The Dragon Heir Read online

  And so he moved silently through the woods, listening for the telltale clash of metal and magic that would direct him to the ongoing fight. But nothing. Even the birds had left that desolate place hours ago, understanding that it was no place for living things. It’s a peculiarity of man—this lining up and marching toward death. The only other creatures who don’t flee a killing field are the scavengers who come after the fact.

  On all sides lay the detritus of terrible endings. Or heroic end-ings. The results looked the same.

  Finally, he broke from the forest and onto a field pegged with ancient trees, many of them charred and splintered and broken, as yet unaware they were doomed, thrusting fistfuls of leaves into a brilliant blue sky. Stone buildings ringed the green on all sides.

  The commons. And, everywhere he looked, bodies.

  “Jack!” Ellen gently tugged at Jack’s arm. He responded by swinging his fist at her, and she captured it between her two hands, forcing it down onto the pillow. “Jack, you’re dreaming, cut it out!”

  His body bucked and twisted as he tried to free himself. His red-gold hair was sluiced across the pillow, damp with sweat, and he muttered something unintelligible.

  “Come on, Jack, you’re waking up the whole house!” Man, he’s strong, she thought, unable to resist a little professional envy.

  Another near miss with that big fist, and she picked up a glass from the bedside table and sloshed the contents into his face.

  He surged into a sitting position, spluttering, groping for his belt dagger. Good thing he didn’t have it, or she might have been skewered before he came awake. She avoided his grasp, slid to the floor, and retreated a few yards away, watching him.

  Finally, his bleary blue eyes cleared and focused on her. “What the ...?”

  “You were dreaming,” Ellen repeated. “You’ve been screaming and yelling half the night. Nobody can sleep.”

  He stared at her as if she were a ghost. It was unnerving.

  “I was elected to come in and put a stop to it. You sure wake up grouchy. Don’t take a weapon to bed, is my advice.”

  “Ellen,” he whispered hoarsely, “I killed them. I killed them all.” He gazed down at his hands, turning them palms up, as if they were covered in blood.

  “You killed who?” Ellen asked, but Jack didn’t seem to hear her.

  She came and sat on the edge of the bed. “Come on. It was just a dream.”

  With that he threw back the covers and erupted from the bed, oblivious of his state of dress. Yanking his duffle bag from the closet, he emptied it onto the floor. He groped through the debris of clothes and came up with a chamois-wrapped package.

  He sat down next to Ellen on the bed and ripped away the leather with trembling fingers. It was a mirror, its silver frame engraved with dragons and other fantastical images. He stared into the glass with a desperate intensity.

  “Wow, that’s cool,” Ellen said, combing her fingers through Jack’s hair, which stuck out in all directions. “What does it do?” She leaned close so she could see. “Is it magic?”

  What she saw was not Jack’s face, but an image that looked like a battlefield. Only familiar.

  “Is that no-man’s-land?” she asked.

  A lone warrior stood at the center of the field, the sunlight striking his red-gold hair, head bowed, cradling a comrade in his arms. And all around him lay the fallen—warriors from five centuries, surrounded by the gear and weapons appropriate to their time.

  “That’s you,” Ellen said. “What’s it mean?”

  Jack snatched the mirror away and flung it across the room. It smashed against the wall, and dropped behind the dresser.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Don’t Look Back

  Madison Moss had long ago mastered the gift of looking forward—of achieving that narrow focus on goals. Not that there wasn’t a price. Sometimes she wondered if she was doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, since she’d trained herself not to look back at it.

  But Maddie was, first and foremost, a survivor. Beyond that, she’d protect the ones she loved. Whatever it took. That, at least, gave her direction.

  So, for now, she could set aside wondering what had happened at Bryson Farms. Set aside the Chicago Institute of Art and Seph McCauley.

  Set aside Warren Barber’s threats.

  It didn’t take her long to pack. She stuffed two changes of clothes into a duffle. After some thought, she returned her father’s gun to the wood box, made two sandwiches from the groceries she’d bought, and piled them in a six-pack cooler with a couple of cans of pop. She didn’t mean to stop.

