The Dragon Guard (9 page)

Ting gasped and freed her crystal so that she could cup it closer, peering into it. She looked up into her grandmother's etched face as if seeing her through water, which she probably was. Her grandmother used a teacup and leaves as a focus rather than a crystal, for that was how she'd been taught many, many years ago. Eleanora and FireAnn referred to Ting's grandmother as one of the Hidden Ones, people of magickal Talent who'd never been really found or taught, and yet used their own abilities in mystical ways. Her grandmother's father had been a Chinese magician and acrobat, and a revered performer who had never given out his many secrets. Ting sometimes wished that she could have seen him, as well, but the age difference was just too great. He had passed away long before she had been born. A very few faded and yellowing black-and-white photos were all her grandmother had left, and in those, he was already aged, and had stopped performing.

“Grandmother!” Ting said in soft delight. “How are you feeling?”

“I am feeling well enough. Do you have a moment to come speak with me?”

“Let me tell Mama.” Ting got up, slipping from her chair, and walked to the other room. Her mother held up one finger, asking for a moment of silence while she finished talking, then lowered the phone. “I am going to talk to Grandmother.”

Jiao Chuu smiled. “Give her a hug and kiss for me, but don't stay too long.”

“I won't. I've homework.” Ting cupped her crystal, centered herself for a moment, then stepped into the sharp coldness of the jewel and through its door into her grandmother's kitchen. The room smelled of jasmine tea and its well-steeped tea leaves, and she hugged her grandmother tightly before she even had a chance to lower her porcelain cup in welcome. It had only been a few months since she'd gone home, and yet the body she hugged seemed smaller, more frail than she remembered. Even if she hadn't been told, Ting thought, she'd have known the cancer was back. She kissed her grandmother's cheek.

“You have grown!” her grandmother said proudly as she stood back and looked at her.

“A little.”

“That is the way it should be.” Her grandmother pulled out a wooden chair for Ting, and then they both sat. New porcelain cups were turned over and filled with steaming hot tea and sugar passed around. Her grandmother never used any, as she had grown up that way, and Ting used only a little. For a few moments, they exchanged pleasantries, as was the custom although Ting fought to keep from squirming in her chair. What had been so important she had to visit like this?

At last, her grandmother set her teacup down. “You are patient with an old woman.”

Ting felt her face grow warm. Well, she was
trying
. “I'm afraid I haven't much time today, Grandmother.

Tests and papers, and homework.”

“Then I shall get to the point. First, I wanted to tell you, alone, that I am sorry you must come back.” Her grandmother's face wrinkled even deeper.

“Don't be! I don't mind, and we want to help.”

“You are a far greater help than you understand.

Just knowing that what runs in our blood is not lost . . .” Her grandmother's voice trailed off. Instead, she reached over and patted Ting's wrist. After a moment, she took a deep breath. “Secondly, something rare and strange has happened. The dragon that guards my house has spoken.”

Ting almost dropped the delicate porcelain cup balanced in her hands. “It . . . what?” She resisted the impulse to run outside and look up at it.

“It has spoken.”

“What did it say?”

“Not in words, Granddaughter. It hissed at me.” She did put her cup down then, even though her hands were cold and the cup warm. “Are you sure it was not the wind, or something? Maybe a possum or raccoon up on the roof?”

Her grandmother shook her head firmly. “It is made, as you know, to whistle in the wind, or clatter if a great breeze or earthquake shock rattles it. But no. I was in the garden, and looked up at it, and it turned its metal head and hissed down at me. A long, warning hiss.”

“Warning you of what?”

Her grandmother shrugged. “I do not know. But I thought of you and your friends instantly and decided you should know what little I do.”

Ting swung her legs around. “If I went out to look at it, do you think it would . . . ?”

“Do it again? I doubt it.” Her grandmother smiled then. “But shall we look?”

They went out the door to the kitchen garden courtyard. The dragon was made so that it could be seen easily from that side, as well as on the roof ridge immediately over the entrance to the house. She looked up at it. Sinuous like the design of her bracelet, it was similar to a weather vane, but far more clever and sculpted than that. She had never really seen anything like it before coming here. They stood in silence for a few moments, until her grandmother gave a weary sigh. Ting put her arm about her shoulders, to steady her, as night crept close to the garden and she could feel the dampness of a Bay fog in the air. “When I come back,” she said, “perhaps I'll hear it then.”

They turned away, toward the golden doorway of the well lit kitchen. Metal creaked overhead. Ting looked up to see the chrysanthemum-holding dragon peering down at her. It let out a long hiss. Then went quiet. She blinked in amazement.

Her grandmother nodded. “Tell them,” she said. “Warn them.”

Ting's heart beat rapidly. Her younger ears had caught what her grandmother had not.

The metal dragon had not just hissed. It had said, “Jassssssssssssson.”

S
OMETIMES Thursdays could be so bad, Trent thought, you just wanted them to sink into oblivion forever so you could get on into Friday, which always seemed to be better no matter
what
was happening. That, of course, was just one of his mistakes.

Along with reading Ting's e-mail about a mysterious warning from the roof dragon at her grandmother's to confound himself with, his father came home from work with a box full of personal things from his desk and an overloaded briefcase. He sat down, cradling the box on his knee, and looked at Trent sadly. “Business,” he said, “is not going well.”

“They fired you?”

“No,” his father answered thoughtfully. “Not yet.” He shuffled his carton over onto the free part of the couch. “We'll find out tomorrow if the company has found a buyer willing to take on the debt, or if we're all laid off. Laid off,” his father repeated, “is not the same as being fired.”

“If you're out of work . . .” Trent muttered, and stopped at the expression on his father's tired face.

“Fired means I did something wrong. Laid off means . . . the company is struggling and there's no work. It means I can get a job with someone else, hopefully quickly.”

