Redheart (Leland Dragon Series)

by Jackie Gamber

  “Oweringsforvorham!” Layce squealed.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming.” Jastin felt around in the seam of his vest for the lump of crystal fastened inside. “Can’t remember how the thing—”

  His legs tingled. His head swarmed with trapped bees, buzzing so loud inside his ears that his head wanted to burst. He clamped his free hand to his forehead, and was just about to shout, when all went dark and silent.

  The ground felt hard and smooth beneath his boots. When he looked down, he saw himself illuminated in orange light that rose up like a haze from the hefty crystal in the floor. The familiar scent of dank stone slowly eked its way into his consciousness. Linen clothing rustled a few feet away.

  “Jastin?” asked Layce’s surprised voice. “What are you doing here?”

  His eyes adjusted enough to see the outline of the woman’s robe. He moved toward her. “You said something about Vorham. I thought he needed me.”

  Layce snorted and tugged his arm. She led him into the adjoining room, which blinded him with torchlight. He squinted, trying to recognize the place. Purple velvet hung like thick walls, sectioning the room into three areas. One area held a large mound of succulent purple padding. In another, leather books appeared to have reproduced and mutinied the few shelves meant to contain them. Tomes were stacked in crooked piles atop the shelves and beneath the shelves, and the piles were advancing across the floor toward a puny willow desk that huddled among the mess like a defeated prey awaiting when its time, too, would come. Jastin thought he’d been in every room in Riddess castle, from the high towers to the foulest dungeon, but this room he didn’t know.

  “Of course you don’t know it, I’ve never had you in my bedroom.”

  “You’ve never offered,” he said.

  Layce propped a fist on a bony hip. Her black hair was pulled into a high ponytail that lagged aside as she stared at him. Her face was just starting to lose the battle with age, but the soft blue of her robe matched the soft blue of her eyes, and Jastin often found himself staring more at her eyes than her wrinkles. “Why did you come back?” she asked.

  “I told you, I heard you mention Vorham, and I thought you needed me to.”

  She shook her head, one hand waving. “I was just checking in on his behalf.” Then she clasped her hands together. She smiled. “And it worked, didn’t it? It’s a tricky spell, the connection between amulets is so tenuous.” She reached into the collar of her robe and drew out a chip of green stone tied to a leather thong. “Only the finest wizards can manage it.” Her chin lifted.

  Jastin eyed the necklace. “Was I supposed to understand what you were saying?”

  “Of course!” She propped both fists on her hips now. “What’s the point of long distance communication if there’s no communicating going on?”

  “I couldn’t understand a blasted thing.”

  Layce blinked. She straightened her shoulders. “What are you saying?”

  Jastin knew he didn’t have to say it aloud.

  Her face colored in like a blotchy, red tomato. “I’ll have you know my father taught me everything he knew. The Phelcher name is synonymous with magic. Great magic.” She whirled and marched toward a purple curtain, threw it aside, and tugged a dusty tome from the top of a pile on the floor. “Must be the spell itself.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Jastin considered teasing her about it, but he’d left Blade too long already, miles away in that dying province of Leland. He pressed his fingers to the back of his stiff neck and rolled his shoulders. “So, if there’s nothing you need…”

  Layce looked up from her book. At some point, she’d pinched a set of wire-rimmed spectacles to the bridge of her nose. Her blue eyes stared so enormously through them that from across the room he could see flecks of silver within the irises. “I did everything right, according to this. I just don’t understand.” She tapped a sinuous finger to her chin.

  “It’s not a scrying stone, is it? You haven’t been watching me.” Jastin clenched his jaw at the thought. “I wouldn’t have agreed to any of this if that’s so.” His brother-in-law, Vorham Riddess, had manipulated him into carrying a wistful crystal in his vest, and that was insulting enough. Jastin didn’t trust magic any more than he trusted the creatures who wielded it, dragon or human.

  “Well. Thank you very much.” Layce sniffed. She slapped her book closed.

