The Gate of Bones (13 page)

“I think the whole point is that you see differently than we do. That crystal was on the table with all the others because, like all the others, it had something. It offered a conduit the elders could sense, even if they couldn't understand it. Our crystals are chosen just like we are, even if they never find a user to bond to. They're just gems, after all. Even if most of us can't see or feel what you do, we can tell your Talent is there, and growing. Yesterday was a fluke. Gavan wasn't thinking about you or any of us. He was trying to find Eleanora and couldn't.”

“So in a stable of racehorses, even a pack mule has value?”

“I didn't say that! And you're no mule, even if you're as backassward as one, sometimes.”

Trent gestured through the air before dropping his hand back on his leg, and beginning to tap out the unheard rhythm again. “Look, I appreciate the effort. I do, really. But you're not me, and you wouldn't understand. I know you're trying, but you're not me.”

“That's right. I'm not. I know that I couldn't be myself without you around. Look at you. Really look. You kept almost everyone fooled for months about your Talent. You're so damn smart, none of us knew any different, and if we wanted to know anything, if we didn't understand anything about the myths and power behind magic and all the new stuff we were learning, there you were with an answer. How much cooler is that?”

“Almost anyone,” Trent said somberly, “is better off than I am. Look at you.”

“You want to know the worst part about being me?” Jason said suddenly.

“Worst part? How can there be a worst part? You're the golden Magicker, Jason. You're the Gatekeeper.” Trent looked at him sideways, then swung around to face him, his fingers still moving in a drum-beat on his leg to the music only he could hear.

Jason shrugged. “It's only good because no one else is, right now, but no one can show me what to do either. Yet that's not it. I don't mean being a Magicker, I mean being
me.
”

Something flickered in Trent's eyes. “You mean, like being an orphan?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“It never seems to worry you. Look at your stepparents. Joanna is great, and McIntire is way cool. They let you come here, they made things easy.”

“But they're like that to anybody, Trent. The dirtiest, mangiest stray cat could wander in, and they'd clean it up, and bathe it, and feed it royally, and then find the best home in the world for it . . . and it's like . . . it's like I was never any different to them.”

“You can't mean that! Of course you're different.”

Jason shook his head. “Maybe, but I never felt it. I can't say it, exactly. Joanna never talks about my dad, you know? It's almost as if he never existed, or she never wants to say anything imperfect about him. So I don't know what he was, and I'm forgetting what I knew. I'm forgetting my dad. My mom was already forgotten, except in a dream now and then.” He looked away for a moment, and swallowed hard. “So I'm growing up, and I feel like I'm never quite part of anything, you know? But I get along, and it could be a lot worse. They treated me well. I didn't have to live in a cupboard under the stairs or anything—but I never know quite who I'm supposed to be. Suddenly, I find out I have a temper—”

“You? A temper?” Trent wrinkled his nose in disbelief.

“I am being serious here. I wake up at night, with my fists clenched, and I'm so mad I'm just sweating it out, and my teeth hurt 'cause I'm biting down so hard on it. That angry.”

“Wow.” Trent shifted. “Is it at me or something?”

Jason shook his head. “It's at myself. Maybe someone else sometimes, but it's like finding out you have a volcano inside of you. I feel like I'm going to explode with all this anger and I can't go to Joanna and say, did my dad have a temper? And if he did, what did he do about it? Did he go walk it out or did he sit in front of the TV set for hours and punch the remote, or did he yell and scream at someone? 'Cause she would never tell me. She has this code about making sure I have this perfect impression about my dad, and all it does is make him a nonperson, like he never existed. But he did, and it's the warts I need to know about, it's the . . . the wrinkles that make him real!”

“Did you ever tell her that?”

