Dragon Maid (17 page)

“Aye.” His mother winked at him. “Ye should. Now join your mind to mine, or ye’ll miss how to anchor your spell. When time traveling, ’tis essential to maintain an anchor at a known place…”

Heat rose to his face as he listened. She’d been in his thoughts, and he hadn’t even tried to shield them.

“It wouldna have mattered,”
Britta focused her mind voice only for him.
“The gods can blow past any barriers we erect to keep them out.”

“I’ll get better at this.”

She squeezed his hand.
“Of course ye will. Let us learn the secrets of time travel, and then we willna need the Celts.”

A pearlescent tubular structure formed around them. The walls were grayish and warm, as if the conduit were alive. Arianrhod chanted one incantation to call the working and another to seal them into it. Her magic had a pungent scent, like motor oil mixed with salt water.

“We are ready.” She inhaled deeply, once, twice, and turned her attention to Jonathan. “Once ye are within the time portal, ye must take care we are the only living things inside it.”

“No shit.” Lachlan snorted. “Kheladin and I were verra nearly trapped by Rhukon and Connor in a time portal.”

Arianrhod turned her hands palms up. “Sometimes the hardest lessons are the ones we remember best.”

Lachlan screwed up his face as if he’d bitten into something sour; he opened his mouth, but Maggie jabbed him in the ribs. Jonathan choked back a snicker. Likely, Maggie had borne the brunt of her grandmother’s lectures for a long time, so she probably recognized Arianrhod’s
Lecture 101
format. Aside from that, it was always better not to argue with older women. Like Mauvreen for example. He was sorry he hadn’t paid better attention to some of her pontificating, though; it might have stood him in good stead. While he was lost in thought, the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

They fell through the time tunnel. He wasn’t certain quite how, but he still held Britta’s hand. It took a few anxious moments for him to realize that, even though he was moving at breath-stealing speeds, he could control his rate of descent by manipulating something like a chording mechanism infused into the walls of the passageway. Tones seemed to do the trick. He experimented with cadence and pitch until he was confident he wouldn’t crash to an unseen bottom and end up a pile of bones.

Arianrhod floated next to him, a look of grudging admiration on her face. “Now ye have that part to hand, call on seeking magic to follow the sense of evil ye sensed on the beach the dragons were snatched from.”

“How do you know where we were?”

She pursed her lips. “
Tsk
. I thought ye were smarter than that. Your mind is an open book to me. All mortals’ are, but because we share blood…”

Lachlan and Maggie drew near. “I have been trying to do just that,” Lachlan said. “Tracking the feel of Rhukon, Connor, or the Morrigan. So far, I havena felt a thing.”

“Might they have erased all sign of their passage?” Britta asked.

Arianrhod shook her head. “Not possible. And there is no other time portal.”

“Does that mean they didn’t go into the past?” Maggie asked.

The goddess peered closely at the labyrinthine walls with their folds of flesh-like coverings. “We are only to the early sixteen hundreds. I say we descend at least another thousand years afore we try the other way.”

Jonathan thought about it. He wasn’t certain if he had any latitude at all with his mother, but he pressed forward anyway. “I can’t say exactly why I think this, but I believe we should move ahead in time. And not very far. Maybe I’ve watched too many spy movies, but the best place to hide something is as close to
in plain view
as possible.”

“I’m inclined to agree with him.” Lachlan chanted a low note and held it. All of them slowed until they hovered in the tunnel.

“’Twill take more time if we doona find them and must retrace our steps back this way,” Arianrhod argued.

“Aye, but mayhap we willna have to return to the past at all,” Britta said.

The pearl-gray walls shuddered and developed pink overtones. “How long can we stay in this time portal?” Maggie asked.

A corner of Arianrhod’s mouth turned down. “There isna a pat answer. We stay until it expels us. If we are not in a familiar time, we wait until it allows us entrance again.”

“You act as if it’s alive.” Jonathan stared more closely at the shiny walls with their mucous-like coating.

“Och aye.” Arianrhod grinned. “’Tis. Ask me later how it came to be. ’Tis far too long a tale right now. Two of you vote for the future. What think ye?” She eyed Britta.

“I agree with Jonathan. It seems if they’d passed this way moving deeper into the past, I’d sense something of Tarika, yet I havena felt aught.”

