The Dragon Guard (31 page)

“But . . . my mom . . . but . . .”

“Jiao is a wise woman,” her grandmother told her. “She knows I will need you, and she knows you have your own growing to do. Trust her, trust yourself. You will be back.”

Ting looked down at the ground, her wings of lustrous dark hair hiding her face for a moment, before she put her chin back up. “I will see you soon, then, Grandmother!” She hugged Qi fiercely, cupped her crystal and disappeared before anyone could say another word.

She found the Gate open only a tiny splinter, and it frightened her for a moment. Would she even be able to return? She brushed Jason's thoughts as she tried to Focus.
Go
, he whispered wearily.
I will try and let you back through.
Then he faded a little, as if tired even beyond the help of sleep and dreams, and she Crystaled anyway, for if Jason did not keep his word, who would? She trusted him.

Qi settled back as her granddaughter shimmered out of sight. “Now,” she stated, “I am old and have been through a great deal. I must rest my body. Do not disturb me or the boy, as I have much teaching to do, and he much training.”

“In his sleep?” Rebecca stood gracefully.

“For now, yes. It is best for the two of us. He has much to learn. If his mind knows how to do it, his body will follow.” Qi nodded sagely. “We shall see if the bones of the dragon in this earth aid him as they do me.” She leaned back against the tree trunk, put her small hand on Jason's forehead, and closed her eyes.

 

“Wonder where your ex-wife and daughter went to?”

Jerry Landau slowly slid upright in the seat of his car. The upholstery creaked under him, papers from fast food dinners crackling under his feet as he moved. He rubbed his eyes. Everything felt crusty. Late afternoon sun arced through the dusty windshield, and the street had begun to pick up traffic, heading into the hour when nearly everyone got off work.

He looked at the slender, dark-haired man leaning against the fender of his car. “Who in the hell are you?”

“Maybe someone who wants to help.”

“Yeah? Or maybe not. No one knows where they went, least of all me.” He eyed the apartment building which he'd been waiting outside of since Sunday afternoon. Several days now. “The w-w-w-” He cursed and gave up trying to say witch. He hadn't been able to speak about anything straight since he'd seen it. And it hadn't been on the news or in the papers. It was as if everyone who'd witnessed it had been cursed. No pictures, nothing. As if a hurricane had hit the county and no one knew or admitted anything about it. He rubbed his jaw, which ached with the effort of trying to get the word out.

“Too bad,” the stranger said smoothly. “Here you are, a father, just trying to see your kid get raised properly, despite the ex. And she runs out on you again.”

“Got that right. The school won't even tell me anything. She's got a restraining order against me. All the rules and lawyers in a row on her side.” Jerry leaned on his elbow, against the rolled down car window. He didn't remember having left it down, but it was electric and couldn't have come down on its own. The restraining order had been in effect for a few years, but Landau saw no reason to muddy the waters here. He was the victim, after all.

“So that's why I'm here. Figured we could help each other.”

Jerry looked at the man. Well dressed. Hadn't seen a lot of sun, or hard work either, for that matter, but probably had money. Never hurt to have money on your side. Once he had custody of Bailey, his new wife could raise her however she wanted, religious freak that she was, and he could get the support payments off his back. That would be a miracle in itself. “How's that?” he asked.

The stranger smiled. “Ever notice how we all saw something but none of us can talk about it?”

Jerry nodded.

“I think it's a kind of mass hypnosis. A crowd hysteria kind of thing, you know? Controlling what we saw or thought we saw.”

Jerry wasn't quite sure, but he wouldn't admit he couldn't keep up with the dark-haired man, so he nodded again. The stranger smiled again, slowly. “Now, some of us are harder to hypnotize than others. Stronger wills.”

Now that, Jerry understood. He had a will of iron. Except maybe when it came to wanting a drink now and then, but that was different. That was because he deserved it, for all he went through. It wasn't easy working and providing.

“So what's that mean?”

