The Dragon Heir Read online

  Seph kindled a row of tall, beeswax candles that had replaced the electric lights. Electricity came fitfully from a generator, now, and it was a precious commodity. The flames flickered in the draft from the stairwell, alternately concealing and revealing the names on the occupied crypts.

  In contrast to the dimly lit corridor, the niche at the end of the row was brightly illuminated. A hunched figure sat on the floor next to it, wrapped in a shawl, seeming asleep.

  “Nick?” Seph whispered.

  The old man raised his head at their approach. Madison was stunned at how much—and how badly—Nick had aged in the time she’d been gone. He’d morphed from a vibrant old man of indeterminate age to someone who looked like he’d outlived the most ancient of the patriarchs.

  Still. Why was he here, and not out on the battlefield?

  “Ah.” Nick nodded, as if they were expected. “You’ve come.”

  Seph looked a little confused himself. “Um. Ellen, Jack, and the others are upstairs. Ellen’s hurt. Madison came to see if she could do something with the Dragonheart.”

  “Yes. Of course.” Nick smiled, as if Madison were the answer to a prayer. “My dear, I’m so glad you’re here.”

  But Seph still hesitated. “Nick? You all right?”

  Snowbeard closed his eyes, as if too weary to hold them open. “Yes. I believe all will be well, now that you’ve come.”

  Maybe the old man was losing it. Madison glanced at Seph, then back at Nick, receiving no guidance from either. “Okay, then. I guess I’ll just see.”

  Cautiously, she approached the niche. Who knew what the rules were here? Slitting her eyes against the light, she stepped inside.

  The stone was brighter, more alive than when she’d last seen it. Flame and color swirled beneath its crystalline surface, casting moving shadows on the walls, so she had the feeling of floating underwater. It was very much like standing next to a hot coal stove. Only, there was something else, something beyond heat, some other challenge to be met. It brushed her consciousness like a feather, a certain . . . skepticism. She extended her hand, then jerked it back when someone spoke.

  “Careful,” Seph said from the doorway. “It blistered my hand when I tried to touch it.”

  Madison swallowed hard. She wrapped her jacket around her hand and extended it again, gritting her teeth, half expecting to be flamed alive. A weapon, they called it, more powerful than any ever seen before. She dropped the jacket over the stone, slid her hands underneath, wrapped the cloth around it, and lifted it from its stand like it was an egg that might break.

  Nothing happened, except she felt dizzy and overheated, confused and conflicted. A voice whispered in her head, but it was too faint to make out the words. At least the stone didn’t explode.

  She turned toward Seph, who stood watching her, a puzzled frown on his face. “So?” he said. “Anything?”

  “Maybe,” she said, swaying a little. Somehow, she needed to get the stone out of the church. “Only . . . I’m a little woozy. I need to get out into the air.”

  Madison pushed past him, protecting the stone with her body. As she emerged from the niche, Nick looked up from his seat on the floor. “Unwrap the stone, Madison,” he said sharply. “Take it in your hands.”

  “Y’all just wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.” She stumbled for the stairs, thrusting the jacket with the Dragonheart into her backpack.

  “Madison!” She was nearly at the top of the stairs when she heard Seph’s quick footsteps behind her; she put on speed. To the landing, through the door, and out into the sanctuary. Past the side chapel where Will and Fitch hovered in the entryway, their pale, startled faces turned toward her. She heard Seph behind her and broke into a flat-out run up the aisle. There was no way she’d outrun those long legs from dead even, but his confusion had given her a head start.

  She clutched the backpack close, worried about jostling it, and reached the double doors at the front thirty feet ahead of Seph. Then ran smack into Jack Swift, which was a lot like running into a brick wall.

  “Hey!” He took hold of her shoulders to keep her from bouncing back onto her rear. “Madison? What happened? Where’re you going in such a hurry?”

  She tried to twist free and slip past him, but Seph shouted, “Grab her, Jack!” and then it should have been hopeless, but she kneed Jack hard, like Carlene had taught her, and he was so startled he let go. But he was still blocking the door.

