The Dragon Heir (34 page)

Maybe we should've met at
Jack's house, Seph thought. Just now it seemed perilous to be perched on an
outcropping of rock at the edge of the lake.

The wind howled, flinging
foam-speckled waves against the breakwater, ripping slate shingles from the
roof and sending them spiraling away into the darkness. The trees in the garden
bent double under glittering skins of ice. Sleet clattered against the leaded
windows of Stone Cottage, the witchy wind screamed down the chimneys, and
thunder and lightning clamored over the lake. They had to speak loudly to be
heard over the din.

It was worse for Seph than for
anyone else. The aelf-aeling made him hypersensitive—to the conjured storm, to the lowering cloud
overhead, to the legions of wizards that drew close around the walls, like
darkness around a shuttered lamp. It was as if his nerves had been sandpapered
to exquisite tenderness. The magical activity at the boundary was a constant flickering,
just out of his field of vision. He could see all of the possibilities, and
they all looked bad.

He thought of the refugees out
on the Sisters, and wondered how they were faring. They must think the world
was truly coming to an end.

“Wonder what the weather
people are saying about this one,” he muttered.

“One can only
imagine,” Nick observed dryly, from his place by the fire. “Given
that it is their habit to make a run-of-the-mill thunderstorm sound like
Armageddon.”

The old wizard had drawn a
wool blanket around his shoulders. He and Leesha sat, a chessboard between
them. Either she was really good or Nick was letting her win. He seemed to be
working really hard at cheering her up, for some reason.

Jack and Ellen came banging
in, shaking off the sleet and rain like dogs. And after them came Will and
Fitch.

Seph looked from Will and
Fitch to Jack and raised an eyebrow. “Aren't these two supposed to be on
the Sisters?”

“They were hiding
out,” Jack explained. “But it's not like they haven't been
busy.”

“They've been mining the
no-mans-land between the walls,” Ellen said, grinning, slapping Will on
the back, sending ice flying in all directions. “We've been providing
cover.”

Will and Fitch resembled
high-concept members of the French Resistance, clad in black jeans and hoodies
and black knit caps, faces smudged black so as not to shine out in the dark.

“The Roses are looking
for hostages, you know,” Seph said. “Not a good idea to be out
there.”

“Been hostages, done
that,” Fitch said, poking in the refrigerator and coming up with a bottle
of juice.

Seph turned to Jack for help.
“Aren't you afraid of blowing up our own warriors? I mean, we're out there
patrolling that area.”

“The motion sensors will
tell us someone's out there,” Fitch said. “But nothing blows up until
I say so.” He produced an electronic device, small as an MP3 player, and
dangled it in front of Seph.

“Anyway. We're not going
into the salt mines,” Will said, thrusting his chin out belligerently, as
if anxious to put the issue to bed. “So forget it.”

“You don't have a chance
against wizardry,” Seph said.

Will's response was something
like “Hmpf.”

“All right,” Seph
said. “Thanks. But don't get killed, okay?” He made a mental note to
try and put them out of harm's way when the bad stuff happened. One more thing
to think about.

Mercedes had come in while
they were talking. So they were all there except…

“Anyone seen Jason?”
Jack asked, looking around in an exaggerated fashion.

“Jason?” Seph
shrugged. “He'll be here. Probably got hung up. Why?”

“He was supposed to meet
us two hours ago,” Ellen said. “To go over the layout of the camp
outside the walls. He didn't show.”

There was a long, charged
pause, full of throat clearings and significant looks. “What are you suggesting?”
Seph said testily.

“I just think it's
strange, that's all.” Jack thrust the tip of the poker into the flames on
the hearth. Sparks spiraled up. “I mean, he's been a loose cannon all
along. Crazy to leave.”

Seph waited for someone  to 
disagree. No  one  did. “Jason's been frustrated, yeah, but that was
because he thought he could do more good in Britain than here. He can't still
believe that.”

“So where is he?”
Jack asked.

“Hey.” Ellen frowned
at Jack. “Ease up.”

Silence crackled among them.

“Brooks saw him outside
the perimeter just before midnight,” Jack said, propping the poker against
the hearth. “He was headed for the Wizard Gate. No one's seen him
since.”

“What are you
saying?” Seph asked. “That he ran out on us?”

Jack shrugged.

“He wouldn't just
leave,” Seph said flatly, feeling some of the old friction with Jack.

Without meaning to, Seph
reached out with his mind, looking for the angry spark that was Jason. And did
not find him anywhere within the perimeter. Could he have gone out to the Sisters?
Was he somehow incapacitated so he couldn't be detected?

If not, how would he have
breached the outer perimeter and navigated the wizard lines outside?