“That means that one of us is going to be able to break the control. Could be any minute now, could be a few days. Those kids are missing. No one seems to know anything about it, but—” His new friend paused. He rubbed his gloved hands together. “Someone has to know something. And I want to be there when everything cracks open. My kid deserves that.”

“So . . . what do we do?”

“All I ask of you is that when you learn something, anything at all, you share it with me. And in return, I'll use all my resources to see you get your daughter back.”

Jerry's eyes narrowed. “She's not supposed to take Bailey out of state, restraining order or not.”

“There you go. You're in the right, and you know it.”

The stranger stepped away from the car, into a dark shadow cast upon the street.

“But how do I get hold of you—”

“Don't worry. You will.”

Jerry sneezed suddenly, grabbing for a paper napkin on the dashboard, and when he'd finished mop-ping up, the man had gone. Jerry wadded up the napkin and tossed it out the window. About damn time someone had listened to his side. He glared out at the apartment building. There wasn't a place Bailey could hide now.

G
AVAN knew the moment something went wrong. The thread he followed twisted and then turned on him, as though it were some great snake coiling and fighting with him. He growled back at it and yanked, then immediately felt a chill of fear. The void he tried to enter shut on him. Jason's thread snapped and disappeared. Gavan often likened Crystaling to jumping from an airplane. There was that moment of plunging off and then just hanging, before reaching for the parachute cord and deploying it. His cord had just broken away and he had no place to go. He drifted in the cold nothingness of
between
and tried to search out a true path. That which he had sensed before stayed as if it had never existed at all. Instead, he found Eleanora, faint and weak, beckoning him. He concentrated on her then and even as he emerged, he knew he was not at Ravenwyng.

Nor was it truly Eleanora who'd caught him.

Something waited for him, wanted him, hungrily. Too late to stop Crystaling, Gavan went through. He landed at the ready, eyes narrowed, weight balanced, awaiting anything. A faint, damp breeze lifted the cape on his shoulders and let it drop as quickly as if sulking.

He murmured a word to Lantern the darkness. Gavan looked about, not sensing Jason or Bailey or any of the others, but the hungry presence hovered nearby, and Gavan juggled a thought of leaving as quickly as he'd come, but curiosity got the better of him. He'd felt Eleanora calling. He couldn't be wrong about that. Had she been taken? Had she led him here? Or did something dark and sinister mock his love for her? His thread had been tangled or captured, his journey detoured and he wanted to know by what.

The glow from his crystal fell on cave walls and crude drawings jumped into sight. He stepped closer to look at renditions of hunters depicting the hunt of thousands of years ago, paint fading yet still preserved. He put a hand up, and then dropped it, knowing his touch could disintegrate that record of a struggle immemorial. The caves led deeper into stillness and Gavan followed the cave wall cautiously. “Eleanora?” he called lightly, quietly, not expecting an answer, hoping fervently there would be none. She did not belong here. Yet a small sense of her lingered, and it bothered him, drove him deeper into the caverns. Lichen growing here and there seemed to glow with its own phosphorescence as his Lantern light touched it. He trod carefully, making as little noise as he could, yet knew that would not help. Whatever it was he approached knew as well as he did that he sought it even as it sought him.

Gavan brushed the essence of Eleanora again and recoiled from it. It couldn't be her and yet it was, and he feared that she had fallen into true darkness. It was as though nothing had been left of her but an aching need.

So hungry it was! And tired and cold, but most of all thirsting for him. It pulled him nearer and nearer relentlessly and Gavan had no doubt that it would savage him if they met. Yet though he sensed he was moving nearer to it, he could not feel that it was moving toward him. Did it wait in shadowy ambush? Was there a Gateway here he had no knowledge of? Had that been a Gate he felt opening? Yet, if it had been, it should not have led to this.

Gavan slipped through the caves into a labyrinth, a catacomb passage that he could see had been carved both by hands and time. There were traces along the way of what it had once been. A broken crate, old and weathered, rotting away. Old rope. Rutted wheel marks ground into the dirt and stone below his feet. He could smell, faintly, the dampness of a river or perhaps a seacoast. A smuggler's passageway.

