The Dragon Guard (11 page)

Trent couldn't bear to watch any longer. He bolted to his feet. He took his crystal out as if to leave, then hesitated, with Bailey and Jason watching him. Only the three of them knew he wasn't going anywhere. Gavan took him aside, saying, “There are harder things to watch, lad, and I hope you never have to.”

Jennifer got to her feet. “I must . . . I must go inside. I have to finish packing, and Mother and Father are waiting and . . . you are all very nice but . . . I don't . . . quite . . . know you. What are you doing here?”

Eleanora tilted her face up, smiling. “We just came by to say farewell, dear, and wish you luck.”

“Oh.” Jennifer pushed her blonde hair away from one eye. “That's very . . . nice of you.” She took a step toward her back porch, her charm bracelet jingling. Reluctantly, Bailey and Ting let her go.

“One last thing,” Eleanora said.

“Yes?” Jennifer turned to face her, a bewildered look on her face.

“This,” said Eleanora firmly. She reached up, spreading her hand, putting her fingers to Jennifer's forehead.

They all felt it. Later, Jason would wonder how it was Trent did, although it was like a lightning strike. You didn't have to be at ground zero to feel the zap, the power, the snap, and smell the ozone. It was almost exactly like that. Something dark and powerful surged at Eleanora, knocking her to her knees and crackling through the air with power and Magick that reeked and promised nothing but ill. She took it from Jennifer. It snaked through the air in smoky dark lines, fleeing the girl and shooting toward Eleanora, sinking into her before disappearing, one line after another. Eleanora put a hand to her chest as if shot as Gavan cried out in alarm.

She put her other hand up, trembling. “Get her into the house quickly, now!”

Trent took Jennifer by the hand, and found it cold as ice. He led her across the grassy lawn, up the porch, and into the house. Packed boxes lay everywhere, and furniture had been piled neatly as well. She sat down on a box, as someone called from another room, “Jennifer, is that you? Are your friends gone yet?”

“We're leaving now,” Trent called back.

She looked up at him. “All of you are so very . . . nice.” And she smiled.

He smiled in return, though it took all of his strength to do so. He backed toward the screen door, and out it, and pelted down the porch steps before he stopped breathing.

Eleanora lay on her side on the ground, and Gavan knelt beside her. He held both her hands tightly.

She panted. “It will go,” she said. “It will.”

The Magickers ringed her, crystals in every hand. In their jeweled light, Trent could see . . . see . . . gray sparkling in Eleanora's hair. Lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. It was as if she had aged ten years in just the few moments he'd been gone.

Trent and Jason looked at each other. “Fizziwig,” Jason mouthed.

Gavan heard them. “No! No, she's not going to . . .” His voice strangled in his throat. He held his cane up, and the moonlight caught the crystal gleaming. “No!”

The beam of light that shot out from the wolfhead cane spilled across the yard, and in the shadows, things fled, scattered, as if they had been gathered watching. He could hear hot breathing, and paws thundering across the street, and feel the disturbance of great bodies leaping through the night. Jason felt something prickle up the back of his neck as two great glowing green eyes winked and disappeared with a low growl.

He whirled about, searching, every hair on his body tingling with the sense of evil and chaos that wolfjackals always brought with them. The night went very still for a moment. He opened his mouth to shout out a challenge, but something moved in the purple shadows. He spun to face it.

And someone stepped out.

Khalil gathered his desert shroud around him, looking at all of them down his hawk-bridged nose, dark eyes narrowed. “Hello again this eve, it seems,” he said, in his deep, purring voice.

“Have you been there all the time?” Gavan gritted his teeth as if he wanted to say more, and had to force himself not to.

“More or less. I wanted to see how you were handling the situation.” He came to the curled up Eleanora and gently put his hand on her head. “Very well, until this.”

“Help her.”

Khalil stared at Gavan. “Only one thing can I do.”

“No!” cried Gavan.

Eleanora protested softly, weakly, as Khalil cupped her head carefully against his knee, as he joined Gavan beside her. “It's all right,” she managed in a barely audible, breathy voice. “I will accept this,” she said.

