The Gate of Bones (37 page)

A jagged red mark met her eyes, a fiery mark looking like a flying snake dragon, remarkably like the red enamel weather vane dragon that rested on Ting's grandmother's home, or at least the way she'd described it to Bailey many times. “Whoa,” she breathed. “That must hurt.”

“It does.” Ting snatched her hand back. “And I have no idea what to do about it!”

“Then things can't be that dark. Yet.” Bailey finished ominously.

 

They limped back to the academy. Trent referred to it as leapfrogging, since neither Gavan nor Jason could Crystal a significant distance. They relied on small landmarks from memory, viewed by dragonback or horseback from days ago. It took time as they shared their vision among the three of them, to make sure that they had details correct, and then rested, and then tried to decide on the next hop. Jason relied as little as possible on his lavender crystal, counting on his main crystal, the one he'd bonded to first, although its warmth and light seemed to waver badly every time he focused. Twice, Trent helped him find a ley line of natural energy that boosted his own weak energy, and still they staggered home as though tied together in a three-legged race.

Gavan made a fist about his watch fob crystal, the one in his cane still not having recovered, and they jumped. They landed on grass slick with dew as evening grew close, and they all grabbed each other to stay upright.

Jason felt a cold chill start down the back of his neck and on down his spine. He chafed his arms. “We've doubled back. We're near the Dark Hand fortress.”

Gavan swore and rubbed his eyes. “My fault. I'm tired.” As the two of them cast about for their bearings, Trent stared at the ground. He said quietly, “I know I don't feel things the way you two do, but . . . did you feel pulled here? Somehow?”

“Pulled?” Gavan arched an eyebrow. He rubbed his crystal fob.

“We're nearly exhausted. I can feel it, clearly. And while we were Crystaling, I could feel something, I don't know, tugging at us.” Trent shrugged. “Can't explain it better than that.”

“I feel,” Jason added slowly, “watched.” Slowly, he turned about in a circle, looking into the late afternoon light, when the sun slanted low across the land and shadows seemed to be multiplying everywhere. It felt damp, too, as though the skies would be gathering storm clouds when nightfall truly hit.

Trent danced his fingers through the air. “It feels like something over there.” He found an invisible string and turned to tug on it.

“Watch it, lads.” Gavan frowned.

“Think it's a ward or trap?”

“More than likely. Even likelier, if it is, it could be lethal.”

“I need to look.”

Gavan and Jason stared at each other a moment. Then Gavan sighed. “I suppose we all do.”

“You felt it, too, then?”

“I did. What it was, I didn't know.” He signaled to them. “Be quiet, and stay close. Trent, keep that Sight of yours alert.”

They moved through the edge of a forested land, thin because they were already in the highlands, wiry shrubs with stubborn barbed thorns grabbing at them from time to time. The land opened up into a canyon or cove, and they all came to a sudden halt.

Shadows had a life of their own here. A gash in the ground opened like a yawning mouth, biting at the world about it. Darkness boiled around it. Jason caught a glimpse of a skull being tossed back and forth through the ebony chasm. Dry clinks and rattles issued forth, along with a low moaning as though wind escaped from the fissure as well, accompanied by the clatter of bones.

“What is that?”

“I don't know, and I don't want us getting any closer.”

But Jason said, “I'm not sure,” echoing Gavan. The gaping hole both drew him and repelled him.

“We need to get out of here. We'll talk about this later, but I don't want either of you coming back to take a look. Is that clear?”

“No argument here,” Trent agreed.

Jason only nodded his head, as the elder Magicker took their arms and pulled them away from whatever it was. The one thing he could be certain of was that he did not believe it had existed before that morning.

In the clear, Gavan took a deep breath. “Home, then, however long it takes us.”

They linked and Crystaled again, the moments
between
growing colder and longer as their powers faded.

 

Lanterns hung from the academy's corner eaves glowed as they touched down in the yard. Gavan staggered and almost fell over. Trent caught him by one elbow and Jason by the other. Looking down, Jason saw the cuff of Rainwater's trousers soaked in dark liquid that must have been blood.