The cave drawings brought Lascaux, in the south of France to mind, although he doubted that these drawings had ever been found by those of archaeological academia. He had a pretty good idea whose domain he trespassed in. He had to be underneath an estate, a manor house or perhaps what might even pass for a castle in these days, built over hidden caves and passages and the smuggling trade along the waterways. He could not imagine why the remnant of his Eleanora would be here in the shadow of another Magicker except that it had to be a trap or worse, and he could not turn back now.

He rounded a corner, and lantern light bounced back at him, dazzling him for a moment as the catacombs opened into an immense cavern, studded with oil burning sconces and hung with prisms to reflect and increase the meager light. Heavy chain rattled amidst teakettle loud hissing at his stumbling entry and Gavan halted, and stood, surrounded.

Dead eyes watched him from all around the cavern. The captives tried their chains and shackles, reaching for him and failing, their faces hungry to touch him. He shuddered as he turned about slowly, taking the horrible sight in. Leucators filled the room. Their mouths
sissed
at him in anger and need. They clawed the air trying to reach him, their white-gray bodies clothed in the crudest of rags, gnawed bones scattered at their feet, and everywhere felt icy cold.

“Eleanora!” He raised his cane, letting light fall on her, but it wasn't her. The Leucator reared back in its chains, its brunette hair in greasy disarray about its face, like the youthful Eleanora when he'd first fallen in love with her but horribly, terribly wrong. And yet the Leucator retained the youth she herself had lost. The bitterness of it filled his mouth, and he spat. It raised a shaking hand at him in entreaty, then dropped it, and its eyes looked at him hopelessly. He would have wept but something tugged viciously at his ankle nearly pulling his leg out from under him.

Gavan spun about. Another Leucator crawled back, whimpering, and slyly covered its head with one arm, and he stared in shock. “My God,” he whispered. “Fizziwig.” It couldn't be, but it was. His study partner, his colleague, his best friend from days he could hardly remember anymore looked back at him. His friend from before the battle, before the great jump across time, before he'd become old and cheerful and spritely and then had suddenly died. No, this Fizziwig had the mop of unruly golden curls which had later gone to shocked white, and his unhealthy Leucator skin remained free of wrinkles. The creature grinned back at him mockingly. If only it knew how terrible it was.

Unable to face either it or the doppelganger of Eleanora, Gavan turned again, slowly. He looked into parodies of faces he recognized and felt bile rise at the back of his throat in disgust and fear. Someone had made doubles of them all, as well as doubles of strangers.

This had been Forbidden. Gregory had made it clear in no uncertain terms. Leucators should not be created but if they were, a Magicker should never fall into the delusion that it can be fed from.

Yet, as Gavan swung about, it was clear someone had. Like a vampire with its own herd of cattle hidden in these caves, someone had been feeding. He clenched his teeth. No wonder Eleanora lay near death, her soul being drained through the Leucator and its Maker. And perhaps that had killed Fizziwig as well, or at least haunted him all the days he'd had left after the disaster, for a Leucator was a mirror, and this one had been made
before
the War of the Wizards. Fizziwig had been doomed even before the rest of them. As for Eleanora, did she sense it? She had pushed him this way, and then the Leucator had drawn him the rest of it. She must have! She must lie in her sleep and know that she was being fed upon and drained and helpless. Anger shot through him.

The sound of a chain rattled in his ear. Gavan jerked away, shuddering at the thought of being touched by one. A pebble rolled under the heel of his shoe and he went to one knee. A shadow fell over him.

Gavan twisted his head to look up, and his heart stilled for the barest of moments.

Not all the Leucators were chained.

He pushed himself away, rolling, and came up, back to part of the cavern wall. Three closed in on him. Their howls of hunger filled the air and the chained ones added their own hissing excitement. Gavan put his Shield up and waited, his heartbeat having recovered and now racing in his throat. Cornered and likely outnumbered, he was not sure if he would have time to Crystal elsewhere or not.

Silence filled the cavern. Dead silence. The Leucators all retreated a step, their mouths writhing in un-uttered distress as someone entered the cavern.