The Gate of Bones (10 page)

And it would. If not on this leap, then on the next, or the one after. Bailey knew it in her bones.

Two sprang as one. The first yowled in pain as the Shield threw it back amid a shower of hissing sparks, the power of it dancing about the wolfjackal's fur like bits of fire. The second leaped low, and pierced the tear in the Shield. Bailey's horse squealed. It whirled about and lashed out, hooves striking the wolfjackal solidly. A howl of pain cut abruptly in two, and the limp body sailed through the air, landing outside the Shield's shimmer, and lay still.

The pack leader nosed it, and made a low growling sound as if to promise revenge for the fallen. Bailey curbed her pony to bring it about, to face the enemy again. Magick or not, they wouldn't be easy to pull down! She sat straighter in her saddle.

“Well. Well, well. The little Magicker has teeth. And more.”

She hadn't heard a sound, nor had the wolfjackals, but with low growls, they slunk back, curling back and forth among one another, snarling. Bailey twisted in her saddle and saw Jonnard of the Dark Hand watching her from horseback, a faint smile twisting his pale face. Dark cloth and a darker cape, seemingly wrought of shadow, wrapped him from head to toe, revealing only his face and hands. His horse, an immense steed of the deepest midnight color, stood far taller than her own rugged mountain horse. It arched its neck, and an unseen hand or wind stirred its mane and unfurled its tail like a silken coal-black banner. Leave it to Jonnard to ride only the finest horseflesh he could find in Haven.

“Oh, yes,” he added. “It is true that the female blooms sooner than the male, is it not? And look at you. You make Eleanora look so . . . old.”

“Get out of here.” His words, though she didn't quite understand them, still brought an angry flush to her face. He was taunting her, that she knew. Well, she wasn't helpless. Yet. She'd show him that! Her hand clenched her crystal so tightly she thought its one sharp edge might draw blood.

He quirked a finger at her. “How long do you think that Shield will hold? Or . . . that crystal?” He smiled at her, without humor in his eyes. What did linger in his eyes was something she didn't recognize, but it made her afraid. “Let me take you from this peril, Bailey. Rescue you, if you will.”

“It will hold long enough,” Bailey shot back at him.

Jonnard gestured at the wolfjackal pack, and sent them racing away, after a short snapping disagreement from the leader. They left their dead pack mate behind them. Moments after they were gone from view, a green fog boiled up from the ground about the wolfjackal body, and as it leeched away, thinning, the carcass disappeared with it. The tiny vale seemed deadly quiet, with only the snort of his warhorse and the quieting pant of her sturdy pony.

Jonnard considered her. “I could take you to . . . join . . . Eleanora and FireAnn.”

Bailey lifted her chin. “You could
try.
”

Jon laughed. “You've grown, Bailey. Not as tall as Jason or Trent, but . . . aye, you've grown.” He leaned forward in his saddle and his fine dark horse paced forward proudly. “Not enough to withstand me.”

“Maybe not, but I bet I could put a big dent in that ego of yours.”

“Or die trying, I imagine.” He reined his horse to a prancing stop. “What can I do to convince you to visit with me? Just a while? We haven't talked in many a month, yet I remember mornings at camp. Do you still rise in the morning, Bailey, as bright and sunny as the dawn?”

She felt flustered. He was up to something, but she had no idea what. Jonnard had tricks within tricks. “I wouldn't go anywhere with the likes of you.”

“No? How sad. And here I had hopes you'd put me on your dance card. And you so charmingly unaware of your . . . charms.” He paused suddenly, quirking his head, as though aware of something else. His tone changed abruptly. “Then I shall simply give your regards to the lovely ladies already guesting with me.” He flicked his reins, and his horse threw his head up, about to bolt into movement.

“They'd better be safe!” Bailey called out, even as he put his heels to the dark horse. A cloud of dust and turf was all the answer she got as Jonnard raced from view, back the way the wolfjackals had fled, and she had no time to wonder why, as a thunder of hooves from the other direction told her the lost had finally been found.