“You're hurt! Help me get him inside!”

“No, no, it's nothing.” Gavan hastily pulled the edges of his cloak together, trying to hide his legs from view. “That's not from today. A little bleeding is good. It'll help clean it out.”

Trent looked at the shadow pooling around Gavan's boot heel. “Then I'd say a major leak like that must be fantastic.” He rolled his eyes. “C'mon, man.” He put his shoulder under Gavan's arm and with Jason's help, muscled the headmaster into the kitchen doorway. Once inside, Jason propped Gavan's leg on a stool while Trent stuck his head into the corridor, letting out a cheerful, “Halllloooo, we're home.”

Great kettles of hot water steamed in the fire pit, and Jason grabbed up a torn rag from a waiting pile. “Looks like they were ready to bandage an army.”

“Either that or they took up mummification while we were gone.” Trent pulled a stool up next to Gavan and looked at the ankle wound in fascination as Gavan gingerly peeled his trousers away from it. “That is a bite, and a nasty looking one. Not from . . . there?”

“Indeed it is, and no. I didn't get any closer than you two did.”

Trent nodded at Jason as he lowered rags and a bowl of hot water onto the table. “He's going to need a rabies shot.”

“I most certainly am not!”

Trent sat back with a wicked laugh as Gavan, frowning, grabbed a rag and made a hot compress from it, laying it over the green-and-purple, jagged wound.

“That does look bad.”

“It festered, but now it's bleeding cleanly and it will be fine.”

Jason rubbed his left hand. “That's not a wolfjackal bite.”

“No. It's from a Leucator.”

Both boys whistled sharply at that. Then both spoke at once, Trent saying, “When'd you get that?” while Jason said, “That came the other night, then. You were looking for Eleanora.”

Gavan closed his mouth stubbornly and answered neither, wincing as the heat settled into tender flesh. “Without success,” he said finally. “And I don't want any discussion on the other until I've talked with Tomaz and others first. Agreed?”

Trent drummed his hand on the table, nodding, but Bailey and Ting, and the older women burst into the kitchen before he could say anything.

“What other,” demanded Bailey.

“Nothing important. Is Tomaz back yet?”

“No, but he sent to us. They're staying the night in Naria.” Bailey plunked herself down on a stool next to Gavan. “Ew!” She eyed his ankle.

“Ugly, isn't it? Good thing FireAnn can't see it. She'd have my hide.” Gavan took up a clean cloth and wrapped it tightly, then tied it into place. “All right. How about a cup of hot tea and stories all around? Who wants to know what happened today?”

“We do! And we have something of our own to tell you.”

“Good enough. Where's Henry?”

“He's upstairs resting,” Ting said softly. “And he's part of it.”

“Hmmm. Well. Rome wasn't built in a day, nor the Dark Hand defeated in one, it seems.” Gavan tried a smile that did not quite work.

“What he means is, back to the drawing board, I think,” Bailey said smugly, and laced her fingers around one knee as she drew close to listen. That brought fond laughter from everyone else much to her puzzlement. “What? I thought I got that one right!”

Rebecca kissed her daughter's forehead. “Yes, dear, you did. You got it absolutely right.”

H
E WAS TIRED ENOUGH to sleep like a log, but he couldn't. Trying not to think about Rich and the blackmarrow poison and Tomaz's warnings of it didn't help. The more you tried not to think of something, the more you thought of it. Logic told him that it wasn't his fault. He hadn't invented Haven or the raiders or the poison one of them had decided to use—and that didn't help either. Tomaz said the healer Kektl told him the rare poison came from a very difficult to grow flower and very few people could prepare it. Yet someone had and now Rich would have it infecting his system for the rest of his life, however long that might be!

Jason turned and thumped his flat pillow. Not his fault!

Still. He buried his nose in the rough sheeting of the bed and squinched his eyes shut. That was when he felt it.

