The Curse of Arkady (2 page)

He had no more time to wonder!

The wolfjackals trotted into the cavern chamber now and raced once around the stone-and-marble tomb, then surrounded it, growling, crouched low on their paws. He could smell their heated breath and drool, like putrid steam upon the icy air. The leader paced forward, his tail making one slow wag of triumph.

He opened his sharp-toothed lined jowls, hunching his neck and shoulders in the painful effort to speak like a human. “You are
mine,
” he reminded Jason, and ran his scalding raspy tongue over the throbbing hurt that Jason's left hand had become.

The pain of it jolted him. So shocking was it, that he flinched wildly, throwing himself off the tomb. He smashed onto the floor. The wolfjackals scattered as he landed, and the pain of hitting the stone with his cold brittle body shattered his dream into a thousand sharp pieces and he . . .

Came awake.

Jason lifted his face from the lined paper under his hand. A string of drool followed him, and he wiped it away quickly. His notebook lay across his desk, open, and he'd been working on homework. WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION. Under it he had written: Found out I was a Magicker. And then he crossed that out. Learned to use crystals for Magick. Scribbled across that. Made new friends in summer camp. That had stayed. Was bitten by a wolfjackal and fought off the Dark Hand of Brennard. . . . His pencil lay over that line, as if he hadn't quite got a chance to blacken through it before he'd fallen asleep.

He lifted his other hand, stretching. From his attic bedroom, he could hear the normal, comforting sounds of the McIntires down below in the entertainment room, laughing at something on television. The hearty bellow of William “the Dozer's” big laugh, echoed by the more delicate tones of both Joanna and Alicia sounded faintly to his ears, ever so much better than the eerie wailing of wolfjackals. He took several breaths.

The porthole window of his attic bedroom stood open to the night breeze, which had grown very cold, and he leaned over, closing it. He knocked down his latest Mercedes Lackey book while doing so, and the unicorn bookmark in it fell out. Jason left it lying there on the carpeted corner near his bookcase. No one would bother it. This was his part of the world and nothing uninvited ever pulled down the trapdoor stair to come in. He liked it like that.

Jason tore the paper out of his notebook and wadded it up. With serious thoughts in mind, he pushed his dream away, and began to craft an essay that would make his Honors English teacher happy and not mark him as a candidate for a straitjacket. His room gained some warmth as he wrote of bright summer days and campfires and friends like Bailey with her twisted sayings and the pack rat she'd captured for a pet after it had pilfered many shiny items from her cabin. The words flew across the pages. Not once did he say anything that would jeopardize any of his comrades as Magickers in a world that knew nothing about them.

He came to a stop as he tried to finish the paper. What he had really done on his summer vacation was learned a lot about himself, as well as making new friends. But how much of it did he dare reveal? He tapped his pencil point on the desktop, pondering. Tap, tap. Although the time spent at Camp Ravenwyng was weeks in the past, his thoughts seemed to be stalled back there.

TAP, TAP.

Jason jumped in his chair.

TAP.

He stood up, glaring at his window. A black shape winged past it, and Jason threw himself at the pane, to catch a glimpse of it as it flew past. Raven, again!

He opened his stair and clattered down them, determined to catch a glimpse of the bird, if he could. He grabbed the trash from the kitchen as he went, it was his night anyway, and could serve as a cover. Then he headed out the back door, into the night-darkened backyard and driveway where the Dozer had the trash cans lined up like solemn soldiers. He tossed his bag in the appropriate can . . . not “Papers Only,” or “Yard Cuttings!,” but the one marked “Plain Old Garbage,” then ducked across the yard, where he could see the yellow moon glowing through the eucalyptus and slippery elm trees.

The darker-than-night bird wheeled over him, gliding as silently through the sky as an owl. He knew it! He knew that had been no crow . . . that was a raven, and undoubtedly one of Tomaz Crowfeather's. It had been too quiet in the weeks since summer camp's abrupt ending. Far, far too quiet. He hadn't had a Tomb dream in all that time either. Something was up! But what?

