The Dragon Heir (39 page)

She gazed down at him a
moment, leaned down and kissed him on the top of his head. She turned to Demus. “What is
it you want me to do?”

“Put an end to this
conflict. Sort out the Roses.”

The Lady bristled with fire.
“I never wanted to rule over you. You, of all people, should know that. I
wanted an academy. Collaboration among peers. Meetings of the mind and
communion of the heart. Philosophy and discourse under the trees. And yet you
led a conspiracy against me.”

Demus didn't answer for what
seemed like a long time, and when he spoke, his voice fractured. “I am…so
tired … of trying to make things right. If I could undo it, I would.” He
shifted back to Old Nick. “If you will not mediate this dispute, then take
back your gifts. The Weirstones.”

She gestured toward Seph and
the others. “You've lived a long life, but they are young. Their
Weirstones are a great price for them to pay to cleanse you of guilt.” She
smiled sadly and extended her hand. “Nicodemus. The age of dragons is
past. I'm going back to sleep in the mountain. Come with me and rest.”

“The Roses will
annihilate or enslave the other guilds.” Nick met Madison's eyes, then
looked away. “Then they will murder each other. They'll destroy the
world.”

The Lady shrugged, as if to
say, Who cares? Then she seemed to take pity on Nick. “It's too
late, anyway. I have abdicated in favor of the girl,” Lady Aidan said.

Nick's head came up.
“What?”

“The girl is a blooded
descendant of the Dragonguard. She wears the stone of that lineage. I name her
the heir of the Dragonheart, the giver and taker of power. If you want someone
to rule over you, she can do it.”

Now, wait just a minute,
Madison thought, rattling against confinement like a marble in a jar. Who's
this girl you're talking about?

Nick cleared his throat.
“But … so much power in the hands of one person.”

The Lady Aidan shrugged
carelessly. “She does not want it, either,” she said. “And that
is a hopeful sign. Let's trust her to make good use of it, shall we?”

“But, my Lady…”

The Lady drew herself up.
“Good-bye, Demus. You know where to find me.” Madison felt the touch
of the Lady's mind as she departed—and
was suddenly and terribly alone.

The green landscape faded, and
the stone walls of the church closed in again. The others stirred, as if a
spell were broken.

Madison looked down at
herself. Her vision swam, and she knew she must be hallucinating. Her skin
still glowed, and she seemed to morph subtly from one shape to another—from a girl in jeans and a denim jacket to the Lady
with jeweled skin to something more dragonlike. Her skin glittered when the
light hit it just so, and flame seemed to trail her gestures.

Seph gripped the end of a pew
and pulled himself upright. “Madison?' he said cautiously. ”It's
really you, isn't it? But, you're … shifting.“ He reached for her hands,
and when Snowbeard said, ”Careful!" he ignored it.

It was like gripping a live
wire—power mingling and colliding in
their fingertips. Seph's touch seemed to anchor her, and she held on tight,
gazing hungrily into his face. His green eyes were clear now, no longer muddy
with pain. He leaned down and kissed her, another exchange of potent power, leaving Madison
overwhelmed with guilt and gratitude.

He knows what I did, he
knows what I am, and he doesn't hate me.

“Nick. So it was you.”
Jack's voice was icy cold.

Madison turned. She'd
forgotten anyone else was there.

Jack slid his dagger free and
pointed it at Nick, his blue eyes brilliant against a face pale with anger.
“You were Demus—the wizard who
established the guilds, who … who wrote the Covenant.”

Nick was silent for so long
that Seph thought the old wizard would not answer. When he spoke, he could
scarcely be heard. “Yes. I led the original conspiracy against Lady Aidan.
It was a long time ago, Jack. I was…very ambitious. Very full of myself. I saw
no reason we should answer to a dragon, no matter how wise and virtuous she
was. The price of living so very long is that one sees the error of one's
ways.”

“And the tournaments?
They were your idea, too?” Jack's voice shook.

Nick bowed his head against
this assault. "I did not anticipate the level of destruction that resulted
from putting such devastating power in the hands of flawed human beings. It was
not only the Weir who were dying, but thousands of Anaweir, in battles that
raged all around the globe. We were destroying the earth, as well—poisoning the atmosphere, sullying our waterways,
drenching the ground in blood.

