The Gate of Bones (26 page)

“I'm the one to ask them?”

“So it seems. Do you mind?”

He thought about it. “Well, I'm not happy about it, but—I guess not.”

“Good. You have been a good student.” She pushed the jam jar toward him and continued with her breakfast, silent now, her wizened face curved in a pleased expression.

Things like this always seemed to start so simply and end up so complicated, he thought to himself, as he measured some strawberry preserves onto a biscuit gone stiff as a hockey puck, and then dunked it in his tea until it was soft enough to eat. Messy, but good, and on the whole, worth getting up earlier than usual for. When he was done, he cleaned up the fixings briskly but couldn't avoid Madame Qi as she tapped her cane and sent him out on a long, early morning training run, just when he'd hoped she'd forgotten about his exercises.

The sound of his running had barely faded from her hearing when the quieter, softer steps of her granddaughter entering the kitchen stirred Madame Qi from her thoughts. Ting fixed her own cup of tea before sitting with a natural grace that warmed Madame Qi to watch. So much her mother's daughter, so much of her own family she could see in Ting. Life did indeed circle, if one only knew where to look. But Ting looked far from content that morning, an uncharacteristic frown settled on her face.

“There is trouble in you today?” Madame Qi probed gently, sitting back a little on her stool, and preparing to listen.

Ting stared into her teacup. “Not trouble,” she answered slowly. “Exactly. But something.” She looked up. “Everyone else seems to have a real idea of where their Talent might lead them. Jason is a Gatekeeper, Rich a healer, Stef a shapeshifter.”

“Everyone?” echoed Qi. “Even Trent?”

“Well.” Ting shifted. “Not Trent, no. And not me. I mean, I make nice little enchantments that last maybe a few hours or a few days or weeks, but I can't see that it's really, well . . . a Talent.” She looked at her grandmother with questioning eyes. “Do you understand?”

“I do. I have no answer for that except to say that the world turns slowly, and in its own way, under the revealing light of the sun. What is hidden on one side, will eventually be revealed, as it turns.”

Unhappiness winged across Ting's face.

Madame Qi stretched out her hand and patted her granddaughter's shoulder. “Because it is something from within you, it has to be discovered that way, too, I fear.”

Ting nodded slowly. She turned her cup in her slender, agile fingers. “I also dreamed about home last night.”

“Ah.” Madame Qi nodded. “Missing everyone?”

“Not that home. Yours. And the house dragon.”

“Indeed.” Sudden intent interest flared inside Madame Qi, even more interest than that of helping Ting through a difficult day. “What of my house dragon?”

She missed her home in the San Francisco Bay area, with its bronze weather vane of a Chinese dragon upon it, the guardian of her family for many many years now. That bronze sculpture had been forged in their ancestral China and brought over to reign over their homes in America. Of all things in her old life she'd given up without regret, that was perhaps the only irreplaceable object. The Chrysanthemum Dragon, with its brilliant coat of enamel paint, and its long sinuously curling body, moving about slowly in occasional gusts of wind, had always been more than just a weather vane.

“I dreamed it was unhappy at being left behind, and that it wished to be here, with you. Upon the academy roof.” Ting's gaze flickered up briefly as if mentally picturing it there.

Madame Qi smiled slowly. “It has its own duties for others, now. Yet it spoke to you, Granddaughter?”

“It did.” Ting finished her tea and put her cup down carefully on the table. “Remember when it spoke? Remember when it hissed ‘Jason' at us?”

“I do indeed.”

“I didn't just imagine that.”

“I don't think either of us did.” Madame Qi leaned forward on her elbows, quilted jacket rustling about her wizened frame. “Many, many years ago, my grandfather was a magician in old China.”

Ting's face took on a faint glow as she leaned forward in anticipation. “I remember.”

