The Magickers (47 page)

He took another slow step toward the dragon form. He gripped the lance in his hands, though it would be a poor weapon against such a beast. Jason paused.

The wingspan at his back yanked sharply at him, dragging him onto his heels. From far away, scarcely more than a whisper, he could hear Gavan Rainwater's voice.

“Not now, Jason. Do not take that journey now. Next time. . . .”

Jason inhaled. He swung about sharply and just before plunging through the great Iron Gate posts, he stabbed Trent's lance into the ground. And it was marked, not only for him, but for anyone who looked for it now. The pennant snapped about as he did so.

Even Trent, who could not see the Magick, would be able to find this Gate one day. He was the Gatekeeper and had made it so, until he came back to change it.

And he would return.

Stepping past the flag, he strode across the threshold and back into his own world.

Gavan stood at the table's end, his cloak swirling about him. He looked angry and the flash in his eyes was echoed by a glint stabbing outward from the crystal held in the jaws of his wolfhead cane. “This is not the old world,” he said finally, and he closed his mouth tightly as if there were many, many more things he would like to have said.

Jason sat back in his chair. Trent tapped him on the arm, drawing his attention, and he glanced at his worried friend. He shook his head, once, and then looked back to Gavan.

“The children . . . the young Magickers . . . are more at risk than ever.” Khalil sat in his chair, quiet, inscrutable, his Moorish features hidden by his head-to-toe dark clothing. “This is the same argument we had but a few weeks ago. You need us to help anchor and ward this school. But you've made no progress in finding a Gated Haven to put it in. Why do you bother us?”

“Do you think I don't know that? Why do you think I am trying to get an Academy established? Together, we can protect them. Educate them.” Gavan put both hands on the table and leaned forward, his gaze sweeping all assembled: Council, young Magickers, and elders from all around the world.

“If, by calling this meeting, you are hoping to bring pressure to bear on us and force a hasty, perhaps unwise decision, you will fail, Rainwater.” The tall, spindly woman, wrapped in dark crimson satin, sat catty-cornered from the end of the table where Gavan stood and Eleanora stayed silently beside him, as if biding her time. The two women looked at each other, then away, as if something unspoken had passed between them. Isabella tapped her fan, of dark watered-silk crimson matching her gown, on the table's edge. “You have a Gatekeeper! Open Gates. Choose them wisely, and then—and only then—we can work with you. You must remember that some gates lead only to havoc and chaos.”

“We've lost two candidates already,” Eleanora spoke up. “Henry Squibb, fallen to betrayal by the Dark Hand, and Jennifer Barton.”

“Jennifer!” squeaked both Ting and Baily in unison before clapping their hands over their mouths and turning pink.

Eleanora smiled slightly, and nodded at them. “Jen nifer decided she did not wish to be a Magicker. It was her choice, and we have to respect that. She drank the Draft of Forgetfulness and her crystals have been taken and destroyed.”

“We'll lose more like that, too, if we do not move,” Gavan finished. “If that happens, we don't have to worry about the Dark Hand, we'll be discouraging them ourselves.”

“We have monthly conferences,” Anita Patel said in her soothing, lilting voice. “Things are not all that dire, Gavan.”

He frowned briefly. “This is not the Old World,” he repeated, “where we can gather them up and sweep them away and their parents will be thankful they were apprenticed somewhere. No. They may well spend their summers vacationing in different corners of the States and we may never get them altogether in one group again. Not,” and he took a breath, “unless we can offer them a school. An Academy of such outstanding opportunity that a parent would want nothing more than to send his child there. And we have to produce that Academy now. We can't waste any more time. Now their powers are more open to abuse than ever, and now, when things are forever changed, their lives are even more valuable. Precious. And we Magickers are responsible for them!”

“Open the Gates. Then and only then will I help establish a school. If you cannot do that, they might as well all drink the Draft and be returned to the nothingness from which they came.” Khalil the Moor stood, cloaked completely in night-dark fabric, even his eyes hidden in shadow. “You've a betrayer in your midst, Gavan Rainwater, but you are too blind to see it. Open your eyes! Then and only then have we any hope.” With that, he raised his arm, invoked his crystal, and was gone in a heartbeat.