Dragon Knight (The Collegium Book 3)

by Schwartz, Jenny

  He draped the towel around his neck and headed for the back of the house and the kitchen door.

  “You needn’t go around,” she said. “House witch, here. I can deal with a little bit of beach sand tracking in. Won’t be the first time.”

  So he climbed the porch steps to where she sat in one of two Adirondack chairs. She tipped her head back, looking at him, as he walked to the front door. He stopped.

  Her gaze stayed on his face.

  They stared at one another.

  She’d watched him in the distance, but now she refused to study him close up. Like him, she knew they were playing with fire. The attraction between them was dangerously intense.

  It was crazy, but he lifted the towel from his neck and began drying himself again, daring her to watch where his touch directed her attention.

  “There’s lasagna warming in the oven.” Her voice was husky.

  He rubbed the towel lower. “I can smell it. Smells good.”

  “Yeah.”

  Abruptly, he wrapped the towel at his waist. “I’d better shower first.” The game had turned on him, his body rather obviously showing his reaction to her hungry gaze.

  Now was not the time for games—a reality confirmed twenty minutes later when Gina told him of her dealings with the Group of 5.

  “The fifth member pursued you?” The tasty lasagna was suddenly flavorless.

  “Hardly. Someone tracked back one of my identities, and not the most important, to a couple of chat rooms in the dark web. They never got close to discovering who I was.”

  “But they’ll be looking.”

  Gina shrugged. “For all the good that’ll do them. You were right, though, they are a rotten bunch. No conscience. Today was a preliminary look around. I’ll need another week—”

  “No.”

  “To pull together a decent report on their online activities,” she continued. “It might even take me a bit longer than that since I’ll be taking precautions when I poke around.”

  “I didn’t anticipate them detecting your investigation and coming after you so fast. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Not if I’m careful, and I am.”

  “Let it go.”

  She smiled at him. “You’ve had a frustrating day, haven’t you? First the Collegium and now me. Lewis, my life means my choices. You’re not the only one who can’t let a problem go. It’s as you said to Morag, doing nothing is not a neutral choice.”

  “And if I ask you to let it go, as a favor to me, because I have enough to worry about?”

  She paused with her fork cutting into the lasagna. “I don’t think I can. It’s part of the hacker psyche. Something in me won’t rest till I discover who the fifth member of the group is. Whoever it is challenged me by coming after my false identity.”

  He groaned. “I guess it’s an example of ‘be careful what you wish for’. I wanted help in tracking the Group of 5.”

  “And you got me.” She smiled brightly.

  She was being perkily annoying on purpose, he suspected. Perhaps because he’d suggested she couldn’t protect herself. Morosely, he ate the last of his second helping of excellent lasagna. The senior mages were easier to deal with because he didn’t care if he hurt their feelings.

  “All right.” Gina was clearly in a rush because as soon as he finished eating she cleared the table with a sweep of house witchery that set the dishwasher sh-shushing a moment later. “Time to visit Morag. I’m interested to hear about your first steps along the Deeper Path.”

  Three hours later, Gina was less sure she wanted to learn about Lewis’s progress along the Deeper Path. At her house he might have been grumpy and overly protective, but he’d been human. Now, as he followed Morag’s verbal directions, Gina could sense him drawing away from her.

  She got the same emotional distance from her aunt Deborah. The older woman obviously loved her family, but she seemed to view them from a distance. Gina had thought that was a personality quirk or perhaps a consequence of journeying through the galaxy, but Morag’s instructions made it obvious that instead that distance was the price of the Deeper Path when humanity trod it.

  The dragon flicked the tip of her tail against an opalescent wall, setting a strange pattern of beats that jangled Gina’s nerves, particularly when the wall pulsed subtly in time with her strikes.

  Lewis put a hand against the wall. “I see it. A spiral compressed within a spiral.” His concentration was total. It flattened his voice.

  “Don’t touch the inner spiral,” Morag said. “You need to stretch the outer one. Pinch it at the third coil from the top, right in front.”