“So. With the help of
some confederates, I wrote the Covenant, convinced representatives of the
guilds to sign, and persuaded the nation of wizards that magical disaster would
strike if we did not adhere to it. I created a legend and enforced it with
magic. Those who violated it paid the price.
No small feat, but then, I was in my
prime.” He looked up at Jack. “I know this is difficult to believe,
but the Game saved thousands of lives.”

“Just not the lives of
warriors,” Jack said bitterly. “We're expendable.”

Snowbeard slumped into the
nearest pew, his eyes still fixed on Madison. “At one time, that seemed …
a reasonable trade-off.”

“A reasonable
trade-off?” Jack's voice rose. “And now Ellen's lying out there with
a mortal wound—”

As if to add punctuation to
this statement, a flaming missile smashed through the stained-glass window
above the altar, sending shards of glass flying toward them. Seph put up a
hand, and the shrapnel dropped to the floor as if it had hit an invisible
barrier. “They're getting close,” he said. “We'd better
go.”

But Madison put her hand on
Nick's shoulder. He flinched violently when she touched him, and she pulled
back her hand. “What changed you?” she asked.

He smiled, his face crinkling
into familiar lines. “Why, my dear, I fell in love. One of your
May-December affairs, my … fifteenth bride. I was totally smitten. I had no
idea she carried warrior blood. When our son was born a warrior, I tried to
conceal him. When the Roses took him for the Game, I—ah—freed him and fled to America. That was in
1802.” He rubbed his hand over his face. "Jack, your
great-great-grandmother Susannah was my many-greats granddaughter.''

Jack stopped pacing and swung
round, looking not a little horrified. “You mean you're my…grandfather?”

“So to speak. With a
great many greats. I very much resembled you as a young man. Though not quite so …
muscular.” Nick shook off the memory. “In recent years, I've tried to
remake the hierarchy of the guilds, but found I'd lost power over it. My power
has waned, while the system has taken on a life of its own. When Jason brought
the Dragonheart, I was hopeful that it might be a link to the lost Lady. A last
chance.”

“What… was it,
exactly?” Seph asked. “The Dragonheart, I mean.”

Nick shrugged. “The
Dragonheart is the Lady's encoded memory. Both her essence and the source of
power given up by the Lady to the Weirguilds.”

Outside, the fighting rolled
toward them, its advance marked by the percussive tread of explosions. Flames
flickered outside, casting bizarre shadows on the walls and floor, and thick
smoke seeped in around the windows.

“Well, none of this is
going to matter to any of us before long,” Seph said. “They're in.
Obviously.”

“So. I guess this is the
end, then,” Fitch said, pressing his fist over his heart. “I have to
say, it's been really …” He swallowed hard. “I wouldn't have missed
it,” he added, his voice faint in the cavernous sanctuary.

Seph reached into his jacket
and pulled out the bottle of flame. He gazed at it a moment, then opened his
hand so that it fell, smashing on the stone floor.

“Listen,” Seph said.
“The rest of you, get Ellen and go down in the crypt and out the tunnel to
the lake. They won't know how many of us there are. They've broken through the
walls, so there may be a way out.”

“And what will you be
doing?” Will asked suspiciously.

“I'll hold them off as
long as I can. You know, to give you a head start with Ellen. Then I'll come meet
you,” Seph said lightly.

“Right,” Will said,
not buying it. “Not a chance. We all go, or nobody goes.”

“This is my fault,”
Madison said. “I am so sorry. I was just…just trying to save Grace and
J.R., and I've ruined everything. You had one little chance, and I wrecked it.
Now Jason's dead and Ellen's hurt, the Dragonheart's gone, and they're coming
for us.”

“Madison,” Seph
began, but she knew better than to look at him.

“Anyway, you all go on.
I'll go out there and see if I can suck the power out of some of them. It's
worth a try.”

“Madison.” This time
it was Nick. “That won't work now. Not in the way you mean. You don't draw
power anymore. But…”

“Don't argue with me; my
mind is made up.” She felt almost peaceful now that she'd made her
decision.

“No,” Seph said.
“You didn't want to be involved in this in the first place. We pulled you
into it, and now…”

“Listen to me!” Nick
Snowbeard's voice boomed out with something of its old force, and everyone
stopped talking. “Madison,” he continued in a softer voice. “You
do indeed have the means to save us all, but you must act quickly and with
intelligence. I can teach you some things, but there's not much time.”

