As he drove the ships eastward, he sensed sailors frantically trying to beat against the wind while priests knelt to invoke God's help in avoiding the waiting shoals. The water beneath the hulls changed color, and the waves turned choppy as the seas became shallower and shallower.
He dimly recognized pounding pain in his temples and trembling in his limbs. The first ships were minutes from striking, but could he maintain his control over the increasingly rebellious winds he had assembled? He reached for Isabel again. Maddeningly, he could channel only a small part of her power. But surely he was strong enough to finish the job he had begun.
The Cornish gust, the strongest and most rebellious element of his coalition, cracked its way loose, weakening the whole. Savagely, he worked to force it back into his pattern. He almost succeeded.
Then the Scottish winds, notoriously chancy, broke away. His painstakingly constructed northwest wind disintegrated like splintered glass. Desperately, he reached again for Isabel, but he couldn't find the key to unlock the deepest reservoirs of her power. It stayed tantalizingly beyond his grasp.
Gasping for breath, he tried again to exert his mastery over the winds bucking against his grasp. As he stretched his mind to keep them in line, his power thinned to the snapping point. Only a few moments more, only a few…
Clashing like silent thunder, the spell shattered with a violence that pulsed through his skull. He cried out in agony and fell to his knees.
The last thing he saw before falling into blackness was Spanish ships turning sharply to port as they sought the safety of deeper water.
Macrae's collapse slashed Isabel's mind as viciously as a sword lacerated flesh. After an instant of paralysis, she reached out mentally to steady his convulsing spirit even as she raced across the circle to his sprawling body.
She dropped on her knees beside him. His face was corpse-white, and he wasn't breathing. Moved by sheer instinct, she inhaled deeply and bent over to share her breath with him. Placing her mouth on his, she forced air into his lungs. He was a master of wind and air, surely all he needed was more breath.
Once, twice, thrice… She was growing dizzy with exertion when he coughed and twisted under her hands. Finally he was drawing great ragged breaths on his own, God be thanked.
Dee joined her, panting. "I felt the spell go awry. How is he?"
"Breathing now. Beyond that…" She shrugged helplessly.
Dee frowned as he rested his hand on Macrae's forehead. "He's burning with fever. Pray God he has not destroyed himself with his exertions."
Getting to his feet with effort, the old man signaled to the pair of male servants who had followed him from the house. Carefully, the servants lifted Macrae onto the battered pine door they had brought, struggling with the Scotsman's deadweight. Then they set off toward the house.
Isabel started to follow, but Dee stayed her with a gesture. When the servants were out of earshot, he asked quietly, "What happened, child? Why didn't you save him from such a disaster?"
"I tried!" Tried desperately, and had been seared by the backlash when his power and concentration failed. "He tried also, but we could not fully connect. Our energies are too unlike. Too clashing."
"That clashing can be a source of strength, not conflict."
She rubbed her temples, too drained to understand. "What do you mean?"
"Think of your astrological studies — opposite signs are both natural enemies and natural complements. Men and women are opposites, and sometimes conflict between them is attraction that will not admit itself. Yet if opposites find balance in each other, they can create a whole greater than the sum of their individual powers."
She thought back to Dee's lessons, when he had poured rivers of information into her eager mind. "Is this the alchemical marriage you once spoke of?"
"The alchemical marriage is a philosophical principle, and it can be seen on many levels. One is male and female." He eyed her speculatively, then shook his head. "The point is moot. Macrae may be out of his senses for days. Or… worse. Do you know what has happened with the Armada?"
She had been too upset to even wonder. Wearily, she drew out her scrying glass and conjured the scene. "The Spanish ships are escaping the Zeeland shoals and heading north. The English pursue, but they are still outnumbered. Once the Spaniards regroup, they will be able to resume their plans for invasion."
Dee's face tightened, adding ten years to his age. "I must go to London and report to the queen."
"Perhaps Macrae will recover and try again," she suggested without much hope.
"He will be lucky to escape with his life and his sanity," Dee said bluntly. "Even if he survives, today's work may have destroyed his magic forever."
Having felt the cataclysmic collapse of Macrae's power, she knew that Dee spoke no less than the truth. "I will stay here and care for him. My housekeeper is experienced at nursing. God willing, we will save at least his life."
"He may not thank you for it if he survives deprived of his deepest self." Dee raised his gaze to the restless sea, where Spanish ships were sailing north around Britain. "I once had great power. Not so much as you, but enough to make me a true sorcerer. In my arrogance and lust for knowledge, I pushed my abilities too far and nearly died of it. Since then, I have had to content myself with small magics and scholarship."
The naked longing in his face made Isabel look away uneasily. What would it be like to lose her power? Though her abilities made a normal woman's life impossible for her, the exercise of magic was also the purest delight and satisfaction she had ever known. To be deprived of it would be like losing her limbs. Macrae had been bound in iron for more than a year. Now, after only a few days restored to his full self, he had risked his life and his power to stave off the Spaniards.
Though she had scarcely noticed at the time, she had a sharp flash of memory of how his lips had felt under hers when she had breathed for him. Embarrassed, she said, "If the body is saved, perhaps the spirit will also heal. We will do what we can." The world needed Adam Macrae.
And she needed to know that somewhere he would be living under the same sun as she.
4
He had been lost for so long among the cinders of his mind that at first he didn't recognize returning awareness. All he knew was cool darkness, a soft night breeze redolent of country flowers, a gentle hand on his forehead.
A woman's hand? He forced his eyes open. He was in his bedroom at Leighton Manor, the canopy above him barely visible in the dim light. Isabel de Cortes was perched on a stool beside him, her eyes narrow with concern.
"So… I did not die," he said in a rasping voice.
"Not for lack of trying." Despite her acerbic words, she gave him a smile that softened the austere beauty of her narrow face.
He closed his eyes again. "How long has it been since I conjured the winds?"
"Eight days. Master Dee has returned to London to confer with the queen."
Seeing her expression brought back the last disastrous memories that preceded his collapse. He exhaled roughly. "I failed."
"Perhaps not." Her gaze slid away. "Your efforts have given more time to improve the coastal defenses. Surely that will help if — when — the Spanish invade."
Absurd. Britain's coastline was far too long for defenses to be adequate everywhere, and they both knew it. As his vision cleared, he realized that she looked different tonight. Defeated. Unbowed, but preparing for the worst. "Give me your scrying glass."
She looked doubtful. Guessing she thought him too weak, he repeated, "Give it to me! I must know."
She reluctantly produced the obsidian disk and laid it on his right palm. He was so weak he could barely raise the glass high enough to see the surface, and he couldn't sense the glow of her energy as he had before. As the surface remained blank, he recognized that the center of his spirit was numb, devoid of power.