Bailey lowered her aching arm in relief, and let the shield go, its purple sheen flooding back into her amethyst, its color returning a bit. Like her, it looked exhausted and nearly bled of every morsel of strength. Lacey climbed out of her pocket, and onto her shoulder, where she wove her tiny claws firmly into the fabric and took up a determined perch.

“Oh . . . now you make a showing,” Bailey said to her fondly, and tilted her head to rub her cheek against the small bit of fluff. Lacey chittered back. She looked up at Gavan and Jason and the others as the small herd of horsemen surrounded her, and she said, “It's about time.”

J
ONNARD STRIPPED off his riding gloves as he strode up the crude stairwell toward the chambers his mother had claimed as her own. He could smell the aroma of her perfume before he even arrived at the doorway and threw the door open, and her scent washed over him even more heavily, a wave of roses and jasmine and something darker, more mysterious than mere flowers. Perhaps nightshade, he thought. Perhaps something even more deadly. He smiled faintly to himself as he stepped inside her apartments. So different from Bailey who used no wiles yet beguiled.

Isabella sat at a writing desk, her dark vermilion gown almost completely enveloping the chair, her graceful neck bent forward as she perused the many volumes stacked upon the desktop. Thin, spidery spectacles rode the bridge of her strong, prominent nose, the delicacy of the one setting off the harshness of the other. The hammered satin of her deep red gown made faint rustling noises as she turned a page and said, without looking at him, “Teasing Gregory's lot, were you?”

“Assessing them.” Jonnard tucked his gloves away in his cape, and took up a perch on a tall stool not too close and not too far from her writing desk. His mother looked at him then, a careful nonexpression on her imperious face. If anyone, he thought, had the strength to rule this motley world, it would be her . . . or himself. Then he revised his estimation. He was not ready for the discipline of ruling . . . yet.

“Assessing,” repeated Isabella. Her voice still held the faint trace of a French accent, that country in which she had hidden and lived for many many decades. It added to her charm. She closed the book she was reading, taking care to place a pewter bookmark in it first. “I was wondering when they would take the bait we've been laying so carefully.” She removed her spectacles carefully, folding the bows, and putting them down on top of a stack of other books. “Have you looked in on our guests to see if anything untoward has occurred?”

“Not yet. I came to you first.”

“I see.” Her legs moved, the satin dress sounding again with its music of the fabric, and he guessed she probably crossed her legs beneath its skirts. “Tell me what transpired.”

“The wards told me we had trespassers. I saddled up to take a closer look. The impulsive one, Bailey, had already separated from the others.” Jonnard made a gesture with one hand. “I sent the pack out to keep her cut off and hold her.”

“And what, if anything, did you learn?”

“That they have not yet learned what we know.” Jonnard smiled with that.

“Good. It's to our advantage, obviously. Anything else?”

“She or her pony killed one of the pack, so I will have to make amends there.” That brought a frown to his face, which evaporated quickly. Things happen, and he was not particularly worried or inconvenienced by the loss of a wolfjackal, but he would have to compensate the pack, a trivial nuisance. “As for the others, they saw what you wanted them to see, and I would say from Bailey's state of mind, that you've accomplished what you wanted.”

“Did I?” Isabella's mouth twitched slightly. She moved her hands, so that they formed a blockade. “Jon, when is a gate not a gate?”

He looked at her quizzically. “I . . . I don't know.”

She looked down at her hands. “When it is a wall.” She then flexed her hands, opening them as if they were the aforementioned gate. “He has us locked in. What I want, is that Gate open and free-swinging, so that we can move back and forth at will. I thought I sensed a trembling in that force the other day, but nothing I could pinpoint. But if we could move as we need, Jonnard, then both worlds would indeed be open to us. I would be warm again, and lodged in comfort. . . .” Her gaze became distant, as if she looked into her past, or perhaps another world. She stirred after a moment. “We can use the one, and rule the other, but not until we have a Gatekeeper.”

He could sense that her energy seemed down. “He has us bottled up and he is the cork.”

