Chapter 27
The pile of blankets before Darcy shifted. Instantly he was on his feet, hurrying towards Jack on legs cramped by spending the long, cold night lying on the bench. Frederica had pleaded with him to go back inside to wait, but he could not bring himself to let his brother out of his sight.
“Jack?” he asked urgently, kneeling beside his covered form. “Are you awake?”
His brother rolled onto his back, knocking the blankets off, gazing blankly into the first light trickling into the sky.
Fear rose in Darcy. “Jack, say something. I beg you.”
Jack turned his head to look at him. “Ugh.”
“Can you stand up? Or should I bring you anything?” Was Jack still the same person he had been before, or had this magic changed him? Darcy no longer cared if it was the King's Bond or not, as long as he got his brother back.
“No...not. Yet. Need to...think.” His words seemed to be coming from far away. He picked up one hand and studied it, turning it back and forth as if trying to decide what it was.
A sick feeling built in Darcy's stomach.
This was more than the result of lying on the cold ground overnight.
Still, the sense of power roiling through the land had settled back to simply being a strong presence, rather than a stormy sea.
Did that mean the bond had taken? Or had it failed?
“The land - is it still making you ill?” he asked.
Jack moved his head slowly from side to side, as if afraid to shake it too hard. “No. Just need...to remember. Talking. Moving. How to do it.” He raised his shoulders, then fell back. “Sit. Help me sit.”
Darcy slid his arm under his brother's shoulders and lifted him. Jack groaned as though even that small motion was painful, but he managed to stay seated, even when Darcy released the pressure holding him up.
Perhaps this was normal. When he went too deep into the land, he sometimes had trouble speaking and dealing with people when he first emerged. This might be nothing more than that. It might not be the King's Bond at all.
“Do you want to try going inside?” Darcy asked.
A wry smile twisted Jack's face. “Not sure my legs work. Only one way to find out.” His words were already coming out more fluently.
Darcy helped him up, wrapping his free arm around him when it became clear that no, Jack's legs were not fully functional yet. Perhaps the best he could do was to get him to the bench. Fortunately, someone was striding their way, someone in uniform.
A royal guard. Of course they were being watched. Strange behavior like lying in the churchyard through the night could not go unnoticed in the middle of the palace grounds.
“May I be of service, sir?” the guard asked.
“Could you help me get him inside? Preferably somewhere he can rest?”
“Yes, sir.” He swung Jack's other arm over his shoulder. Together he and Darcy half-led, half-carried Jack across the churchyard and into the castle.
By the time they were indoors, Jack was managing to carry more of his own weight. Darcy's heart ached to see his hearty brother so weak. It was full dawn by the time Jack collapsed on a sofa in the anteroom the guard had taken them to.
The guard bowed and left, no doubt to send word to his superiors that the madmen who spent the night outdoors were back.
As soon as he was out of the room, Darcy could no longer restrain himself. “What happened?”
Jack stared at him blankly. “How can I explain? I was everywhere and nowhere. In the ground, in the air, in the trees. In the white cliffs and the sea. There are things I never knew, creatures and strange powers. Did that happen to you with your land bond?”
So it was the King's Bond, if it stretched that far. “Something similar, though much smaller in scope, and it came on me more gradually. I had always been there.”
“Smaller? I wonder why.”
Of course; Jack had not been privy to the discussion of the King's Bond, and it would no more occur to him as a possibility than that he might be named King of Italy. “Roderick guessed it may be a different sort of bond, since it hit you so hard. Are you still feeling ill?”
“Not the same way as before. Achy, tired, not quite myself. Like there are voices in my head that are saying something important, but I cannot quite hear them. And I can feel that spot like a pull, almost a tether - the place in the churchyard. What did this do to me?”
“I do not know.” And unfortunately, it was true. His brother still seemed oddly distant. “But you were there all night, so it is hardly surprising you are uncomfortable. Have you reached out to Gentiane? He was worried about you.”
“Gentiane? Good God, I had forgotten about him! How could I forget about my dragon?” It was not a rhetorical question, but a frantic one. He stared into the air, but it took a few minutes before his eyes unfocused in that way common to sendings. Then he tensed.
