“Not enough of it, my lord. Not yet.”
Douglas’s shoulder bruised Cathal’s sternum, and the uneven way of climbing stairs was far too slow for his liking, but he didn’t try to walk on his own. His legs still felt unsteady, and the walls had a tendency to swim. Besides, the tower room wasn’t very far from Sophia’s laboratory. Cathal wanted to take credit for wisdom in that regard, but knew it was only good fortune.
A comical bit of rearrangement happened at the door. Douglas left Cathal leaning against a wall while he ducked in front of Madoc and Sophia, opened the latch for them, and then came back to retrieve his brother. “I feel like a side of venison,” Cathal said.
Douglas snorted. “You’re not half so appealing.”
They stayed against the far wall of the laboratory, out of the way. Cathal watched Sophia as she cast her eyes about the place, looking over vials empty and full, cold braziers and unused mortars. She bit her lip in thought, then nodded, as if in response to words only she could hear.
“I’ll need the gold chalice,” she said. “It should be in my trunk, near the top. If you’ll put me down in front of the table—” She broke off and frowned down at her hands.
“No.” Cathal nudged Douglas in the side. “I’ll hold it for you.” That felt right, though he couldn’t have said why: a half-remembered lesson of his youth, perhaps. “Get me over there.”
Douglas started to object, then fell silent. His eyes sharpened, reminding Cathal of their father’s. “Aye, that might help. Considering.”
He didn’t say what he was considering. Cathal didn’t have the energy to ask. His hands were clumsy with the trunk’s simple latch, and raising the lid left him pale and sweating. Thank Christ, the goblet in its white silk wrappings was at the top. If he’d had to dig through the trunk’s contents, he might have lost consciousness. The trip back across the room felt as though it took an age.
“Are youcertainhe’s well?” Sophia asked, giving Douglas a stern, searching look. “My lord” was clearly an afterthought, and not a very heartfelt one.
“Nothing’s certain, madam, as I imagine you know well. But I’m sure that the danger has passed.”
“I only need rest,” Cathal said, not because he had any way to be certain, but because the worried look on Sophia’s face was a blight in itself.
Both wounded, each supported by another, they held each other’s gaze across the table. That wasn’t enough, but it was sufficient. Sophia was the first to smile, Cathal not far behind.
He pulled off the wrapping and twined his hands around the stem of the goblet. Already the metal was warmer than it should have been. Cathal had the sense of a presence, the idea of a hum or a breeze, as he held the goblet out and up so that Sophia could reach it.
For just a few breaths, he saw her lips move, forming words in a language he didn’t think he knew. Then she put one glowing hand on each side of the chalice’s bowl, and the rust-colored aura began to vanish.
The metal itself looked the same. Even when Sophia’s hands only looked mortal again, illuminated by nothing other than the pallid morning sunlight, there was no change in the goblet itself. It shone a little, but only the light of sun on metal, and Cathal knew alarm. Had they failed at the last? Had they done the wrong thing?
Sophia smiled again, and her whole face lit with the expression. “Look,” she said, and lowered the goblet.
The bowl, which had been both empty and dry, was half-full. The contents reminded Cathal of wine, somewhat faded, or of November leaves, except that they still glowed. He could see the sides of the bowl clearly.
With immense care, aware of every motion of his hands, he put the goblet back down on the table. “Do we take it to Fergus now?”
Sophia shook her head. “We have his soul… He’ll need that which lets it settle back into the body. The first potion I made for him, I believe, or a version of it, and that I fear, will take a few days longer.” She looked down at herself and made a face. “Nor can I do it with such a recent wound. The influences would be entirely wrong.”
“You’ll have your few days,” Douglas said. “Now that Albert is gone, it’s only Fergus’s body we need to worry about. That’s lasted until now.”
“And I’ll see to it that he endures long enough.” Madoc smiled and shrugged, as much as one could shrug with an armful of woman. “The ways of my people are older even than this castle. Mastery of most is beyond me, but what I do know will, I think, suffice to be a safeguard in this case.”
“Good,” said Cathal. It was one of a few words that remained within his grasp. His head was drooping, his eyelids lowering.
“Cathal,” said Sophia, checking herself in a forward motion that would likely have upset Madoc’s balance entirely.
He smiled at her again and brought forth the other word that came to him. “Bed.”
Forty-one
Three days later, Sophia saw Cathal again for the first time.
After they’d both been carried away to separate beds, Sophia had slept,trulyslept, for a day and a half, then woke to Donnag’s wondering ministrations, Alice’s brusque relief, and her weight in bread, butter, and honey, with a fish stew afterward.
Alice’s ankle was recovering, but she still could do no more than hobble a few feet on crutches. It hadn’t improved her temper at all—“I’m glad you didn’tgravely injure yourselfwhile you were gone,” was the first thing she’d said after she’d embraced Sophia and they’d both wept a little—but she’d occupied herself with writing down the songs and legends she’d learned at the castle. “I’m thinking I’ll become a wandering scribe,” she said. “It can’t possibly be any worse.”
When Sophia reached the part in her story about staying in the inn with Cathal and skipped straight from there to her decision to hunt Albert in dreams, she knew she blushed, and she knew Alice could read her face. That hadn’t changed. But Alice looked at her silently, smiled, and asked, “What happened then?”
