The Scarlet Dragon (The Witching World Book 5)

by Lucia Ashta

  I whipped my head around, looking for Salazar. I’d completely forgotten about him. I found him sulking in the corner behind Sylvia’s body. I turned toward Mordecai again, with another swooshing sound of flesh against silk. “What spell did Count Washur cast on Sala—”

  “No, child.” Mordecai waved his hands at me. “I believe the spell Washur cast over Marcelo’s nephew is tied into his name. I think that’s what he was trying to warn Marcelo about. Is that right?” Mordecai looked straight at Salazar.

  Salazar hesitated for a moment from his corner, but then nodded once, curtly.

  “How long will S—Marcelo’s nephew remain under the Count’s spell?” I asked.

  “I’m not certain,” Mordecai said with an appraising glance at Salazar. “Do you know?” he asked the young man.

  Again, Salazar hesitated. Then he shook his head.

  “Don’t worry, my boy,” Mordecai said. “It’s difficult to understand all that’s going on when one is under the effect of a spell. We’ll get it figured out soon enough, I imagine.” Mordecai looked back to me. “I think the spell has already begun to wear off some. But based on the discontented look on Marcelo’s nephew’s face, it’s still in place. At least, I hope it is. If not, it means that our friend here may not be our friend at all, and not at all pleased to be in our company.”

  “You bound my magic,” Salazar said. His words sounded more like a threat than a statement.

  “I did not. Your uncle did. Surely, you must understand why, my boy. You don’t yet know the full extent of the deceit you’ve been under. You might still consider us your enemy. Until it’s clear that you aren’t a danger to us, I regret that we must keep your magic bound.”

  Salazar looked unconvinced.

  “It’ll be Marcelo’s great pleasure to remove your bindings once you convince us that we are safe in your company. I’m sure.”

  “If he lives.”

  Mordecai looked at Marcelo’s limp body. “Yes. If he lives,” he said, in a voice soft with tenderness and hope. Then he flicked angry eyes at Salazar. “And you better hope he does, for your sake, since that seems to be all you care about.” Even as he said them, Mordecai knew his words to be unfair. But just then he didn’t care. He didn’t particularly feel like being a mature adult of three-hundred-and-seventeen years.

  Mordecai marched toward the stairs and began down them in a whirl of his cloak. The sound of a door slamming echoed up the narrow, rickety staircase, and the wizard was gone.

  Chapter 9

  Mordecai returned within the hour, with ale on his breath and better spirits. He deposited a large sack filled with breads and cheeses and a tankard of ale on the worn table. Every one of us, even Sir Lancelot, who didn’t need to eat since he was under the spell of a painting that extended his life unnaturally, went straight to it.

  Mordecai waved a hand in the air, and cups and plates flew from the kitchen cupboard, clanging the cabinet doors shut behind them. The dishes landed neatly on the table. Mordecai waved another hand, and chairs dispersed throughout the house assembled next to the table.

  I watched with rapt attention. Despite the fact that I’d been living amongst magicians for almost four years now, these indulgent displays of magic were rare. Mordecai took his seat jovially and waved a hand again. This time, I looked to see if his lips moved. They did, yet they moved so quickly that I had no chance to interpret what they said. The lid on the tankard flipped open noisily and began to pour itself in four cups. The amber liquid sloshed within the smaller receptacles.

  “Sit, Marcelo’s nephew,” Mordecai said. “You must be hungry.”

  Timidly, like a scolded child, Salazar pulled out a chair. “We’ll need to do something about your name. We can’t go on calling you ‘Marcelo’s nephew.’”

  “Yes, Sir,” Salazar said.

  I observed the peculiar interaction between the two men. It was as if Mordecai’s outburst had shifted something between them. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly had shifted, but it was important.

  “Do you have any ideas of what you might like us to call you, son?”

  One of my eyebrows arched and I noticed that one of Grand-mère’s did the same. She caught me looking at her across the table and offered me a small smile. She was also curious by the shift in the men’s temperaments.