Qi nodded. “I have told you some of the old tales. Not, however, all.” She laid a finger alongside her nose, indicating that Ting should listen. “In the old tradition, a Chinese magician was a master of many things. An acrobat, an actor, singer, performer, with tricks of voice and illusion, and in my grandfather's case, tricks of Magick. Nothing remains from those days. The letters and journals he left were destroyed by war and purging, but there are still memories.” She tapped her finger to her temple. “He could make paper chrysanthemums appear from thin air, while tumbling through burning hoops of fire. And he could make a dragon appear, from smoke and mist, as if bidden by his very call. It is that dragon that was cast in bronze, as a symbol and guardian for our home.

“A traveling magician, in those days, could earn much money from the families and weddings he entertained, but there were always bandits on the road eager to obtain his earnings. Sometimes my grandfather traveled with the family, oftentimes alone. I remember, however, the stories told of the dragon who would appear to chase away would-be robbers. A dragon whose strength would pull the wagon out of muddy ditches or rivers swollen with floodwaters. A dragon whose breath would be like the most reassuring campfire on wintry mornings. A dragon who . . . strangely enough . . . was there to help my grandfather even when my grandfather had mysteriously disappeared from the scene.”

Ting blinked. “What?”

Madame Qi nodded slowly. “One never saw my grandfather and the dragon at the same time.”

“But. . . what did that mean?”

Qi leaned forward, smiling softly, and whispered, “We were never sure. I always thought my grandfather
was
the dragon. He had the same long curling mustache, thin and sinuous as a river eel. Nothing ever frightened him, not even the Boxer Rebellion or the great wars which followed. When I knew him, of course, age had bowed and molded him, as it does me now, and his mustache had turned snowy white, instead of the glossy ebony in old posters he used to show me. He always wore a great pearl about his neck, not jewelry, but a beautiful object he prized. One day, he told me, it would be mine.”

Ting had never seen that pearl. “Did you leave it behind?”

Madame Qi shook her head. “It disappeared when he grew ill and we all knew he had begun to die.”

Ting gasped. “Someone took it?”

“In our family? Never!” Qi shook her finger at Ting for suggesting such a terrible thing. “No. It was thought he hid it somewhere. No one knows where. He was a clever man, my grandfather.”

Ting looked at her grandmother with an expression of admiration. “I wish I could have known him, too.”

“He would have been most proud. Many generations have passed without his magic showing, but it does reside in you, and you will discover more and more. You will not be an echo of him, but a fine magician in your own right.” Qi reached out again and squeezed her hand tightly. “Never doubt that. Impatience will only slow you down.”

Ting sighed. “I know, Grandmother.” She stood, and flipped her hair back over her shoulder. “I'd better go wake Bailey. Lots to do today. Leave the dishes, I will clear them.” She kissed her grandmother's brow and left.

Madame Qi gazed after her. Yes, her grandfather would have been most proud to see his blood still ran strong in his family. She poured herself a second cup of tea and warmed her hands about it, lost in memories.

 

Jonnard woke at the first touch of dawn and got up quietly, knowing that Isabella would sleep late. She slept later and later each day as her activities and the turning of the season took its toll. She was old, he knew, far older than he who had slept when thrown through the centuries after the battle of Brennard and Gregory the Gray, while she had lived, and even her own magic and that of the Leucators now seemed to be losing ground in keeping back the natural tides of Time. Still, he had hopes of not waking her.

He'd learned much in Naria, and she would be eagerly after him when she did awake. He would be able to tell her then that Fremmler had done as hoped, and more. The trade would make them wealthy as well as feared, and the first holds she wanted to establish over the cities and provinces of Haven had begun to be well anchored. All this, and more, would please her greatly later. Now was his time for himself.

He drew his father's journals out of their warded safekeeping, and laid them out. So many hints he had read over the days since finding them. To think that this man had raised and taught him, and never said a word about what he'd found in the journals.

Jonnard put a fingertip to one page. It crackled faintly under his touch, not with aging of paper, but with power, an energy he recognized well. He traced the words inked there.

