Most were even worse about Valerius. I bribed, and I threatened, and the ones that would talk in the end talked mostly in hints and in tales.
None could say what name he was born to, nor exactly where, but there were stories.
His lands are on the border, though nobody could tell me where. They’re not wide, but he put his stamp on them, by all accounts. God help the man who falls short in his taxes or catches a hare in His Lordship’s forest. Hanging’s not the worst of it. His vassals’ one comfort is that he’s not often at home. The bastard’s got ambitions, and they put him in the field more often than not.
Here’s the part for a winter’s night:
Once there was a lord, and he had a son—maybe two, as comes into the tale later, and depending on who you ask. Son grew up, went off, and became a knight, or almost became a knight. The first death may have been there: a fellow squire who ran afoul of his temper, or was better than he was, or crossed him in another way.
Three different men tell three different stories. You know the way of it.
Our young lordling, knight or no, comes back home. Mayhap he’s learned a bit of the world. Could be he’s learned too much. He takes up his place and his duties, regardless.
Then—well, the story branches again. One version is his father hears what he’s been doing and goes to cast him out. One version is there’s a girl, of course, though whether she had the bad taste to choose a younger son—the brother who may not exist, aye?—or a villein or the veil is also down to the teller. And one version is he’s just not content, he wants more, and he sees no way in this world to get it.
All the branches come back to the same place. The old lord dies. Messily. Slowly. If there’s a second son, or a peasant rival, he hangs for it. If not, I’m sure some poor servant took his place. The elder son, the man of our tale, becomes lord in his turn, only now he calls himself Valerius, and now he has powers that his vassals don’t speak of, and he goes seeking a wider place in the world. And whatever the English king knows or believes about him, he sees a tool and picks it up.
One more thing: none of the men know quite when this happened, but those who heard about it heard when they were young. Twenty years past, I’d guess, and could be more. If the man you fought was no more than middle-aged—
Cathal winced, remembering that Valerius had looked no less hale than half the men he’d fought.
—then there too is a thing to consider.
Mortal magicians could do a great deal. Staving off age was a rare power; usually it involved some contact with the great forces of the universe.
That’s your enemy, brother. If I get back in time, you know you have my aid. If not, may God aid you, and may this woman he’s sent you be the ally you need.
Slowly, Cathal folded the letter and put it down. He would double that last wish in brass, only slightly differently. He didn’t doubt that Sophia was the best ally he could hope for, but he wished he could be as certain of her safety.
And as he finished that thought, he heard her scream.
Twenty
The first sign of something amiss was a foul smell, so Sophia was less alarmed than vexed to begin with. Unpleasant odors were common enough when alchemical processes wentright—she’d learned early on to keep a veil over her face during certain stages of compounding elixirs, and to breathe only through her mouth—and far more common when an error had crept in. Not expecting either smoke or sulfur in any of her ongoing experiments, Sophia sniffed the air, cursed, and then swung around to check the crucible over the flame.
No, the mixture inside the vessel was the dark red of Mars, as she’d intended, and the surface was smooth, with no bubbles or other signs that it was heating too quickly, and certainly no more smoke than Sophia would have expected from a properly tended fire. The air around it smelled strongly of herbs, notably garlic, and of hot iron, but no sulfur. Sophia breathed a sigh of relief. This was her first experiment with the protective formula she’d found. It was in a sensitive stage, and she hadn’t even added the dragon’s scale to catalyze it.
The next potion for Fergus was also in progress but in distillation, and thus, she’d thought, less likely to be giving off a smell. She turned to the glass apparatus and the lead vial anyhow, to be certain, and eyed the black mist within. It looked ominous enough, but she could see the streaks of silver within it that she knew should be there, and Saturn’s power was for tenacity. Until she could wrest more control from Valerius, tenacity would have to do.
Meanwhile, the smell was stronger. Had the kitchens exploded? She turned, taking another breath to try to track the reek to its source, and then heard a screeching, clicking sound, like a million insects with very sharp legs were walking across the stone floor.
A hole was appearing in the air.
It hung in the center of the room, a spot the size of her hand that her mind translated asblackbecause black was the color of things not there. Looking at it made her dinner rest uneasily in her stomach, and her eyes hurt. Looking at it also gave Sophia the impression that it was getting larger, and that it was struggling to do so, writhing against fences that she couldn’t see.
Crystallization: the world went still around her, each piece of it separating from the one adjoining. Into that stillness, her own voice spoke inside her head.
So then. There is a hole in the world here. Likely this is going to get worse. Cathal might know how to repair it, but he’s said himself that he knows little of magic. You have no time for research. So—tenacity or protection?
Three silver vials stood on the table, each containing one powdered scale. With hands that felt barely like hers, though they were steady and quick, Sophia opened one and poured the contents into the red mixture heating over the crucible.
Red smoke billowed up, but not enough to block Sophia’s view of the hole. Still twisting, it had grown to the size of her head, and now there were other colors than black. She could see flashes of olive green, of sickly yellow. One of the yellow patches turned. Clarified. Became an eye.
Sophia shrieked at the top of her lungs. It seemed the most sensible course of action, considering the presence of armed men nearby. It was also irresistible instinct. When a clawed hand reached out of the hole, she screamed again—and managed to do it even louder.
She started for the door, then stopped herself. Well enough if Cathal or his men could arrive and dispatch the thing.Notwell if it got out of the door and started running amok through the castle.
At hand she had a knife she used for chopping herbs: sharp, but not nearly long enough, and she was good at chopping herbs, not fighting demons. She doubted she could close the hole in the world now, with the demon already partway through.