  Morag had guided him along what she called a Meditation of Abandonment. Lewis had released his awareness of the physical environment, his body and emotions until finally Morag had asked, “Can you see the outer skin over Gina?”

  Gina shivered as she recalled how his dark eyes had studied her. Two hours before that he’d stood on her front porch challenging her with a sexual tease. Now, she wasn’t a person to him. She was a study prop.

  “Yes,” he’d said.

  “Good.” Morag’s alien eyes on Gina had been kinder. Kinder, but still ruthless. “That outer skin is the arrangement that lets Gina perceive my home as something comprehensible in three dimensions. Now, look for that same skin over you. It’ll be harder to detect as concentrating on yourself might bring you back to your three dimensional, magic-limited self. I could remove it for you—”

  “I’ve got it.”

  When Lewis interrupted, Morag had blinked once, surprised. She’d recovered fast. “Pull it off.”

  A moment later, Lewis had jolted out of his meditative stance. He and Morag had stared at one another. “Continue.” One word in his deep voice. They’d continued.

  Gina wrapped her arms around her knees as she curled up in the chamber’s solitary armchair. What did Lewis and Morag see when they perceived the chamber in more than three dimensions? Lewis had promised to describe his progress along the Deeper Path to her, and she’d ask him, but was there even human words for it?

  Abruptly, Lewis vanished.

  “Morag?” Gina called.

  “He’s here, Gina. But also somewhere else. The chamber works differently in five dimensions. My home is a safe place for him to learn the patterns of translocation.”

  Lewis reappeared. Disappeared.

  Reappeared. “Is it safe for me to leave the chamber?”

  “Yes. Wherever you go, I can find you. But don’t leave Earth.” Morag looked at Gina as Lewis vanished again. “I’ve never had a human learn the Deeper Path so fast. His discipline is remarkable. Even faster than Deborah, he shed his ties to this world.”

  Gina should have asked how she could copy him. She should be wanting to follow him along the Deeper Path. It was her life’s dream. Instead, she felt lost. Abandoned. “He looks different.”

  “I’ve observed humans for a long time.” Morag sank down, bringing her face companionably nearer Gina’s height. “Far more than my people, you are part of your world. Your social ties are important to you, as is your sensory involvement in your planet. Your bodies constantly register and react to changes in your environment. They are alert for opportunities to give and receive comfort.”

  “Comfort?”

  “Security. Pleasure. Ease. A sense of belonging.” Morag glanced to a far corner.

  Gina looked but saw nothing beyond the opal walls, the familiar reality of the dragon’s den. Yet Morag said that what Gina saw and heard and felt of the chamber was a false construct, one manufactured to give her confidence in the alien setting. When Morag looked to the far corner, what did she see?

  Reality had fallen away from beneath Gina’s feet. Did the floor she stand on exist or did she hang in midair, in a spinning void? She leaned back in the armchair, huddling into its certainty.

  Morag sighed, a soft gust of sage-green smoke. “I envy humans. Comfort is less accessible for my people. We share it less.”

 
“Is that Lewis’s future?” Gina asked. “Will he withdraw more and more? He’s already so contained.” When his control broke, the passion in him was scalding excitement. But would the Deeper Path freeze that emotion and heat?

  “It will be his choice,” Morag said.

  Gina shivered.

  Lewis reappeared in Morag’s chamber. In clarity of sight, his body appeared as silver crystal. The energy that ran through his blood sparked and lit. Beyond his body, the chamber opened like fractal flowers, layering one upon the other. Each was infinite, each contained. The Deeper Path balanced paradox as a doorway.

  He had travelled to a beach in Australia. It had been winter there; the empty stretch of sand home to a small flock of seagulls that combed the beach or flew low over the cobalt-blue water. But he’d seen deeper than that. He’d seen the silver pull of gravity on the waves and on the birds’ flight. He’d seen the silver spirals that led out and in and away. Possibilities. Gateways to other galaxies.