“He wouldn't run out on
you,” Leesha said suddenly. They all turned to look at her. “He wouldn't,”
she insisted, shoving the chess board away so the pieces toppled onto the
floor.

Jack gave her a look and
rolled his eyes, as if to say, Consider
the source.

“Nobody said that,”
Seph said, looking around at the others, daring them to disagree. Jack fixed him
with his blue-eyed gaze, but said nothing. Seph remembered what Ellen had told
him, more than a year ago. Jack's more wary than he used to be. Before Raven's Ghyll.

“Perhaps we should
discuss what will happen tomorrow,” Nick suggested softly.

 Jack was conscious of
overwhelming thirst. Fatigue dragged at his legs and arms like millstones. Or
maybe it was the armor he wore. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the images
of the men he'd killed, as if they were painted on his eyelids. So he struggled
to keep his eyes open, blinking against the dust and sweat and blood caked on
his face.

He was looking for his
comrades. He'd somehow lost them during his last one-on-one with a wizard who
wouldn't go down. By the time he'd finished him, and yanked his sword free, he
was alone among the trees, in a wood littered with bodies and watered with
blood.

And so he moved silently
through the woods, listening for the telltale clash of metal and magic that
would direct him to the ongoing fight. But nothing. Even the birds had left
that desolate place hours ago, understanding that it was no place for living
things. It's a peculiarity of man—this
lining up and marching toward death. The only other creatures who don't flee a
killing field are the scavengers who come after the fact.

On all sides lay the
detritus of terrible endings. Or heroic endings. The results looked the same.

Finally, he broke from the
forest and onto a field pegged with ancient trees, many of them charred and
splintered and broken, as yet unaware they were doomed, thrusting fistfuls of
leaves into a brilliant blue sky. Stone buildings ringed the green on all
sides.

The commons. And,
everywhere he looked, bodies.

 “Jack!” Ellen
gently tugged at Jack's arm. He responded by swinging his fist at her, and she
captured it between her two hands, forcing it down onto the pillow. “Jack,
you're dreaming, cut it out!”

His body bucked and twisted as
he tried to free himself. His red-gold hair was sluiced across the pillow, damp
with sweat, and he muttered something unintelligible.

“Come on, Jack, you're
waking up the whole house!” Man, he's strong, she thought, unable to
resist a little professional envy.

Another near miss with that
big fist, and she picked up a glass from the bedside table and sloshed the
contents into his face.

He surged into a sitting
position, spluttering, groping for his belt dagger. Good thing he didn't have
it, or she might have been skewered before he came awake. She avoided his
grasp, slid to the floor, and retreated a few yards away, watching him.

Finally, his bleary blue eyes
cleared and focused on her. “What the … ?”

“You were dreaming,”
Ellen repeated. “You've been screaming and yelling half the night. Nobody
can sleep.”

He stared at her as if she
were a ghost. It was unnerving.

“I was elected to come in
and put a stop to it. You sure wake up grouchy. Don't take a weapon to bed, is
my advice.”

“Ellen,” he
whispered hoarsely, “I killed them. I killed them all.” He gazed down
at his hands, turning them palms up, as if they were covered in blood.

“You killed who?”
Ellen asked, but Jack didn't seem to hear her.

She came and sat on the edge
of the bed. “Come on. It was just a dream.”

With that he threw back the
covers and erupted from the bed, oblivious of his state of dress. Yanking his
duffle bag from the closet, he emptied it onto the floor. He groped through the
debris of clothes and came up with a chamois-wrapped package.

He sat down next to Ellen on
the bed and ripped away the leather with trembling fingers. It was a mirror,
its silver frame engraved with dragons and other fantastical images. He stared
into the glass with a desperate intensity.

“Wow, that's cool,”
Ellen said, combing her fingers through Jack's hair, which stuck out in all
directions. “What does it do?” She leaned close so she could see.
“Is it magic?”

What she saw was not Jack's
face, but an image that looked like a battlefield. Only familiar.

“Is that
no-man's-land?” she asked.

A lone warrior stood at the
center of the field, the sunlight striking his red-gold hair, head bowed,
cradling a comrade in his arms. And all around him lay the fallen—warriors from five centuries, surrounded by the gear
and weapons appropriate to their time.

“That's you,” Ellen
said. “What's it mean?”

Jack snatched the mirror away
and flung it across the room. It smashed against the wall, and dropped behind
the dresser.

Madison Moss had long ago
mastered the gift of looking forward—of
achieving that narrow focus on goals. Not that there wasn't a price. Sometimes
she wondered if she was doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, since she'd
trained herself not to look back at it.

