The Dragon Guard (5 page)

S
OMETIMES having dinner at the McIntire house was like running an obstacle course while carrying a hundred-pound cat who knows a bath is waiting for it at the end. Not that baths are a bad thing at all, although Jason preferred showers, but trying to get a big cat into one could be. And that's just how he felt as he tried to get through dinner, every word from Joanna or William an obstacle to be taken carefully, without dropping the cat. Or getting his eyes scratched out.

“Did you get your forms filled out?”

High jump!
“Almost,” Jason answered carefully as he speared a few green beans. He munched them and tried to look thoughtful. His stepsister eyed him.

“Electives are as important as core classes,” she offered helpfully. “They opened up my love of film and arts.”

Dodging through cones!
“I've looked through the brochures,” Jason said truthfully. “There's a lot that look interesting, but I haven't that much time. I think I might have one slot.”

Joanna looked fondly at her daughter. “With Alicia's success in filmmaking, we all know how important it is to find something that fulfills you.”

Trip and fall!
“It's not that I don't want to find something, it's that I . . . can't decide.” Jason stabbed at a green bean, a little harder than he intended. The fork went squeaking shrilly across his plate. McIntire looked at him briefly, bushy eyebrow waggling up and down, but he said nothing. Jason shoved the captured green bean in his mouth and chewed vigorously, hoping he wouldn't be asked anything else, at least till he chewed and swallowed.

Alicia watched him, too, her fine blonde hair framing her face, and finally she said, “Must be an awfully tough string bean.”

His face warmed.
Time for the sprint!
“I'm thinking of photography,” he finally managed. He wasn't, but the words just sorta fell out of his mouth. He stared at his plate in slight amazement. Where had that come from?

McIntire cleared his throat. “A nice hobby. Not that many can make a living at it . . .”

“He could be a cameraman. Cinematographer. Or even go into digital effects,” Alicia said, with a great deal of satisfaction on her face and her expression. Her forte in film work was directing, but she was always complaining she couldn't find anyone to set up the shots the way she wanted them. Jason was never sure if it was because Alicia was so particular or young or just hard to understand. He'd never quite understood her.

Joanna frowned slightly, saying, “Digital?” in a vaguely unsure voice.

“Computerized photography, Mom, or close enough. They use it in all kinds of special effects, like movies, commercials, and so on.”

“Oh, my. That sounds as if it could be very promising. Combined with a good business mind and sense, of course.” His stepmother beamed at him then, as she refolded her napkin over her lap.

“I was just looking at it like a hobby. Something fun, you know. To break up the day.” Jason pushed a few more green beans around. His appetite seemed to have fled although he could almost guarantee it would return with a growl when he went back upstairs if he didn't eat now. Even if he did eat, he'd be back in the kitchen around ten for a snack before bedtime. Something to do with having the constitution of a fast growing weed.

“Sounds like you're into something interesting and fun. A boy needs a bit of fun now and then, along with the hard work.” McIntire gave a deep noise of approval.

Jason felt almost trapped. “It's not a done deal,” he said. “I might not have room in the right time period. It might fill early. I might not like it.”

“Worrywart.” Alicia cleared her plate, standing up. “There're other classes, too. Don't be a typical freshman, running around campus with that ‘Bambi caught in the headlights stare' on your face.”

“Alicia!”

She flipped her lanky blonde hair, as she turned to her mother. “Well, Mom, honestly, you ought to see them! It's pathetic.”

“I won't be pathetic,” Jason vowed. “Trust me.” His words came out strongly, not at all affected by the strange quaver that sometimes hit his voice now and then.

Joanna looked at him a long moment, then smiled gently. “I think you'll do quite well.” She stood, with a relieved expression, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

Jason excused himself, cleared his place, and fled to the sanctity of his attic room. Was raising him really that big a problem? He had never even thought of getting into things some of the other guys did, but Magick now . . . that would be bad enough. He couldn't ever tell her. He wondered as he trudged up his attic stairs if he could have told his real mother. Or his father. His father he still had memories of, though they were getting fuzzy. From what he remembered of his dad, someone tall, with strong arms and big hands, and a bigger laugh . . . he thought he could have. He hoped he could have.