“Witch?” Arianrhod glanced at Maggie.

“Barely a witch as you pointed out earlier.” Maggie smiled, but it was mostly teeth without any warmth behind it. “I’ll do what everyone else thinks. I don’t know enough to be useful here.”

“Ye dinna like my comment about you coming late to your magic.”

“Not much.” Maggie shrugged. “But the shoe did fit. Let’s get out of here if we’re leaving. This place gives me the creeps.”

Jonathan privately agreed with Maggie’s assessment but kept his mouth shut. There was a sense of arcane magic in the time portal, with roots so deep it was unsettling. It took longer to move up the tunnel than it had to descend, almost as if something wanted them right where they were. Jonathan stole a glance at Arianrhod when he thought she wasn’t looking. Her forehead was creased with worry, but she smoothed her features as soon as she became aware of his eyes on her.

“How can you tell where we are?” he asked.

“Aye,” Britta cut in. “I would like to know too.”

“See yon node?” Arianrhod pointed as they moved past it. “They are placed at intervals on both sides of the portal. Date ranges are carved into them, but ye need a certain magic to be able to read them. ’Tisn’t as exact as ye may like, which is why we set an anchor in the time we left.”

“We must have passed it,” Jonathan said. “For a long time, I felt it above us, but now it’s below.”

Arianrhod nodded. “Our first stop is coming up. Ye said not verra far into the future. I picked fifty or sixty years.”

“Pay attention.” Lachlan snapped. “Use your magic. I just sensed Kheladin.”

“Aye.” Britta sounded so excited Jonathan’s heart sped up for her. “Tarika came this way.”

He breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t been certain when he’d proposed the near future as a destination, yet his intuition had rarely failed him. If their luck held, they’d rescue the dragons and maybe be back in modern day Scotland in time for supper.

“In your dreams.” Arianrhod shot him a wry glance.

“Damn it! Stay out of my head.”

“Just remember, ye called me. Not the other way round. Get ready. I will instruct the portal to disgorge us.”

“Ready for what?” Maggie asked.

“Ye doona know what we will find, lass. ’Tisn’t the same world ye left. There may be things trying to kill you as soon as ye emerge. Keep your wards up and be vigilant. Otherwise, there may be more of you needing rescue than the dragons.”

“Will we still be in the British Isles?” Jonathan asked.

“Mayhap. Hard to say. The time tunnel has a mind of its own, which is why—”

“—we set an anchor,” Jonathan finished for her and earned himself a sour look.

“Doona be cocky. Ye still doona know much, and what little ye do know can get you killed.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Arianrhod rounded on him. “Doona be calling me that.”

“She’s right.” Britta floated next to him. “Blood ties are strong. Our enemy could use the knowledge against us. They could make something from your blood to torture her or vice versa.”

“Okay. Got it. Sorry.” Jonathan shook his head, feeling like an idiot. “Let’s move this show down the road.”

“Betimes I doona understand him,” Britta complained to Lachlan.

He rolled his eyes. “I have the same trouble with Maggie, but I’m getting used to her odd ways of expressing herself. Och, and ’tis time to exit. Kheladin’s trail just vanished.”

“Focus your power and follow me.” Arianrhod’s voice was stern.

The walls moved inward as if they were trying to crush them. Jonathan felt extreme compression all along his body. Even the air felt thick and sticky when he struggled to draw it into his lungs. As quickly as it had come, the pressure released. He tumbled through the air, managing to tuck his body into a ball just before he pitched onto rocky ground. “Christ!” he mumbled. “It’s like being spit out of a cement mixer.”

“Hush,”
Britta cautioned.

Jonathan fanned magic around himself and looked for the others. Everyone had landed within fifty feet of him. He got slowly to his feet, grateful nothing was broken or sprained, and melted into the shadows of a dead tree while he scanned where they’d come out. Britta jerked her chin to one side where Lachlan, Maggie, and Arianrhod had gathered. He nodded and followed her deeper into the lifeless forest. Branches crackled beneath his boots. Jonathan drew data from his magic. It wasn’t only the trees that were dead. Maybe it was just that his power didn’t stretch far, but he couldn’t sense anything alive—not a bird, not even an insect—as far as he could reach. A shudder oozed down his back. Surely this couldn’t be Earth. Things couldn’t have eroded this much in a mere fifty years.

