“It’s too narrow.”
“Just do it.”
We turn into an incredibly narrow little cobblestoned lane, and suddenly the lights and the music and the crowds are gone.
“Have we lost them?”
“Not yet. Turn right and then keep going.”
We drive through a gate into what looks like a small harbor: there are crates and boats and the overwhelming smell of sea and salt and oil and fish.
“Right again.”
We’re on a tiny gravel road now, heading straight to the water.
“Okay. What now?”
“Just keep going.”
“You want me to drive into the ocean?”
“There is no ocean. We’re in the middle of a landlocked state.”
Next to me, Jonathan’s eyes are glowing with an eerie green light. The rest of his face is completely impassive, as if he’s sleeping.
“Don’t slow down. You’re losing speed.”
“We’re heading straight into the water!”
“You need to pick up speed now.”
Gunn curses, but I feel the car accelerating. “You’d better be right about this.”
And then we’re flying through the air and crashing into the water, the cold seawater a shock of briny—
The sun now blazing in the sky.
The air blue and clear and cloudless.
Miles of open road ahead.
*
“Did you see that?”
When Jonathan finally lets go of the spell, he’s jubilant. “How incredible was that? That was the best Enthrallment spell I’ve ever seen!” He turns to me and grabs my hands. “You were right! They did help me! And it was so easy. Much easier than before! I didn’t need to take their power or guide them in any way. I simply wished for something to appear, and there it was! It was as if my thoughts could create reality itself, as if the whole world had to bend to my will!”
“It was pretty amazing.” I can’t help smiling at his boyish enthusiasm.
“And it wasn’t like the last time; it wasn’t scary at all! My mom was still my mom and Amber was still Amber and I knew they’d never hurt me. Oh God, I could feel them, right there, beside me. So much raw power. It was—”
“It was stupid,” Zig interrupts him. “Stupid and wasteful. There was no need for such detailed world-building.”
“It worked though.” A wide, delighted grin.
“A simple confusion spell would’ve been enough. Now we’re going to lose hours.”
I look at my watch. About thirty-five minutes have passed since we stopped at the Pendragon gates. “We haven’t lost that much time.”
“But we will,” Gunn says. “Jonathan will have to go into his resting state soon. And you know we can’t travel while he’s resting.”
“Really?” I stare at Jonathan in amazement. “You have to rest too?”
The thought is surprisingly comforting.
“I don’t think so,” he says uncertainly. “I’ve never had to do it before.” He thinks for a minute. “Even that time when I concealed the plane, I was fine afterward, and that was a two-hour flight.”
“Yes, but then the half-dragons could carry the consequences for you,” Gunn says. “They can’t do it now, not without your father noticing.”
“Is that how it works?” Jonathan asks Zig.
“Yes.”
“But I feel fine. I feel great!”
Something about the way he says it, a note of triumph in his voice perhaps, makes me look at Jonathan more closely. He does look good in that slick, expensive way of his, but there’s nothing about him that I find particularly attractive anymore. On the contrary, suddenly there’s something vaguely reptilian about him; for the first time I can clearly see that he’s his father’s son.
“We’ll need to stop soon anyway,” Gunn says. “We can book him into a motel if all else fails.”
“I told you. I feel great! There’s no need to worry about me.”
“Now that I think about it, a motel might not be a bad idea,” Gunn continues. “We need to ditch the car, which might take a bit of time if we do it right. And it could get tricky to find a new one fast without them tracing us.”
“Surely you must have planned for this kind of situation?” Zig sounds irritated.
“Yes,” Gunn says. “But I don’t want to burn through the fake identities too soon. The White Lady is a bigger threat than Jack Pendragon, for now. We can sort out the details while Jonathan is in his resting state.”
“I don’t have to rest. I’ve never felt better in my life!”
“We’ll have to make sure nobody sees him,” Zig says.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because he’s shining,” Gunn says.
I look at Jonathan again, but apart from the unattractive reptilian vibe he’s suddenly got going, I can’t see anything different about him.
“Are you telling me I’m actually shining?” Jonathan grins, pleased. “Like she does? Like, enough to enslave people?”
“Not like her, no. And definitely not enough to enslave anyone. But you’ll certainly draw attention to yourself, and that’s the very last thing we need right now.”
“If we stop at the next town, I’ll deal with the cars,” Zig says.
“There’s a motel up ahead, about twenty miles from here,” Gunn says. “He can rest while you sort it out.”
“I told you. I don’t need to rest. I’ve never felt better in my life!”
Gunn sighs. Zig scowls. I roll my eyes.
In the end he remains in a resting state for almost forty hours.
I spend the time hiding in the room with him because I’m afraid my firemagic might get out of control in public. I’m so done with turning people into slobbering zombie slaves.
The motel room is soulless and generic and perfectly adequate. I rest for twenty minutes or so to compensate for the magic I used on Jacob and Paula, and then I spend most of the time on Gunn’s phone, reading up on all the latest conspiracy theories concerning Jezebel Sarkany, the infamous schoolgirl hero/murdering bitch. The good news is that the story is finally beginning to die a natural death. The bad news is that the stuff out there now is so batshit insane that I literally can’t even.