  “Well, I actually have given it some thought.”

  Now Mordecai’s eyebrow shot up also. “You have, have you?”

  “Yes, I’ve always known that my name was a spell, and I never particularly liked that. My father told me it was to protect me. But I never like the name he gave me.” Salazar paused. “When I was younger, a boy, I thought I might like to be called Brave.” Salazar stopped to blush.

  “Go on, son,” Mordecai said.

  “I know it might seem childish, but the name stuck with me, and I’ve never come up with another. I always wanted to be brave.” Salazar looked down, suddenly fascinated with the curves of his fingers.

  Mordecai traded looks with Grand-mère and gave a short grunt. Salazar swung his head up, like a child afraid he was being reprimanded for an idea that had been plainly ridiculous, even if it hadn’t been to him.

  “Son, if you want us to call you Brave, then we shall.” Mordecai’s tone softened, with the compassion he regretted not showing Salazar earlier. “You certainly have been brave already, whether or not you realize it. Leading a life with a man such as your father requires much courage. If you accept us, we can become your family now. And it would be our honor to call you by a name that more aptly depicts who you actually are, and not the person your father tried to create.”

  Salazar nodded curtly. His eyes didn’t stray from his hands.

  And just like that Salazar became Brave and the hold the Count of Washur held over him demolished.

  Chapter 10

  The morning and afternoon passed by uneventfully, or at least as uneventfully as they could considering the company I kept and the circumstances that forced us to remain enclosed in a small neglected house in the center of Dillbasin. Mordecai spent time with his patients, off and on, casting more magical healing spells over them during some of the time, and simply sitting with them for the rest of it. He dozed at one point in the afternoon, with one hand on each of his ailing friends, when the ale and the warm sunshine made his eyelids heavy.

  Grand-mère nestled with me some more, but then withdrew into her own thoughts. She joined Sir Lancelot at his post on the windowsill that faced the alley, waiting for the mystery magician, pacing the length of the room slowly and gracefully when she wasn’t keeping watch with the owl.

  Gertrude stayed with me, never venturing too far away for long. But she couldn’t speak with me and she didn’t look anything like the sister I was used to. Her company didn’t feel the same, and the soothing quality of our time together as sisters wasn’t the same either. Despite my proximity to the physical body of my little sister, I missed her. It wasn’t all that different from when she was in Norland Manor, a world away. I longed for my real sister and for a semblance of normalcy, yet I thought it was likely that I could only have one of those two wishes. I hoped for my sister’s true return.

  That left Brave. For a long time, neither one of us spoke. The introspection of everyone else in the room was contagious. But as the sun traveled across the sky, informing us of the passing of time through the windows, we began to glance at each other, not often, but often enough. Eventually, when subtle snores punctuated Mordecai’s sleep, Grand-mère continued her preoccupied pacing, and Sir Lancelot remained uncommonly quiet, Brave shortened the distance between us by half, and spoke.

  “So you and my uncle are promised to each other?”

  I studied him, this young man that looked so much like Marcelo, and finally nodded. “Yes.”

  “Hmmm,” Brave said, and several breaths passed.

  “Marcelo asked me to marry him before your father invaded Irele Castle, after we knew he was coming.” Diplomatically, in an attempt at
reconciliation that was necessary if we were all to move forward with Brave, I omitted his part in the attack, and that he kidnapped and tried to kill me during that same invasion.

  More breaths passed. “How did you know we were coming?”

  I deliberated. Should I tell him the truth? I didn’t intend to lie, as I never lied, but there were ways to hold back the truth. Was it necessary to continue protecting ourselves from him?

  I didn’t think so. Something had shifted in Brave. His attitude toward us had changed. I still couldn’t understand what exactly Mordecai did to cause it, yet I also knew that sometimes understandings crystallized on their own and cemented when we were ready to accept them.

