The Source of Magic, a fantasy romance

THE SOURCE OF MAGIC

Cate Rowan

***

CHAPTER ONE


Present day
Bhruic's castle, world of Alaia


A frigid draft slunk through the dungeon cell, chilling the muck-fouled cobblestones until even the rats looked miserable.

Jilian Stewart drew her thin cloak around her and tried to ignore her thudding heart. Each heartbeat seemed to reverberate off the clammy walls as if seeking a crack in her prison.

The linen chemise beneath her borrowed gown clung to her, damp with cold sweat. She licked her lips and caught the iron tang of blood leaking from the gash on her forehead. As her gaze flicked to the door, her breath hitched, then her lungs sped up of their own accord.

Stop, Jil. Panicking won't help. You've got some brain cells left and you're going to need them all.

Icy fingers of air flowed down the walls and skimmed across her collarbone. She shivered and pulled the cloak tighter, craving the warmth of Alvarr's arms around her instead.

Alvarr. His teasing smile played through her mind. He'd saved her life with his sword and wits, and shown her that love still lingered in the world. This world, anyway.

Now he probably cursed her name.

"Enough! Get a grip." She shoved away from the rough wall, trying to leave the path of her thoughts behind.

A grip. Her gaze snapped to the claw-shaped hinges of the iron door. Could she pry them open?

She seized the nearest one, cold and hard under her fingers. The hinge crackled. A piercing shock surged up her arm and flung her to the opposite wall.

Air scorched her lungs; her numbed hand shook. Fantastic. First I'm yanked light years—or is it dimensions?—from home and Earth and useful things like 911, and now I've nearly had a limb fried off. Hysterical laughter surged up, only to clog and die in her throat.

Her head sagged against the jagged stones.

Mom, how could you? How could you keep all this a secret?

Another shiver slid over her. The dungeon's putrid stench roiled in her nose; the chill of the wall at her back seeped into her bones. In the growing hush, her heart echoed. Thump. Thump.

Metal clanged beyond the boundaries of her cell, followed by the groan of a massive door. A squadron of footsteps thudded toward her in counterpoint to her accelerating pulse.

She clutched her cloak to her body and tried, in vain, to blend into the shadows.


CHAPTER TWO


Three weeks earlier
Fort Nevis, Scotland, Earth


Jilian reached for the door to Room 309, then stopped.

She slid her palm down her face. It's going to be fine. It has to be.

Taking a deep breath, she turned the knob and stepped toward the steel-framed bed. "Hi Mom," she said softly.

"Hello, Jilly Love." Sara Stewart reached up and gave Jilian's hand a feeble squeeze. Her wrinkled face and smiling eyes seemed at odds with the white and anonymous hospital bed linens. The frail legs that could no longer move were tucked neatly under the blanket.

Without relinquishing her mother's fingers, Jilian reached for a nearby chair and drew it close. When she settled upon it, silence grew between them and became entwined like their hands.

Finally, Sara spoke. "Ach, Jilly, no matter what happens, everything'll be all right."

Caressing the soft skin of her mother's wrist, Jilian replied in cheerful tones. "Of course it will."

Sara grinned and raised a brow.

"Fine, you caught me." Jilian gave a wry smile. "I never could hide things from you."

"No, m'girl. And that's just as it should be." Sara reached over and tucked an errant strand of dark hair behind Jilian's ear. "Have ye been to yer father's house yet?"

"I stayed in it last night. It seems…smaller than I'd remembered. His things—his clothes, the teapot, his books—they're all there." She shook her head. "I couldn't sleep in his room. The bed was neat, perfectly made, like most of the house. Waiting, almost. As if he were coming home." She brushed her thumb over her mother's knuckles. "The only place not spic-and-span was your old study. The door was stuck shut at first, and the room's coated in dust. I doubt he'd been there in years."

Sara's gaze slid away and she picked at a loose thread on the sheet.

"I'm sorry," Jilian said, and bit her lip.

Her mother squared her shoulders. "Don't apologize, lass. It's fine." She took a breath, then began again. "Ye never really got to know yer father, and I wish it were otherwise. Maybe that's why he left ye his house—because he wished it, too."

Jilian gave a half-hearted shrug. Colin Stewart was a distant memory, and that was all he deserved.

But her mother…they'd shared love and dreams. For all Jilian's twenty-five years, she'd felt safely anchored. No matter what happened, her mother had always been able to pull her back to calm waters and comfort.

Now her anchor was disintegrating.

Her mother tugged at her fingers. "Yer father's heart attack, the house, me—everything at once, m'girl, I know. But chin up. Sometimes we must leave things to fate."

Then fate's a jackass.

