The Gate of Bones (34 page)

“Let's play follow the leader, then.” Trent sketched across the sky. Jason followed the movement of his hand, and swept a crystal blade through it, like trying to cut an invisible thread. A triumphant whoop from Trent told him he'd done it.

Trent's hands hopscotched across his field of vision, plucking and pulling at lines of magic Jason could only barely sense. Sometimes it took four or five attempts to bring down one casting, but more often he could get it in one or two tries. The fighting around him seemed to retreat to slow-moving visions that he barely saw as he concentrated. A look to one side showed Stefan with Shield up, and crystal in his knobby fist, blond face streaked with dirt and frown, growling at raiders as they attempted to close on them, and he drove them back.

A knot of fighters bore down on Gavan. He stood in a swirl of his cape, crystal Lightning in his hand. Flameg nocked an arrow to his bow and moved in on his flank protectively. Gavan loosened his Lightning and two men dropped. The third one he met hand to hand, while the fourth went after Flameg. He got his arrow off and it hit deep into the raider's leg, but even the cry of pain as it hit did not slow the swing of the outlaw's blade. It hit Flameg square, and the Avenhan fell to his knees, then sagged to the ground in a spray of blood. Jason looked aside, afraid of being sick. He barely caught the sense of what Trent said, flustered, and managed to focus on the last of the web about him.

The last thread of magic ensnarement cut, Jason rose to his feet, and grabbed Trent by the arm.

“We're going after Jonnard.”

“Now?”

Jason looked at him. “There's a better time? We press him; either he'll drain his power or she will trying to save him. We haven't much left ourselves.”

Thwoosh.
Trent dodged an arrow, spun about on one heel, and shrugged. “I guess not!”

Jason threw up a Shield and locked arms with Trent. He gestured at Tomaz, indicating which way they were heading. The elder Magicker hesitated, then gave an agreeing nod. They zigzagged their way through the fighting. Raiders had fallen and lay silent, their bodies stunned by crystal shock or pierced by arrows. Jonnard saw them coming. He reined his horse back sharply, and the horse went back on his haunches, one hoof pawing the air in protest.

Jason struck. He did not wait for fairness or for Jon to acknowledge the duel or anything else. Their fight had started long before this one.

Crystal stroke met crystal in a blaze of sparks, the air sizzling with the noise and sheer impact of it. Jason did not wait to take a breath before striking again, hard, and again the Magicks met in an explosion of energy. Let the Dark Hand think he would kill Jonnard if he could. He knew the other had no such doubts.

His crystals cooled slightly in his hands. Ruthlessly, he reached back along their anchors, back to Ting and Bailey and Henry to tap their resources.

“Jason.” Trent put his hand on his arm. “Jason! I can see it . . . Jon is tied into Henry again. He's draining him. You can't do it, too. You'll kill him.”

“Show me!”

Trent gulped. His hands swung about aimlessly in front of him, as though signing an impossible message, then, “Here! I've got it!” He held his hands out as though the string were woven through them.

Jason reached out with one crystal, blading it, and swung the edge through Trent's hands. A zzzzt and then a sense of letting go as the strand parted. He had it! He knew it without Trent telling him. Poor Henry, ensnared again, and without even knowing it!

Jonnard let out a curse of frustration and savagely reined his horse around, wheeling to the far side of the first wagon, leaving Jason to look up into Isabella's haughty and furious expression. The rubies and other gemstones at her wrists and neck blazed with her anger. Here and there, a blackened stone hung in its setting, ruined and lost to her Magick. She raised her hand and pointed at Jason.

“Uh-oh,” said Trent in his ear. “Incoming!”

Jason pulled Trent to his knees, and dropped himself, shifting all his energy to a defensive Shield. Fire and rage poured down on them as though dragonfire spewed from her hands, beating down until Jason's whole body trembled in the effort to keep the Shield up to protect them. He held the shimmering buckler up out of sheer will, and watched her drain herself. Then she cried out harsh words, and in the blink of an eye, Jonnard disappeared.