He raised his hand, rather like a falconer, as he'd seen Tomaz do. The Native American had struck a far different figure than he did . . . a grown man, with a face lined by the sun, hair banded at the nape of his neck, always in comfortable blue jeans and vest and shirt, hammered silver disks and turquoise stone jewelry studding his waist, his wrists, his neck. But Jason stood there expectantly, anyway.

The raven circled above him. It dove at his hand, passing it, the wind from its wings slapping his open palm. Then, with a cry, the bird dropped something into the dewed grass and disappeared into the darkness.

He picked it out of a tangled spiderweb in the corner, strands holding it tightly for him, keeping the paper from being carried off by the faint night breeze. He tucked it into his pocket and hurried back into the house. His step on the stair caught Joanna's attention, and she called out from the TV room, “Jason?”

“Yes, Mom. I just took the trash out so I wouldn't forget it. I'm almost finished with my homework.”

“Good!” Although he couldn't see her, he could hear the pleased smile in her voice.

Without further interruption, he hurried back to his attic bedroom, pulled the stair up and secured it. Then, and only then, did he take the paper out and flatten it to be readable.

He knew it! There
was
danger lurking nearby. “What on Earth is the Curse of Arkady?”

“A thing to be feared and watched out for, it seems.”

Jason whirled around in his chair. “Gavan!”

The headmaster of Camp Ravenwyng leaned against his porthole window, his unexpected presence filling the room. “You rang?”

“In my dream—”

Gavan frowned slightly. He straightened up, drawing his cape about him, and bringing his wolfhead cane up to look into the crystal held by the pewter creature's wide jaws. “You set off the alarm beacon through your dreams? That's power, Jason. Good and bad.” He rubbed his palm over his cane as if communing with his crystal. “I think I'll have Tomaz visit you again, give you some more instruction on dreamwalking. Yours seem to be very potent, and yet you have to be able to read and control them.”

“What more can he tell me?”

“I'm not sure.” Gavan gave him a lopsided grin. “Tomaz is a man of infinite depths. His knowledge of other ways of magic is vast, and I'm still learning about it myself. But this I know.” Gavan Rainwater stared into his face with eyes of crystal clear freshwater blue. “We can't afford to have you scared, Jason. A Gatekeeper has to be strong and curious, ready to explore, and wary enough to handle what he finds. I've a friend, Fizziwig, who will be training you for that, but in the meantime, we have to help you find a balance.”

“I'm not scared.”

Gavan reached out and put a hand on Jason's shoulder. “No?”

“Not that scared anyway.”

“Good. If you were that scared, you couldn't think, and we need you to keep your wits about you. We are spread thin, Jason, watching over all of you, and there will be times when none of us can come to your aid, despite the alarm beacon.”

Jason tapped his note. “Then that's why Tomaz sent this. A warning to keep us ready.”

“What is that?”

Jason passed it over. Gavan scanned it, and handed it back with a sigh. “He dares what he shouldn't, and in all of our names. The Council will be furious over this, but perhaps he's right. We debated this, and the Council voted not to frighten everyone unduly. Tomaz and I disagreed, but we were outvoted. Evidently, Tomaz took the warning upon himself.” Gavan rubbed his jaw. “If I can't stop the Council from bickering, we're not going to be able to face Brennard. You should all know there are risks out there now, of being found and attacked and not just by the Dark Hand.”

“So there is a curse.”

Gavan nodded slowly. “A curse that can be dark and deadly. Gather the others, and warn them if they haven't been already, and learn to guard yourselves. Take care of each other, Jason.” He tapped the head of his cane, and his very body seemed to grow thin and disappear. His voice lingered after he'd vanished, saying, “Do all that is within your power to do!”

“I will!” pledged Jason, and the Magicker was gone. It was only then that Jason realized Gavan hadn't told him what the Curse of Arkady was.

“W
HEN are we seven met again?” asked Bailey, her voice hollow and thready, pitched to send echoes through the air and raise the fine hairs at the back of everyone's neck.

Trent wadded up a piece of paper and threw it at her. It bounced off her freckled nose and into the pocket of her shirt. “We're in my backyard and we're only here till my dad gets home!” he snorted, unimpressed.

