Uncertain Magic (45 page)

The crack of gunfire caught the attention of the men around her for an instant; long enough for her to lunge free. One turned, yelling, but Roddy avoided his grasp and darted away, throwing herself to one side or the other in anticipation of the stragglers who stood between her and freedom.

She was in the open suddenly, but she kept running, heading for the cover of the overgrown shrubbery. Behind her the roar of the fire drowned out voices, but she felt the changing emotion of the troop as the officers began to restore some semblance of discipline. There wasn't much left for the men to set upon; the house and outbuildings been put to flame and the furniture bashed to pieces without resistance. Of rebels or even servants there were none to be found; no caches of hidden guns or gold. With no fuel for destruction, their excitement ebbed quickly.

In the receding emotion, Roddy picked out MacLassar's panicky flight. He was hurt and frantic, moving at speed away from the scene of terror. Roddy cast a look back at the mansion, burning steadily now, and plunged into the darkness after her wounded pet.

There was only up and down in the dark. Up and down, and rocks to stumble on and heather to tangle her feet, like living hands bent on dragging her to her knees. Each time it tripped her, she struggled upright, heaving for breath and plowing forward again, up the ridge, up and up until the earth tilted down again—and she stopped, staring bleakly into the dark.

She could see the line between the horizon and the sky, where a few hazy stars hung below the clouds, but the ground at her feet was a black and shapeless mass. In a few places the dim starlight caught the blurred outline of a bush or a stone, but the harder she strained the more the edges seemed to slip and waver, until she might have been standing before a smooth, safe plain or wavering at the edge of a precipice.

She thought of the militiaman who'd died the night of the fairy ball, and how a cliff must have looked like safe ground to him, until suddenly ground wasn't there at all. The more she thought, the harder it was to fight the metallic taste of panic in her mouth. She could imagine how it would feel. One step, and then nothing; the awful drop, the air rushing past… it would take a long time, a very long time, before one hit the bottom—

She stood frozen, breathing too fast, her stomach weak and her ears ringing with terror.

She'd long since given up finding MacLassar. Hours ago, she'd lost contact with his small, frightened presence among the dark hills. She'd stopped then, when she'd realized it, and turned back the way she had come, expecting to see the glow from the fire as a beacon.

But there was nothing. Only the dark, and the faint, silent wind.

Her gift was no aid; she found no rational mind nearby to help. There were creatures about, hares and mice and birds, with their little spurts of fear at her noisy approach, but for half the night she'd stumbled aimlessly without human contact.

She feared she had drifted into the mountains themselves, for in trying to find the fire she'd topped ridge after ridge, hoping at the crown of each one to see the blaze. It seemed impossible that the fire which had lit the whole sky could have faded so suddenly out of existence.

The logical part of her had an answer. There'd been little to burn on the half-repaired mansion. Once the roof and the new second floor had gone, there was nothing else to fuel the flames.

She blinked, trying to bring her mind into focus, if not her eyes. Beneath the fear was exhaustion, a deeper, heavier misery. Her legs trembled and her throat burned. Her skin was hot, but she was cold; her cloak long lost somewhere back at the stable and her French muslin dress never meant for the damp night air. She took a raw breath, fought back the paralyzing images of falling, and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other.

She crept along, feeling ahead with each step. She had an idea: to throw pebbles ahead of her every few feet and listen for the sound of them hitting the ground. It was slow, but it was progress, and she heartened a little as she edged down the hill without mishap.

A sound came to her. She thought it was wind at first, but it remained steady, a low rustle of water over stones, that grew as she neared the bottom of the valley. The vegetation thickened, rose up into bushes that brushed wet fingers in her face. To avoid the branches she kept her head down. The clinging vegetation opened. Her feet found a smooth rut among the plants: a cowpath, she guessed, and thought no more about it, only glad to have a guide and an easier place to walk.

A last spark of strength made her quicken her step. She could hear the stream ahead of her, and hoped that the path crossed at a shallow ford. As she was fuzzily contemplating the necessity of wetting her shoes, she put one foot into empty space.

She flung her arms backward. Her nightmares of falling took on shape and reality; for one infinite moment she hung in the air, her heart lurching wildly, and then water met her cry and choked it.

She came up coughing, tangled in her dress and slimy strings of vegetation. Splashing and stumbling in the knee-deep water, she cast about until she hit a bank, dragged herself up, and sat down on it, with her feet still in the stream and her arms clutched around her streaming shoulders. »

She leaned forward, buried her face in her lap, and began to cry.

They were a child's furious tears, pointless and heartfelt, compounded of cold and fear and hopelessness. They swallowed everything, focusing all her mind on herself and her misery. For minutes she sat there—for hours… days … weeks. She was alone: the last person on earth, lost and doomed to wander the dark forever.

The touch on her shoulder made her jump and shriek. Her talent came into focus with a jolt, but she was already back in the water again before she recognized Geoffrey.

