The Gate of Bones (12 page)

“None of us can, but it may come down to it. I don't think Jonnard is going to give up Eleanora for anything less.”

“No. I guess not.” She let out a soft sigh.

“Out of the frying pan, into the fire, huh?” Jason kidded her softly.

Bailey nibbled on the corner of her mouth before nodding slowly. “Sometimes it feels like it.” She became very quiet as Gavan broke off talking, and moved to rejoin them. He linked them all together with his large hands, and murmured in a voice only Jason could hear, “Work with me,” as he brought up his wolfhead cane, and the crystal in its jaws glowed. Jason added his Talent to Gavan's, and the crystal flared like a newly minted silver coin. A stomach-jolting swoop, and then they were home.

Bailey shook herself. Lacey let out a rattle of scolding clutters before diving nose first into her pocket and refusing to come back out, apparently upset by the teleportation.

Trent's stomach growled, as they all dusted themselves off. “Dinner,” he said emphatically.

“Washing first, we all smell like horses.” Gavan cuffed his charge lightly and sent them off to the primitive wash stands built by the waterfall off the Iron Mountain. The cold water may have made them smell better, but they all stood shivering as they regrouped to make their way to the kitchens.

Warmth and light from the rooms flooded over them, however, along with the rich aroma of stew and freshly baked bread. Ting and Bailey's mother Rebecca busily set steaming bowls on the table while Ting's grandmother sat with her snapping dark eyes, and watched all of them. She had brewed tea and the kettle sat in front of her, with its row of cups; she would serve them once they all sat.

So dinner went, as it had been going for months, familiar and yet different, and Trent ate as if famished, and made a sandwich out of thick bread slices with stew ladled between them, to take back to his room for “later on.” No one said anything, but Jason grinned. The only one in the group who could outeat Trent was working off his bearlike aggressions elsewhere that night.

And the difference between the two was that one could see Stefan bulking up over the months, but Trent stayed wiry thin as always. After dinner, the boys cleaned while Ting and Bailey dashed upstairs “to talk” and Rebecca and Madame Qi went out to the lecture hall to talk and work on darning clothes at their leisure.

Gavan disappeared to find Tomaz; the other hadn't shown up for dinner, but they could all feel his presence about, and that left Trent and Jason elbow-to-elbow at the great tubs for cleaning up.

“Did you mean what you said?”

Trent looked at him. He thought for a moment, then twitched one shoulder. “Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I mean, how do you handle the pressure of being a Gatekeeper? Hard as you study, you can't turn that on and off, right?”

“True. But that's not the point. It's that you thought Gavan wouldn't listen to you. That he wouldn't think you told the truth.”

“He wouldn't have. And maybe he's right . . .” Trent paused, scrubbing bag in hand, elbow-deep in the foaming tub. “Maybe it was an illusionary trap, laid by the Dark Hand. But I don't think so. What we saw was there, and it's still there, only he can't sense it. And you can't. And no one else could but me. And I've got no Talent, virtually, so, how can I be right?”

“But if you are, you are,” answered Jason flatly.

“It's that black and white? Look, Jason. Nothing in life is that black and white. Nothing.”

“Some things are. I trust you.”

“But if I were wrong a lot, you wouldn't. I might have been wrong about the old fort, but I don't think so.” Trent rubbed at his nose, leaving a soap bubble on it. It left a glistening spot as it popped.

“We should go back, then.”

“After what happened to Bailey, I don't think so. Not just the two of us.”

Jason finished up his stack of crockery and slid it carefully into the rinsing tub. “You need to talk to Gavan.”

“You think so?”

He nodded. “Don't you think so?”

“I suppose you're right.” Trent slowly finished his own stack of crockery, before adding, “I think I'll talk to Madame Qi first.”

Jason smiled a little. Ting's grandmother had a kind of no-nonsense philosophy that was welcome to them all, which she sometimes thumped into place with her bamboo cane, and sometimes slipped into their heads with just a wink of her dark eyes. Either way, Qi was old and very, very learned, and her strain of Magick went deep in her blood, although she was untrained by Magicker standards. “Good idea.” If anyone could get past Trent's wariness, she could.