Finally Jack blinked twice. “He says I am changed.” His voice was hoarse. “That something is different, but our bond is still intact. He is coming here.”
“Good,” Darcy said. As soon as it was a decent hour, or at least a little closer to one, they needed to talk to Roderick, too.
Jack's eyes were wild now. “He thinks this is the King's Bond. How can that be? The Bond was lost centuries ago, and I am not royalty.” Then he sucked in a breath. “Or at least I was not until yesterday,” he said in a small voice.
Devil take waiting for a decent hour. Darcy sent to Coquelicot, waking her from a drowsy state, and asked her to find Roderick and Frederica.
Unfortunately, only Frederica arrived, and that nearly two hours later. And she did not look pleased, though she embraced Jack and told him how glad she was to see him awake again.
“Where is Roderick?” Darcy demanded, too exhausted by the long night of fear to have any tact left.
She grimaced. “Back at the inn, or at least he was when I left.”
“We need him here!”
“I know, but he is an idiot!” She threw up her hands. “He says he cannot come, that he should not be so close to the center of Jack's power. And lest you suggest, like a sensible man, that we go to him, he will not meet with Jack, either.”
Darcy frowned. “Why not?”
“Some nonsense about being Welsh,” she snapped. “He is being ridiculous. He did give me some questions to ask which might help us understand what this is - though he told me not to say they were his idea.”
He did not envy Roderick, being at the wrong end of Frederica's anger, but Darcy also agreed with her. How dare he just abandon them, after everything they had done together, after being his guest and fighting by his side?
Jack rubbed his eyes. “What are you two dancing around? Will, you said to wait for Roderick and Frederica. I need you to tell me whatever you know, even if it is incomplete. I am not a fragile infant who will break, simply because I was birthed by a horrible witch and my father is a useless wastrel.”
“Gentiane has already told him it may be the King's Bond,” Darcy said. “Which more or less summarizes all I know.”
Frederica sat beside Jack with a sigh. “I do not question your strength, only my own ignorance.
We know what happens with an ordinary land bond, or at least Darcy does.
What took place last night was very different and more intense.
It is similar to stories told in Wales about how the King's Bond is formed.
And you were at St. George's Chapel, the center of the old English King's Bond. So far, that is all our evidence.”
“There is one more thing,” Darcy said. “When he was in the land, Jack saw the white cliffs and the sea. I only envision Pemberley and a few miles beyond it.”
Frederica nodded. “Then for now, we must assume it is true.
According to Roderick, though, it may not mean much.
There is another step to the true King's Bond, where the holder of the Bond awakens the power of the land in the heir.
Without that rite, whatever it is, the King's Bond is no more than a larger than usual land bond - some ability to help crops grow, awareness of storms and floods, that sort of thing.
For the King's Bond of the old stories, with the ability to break open the earth and to drown incoming armies, another king must awaken it in you.”
“So it is useless, then.” Jack sighed. “At least against Napoleon.”
“Improving the harvest prevents famine,” Darcy said sharply. “Hardly useless.”
Frederica continued, “Also, the Bond does not respect legal borders, only its own sense of what its country is.
Yours, if it is like the Plantagenet one, would not cover all of what we consider England, either.
Most of the southern half of the country, and only as far West as the beginning of the Welsh Marches.
When you think about the parts of the country that kept rebelling - the North, the Scots, the Welsh, the Cornish - those are the ones outside the King's Bond.”
“Not that it matters,” Jack said in a low voice, “if I cannot use it. Is there no one who can awaken it in me, so we could stop that bastard Napoleon like the Russians did?”
Darcy spread his hands. “The czar of Russia is the only ruler we know of who still has the King's Bond, but even if he were willing, by the time you traveled there and back, the invasion will be over.” Then a thought occurred to him.
“Unless a certain disinherited Welsh princeling knows of some hidden person with a King's Bond.”
Frederica snorted. “A Welshman willing to give that much more power to the English? They would die first.”
Though he noticed she did not deny that Roderick might know someone. Or be related to him - had not Roderick's father managed to keep their small land mostly free of the English? Or perhaps that had simply been the dragons of the Gwynedd Nest. It did not matter, if they would not help Jack.
“If I leave, will these infernal voices in my head go away, so I can pretend this never happened?” Jack asked.