“How? With what?”
She looked around at the others, who seemed as puzzled as she.

“With the
Dragonheart.”

She looked at him as if he'd
lost his mind. “The Dragonheart is gone.”

“You are mistaken.”
Nick stood, and pressed his fingers to the base of her collarbone. “The
Dragonheart is here.”

“What?” Madison
looked totally bewildered.

Nick smiled grimly.
“Madison, like it or not, you are, shall we say, the Dragon Heir.”

When it came down to the final
assault, Jessamine Longbranch was surprised at the lack of resistance at the
wall. After the days and weeks of siege warfare, it seemed the rebels' strength
was far less than had been believed. In fact, the Roses had taken their
greatest losses outside the perimeter—from
inter-House battles and a diabolical series of nonmagical mines and explosive
devices that infested the ground between the walls.

It was a mark of ill breeding
for wizards to use such tactics against their fellow gifted.

In the end, they sliced
through the Weirwall in three places. When the armies poured into the town, the
rebels dissipated like smoke. The Roses sent flame howling up the streets and
alleys of Trinity, but it was like hunting Stardust.

Still, Jess was unsettled by
the fact that Joseph McCauley, Jack Swift, and Ellen Stephenson were
conspicuously absent. Her greatest fear was that somehow they'd found a way to escape with the
Dragonheart and were even now making their way to a rendezvous with Hastings
and Downey.

No sign of Madison Moss,
either. But there could be no doubt that the Dragonheart was still close by,
somewhere near the center of town. Now her objective was to get to it ahead of
Geoffrey Wylie and the Red Rose.

So when she came through the
wall, she did not linger to finish off the last defenders. Leaving the cleanup
to others, she led a score of her most trusted lieutenants toward the source of
the power that welled from the city core.

The town was in ruins. Its
once-picturesque square fumed black smoke into the dawn, surrounded by blasted
storefronts and littered with broken glass. Its gingerbread Victorian homes
were ablaze. The streets were deserted, the Anaweir residents nowhere to be
seen.

Jess saw movement off to her
left and right, a flash of red livery. Not rebels, but some of her purported
allies. She sent flame spiraling out in both directions and heard screams as
they connected. She could do with a little less competition.

She quickened her pace to an
undignified trot. If she could find the Dragonheart, so could anyone else.

She rounded a corner and all but
skidded to a stop, swearing forcefully. Ahead stood a large stone church, like
a great ship swimming in a sea of wizards—Red
Rose, White Rose, and some brave indeterminate fools who had taken the new
ecumenicalism to heart.

She was late. She took a quick
count and shook her head.

Geoffrey Wylie greeted her on
the church steps, a big smile on his ugly face, his shields firmly in place
against a surprise attack from the sanctuary. Or his allies. “Jess! So
glad you
could  come. We've demanded the surrender of the Dragonheart and are awaiting
the rebels' response.”

Jess shook back her hair and
delivered a withering sneer. “Really, Geoffrey. Why are you even
negotiating with them?”

The smile did not falter.
“Once we have the Dragonheart in our hands, we will, of course,
renegotiate. Watch and learn.”

As if called by their
conversation, the boy wizard Joseph McCauley emerged onto a second floor
gallery, dressed all in black, glittering with wards. A few over-enthusiastic
wizards (mostly Red Roses) directed a smattering of fire at him, which he
brushed aside contemptuously. The boy surveyed the assembly as one might an
infestation of fire ants— unpleasant,
but, for the most part, manageable.

He was admittedly handsome,
though he'd already mastered his father's habit of squinting down his long nose
at his betters. Too bad he carried so much bad blood.

I should have kept hold of the
girl, she thought. Perhaps McCauley still could have been turned.

The boy's voice rang out over
the churchyard. “We've discussed your proposal,” he said. “And
we have a counter offer.” He paused, as if to assure that he had
everyone's attention. “We propose a new Covenant of peace and forgiveness.
If you all go back where you came from and swear off violence, coercion, and
attack magic, we will allow you to live.”

For a moment, Wylie couldn't
conjure a response. “Are you out of your mind?” he sputtered.
“What kind of proposal is that?”

