The Dragon Heir (40 page)

“What did he say when you
called him?”

“He said to follow the
yellow ribbons. He'd make contact.”

It was nearly dark. The light
from the dashboard illuminated Seph's features and glittered off the amulets he
wore around his neck. The air from the open window tumbled his hair into thick
slices of dark that sluiced against his pale skin.

Time was she had thought she'd
die of embarrassment if Seph saw where she came from—the Booker house, all shabby grand and fading; her
mother, Carlene, much the same. Her brother and sister living like young
savages on the mountain—resistant to their big sister's notion of civilization.
Now she wanted to breathe them in like the scent of wildflowers rising off a
sunny field.

Seph felt the intensity of her
gaze and glanced at her questioningly, then looked back at the road—which was no longer there, just open space where the
bridge used to be. Seph stomped on the brake and twisted the wheel. The car
careened sideways, rolling once before it landed heavily on its wheels in
Booker Creek. For an instant, Madison was fighting with the side airbag, and
then it was gone, and her right arm that she'd flung out in front to keep from
going into the dashboard was gashed deep and dripping blood.

She looked over at Seph, who
lay unconscious, draped across the steering wheel, a purple swelling rising
over his right eye. She pressed her fingers against the side of his neck. His
pulse thudded against her skin, and she knew the key to keeping him alive was
getting away from the car.

She squirmed out of her seat
belt, forced open the door with  her  good  arm, and  slid  out into  the 
creek, which fortunately was just knee deep in this spot.

“That's the thing about
wizards,” Warren Barber said from the bank. “They're not used to
having to be clever. All you ever need is one trick.”

And all Madison had was one
trick, the one Nick had taught her at the church. It would have to be enough.
“You idiot,” she said, more to herself than to him. “You
could have killed me. Then you'd never get your hands on the Dragonheart.”

The pale brows drew together.
“I told you to come alone.”

“I needed a ride.”

“So you asked McCauley.”

Madison took a deep breath,
fighting for control. It wouldn't do to play her puny hand too soon. “Who
else do you think would be willing to drive me all the way down here?”

“You think he'd let you
hand the Dragonheart over to me?”

“He doesn't know I have
it. I was going to split away before we met.”

“So where is it?”

“I'll show you once I've
seen Grace and J.R.”

He shaded his eyes as if she
were too bright to look at. “Show me the stone first.”

“I don't have it on my person.”

Barber kind of rocked back on
his heels. She could tell he wasn't used to being said no to. “You'd
better not be lying to me.” He slid down the bank, landing lightly on his
feet, and walked toward the car.

“Leave him alone,”
Madison said sharply. “He's out cold.” When Barber leaned into the
window, she added, “You so much as breathe on him, and the deal's
off.”

Barber straightened and
squinted at her uncertainly. “What's up? You seem different.”

“I just want to get this
over with. Come on. Let's go.”

Barber's Jeep was parked at
the foot of a gravel road that snaked over the shoulder of the mountain above
the Roper place. They hairpinned up the slope on a road better suited for the
plodding gait of oxen hauling overburden and pig iron. Madison knew then where
they must be headed.

Coalton Furnace was a
short-lived enterprise of her great-grandfather's. He'd built the stack of
sandstone lined with firebrick and dug iron ore from the mountain and made
charcoal from the groves of hardwood trees. The furnace produced ingots of iron
that were floated down Booker Creek and eventually to the Scioto and the Ohio
River.

The furnace stack remained
against the shoulder of the mountain, though the company store, church, and
school had long since slid away, victims of erosion and the cutting of trees.
Brice Roper knew about the furnace. He must have suggested it to Barber as a
place to keep his young captives.

They had to hike the last few
hundred yards over rubble and rock, since the wagon track was too treacherous
and unstable for them to proceed farther.

The retaining wall that kept
the mountain at bay had collapsed, so the stack was half buried on three sides.
Saplings sprouted out of the chimney where they'd found a little dirt between
the stones. Someone had affixed a cast iron door to the stack to keep vandals
from getting inside and damaging the historical ruins. The door was still
firmly in place, padlocked and half buried in slag.

Madison swung around to look
at Barber. “Where are they?”

He shrugged and pointed to the
top of the chimney. “I dropped them in from the top.”

“You what?” Madison
scrambled up the unstable slope next to the chimney, rocks sliding away from
beneath her feet, gripping the chimney with one hand to keep from sliding down
herself. At the top, she could look down into the black interior of the stack.
“Grace? John Robert?”

For a moment, nothing, and
then she heard movement down below. She caught a whiff of foul air, what you
might expect when two kids had been penned up together for days.

“M-Madison?” It was
Grace, her voice uncharacteristically reedy and thin.

“Gracie? Is John Robert
with you?”

And then they were both
shouting and crying and calling her name, as if they thought she'd forget about
them and go away if they let up.

“You just hold on, I'm
getting you out of there.”

She looked down at Warren
Barber from her perch high on the slope, thinking she'd like to throw the
mountain down on top of him and wondering if she could. But first she needed
him to do something she hadn't the skill to do.

“You open up that
door,” she said, fury overcoming whatever fears she had. “Do it
now.”

“First the
Dragonheart.”

“I haven't seen those
kids yet. I don't know that they're all right.” She fetched up a
first-sized piece of slag and winged it down at him, striking him in the
shoulder. Stupid but satisfying.

He rubbed his shoulder, his
lips pulling away from his teeth in a snarl. “You're going to pay for
that.”

And she knew that she might,
but she didn't care.

Madison slid down the slope,
landing next to him in a shower of stones. “I want to see for myself that
they're not hurt.” She wished she knew how to focus her mind the way the
wizards did to make him do what she wanted. Instead, the force of her will
slammed against him in an indiscriminate way.

