Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

An icy chill shot up Rakoczy’s spine at the thought of the grinning gargoyles perched high above him and the implication that one might at any moment choose to spread its silent wings and hurtle down upon him, teeth still bared in carnivorous hilarity. Despite himself, he looked up, over his shoulder.

“Not that fast.” The note of amusement was back in the frog’s voice. “You would never see them. It takes them millennia to move the slightest fraction of an inch—unless of course they are propelled or melted. But you don’t want to see them do that, of course. Much too dangerous.”

This kind of talk struck him as frivolous, and Rakoczy was bothered by it but for some reason not irritated. Troubled, with a sense that there was something under it, something that he simultaneously wanted to know—and wanted very much to avoid knowing. The sensation was novel, and unpleasant.

He cast caution to the wind and demanded boldly, “Why did you not kill me?”

Raymond grinned at him; Rakoczy could see the flash of teeth and felt yet another shock: he was sure—almost sure—that the frog had had no teeth when last seen.

“If I had wanted you dead, son, you wouldn’t be here talking to me,” he said. “I wanted you to be out of the way, that’s all; you obliged me by taking the hint.”

“And just why did you want me ‘out of the way’?” Had he not needed to find out, Rakcozy would have taken offense at the man’s tone.

The frog lifted one shoulder.

“You were something of a threat to the lady.”

Sheer astonishment brought Rakoczy to his full height.

“The lady? You mean the woman—La Dame Blanche?”

“They did call her that.” The frog seemed to find the notion amusing.

It was on the tip of Rakoczy’s tongue to tell Raymond that La Dame Blanche still lived, but he hadn’t lived as long as he had by blurting out everything he knew—and he didn’t want Raymond thinking that he himself might be still a threat to her.

“What is the ultimate goal of an alchemist?” the frog said very seriously.

“To transform matter,” Rakoczy replied automatically.

The frog’s face split in a broad amphibian grin.

“Exactly!” he said. And vanished.

He had vanished. No puffs of smoke, no illusionist’s tricks, no smell of sulfur—the frog was simply gone. The square stretched empty under the starlit sky; the only thing that moved was a cat that darted mewing out of the shadows and brushed past Rakoczy’s leg.



WORN OUT WITH constant walking, Michael slept like the dead these days, without dreams or motion, and woke when the sun came up. His valet, Robert, heard him stir and came in at once, one of the femmes de chambre on his heels with a bowl of coffee and some pastry.

He ate slowly, suffering himself to be brushed, shaved, and tenderly tidied into fresh linen. Robert kept up a soothing murmur of the sort of conversation that doesn’t require response and smiled encouragingly when presenting the mirror. Rather to Michael’s surprise, the image in the mirror looked quite normal. Hair neatly clubbed—he wore his own, without powder—suit modest in cut but of the highest quality. Robert hadn’t asked him what he required but had dressed him for an ordinary day of business. He supposed that was all right. What, after all, did clothes matter? It wasn’t as though there was a costume de rigueur for calling upon the sister of one’s deceased wife, who had come uninvited into one’s bed in the middle of the night.

He had spent the last two days trying to think of some way never to see or speak to Léonie again, but, really, there was no help for it. He’d have to see her.

But what was he to say to her, he wondered, as he made his way through the streets toward the house where Léonie lived with an aged aunt, Eugenie Galantine. He wished he could talk the situation over with Sister Joan, but that wouldn’t be appropriate, even were she available.

He’d hoped that walking would give him time to come up at least with a point d’appui, if not an entire statement of principle, but instead he found himself obsessively counting the flagstones of the market as he crossed it, counting the bongs of the public horologe as it struck the hour of three, and—for lack of anything else—counting his own footsteps as he approached her door. Six hundred and thirty-seven, six hundred and thirty-eight…

As he turned into the street, though, he abruptly stopped counting. He stopped walking, too, for an instant—then began to run. Something was wrong at the house of Madame Galantine.

He pushed his way through the crowd of neighbors and vendors clustered near the steps and seized the butler, whom he knew, by a sleeve.

“What?” he barked. “What’s happened?” The butler, a tall, cadaverous man named Hubert, was plainly agitated but settled a bit on seeing Michael.

“I don’t know, sir,” he said, though a sideways slide of his eyes made it clear that he did. “Mademoiselle Léonie…she’s ill. The doctor…”

He could smell the blood. Not waiting for more, he pushed Hubert aside and sprinted up the stairs, calling for Madame Eugenie, Léonie’s aunt.

Madame Eugenie popped out of a bedroom, her cap and wrapper neat in spite of the uproar.

“Monsieur Michel!” she said, blocking him from entering the room. “It’s all right, but you must not go in.”

“Yes, I must.” His heart was thundering in his ears, and his hands felt cold.

“You may not,” she said firmly. “She’s ill. It isn’t proper.”

“Proper? A young woman tries to make away with herself and you tell me it isn’t proper?”

A maid appeared in the doorway, a basket piled with bloodstained linen in her arms, but the look of shock on Madame Eugenie’s broad face was more striking.

“Make away with herself?” The old lady’s mouth hung open for a moment, then snapped shut like a turtle’s. “Why would you think such a thing?” She was regarding him with considerable suspicion. “And what are you doing here, for that matter? Who told you she was ill?”

A glimpse of a man in a dark robe, who must be the doctor, decided Michael that little was to be gained by engaging further with Madame Eugenie. He took her gently but firmly by the elbows, picked her up—she uttered a small shriek of surprise—and set her aside.

He went in and shut the bedroom door behind him.

“Who are you?” The doctor looked up, surprised. He was wiping out a freshly used bleeding-bowl, and his case lay open on the boudoir’s settee. Léonie’s bedroom must lie beyond; the door was open, and Michael caught a glimpse of the foot of a bed but could not see the bed’s inhabitant.

“It doesn’t matter. How is she?”

The doctor eyed him narrowly, but after a moment nodded.

“She will live. As for the child…” He made an equivocal motion of the hand. “I’ve done my best. She took a great deal of the—”