Jilian leaned forward to fuss with the wool blanket, smoothing it over her mother's motionless legs. The flights from their longtime home in San Francisco had been uneventful and then the train ride from Glasgow breathtaking, with the mountains curving up around them and the lochs shining in the sun. The raw beauty of Scotland still made her shiver in joy, even after nineteen years away, and had let her forget for a short while the reason she was back: her father's death. But they'd been only a few miles from Fort Nevis when her mother's face had pinched into frightened lines. "Jilly," she'd whispered, "I can't move my feet!"

Toes, feet, knees, thighs… Days and myriad tests later, the paralysis continued its slither up her mother's body. "Acute idiopathic progressive neuropathy," the doctors said, which really meant they knew zip—not what was causing it, nor how to treat it.

Her mother had refused to be moved to a hospital in Glasgow or London, muttering something about having traveled far enough already. Jilian had fought with her about that, to no avail. What would happen when the paralysis reached her mother's heart, her lungs—her brain? She'd begged the doctors for answers, for a cure; she'd searched the Internet and contacted specialists far away. None of the treatments had helped.

At last the hospital staff had told them both to prepare for the worst. To find a way to make peace with that.

But now neither of them could talk about it.

Jilian straightened in her chair. "Are you sleeping well?"

"Thanks to some help." Sara nodded toward the empty pill cup on the bedside table. "Otherwise, I'm awake all night and dozing the day away. Blasted time change still has me off. How about you?"

A hospital cart rolled in squeaking protest down the hall outside the room. Jilian gazed out the window at the hulking mountain beyond and the shadows of clouds that glided along its slopes. "I slept through the night for the first time since we got off the plane. Though I dreamed something strange." Her fingers twitched as if collecting the memory.

"Oh?"

Strange indeed. A deep and sensual whisper had echoed through her sleep. I need you. Be ready. I'll come for you soon. She'd woken with a gasp, clutching the blanket to her body, the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickling in alarm. There'd been no one in the room except her own imagination.

"I heard a man's voice." Jilian grinned and rubbed her nape, feeling foolish. "He told me to get ready, and that he'd come for me soon."

Her mother stilled for a long moment.

When Jilian raised a questioning eyebrow, Sara let loose a giggle. "The devil spoke to ye?" Her eyes grew comically round, and she poked her daughter. "Ye must have done something really awful."

"No, no." Jilian laughed. "It wasn't like that. The voice didn't scare me—well, not exactly. It was deep, but quiet, too. And had a lot of layers in it, if that makes sense." She tilted her head, trying to figure out what she meant herself.

"Hmm." Sara looked at her solemnly. "Maybe it's the voice of your true love, coming to find ye."

"Ha." She rolled her eyes. "I'd rather eat haggis than fall in love again."

Sara clutched at her heart. "A child of mine who won't eat haggis. I've failed as a Scottish mum."

Jilian snorted. "Or I've succeeded as an American daughter, Mom," she said, emphasizing the un-Scottish pronunciation.

After their smiles faded, her mother spoke again. "Jilly, there'll be someone else for ye. Give it a chance."

"I'll pass, thanks." Humiliation oozed back to her in memories of her wedding day with Matt. A flower-strewn chapel, the silk of her hand-sewn gown, the sun shining and glorious as she'd waited…for the absent groom who'd crushed her heart like a Dixie cup. Even now, five months later, Jilian winced and gripped the arms of the chair.

Her mother noticed and frowned.

Jilian leapt to her feet and grabbed the white mug on the nightstand. "So, Mom, what kind of tea can I get you today?"

With a sigh, Sara placed her order and let Jilian make a temporary escape.

* * *

That night, alone again, Jilian heard him breathe.

A cool mist wafted over her, tingling against her skin as she listened. His breaths came fast and circled all around her.

The mist contracted and began to spin like the tendrils of a galaxy.

From the center of the whorl he emerged—tall and bare-chested, tawny blond hair framing high cheekbones and steel-gray eyes.

"I need you." His voice was deep and certain. "Come."

The haze spun into a hypnotic rhythm. Her heartbeat echoed, intensifying with the swirls of vapor and her fear.

The heartbeats, the mist—too fast! She was caught, trapped…

He held out his hand to her.

Jilian opened her eyes and shot up on her cot.

Her father's house was still and the air bore a sharp tang she couldn't place. Early dawn touched the tree beyond her window and drew its slender branches from the shadows.

She clamped her eyelids shut again, willing her body and mind to quiet. Just a weird dream.

Once her pulse decelerated, she scoured her mother's former study with her gaze. A fine sheet of dust blanketed the room's contents: a cozy writing desk, a soft armchair of burgundy leather, and an old brass lamp with a fringed shade.

"See? A perfectly normal room," she muttered. "Nothing here a feather duster can't fix. You're being ridiculous."

