The Curse of Arkady (30 page)

Gavan's hands turned white around the knuckles as he leaned on them. “I need protectors for my Gatekeeper. We may well lose him, if not.”

Jason went cold. He stared at Gavan. Lose? What did he mean by that?

“We've lost two candidates already,” Eleanora spoke up. “Henry Squibb, fallen to betrayal by the Dark Hand, and Jennifer Logan, who was one of our more trained recruits.”

“Not Jennifer!” protested both Ting and Bailey in unison before clapping their hands over their mouths and turning pink.

Eleanora smiled sadly. “Jennifer has retreated. She's renounced her Magick, and although I am working with her, her crystal has been shattered, and I'm not sure she'll ever be able to take up a new one. It happens sometimes. She won't tell me what she was attempting or what went wrong, but she is frightened. Terribly, desperately frightened. I'm doing all I can.”

Both Ting and Bailey let out small breaths, and grabbed for each other's hands, and held them. Lacey poked a whiskered nose out of Bailey's pocket, then dove back in, followed by a small crunchy, munching sound.

“We'll lose more like that, too, if we don't move,” Gavan finished. “If that happens, we don't have to worry about the Dark Hand. We'll be destroying them ourselves.”

“We have monthly conferences,” Anita Patel said in her soothing, lilting voice. “Things are not all that dire, Gavan.”

He frowned briefly. “This is not the Old World,” he repeated, “where we can gather them up and sweep them away and their parents will be thankful they were apprenticed somewhere. No. They may well spend their summers vacationing in different corners of the states and we may never get them all together in one group again. Not,” and he took a breath, “unless we can offer them a school. An Academy of such outstanding opportunity that a parent would want nothing more than to send his child there. And we have to produce that Academy now. We can't waste any more time. Now, their powers are more open to abuse than ever, and now, when things are forever changed, their lives are even more valuable. Precious. And we Magickers are responsible for them!”

Isabella ruffled her fan. “There is no suitable Haven to hold such a school yet, Gavan. This is an old argument, one we have every time we meet. Have you trained your Gatekeeper? Does he even know what faces him? Or are you still dabbling in painting only the light side of Magick? Would you have him be caught unawares as Fizziwig was?”

Before she finished, she was interrupted by the other dissenting voice. “Open the Gates. Only then will I help establish a school. If you cannot do that, they might as well all drink the Draft and be returned to the nothingness from which they came.” Khalil the Moor stood, cloaked in night-dark fabric, even his eyes unseeable. “You've a betrayer in your midst, Gavan Rainwater, but you are too blind to see it. Open your eyes! Then and only then have we any hope.” With that, he raised his arm, invoked his crystal, and was gone in a heartbeat.

A moment of complete and utter silence followed. Not a soul left on the Council moved or, it seemed, even dared to breathe.

Then Bailey stirred. “He forgot to say ‘Mwahahahaha,” ' she commented.

Gavan stared at her, his jaw dropping slowly. Eleanora reached over and put her hand on Bailey's knee, squeezing, as she tried to contain a giggle. Then Aunt Freyah put her head back and laughed heartily, and for a very long time, before finally subsiding and saying, “Thank you, Bailey, I needed that. Khalil is nothing if not dramatic, and it doesn't take a Shakespeare to note that.” She gathered her patchwork jacket about her, looking very gypsylike. “We can't let fear defeat us before the enemy has a chance.”

Allenby who had sat mostly silent, except for nervously wiping his balding head with a handkerchief from time to time, managed a few words. “Someone here has to remember this is not all fun and games.”

Isabella snapped her fan and shaded her face with it. “The point remains, Council members. We've a Gatekeeper. Has he been trained? Does he know what faces him?”

“Ummm. I think I can answer that. No.”

They all turned to look at Jason.

“Unless,” he added apologetically, “I wasn't paying attention at the time?”

Gavan sat down. The palm of his hand rubbed the wolfhead of his cane a moment, as it did when he was thinking, before he finally said, “No, I think you would have remembered this. Fizziwig was our last and only Gatekeeper. I was hoping when we found him, he'd impart what he'd learned.”

