown beard, a crooked nose, and eyes so deep-set as to obscure their colour.

  “Steady,” he growled, not unkindly.

  Sophie registered, with a tiny flare of hope, that he was addressing her in Latin.

  * * *

  Joanna froze in her tracks and held up a hand to halt Gwendolen likewise. “I hear something,” she hissed.

  She could hear nothing now but Gwendolen’s breathing and, in its interstices, her own. As soon as they resumed their stealthy progress, however, the sound tugged at the edges of her hearing again: faint, familiar, impossible to identify.

  Not the borrowed draught horse they had left picketed at the edge of the wood; they had come too far from that point, now, for any ordinary horse-sound to carry, and had the horse managed to get loose, it should have turned for home, not followed a pair of strange riders. And not, she thought, the sounds of any creature native to this forest.

  But footfalls, yes. Lighter than a horse’s; heavier than a fox’s or a deer’s.

  A sentry of this castle, or a scout of Angus Ferguson’s company. Neither is likely to welcome our presence here.

  The footsteps were growing louder. It was almost full daylight, even here amongst the trees; there was no time to climb up out of sight, and no other cover sufficient to conceal them. Now they should see whether Mama’s charms against unwelcome notice could inded protect them.

  Joanna stretched out her right hand towards Gwendolen; Gwendolen caught it in her left and held fast.

  A pair of men, long-haired and bearded, emerged from between two pine-trees. They wore breastplates and vambraces of boiled leather, and helmets on their heads; one wore a sword on a heavy baldric, and the other carried a recurved bow as tall as his shoulder. Their gear and badges were not those of Donald MacNeill’s troops; sentries of Castle MacAlpine, then.

  Joanna held her breath. Gwendolen’s hand gripped hers so tightly that her fingers were growing numb; where their wrists aligned, she felt her trembling and
was reminded that Gwendolen had never seen Sophie’s magick put to the test. Even Joanna herself, who had seen it more than once, did not altogether trust that the charms could prevent their being overheard, and so she could not risk any word of reassurance.

  But for the present, at any rate, the magick held, and the strangers passed within half a dozen paces of them, apparently without remarking their presence at all. Joanna and Gwendolen watched them out of sight into the trees.

  Gwendolen exhaled a long, almost silent sigh, and releasing Joanna’s hand, she sank down with her back against a tree-trunk, resting her head on her drawn-up knees. For a moment, Joanna tactfully averted her eyes. Then she crouched beside Gwendolen in the leaf-mould, balancing herself with a hand on her friend’s shoulder, and said quietly, “If we follow them, we shall have our way in.”

  The shoulder beneath her palm stiffened momentarily before Gwendolen raised her head. Her face was pale but resolute. “Lead on,” she said.

  * * *

  They caught the sentries up at the edge of the wood, slipping out into the open just as their quarry approached the steps leading up to the postern-gate. The guards at the foot of the walled staircase made to bar the sentries’ way; one of the men spoke a brief unintelligible phrase, and the guards raised their long pikes again and let them pass. When the sentries reached the middle step, Joanna and Gwendolen crept up behind them, slipped between the two guardsmen, and started up the staircase.

  Another pair of pikemen guarded the postern-gate proper, at the top of the steps, and again the returning sentries were challenged, gave what must be a watchword, and were permitted to pass, with Joanna and Gwendolen unnoticed upon their heels. It was heady and terrifying, to see without being seen, and Joanna’s heart beat so loudly and so rapidly that she half expected the noise to give them away.

  Once inside the castle walls, Joanna tugged Gwendolen behind a rain-barrel and muttered, “Where do you suppose they are keeping the prisoners?”

  * * *

  Sophie was escorted into a pleasant sitting-room, where a tall man and a smiling golden-haired woman sat by a crackling fire. Her captors had bound her hands and stood either side of her, each with a hand on one of her elbows, from which she deduced that it was now that Rose Neill MacTerry’s spell ought ordinarily to be wearing off.

  The woman’s eyes widened. “Well,” she said, in a pleased tone. “How interesting. I had almost given up hope.”

  Given up hope? Hope of what? But she should not ask; much better if they thought her unable to understand them.

  “Indeed,” said the man. He rose from his seat and stalked towards Sophie, who now saw that he was even taller than she had supposed: quite as tall as Gray, in fact. “I had thought Rose Neill MacTerry overoptimistic; but unless I am much mistaken, this is the Sasunnach princess indeed—only a little later than expected.”

  Sophie’s stomach clenched painfully, and her heart threatened to smash through her ribs. They know who I am; I have walked into a trap. She held her face and body still, however, and tried to think rationally: This changes nothing. They covet my magick, that is all, and I sprang the trap of my own will.

  “Truly?” said his companion, leaning forward in her seat to study Sophie more closely.

  “Oh, yes.” The tall man smiled—a slow, secret, chilling sort of smile. This, Sophie was beginning to suspect, would be Cormac MacAlpine himself. “She imagines that she can hide it from me, but I believe she is more powerful even than that husband of hers.”

  So, then: He can see magick, and he recruits others who can do so to spy for him elsewhere. Yes, that explains a great deal.

  But could also he see the remnants of Lucia MacNeill’s magick threaded through her own? If so, he gave no sign.

  Had Joanna and Gwendolen arrived yet? Had they succeeded in gaining entry? Great Janus, keeper of doors and gateways, smooth their journey.