  “Is it a scrying stone?” Jastin repeated, his face warming with anger.

  She pursed her lips. She stood, leaning toward him, her eyes looming large and ridiculous through her lenses.

  “Layce,” he said, trying to sound patient but knowing he didn’t.

  “Oh, it’s not a scrying stone, you big oaf.” She plucked her spectacles from her nose and closed them in her fist. “It was just an experiment.”

  He didn’t like that thought any more than being watched. “I don’t like surprises. If you’ve got more ‘experiments’ planned, you’d better tell me right now.”

  “You take yourself so seriously. I suppose people have told you that.”

  “What other crystals have you hidden in my things?” He took a step toward her. He would throttle the information out of her if he had to.

  “It isn’t a healthy way to live, being so serious. In all the time I’ve worked here for your brother-in-law, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you smile.” She looked right at him, with blue, blue eyes, wide and unblinking.

  He felt a nudge somewhere in his mind. An impulse suggested itself, tempting him to grab her arm and wrench it behind her. At first he thought it was his own idea, because he’d already considered doing something similar, but the longer he stared into Layce’s eyes, the more he sensed how unnatural it felt. As though she wanted him to do it.

  If that were the case, he’d fight it, simply for spite. He held up his hands and turned his head. “I’m not going to hurt you, Layce. I just want an answer.”

  “Oh fiddle.” The disappointment in her voice made him look back at her face. Her bottom lip poked out. “I wanted to try out the irritation crystal I’ve been working on. You were supposed to touch me and get a shock.”

  “You wanted me to hurt you?”

  She huffed. “Of course not. But it was the only suggestion I thought you’d receive.”

  Now Jastin really did want to twist her arm behind her back. He clenched his hands, resisting, only to avoid the consequence of her irresponsible magic. “Don’t ever get in my mind again.”

  “No, I didn’t quite do it right, anyway. Hmm.” She turned, reaching again for a book. “I’m sure I sequenced the descent right. The spell must have been transcribed incorrectly.”

  She’d been toying with him for so long his anger and surprise and confusion were all twisted together into a thick rope that choked his ability to think straight. He just wanted out of there, back to where his body and his mind were under his own control.

  But first, he needed an answer. “What other crystals do you have in my things?”

  She shook her head, finger drawing over parchment. “I won’t know until I try a different sequence, of course.” She closed the book. “Maybe I’m wearing too many at once. They may be interfering with each other.”

  “Layce!”

  She startled, and looked over at him. “Oh. Oh, that. There aren’t any more, just the one.”

  He didn’t believe her.

  “Would I lie to you?”

  “I can’t concentrate on what I need to do if I’m going to be worried about who’s watching, or if the trees are going to break into a jig.”

  “I’m flattered! Only one wizard has ever been able to get a tree to dance. Though it was more of a sway, really.” Layce reached her arms over her head, closed her eyes, and rocked left to right. “Legendary.”

  He didn’t have much choice but to hope she was telling the truth. For a split second, he almost wished he did have magic to find out.

  Her eyes popped open. “I could teach you. Theoretically. Though a person checking for hon
esty needs to be righteously honest himself, so, frankly, you’d be a real challenge.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I could try to explain, but it would be like trying to tell a kutterbug that it’s yellow, not brown. First, the kutterbug has to be taught what the color yellow is.”

  “Now you’re calling me a bug?”

  She shrugged, and inspected the ceiling.

  “I make no excuses for what I do, or why I do it. I know what I am. That’s more honesty than a lot of people can handle.”

  “Of course it is.” Her gaze remained fixed on the ceiling.

  Jastin groaned. Here he was, justifying himself to this loony wizard. She’d gotten him again, somehow. Time to cut his losses and get back to business. He turned once more from her doorway.

  “You remember how to use the wistful crystal?” she called.

  He stopped himself from snarling, but he did snap, “I’m not a child!”