He'd felt it before, but the strangeness of it chased the very last edge of sleepiness from him as it tickled along every nerve in his body. Very quietly he pulled out his crystals from under the makeshift pillow. They glowed faintly in answer to his touch, the clear gold-and-lapis banded quartz and the lavender gemstone. As he did so, he could feel the immediate attention of whatever it was that walked unseen, unheard through the academy. A shivering like a pool of water passed over him and as it did, both crystals dimmed. He could feel and see them growing cooler, weaker, in his hands.

Whatever passed over him was sucking off the reservoir of energy he'd put in them and, from the prickling of his skin, from himself as well! What the—

Jason rolled over angrily. He stared into the dim room, sweeping it for sight of something, anything—Jonnard in his black cloak, Isabella in one of her extravagant European dance gowns sweeping past—anything at all. The thing shivered away from him as he reached for it.

Trent murmured something in his sleep and kicked a bare foot out from under the homespun blankets.

Jason tilted his head, listening, feeling, searching with senses he hardly knew he had, for something magickal stalking the academy halls. He found it, and it evaporated from his grasp almost the moment he touched it.

Jason recoiled. He didn't know what it was, but he knew it wasn't the Dark Hand. Still unseen and unstoppable, it passed beyond the walls and his ability to reach for it again, and then was gone.

The lavender crystal cut into his palm. He looked down at it, its glow flickering like an ember trying to stay lit and alive. For a moment, he saw Gregory's countenance, so familiar and yet not, and then, he saw Aunt Freyah's. The vision looked distressed, but it reached out for him.

So independent and defiant and now utterly alone, she held a hand out to him. He had to go to her.

He dressed silently and slipped out of the room, leaving Trent behind. Halfway down the main stairs, a step groaned behind him. He turned and saw Bailey, rubbing an eye sleepily, Lacey tucked away in her other hand.

“Going somewhere?”

“You know me. I always seem to take a walk in the middle of the night.”

Bailey had dressed, too. She yawned. He hesitated. “I think . . . I think I have a rescue mission or something.”

She grew alert. “Really? Where?”

“Aunt Freyah.”

“I'm going with you!”

It seemed like a good idea. He took her hand, and then thought of Aunt Freyah's little kingdom and her cozy cottage, and they Crystaled there.

 

Time always changed when they went to Freyah's. Jason anticipated that. What he never expected was the sight that greeted him. Her country cottage looked as if a bomb had struck it. Only two walls stood and a third of the roof still clung to them. The picket fence had fallen like loose sticks to the ground and the lawn and gardens were rampant with weeds and unruly thorn-bushes. The place was wrecked.

“It's falling down,” breathed Bailey as if one loud word might add to the disaster. She moved cautiously across the weed-infested lawn.

“No kidding.” He was surprised, and not surprised. He'd expected to see worse, but had hoped he wouldn't see anything like this at all. He was often wrong and wished this had been one of those times. He held out a warning hand. “Don't touch anything.”

“No way.” Bailey put her hand up to her bodice pocket and repeated the caution to Lacey. “Not even with a whisker,” she added. “No wine cellar trips this time either. I don't know what you find so fascinating in her wine cellar, but you stay with me!” Her pocket squeaked back at her.

They approached the cottage door hesitantly, and Jason raised a hand to knock, stopping, because it looked like the only thing that wasn't falling over. Two walls and a door . . . surely she heard or saw them coming? He made a fist.

The door swung open. Aunt Freyah looked out, eyes snapping, silvery hair in bouncy ringlets. “Well, well! Come in, come in, have lunch or breakfast or whatever time it is out there.”

“Midnight snack,” supplied Bailey helpfully.

“Mmm. A challenge! Come in, then, before something falls on your head.” Freyah turned away briskly and snapped her fingers, calling for her picnic hamper. It shuffled in with a grunt and a moan, as she led them to the parlor. Bits of plaster and roofing drifted down from above like a tree shedding brown-and-red leaves. Bailey sneezed and rubbed at her nose. “I apologize for the dust, dear, but it seems inevitable.”

George, the serving tray, came galloping around the corner and skidded to a halt in front of them. It shook in delight to see them, or perhaps it was in terror. Jason studied the long-legged tray. Difficult to tell with an animated inanimate object, frankly. George could have been either.