 

Jonnard stood inside the threshold to the dungeon. The air stank of the Leucators, filling his lungs for a moment, his pulse racing with the adrenaline of the fight and Isabella's hoarse cry in his ears to do something. A weakness tremored through his body. His link to Henry severed, that mongrel pup Jason sapping him . . . He palmed his crystal, centering his thoughts. If he did nothing, they would lose the caravan and the defeat alone might set the raiders against them.

Now or never, and if it were to be done, it would be better to be done quickly. Jonnard smiled grimly at the words of the old Bard of Avon running through his head. His father had told him, once, that Shakespeare had seen him do Magick and often wondered if Oberon were based on that sight.

The Leucators got to their feet, chains and shackles rattling eerily, like a crashing wave of metal upon metal. They eyed him hungrily. If they only knew what he had planned for them. They alone had the reservoir he needed.

He grasped their essence with his mind. He pulled on the magickal energies they held within themselves, mere shadows of the people from whom they'd been cloned, but still potent to a degree. They filled him with a fiery glow. Like the rush of water from a broken dam, they poured into him. He'd miscalculated how much they had to offer. He felt the power growing inside of him until his own skin felt too tight, and he thought he must burst with the sheer frenetic energy of it. His hand about the crystal shook as he fought to contain what he took from them.

This, then, was their secret. Spawned by Brennard and Isabella, they were themselves what he sought. As he held them, he knew them.

He mastered them. The Leucators sank to their knees as he drained them, pulled all he wanted from them, and left them with precious little. Magick fountained inside of him, and he raised both hands then, reaching for what he wanted, seeing it, placing it.

Then, with a deep breath, Jonnard summoned it. He felt the sudden, shocking emptiness of Magick exploding out of it, the icy coldness of its absence, the harsh shock wave lashing back at him. It slammed him back on his heels, throwing him into the wooden frame of the dungeon door. He let out a gasp of pain as his shoulder crunched, but the doorjamb kept him from falling entirely, as his body went limp.

His mind reeled. It tumbled over and over with emptiness, with thoughts that bloomed and fled too quickly for him to comprehend them. They tore through his mind, a thousand possibilities and more, and he felt as helpless as a leaf in a hurricane. Then all came to a halt. Quiet, and trembling. In that moment, he felt as weak as a newborn, as though he'd touched time itself.

Jonnard straightened. He dropped his hands. His skin, always pale, seemed ashen. He flipped one hand through his hair, pushing it off his brow.

Had he done what he thought? If not . . . what had he done? He took an unsteady step forward, realizing the fortress walls were gone. The sound of the river and the wind washed over him, but the battlefield was gone, left behind or left ahead, he could not be certain where. The wagons creaked in restless movement, and the living watched him fearfully.

He had moved the caravan. That much, he'd accomplished. The horses whinnied and shuddered in their harnesses, eyes rolling whitely, as the drivers held onto their headstalls and tried to calm them. Isabella dismounted, her eyes narrowing. “What have you done?” She gestured across the field.

His gaze followed her hand wave. There, in a hollow of ground, a maelstrom of darkness and fog boiled up. He'd brought the whole scene with him, bodies and all, and the dead slid across the ground and disappeared into the pit. It pulled at him, and he took a step closer, even as Isabella grabbed his elbow with a warning cry. “Don't.”

“Look. Look at that!”

“What have you done?” She toyed with the necklace about her throat, unaware that most of the priceless gems upon it were now blackened and useless. She stared at him.

“It's a Gate. I've opened you a Gate.” And he shook her off impatiently, eager to see the handiwork he'd wrought. A wind wailed down through the small valley, carrying what seemed to be voices on it. He neared it. It knew him, as he knew it. Where it went, he did not know. The sheer force of opening it had drawn the convoy to its mouth, and it yearned for them, yawned for them. Even as he neared it, he felt instinctively what Isabella had. The veil over it parted, torn by its seething inner action, and he saw it clearly then, a dark gash into the earth filled with bones and skulls, tumbling about as if caught in a maelstrom. The Leucators thrashed inside of it, disappearing and re-forming. He stared at it in fascination, unsure of it.

Chaos poured out of it. “Drink of that, my mother,” he said to Isabella. “And our power here will never pale.”

“Only if I dare.”