  They were everywhere. He could see them in Morag’s home. Everywhere was just next door.

  He stepped into the silver light and into the presidential office in the Collegium: his office, although he felt no ownership of it.

  Practice with Morag had strengthened his clarity of sight, and he saw the intricate pattern of the magic laid into and over his office. They were protections, but also the oath ties each mage swore to the Collegium when they joined it. So much magic centered on his office.

  Lewis’s heartbeat remained steady. As much power as the office held, it was irrelevant on the Deeper Path. That required only to see truly. Not to lose focus, but to hold to the intellectual, dimensional insight. He had so much to learn.

  He returned to Morag’s chamber and released his clarity of sight. Color returned faintly to the world. The white opal colors of the walls, ceiling and floor confirmed that he was back in his three dimensional, old world.

  “Thank you,” he said to Morag.

  The dragon lay near Gina’s armchair. “You are a most satisfactory student.” One of the dragon’s black tentacles stretched and touched Gina’s knee. “Go home, now. It is enough for today. Time is a dimension even the Deeper Path must respect, and we have used hours of it. Rest.”

  Gina smiled at Morag. “It’s not me who tested its power.” She looked at Lewis, and away. “But I am tired.”

  She stood, and just that simply, Morag translocated them to the closet under the main staircase in Gina’s house.

  He opened the door of it and walked out. The space was too small to complicate with polite gestures such as inviting Gina to exit first.

  She closed the door behind her, glancing across to where a grandfather clock stood in the hallway. “Nearly one o’clock. Would you like a hot drink or anything?” The offer sounded reluctant.

  “No. Thank you.” He needed sleep. His physical body was exhausted and his brain had to switch off consciousness so it could do whatever mysterious thing brains did to process the day. Acting in five dimensions rather than three was not natural to him. Do-able, but alien. He concentrated on one foot in front of the other. Wry humor darted the thought that it would be easier to translocate than to climb the stairs. He put his hand to the bannister. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, Lewis.” Gina’s voice trailed him up the stairs before her footsteps faded in the direction of the kitchen, evidence that she’d stayed to watch him.

  He reached the guest room, set the alarm on his phone, undressed and slept.

  Hot milk with cinnamon, vanilla and honey warmed Gina up physically, but emotionally she felt cold. She rinsed the empty mug and walked upstairs, avoiding the creaking eleventh step out of habit.

  One of the benefits of her home’s powerful wards was that she never had to physically secure the house. That meant she could leave the windows open to allow in the sea air and the scents of her garden. However, when she sniffed now, the scent that came to her was that of a summer fog rolling in. She sent out her house witchery in a gentle push of magic that silently closed all windows.

  Her muscles were stiff from sitting for hours watching Lewis learn from Morag. She pulled on a lilac satin chemise and crawled into bed. Twenty minutes of concentrated relaxation exercises had her muscles relaxing but her emotions remained disturbed.

  She couldn’t let go of what Morag had said: humans were instinctively inclined to give and receive comfort. How human were you, then, when you relinquished those emotional and sensory ties to walk the Deeper Path?

  All she had ever wanted was to follow her aunt Deborah and discover worlds beyond Earth. To walk among alien people and on alien planets had been her dream. Her repeated failure to attain clarity of sight had crushed her…but now, for the first time she felt the price clarity of sight and the Deeper Path demanded. It meant renouncing her place on Earth and among humanity. She would lose the bonds of family and friendship.

  Aunt Deborah was part of the family, but she wasn’t emotionally close to any of them. Had she known and chosen that distance?

  Would Lewis think the sacrifice of the core of passion in him worth the Deeper Path?

  Gina lay in bed and remembered his kiss. She remembered the taste of him, the feel of his body and how he’d looked that evening, walking up to her with his skin shiny with water and salt, the muscles clearly defined, the banked desire in his eyes.

  She flipped over to lie on her stomach and bury her face in a pillow. It was worse than pointless to think of him. She could guarantee he wasn’t lying there thinking of her.