—
•●•
—

Kheladin strained against shackles binding his wings to a brick tower. His shoulders ached. Rhukon, or mayhap his dragon, Malik, had managed to erect a barrier between him and his magic. It was there but tantalizingly out of reach. Tarika was close. He felt her energy. “Where are you?”

“The other side of this goddess-be-damned tower, fettered to it with iron.”

Was that what had blunted his power? “Is that why I canna reach my magic?”

“Aye.” Tarika’s single word held a bitten-off quality, as if she’d chew through her bonds—if she could reach them.

“Do ye know of any…antidote?” he asked. Tarika was old. If any dragon could get them out of this mess, it would be her.

A grim blast of laughter rocked him. “Aye, and wouldna we both like such a potion. Do ye think I’d still be here, waiting for that poor-excuse-for-a-dragon slime to return, if I had a way to free us? Mother should have crushed his egg afore he was hatched.”

Kheladin felt young, naïve, stupid. “I dinna know we were so sensitive to iron. Lachlan often wears a sword, and he always carries a knife. Neither holds any effect on me.”

“Usually, we are not, but there is an exceptional amount binding us.”

His next question felt even dumber, but he needed to know. “How could they have transported so much metal?”

“The Morrigan must have poured power into Rhukon since she canna work with iron, either. Pah! She’s broken the covenant the Celts had with dragons to not make war on us. Och aye, and she was trying to stay in the background, but I felt her presence.”

The implications sank deep. “That means they canna let us go.”

“’Tis exactly what it means. The battle crow would have to stand for judgment afore her peers. She’d be exiled—likely to Fire Mountain.”

Kheladin felt horrified. “Why would dragons get stuck riding herd on her?”

“Because there is no other place that could contain her. We keep miscreant dragons imprisoned. Why not a Celt?”

He started to say because reprobate dragons had the decency to be ashamed of their foul deeds, or at least cowed because they’d been irresponsible enough to have gotten caught, but stopped himself. Mythical dragons didn’t matter. What did was marshaling their forces to find a way out of their predicament. He jerked a wing again. Pain shot down his shoulder and foreleg.

“Ye willna help our cause if ye injure yourself,” Tarika said.

“Do ye know where we are?”

“Aye. In the future but only a few years. Mayhap fifty or so.”

Another unpleasant truth dawned. “Rhukon and the Morrigan want our mages to find us.”

“Doona forget Connor. Of course they do.” Another bitter laugh. “They know they canna kill us. We’re nothing but bait. The ones they really want are Lachlan and Britta. They canna kill them, but ’twill burn the heart out of them to see their mates tortured and likely killed.”

Kheladin sagged against his chains. His heart ached when he thought about Lachlan—and Maggie. Maybe this new bond hadn’t been such a good idea. When they’d been forced to use one form or the other, at least they were always together. Maggie wasn’t immortal. She’d be who their enemies would target to shatter the prophecy…

“Forgive me, youngling,” Tarika said, breaking into his thoughts. “I was in your mind. I am glad Britta isna trapped here with me, nor her new mate. This will give them opportunity to seek reinforcements and free us.”

“If they’re just walking into a trap, what difference will it make whether we’re all here or arrive separately?” Kheladin heard cynicism in his voice, and bitterness, but couldn’t modulate either. “Besides, none of them knows how to bend the threads of time.”

“Doona give up, Kheladin,” she crooned. “I have been in worse places. We shall prevail. I feel it in my bones.”

“Where are we?” Maggie spoke quietly and drew a step closer to Lachlan.

Britta’s eyes narrowed. “Beyond that, what has happened here? I canna sense a living creature nearby.”

“’Tis because not so much as an insect or a bird lives in these dead trees. This is but one possible future.” Arianrhod jabbed her index finger at them. “If you doona care for it, you must return to your own time and make certain this doesna come to pass.” She glanced at Lachlan and Britta. “The dragons? You can find them faster than me.”

Britta closed her eyes. Jonathan felt her weave fire and air into a seeking spell. He moved to her side, ready to help, and opened his mind to hers. The roots of her dragon magic entwined with her own power. He looked for a place to tap into both and joined her. She turned to him, a smile in her eyes. “Ye feel right in there.”