“If you refuse,”
McCauley continued, unperturbed, “we'll strip you of magic and leave you
Anaweir.”

A buzz of outrage erupted from
the assembled wizards.

Jess couldn't help but admire
the boy's arrogance. Apparently McCauley had also inherited his father's
inability to recognize when he was beaten.

Wylie was less impressed.
“Why, you self-important young…”

“A generous offer,”
McCauley s voice boomed out again, drowning out the commentary from Wylie and
the rest of the crowd, “given the other crimes committed by some of you.
Including the murders of Jason Haley and Madison Moss.” His voice trembled
a bit at the end, whether from rage or grief, Jess couldn't tell.

Jess was finally goaded into
speech. “The girl's dead?”

“She was killed by
falling debris during the attack.”

Jess sniffed. “Haley got
what he deserved for not delivering what was promised. And if the girl is dead,
it's your own fault, for resisting.”

McCauley went very still.
“Well, she's still dead, isn't she?” he said softly. “And if not
for you, she'd be alive.”

“Enough of this
posturing,” Wylie said. “Give us the Dragonheart.”

McCauley inclined his head,
and came up smiling, an awful smile. “Be careful what you wish for,”
he said. He turned and looked back into the church. The windows kindled,
illuminated by a light so bright Jess had to shade her eyes.

There was movement in the
doorway: a long, sinuous neck uncoiling, wrapping itself around the tower of
the church, a glittering body following, an armored tail clattering against the
stone walls, the suggestion of wings that remained imprinted on Jess's vision
when she closed her eyes. Slate roof tiles clattered down, followed by a
gargoyle downspout, as the beast settled itself into the architecture of the
building, its serpent's head questing out toward the wizards on the ground, its
clawed forelegs gripping the stonework over the door. Wizards toppled, landing
hard on the pavement of the parking lot, driven down by raw and irresistible
power.

Dragon! The word rippled through the crowd.

Jess managed to remain
standing, though just barely. The apparition was so bright, it was difficult to
look at for any length of time. The image wavered, and for a moment coalesced
into a human figure, a woman, tall and terrible, with brilliant blue eyes and a
cloud of glittering hair. She had a rather startled look on her face. Jessamine
frowned, thinking she recognized her from somewhere.

Wylie had fallen. Now he
gathered himself, forcing himself upright. “We've seen this before,”
he gasped, his face a fish-belly white. “At Second Sister. It's just a
shade. A … a glamour. N-nothing to be afraid of.” He sounded totally
unconvinced.

Jessamine was filled with a
cold and consuming dread. This was different from Second Sister. Horribly
different. Raw power pulsed from the beast, pounding against her consciousness
like storm-driven surf.

A dozen wizards surged forward
in a charge across the cobbled square. Flame erupted from the ragged line,
arcing toward the beast coiled around the base of the church steeple. The gouts
of flame connected, but it was the wizards who went down screaming.

Another wave of twenty wizards
washed forward, attacked, and went down.

After a moment's hesitation,
the remaining wizards on the plaza turned and scrambled for the perimeter.
Only, Jess had a bad feeling that she still had a principal role to play.

“Geoffrey Wylie,”
the monster said. It was a female voice, softly cadenced, oddly familiar. Wylie
flinched and covered his head with his arms, as if he might hide himself from
view. The erstwhile Procurer of Warriors for the Red Rose rapidly back-pedaled
until the dragon fixed him with its serpent eyes. Then he stood frozen, as a
mouse caught in a snake's gaze.

The dragon shimmered,
coalesced once again into the Lady, dressed in what looked like a rough-spun
monk's robe, her brilliance making it impossible to make out her features.
Slowly she descended the church steps, fabric whispering over stone, stopping
three steps above the bottom. “Come forward,” she said in a terrible
voice.

Wylie shuffled forward, eyes
downcast.

“You have perverted and
slandered my gift to you,” the Lady said, almost gently. She extended her
hand until she touched Wylie's chest. “And so I take it back.”

Wylie stiffened, eyes widening
until the whites showed all around, gripped the Lady's arm with both hands, and
tried to shove it away. Then he screamed, a high, wailing, desperate note, and
collapsed to the ground, weeping.

“You are now Anaweir.
Your link to the Dragonheart is broken. Live on in the knowledge of what you've
lost.”