“No, you won't!” cried Gavan. “No.”

Khalil murmured a sentence of words neither Jason nor any of the others could catch, but Gavan heard them, for he seemed to flinch with each one of them. When the tall Magicker stopped, Eleanora lay asleep on the ground, the blush gone from her cheeks, and the breath in her body barely moving through her chest.

“How long?” Gavan asked, looking at her.

“Till you find the cure or awaken her to let her die.” Khalil lifted her body in his arms as he stood, Eleanora limp in sleep.

“Like Sleeping Beauty.” Ting touched her fingers to the lace drifting over one still hand before drawing back, her face stricken with unhappiness.

“And the curse is our very own Magick,” Gavan said bitterly.

“Perhaps not. Perhaps the curse is our not understanding. Take us away from here, before we are seen, and so that we may find a place for our sleeping Eleanora to rest safely.”

But Rainwater wasn't done, his face tight with emotion. “Was that all you could do?” Gavan demanded of Khalil.

The two Magickers stared at each other in the darkness of the night.

“Yes,” answered Khalil. “For now.” He shifted, and handed her body to Gavan. “She is lucky. The rest of us . . . may not have a chance to sleep rather than face our deaths.” He turned on his heel and disappeared in a crystal flash.

G
AVAN stood uneasily, Eleanora draped in his arms. A faraway howl sounded through the late night air that might have been from a lonely dog down the streets, or from banished wolfjackals. It was difficult to tell. Bailey stepped close to brush a trailing lock of hair from Eleanora's face, and shivered slightly as her fingers touched.

“She's so cold already.”

“It's what's keeping her alive.”

“She looks like Sleeping Beauty,” Bailey said wistfully. Ting caught her hand and held it between both of hers, as if warming her.

“Maybe that's where the story came from.”

Bailey looked at Ting, baffled. “Just think,” Ting said. “Magickers asleep, hidden down the centuries. Maybe one of them was the original Sleeping Beauty.”

“One way or the other,” Jason interrupted, “we have to do something about this one.” He didn't like the sound of another faraway howl wavering on the night air and also fretted at the time. He didn't want to risk being missed at the McIntire household.

Gavan frowned. “I can't hold your hands, so hang on to me however you can. Make sure everyone is connected.”

They gathered around him, and with a faint feeling of not being anywhere, they were suddenly at the edge of the lawn of Aunt Freyah's cottage, and it was daytime there, although late in the day, with the warmth of the sun still flooding across the green grass. The cottage looked as if it were caught in a ray, its whitewashed walls cozy, and its tiled roof sound, with two crooked chimneys and dark blue shutters swung wide open. A climbing rose covered a trellis by the east wall, and its blossoms of red and copper were everywhere. A picket fence, rather ramshackle, bordered the little haven, but Jason noted it was falling down in places and he wondered if that was just part of the charming atmosphere or if it meant Aunt Freyah's Magick had begun to fail.

Gavan shook them all off gently like a big dog getting out of a bath. He tossed his head back to clear his eyes, and took a deep breath before approaching the cottage. They all shadowed him, more than willing to let him take the lead, because even though they all loved Freyah, her temper could be uncertain, rather like anyone's eccentric but favorite aunt. Her sharp blue eyes never missed a thing, and she was apt to speak her mind. Bailey inhaled as her pocket fluttered and Lacey let out a timid squeak for both of them, poking her little face out of the flap and watching curiously. The kangaroo rat's little soft velvet ears were still all crumpled up from her nap in Bailey's pocket as she began to clean one whisker thoroughly.

Trent stirred. “What're we waiting for?”

“The best way to go in,” Gavan muttered.

Jason said dryly, “I think she knows we're here.” He pointed, as the apple-red and somewhat fruit-shaped door began to swing open slowly.