“I dare,” he said. He put his hand out, palm outward and drew upon that which he had made. Just a touch of it jolted him, and he shut off the contact quickly, composing himself. It held a Magick unlike any he'd ever felt before, and he was wise enough to know he might not be the master of it. Caution, then, until he learned the Gate well. He stepped back to Isabella's side.

She stared at the Gate of Bones for a long moment, then caught the hem of her skirt in one hand.

“I want the Magickers punished for their impudence.”

“Of course.” Jonnard bowed in her direction. “I will see to it.”

She mounted a free horse and reined him off eastward after a moment's contemplation of her crystal. The convoy bumped and jolted into movement after her.

Jonnard's mouth twitched.

She had not dared to drink of the power as he had. She could sense it as he could, and she'd been afraid she could not master it at all.

His time was nearing.

T
HE BLAST SLAMMED Jason on his back, knocking the wind clean out of him. He lay gasping, staring up at the sky, feeling the Magick roar around him in utter Chaos, then it was sucked back and . . . Gone. He rolled to his side, clawing for air, his body frozen, not breathing and screaming for it. All around him was . . . nothing. Every shrub or tree, every blade of grass for a hundred-yard radius about him lay flattened.

Not a wagon, horse, or person, dead or alive, could be seen except for Trent at his feet who lay making guppy noises. What had happened? His body fought to breathe, chasing thoughts away except for the weakness that seeped through him, and the wonder of it. Opening a Gate could feel like this. But he hadn't done it. So why? And why had the Magick smacked him down? And what had it done with the Dark Hand? Were they . . . gone?

Jason finally squeaked down a sliver of air and sat up. He nudged Trent's shoulder with his boot toe. “Relax.” He couldn't say much more than that, but he'd had the wind knocked out of him before and knew that once the solar plexus relaxed, they'd both be breathing again. It was the hit, the shock of it, that sent the body into temporary paralysis.

That didn't make it any more fun. He hung his head over, whooped a few times, and finally got the circulation going. Jason wobbled to his feet. Trent flopped over like a hooked fish. After a splutter, he managed a long gasp of air.

“Smackdown,” he muttered. “What the hell was that?”

“I don't know. Yet.” Jason looked around, unable to believe what he could not see. Perhaps the whole convoy had been Crystaled, but it would never have created a backlash like the one they'd felt. It was as if Jonnard or Isabella had loosed a magickal atomic bomb or something. Or they had. Did Gavan dare to use resources the others never suspected? He scrubbed a hand through his hair, and resettled his headband into place.

A wail of mourning sounded behind him and Jason turned about. Figures rising slowly from beside the river and the band of trees along it where they had begun their ambush. The devastation ended there, as if the countryside had withstood it, or perhaps the Magickers' presence inside it had protected it. Pyra went to one knee, gathering up the shattered remains of Flameg's longbow from the autumn-burned grasses. Her voice wailed with primal grief. She clutched the broken weapon to her chest and stifled her cry to one soft murmur, then silence. She looked up, her face streaked with tears.

“Not even his body! How can I bury him? How can we honor him?”

“We will make sure he is remembered. We can do no less for a friend and ally!” Gavan's voice rang out reassuringly across the devastation. He and Tomaz emerged from the grove, each with a fistful of reins, leading nervous horses onto the battlefield. Though no bodies remained, their nostrils widened at the smell of blood and ruin. “We'd best get out of here before the wolfjackals show. I don't want another fight, just yet,” Gavan added, weariness wavering his voice slightly.

“Eleanora? They're gone, right? They whacked themselves.” Trent rubbed the flat of his stomach ruefully as he found words.

“What did happen?”

Gavan looked at Jason, then shook his head slightly. “We don't know what happened here. If they'd destroyed themselves, I would feel Eleanora immediately, and I can't. Whatever that was that happened, we didn't do it, so I have to assume they did. I can't, I
won't,
leave her. If it's to be war here, regardless of the price to be paid, I'll free her first. We need to go in with full power, and surprise. If they retreated, then they still have their deal to carry out. They have a day or two to get that caravan into Naria, and negotiate and sell. We have a day, then, to act.” He swung up.