Zig gets rid of Gunn’s car and finds a new one. We don’t ask him how he managed it and he doesn’t volunteer any information. Gunn gets burgers from the local diner and later we share a pizza. I sleep for a while. We leave as soon as Jonathan wakes up.
Once we’re on the road again, Zig and Gunn take turns to drive. They stick to the back roads, avoiding the big towns and cities and making use of Jonathan’s new Enthrallment skills whenever they sense any trouble. We sleep in the car, mostly, only stopping when Jonathan needs to go into his resting state, but this happens less and less often as he gets better at spinning his illusions.
At one stage—I’m pretty sure—we get onto a bus. And then a small plane. I think. It’s difficult to say with any certainty because reality becomes increasingly dreamlike and fluid as Jonathan’s Enthrallment spells became subtler and more convincing.
What I do know is that we travel for at least three days. There are taxis and a train and another boat. We might have been in a city or we might not. I’m pretty sure I saw the ocean from the window of a plane.
And then, finally, we step from a small dingy onto dry land, and my senses reel as Jonathan’s spell recedes and nature comes rushing toward me in all its living green glory.
Chapter 7
The First came from Chaos
and knew destruction
The Second came from Will
and knew creation
The Third came from Wonder
and knew marvel
The Fourth came from Darkness
and knew evil
The Fifth came from Light
and knew good
The Sixth came from Fire
and knew burning
The Seventh came from Air
an
d knew breath
The Eight came from Water
and knew thirst
The Ninth came from Earth
and knew growth
The Tenth came from Blood
and knew what it was to be human
From Collected Wisdom of the Seaprophets (first printed in 1709). This translation, from the original Japanese, by Asahi Ito (1948).
The rainforest opens up and I fall into it.
The dappled green light. The rich, heavy air. The sweet, rotten smell of damp leaves. The luminous sacredness of life in all its shimmering, vibrating, mysterious glory. There are trees all around me: green and old and endlessly tall. There are creeping vines and climbing roots and fallen branches, all twisting and crawling and growing and alive.
Life comes spiraling at me from all directions, pulsing with energy, completely irresistible. Beneath my feet: a frenzy of scurrying ants, a vastness of tiny insects, a nest of deadly scorpions. Above my head: squawking parrots and fluttering butterflies and sleeping bats and hidden owls. There are vipers and monkeys and sloths in the high trees; there are spiders and lizards and tortoises in the low shrubs; there are iguanas and capybaras and caimans sunning themselves on the wide muddy banks; there is a lone jaguar not too far from here, hidden and alert and waiting.
Ah, the overwhelming abundance of this treasure.
The magnitude of these riches!
I give myself up to the dizzying depth and variety of life around me, dissolving in its beauty like a flame in a fire until the sounds of the forest, a soft hum just a moment ago, becomes a whirring, buzzing, chirping, trilling, squawking, crashing whoosh, a dizzy-making, heartbreaking, earthshaking thunderous waterfall of noise and color and energy and power. I dive into that waterfall, allowing the dividing line between me and the forest to melt away until everything around me becomes illuminated.
Fire.
A blazing, blistering inferno.
So many spiritfires, all burning together.
The entire world alight with the spiritfire that all living things share—a miracle beyond comprehension.
Oh! The dazzling beauty of this world!
I turn to the three men who have brought me to this place of majesty and wonder. “My thanks to you, young keepers. You have done well to bring me here.”
“I am not your keeper.”
One of them, a lean, tattooed young man, sneers at me, his strangely pale eyes raw and vicious.
I look closer.
Indeed. This is no keeper. This one follows an older and more sorrowful path.
“I am pleased to see you here at my side,” I tell him. “There are not many of your kind who still remember their primary duty.”
“My duty is not to you,” he hisses, but I find myself unable to focus on his words, mesmerized as I am by the beauty of his inner fire.
“Your spiritfire is pure and true,” I tell him, “and completely unblemished by any borrowed magic. You are a credit to your line.”
For a brief moment the warm glow of his rare golden spiritfire burns even brighter. But then he catches himself and I watch, fascinated, as his lips start moving, slowly at first and then more frantically. He is reciting a poem, I realize, and with every word the gorgeous golden blaze of his inner fire dims just the slightest bit.
“Why would you knowingly dull the splendor of your spirit?” I ask him, perplexed by his strange ritual. “You who have not allowed the faintest stain of darkness into your soul?”
He does not answer me, instead closing his eyes and mumbling his poem with all the fervor of the desperate.
I turn my gaze to his companions. “Why does this young man punish himself so? Why can he not revel in his own beauty, his strength and freedom? Why does he darken the brightness of his true feelings with such petty ideas and inane phrases?”
The man who answers me has stoked his outer magical fire so brightly that the colors of his spirit are hidden from me. But even so, I recognize his face.