But Maddie was, first and
foremost, a survivor. Beyond that, she'd protect the ones she loved. Whatever
it took. That, at least, gave her direction.

So, for now, she could set
aside wondering what had happened at Bryson Farms. Set aside the Chicago
Institute of Art and Seph McCauley.

Set aside Warren Barbers
threats.

It didn't take her long to
pack. She stuffed two changes of clothes into a duffle. After some thought, she
returned her father's gun to the wood box, made two sandwiches from the
groceries she'd bought, and piled them in a six-pack cooler with a couple of
cans of pop. She didn't mean to stop.

Finally, she pulled on blue
jeans and a sweatshirt and boots over heavy socks. Clothes that said she meant
business. She set the duffel by the door and laid her silver-studded denim
jacket on top, then tied her hair back with a bandana.

Her plan was simple—she'd drive back to Trinity and go directly to St.
Catherine's. Seph's barriers and wards wouldn't give her any trouble. With any
luck, she'd take the Dragonheart and be gone before anyone knew she was there.

That was it. What would she do
if she ran into Seph? She'd make something up.

She tried to think of what
came after that, but drew a complete blank. She didn't trust Barber, but she
had no clue how to get around him.

She heard the clatter of
gravel against metal as a car pulled into the yard, followed by a door
slamming.

Had Barber come back for some
reason? The police? County child welfare? None of the possibilities were good.
She thought about running out the back, but she'd still have to get past
whoever it was to get down the mountain. So she knelt on the floor beside the
wood box like a cornered animal, one hand gripping the loaded pistol.

She heard footsteps cross the
creaky porch, but still jumped when someone banged on the door.

“Come!” she said,
aiming the pistol through the wood box at the front door.

The visitor stood silhouetted against
a rectangle of sunlight, squinting into the darkened room, then took a few
hesitant steps forward.

“Madison?”

“Jason?” She let go
of the pistol and sat back on her heels, her breath whooshing out in relief.

The light struck his face as
he moved out of the doorway. He looked better than when she'd last seen him,
when he'd left for Trinity. His coloring was restored, though he looked like
he'd not slept for days. His hair had grown out in a haphazard way.

She wanted to grab hold of
him, to somehow hand off her load of problems. But he might not be an ally. She
had only one agenda—could have only one
agenda. His might be different.

She stood, a little shakily,
thinking furiously. “So. Not to be rude, but what are you doing back
here?” she asked.

The question seemed to take
him by surprise, as if he hadn't planned anything further than getting to
Booker Mountain. “Well, we—um—that
is, I wondered if you'd heard what was going on in Trinity.”

Barber had told her there was
trouble, but she wasn't sure what kind, and besides, it wouldn't do to say
she'd been chatting with Warren Barber. So she shook her head. “What's
going on in Trinity?”

Jason's eyes lit on her duffle
bag, sitting by the door. “Were you going somewhere?”

“Well.” She thought
a moment, decided, and answered in a rush. “Actually, I was just getting
ready to leave. To come back north. My …” She gulped, lost for a moment,
then went on. “Someone else has the kids for awhile. So I thought…”

“Great,” Jason said.
“That's great.” They stood in awkward silence for a moment, then he
glanced toward the kitchen. “I drove straight through. Could I get
something to drink?”

“Well. Sure.” She
motioned him to the kitchen table and fetched him a cold pop from the
refrigerator. All the while itching to be gone.

She set it on the table in
front of him and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “You look
better,” she said.

He grimaced. “Yeah. Well.
I'm close to a hundred per cent. But a hundred per cent ain't that great.”
He didn't say it like he was fishing for a compliment. “Damn Warren
Barber, wherever he is.”

Yeah, she thought. Damn Warren
Barber.

“So. How is Seph?”
She couldn't help herself.

Jason's words came out in a
rush, as if some internal dam had broken. “Bad. Look, Maddie. We need your
help, but he won't ask for it. Trinity is under siege. The place is surrounded,
and they say they'll attack tomorrow if we don't surrender.”

She blinked, momentarily
diverted from her urge to be gone. “What do you mean, the town is
surrounded? By who?”

“The Roses. And D'Orsay.
They've put up this mammoth wizard wall all around the town that keeps
everybody inside—Weir and Anaweir. Well,
first, Mercedes put up a wall. Remember? Will and Fitch told us about it when
they came. But that one just worked on the Weir.”

Seconds passed while she
processed this. “Okay. You're saying there's two walls, one inside the
other. And the outside one catches the Anaweir. So nobody can get in or out of
Trinity? How can that be? It's not like no one would notice. What about the …
the police?”