"Don't be afraid," he said in the dark. "I won't hurt you; I want to help—"

Relief poured through her like hot oil over ice. "Geoffrey—oh, Geoffrey, thank God—" She stopped suddenly, catching his shock of recognition as he heard her voice. "Of course it's me!" Exasperation followed on the heels of salvation as she realized he was disappointed—that he'd taken her for some unknown damsel in distress. Her cheeks warmed at his mental image of just what kind of rescue he'd hoped to offer.

But he was human and familiar, and Roddy waded toward him. "Give me your hand," she ordered. She could barely see him in the dark, just a vague light blob where his hair might be, and another one that moved. She took that for his hand, and grabbed at it. After a moment's searching, their fingers locked. He pulled her up with a grunt.

"Lord, girl, you're sopping wet." He felt up her arm, and then lifted a dripping lock of hair and dropped it. "What the devil are you doing here? Did you run away from the fire?"

A quick memory of the flaming mansion accompanied the words, and Roddy suddenly realized that Geoffrey had been far closer than he should have. "You went down there, didn't you?" she hissed. "For God's sake, Geoffrey, they'll hang you yet, and Faelan, too."

He was instantly guilty, not for going to view the fire, but for why he was so late coming back. Roddy sucked in her breath and bit her lip to keep from shouting at him that consorting with stray cottiers' daughters did not count as offering comfort and consolation to the oppressed peasantry. Instead, she clenched her teeth and began to shiver. A shaky sob escaped her.

"Come on." He took her arm and pushed her ahead of him into the gloom. "Don't cry. Poppet, poppet, don't cry. It was only a house, and half ruined at that."

"It's not the h-house. It's Faelan—"

He steered her around a bend in the path. "Faelan's all right. Didn't you know that? I saw him giving Roberts the devil of dressing-down—"

She stopped, and stumbled around as he bumped into her. "Just how close
were
you?"

"Up on the hill," he said, a blatant lie. Roddy caught a memory of the rioting soldiers from no farther away than the smokehouse.

There was no way she could castigate him for the exaggeration. "You shouldn't have been there at all," she snapped.

"Well, it's my hide, poppet."

"And Faelan's!"

"Faelan had best hold his tongue with a British officer, in that case—that's more liable to get him arrested than helping me out of my spot."

"No, it isn't." She turned and plowed ahead, only missing a tree because Geoffrey pulled her back just as the slightly blacker shape loomed up out of the darkness. "Roberts wants evidence before he makes any arrests. He's afraid of embarrassing himself."

The shivering began again, uncontrollable. Roddy tripped as she pulled her dripping gown up from where it was trailing off her shoulders.

"You'll catch your death from this," Geoffrey muttered. "Faelan'll have me out for pistols at dawn if you get sick."

"W-will he?" The sentiment behind that comment made her suddenly teary. "Do you think he really c-cares about me?"

"Lord, poppet—do you think he don't? He turns ten shades of purple if another man lays a hand on you. Including—
particularly
—me."

Roddy sniffed and shook. "That's just his way. He's j-jealous—"

"Jealous!" Geoffrey laughed with honest amusement. "Lord, we've shared more—"

He cut that sentence short, but Roddy could have guessed the end even without the flash of memory that accompanied it.

"Well," he finished lamely, "he's a changed man since he married, I can tell you that. Here we are. Take your shoes off and leave 'em outside. You can wear some of my stockings. Get that wet dress off. There's an extra blanket—that should do until morning."

"Morning!" Roddy set her feet outside the dim white bulk of the cottage. "I c-can't stay here till morning. I have to get home."

"If home is that stable you told me about, then it's nothing but a pile of cinders," Geoffrey said ruthlessly. He held back the musty cloth and pushed her inside. "Damn—wait a moment, while I find the tinderbox."

She hugged herself, trying to control the shivers. The shaking seemed to go to her head and muddle it. "Geoffrey… I h-have to get back. No-no-nobody knows wh-where I am."

Light sputtered and flared, then steadied as Geoffrey lit a candle. Roddy squinted at his face, underlit by the small flame.

"You can't walk another step," he said. "Here. Let me reach your buttons."

He turned her around, with no more thought of her feminine wiles than Earnest or MacLassar would have entertained. Roddy clutched the blanket to her breasts as he pushed the sodden dress down off her shoulders. She tried to gather wit enough to protest, but nothing come out beyond a vague, sulky mumble. Her eyes would not focus, and Geoffrey's voice drifted in and out of her ears.

"There. Slide it off—oh, for Christ's sake, do you think I've a fancy for drowned rats? Get the blanket around you, then—here—here—stand up… are you fainting? Ah, hell… Roddy…"

She didn't faint so much as fall asleep on her feet. Her dreams were vivid, and mixed with reality: lying down on a musty pallet on the floor, an incoherent argument with Geoffrey over starting a fire—it seemed fatally important to her that he not start one and vitally important to him that he did—and when Roddy could not remember her own reasoning she just burst into shivering sobs and accusations and buried her face in the blanket. Then she dreamed of a huge, hot blaze, that burned in her face and made sweat trickle down her throat, but when she woke sometime in the night there was no fire, though something warm held her pinned, and that warmth drifted into a dream of Faelan with his arms around her, and she snuggled down in safe content.