Highland Dragon Warrior

by Isabel Cooper

  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.”

  Twenty-six

  Three days of clear skies and a wind from the southeast had melted most of the snow, and when Sophia went down to the hall for dinner, she stood awhile outside without a cloak, hands and face stretched out to receive the sunlight. There was strength to its heat now, a promise that spring would come even to Loch Arach. Grass was sprouting in the corners of the courtyard, and a few of the trees even had started to bud.

  Time went ever onward, and though Sophia knew she might work against it where Valerius was concerned, just then she was glad of the reminder. The world did turn—even if she couldn’t celebrate those turnings properly, her family would, and knowing that was a comfort—and men would move with it, not stuck in one place but making progress, even if they generally knew not their destination.

  A row of sealed bottles in the room above doubtless helped her mood, she knew. The last of the defensive potions had come to what looked like a fruitful finish. She’d added some of the solar herbs she’d used with Fergus in the hopes of promoting a little more internal resistance, and had let the dragon scales blend for more time, but hadn’t made many changes to the basic recipe. It worked. If she could ask Cathal for more scales, she might try others, but the mere success was enough for the moment.

  With spare time and herbs, she’d made up another few elixirs—simple herbals in those cases, suitable for women’s ailments and diseases of the gut, or for the ague in the lungs that always struck around springtime. On the road, she might be able to trade them; if she stayed at Loch Arach, she could perhaps use them to buy favor and avert suspicion.

  With a pleasant feeling of accomplishment, therefore, she leaned against the doorframe and breathed deeply, noticing how the aroma of wet earth and new growth now mingled around the edges of roasting meat. Munro waited a few feet off, talking with one of the other men and sounding involved enough that she felt no need to worry for his sake. Tilting her face into the gentle wind, Sophia closed her eyes.

  “Good,” said Alice from behind her. “I won’t have to climb all those cursed stairs. Has Sir Cathal had any words with you yet?”

  Ever since the conversation with Donnag, and perhaps ever since Cathal had come to Sophia’s rescue—though she’d breathed no word of their embrace afterward—Alice had spoken his name with great care to seem careless. She hadn’t tried to talk with Sophia about him either, which was odd itself.

  Sophia, therefore, slipped into caution as she shook her head. “I’ve not seen him yet today. He wasn’t awake when I went up to the laboratory. What’s amiss?”

  “Visitors,” said Alice. “In a few days. Distinguished ones too, if you trust the gossip, and I often do. Which is all very well and good normally, but I hope they’re aware that things come and attack us out of nowhere here. It could be a nasty surprise for them to find a demon under their bed.”

  “The demon only attacked me,” Sophia said, though she couldn’t object too much. She doubted that the creature would have stopped with her, or scrupled to kill anyone in its way. “Anyone worried has only to stay away from me. And if it happens in the great hall, we’ll be surrounded by armed men. Sir Cathal dispatched the last one easily enough, once he arrived.”

  “He has a few advantages that the others don’t,” said Alice.

  “And if the guests are important, he’ll likely be with them much of the time, so that solves the problem rather neatly.”

  “I’m quite the man for neat solutions, when I can manage them,” said Cathal from behind them.

  For a big man, he moved very quietly. Alice and Sophia both spun around to face him, and Sophia felt herself blushing. No matter that he’d overheard a compliment, if anything, or that their subjects had been only reasonable ones for common discussion, she’d still been talking about him. Besides, every time she met his eyes, her clothing felt too tight, and she was afraid it showed on her face.

  She cleared her throat. “I hear you’re to expect guests, my lord.”

  “Not quite. You’re to expect a proper host.” Standing in the shadows of the doorway, Cathal looked more silhouette than man, but Sophia could hear relief in his voice, and she thought she saw a genuine smile. “My brother, Douglas, is coming back, though God knows for how long. He’ll be bringing a few others too…an English hostage and a few allies, or men who might be. And he can handle a demon as well as I can.”

  “Will he…” Sophia looked upward toward where she knew her laboratory and Fergus’s room to be, though she could see neither from her angle. “Is he likely to permit me to continue my experiments, do you think?”

  “Aye. He’ll do that.”

  Cathal spoke not with trust so much as determination, but that satisfied Sophia nonetheless and left her smiling in a way that confidence in his brother might not have done. Conscious of Alice’s presence, she schooled her voice to casual curiosity and asked, “And will you be going back to the battle?”

  “There’s not a battle to rejoin,” Cathal said, and Sophia’s heart unclenched. “Not just now. ’Tis why Douglas is coming home, and Moiread soon enough. It’s to my father to handle the treaties. I know not where I’ll go, but I’ll not leave the castle until Fergus is…well.”