They raced each other then, through the last of the kitchen cleanup before tumbling outside to check the perimeter wards and stargaze and see if they could find Tomaz before bedtime. They were successful in all.

 

Ting pulled Bailey into their room quickly and shut the door before hugging her so hard that Lacey had no choice but to climb out of her pocket with a squeak and clamber onto Bailey's shoulder as if in fear of being crushed.

“I thought you weren't coming back!” Ting paused as the words tumbled out of her and she stood breathless for a moment. “I felt your touch, a tug and then . . . oh, Bailey. All my crystals went dark!”

“What?” Bailey blinked at her in astonishment.

“Every one of them. I couldn't find you. I knew you were trying to get back somehow. I went frantic. And Grandmother couldn't help and I was afraid to let anyone else know. My crystals!” Ting flung her slender hands in the air, where they made movements like lost, startled birds.

“But . . . but . . .”

“No, wait, that's not all. I heard the wolfjackals howling.” Ting sat down then, gazing up at Bailey, her eyes intent. “I knew they weren't around here. I was so frightened for you. I knew you were trapped, Bailey! What happened? Tell me everything!”

Bailey sat down. She pried Lacey off her shoulder, and put her down where the tiny pack rat scampered across the wooden flooring, looking for interesting and sparkling bits of treasure. Distracted, both girls watched as the clever creature found something and skittered into the corner, climbed into her cage, and stowed it away.

“So that's where my barrette went,” muttered Ting. “Such a troublemaker.”

“I'll fetch it out later,” Bailey promised. She sat back, clasping her arms about her knees as she folded her legs under her on the cot. “We Crystaled to Avenha. The whole city is in retreat, up in the hills and caves behind it. I guess years ago, they wintered there during really hard times or attack or something. Renart got us horses and we rode out to an old fortress where they said the raiders camped.”

“Was it the Dark Hand?”

“Oh, yes. As if there were any doubt.” Bailey let out a tiny snort. “A long ride, though. I think my legs are going to fall off by tomorrow morning. Something odd about the fort, but I'll tell you that later. Gavan looked it over, and then turned around. We thought we were going to, well . . . I dunno . . . attack or something, but he didn't.”

“He can't.”

“Still. We rode all the way out there.”

“Maybe he was hoping to get a trace of Eleanora.”

“Maybe. He should have. We were close enough, but I don't know.” Bailey frowned, trying to remember. “If he did, he didn't show a sign of it. We turned back then, noting to Renart that we couldn't do anything now, but that we
would.
I think he understood that. And I got lost heading back.”

“Lost! Oh, no.”

Bailey nodded at Ting. “That's when the wolfjackals hit. They galloped over the low hills and surrounded me. It's like I couldn't decide what to do first, and I tried to do it all at once, Shield, reach you, Crystal back, Beacon Gavan and Jason—and only the shield held. Everything else I couldn't do. I know I get flustered sometimes, but . . . it was scary, Ting. Really, really scary.”

“I know,” said Ting quietly. She reached her hand out and grasped Bailey's wrist. “I was so frightened.”

“They circled closer and closer. My little horse kicked one of 'em to pieces. I didn't know how much longer I could hold out, and then he showed up.”

“Gavan? Jason?”

Bailey shook her head, ponytail bobbing vigorously. “Jonnard!”

“No!” Ting's eyes widened. “That snake!”

“He laughed at me. I don't know how I managed, I kept the Shield up and finally, someone felt the energy, and I could hear the hoofbeats pounding over the hill. He could, too, so he talked some trash and then rode off as fast as he could.”

“Wow.”

“Then Gavan got mad. So we went back to the fort. I don't know what he was going to do, but he was going to do something . . . and the fort wasn't there! Not a sign of it. Just old ruins. Before, it had buildings and wagons and we could see the raiders training, working. Now, nothing. As though it had all been a bad dream.”