  When she didn’t reply, he considered it a small victory. He stepped into the dark place off her bedroom and moved closer to the smooth lump of orange, glowing stone on the floor. “Just curious, but why did I come back to this room, instead of the place in the woods where you broke off the shard for me?”

  She appeared in the doorway. “I had the origin stone dug up and brought here. The shard returns to wherever the origin stone is, and I felt safer guarding it.” She looked down at her fingernails. “Not that I’m trustworthy, or anything.”

  “It’s nothing personal.”

  “No, I know. Once you start trusting people, you might have to believe they could be sincere, which gives them actual merit. Soon, you’d have to completely rethink the color yellow.”

  “I’ve had enough lecturing for one day, thanks.”

  “So go on. You must be worried about your mare.”

  “He’s a stallion.”

  “Whatever.”

  Jastin looked down at the orange stone and cringed. He could feel Layce smiling at him, but he wasn’t amused. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

  She shuffled closer. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Fine. I don’t remember how to use the crystal.” He refused to be embarrassed. He wouldn’t let her have that.

  “Just climb on, it’s easy. Well, not as easy as returning. The shard does most of the work then, because it always wants to come back home, so to speak.”

  He stepped onto the stone. “Last time we went over this, I don’t believe you mentioned the headache that tried to split my brain.”

  “Didn’t I?” she blinked blue eyes and smiled.

  “If Vorham asks, this never happened.”

  “I won’t tell him if you won’t. He’d be upset to find out my experiment got you off schedule.”

  “Not an easy man to work for. Why do you stay?”

  Layce shrugged, her eyes going unfocused as she considered. Jastin guessed she considered it a lot. “Not many choices. Most venurs don’t even keep wizards, with so few dragons to liaison.”

  “I don’t know of any vassal dragons left here in Esra.”

  Layce shook her head. “No, but there are many dragons in the Leland Mountains, aren’t there?”

  Jastin didn’t know why he was surprised, but his brows went up, anyway. “If you know why I’m going, why are you helping?”

  She shrugged again, but her eyes came back into focus. “The future is guided by a hand much stronger than mine. I may not like the part I play, but I do it so I can see the end as it is meant to be.”

  Jastin nodded. “As it is meant to be.”

  Layce smiled. “You know, you got a look in your eyes just now that seems almost human. You should try that again sometime.”

  He let the remark go, and just shook his head. He gripped the crystal shard sewn into his vest. “Can we do this please?”

  “Right. Just think pleasant thoughts about why you took the shard where you did. Picture it fondly, and it will whisk you back to the last place you used it.”

  “My horse is there.”

  “Good. Use that.” She leaned toward him. “There’s that look again. Twice in one conversation. Makes me see you a little differently.”

  Jastin closed his eyes and tried to picture Blade. He truly did want to be back there now.

  “Makes me wonder if I was a little younger, and you a little older…,” murmured Layce. “Well, not just older, but more mature, too. Gentler, and less selfish, maybe. In fact, if you could become an entirely different person…”

  Her voice faded. His stomach wrenched, and he struggled to stay upright. The droning flies attacked his brain again, swarming violently and shuddering his head. Then he felt crunchy grass beneath his feet, and heard a loud, irritated whinny.

  Blade pressed his muzzle against Jastin’s shoulder, and Jastin gripped it to steady himself. “I told you I’d be right back.”

  Blade snorted.

  The sound reminded him of Layce. He’d forgotten to ask her where she’d put the stone that let her speak through the horse. He couldn’t have that. He had to find the stone and destroy it. He pulled Blade’s face close, and looked into his eyes. “Layce!”

  “Yes?” came her voice through Blade’s open mouth.

  “Where’s the stone you put on my mount?”

  “Fizzitmeallenwhum,” said the horse.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kallon shot up from the lake and blasted a stream through his teeth. Water rained down like a thunderstorm, showering the lake, the shore, and the girl. She squealed and ran for cover under a tall elm.

  “Not going to swim?” he asked.

