This was not the time or place to get slipshod. Haste wouldn’t help anyone.
Telling himself these things helped a little. Cathal took a slow breath in and let it out, on impulse letting it power a series of quick words in Latin, phrases that he’d learned in youth and used rarely. The world shifted around him: magic overlay familiar objects in washes of color and light. Magic was no weapon of his and didn’t come easily to his hand, but he knew enough to let it provide warning in case the potion flamed up again, or exploded, or attracted unwelcome attention. Glancing at Sophia’s bandaged hand, he wished he’d thought to do as much earlier.
The shades around her were dawn-pink, he noticed, but the goblet was more dramatic by far. It, or the substance inside it, or both, glowed as if Sophia held the sun itself in her hand. When she set it to Fergus’s mouth, gentle as she was, Cathal went absolutely still, every muscle tense.
Enough mind, or perhaps just reflex, remained that Fergus opened his mouth at the touch of the metal. Sophia tipped the goblet forward, as slowly as she’d done everything since they’d entered the room, and the potion flowed bit by bit down Fergus’s throat. His flesh, sparse and translucent as it was, hid the glowing liquid from view, and for a short time there was no sign that anything had happened at all.
Sophia righted the goblet and stood, her face set in the blank expression of one determined not to let disappointment show.
Beneath Cathal’s hand, Fergus’s shoulder felt suddenly warmer than it had a moment before. Even as he flexed his fingers, testing whether the sensation was real or his own imagining, the heat grew. A glow, subtler than the potion’s, spread out from Fergus’s throat, banishing the pallor of his skin and turning his flesh substantial where the light touched.
Not daring to speak, Cathal felt an incredulous smile widen across his face, moving, it felt, with the shining effects of the potion. He heard the sound of a single harp string, faint at first and then growing. The glow reached Fergus’s chin and his shoulders, then passed upward over his cheeks and outward to his arms.
In an instant, it stilled. The sound cut off. A wind from nowhere brought a chill and the smell of grave dust, and the light of the potion went out.
Fergus’s eyes opened, a washed-out version of the merry brown ones Cathal had known: washed-out and now wide with terror and urgency. “Hhhh…” His voice came dusty from a disused throat.
Cathal crossed himself. Sophia stood with her hands at her sides, struck dumb and motionless. Fergus’s throat worked, his lips writhed, and finally he managed speech.
“He. Wizard. He has me. In his grasp. Grip is…tight.” Those pale eyes found Cathal’s face and focused. “Captain.”
“I’m here,” Cathal said, and his hand tightened. The flesh beneath it was still more solid than it had been, but what comfort was that next to the horror in his friend’s expression? “We’re…”
We’rewhat? He could in truth promise nothing—no rescue, no salvation, not even a quick death, for Cathal knew not what happened to the soul of a man killed under such a spell, and what he imagined was all hideous. He could but promise effort, and what earthly good was that?
And so he would lie. He’d done that before.You’ll be fine, lad. We turned the bastards. We’re safe. We won.The phrases came to his lips more easily than the paternoster. This time, the words would just be more complicated and not entirely false. They wouldn’t give up; they were working on the problem. All he had to do was leave out a few details.
Cathal opened his mouth and saw that there was no need to say anything. Fergus’s eyes were closed again, and his jaw hung limp. He still breathed, and he still had the measure of solidity that the potion had given him back, but no more. His hands were yet half fog, his closed eyes pallid wisps in an otherwise solid face, and the spirit that had briefly animated him had vanished once again.
Now Cathal knew where it had gone or—he feared, more accurately—where it had been dragged.
Eleven
In the aftermath, Sophia sagged against the stone wall. The cup hung empty from one hand, droplets of the potion falling onto the floor by her feet. It was far heavier than it had been. Her very bones were heavier than they’d been a few minutes ago, and her head was a boulder, far too large for the neck that was supposed to support it. Sophia let it drop forward and let her eyes drift shut.
She’d take up her duties again in a moment. Once she regained…she couldn’t say what. Breath? Strength? Life itself, or at least vital energy? She just needed a minute to summon any of those things, and then she knew she’d make herself go on. She’d need to think; Cathal was waiting for an explanation.
No, he wasn’t.
His hand clasped her shoulder: a friendly touch, warm and stabilizing, and the sensuality that it sent curling through her, even in her depression, was secondary to the feeling of support. “It was well done,” he said, quiet but fierce, pausing before each word so that it landed in her weary ears and sank in. “It would have worked. It did, some.”
She let herself rest a moment against his hand; she clung to his words. “It did,” she said. Fergus’s flesh had changed—was changed yet, for when she opened her eyes, he looked even better than the man she’d first seen, and nothing like the half-wraith that had met her eyes on entering the room.
And he’d come back. Horrifying as he’d been in his desperation—hisdesiccation—he’d been able to inhabit his body again for those few moments.
She gathered knowledge like a cloak around her.
No experiment fails if it tells youwhyit fails. That had been Roger the Mad, her second teacher, glaring at her across the ruins of an alembic and preparing an avalanche of questions. Her father, a fine merchant and passable poet but no great scholar, had put it more simply:Walking is learning not to fall.
“So,” she said and stepped forward into the room, raising a finger. “The flaw was not in the potion itself, yes? At least there was no flaw that I saw, nor you? The flaw, if we can call it such, was interference.”
Not really addressing Cathal, she turned toward him nonetheless. He’d hooked his thumbs into his belt and was watching her, his brow furrowed but a hint of a smile on his lips. “Aye,” he said slowly.
“Or”—she raised her hand again—“conversely, the flaw was incomplete knowledge of the situation. Restoring the balance of a man’s elements can heal his body and his soul both,butonly if both are intact. Had ‘Valerius’ severed your friend’s leg, for instance, no potion nor salve could grow him a new one. None that I know of, at least. Alchemy cannot turn a man into a lizard. Um, begging your pardon,” she added, abruptly remembering her audience and what he was.
“No need,” he said, still smiling. “There’s no alchemy in that, lass.”
“Can…” For a second she thought to ask if hedidresemble a lizard in that respect, and how injury in dragon form affected his human shape, but this was no abstract lecture. “No. Forgive me. So. In like manner, this sorcerer has captured a portion of Fergus’s soul—his astral, or spiritual form—and keeps hold of it. I’m yet uncertain, and perhaps I cannot be certain, whether the wizard uses this aspect to wound the physical body or whether the absence of that portion of the animating spirit innately causes the body to become less…physical. There may be an element of compensation, or an attempt at such. Regardless.”