Jason looked at him, whispered words echoing in the back of his head . . .
There are secrets. Don't you think you ought to know them . . . ?
And the message etched in his crystal. Fizziwig's secrets, now lost to him forever. Was it something that could save all of them?

Eleanora glanced at Gavan as his words trailed off, before looking to Jason and adding kindly, “Fizziwig . . . Herbert was his real last name, but he liked being called something that sounded like it came from Dickens with just a little twist . . . Fizziwig was a classmate of Gavan's. They were trained together, and came forward together.”

“Oh, Gavan,” said Ting. “We're sorry! You must have known him well.” Her brow creased in sympathy.

“We didn't know, when we found him,” Bailey added.

Jason echoed with an “I'm sorry” of his own.

“That's not the point, guys,” Trent cut in. “I think the point is,” and he looked right at Gavan, who seemed to be studying the crystal embedded in his cane without responding to any of their kind words, “the point seems to be that they were classmates. In other words, the same age. But we found an old man.”

“Not that old,” snapped Freyah. Her dark eyes glared a hole through Trent.

Gavan sighed. “Old enough.” He looked up. “Trent has cut the Gordian knot again and gone right to it. Fizziwig was, or should have been, my age.”

Bailey let out a small “Meep” . . . or maybe it was her pocket that squeaked. “He couldn't have been.”

“Trust me, he was.” Absentmindedly, Gavan pushed a shock of dark brown hair from his forehead. He did not reveal any creases by doing so, nor was there a single thread of gray in his hair. His eyes were the same, piercingly clear blue they'd always been, with only a very few fine lines at the corners.

Jason shook his head in disbelief.

Trent cracked his knuckles. “It makes sense,” he said. “Magick has a price, it always does, and all the wizards and sages are old, wise. Bearded. So it takes youth, maybe even the life force itself, to use.”

Aunt Freyah fastened her gaze on the back of his head, her apple cheeks blazing, her silvery hair a corona about her face. Trent didn't seem to notice.

“For all we know,” he continued. “They could be the ripe old age of twenty or something.”

Bailey snickered. She put her hand up to muffle it. Eleanora smiled faintly, shifting gracefully inside her lacy dark dress. “I would be hurt,” she said softly. “But I know you mean well, Trent.”

“Are there things you should be telling us you're not?” Jason sat forward in his chair. “Is that what killed Fizziwig? The Curse of Arkady? Do we face aging incredibly if we use any mana?” He looked at all of their faces, and no one would look back at him except Aunt Freyah.

“We don't know what killed Fizziwig,” Gavan said finally. “I wish we did, but we haven't a clue. His heart just stopped. As for the Curse, well, I don't think it would have applied to Fizziwig at that point in his life.” He tapped his cane lightly on the floor in a mild, uneasy rhythm, his fingers gripping the pewter wolfhead tightly. Bare glints of the massive crystal the wolf held could barely be seen.

“Will we ever know?”

“Probably not. FireAnn is working on it, but she's not found any answers yet in herbology and Dr. Patel had seen him first, of course. There doesn't really appear to have been a reason for it, despite what you think of his aged appearance. Up till the last, he was hale and hearty, as he should have been.” Gavan stood. “A lot of issues have been thrown about the table today, and I guess it's time to answer one of them.” He looked at Jason. “I had hoped for you to have more time, more training, more understanding before I showed you this.” He extended his hand. “Gatekeeper. Are you ready to glimpse the futures?”

T
RENT shot him a look, but Jason shook his head slightly as he put his own hand out to meet Gavan's. Now was not the time, he thought, to be telling the others they'd done a little exploration of their own. Definitely not the time. He'd played dumb, he'd stay that way.

Trent stood, too, as Jason rose to take Gavan's hand. He asked quietly, “Do we all get to see or is this private?”

“I think we're going to need the help of all those here, who can stay to help. Jason is the Gatekeeper, but I think part of the phenomena of your Talents . . . all your Talents . . . is that you support and draw on each other.” Gavan wore a wistful expression. “Perhaps if we'd been raised with that spirit of cooperation instead of competition, Brennard might never have fought Gregory. We shall never know.”

