Saying nothing in retaliation, Jonnard stared at Isabella as she paced the floor angrily in front of him, her long gown swishing and sounding like the sea driven by a high and maddened wind. He had expected nothing less than having to bear the brunt of her displeasure when he delivered the news he'd gathered while trailing Fremmler at Naria. He'd waited a day or so to tell her, knowing that she would explode in fury. He knew word of the Magickers and their academy would distress her beyond measure. He could only stand quietly until it passed. She had been raging for the better part of thirty minutes, however, and he had begun to tire of it.
“All our devices will be for nothing. Our work. We cut off their supplies, I thought! You were to see to that. The building was never to have been begun, let alone finished, and now you bring me this news.” Her eyes flashed as she looked at him, her dark hair tangled about her face as it had fallen from the gem-studded combs holding it.
He waited.
“Our bribes were in place at the Trader Guild?”
He nodded.
“Useless. Absolutely useless to me!” Isabella glared at Jonnard. He felt a muscle along his jawline jump as he kept his teeth clenched. Another moment or two of anger, and he would break, and both of them would likely to be sorry. His fingers twitched as he fought not to curl them into a fist.
She took a deep breath. “How did this happen?” Then, lifting the hem of her skirt slightly, she sat down, her back ramrod stiff, and let the elegant folds of material fall into place about her ankles. “Talk.”
“Our influence got Renart disbarred temporarily, as planned, and he was unable to procure supplies for them, as we agreed. We were also given access to the libraries for my studies, and I took advantage of warding the maps, as directed. Our locations remain undetectable. I hardly call that useless. As for the building of the academy, it appears that they hired wanderers, Gypsies if you will, who needed the work desperately. No matter what disbarment from the guilds, what whispers they heard, the wanderers are independent sorts and would judge for themselves, and evidently found a bargain to their liking. As for how they gathered their supplies, there is a black market, an underground, for almost any need, anywhere. If anyone could have tapped into it, it would have been the wanderers.” He shrugged at that. “We planned well, Mother, and I see no fault in it. The use of the wanderers can be twisted to our advantage, for the people here are suspicious of the Spirit and those who disbelieve. The wanderers are outcast for their disbelief, and the Magickers, too. I think we can still turn it to our advantage.”
“I haven't time.” Isabella raised her hands and quickly upswept her hair, replacing her combs. She looked tired, and for the most fleeting of movements, well, old. He turned his gaze away before she could catch him staring.
“I'm not saying we must restructure. Our contacts are in place, and they're doing what we hoped. The Magickers have no idea what has been working against them. It is sheer luck they've countered us despite the hostages we hold. I suggest we consider a more direct strike as well.”
Isabella lifted her chin. “Such as?”
“Wood burns.”
A hungry realization flared in her eyes. “And winter draws near.”
“A delay which even luck cannot put off.”
She lifted a hand. “Very well, then. See to it. I will not need you when we take the caravan to Naria. Fremmler can handle that.”
Jonnard gave a slight bow. He left her apartments then, and not until he was downstairs did he take a long, slow, steadying breath. Did she know how close she'd come to his answering her challenge? Did she even care?
He was not quite ready to battle her for leadership.
Not quite yet.
Downstairs, he assembled a group of five, veterans used to being Crystaled to a destination on horseback, and then raiding from there. He gave them their instructions, and told them when to prepare, before leaving them. They would be ready. He'd seen the hard lights in their eyes. They lived for mayhem. It served him now, but he made note of their names. It was never too late to plan or be wary for the future.
He would not examine the journals this night, for he had a feeling Isabella was watching him. His day would come.
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Jason stirred restlessly on his cot, with the feeling of whispering inside his head, like an annoying insect. He got up quietly, observing Trent to see if his roommate were reading late, but the bundle of blankets suggested that his friend had burrowed into a sound sleep. He stood, shivered a bit with the cold seeping through the building, and pulled a blanket off the cot to wrap it about himself. The fireplace and chimney structures would be operating soon, yet not soon enough for those Magickers with thin blood unused to winters that could bring frost and even snow soon. He padded out of the room, thinking a bit of food might help drop him back into sleep. He always seemed to be a bit hungry these days. Growing spurts, he thought. When he crept downstairs, the buzz in his head grew louder, and Jason went outside in search of it, hearing hushed words. He drew back against the side of the building.