Jason dropped into his chair with a sigh, kicking the rungs as he did. One of the all-important papers he needed to fill out drifted off the desk and fell to the carpet in a slow-motion kind of billow. He stared at it, rather than picking it up.

He already felt bummed. So, maybe now was just as good a time as any to drop into the Council and get that chore over with. After all, things couldn't get any worse, could they? He got his crystal out, focused on it, and found the plane where interminable Council meetings seemed to be taking place, and went there.

He was, of course, wrong.

Isabella swept in at about the same time he did, wearing a red satin hat with a veil across her face and strong nose, and some kind of feathery fan fastened to the brim of the hat that matched the fan in her gloved hands. She sat down at the conference table with a muffled noise rather like a haughty snort. “It would be nice if meetings started on time.”

“There is always someone here at meeting,” answered Allenby mildly. The gleaming skin of his bald head flushed pink next to the white fringe of hair that was all that he had left, nearly giving him the appearance of a fluffy halo. Allenby, however, wore a pinstriped business suit and a serious expression that Jason would never associate with any cherubs. His briefcase sat on the table in front of him, a calculator nudging it. His sharp-eyed gaze swept the room. “Well, well, young Jason. Welcome!”

Jason pulled out a chair near the end where Gavan usually sat, and perched on it warily, seeing no sign of Gavan or Eleanora, and knowing Tomaz wouldn't be around. “Good evening, sir,” he said, and his voice broke slightly, so he cleared his throat and went silent. Aunt Freyah, another with white hair, looked up from across the table, lowering the knitting needles which had been flying in her hands, and smiled kindly at him. She had dimples in apple-red cheeks, smooth but older skin, fluffy hair, and sapphire eyes, and a small cottage full of animated tables, pictures, trays, teapots, and the like. Jason loved visiting her. He didn't know who baked the best fudge brownies he'd ever tasted, but she always had an ample supply of them! She dropped her project (scarf was it? Something long and narrow with lots of bright yarn, at any rate), reached down into her huge purse and pulled out a steaming cup of apple cider. “Here, dear,” she said as she slid it across to him. “This should help.”

Actually, from what he'd heard and seen and been told in health class, the only thing that would help would be outlawing or outliving puberty, but he took the cup without argument. The cider smelled great, anyway, apple-and-cinnamon aroma in the steam. He sipped at it cautiously.

Khalil sat kitty-cornered from him, his steepled hands masking his face. As usual, he wore sweeping desert robes, making him look like a Bedouin sheikh. “Small group tonight,” he observed. “Are we expecting Rainwater and Eleanora?”

“We'll wait a bit longer,” Aunt Freyah said, her knitting needles once again tip-tapping in a blur of movement. “My niece has been feeling a bit under the weather, so we'll give them the benefit of the doubt.” Her bright blue eyes looked about the table sharply, as if inviting disagreement, but she got none. Allenby turned his attention to some papers inside his briefcase, Isabella fished out a small, neat book of French poetry from her purse, and Khalil merely closed his eyes as if he were meditating. Jason sat back in his chair, bored, and drank his cider, feeling the sweet tart warmth trickle down his throat, bringing a nice satisfaction with it. He wondered what, if anything, really ever got decided at a Council meeting.

Finally Allenby looked up from his stack of paperwork. “I don't believe they're coming.”

“Then we might as well get started.” Isabella snapped her book shut with a retort that sounded like a gunshot. Khalil's eyes flew open and then he frowned at her. “Some of us have places to be and things to do.”

Jason didn't know much about Isabella except for her European background and residence and that she was a businesswoman, he'd heard, of some wealth. She'd taken advantage of her knowledge of the centuries to become rich, which was in a way using her Magick and in a way not. Most of the Elders had an unspoken creed not to use Magick publicly or for ill-gotten gain. There were those who vowed it couldn't be done anyway. It seemed to backfire, and horribly, rather like the Curse of Arkady. A shiver whispered down the back of Jason's neck at the thought of that one!