  She ran down the side aisle. It dead-ended into a small chapel. But there were stairs leading up, so she climbed them, knowing she was probably heading into another blind alley. They let out onto the balcony, and she ran across, hoping to slip down the other side. She met Seph coming up, and Jack was behind her, so she ran to the railing and dangled the backpack over the stone floor of the sanctuary far below.

  Seph came from the right, Jack from the left.

  “You get back or I’ll drop it,” she warned, giving the backpack a shake.

  “Madison?” Seph halted a few feet away, his dark brows drawn together. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  “I need the Dragonheart,” she said. “Go away and leave me be.”

  “Don’t drop it,” Seph said soothingly. “It might break. Or explode.” He resumed his careful approach.

  Madison seized the top rail and climbed over, clinging to the outside. “You come near me, I’ll jump. I mean it. I don’t care what happens to me.”

  Jack and Seph both halted again. “Does this have to do with the Roses?” Seph asked, reaching for some explanation for her bizarre behavior. “Do you think you can buy them off with the Dragonheart?”

  “You can’t give it to them,” Jack put in. “You can’t trust them. They’ll kill us.”

  “It’s not about the Roses.” She couldn’t seem to control her breathing. It came in great, shuddering gasps.

  “Then what’s this all about?” Seph asked, clearly clueless.

  “It’s . . . it’s about Grace and John Robert. Warren Barber has them. He’ll kill them if I don’t bring him the Dragonheart.”

  Understanding flooded into Seph’s face. “Maddie. I’m so sorry.”

  “Well, sorry won’t do any good. I am not going to lose them, do you hear me?”

  “You can’t give Barber the Dragonheart. You must know that.”

  “I’m going to do whatever it takes to get them back.”

  “That won’t get them back. Please, Maddie. Let us try to help.”

  “You have a whole town to save. And all the underguilds. Grace and J.R. can’t be your priorities. But they’re mine.”

  And, somehow, Jack leaped across the space between them and tried to grab hold of her backpack. She let go of the railing and clutched the backpack to her, and she was falling, and then Seph’s hot hands grabbed her wrists and yanked her up over the railing with inhuman strength, and they were all three rolling on the floor, fighting for the backpack. Jack or Seph or someone nearly wrestled it away, but she got the backpack half unzipped and plunged her hand inside, groping for the stone, knowing it was now or never.

  The jacket slid away, and she felt its smooth surface under her fingers. She pulled it out, clutched it to her chest, and backed away, vaguely aware of the staircase behind her. “I’m warning you. Stay away.”

  They came at her from two directions, the sound of their breathing competing with the drumbeat of her heart. Something exploded just outside. The building shuddered, plaster cracking and sifting down from the ceiling, the great chandeliers swaying uneasily.

  She turned and leaped down the stairs, rammed into the wall at the turning, and fell down the last few steps. She sprawled out onto the floor of the sanctuary, curling herself around the stone to protect it. She lay on her back unable to move. The stone between her hands flared and pulsed, the light penetrating skin and flesh, revealing the bones beneath like the Visible Woman in the science lab back home.

  She blinked and squinted against a brilliance that flooded the
nave, driving the shadows from the uppermost vaults. From far away, someone was shouting, Madison! A name that seemed familiar. The stone under her fingers became more malleable, the hard surface dissolving like spun sugar. Power slammed into her like Min’s medicinal apple brandy, rendering her drunk and helpless, the room spinning until she thought she might be sick. An unquenchable flame burned at her center and rippled under her skin, threatening to split it open. Someone was screaming, and she realized it was her.

  The stone was a flame between her hands. And then it was gone, wicked into her body until she was lit from within.

  She remembered something Hastings had said.

  Elicitors draw all kinds of magic.

  From somewhere close at hand, the sounds of battle intruded. The Roses must be inside the walls. There was no getting away now.

  She’d destroyed her only hope of saving Grace and J.R. She wished the flame at her core would just burn her up so that nothing remained but ashes.

  Pressing her hot palms against the cool floor, Madison sat up, scooting back until she leaned against the wooden pew. She illuminated the entire sanctuary, driving out shadows like the rising sun. “It’s gone,” she said, hopelessly. Tears sizzled on her cheeks, evaporating as soon as they emerged.