  One way or another, Sophia finished silently for him.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Alice. “Though sorry it’s not the outcome you’d have wished…but you seem to have gotten your family through it alive.”

  “I’ll take that any day,” said Cathal. “This is no surprise.”

  “Will you…” Sophia glanced away, wishing she’d learned more of courtly etiquette. “If we’re to move tables for dinner, only let us know.”

  “No. Not at all. There’s room enough, and probably not many women.” He’d shifted position just slightly, or the light had changed, and this time Sophia did see him smile: rueful and almost boyish. “Besides, I’d be right glad of a friend.”

  “Then I’d be glad to help,” said Sophia.

 
“And I’ll see if anyone here can get the scorch marks out of one of your gowns,” said Alice.

  “Ach,” Cathal said offhandedly, “use one of Agnes’s. She left half a dozen when she married, and she’s not much taller than you are. One of the serving maids can help you.”

  Then he bowed and went inside, clearly thinking, manlike, no more of the matter at all.

  * * *

  Manlike too, or speaking from a vantage point of well over six feet tall, Cathal had been wrong about not much taller. Judging from her gowns, the absent Agnes had overtopped Sophia by at least a head. The skirt pooled on the floor around Sophia when she tried the dress on, and the sleeves hung well past her fingers.

  She and Alice were both decent with a needle, however, and taking clothing in wasn’t nearly as difficult as letting it out, particularly when it was merely a matter of making the gown shorter. In figure, Agnes and Sophia were evidently close enough not to cause trouble in clothing cut along slightly old-fashioned lines; a belt easily settled any discrepancies there.

  The dress itself was beautiful: white wool and a surcoat over it of burgundy velvet, thick enough for Sophia to run her fingers through as she otherwise stood still and let Alice dress her hair. Long ago, she’d resigned herself to plain clothing as more suitable for experiments and travel both, but her eyes and heart delighted in the rich colors, and she was glad to have the excuse for finery.

  Alice, who’d been gentler to her best clothing, wore blue and green, though cleaned as best the castle could manage in early spring. Sophia had offered to help with another of the dresses, sure that Cathal had meant them both.

  “I’ll do well enough with my own,” Alice had said in response. “I’d rather not be obliged.”

  “But you think I am?”

  “I think his friend wouldn’t have lived this long without you, and you’ve put your life at risk for him. A few scales and an old dress are no more than you’ve earned.”

  She’d spoken very firmly, and Sophia had wanted to ask more, to say that she wouldn’t have gotten to the castle without Alice, nor survived long enough to succeed, but one of the maids had joined them then. In the day or so since, Alice hadn’t encouraged conversation along those lines, and Sophia hadn’t had the energy or the nerve to take the subject up again.

  When they went into the hall together, though, Sophia reached for her friend’s hand and squeezed it, then whispered thank you when Alice turned to look at her. Both knew it was for more than the dress or Sophia’s hair, now neatly braided and pinned into a coil near each ear, and when Alice smiled and returned the pressure, Sophia didn’t much mind that the guests were staring at both of them.

  There were four. Cathal’s brother was easy enough to recognize, though his hair was red and his eyes ice blue. More than the build they shared, or the strong outlines of both faces, each brother carried himself with a confidence lacking in anyone vulnerable to bad meat or steel blades. With him sat a middle-aged woman, slim but not frail, and two men, clearly father and son themselves. The elder was the shorter of the two, and his hair was more white than black now, but he had the same gray eyes as his son and the same sharp features.

  All the new arrivals were dressed very well. Sophia marked silk and fur, jeweled rings, and a silver fillet around the woman’s head, and was glad for her made-over gown. If Douglas recognized it, he didn’t say as much, but bowed to her and Alice with sober politeness. “My brother speaks well of you.”

  “That’s good of him, my lord,” said Sophia. She knew Cathal had probably restricted his praise to her alchemical skills—she wasn’t certain that her performance elsewhere even merited remark, though Cathal had seemed to enjoy it at the time—but still she blushed. “And he’s done the same of you.”

  “That’s kind to say,” said Douglas, with a mocking grin and a sidelong glance at Cathal. He didn’t wait for an answer but moved on to indicate his guests. “Lady Eleanor Bellecote, late of England. Rhys, Lord Avondos, and his son, Madoc, of Wales.”

  “I’m honored,” Sophia said and curtsied.

  “Rhys knows my mother’s people,” Cathal said when Sophia and Alice had been seated.

  “Yes,” said Rhys, looking carefully back and forth between Sophia and Lady Bellecote before he responded, “though not, I fear, his mother.”

  “Not save in stories,” Madoc added. “But there are many for those of us who take the time to listen.”