  “I sensed your approach, and later I had visions of it,” I said, observing Brave closely to gauge his response. Had I revealed too much?

  For the first time since I met him, Brave’s face relaxed. “Really?” He closed the gap between us all the way and slouched next to me on the floor, our backs against the same wall. He looked at me, enthusiasm mapping new paths across his features. “I’ve never had a vision before. I would like to though.”

  “From what Marcelo and Mordecai tell me, true visions aren’t that common.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “What? Have a vision?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t do anything in particular. It just happened.”

  He took his eyes away from me to look straight ahead. “Oh.”

  “I know that’s not very helpful, but it seems that I do magic unlike most other magicians.”

  The enthusiasm returned. “Really? How so?” I realized he wasn’t all that unlike the rest of us, even if he’d been raised by an undead lord of darkness.

  I smiled at him. “You like this magic stuff, huh?”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Magic is fascinating. I always want to learn more magic.”

  “Well, I’m only just beginning to learn, really.”

  “You haven’t known about your magic all your life?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. I assumed all magicians did.”

  “No. Not this magician.” As usual, I was different, even amid a group that was different from everyone else already. “I’ve only been learning magic for the last four years or so, and really it’s only been for a fraction of that time. I was a captive of the merworld for more than three of those years.”

  “Really?” Brave’s eyes grew as wide as a toad’s. “You met the merpeople?”

  “Yeah, I met them. I was their prisoner. They drained me of my life energy just to prolong theirs.”

  “Wow. That’s fascinating.”

  “Is it? It must be easier to think that when they didn’t steal three years of your life.” But even as I said it, I realized that Count Washur had stolen every year of his life thus far. Were the circumstances really all that different? The merpeople stole my life under a ruse of intricate deceit. Hadn’t Count Washur done the same to Brave? “The merpeople took Marcelo captive for more than five years before he managed to escape.”

  Brave’s eyes grew impossibly wider.

  “But I didn’t manage to escape. I hadn’t even realized what was going on. Your uncle saved me. If not for him, I would probably still be down there, underwater. And once they drained all the life force from me that they could, I’d be dead.”

  I hadn’t noticed before, but I noticed then. Grand-mère had stopped her pacing to listen to our conversation. I looked at her, and Brave looked at her, and she said, “I didn’t realize you’d spent time with the merpeople.”

  I shrugged, very unladylike. Mother would have berated me. But Grand-mère was not her daughter. “We haven’t really had the chance to catch up. I thought you dead until yesterday afternoon. Besides, my time with the merpeople isn’t a high point of my life. I try to forget about it. Seriously, I’d be dead now, or close to it, if not for this man.” I gestured toward Marcelo on the floor with a wave of red curls. “Mordecai and Albacus weren’t even looking for me. If Marcelo hadn’t persisted—well, I’d be as dead as Mother and Father think me.”

  “I see,” Grand-mère said, turning an admiring glance to the limp form of my fiancé. Brave looked toward his uncle too.

  I hesitated for only a moment before reaching over to pull up the clothing from Marcelo’s chest. Grand-mère gasped and Brave turned as still as stone beside me. “One of the merpeople, their leader, did this to him when he was trying to escape.” I’d seen the crisscross pattern of scars across Marcelo’s chest before. But even so, their unforgiving ghastliness rattled me. I put his shirt back down, experiencing a twinge of guilt that I hadn’t considered that he might not like me to reveal what he concealed.

  “I haven’t seen the merpeople either, although their existence has enthralled me since I first learned of them. I’ve hoped for an opportunity to observe their ways,” Grand-mère said. “It’s much easier to admire them since they haven’t harmed me as they have you.”

  “Perhaps you should also hope not to be their prisoner during this observation, Grand-mère.”

  “Oui, ma chérie. It would seem that’s the wise thing to do. Did they harm your body in any way, like they did your fiancé?” she asked with great delicacy. I relaxed, hearing the tenderness in her voice.