“I tried. Once. It was right after I overheard something.” Jason paused. He scratched the corner of his eye. “McIntire had said something I wasn't meant to hear. Something that made it sound as if my dad had been drinking the night of the car crash. That maybe, once in a while, he did that. I tried to ask her. She wouldn't say a word about what McIntire had spilled, just told me, ‘Jason, don't worry about anything, you'll be fine.' But I'm not. I want to know. At the same time, I don't dare be less than perfect either. How would she deal with me then? How badly would I disappoint her? Would she look at me and compare me with this loser she never talked to me about? I felt like I couldn't breathe sometimes.”

“Jeez.” Trent let his breath out slowly. “I think she just wanted to make things smoother for you. Losing your mom so young, and then your dad, too, I think she is always worried about how hard it is for you.”

Jason nodded slowly. “Like the stray that doesn't have a family, or not a real one, anyway.”

“Cut that out! We're your family!” Trent's expression blazed.

The corner of Jason's mouth twitched. “Exactly. So when I say to you, don't take it so badly, you know what I mean.”

Trent blinked slowly, then a smile crept over his face. “Did you walk me into that?”

“Like Bailey into a wall.” Jason nodded again, firmly. He stood up. “Anyway, you're coming with me.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere,” Jason said firmly, “you've never been before.”

 

He left a note for Gavan about missing the morning of the workday, that he and Trent had work to do. Then they grabbed some food from the kitchen pantry before the sun had begun to crack open the sky, and Jason took Trent climbing up one of the easier slopes of the Iron Mountains. They scaled it slowly at first, muscles awakening and stretching, and then warming even as the sun warmed their backs as it dispersed the clouds of night. They emerged on a wide, flat plateau.

Trent cast his gaze about.

“Looks like a plane could land here.”

“That's about the size of it.” Jason stepped back, took a deep breath, and opened his mind, sending out an appeal he was not even positive would be answered. He was not sure what would happen.

A cloud drifted through the brilliantly blue sky, a sky that looked as if it had been washed clean just for today's appearance, and the sun dimmed for a moment. Before he could look around, sound rushed at him, and a keening shriek not unlike that of an eagle, only this came from a fire-rimmed throat coated in shimmering orange-red scales that looked as if they had just been pulled from a heated forge.

The dragon circled lazily once or twice before diving sharply and swooping down on them. Trent stood absolutely still as though not wanting to attract anything by movement. He'd seen the dragon a few times, but there was no way anyone could be nonchalant about its appearance, awesome and demanding. The dragon curled his talons under him, taking on the appearance of a rather large cat, and looked down with huge lanternlike eyes.

“Greetings, young Magickers. Note that I said Magickers and not appetizers.” The dragon rumbled at himself in amusement.

“Always nice to hear,” Jason responded. He took a few steps and leaned in, and scratched the scales just under the curve of the reptile's jaw, being careful not to ruffle the edges. Not only could he hurt the dragon, but the edges were sharp enough to slice through his fingertips, quite painfully. “I never ask, but I must today. Trent and I have some scouting to do and I wondered if you'd take us.”

“Two hearty lads on my back?” The dragon managed to raise a ridge of scales over one eye, much like an eyebrow. His long, spiny whiskers quivered as well, but he did not sound insulted.

“If you would allow it.”

“What sort of scouting?” Both spoke at once, Trent's higher voice underscored by the low rumbling of the dragon.

“Anywhere you want to take us.” He had hopes, of course, where he wanted to go but knew if the dragon agreed to carry them anywhere, it would be where the dragon wanted to go. And, truthfully, flying anywhere on dragonback would be glorious.

“Get on and hold tightly then. Have a soft belt, do you?” The dragon tilted his triangular face curiously at Jason.

“Two,” answered Jason softly, pulling them from the inside of his vest. He kept one on him at all times and had stuffed the second one in before hauling Trent out the academy doors. He looped them about the dragon's neck and mounted quickly, then put an arm out to help Trent up. “Mind the scale edges. They're sharp and if you dislodge them, he gets sore. Use the belt to hold onto, and watch me.”

Trent took a deep breath before grabbing Jason's forearm and leaping up. He settled behind Jason and secured himself within the looping belt, leaning over once or twice to see how Jason did it.