Arkady had been a Magicker back in the times when Gregory the Gray and Antoine Brennard were elder and student, and all the Magickers were truly young, sometime around the time of Elizabeth I, although Jason wasn't really sure of the year. Renaissance, that much he knew. The Magickers didn't like to talk about the terrible war between Gregory and Brennard which had killed many and sent the survivors hurtling through time and space. The war was why Gavan and the others today refused to face off with the Dark Hand, in hopes of avoiding another tragedy. Arkady, they did talk about, though. Arkady had been a rather talented but hapless Magicker who couldn't control what he did. Everything had backfired or exploded in his face, but mostly because he hadn't the confidence or discipline to learn what he was doing.

They'd all been warned about the terrible Curse, one that only practice, practice, practice, and confidence seemed to be able to avert!

“First thing, then. Eleanora is not here because she has been ailing a bit, and she is feeling quite drained working with young Jennifer Logan. Jennifer's shroud of corruption not only leeches the Magick out of her, but out of anyone near her. As I understand what Eleanora and Gavan have told me, it would be easier to purge the nastiness all at once, but that might damage Jennifer for life. So, at the moment, the going is slow and difficult for everyone.”

There was a murmur of sympathy about the table for Eleanora. Jason joined in, but he worried about Jennifer, too. Poor Jenny. He put his empty cider glass down on the gleaming wood table.

At the sound of its thump on the wood, all heads turned to him quickly, eager for a distraction, and it was like a trap snapping shut on its victim! Jason sat back with a momentary feeling of worry over having attracted their attention. It didn't help that Allenby immediately said, “How about a report on Gating, Jason? How goes your training, and how close are you to stabilizing the Iron Gate?”

Aunt Freyah jabbed a pointy knitting needle skyward. “That's it, put the lad on the spit, first thing, and pump up the coals.” She let out an unladylike snort and threw herself back in her chair, staring a challenge at Allenby with her bright blue eyes.

Khalil composed his robes a moment, then said, “Has to be done, Freyah. There are things we have to know.”

Another snort, one that
pffuffed
her frothy bangs off her forehead. “Much more is kept secret than shared around here.” Freyah wrapped up her knitting briskly and stowed it away in her carpetbag. “All right, then, Jason. Looks like you're going to roast till you talk. Anything you can tell us?”

Her kinder words barely took the edge off the question as everyone kept watching him. He shrugged. “I'm doing my best, but . . . it's not so much my finding a Gate as the Gate finding me . . . I think.” His face warmed with embarrassment over his uncertainty. He had no one to train him, the only Magicker in this time who'd had the ability, Fizziwig, had died mysteriously before he could help Jason at all.

“Is that how it works, then?”

Jason looked to Khalil. “It seems to. I mean, that's what happened with the Iron Gate at Camp Ravenwyng and then the Water Gate when the Dark Hand tried to trap us.”

Isabella shifted. “We cannot wait for happenstance.” She touched her face briefly where lines had begun to etch the corners of her eyes.

“I'm doing everything I can. I practice focusing, I travel whenever I can . . . I try to pay attention to everything I see and touch. That's all I can do,” Jason finished up, helplessly.

Allenby closed his briefcase with a snap. “And that's all we can ask of you, given the circumstances.” He glanced at Isabella. “Surely all that money can buy you a decent eye cream?”

“It's not that,” she snapped back, “and you know it.”

“I know that we're all going to grow old, sooner or later. It's the way of things.”

Isabella opened her mouth to shoot off another retort but Jason quickly said, “That's not the reason I'm here, though.”

Again, all eyes turned to him, and he felt their burn, as he tried not to squirm in the hard wooden conference chair and took a deep breath. “I was playing on the soccer field when Jonnard showed up. He was there, but he wasn't. No one else could see him, not even Ting and Bailey who were watching in the bleachers.”