I recognize his voice too. His body. His hair. His smell.
Once, this man meant something to me. Something important.
“It’s just Zig being Zig, Jess. Remember? You know what he’s like.”
The names on his tongue are like the words of a bard’s song, heard long ago but not entirely forgotten. I open my mind, searching through the many realities I inhabit.
Oh. Yes.
I remember.
“Gunn?”
“Jess? Are you back?”
I shake my head at his ignorance. “Do you not realize? The girl you call ‘Jess’, never really leaves me. She is a part of me, as I am a part of her.”
He smiles, clearly pleased by my response, and that smile stirs something inside me— a powerful surge of emotion that I have seldom experienced, yet never forgotten.
I have no time to dwell on this unexpected sensation, however, because I sense two people approaching, a man and a woman.
The woman is the first to appear from behind the trees, her movements so swift and silent that she almost seems a part of the rainforest itself. But her physical grace is far less interesting than the inner strength she possesses, for this woman’s spiritfire blazes brightly in all the most brilliant shades of red: the crimson of passion, the scarlet of energy, the ruby red of enthusiasm, the maroon of commitment, the blood red of confidence. She is a woman of power and passion, and she vibrates with a wild and radical energy beautiful to behold.
But even her beauty cannot hold my attention once the man steps into my field of vision.
I feel my heart contracting painfully. First with fear, and then with hope.
The man standing before me is a giant. Someone complete in himself and completely of himself, filled to the brim with his own, glorious power.
I gaze at him in wonder.
His inner fires form a brilliant blaze, too bright for me to read, but I do not need to see him to know him. I know him by his smell.
The true smell of my kind.
We reach out to each other at the same time. He clasps both my hands in his, his skin against mine both wondrously familiar and terribly strange. Blinded by our tears, we stand frozen, hands held tightly together, for minutes and hours and centuries.
“Brother!”
In answer, he releases a stream of excited words in a language I have not mastered in any of my lives.
“Please.” I stop the flow of words as politely as I can. “I do not have knowledge of this tongue, and I long to know the meaning of your words.”
He immediately switches to a familiar language. “I apologize, my sister, last of the Tenth and now, I hear, legendary mistress of fire! I tend to forget that the human language in which I feel most at home is unknown beyond the walls of this forest.”
I smile, charmed by the grace of his apology. “I did not realize a trueborn son still lived on this world.”
“We have met before, my sister. But this happened years ago, when you wore another form entirely and my own human body was still strong and whole.”
I close my eyes, trying to remember. But as soon as I delve too deeply into the recesses of my mind, the world starts spinning until everything becomes strangely loose and confusingly unreal and treacherously beautiful.
I remember an inky black night filled with luminous stars. A woman’s hot breath against my cheek. Sweat on skin. A deal made. A price paid. A promise I could not keep.
There’s a sickening lurch in reality as I open my eyes again.
I am standing in a rainforest, and I am staring at my brother.
“Please forgive me,” I say. “I do not remember much, being as I am now, and what I do remember is unclear and confusing.”
He nods, solemnly accepting my apology. “I will gladly introduce myself to you again, daughter of the Tenth. For I am the last trueborn son of what you would call the Ninth, but what we call the Mother of the Waters, our Everchanging Snakemother.”
“Your mother passed on without leaving an heir?”
His words cause a heaviness in my chest. A certain knowledge that something dark and unforgivable was done to me.
I shake it off. Now is not the time.
“Are you the last of her sons still living?”
“I am. But together my brothers and I have sired twenty-one children to keep the dragonfire of the Ninth for you.”
Ah yes. Of course.
Dragonfire. The true name of the magical fires I have seen in those who share in my power.
“The children you spoke of. They are in my service?”
His laugh is rich and warm and not in the least bit mocking. “Apologies, my sister. Please understand that nobody here has served a firedragon in millennia. But my children well understand for whom they keep their fire, and they will flock to you as soon as you become an earthmaster. That you need not doubt.”
“Your descendants have all claimed Green?”
Another laugh. “We do not play those games around here. My descendants will have nothing to do with the so-called Order of Keepers, but live proudly as natural Earthkeepers, as free as they have always been.”
I measure his words carefully, trying to decide what I know and do not know.
“Is it not so that your own daughter sits on the Order’s council as the Green Clan’s Lady?”
“Yes, my daughter has accepted that burden, but she only made that sacrifice because you asked her to. If it hadn’t been for you, she would never willingly have left our living green home.”
I glance at the woman next to him, astonished. “I asked this of her?”
He nods gravely. “Yes. You did. In a previous incarnation, not so many years ago.”
An inky black night filled with luminous stars.
A woman’s hot breath against my cheek.
I shake my head, frustrated by my own confusion. “Forgive me, brother. The limitations of this body do not allow me to remember what you are speaking of.”
He looks me up and down, his gaze measuring. “Of course. Truth be told, I am amazed that someone who shines with so much power has managed to keep full transformation at bay. You have clearly put your theory into practice.”
Treasurekeeper Page 7