  I shook my head. “No, I believed I was happy when I was with them. They stole more than three years of my life however. That’s harm enough. They took me before my sixteenth birthday, and Marcelo didn’t find me until after my nineteenth birthday had passed.”

  “My darling, how difficult it’s been for you. Even more than I realized.” She sighed heavily and with resignation to a fate that we could no longer change. The past was over. “I wish there were something I could do to fix it.”

  “There isn’t, but thank you, Grand-mère.” I sunk into the wall behind me, feeling the weight of my past as I hadn’t in a long while, when I remembered. “Perhaps there’s something you can do to help.”

  “Tell me, darling. Anything.”

  “The leader of the merpeople—or at least the leader of the merpeople that reside within Irele Castle—the one responsible for those scars on Marcelo’s chest?” Grand-mère nodded. “Well, she came out of the merworld—”

  “She did?” Brave interjected. “I didn’t know they could leave the merworld.”

  “She came into the castle proper, where she put Mordecai and Sir Lancelot under her control.” All three of our heads swung in Sir Lancelot’s direction, yet he didn’t turn from his perch at the window. If anyone approached the house via the alleyway, he would be certain to find out. “After some difficulties that we eventually found ways to work around, Mordecai bound her magic. He had to,” I said defensively to Brave, even though he hadn’t said anything. “She was a danger to us all, and she meant to hurt us if we allowed it. Then we took her to Bundry, where we intended to release her into the sea beneath the castle, with the intention that Marcelo and I might keep an eye on her—somehow—once we married and lived there. We decided that it was best to remove her from her people. Isolated from her influence they might make better, and nicer, choices. But she escaped into the sea on her own before we had the chance.”

  Grand-mère and Brave were staring at me. “With her magic still bound,” I added. “Marcelo and I had hoped—we still hope—that once we rescued Gertrude and Brave from Count Washur, we could ensure that the merpeople wouldn’t hurt anyone else like they hurt us. Marcelo believes the merpeople are doing this to many humans. Whenever we return to Bundry, we plan on finding Mirvela and impeding her from stealing more lives.” I gazed to my fiancé with a desperate hope that our plans might still persevere.

  Then I looked to the one person that reminded me of him so much, despite all their differences. “You know, he wanted to rescue you from Count Washur. I wanted to rescue my sister, but he insisted that he had to retrieve you from the Count’s influence. He said he owed it to Clarissa, and to yo
u. He said he hadn’t been able to save his sister in time because he was too young and too inexperienced. But he could save you.”

  No one said anything more for a while. There was so much that could be said. However, little of it mattered in any real way. The time for talk was quickly being replaced with the need for action, just as before.

  “When we get through this, I’ll help you with this merwoman, this Mirvela. My abilities with magical creatures might help.”

  I nodded and attempted a smile. Since meeting Marcelo in the haze of fever, my life had been intense almost to the point of absurdity. It was quite a lot to land on my shoulders, especially when I was only now learning how to stand tall and in my power.

  “Don’t worry, my darling. I believe that he’ll make it. He’s strong, and your love for each other is strong. That alone is enough to make the difference.”

  Again, I simply nodded. It looked as if Grand-mère were about to say something else when Sir Lancelot spoke. “Lady, it appears that someone is coming toward the house.”

  Grand-mère hurried to the window and then rushed down the stairs. We heard the door pull open and shut close, and then another of Mordecai’s soft snores. And we were left to wait.

  Sir Lancelot trained his keen eyes on the scene below, but Brave and I remained where we were. I was no longer certain if I was excited to discover this magician with whom Grand-mère was so eager to surprise me. In that moment, I wasn’t certain about much of anything. I just wanted to be.

  “My uncle really is a good man, isn’t he?” Brave asked. It was a brave question.

  “Yes. He is.”

  “And my father lied to me all this time?”

  “I’m sorry, Brave, but yes, that’s my understanding. I don’t know if he lied to you about everything, but I’m pretty certain he lied to you about the important things.”