Jess had nearly made it to the
shelter of the alley before the Lady called her name.

“Jessamine
Longbranch!”

Jess turned to run, but
something slammed her to the asphalt. “Leave me alone! I've done nothing
wrong.” She tried to scramble away on her hands and knees, but the
Lady's voice froze her.

“Come.”

The link between them drew her
forward. Unable to resist, Jess turned and stumbled back across the plaza to
where the Lady stood.

“You are a murderer, a
slavemaster, a ruiner of lives,” the Lady said. “Jason and—and Maddie are dead, and Ellen's hurt, and believe
me, I've about had it up to here!' The Lady paused, as if to collect
herself. ”You have desecrated the gift of power. And so I take it
back."

The Lady reached deep inside
Jessamine, gripped her Weirstone, and pulled it free, as one might remove a pit
from a cherry. It felt to her as if she'd been disemboweled, though her skin
was unbroken. Jess rolled onto her back, screaming in agony.

“You are Anaweir,”
the Lady said.

Jess looked up at a world that
had been drained of all color. She wrapped her arms around herself, breathing
in great, heaving gasps as if she could somehow fill the void inside. She was a
magical eunuch, exquisitely aware of what she had lost.

Jess felt the touch of the
monster's mind, and another wave of terror rushed over her. Over her rage and
pain, Jessamine heard the Lady say, “Now the rest of you had all better go
on home and change your ways and preach to your friends and pray I don't call
your name.”

Wizards stampeded out of the
churchyard. They didn't stop to help their fallen comrades.

Madison was just so full up
with anxiety that she was afraid if she opened her mouth, the worry would spill
out and make all the possibilities real. So she kept her mouth clamped shut and
looked out the window, the familiar landscape blurring with speed and unshed
tears.

Seph was just about as quiet.
Now and then he asked a question about the road they were on, or how much
farther it was to Booker Mountain. She could feel the tension in him, could see
in the set of his jaw and the way his hands gripped the wheel that he felt
entirely responsible for what she'd become and what she stood to lose.

Everything had changed. She'd
lost the raw craving in her belly that she hadn't recognized until it eased.
Seemed like an elicitor is just an empty vessel, always hungry for power. Raggedy
mad, she'd called it. She couldn't help wondering if it was Seph's gift
that had attracted her to him in the first place.

She and Seph were still
circling each other, wary as stranger dogs. She felt a connection with him that
hadn't existed before. His power was linked, entwined with hers. No one who
hadn't experienced the flow of power from within could understand its
intoxication. But she was like a child with a powerful weapon, the safety off:
all crammed up with power and no idea how to use it, which Seph immediately
pointed out.

“Try to settle,” he
said, resting his hand on her knee, forcing a smile. “You're sparking.
We'll have to walk the rest of the way, if you short out the electrical
system.”

“You should talk.”

“I'm just saying.”

“Then teach me.” She
couldn't help herself. Madison was desperate for knowledge in a way she'd never
been about anything except painting.

Seph removed his hand from her
knee. “I told you. I will. But you can't learn it overnight. I was a
disaster before I was taught. You're a lot more powerful than me, so more can
go wrong.”

Seeing his pale, haggard face,
she felt a rush of guilt. “You should be going after your parents.”

“I will. When this is
done.” He paused, groping for the right words. “At least they're
grown-ups. They can defend themselves.”

Truth be told, she was glad
he'd insisted on coming. She would have welcomed an army at her back. Anything
to bring the kids home safe.

If she was really any kind of
dragon, she would soar over the blunted hills of home and swoop down on Warren
Barber, lift him high in the air, then drop him off the nearest cliff after
she'd wrung from him the whereabouts of Grace and J.R.

But she couldn't control that
metamorphosis, any more than she could control anything else. Her dragon self
was like someone else's memory that surfaced unsummoned and unannounced.

And then she saw it, the
yellow ribbon fluttering from the branches of a twisted pine. “Here! Turn
here!”

Seph made a hard right,
skidding a bit, fighting to keep the car on the pavement. “You have to
give me a little notice.”

“This is Booker Mountain
Road,” Madison said, wondering if Barber meant to meet her on her home
ground. “Where could he be keeping them? There's just my place. And the
Ropers'.” She would not—could
not—entertain the idea that they were already dead.