Jon lifted his hand. Well kept, indeed, for that information had gone to the grave with Brennard. He inhaled slowly. Even if he had it, he would be wise to think as his father had, and that Gregory might know something useful when he did awaken, and how vulnerable he would be in such a weakened state. When he had first read those words, he'd done the only thing he could, which was to focus a crystal and target it toward the sensing of Gregory if and when he ever rose from his Magick-driven sleep. Then Jon would be upon him.

The journals held other treasures in them. It was rather like sitting in front of a jewelry box and being able to dip his outspread hands deep into the contents, letting each gem shift and play upon his fingers. But what he desired most to know, how Brennard had come to Haven and why, could not be found.

It had to be written within. It had to be!

Jon sat back, puzzling over it, biting his lower lip in thought until the sudden sting and taste of blood filled his mouth. He then sucked a moment at the smarting wound.

He picked up the books and studied the embossed leather, but the pattern imprinted seemed to be only a pretty design and totally at random. Suns and stars and moons in their phases studded the covers. Nice but nothing helpful. Jon closed each journal, holding it tightly in his hand. His ears buzzed with faint power.

“Damn.”

He dropped the books and stared at them. His morning time was nearly spent, and he'd learned nothing useful. Perhaps he should turn them over to Isabella and let her work at them.

That idea stuck in him, though. This was
his
heritage and almost all he had, and the thought of giving it to her to shred in her pursuit of knowledge that would benefit her made him dig in his heels against doing it. The journals stared upward at him from the desktop. Years buried in the ground in the casket had done little to them, although the cover of the first book had suffered some damage, its fine-grained leather thickening and bubbling a bit.

Jon picked it up. He rubbed his hand upon it, feeling again the buzz of energy. Then he shut his eyes tightly. “Jonnard Albrite, you are an idiot.” His eyes snapped open, and he slid a long thin knife from his boot. Working it carefully around the cover, he separated the leather from the book itself, and it fell off in his hands as though he'd skinned an animal.

Power blazed up at him, revealed, inscribed carefully on the hidden true cover of the journal, and it took his breath away. He read it slowly, whispering the words to himself, and it seemed as if the very room danced in the blaze, like the sun shimmering in a mirage off boiling desert sands. It filled him with a heady energy. “Gatekeeper,” he breathed outwardly, and drew it nearer to read and learn it better.

 

Deep in the stronghold, in the dungeon of golems, the Leucators stirred in their chains, their graying flesh feeling the touch of warmth filtering down to them, as if someone had unleashed a summer sun. They rattled their chains and shackles and stood, with heads thrown back, and sucked in the feeling with a soft, keening moan. About them, in the very stone foundation of the fortress, another being moved through the earth as if it did not exist. It touched each of the Leucators, a fleeting shadow, then passed through wood and rock to other layers of the fortress, searching.

FireAnn woke. She felt a prickling over her skin, and she threw up her hand, crabbed from arthritis, and she moved to lean over the still sleeping Eleanora, to protect her however meagerly she could. She swatted at the prickling, the searcher, the irritant, cursing in the Irish tongue of her youth. Like bees stirred angrily from a hive, the thing stung at her. Here, there, here again, darting off to another place, then buzzing back in. FireAnn's eyes filled with angry tears.

“Off with you, foul Banshee! Ye'll not have my Eleanora this day!” She gestured as if she could still hold a crystal and send power shooting in attack, and the buzzing stopped a moment.

It crept back, and her whole body quivered as something unseen seemed to take their measure. The sting marks became fiery hot, as did the tears of frustration on her cheek, and Eleanora's body twitched under her, as the stings marked her as well.

“No! Git, bully lad. Ye'll not have her today or any other day, as long as I've breath in my lungs!” FireAnn leaped to her feet then, swinging about blindly at bees of power she was unable to see but could feel. She howled with frustration and her body jerked with each bolt from the attacker, and she wept with the pain and fear of it, a torture she could not prevent or answer . . . and worse, she feared, withstand.