  The look that passed between him and his father was the sort that Sophia knew well—well enough not to comment on. Family was family, whatever part of the world it was in. “Legends can take patience,” she agreed, steering for a neutral path, “though I suppose that yours are near to home, and that must help.”

  “Mistress Sophia is a scholar,” Cathal said. “I think I mentioned.”

  “Your brother certainly did,” said Lady Bellecote. “And your father as well.” Her voice was low, befitting a gentlewoman, but she spoke with conviction. “It was for that reason, among others, that I offered myself as hostage when the bargains were being made.”

  “How do you mean?” Alice asked.

  “Firsthand is the best way to gain knowledge. Even such imprecise knowledge as I have to offer. I heard the legend you had from your sister, you see, and it was familiar to me. Unless there are two such men, my brother’s lands border his.”

  Twenty-seven

  Lady Bellecote’s father was Scottish, she explained. In friendlier times, she’d wed an Englishman, who’d died of a fever a few years before, but her family had always lived on the border, and her brother even closer to the English.

  “I visited from time to time in my girlhood,” she said, and a nostalgic smile had only a moment to live on her face before her lips tightened. “Even then, I heard a few of the stories, and in time I managed to get the rest out of my brother… What he knew of it, at any rate. I was only curious then. What youngster doesn’t like a grisly tale?”

  Madoc chuckled in agreement. “I think I knew of every ghost supposed to be on our lands by the time I was ten, and I might have made up a few that I felt were wanting. But you sound as though your brother took this other man more seriously than I ever did my ghosts.”

  “Quite so. Richard’s men are well trained, and there are many of them. In those days, there was not the war to give a man license for a little private conquest. He was safe, and yet he was always wary. The guard was ever heavier to the west, and the scouts more vigilant, and he wouldn’t visit Valerius as he did any other lord close at hand.” She gestured in apology, the light catching on light-blue and deep-pink gemstones as her fingers moved. Topaz and beryl, Sophia thought immediately: protection, healing, and calm; the sun and the moon. “I saw nothing of the land over the border.”

  “But you heard accounts.” Cathal was leaning forward in his chair, hands together on the table in front of him. The tension about him, the air of waiting and yet preparing, reminded Sophia of the moment before his transformation.

  Lady Bellecote nodded. “Merchants would pass through on occasion. The occasional freeman would flee…though I was given to understand that Valerius’s rule was livable for most people, most of the time. Particularly those farther away from his lordship’s castle itself. His eye and his whims did most of the damage—his and the worst of his men—although…” She stopped, looking uneasy.

  “Whatever you say, I swear the rest of us will believe it,” said Douglas.

  Won over, but not entirely convinced, the lady spoke the rest of her sentence quickly, as if not wanting to think about it herself. “Although they say that the land is poisoned. And it was true, from what the merchants say, that the crops were never truly good there. Adequate at best. And that, again, was better the further out one went.”

  Sophia remembered the wet earth in her dreams: the sucking noises with every step and the smell of rotting meat. Her breath stuck in her throat.
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  “What was the cause of that, then?” Madoc asked. For him, as with his quieter father, Sophia could see that the interest was casual. He was serious, not mocking, but it was curiosity with him, not the weighty matter that it was for her and Cathal, or even for Douglas and Alice.

  She was glad of it. That meant he could ask questions, perhaps even those she wouldn’t think of.

  “Any number of things, depending on who you asked,” said Lady Bellecote. “But always death. There was a tale that he’d married five wives and killed each when they got with child. There was one that he had to eat a human heart every full moon. And then there was a tale that he made a bargain with the devil and killed his father to seal it. That one made me think of what your sister said, my lord. Peasant superstition, mayhap, but…”

  The Welshmen crossed themselves, and Douglas belatedly joined them. “No way to know, I suppose.”

  “Well, his father was killed, I think, and a man hung for it. There were people, when I was a girl, who remembered that much for a fact, only…” She hesitated again, but this time not long enough for anyone else to urge her on. “They were all old. That could have been a child’s perspective—everyone is old when you’re fourteen—but even so, the man must have sixty or seventy years by now.”

  Cathal nodded. “Moiread hinted at that much, and that’s a grim notion. I didn’t fight an old man. Not to look at.”

  “The wages of sin,” Lord Avondos said. “Death, mayhap, but a death long in coming?”

  “In truth, the tales I heard of his behavior would make the pact with Satan in character, whether it existed or no. The merchants were spared the worst of it, but they saw enough, and those who fled went for good reason. I’ll not repeat details unless you request it of me, gentle sirs,” she added, her nostrils flaring with remembered revulsion, “and certainly not at table.”