“Everyone set?”

Jason could feel the dragon's voice rumbling throughout his body, vibrating against his calves. “Looks like it.”

“Good, good! A fine, brisk day for flying!” The last roared out as the dragon broke into a run and launched himself with a bellow off the edge of the plateau into the bright blue sky. For a dizzying moment, it felt as if the whole world fell away from under them. Trent gasped in Jason's ear, echoing Jason's moment of stomach-dropping sensation. Then the dragon's wings beat strongly, one, twice, thrice, and they caught a current stream and soared along it, climbing slowly but steadily.

They banked, and below them could see the small dale where the academy and the Dragon Gate lay, and the small encampment. Trent pointed as they wheeled over it, the dragon's body heat warming them from the inside out, it seemed, even as the cool morning air whipped past them.

Trent let out a yip of sheer joy as they skimmed the Iron Mountains, and the small corner of Haven that they knew fell away. Even Jason had never seen this part from dragonback, as the dragon generally kept to the valley and dale of their refuge. But it seemed as if the dragon knew his mind today, his wings dipping into the air and pushing them farther and farther over the unknown. Indigo and silver rivers crossed below them like lacy ribbons. Dark green forests looked impenetrable. Small roads cut across the terrain in determined manner, linking one small patch of community to another, marked by their quiltlike squares of fields and groves with a town square in the center. Trent bumped Jason's shoulder with his chin.

“Look at that,” he said, his voice snatched out of his mouth, the words whipping away almost before Jason could hear him. Trent pointed. “See the Magick. I can. It follows that edge of the area. It's as if it were a river of its own.”

“You'd see more on the ground, though, right?”

“Sure. Like energy lines. But that. That's one massive band of power, for me to see it up here!”

Jason tried to note its position and wondered if it had anything to do with the old Warlord's spirit presence and the forts that had made up his border, but he couldn't see well enough to know if there were more ruins about or not. The dragon seemed to be carrying them high enough to remain unnoticed, even if their noses and ears and fingers felt like they might freeze off!

“Hold on!” the dragon commanded.

Jason laced his numbing hands deeper into the woven belt. Trent did the same, his body stiffening behind Jason in apprehension.

With a defiant bellow, the dragon did a wheel and roll, and came across an immense lake, his belly barely clearing the surface even as Jason let out a dizzy groan and Trent a whoop of excitement.

“Did you feel that? Out of nowhere, from the clouds to the water!”

The dragon extended a taloned paw, slicing through the water, and coming up with a handful of large, wiggling fish. He swallowed his meal in one gulp and belched contentedly, before turning about on a wing tip and launching himself skyward again.

It felt like riding a rocket. Up, up, up, straining, straining, straining, till he thought his eyes might pop out, and then the beast leveled off again, and a loud vibration thrummed through their bodies. The dragon, it seemed, was humming in contentment.

“Sushi does a body good,” Trent laughed in his ear.

Jason grinned at that, then, his stomach settling down from the loop-the-loops. Trent had more of a Talent for dragon riding than he did! Or at least, the stomach.

They slowly circled back toward the Iron Mountains and although the ride seemed too short, Jason found himself shivering, the only warm parts of him wherever he was in contact with the dragon's body. When they landed, both boys slid off and leaned against the beast for a moment, shaking and laughing and grinning.

The dragon tented his wing about them. “Enjoy that, did you?”

“That was great! That was . . . incredible!” Trent's nose was bright red with the cold, and joy sparkled in his eyes.

“Thank you,” Jason managed. He quickly untied the soft belts from the dragon's neck and stowed them away inside his shirt and vest, then ran his hands over the creature, careful to ensure that he had not damaged the scales or leathery skin in any way. The dragon purred a moment as Jason stroked and massaged him.

Then he cocked an eye at Trent. “Seeing power?”

“I was, yes.”

“Do you look for it?”

“Ummm.” Trent thought about it. “I guess not. It's either there, or it isn't, right?”