  “Not gone,” someone said.

  Madison raised her head. Snowbeard shuffled up the aisle, gripping the pews on either side, a smaller man than she remembered, his lined face brutally revealed in the bright nave. The heat within her fractured and split. She retreated without a fight, shoved aside by another presence under her skin.

  “Madison,” Seph whispered. Jack came up behind him, and they walked toward her, as one might approach an explosive device or a demon. Will and Fitch followed at a discreet distance, no doubt drawn by the noise of the chase. Mercedes stood frozen in the doorway of the side chapel, unwilling to leave her patient.

  The stranger within her stirred, seizing control of her body. Madison gracefully levered herself to her feet, seeming to extend herself as she did so, until she towered over them all. Her arms trailed light, resembling wings. Her skin reflected light like glittering scales, and her eyes changed, her pupils becoming vertical slits. She was beautiful and dreadful, and somehow no longer Madison Moss.

  “No,” Seph looked up at her, eyes wide and horrified. “Please. Maddie . . .”

  A powerful intellect pressed against her. A rush of memory and emotion, sorrow and pain overwhelmed her, punching into her mind like a sword through paper. She was with the Lady, she was the Lady. She reverberated from one to the other.

  She was a dragon, armored in shimmering plates of ruby, emerald, and gold, her long, narrow head questing toward Seph and the others, her glittering wings folded tight against her body to avoid colliding with the walls of the church. Another shift, and she was Madison again. Sort of.

  The Lady’s memories claimed her, and she looked through dragon eyes. The church retreated, was replaced by a rugged green landscape studded with rocky outcroppings. Nicodemus Snowbeard had changed, morphed into a much younger man, handsome, beardless, with black raptor eyes and hair Jack’s redgold color. Seph and the others stood in a circle, frozen like standing stones, hemmed in and overwhelmed by the Lady’s will.

  Madison looked down at them from a great height. She extended her long neck toward them, and they shrank back, afraid.

  “Demus!” The Lady spoke through Madison. “Nicodemus Hawk.” Her voice rang out among the peaks, so startlingly loud that birds exploded from the trees.

  This younger Nick fell to one knee, bowing his head. He was dressed expensively, in fine leather and silk, the cut of his clothes revealing a soldier’s build. “My Lady Aidan Ladhra.”

  “Nick,” Jack said, his hand on the hilt of his sword. But Nicodemus Hawk Snowbeard raised his hand and shook his head. There was something in Demus’s face that might have been hope.

  The Lady’s memories rolled through Madison’s mind like bright pebbles in a stream while Madison cowered in the corner.

  “You betrayed me,” the Lady Aidan said.

  Demus’s forehead touched the ground. “Yes, my Lady.” He changed again, reverted to the familiar old man with the white beard. But the eyes—they were the same.

  “I’ve slept away the years,” she said, sounding slightly amazed. “While you’ve grown old.”

  He did not flinch. “Yes, my Lady. It’s been over a thousand years. They call me Snowbeard now.”

  “That’s fitting, old man,” she said sardonically. “Have you grown wiser as well as older?”

  Demus flinched. “One hopes, my Lady.”

  “Why did you dig me out of the mountain?”

  “You promised to intervene if we broke the Covenant.”

  “I promised nothing. The Covenant was your creation, not mine. Your lies, not mine.”

  Nick raised his hands, palms up, a supplication. “The Covenant stopped the wizard wars. For a time.”

  Madison/Lady Aidan yawned, spewing flames all the way to the end of the valley. “Kill each other off, for all I care. The world will be better for it.”

  “We need your help,” Nick persisted.

  “Then be creative. Use my name, if you want. You have been, for years. I’m going back to sleep. I’ve had the most wonderful dreams.” She closed her eyes, as if meaning to retreat to that place of dreams and leave Madison behind.

  “I’ve made mistakes.”

  The eyes came open. She studied him dispassionately. “Perhaps you are wiser. You were arrogant, before. But, really. Was it at all fair to use an elicitor to draw me out?”

  “It’s a good match, my Lady. She’s a painter, a lover of art. And shiny things. Like you.”