The pocket rippled and bumped and squeaked, and the paper wad was abruptly ejected, followed by the whiskered and curious face of the pocket's occupant. Lacey let out an indignant chirp, cleaned her pack rat face with tiny paws, and dove back into Bailey's pocket, leaving only her tufted tail hanging out. Grinning, Bailey tucked that back in, as well.

Sounded good, though!”

Ting smiled slightly as she smoothed a dark wing of hair from her oval face, her almond-shaped eyes lighting with a quiet humor. “You always sound good, Bailey. It's the mind behind the words. . . .” Her sentence trailed off. She folded her hands in her lap and bumped her shoulder against her friend's as if to emphasize the tease.

“Yeah, yeah.” Rich and Stefan had been playing cards, as usual. Stefan gathered them into his big, chunky hands as he turned his attention to the meeting. “I got football practice in thirty minutes. This had better be good.”

Getting them all together at one time was no small feat, and Jason could only thank a slow Saturday morning for the timing. He'd sent a summons by crystal, but it had taken days to get them together here. He fished out the raven-delivered paper. “Anyone besides me get this from Tomaz?”

Bailey's hand shot up. Ting frowned, then shook her head. Rich grunted and both the redhead and his chunky pal nodded. Danno's answer was to pull out a similar piece of paper from inside his jacket. Trent shook his head in the negative. “What's up?”

“It's a warning.”

“Trouble?” Trent's eyes lit up. “And they're worried we might get into it?”

“I think,” said Danno quietly, “we've got enough problems with the Dark Hand. Fair warning against anyone or anything else is good.” He wrapped his arms about his legs, darker Latino face a contrast to the cream color of his shirt.

“But no one's been bothered, have they? School's been going, days and weeks are passing. I think it's all a bunch of hooey cooked up to keep us quiet.”

Stefan echoed Rich's scoff. “Yeah. Like homework.”

“Homework is cooked up to help us learn,” remarked Ting. She stared at her slender hands in her lap.

Jason sat down on a big rock that occupied most of the corner of Trent's small patch of yard. “I think,” he offered, “that we can expect the Dark Hand, just like the Magickers, to be recovering from the battle at Ravenwyng. First we defeated their spy Jonnard, and then the others. They've probably been catching their breath, and now they're getting ready to strike again. I don't think they'll have wolfjackals to help them, but they could be anyone, anywhere, tracking us.”

“Why no wolfjackals?”

Jason shrugged. “They need a lot of mana. My guess is they stay close to Havens and Gates. But members of the Hand are just like anyone.”

Rich rolled his eyes. “Like they can find us. There's only how many million people in the country now?” Trent shot him a look. “You think they couldn't?”

“I think,” Rich said, tilting his head in Trent's direction, “that we're small fish to them.”

“Not so small,” Bailey muttered. “Remember what Jon did to Henry Squibb!”

They all sat in silence for a moment thinking of round-faced, funny, and smart Henry who'd had his newly found Magicker powers destroyed by the traitor Jonnard. The discovery that Jon had been a thief, traitor, and destroyer had shocked them all. Ting let out a little sigh. “I see Henry sometimes,” she said. “At our dentist. I can't tell if he remembers me or not.”

The Magickers had ways of protecting their existence, and one of them had been used on Henry after the disastrous theft of his fledgling powers. It had sent him home in a baffled, cheerful, totally clueless state. Not that Henry had been all that different, but . . . well, he
had
been magickal. “You don't think he does?”

She shook her head. “I don't think so.”

Trent said quietly, “I miss Henry.”

“Me, too.” Danno scratched his hand through thick, dark hair. “Think we'd get in trouble with . . . them . . . if we said hi or something?”

“I don't think we'd get in trouble, but would it be fair to Henry? Seems to me, he's better off not knowing what he lost. Ignorance is bliss and all that.”

Bailey glanced at Trent. “I thought it was ‘Ignorance is best,' ” she said. Trent nudged her. “You would!” acknowledging that Bailey seemed to have a bottomless source for her slightly twisted sayings.