“A lot of people are getting laid off,” Trent pointed out. “It's been on the news for months.”

“I know.” His father let his briefcase hit the floor. “That's why I started packing tonight. These are things I don't need at the office anyway, and if it comes to the worst, I'm ready to go. I'll know tomorrow.”

“And what then?”

“Then, I bring home my good briefcase, and my last check, and I start sending out résumés. I understand it's done over the Internet now, a lot of the time.”

And so on Friday night, Trent sat in his room, doing his homework, and listening for the front door. He didn't know when he finally heard his dad's key in the door if being late was good, bad, or worse. Shoving his desk chair away, he rolled across his bedroom floor, neck craned. His dad walked in with his regular briefcase, and Trent couldn't tell just from looking at him. He stood and went to the threshold of his bedroom. “Well?”

His father looked at him. “Well. I got three months' severance pay, which is really quite good, under the circumstances. But they're closed, and it's done.” He just stood there for a moment, a rather dazed expression on his face. He added in a low voice, “I worked there for a long time. I met your mother there. Now they're both gone.”

Trent got up and went to him, putting his arms around his dad. “It happens,” he said, trying not to feel as scared as his father looked. “You needed a job change anyway! Everyone does, sometimes.”

His father gripped his shoulder. “Yes, sometimes they do. I have the retirement funds, of course, although that's for . . . well, retirement. And you've your college money put away.”

“That,” said Trent, “is yours if you need it.”

His father shook his head. “We should be just fine. I've got a lot of skills, and they gave me some excellent recommendations.”

Trent managed a lopsided grin. “You're not the guy who put them out of business, then?”

“Let's hope not.” His father looked around the apartment and into the tiny kitchen. “I think I can manage pizza tonight. It's too late to cook, and I think I might be famished.”

“And I think I can manage to find a coupon or two. We need to save money!” Trent dashed off to the corner of the room where newspapers and old mail stacked up. He wasn't sure if he had any appetite for pizza, but his dad needed cheering up, and they could always bring home the leftovers. Pizza for breakfast was always nearly as good as the night before. As he rustled through, looking for the coupons he'd seen days ago, he added, “And after dinner, I'll let you get on-line to look that résumé over.”

“I appreciate that.”

Trent found what he was looking for, and held the flyer up triumphantly. “And I appreciate
pizza
.”

His dad smiled briefly, and then they were headed out the door. Sometimes Fridays were even worse than Thursdays.

 

Friday night, Jason got word that the soccer championship being held the following Sunday afternoon might not have his coach on the sidelines. He'd broken his arm in a car accident and might or might not be able to be up and about, even with a sling on. The assistant coach promised to fill in and told everyone not to worry, but against a top notch team like they were playing, every little bump felt like a major mountain. Jason knew it was his team that had to face the other team, but not having the coach there would make a difference, no doubt about it. It was rather like Magicking, with Tomaz gone and no one training him right now and his not being able to tell anyone or having a backup. There were times when there was no substitute for the real thing.

He sat back on his bed, book across his knees, and looked at his porthole window, which framed the moon just perfectly and would do so for about thirty minutes. Then, as the world turned, the moon's position would change and he would eventually lose sight of it from his window. It was almost like the glimpses he had caught of Tomaz in his crystal once or twice this week. Neither time had the Magicker seemed to be aware of him, and both times, he had been enveloped in a stormy looking mist, his hands up, and his mouth opened as if chanting, with a pack of wolfjackals sulking at his booted feet, as if his chant and strength alone held them at bay.

Did he really see what was happening? Jason didn't know. Was he supposed to go and help? Was that the meaning of Ting's warning?

He rubbed his forehead. He hated not doing anything, but he knew he couldn't; none of them could afford it if he did something wrong. Too much depended on it. He tried not to imagine ruining the lives of people who had somehow lived across centuries only to be done in by him in one afternoon!

He got out his lavender crystal and rolled it lightly between his palms. The feeling of it was only slightly different from his first crystal, a banded quartz, and the only way he could describe it was the way he'd once told Trent: it was like holding an orange and a lemon with your eyes closed. You could tell they were different, but they were also very much the same. The crystal warmed to his touch and he looked into it, hoping for a glimpse of Tomaz and a knowledge of what he should do to help. Not going to Gavan grated on him every day, and he wasn't sure he could respect Tomaz's wishes much longer.

Finding no hint of the Magicker, Jason opened his mind to even harder things . . . Gates. After all, Tomaz had told him that finding the third Gate was the most important thing he could do, and everything might anchor on that. If only he could. Jason looked deep into the gemstone, sinking into its translucent beauty, and his own thoughts. For long moments he felt himself drift, barely aware that his body lay in his bed, propped up by doubled-over pillows, with his stockinged feet tucked into covers folded at the bottom. The distance between here and now and wherever his thoughts were taking him seemed incredibly far. . . .

Something latched onto him. He had just a moment to realize he was no longer moving aimlessly, but he was being tugged, pulled in a certain direction through nothingness. He experienced a moment of worry, as the tug became a yank and he felt himself catapulting through space and then . . . THUD!

He hit something large and transparent and hard, and slid down it as though it were ice. When he hit bottom, he caught his breath, and stared at the other side of the icy window.

A man lay as if in a tomb. Jason felt his whole body freeze, but it was not the man of his many nightmares, he already knew who that man was . . . Antoine Brennard . . . no, this was someone else, and he knew this man, too. And he did not lie atop a stone tomb as Brennard had before finally awakening, but he lay on a lounge, covered with a warm brown blanket, with a small pillow for his head, and a blanket tucked over his body except for his out-thrown arms, as if he'd been caught falling backward for all time, and then laid down for that moment when he would ultimately hit bottom.