She threw off the sheets and walked to the window. As cool air brushed past her legs, she folded her arms across her silk nightgown.

Beyond the glass, several mallards and their mates waddled out into the loch, bathing themselves and pecking beneath the water's calm surface. The tree's leaves fluttered in a puff of wind, and the dark bulk of the mountains across Loch Leven towered above the horizontal layer of fog.

Glancing down at the desk beside her, she extended a finger and drew an arc through its years-old coverlet of dust.

Why would a father close off a room and pretend it didn't exist? What could make him forget his family?

Forget her?

Shaking her head, she flicked the dust from her hand. Maybe a glass of juice was all she needed, then back to bed for a while.

In the kitchen, she flipped the light switch for the pristine, almost sterile space. Long ago, it had been a bright and cheerful room… The aroma of baking bread had filled the air as her mother sang nonsense songs, accompanied by the clack-clack-clack of her father's garden shears as he trimmed the hedge outside the window.

Now, with only a wan bulb to illuminate the kitchen's shadows, it seemed a poor replica of her memories.

She opened the fridge door and stared at its pitiful contents. Note to self: find grocery store. She twisted the cap off a full bottle of apple juice and sniffed. Not rancid. Worth a risk.

The cold liquid soothed her throat. Yawning, she rinsed her glass, flicked off the light and crossed back into the murky hall. She touched her fingertips to the walls and moved through the shadows toward her mother's study.

At the room's open doorframe, she glanced up at the symbol painted in luminescent silver above it. Two dots, each trailed by a semi-circular line, formed a ring around a smaller orb…like two planets that shared an orbit and chased each other around the sun.

She recalled the symbol from her childhood and had never known what it meant. I'll ask Mom, she thought—then flinched. Not much time left for answers.

And soon she'd be on her own. No father anymore, though she couldn't call that much of a loss, considering his long-ago disappearance from her life. But her mother… Her throat tightened.

Her father's will had provided her a little money, his old Citroën car and this house. But what good was a chance to start over in her native country if her mother wouldn't be alive to share it with her?

Deflated, she straggled into the room, then noticed something peeking out from under the leather chair. She knelt to examine it and a lopsided grin tugged at her mouth.

It was a dusty hardback of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis—her favorite childhood book. She'd felt so loved and safe, snuggling in as her mother had read aloud the story of children transported by magic into another world.

And she'd sobbed when the novel had been left behind on the night her family ruptured.

Jilian wiped the dust from the cover, then stood the book upright on the desk as a reminder of her mother's love.

That peculiar smell returned, stronger than before—like the air after a rainstorm, or fresh snow. A strange scent for a dusty study. She swiveled toward the cot and stopped cold.

The man from her dream stood in the center of the room. The outline of his body rippled the way water moves when disturbed, then solidified. A circle of light like the symbol over the door shone from the floor around his feet.

Jilian choked back a scream. He stretched his hand toward her, palm up. In the resonant voice she already knew, he spoke: "I am Alvarr sen Danyd, and I call you in Teganne's name. I need you. Come!"

Her limbs stiffened like timber and fright iced her spine. I'm not seeing this!

He stared at her. "Do you hear me? We can't keep the portal open for long." Frowning, he turned his palm down. She felt a powerful tug as if an unseen rope wound around her, but her legs resisted his command.

He whirled to his right as if something had startled him—then with one last vivid glance into her eyes, he vanished. The shimmer of his outline was all that remained, and then that too was gone. Her gaze shot to the place he'd seemed to look, but she saw nothing unusual.

Her knees buckled beneath her. She landed on the floor with a solid thwack, hands splayed against the wooden boards, rapid-fire gasps almost choking her.

She concentrated on bringing her breathing and her heart back to a normal tempo. "Just a dream," she muttered. Because she was either dreaming…or going crazy. And that was not a pleasant thought. No, nope, can't happen. She wanted to laugh, but didn't have the breath. Instead she took another gulp of air and stared at the floor.

To her horror, the circle of light reappeared there, and then the man. He shimmered as before. As his gaze touched hers, panic seared her nerves.

His breathing grew labored. Again he held his hand out to her, but she didn't move. The part of her that had the power to answer him did not. Would not!

His expressive face hardened in frustration. He drew the sign of a circle in the air, then stretched his hands toward her.

A raw force tugged at the center of her body. This time she felt herself move in spite of her fear. She screamed aloud—or thought she did—but heard nothing except the thunder of her pulse.

The mist reappeared, spinning ever faster like a chaotic whirlpool until her mind lost track. She floated up and toward him. She willed her legs to move, to find the floor—back away, run away!—but they couldn't.

When he had her body clasped in his arms, he locked his intense gaze on hers. "I do what I must, for Teganne to survive."