  Finally, she pulled on blue jeans and a sweatshirt and boots over heavy socks. Clothes that said she meant business. She set the duffel by the door and laid her silver-studded denim jacket on top, then tied her hair back with a bandana.

  Her plan was simple—she’d drive back to Trinity and go directly to St. Catherine’s. Seph’s barriers and wards wouldn’t give her any trouble. With any luck, she’d take the Dragonheart and be gone before anyone knew she was there.

  That was it. What would she do if she ran into Seph? She’d make something up.

  She tried to think of what came after that, but drew a complete blank. She didn’t trust Barber, but she had no clue how to get around him.

  She heard the clatter of gravel against metal as a car pulled into the yard, followed by a door slamming.

  Had Barber come back for some reason? The police? County child welfare? None of the possibilities were good. She thought about running out the back, but she’d still have to get past whoever it was to get down the mountain. So she knelt on the floor beside the wood box like a cornered animal, one hand gripping the loaded pistol.

  She heard footsteps cross the creaky porch, but still jumped when someone banged on the door.

  “Come!” she said, aiming the pistol through the wood box at the front door.

  The visitor stood silhouetted against a rectangle of sunlight, squinting into the darkened room, then took a few hesitant steps forward.

  “Madison?”

  “Jason?” She let go of the pistol and sat back on her heels, her breath whooshing out in relief.

  The light struck his face as he moved out of the doorway. He looked better than when she’d last seen him, when he’d left for Trinity. His coloring was restored, though he looked like he’d not slept for days. His hair had grown out in a haphazard way.

  She wanted to grab hold of him, to somehow hand off her load of problems. But he might not be an ally. She had only one agenda—could have only one agenda. His might be different.

  She stood, a little shakily, thinking furiously. “So. Not to be rude, but what are you doing back here?” she asked.

  The question seemed to take him by surprise, as if he hadn’t planned anything further than getting to Booker Mountain. “Well, we—um—that is, I wondered if you’d heard what was going on in Trinity.”

  Barber had told her there was trouble, but she wasn’t sure what kind, and besides, it wouldn’t do to say she’d been chatting with Warren Barber. So she shook her head. “What’s going on in Trinity?”

  Jason’s eyes lit on her duffle bag, sitting by the door. “Were you going somewhere?”

  “Well.” She thought a moment, decided, and answered in a rush. “Actually, I was just getting ready to leave. To come back north. My . . .” She gulped, lost for a moment, then went on. “Someone else has the kids for awhile. So I thought ...”

  “Great,” Jason said. “That’s great.” They stood in awkward silence for a moment, then he glanced toward the kitchen. “I drove straight through. Could I get something to drink?”

  “Well. Sure.” She motioned him to the kitchen table and fetched him a cold pop from the refrigerator. All the while itching to be gone.

  She set it on the table in front of him and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “You look better,” she said.

  He grimaced. “Yeah. Well. I’m close to a hundred per c
ent. But a hundred per cent ain’t that great.” He didn’t say it like he was fishing for a compliment. “Damn Warren Barber, wherever he is.”

  Yeah, she thought. Damn Warren Barber.

  “So. How is Seph?” She couldn’t help herself.

  Jason’s words came out in a rush, as if some internal dam had broken. “Bad. Look, Maddie. We need your help, but he won’t ask for it. Trinity is under siege. The place is surrounded, and they say they’ll attack tomorrow if we don’t surrender.”

  She blinked, momentarily diverted from her urge to be gone. “What do you mean, the town is surrounded? By who?”

  “The Roses. And D’Orsay. They’ve put up this mammoth wizard wall all around the town that keeps everybody inside—Weir and Anaweir. Well, first, Mercedes put up a wall. Remember? Will and Fitch told us about it when they came. But that one just worked on the Weir.”

  Seconds passed while she processed this. “Okay. You’re saying there’s two walls, one inside the other. And the outside one catches the Anaweir. So nobody can get in or out of Trinity? How can that be? It’s not like no one would notice. What about the . . . the police?”