Peeking around it, he saw Rainwater and Crowfeather, and he sensed the tension then, as well as the quiet. He started to pull back, then held very still to listen, instead.
“You should be resting,” Tomaz remarked quietly.
“I know. The days should be getting shorter, but they feel longer and longer.” Gavan shrugged into his cape and rubbed his palm over the pewter wolfhead of his cane, as if settling in his mind what he wanted to say next. “I wanted to do this now, when everyone is asleep, in case there are problems.”
Tomaz squatted by the fire which had burned to gray ashes and red glowing undercoals. He stirred it up a bit, setting flames to licking upward from within the broken stone ring. The orange illumination gave his face the look of ancient gold. He did not try to hide his worry. “I do not think this a wise thing.”
“We can do it this way, or we can spend days, weeks, combing the countryside by horseback.” Gavan scrubbed a hand wearily over his face. “I don't think Eleanora can last weeks longer.”
“We know nothing for sure. Let me send Snowheart after her.”
Gavan shook his head. “I know you can sometimes see through the eyes of your crows, Tomaz, but I need to know for certain what we find, what we can expect.”
“You cannot Crystal to a place none of us has actually seen.”
Gavan put his hand on the map tube inside his cape. “I think I can find it by the landmarks.”
“Even stone changes, given enough time.” Tomaz stood. His silver-disk belt flashed as he hooked his thumbs in it and stood, legs balanced. “Even anchored to me, I cannot help if you materialize locked in granite.”
“I know.” He fetched out the tube, handing it to Tomaz. “Each fortress had a distinctive guard tower. The one we want is studded with obsidian and the picture of it is fairly good. I should be able to Crystal near it.”
“If the fortress is manned the way its illusion showed it, you could appear in a tent camp of armed men, Gavan.”
“Let's hope I don't Crystal that close.”
Tomaz took the map with a sigh. “I shouldn't let you go, but I agree that time is no longer on our side.” He put his other hand on Gavan's shoulder. “Don't let the coyote blind you.”
Gavan gave Tomaz a lopsided smile. He rubbed his cane again, and the Herkimer diamond inside the wolf's jaws sparkled dully. He grasped it in his palm, and then was gone.
Jason lost his breath at the suddenness of it, and clenched his teeth hoping the noise hadn't been heard, but Tomaz seemed very intent as if he listened to the absence of the other. Jason wondered if he would ever see Gavan again.
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As a lad, he'd grown up knowing how to Crystal almost from the moment he could walk. He had memories of using it to cross the moors when frigid howling winds seemed to chase him, and of Crystaling down the Thames to where the grand country estates near Windsor Castle held docks on the water, and of jumping across the London bridge in wild games of crystal tag, back in the days when getting caught might mean being prosecuted for being a witch. He had never known fear. Gavan reflected there were times when he probably should have, although none more than now.
He kept the image of the obsidian tower in his head, flint-edged rock studding a gray stone tower, overlooking the rills of a rocky pass with a verdant valley down below. The pass and valley were unimportant now, and with autumn hard upon them, might already be browned by frost, but it was the tower upon which he needed to keep his inner focus. The tower and Eleanora, for he hadn't told Tomaz that she would be his anchor there, even as Crowfeather would anchor him to the academy, holding his soulstrings if he himself should fail.
Crystaling should be near instantaneous, but he hung in the coldness of
between
for many heartbeats until his bones felt the absence of the life of the world and he wondered if he had emerged already and been sunk into the stone as Tomaz warned. Yet he lived. His heart struggled to beat one more time, his lungs ached for air, and the crimson veil of blood behind his eyes fluttered as if reminding him he could look inward as well as outward.