Jason dismissed the police
with a wave of his hand. “What do the Roses care? The Anaweir authorities
can't do anything. Trinity is sort of isolated to begin with. They've clothed
the wall in confusion charms, so no one can find us. Phones, TV, radio don't
work inside the wall. We might as well be in the Middle Ages.”

An image came to her—Trinity as a fifteenth-century university town under
siege, in perpetual twilight, shadowed by menacing black walls. “But…isn't
everyone going crazy inside? What about the kids at the high school? And people…people
have jobs…”

Jason hesitated, as if
debating the wisdom of sharing a secret. “The Anaweir are gone. Seph snuck
them out of town.”

“And Seph is…”

“He's using wizard
flame,” Jason said brutally. “It makes him incredibly powerful, but
it's dangerous, I guess. He's going to save the town and everybody in it or die
trying.”

No. Focus forward. Don't look
back. There's nothing back there but monsters. “But. Why are they doing
this? What do they want?”

“They want the
Dragonheart.”

Madison turned and stared out
the kitchen window, over the sensuous hips and shoulders of mountains that
rolled into the distance. She hoped the view would soothe her so she wouldn't
vomit into the sink. “What do they want with it?”

She felt the hot pressure of
Jason's gaze on the back of her neck. “They think it's a weapon—like, the mother of all weapons.”

“A weapon?” So
that's why Barber wanted it. Madison had never thought of it as something dangerous.
But what did she know? “Well. If it's a weapon, can't you use it
against them?”

“We don't know how. We're
not even sure what it does.” He took a breath. “And … we can't get
near it.”

She swung round to face him.
“What? Since when?”

“Ever since you left.
It's like it's got some kind of force field around it. If we try to touch it, it erupts in
flame or slams us down on our butts.”

“You're saying four
wizards can't pick up a stone?” He nodded, and she said, “Why didn't
you tell me?”

He shrugged unhappily. “I
kept thinking it would settle. I … I wanted to try and use it.”

Could things get any worse?
“But you handled it before, didn't you? The Dragonheart. Did you have any
trouble then?”

“No.” Jason rubbed
his stubbled chin. “Nick and Mercedes and I fooled with it for weeks,
trying to figure out what it did. But it's like something woke it up. Power
just rolls off the thing. It's like this big antenna that's drawing wizards and
Weir from all over.” He looked up at her, fixing her with his blue eyes.
“It seemed to respond to you before. I thought maybe…your leaving … set it
off. Somehow.”

She'd last touched the
Dragonheart the day she left for Coalton County. It had blazed up, so bright it
hurt her eyes. Magic had poured into her until she ripped her hands away.

Maybe she'd had something to
do with the change in the stone. Maybe she'd been the one to mess it up. Either
that or the hex magic it had driven out of her.

Jason was still watching her,
waiting for a response.

“What do you think I can
do?” she asked.

He studied her, as if
assessing his chances of success. “Two things. I want to see if you can do
something with the Dragonheart. You're not vulnerable to magic, so you ought to
be able to handle it, at least.”

“But…I'm not
gifted,” Madison protested. “I don't know how to do magic.” She
was torn so many different ways, she didn't even know how to strategize.

Jason gripped her hands and
played his best card. “Look. Seph and Nick saw the painting you did. The
hex painting. It put Seph down for days. He still hasn't fully recovered.
That's why he's using flame. They thought maybe you were…maybe you'd sold out.
That's why I came down here before. I was supposed to find out for sure.”

Madison flailed for an answer.
“I would … I would never hurt Seph,” she stammered, feeling like the
worst kind of liar. “He should know that.”

“He does. He never bought
the idea that you'd turned. But he needs your help now. The Dragonheart aside,
you can help us when the Roses attack. Maybe you can disarm them like you did
at Second Sister, if we handle it right.”

I can't.

But, maybe, after she gave the
Dragonheart to Barber, she could somehow help them. She could make up for what
she'd done. If they weren't already dead. If they'd even accept her help.

Her plan was in a shambles
now. There was no way she'd get in without Jason's help.

She swallowed hard. “The
town is surrounded, you said. Can you get me in?”

He hesitated for a fraction of
a second, then said, “Yes.”

“Guess we'd better go
along, then,” Madison said. “Time's a-wasting.”

A relieved smile broke onto
Jason's face. “Great,” he said. “Great. Um, could we take your
truck? I kind of borrowed a car without asking. I'd rather not be driving
around in it.”

Madison had planned to propose
that she follow him in the truck so she could leave when she'd finished in
Trinity. But there was a wired intensity in Jason's movements that told her this
was nonnegotiable.

“Oh. Okay.” She
scooped up her keys from the table and slung the duffle bag over her shoulder.

But he gripped her wrist and
took the keys from her hand. “I'll drive,” he said.