  The pillow smelled of lemon and sunshine from the soft bleaching she’d given the old linen. Breathing in the familiar scent, her heart beat steadied, her flushed skin cooled and she sighed for how messy life could be.

  The clash of her house ward being tested woke Gina jarringly. She sat up, momentarily disoriented. Her bedside clock said not quite four in the morning. The sky outside was dark. The particular smothering quality of the darkness suggested the fog had not only rolled in, but stayed.

  From the heart of the fog came a roar, not animalistic or even demonic. It was the roar of fire.

  Gina leapt out of bed.

  Chapter 8

  Gina ran out of her room and straight into Lewis who stood, bare-chested but with his jeans on, just outside her door.

  “Fire mage,” he said briefly.

  She pushed back from him, fingers splayed against his chest. She let her fingertips rest there a moment, keeping her balance, as she closed her eyes and used mage sight to check her wards.

  The mage had crossed her home’s outer perimeter with its look-away spell and maze ward set about fifty meters from her actual land. The wards were intended to distract people who weren’t actively looking for her. That meant, she was his intended target.

  Or Lewis was.

  She opened her eyes, staring into Lewis’s dark ones.

  Flames outside sent an orange light dancing in the windows, magnified by its reflection off the fog. The mage had ringed her house in fire.

  “The mage hasn’t made it across the house’s boundaries,” she said. “The wards against evil and evil intent are unbroken.” And her house witchery instincts told her she was stronger than the fire mage. “But I don’t want someone seeing through the look-away spell and detecting the fire. My family could.” And some of her family, like her cousin Angela, might be out and about. Hospitality businesses, like the bakery, meant strange and inconvenient hours of work. If her family saw her in trouble, they’d rush to the rescue.

  “Where is the mage?” Lewis asked.

  “To the side of the house, back behind the dogwood, trying to take the side path in. I have to stop the fire before someone notices it.” She called on her house witchery and the magic came eagerly, almost as if it, too, was affronted and outraged at this attack on her home. She channeled it as she would have if dousing any other fire, whether hot oil catching fire in the kitchen or a bonfire escaping control out in the yard.

  Her magic descende
d in a smothering torrent on the ring of fire around the house. The glare of orange firelight vanished.

  The fire mage definitely wasn’t as strong as Gina. She felt him attempt to reignite the flames, and her house witchery walloped him, beating him hard, once, as if he was a carpet that needed freeing from decades of dust. He staggered, attempted to relight the fire, failed, and began to run towards the beach.

  “He’s in retreat,” she told Lewis. “Heading for the beach.”

  Lewis ran.

  “Damn. Hell. Damn.” She’d forgotten Lewis’s training and instincts. Of course he’d run towards the threat, even without magic. Unless more had happened in the training session with Morag than Gina had observed, Lewis couldn’t use the Deeper Path yet to replace his magical skills. He’d be facing a fire mage—and who knew what back-up—as a mundane. “To hell with it.”

  Gina’s house witchery unlaced the hammock from its comfortable span between two trees, whistled it through the air and bound the fire mage thoroughly, toppling him to the ground. Then she leaned against the wall and concentrated on perceiving any other intruders. She wasn’t used to expending her magic in such violent and high adrenaline ways. She could hear her pulse thudding in her ears.

  It seemed the mage had arrived alone. There was no one on the beach or in a near radius of her home. Her scan blipped. No one conscious. Just beyond her outer perimeter, in the treehouse inside her neighbor’s yard, there was a huddled heap of humanity.

  Gina raced downstairs.

  The fog was damp and cold and rolling in the open front door. She snatched a coat from the rack and shrugged it on. She met Lewis on the bottom step.

  He had a hammock-bound fire mage slung over one shoulder.

  “Should you be carrying him?” Her worried question slipped out before she could reflect that Lewis might resent the slur on his ability to protect himself.

  “I knocked him unconscious first,” Lewis said laconically. He dumped the man none too gently on the porch and straightened.