  “No one is a good match for a dragon. We are, apparently, meant for solitude.” She paused, closed her eyes, and Madison felt the intensity of her scrutiny. “Madison Moss. What a peculiar name. She’s hungry in the way of dragons, full of desire. She has more pictures in her mind than she can paint in three mortal lifetimes.” She opened her eyes. “She loves the boy,” the Lady Aidan said abruptly, glaring at Seph.

  Nick nodded. “Yes.”

  “He’ll betray her,” the Lady said, flaring up dangerously, reaching for Seph with her taloned hand. Seph stood frozen and closed his eyes.

  No! Leave him alone! Madison struggled clumsily with the Lady within her, trying to wrest control away from her.

  “No!” Nick said quickly, morphing once again into the young Demus. “He loves her, too. He is, I believe, wiser than I was.” He paused. “I know you are tired of life. But there is hope in the young. I think they’ll find their way to peace.”

  The Lady Aidan looked them over, her gaze shifting from Jack to Seph—who still shivered under her glittering scrutiny. “The boy is damaged,” she said, curling her lip back to reveal razor teeth. “He’s using flame.”

  “He is desperate to save the ones he loves. He would trade his life for theirs.”

  “Hmmm.” Shifting back into Madison form, she reached out her hand and touched Seph in the center of his forehead. His entire body relaxed, his hands unclenched, and the pain and exhaustion and need in his face fell away. Seph dropped to his knees on the turf, head bowed. “M ...my Lady,” he whispered, his voice catching in his throat. “Madison—is she—all right? Please. She never wanted any of this to happen. Don’t take her. Take me instead.”

  She gazed down at him a moment, leaned down and kissed him on the top of his head. She turned to Demus.

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Put an end to this conflict. Sort out the Roses.”

  The Lady bristled with fire. “I never wanted to rule over you. You, of all people, should know that. I wanted an academy. Collaboration among peers. Meetings of the mind and communion of the heart. Philosophy and discourse under the trees. And yet you led a conspiracy against me.”

  Demus didn’t answer for what seemed like a long time, and when he spoke, his voice fractured. “I am . . . so
tired . . . of trying to make things right. If I could undo it, I would.” He shifted back to Old Nick. “If you will not mediate this dispute, then take back your gifts. The Weirstones.”

  She gestured toward Seph and the others. “You’ve lived a long life, but they are young. Their Weirstones are a great price for them to pay to cleanse you of guilt.” She smiled sadly and extended her hand. “Nicodemus. The age of dragons is past. I’m going back to sleep in the mountain. Come with me and rest.”

  “The Roses will annihilate or enslave the other guilds.” Nick met Madison’s eyes, then looked away. “Then they will murder each other. They’ll destroy the world.”

  The Lady shrugged, as if to say, Who cares? Then she seemed to take pity on Nick. “It’s too late, anyway. I have abdicated in favor of the girl,” Lady Aidan said.

  Nick’s head came up. “What?”

  “The girl is a blooded descendant of the Dragonguard. She wears the stone of that lineage. I name her the heir of the Dragonheart, the giver and taker of power. If you want someone to rule over you, she can do it.”

  Now, wait just a minute, Madison thought, rattling against confinement like a marble in a jar. Who’s this girl you’re talking about?

  Nick cleared his throat. “But . . . so much power in the hands of one person.”

  The Lady Aidan shrugged carelessly. “She does not want it, either,” she said. “And that is a hopeful sign. Let’s trust her to make good use of it, shall we?”

  “But, my Lady . . .”

  The Lady drew herself up. “Good-bye, Demus. You know where to find me.” Madison felt the touch of the Lady’s mind as she departed—and was suddenly and terribly alone.

  The green landscape faded, and the stone walls of the church closed in again. The others stirred, as if a spell were broken.

  Madison looked down at herself. Her vision swam, and she knew she must be hallucinating. Her skin still glowed, and she seemed to morph subtly from one shape to another—from a girl in jeans and a denim jacket to the Lady with jeweled skin to something more dragonlike. Her skin glittered when the light hit it just so, and flame seemed to trail her gestures.