When his body screamed silently for a breath of air, then and only then, he tumbled outward, onto the ground, hard stone smacking into his knees and palms, and he gasped, trying to breathe. He threw his head back and looked up, and saw the sharp tower not far away, as he'd pictured it but . . . in the thin gray dawn of morning.
Gavan got to his feet slowly, dusting off his hands and stowing his cane away. What had he done? He'd left at night. Now it was dawn. The inference made him shiver. He'd passed through time as well as distance. No wonder he'd nearly died
between.
He'd never known anyone who'd done it and lived. Was it the day before or the day after? No way to tell. He focused inward, felt the thread of Tomaz tied to him, and tugged it gently to let Tomaz know he lived. His only answering response was a faint warm glow inside himself, but he knew it was an acknowledgment from the other.
Thin plumes of smoke from morning fires drifted into the air from the fortress across from him. No doubt filled him now. Trent had identified this as the stronghold, and he had been right. This was the rebuilt and fully manned fortification whose image they had seen. How Trent had known it, Gavan could not say. No one in his history of Magicking had the Talent, or lack of it, or confusion of it, that that boy had. There was no naming of it, and no way to depend upon it except through blind trust.
He sank back to the ground, finding a broken boulder to shelter him, and tried to commit all that he saw to memory. He could see the trade road below, running through a pass cut by a river, for it was fringed with trees and brush, all glowing red and yellow and orange with color, thinning branches showing through as the leaf fall had already begun. The Dark Hand would take that road to Naria, and he traced the route in his mind. Waylaying the caravan too close to the fortress would be foolhardy; taking on the Dark Hand could be dangerous at best and murderous at worse. He would have to send Tomaz's crows over the trade road to get a better look at the terrain.
Gavan felt his nose and ears grow cold as he watched the fortress. He wanted to be closer. His heart and soul ached to be closer. The morning seemed so new that few walked yet, and sound seemed all muffled and hushed. He began to pick his way through prickly shrubs and broken rock, a hardscrabble of a hilltop upon which this stronghold had been built. He moved slowly, foxlike, across the ground, willing himself to be unseen, unnoticed, unheard.
For once, being chilled gladdened him, for his breath stayed invisible on the early morning air. He pulled his cape close and willed himself still as he crawled ever nearer until he could hear the raiders clearly, the first few up as they tended to the horses and built up the cook fires. His nerves tingled as he sensed the beginning of the ward lines laid down, and he knew he dare not creep closer though his eyes were drawn to a heavily shuttered window on the second floor of the stronghold itself. She had to be there. He could
feel
it.
Gavan lay there for a very long moment. The sensation pulled at him, as it had when as a young sixteen-year-old lad he'd first met the daughter of Gregory the Gray. She'd been five or six years older, a world away from him, it seemed, and all he could ever hope for was an occasional glance from her eyes or a view of her slender body as she passed by the study where her father taught Magick. To listen to her play an instrument was like listening to your own heart being drawn out and made to express itself. He had fallen hopelessly, forever, in love with Eleanora. She had noticed, of course, who wouldn't? She had the grace to neither tease nor flaunt his feelings for her. Gregory had tolerated it, saying little until, near the end, although neither of them had known it was near the end for Gregory and all those in those times, he had said to Gavan that if he had patience, eventually the age difference between them would mean little.
Gavan had taken it as a sign of encouragement, though he needed none. After seeing Eleanora, no one else could even be considered, and as long as she remained single, he'd have hopes. Then the great battle of wills happened between the rogue student Brennard, who by then was a master in his own right, and Gregory, and the power backlash from that encounter had killed many outright, throwing the others into comas and even through time. When they'd awakened, Gregory's prophecy had proved true. Time had equalized them. He'd awakened first, matured, grown, and, upon finding her, was no longer the love-struck youth he'd been. Young still, but someone adept in the modern world, finding and restoring Magickers wherever he could when, miracle of miracles, he'd found her.