Isabella nodded to Jonnard. He made a fist, then turned it, so he could view the strength of the cords across the back of his hand and wrist, the width of his knuckles. “I will break him, Mother. He will either open that Gate for us as you need it, or there will be another Gatekeeper to take his place.”

“Can you do that, do you think?”

He could feel the answer blaze deep in his eyes before he put it into words. “I can, and will.”

“Good.” Isabella stretched out her hand, picked up her spectacles once more, and retrieved her book. “See that you do.”

He hesitated a moment, then said, “Perhaps you should draw a bit from the Leucators. You need your strength.”

Isabella looked at him over her glasses. “I am fine.”

Corrected, he bowed. Dismissed, Jonnard stood, leaving his mother to her study, and went to visit the hostages. Housed in another, quieter wing, with far fewer amenities, he felt a chill brought in with the wind that seemed to know how to wriggle its way through the wooden structure. If they were to stay, he would see plastering invented. Along with indoor plumbing. Jonnard brushed the hair from his forehead before stepping into the guard's hallway, and sketching a gesture at them that he wanted entry.

The two relaxed their vigilance. They were hard men, from a time in the past, when death was both more frequent and less objectionable than it was in current times. He'd instructed them in just enough magic to keep the wards about the prison rooms safe, to open and close them, and nothing more. They had enough Talent for that, little more, nor did they have ambitions for anything more. They knew that would sign their death warrant, for Jonnard kept his Magick close, and they had been chosen for their duty because of their loyalty and their deep suspicion of anything enchanted. Devil's work, they called it, and they did it only to keep the greater Devils . . . those two women . . . locked safely away.

He passed through the first threshold, coming to a locked and barred door to which he held the key in a small leather pouch cinched tightly to his belt. He fetched it out and unlocked the crude brass lock, hearing the tumblers grind as he did so. Then he set aside the lock, moved the bar it secured, and put his shoulder to the door. The weight of the door alone would deter most women from escape. But, as the power of his own mother often reminded him, a Magicker woman was not an ordinary woman.

As he stepped in, an herb-scented mist greeted him. He sneezed and waved the steam away with one hand, raising his eyebrows at the seated woman and the woman standing by her, waving a towel over a basin of steaming water.

“Another cure-all, FireAnn?” Jonnard asked, with more than a touch of mockery in his tone.

“Whatever it takes,” the red-haired woman replied tartly, “to get rid of a pestilence like yerself.”

Jon grinned in spite of his anger, and leaned against the doorjamb. “She takes good care of you, Eleanora, but are you sure she isn't dosing you to death?”

The seated woman lifted her face to him. She had been beautiful, once, but now care lined porcelain skin with deepening wrinkles, and silver streaked her lustrous brunette hair. “Even over this smell, I could catch your stench, Jonnard. Been rolling with the wolfjackals again?” Her voice, still low and pleasant, nevertheless held a stinging tone.

“Wolfjackals make excellent household pets. Perhaps I should send one or two up to bunk with you.” His grin widened as FireAnn shrank back a little, in spite of herself. “How delightful to come and trade barbs with you. Too bad it will end someday. Not today, of course. Your men rode up to the gates, and looked, and left.”

“Left?” Before he could see the expression on Eleanora's face, FireAnn whisked the towel over her charge's head and shoved the basin under her nose, and the only response he could read to his word was that of a muffled sneeze from under the towel. But he could see the surprise on FireAnn's face before she turned away and continued fussing over Eleanora, the redhead's hands swollen and distorted with the painful symptoms of acute arthritis. Their time in Haven had not been kind to them, nor had he intended it to be.

Magick was not a renewable source, despite what they had been taught by Gregory. It did not flow in every being or in every living thing about them. It could not be tapped or restored, unless from another Magicker, and that only with great difficulty. It came from one source, from within themselves and when they burned it out, that was it. It could be banked, like a smoldering fire, or stoked till the blaze reached the skies, but when all the timber was burned, it was nothing more than ashes, and these two women were part of a movement that squandered the precious commodity that gave them superiority. He could not forgive them that.