Barber squinted at her,
fisting his hands at his sides, twitching with frustration. It was almost as if
she could tease out the gist of his thoughts. She was proving unexpectedly
stubborn, and right now neither one of them could get at the kids, so he
couldn't use them to get her to do what he wanted. So.

“All right,” he
said, with a smile that froze the blood in her veins. “Whatever you
say.” He thrust his hand forward, palm out, and a concussion of air struck
the cast iron door, bowing it inward. Rocks bounced down the unstable slope and
landed at their feet.

“Will you be
careful?” Madison hissed.

Barber stared at her.
“What's with your eyes?”

She realized she was sparking
again, as Seph put it. Settle, Maddie, she said to herself.

“Hurry up!” she said
aloud.

This time, Barber ran a line
of flame around the outside of the door like a cutting torch. He poked it with
a fistful of air, and the door fell in with a clang.

Again, a rush of stinking air.
Followed by Grace, blinking in the moonlight, her face streaked with soot and
tears. She ducked through the doorway and stepped over the jagged metal
threshold, lifting John Robert after her.

“Now,” Barber said,
reaching for Gracie. “Playtime's over.”

“Run!” Madison
shouted, slamming her shoulder into Barber's midsection. They tumbled
downslope, Madison groping for his Weirstone as Nick had taught her; but then
her head struck a rock and she saw stars for a moment, and when she regained
her wits, Barber was gone, charging across the side of the mountain after Grace
and John Robert. If he got hold of them, he'd have control of her, and he knew
it.

Madison stood and almost fell
again, her head spinning, then staggered after them.

John Robert's feet slid in the
shale and he fell, and Barber had him, dangling him in space, his arms and legs
pinwheeling as he struggled to get free. Grace went to turn back, and Madison,
coming on, yelled, “No, Grace! Run!” and Grace turned to run.

Barber extended his arm, and
Madison knew he wouldn't miss as flame streaked from his outstretched hand.
Madison screamed as it slammed into Grace and kept coming and coming, an
unrelenting river of flame squeezing out of his body.

Understanding and then horror
flooded into Barber's face. “No!” he screamed, dropping John Robert
and trying to rip free of Grace.

J.R. scrambled on all fours
toward Grace, who stood like some kind of avenging goddess, her dark hair
flying in the wind, until Barber wilted and toppled off the mountain into
space.

It was almost as good as
dropping him off a cliff.

It probably never occurred to
Barber that if magical gifts run in families, then so must the ability to suck
magic out of a Weirstone.

Nicodemus Snowbeard died the
day after the siege at Trinity ended, at an age variously estimated to be 600
to 1000 years old. They buried him at Dragon's Ghyll (which had reverted to its
original name), before the cave and under the Dragon's Tooth, where he would be
close to the Lady he had loved and betrayed.

With the end of the D'Orsay
line, Leander Hastings and Linda Downey moved into Dragon's Ghyll Castle. No
one seemed interested in contesting their claim.

Jason never went back to
Britain. They buried him in the churchyard at St. Catherine's, his mother's
amulet in his hands. They raised a stone, and on it was engraved Draca
Heorte, Dragonheart. Mercedes and Leesha planted rosemary, for remembrance,
and vines climbed over his stone, and flowers bloomed summer and winter over
his grave.

Trinity suffered through a
siege of confusion and investigations, invasions by government agents, and talk
of terrorist plots. But it is difficult to get at the truth when a whole range
of possibilities is off the table and those few who know something aren't
talking.

Ellen was a terrible patient
but fully recovered, except she had a new set of scars like a soldier's
tattoos. Jack and Ellen and even Leesha Middleton threw themselves into the
rebuilding of the town, an effort led by Jack's mother, Becka, who knew how to
get things done and would make sure they were done right. Leesha's aunt
Millisandra was a major donor.

When summer finally came,
Madison Moss went home to claim her inheritance.

She could sit on her front
porch and hear Booker Creek and look down the long slopes to the river,
glinting in the slanted sunlight. And in those hills she saw the reflection of
other hills, slashed by ghylls, set with jeweled meres and standing stones.

She could paint if she liked
and sleep in the sun if she liked, something for which dragons are well suited.
But what she liked most was tromping along Booker Creek with Seph McCauley, who
seemed as at home there as anywhere.

People in the county said
Madison Moss was different— somehow
changed by her time up by the lake. She looked you in the eye more, and her
eyes were different, too, almost mesmerizing. And sometimes her skin seemed to
glitter and spark when the sunlight struck it just so. Everyone knew you didn't
mess with Madison Moss. You never could tell what that girl would end up to be.

Brice Roper's murderer was
never identified. The Roper mine eventually played out and closed, and Bryson
Roper, Sr., went off someplace where there were other fortunes to be made.

Seph didn't know the ways of
dragons, but he knew the ways of magic, and so he and Madison sorted some
things out together and left others alone. And if sometimes they drifted on to
other, more interesting topics, they could scarcely be blamed.

They'd lie in the hammock that
swayed over Booker Creek and stare up at the canopy of leaves and dream dreams
that they hoped would come true.

Among the Weir, legends about
the Dragon Heir that appeared in Trinity spread, becoming more and more
elaborate, fanned by certain storytelling factions among the various guilds. No one knew where the Lady had gone or
when she might reappear. Wizards pressed their hands anxiously against their
breasts and tossed and turned in their beds and wondered what it would be like
to be Anaweir. And behaved; temporarily, at least.

Around the world, the magical
guilds celebrated—all the while knowing
that fear of dragons can't last forever.