  Jason dismissed the police with a wave of his hand. “What do the Roses care? The Anaweir authorities can’t do anything. Trinity is sort of isolated to begin with. They’ve clothed the wall in confusion charms, so no one can find us. Phones, TV, radio don’t work inside the wall. We might as well be in the Middle Ages.”

  An image came to her—Trinity as a fifteenth-century university town under siege, in perpetual twilight, shadowed by menacing black walls. “But ...isn’t everyone going crazy inside? What about the kids at the high school? And people . . . people have jobs. . . .”

  Jason hesitated, as if debating the wisdom of sharing a secret. “The Anaweir are gone. Seph snuck them out of town.”

  “And Seph is ...”

  “He’s using wizard flame,” Jason said brutally. “It makes him incredibly powerful, but it’s dangerous, I guess. He’s going to save the town and everybody in it or die trying.”

  No. Focus forward. Don’t look back. There’s nothing back there but monsters. “But. Why are they doing this? What do they want?”

  “They want the Dragonheart.”

  Madison turned and stared out the kitchen window, over the sensuous hips and shoulders of mountains that rolled into the distance. She hoped the view would soothe her so she wouldn’t vomit into the sink. “What do they want with it?”

  She felt the hot pressure of Jason’s gaze on the back of her neck. “They think it’s a weapon—like, the mother of all weapons.”

  “A weapon?” So that’s why Barber wanted it. Madison had never thought of it as something dangerous. But what did she know? “Well. If it’s a weapon, can’t you use it against them?”

  “We don’t know how. We’re not even sure what it does.” He took a breath. “And ...we can’t get near it.”

  She swung round to face him. “What? Since when?”

  “Ever since you left. It’s like it’s got some kind of force field around it. If we try to touch it, it erupts in flame or slams us down on our butts.”

  “You’re saying four wizards can’t pick up a stone?” He nodded, and she said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He shrugged unhappily. “I kept thinking it would settle.

  I . . . I wanted to try and use it.”

  Could things get any worse? “But you handled it before, didn’t you? The Dragonheart. Did you have any trouble then?”

  “No.” Jason rubbed his stubbled chin. “Nick and Mercedes and I fooled with it for weeks, trying to figure out what it did. But it’s like something woke it up. Power just rolls off the thing. It’s like this big antenna that’s drawing wizards and Weir from all over.” He looked up at her, fixing her with his blue eyes. “It seemed to respond to you before. I thought maybe . . . your leaving . . . set it off. Somehow.”

  She’d last touched the Dragonheart the day she left for Coalton County. It had blazed up, so bright it hurt her eyes. Magic had poured into her until she ripped her hands away.

  Maybe she’d had something to do with the change in the stone. Maybe she’d been the one to mess it up. Either that or the hex magic it had driven out of her.

  Jason was still watching her, waiting for a response.

  “What do you think I can do?” she asked.

  He studied her, as if assessing his chances of success. “Two things. I want to see if you can do something with the Dragonheart. You’re not vulnerable to magic, so you ought to be able to handle it, at least.”

  “But . . . I’m not gifted,” Madison protested. “I don’t know how to do magic.” She was torn so many different ways, she didn’t even know how to strategize.

  Jason gripped her hands and played his best card. “Look. Seph and Nick saw the painting you did. The hex painting. It put Seph down for days. He still hasn’t fully recovered. That’s why he’s using flame. They thought maybe you were ...maybe you’d sold out. That’s why I came down here before. I was supposed to find out for sure.”

  Madison flailed for an answer. “I would ... I would never hurt Seph,” she stammered, feeling like the worst kind of liar. “He should know that.”

  “He does. He never bought the idea that you’d turned. But he needs your help now. The Dragonheart aside, you can help us when the Roses attack. Maybe you can disarm them like you did at Second Sister, if we handle it right.”

  I can’t.