  “Do you mean to try her at once?” said the woman. “She does not seem very likely to give trouble. Though perhaps that is only Rose Neill MacTerry’s spell? I hope she will not become a spitting fury the moment it wears off.”

  Sophie did not doubt that she appeared, at present, quite incapable of resistance. She longed to prove their assumption wrong, but her task at the moment was to divert their attention from Joanna and Gwendolen’s search for the prisoners; instead of struggling, therefore, she drooped against her bonds, forcing her captor to catch at her elbows to keep her on her feet.

  “Perhaps,” said the tall man consideringly. “She must at least be easier to persuade than her husband. I think, however”—and here his eyes lit in a rather disconcerting manner—“that I shall take this opportunity to fill the grove; we have enough sources now to do so, and I hope this may prove the turning-point in our journey.”

  Though Sophie had no more idea what these words might signify than if he had truly been speaking a language quite unknown to her, his voice came near to freezing her blood in her veins.

  His companion visibly weighed the merits of this new idea and slowly smiled. “And perhaps the others will be more compliant, with such an example before them.”

  Despite herself, Sophie shivered.

  “Go and make them ready, then,” the tall man ordered; and, turning on his heel to face Sophie, he added, “and take her down there to wait.” He spun sharply and strode towards the door.

  A hand between Sophie’s shoulder blades propelled her forward, stumbling, in his wake.

  She tried desperately to think. If Joanna and Gwendolen were here now and had gone to find Gray and his fellow prisoners, then no good could come of the order to go and fetch them. She stumbled deliberately and was saved from falling flat only by the hard hands gripping her elbows.

  “Wait,” she gasped, as they set her on her feet again; she made sure to speak in Latin, though if she were correct in supposing that Catriona MacCrimmon had provided a full report on Gray and herself, they must know that she had at least a little Gaelic. “Wait—who is that man?”

  The man on her left—he was not so very much older than herself, she thought, for all his large frame, magnificent beard and mane of russet curls—frowned down at her. “He is the chieftain, of course,” he said. “The true chieftain. Cormac MacAlpine.”

  “And, and what does he mean to do with me? Why am I here?”

  “That’s for the chieftain to say,” said the man on Sophie’s right, a shorter, slighter fellow whose face narrowed down to a point.

  He glared at his companion, and neither of them would answer any more of Sophie’s questions after that.

  * * *

  Angus Ferguson’s scouts had reported seeing the shackled men brought in and out through a postern-gate in the castle’s north wall, which was reached via a walled staircase. There could not be two such (unless the scouts had mistaken their cardinal points), and it stood to reason (thought Joanna) that if one were required to drag from one place to another a heavily shackled man who could not or would not bear his own weight, one should wish to expend as little time and effort as possible in doing so. One would also presumably wish, if it were possible, to avoid the main courtyard, which must often be full of people—not all of them, perhaps, privy to all of the castle’s most sordid business—and offered a variety of opportunities for attempts at escape.

  They considered the possibility of lurking inside the gate, waiting for a prisoner to be brought in or taken out, so that they might follow; but this was perhaps not a frequent occurrence, and in the meantime, the gods alone knew what might be happening to Sophie. Instead, therefore, following their murmured conference in the shelter of the rain-barrel, Joanna and Gwendolen crept back along the wall of the courtyard and into the narrow passage through the curtain wall.

  Gwendolen gave a little huff of triumph when they spotted the low door in the wall of the passage, leading to all appearances directly into the curtain wall. She tried the h
andle, found it locked, and shrugged philosophically.

  “Do you mean that the wall is hollow?” Joanna demanded, sotto voce. “Surely not. A siege engine would—”

  “No, no, of course not,” said Gwendolen. “Did you never look at a plan of this castle, Jo?” She had knelt before the little door now and was peering through the keyhole. “There was one in that book of your sister’s, which I thought you must have seen, though it was not a very good one, and if I remember rightly, there ought to be a staircase behind that door, to take us straight down. Now, keep an eye out for a moment.”

  Whilst Joanna sputtered in silent outrage at I thought you must have seen it, Gwendolen went on down the passage, more silently than a person wearing sturdy riding-boots ought to have been capable of, and out of her line of sight. Joanna had not had time to go more than halfway from outrage to panic before she was back again, with a smug smile on her face and something clasped tight in her right fist.

  The something proved to be a ring of keys, which they tried one by one in the little door until at last, after half a dozen attempts, one of them turned almost silently in the lock.

  “There we are,” said Gwendolen, almost beneath her breath. “And it turned so smoothly—it must be often used.”

  Leaving the key in the lock, she turned the handle; the door swung open on equally silent hinges, revealing, indeed, a winding stone staircase leading down into the dark.

  Down, certainly; but not so very straight, however.

  “After you, milady,” said Gwendolen, with a flourishing bow.

  Joanna glared daggers at her as she stepped through the door.

  Gwendolen stepped in after her, then closed the door behind herself.

  “You are not leaving the keys there?” said Joanna, frowning.

  “Yes, I am,” said Gwendolen. “I do not suppose that they have got more than one set amongst them—indeed, if this castle has been abandoned for generations, they are lucky to have found any keys at all—and if that set cannot be found, someone will raise a hue and cry at once; but this way, each of them will believe that one of the others was careless. With luck,” she added as she turned away.