“That couldn't be.”

“No, it couldn't.” Bailey leaned back and stretched her tired legs gingerly. “Gavan said it had been a trap, some kind of illusion, he thought. I don't know. If that's true, then they're strong. Very, very strong.” She shook herself, as if shaking off an unspoken thought. “Jason and Trent were muttering at each other the whole time, so something is going on. I just don't know what.”

“Bailey,” said Ting softly. “My crystals finally started coming back, but it took hours. And I'm thinking . . . I'm thinking that the power here is very strange. I think we get depleted easier and recover a lot slower. Maybe don't recover at all, if we're not careful.”

“You think so?”

“I think when you reached out for me, you drew on me. I know I felt this surge, and then everything went dark. I don't think you meant to, but if you hadn't, you might not have kept that Shield up. And it could explain a lot of things.”

“Such as?”

Ting flipped her long dark hair over her shoulders. “Why the building is taking so long. They're pacing themselves. They can feel the power drain, too, but they're not telling us that. You know they don't tell us a lot of stuff.”

“True. But this is serious, then!”

“Very serious. The internal structure of this whole academy is laced with Magick, for one reason or another. To protect against fire and rot, and to ward against other Magicks. It has to be difficult to do, and they're going slowly because they have no choice.”

“Then Eleanora's time could be . . . running out.”

Ting nodded, and both girls fell silent.

After a long moment, Bailey said, “Well. This makes it a whole new ball game, doesn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“If we're weaker, they're weaker. And if they're not, then we need to find out why. You and I, my girl, have some experiments to run. When we have some more answers, then we can tell Gavan and Tomaz what we've discovered. I think you're right. We don't have much time!”

J
ASON WOKE WITH THE certainty that something was wrong. He rolled over in his cot, smothering a groan from sore muscles that had been used to ride a barrel-bellied short horse all day, and put his face back in his pillow. In a way, he welcomed the soreness. He used to ache all over after a bruising soccer game, and it was a way of reminding him he'd done something fun and great at the same time. He'd have to get the Havenites together in soccer teams as soon as he could figure out how to make good balls. The rest of the game would be fairly easy to re-create, and he thought they'd take to it. Maybe even the wanderers could put together a team to compete as they went from town to town, gaining acceptance on a level no one could predict or prevent. Athletics had a way of bringing people together.

But those thoughts didn't smooth down the hairs on the back of his neck. Jason peeked to the side and saw, in the early morning darkness, Trent sitting bolt upright on his cot, eyes squeezed tightly shut, his body gyrating and jerking as he performed what Jason could only call “air drums,” his hands and arms beating out rhythms on an unseen drum and cymbal set. His head bobbed in time to a hard rocking beat that Jason could all but hear himself as he watched. Jason sat up slowly to face his friend, who seemed to have no idea of time or place, so lost was he in his song. Trent's mute musical performance grew in fervor until suddenly he stopped, drained, and just sat, his hands on his knees, breathing as hard as if he'd been on stage for a driving drum solo.

His eyes opened slowly to find Jason watching him.

“I'd ask what that was,” Jason told him, “but I think I know.”

Trent lifted his chin. “Sometimes you feel like you've gotta do something.”

“And sometimes it feels like you can't do anything right.”

Trent shrugged then. “Look, I can't blame Gavan or Tomaz or any of them. I faked all of you guys out for a long time. So who says I'm not faking now?” He fetched his crystal out, his opaque, dead-looking crystal. “They should have known it when I picked this one out. Everyone else's is transparent, or nearly so. You can't focus your energy into something you can't see into.” He tucked it away. “We might as well both be useless.”

That time at summer camp near the still blue waters of Lake Wannameecha, when they'd been called to picnic tables, their tops covered with trays of glittering gems and crystals, and told to pick a crystal, seemed incredibly long ago, although it had only been a few years. His life had changed immeasurably since that time, as had Trent's. Jason pointed at his friend.