  But, maybe, after she gave the Dragonheart to Barber, she could somehow help them. She could make up for what she’d done. If they weren’t already dead. If they’d even accept her help.

  Her plan was in a shambles now. There was no way she’d get in without Jason’s help.

  She swallowed hard. “The town is surrounded, you said. Can you get me in?”

  He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then said, “Yes.”

  “Guess we’d better go along, then,” Madison said. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  A relieved smile broke onto Jason’s face. “Great,” he said. “Great. Um, could we take your truck? I kind of borrowed a car without asking. I’d rather not be driving around in it.”

  Madison had planned to propose that she follow him in the truck so she could leave when she’d finished in Trinity.

  But there was a wired intensity in Jason’s movements that told her this was nonnegotiable.

  “Oh. Okay.” She scooped up her keys from the table and slung the duffle bag over her shoulder.

  But he gripped her wrist and took the keys from her hand. “I’ll drive,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Weirstorm

  Before dawn, the Roses woke the remaining residents of Trinity with a fusillade of magical projectiles—cannisters of ligfyr—launched from atop the wizard barrier. They burst against the rebels’ elaborate inner wall with bone-rattling force, drenching the territory between with wizard fire. Toxic smoke boiled up from the fires between the walls, bloodying the underbelly of the lowering clouds. Defenders toppled from the inner wall like rotten fruit, clutching their throats.

  The rebels answered with withering fire of their own, raking over the top of the outer wall, clearing it of wizards and weapons. Jessamine leaned forward, squinting into the murk, gripping the parapet. A tall, spare figure strode to the battlement at the front of the barbican over the rebel gate, ignoring the shells exploding all around him. McCauley. Again. He raised both arms, and the smoke roiled back, away from the rebels, enveloping the Rose fortifications in a cloud of poison.

  Jess charged out of her bastion and attempted to drive the smoke back where it belonged, then dove for cover as a blast of fire slammed into the wall just beneath her.

  Peering over the edge, she surveyed the damage:a huge bite had been taken out of the smooth surface of the wizard wall, and great chunks of stone lay scattered on the ground beneath. Much more of that, and the wall would be porous as a sieve.

  How did he do it?
Their barrier was built to withstand magical assault—that was the whole point. She stormed back along the wall, sweeping past the wizards flinging flaming ligfyr stones against the rebels from heavy cover.

  “Send a patrol down to repair the wall immediately,” she ordered. “And kill McCauley,” she added, as an afterthought.

  Outside the gate, the army of the Roses sprawled across farm fields and littered the wooded groves. Wizards, mostly, with a few sullen sorcerers stirring cauldrons of magically enhanced ligfyr. Others beat out throwing stars of glowing metal, infused with deadly enchantments.

  D’Orsay’s famous hoard had been disappointing to say the least. Jess couldn’t help wondering if he was holding back—if he had a secret stash someplace. They’d been forced to use the weapons sparingly—more to inspire panic among the defenders than anything else. Some were delightfully horrible—like the glass spheres that broke open on impact, releasing hundred of deadly naedercynn vipers within the sanctuary. Or the gliwdream pipes whose high-pitched music drove the defenders insane.

  Jessamine stopped to question her operatives at the gate. Still no sign of Haley.

  Out on the drilling field, Geoffrey Wylie struggled to bludgeon hordes of wizards into order. Wizards were not terribly good at teamwork. It hadn’t been considered a virtue up to now. When he saw Jess, he broke off his harangue and turned the command over to a handsome young wizard in Red Rose garb. Hays was his name, if she remembered right.

  “I don’t like this dual-wall system,” Wylie said, brushing ice from his shoulders (the latest Weirstorm had overshot its mark a bit). “We could be trapped in between and annihilated. We’d better take the outer wall down when the time comes to attack.”

  Jessamine brushed away the suggestion. “And have them scatter like quail and regroup somewhere else? I think not. We need to teach them a lesson. Besides, we can’t risk the possibility of losing the Dragonheart.”

  “You’re not the one who has to lead the charge through the gate against an unknown weapon.”