With a sigh, Gavan began to move forward, the others following him. Taking their cue from his attitude, they grew quiet, although visiting Aunt Freyah was generally a boisterous time. That he seemed unsure made them unsure. Lacey kept her head poked out, twittering anxiously and blinking in the sun, and Bailey thumbed her head gently a few times to soothe her. Ting made a quavery sound at the back of her throat, and Trent reached out to catch her hand. Jason kept his eyes on the apple door, and thought of the warmth he'd found inside that cottage a number of times, and wondered what he'd find tonight. Or today, as it seemed to be here.

The difference in time nagged at the back of his mind. What if finding a Gate wasn't a matter of
where
but
when
? What if that was why he'd hadn't been successful . . . and why Fizziwig had aged so much? Jason was so busy mulling over these thoughts that he almost stumbled into Gavan's back as the adult Magicker came to a sudden halt just inside the doorway.

Needless to say, the others piled into Jason as though it were a freeway traffic jam.

“Whiplash,” muttered Trent, as they all halted abruptly and stood shoulder to shoulder, packed into the relatively tiny doorway.

They peered around Gavan to see what the problem was, and discovered that the problem was Aunt Freyah. She stood with her feet spread, and her cane in her hands, held across her body in a defensive stance that would have done a martial arts expert proud.

“You shall not pass,” Trent whispered in Jason's ear. Jason bit his lip on that remark, but Aunt Freyah did look remarkably determined not to let them by.

“Freyah,” said Gavan gently, “there was nothing else to be done.”

“Nothing? Nothing? There is always something else that can be done!”

“We couldn't let Eleanora take any more . . . damage . . .” finished Gavan, as if he hadn't any other words.

“Don't mince words with me,” Freyah snapped. “As far as I'm concerned, this whole matter of students has been bungled from the start. They need to be sequestered and protected, from themselves, each other, and the outside world, until they can master what flows through them. You have failed on all those counts, Gavan Rainwater, and it's my niece who suffers for it.”

“I agree. Yet times are not what they were when you taught me, and Gregory taught. We can't just sweep these sons and daughters away from their families and have anyone understand or agree to it.”

“So you teach them bits and drabbles and expose everyone to a great deal of danger. Do you think that even bad Magick is better than no Magick at all?”

Gavan shifted his weight, and Jason couldn't tell if it was because Eleanora was getting heavy in his arms, or if he was getting a better defense against Freyah's sharp, blue-eyed wrath. “Magick,” Gavan said calmly, “manifests itself regardless of what I think.”

A long moment of silence. Then Freyah straightened with a hmmmpf, lowering her cane a bit. “First sensible thing you've said in a long time.” She thumped her cane against the floor, and leaned on it. “Regardless. You cannot leave her here.”

“What other safe home does she have, Freyah?”

“What makes you think this is a safe home?” Freyah's voice sounded a little weak, and she swayed a bit on the cane as if she had stood too long without its support and now paid for it.

Two things happened. Jason put his hand in his pocket and immediately the lavender crystal, already warm with power, fell into his palm as if seeking attention, and Jason thought of what Gavan had just said about Magick. Behind him, at his elbow, Jason became aware of a sudden wriggle from Bailey. Something furry darted across his shoulder and then down his leg and disappeared, running along the cottage baseboards. Lacey! And the tiny creature was off and running as though it was entered in a race.

“Cookie!” whispered Bailey urgently, but the pack rat didn't waver at all as she dove into the depths of the forbidden cottage and disappeared. She put her hand out, and then dropped it as Gavan spit out a curse.

“You'd turn down your own niece! And for what, to spite me? To prove me wrong?”

“No,” answered Freyah, her lips tight. “To protect her. Understand me well. It is not safe here.”

“Then where? Where?”

“That is not my concern right now.” Freyah's knuckles were icy white as she gripped her cane. “Leave now, there is no welcome here for you!”

Gavan threw his head back with a roar, and disappeared in front of them. They stood, blinking, taking a step back at his sudden departure. Jason brought his hand and crystal out, as if to take them all with him and follow, but Bailey tugged on his elbow. “Lacey!” she hissed, but even as she did, the tiny fur ball rocketed out of the shadows and scrambled up her leg and dove headfirst into her pocket. After a second, she pulled her tufted tail in with a squeak.