  She peered out from under leafy branches, suspicious. Then she smiled, and he felt an unexpected churn of warmth in his belly.

  “I’d like to,” she said. “But I don’t want to ruin my dress.”

  “Can’t remove it?”

  Her face flared red. He loped out onto shore, and stuck his snout near her nose to get a better look. “Feel all right?”

  “Feel fine.” She smoothed her hair from her face.

  “Thought you were enjoying yourself. Thought you were going to swim with me.” He could hear the disappointment in his own voice, and was embarrassed by it. He looked away toward the water.

  “I do want to,” she said.

  There was a long silence as he stared out onto the glassy surface of the sapphire lake. The air was as thick with heat as a forest fire. He was thirsty again, but somehow the thought of swimming had lost its appeal.

  “Very well,” said the girl again. “Close your eyes.”

  “Close my eyes?”

  “Yes, I’m going to jump in. Close your eyes.”

  He snorted, but he did so. “When do I open them?”

  There was a tiny sound of splashing water, like a pebble striking the water’s surface. “Now you can open them,” she said.

  He found the girl treading water. With a bleat, he charged toward her. Water careened off his chest as he plunged, then he dove headfirst.

  He swam deep toward the bottom, beating his wings slowly to let the water above him settle. To let her wonder where he’d gone. When the water cleared, he spotted her waving legs, and rushed them. He blasted a stream as he did before, and jettisoned the girl straight up into the air.

  She shrieked, arms and legs flailing. She arched high, higher than he meant to send her, and, still shrieking, she landed with an impressive splash. She went silent, and floated on the water like a wispy patch of fog.

  He gulped. He called out as he paddled toward her, “Human? You all right?” No reply. She was facedown. He bumped her with his snout to turn her over. “Human?”

  “Boo!” She sprang at him, latched onto his neck, and erupted into laughter.

  “I thought you were dead!”

  She released him and pushed off to give him a stern look. “You were the one who sent me flying!” Then her expression fizzled, and she laughed again. “I fooled you.”

  Despite himself, a sm
ile tugged at his lips. “You did.” A quiet rumble worked its way out of his dusty lungs and exploded toward the sky. He laughed.

  “Let’s do that again,” she said. “Except this time, I’m ready for you.”

  “All right,” he said, and turned to plunge. “Here I come.”

  * * *

  Hours later, Kallon hadn’t even realized the whole day had passed until the girl mentioned. Only then did he notice the fading daylight.

  “I should be getting back,” said the girl. “If I’m missing another night they might think something’s happened to me.” She hauled herself out of the water and lay on the shore.

  “Who is they?”

  “Rusic and Jaspar. Rusic owns the tavern where I work. Jaspar tends the bar.” She stood, water cascading down her pale skin. Watching her walk, he realized how thin and fragile she really was. How did humans manage on their own?

  “I’ll take you as close to the village as I can. I can’t be seen, though. Your village has not welcomed dragons for a long time.”

  “Why not?” she asked, as she stepped into her dress.

  “Many human villages do not welcome dragons any more. They do not trust us. We do not trust them. It’s the way of things.”

  “My village, I mean, my first village, the one where I grew up, would not welcome you. I don’t even think they believe dragons still exist.”

  Kallon came onto shore, too. “That’s why you were so terrified of me, in the beginning.”

  The girl lowered her chin. “Yes, I suppose that’s why.” She drew closer, and touched her cool hand to his leg. “I’m sorry.”

  He peered down into her face. His snout nearly brushed her nose, but she didn’t step back or pull away. The little human didn’t flinch or wrinkle her nose; she simply looked up at him with eyes the green of fir trees. He smiled.

  “Why don’t you ever call me Riza?” she asked.

  “Hm?”

  “You never use my name. You always call me ‘Human’.”

  “But you are a human.”

  “Yes. But I have a name. Friends call each other by their names, not by…” She looked away, and reached out to climb onto him. “But, never mind. I forgot.”