“Be gone,” she said, and flung it as far as she could into the blackness.
She and Cathal both watched it go, and both let out their breath at almost the same time. Sophia giggled, a touch hysterically.
“We should go too,” she said, “though with luck not to the same place he did.” Quickly, she reached into her bodice and drew out the rust-colored sphere she’d taken from the chest, holding it tight in both hands.
Now. Wake up.
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 thatdeadis a sufficient word for his state, but I know none better.”
“Then you’ve done great work already,” said Douglas.