Allenby pushed away from the Council table with a new sheen of nervous sweat dappling his egg-bald head. “I have appointments and work to do. We have investments we need to keep up to date and accountings to be made. I am, as always, at your disposal, Rainwater, if you need information on the finances. Good day, ladies, gentlemen.” He bowed stiffly to the Magickers sitting around the table before taking out his watch from his vest, snapping open the silver cover to expose a brilliant crystal, glancing into it, and disappearing.

Trent let out a low whistle. “He makes it look easy.”

Dr. Patel considered the spot which had held Allenby. “Never underestimate any of us,” she said finally. She straightened her sari about her petite frame, the silver bracelet on her dusky wrist chiming as she did so.

“Ready, Jason?”

“Yeah.” He slid his hand into Gavan's, aware that he was not yet full grown and his hand felt even smaller inside the other's grasp. Rainwater, like McIntire, had strong, callused hands although his stepfather's hands could be called massive. His own, while not those of a child, still had a ways to go. Gavan closed his fingers slightly around Jason's.

“I suggest that everyone else who's coming link to Eleanora. I'd like to be able to concentrate on the Gatekeeper and start with Iron Gate.”

A coldness swept around the two of them. Jason had a last impression of Trent touching him, gripping his shoulder, before being drawn away from his friends and hurtling into a storm-dark nothingness, towed after Gavan.

After a long moment in which his feet did not touch anything, he could feel gravity again, and see ground below him as the nothingness they'd been in parted, and he and Gavan settled onto a rocky pass, looking down into a vale. At their flanks were the rusting iron gateposts, and a flag showing wear and tear at its edges as it fluttered in a faint breeze. Jason touched it. That banner had been made by Trent, and the flagpole was actually a crudely whittled wooden lance, to battle wolfjackals with if necessary. Instead, he had buried it into the ground to mark and claim the opening of Iron Gate.

He could feel the presence of others at his back as the gathering caught up, though they did not materialize. Gavan nodded at Jason, reading the expression on his face.

“They're here, but Eleanora is holding them back. Now, then.” Gavan took a deep breath. His cloak slowly settled about him like a sail that the winds of the travel had kept unfurled, and let fall only now that he had landed completely. “These are the Four Great Gates which control the elements, that we know of. The Iron Gate, the first one, you found and opened here. We were hoping that the opening of that one Gate would lead us to what we needed, but we feel now that is probably not the case.”

“Why?”

“It's not stable. The only thing we've put here, that has stayed here, has been this.” Gavan tapped the flag. He smiled faintly. “We've laid a foundation twice down there, and it disappeared, shifted elsewhere, overnight.”

“Wow,” Jason breathed. “Where?”

“We've no idea.”

“That would be cool, but I think I know what you mean. We can't have an Academy drifting in and out of realities.”

“No, we can't. Think how hard it would be to assign homework.” Gavan winked.

Jason laughed, though his nerves were twitching and his stomach felt a little queasy. “What about the others? Do you know?”

“We . . . think we do. Mist Gate, Fire Gate, and the last is the Bone Gate.” Gavan may have tried but could not conceal a shudder at the last naming. “Those are the elements that must be mastered to bring other lands into balance. There may be others, hidden, that we don't know of.”

“So, even trained, I'm not fully prepared.”

“No.”

Jason nodded. “That's why it's so dangerous. There's no way of knowing what to expect.”

It was Gavan's turn to nod. “Sometimes, it's better to be intuitive about Gates, finding them by your own best feelings, and opening them that way. There are schools of thought about doing what it is you need to do, and no one agrees. It's a very individual thing.”

“How did Fizziwig do it?”

Gavan smiled sadly. “I've no idea. He usually did it alone, and he only opened one or two successfully. He helped Aunt Freyah open and maintain her small Haven, but that's not really a Gated area, that's more of a . . . hmmm . . . how to explain it?”

“A pocket beyond the boundaries.”