The Scarlet Dragon (The Witching World Book 5)

by Lucia Ashta

  “Unless I keep watch.”

  There was little Mordecai could say to argue with that. In the world of magic, most things were possible, even the most improbable. “Very well then. Please let us know if you need one of us to relieve you.”

  “I will, Lord Mordecai.” However, I knew that he wouldn’t. Sir Lancelot took his post seriously on tranquil days. There was no way he was going to willfully put aside the one job he could do to support our defense that no one else could perform as well as he. He would man his post for days without rest if he deemed it necessary.

  Several moments of silence passed unnoticed. In our wait for Grand-mère’s return to alertness, we’d been over most of the important points many times already.

  “Sit, my son. You’re going to wear the rug thin, if you haven’t already,” Mordecai said. But Marcelo was no more inclined to follow Mordecai’s advice than Sir Lancelot was. He continued, his raven black hair standing at different angles all over his head.

  “I just can’t believe this has happened. It was bad enough that Carlton was missing. Now Anna too?” he said, pacing with a particular ferocity. I’d tried to convince him to take it easy many times already, reminding him of his fragile health. He wouldn’t hear of it, and now I saved my breath, resigning myself to watching this tragic sequence of events unfold.

  “How many people do you know that can control dragons?” Marcelo asked. We’d been over this already.

  Mordecai sighed, resigned to having the conversation again, his advice for ease and rest ignored. “Two, maybe three, depending on who this Gustave really is. Ariadne is the only one I’ve ever seen that could fly sitting atop a dragon. And she’s able to bring others onto the dragon with her, which is most remarkable. Dragons are very proud creatures. Normally, they’ll kill anyone who even thinks of trying to ride them.

  “I can only assume that Washur can control them as well, since the dragon was within his courtyard.”

  “He can. I’ve seen him fly on the dragon, only once, and not far, but he did ride on him,” Brave said, a son that had turned informant on his father.

  “The possible third party is Gustave,” Mordecai added.

  “Why possible?” I asked.

  “Because I’m considering the possibility that Gustave is Washur.”

  “No,” I said in disbelief. I shook my head in shock, copper curls fighting to come loose from the pins Anna had put me in that morning. “Could that be possible?” My voice rose from its whisper. “I thought you’d bound his magic.”

  “Oh, I did, of that I’m certain. The question is now whether his magic is still bound. I can’t feel the binding as strongly as I did at first.”

  I waited for an explanation of the impossible situation. Mordecai himself had explained to me that, once a magician’s magic is bound, the only way that it can become unbound is if that very same magician unbinds it. And Mordecai had most certainly not released Count Washur from the bindings that were the only thing keeping us safe from him.

  “A wizard that has lived as long as Washur, while amassing as much power and wealth as he has, might well be able to convince other magicians to do his bidding, and thus partially compensate for his own lack of magic.”

  “But he couldn’t transform into someone else without magic,” I asserted. Human transformation was something I’d studied a bit in Marcelo’s study in Irele Castle. I hadn’t dedicated more than half a day to researching it, but I clearly recalled that the magician could only transform himself.

  I looked to the faces around me. “Could he?” I ventured, much less surely now.

  “My child, haven’t I taught you that almost everything is possible, especially when magic is concerned?”

  I suppressed the thoughts of complaint that immediately erupted within me. Mordecai had taught me pitifully little to prepare me for the events of the last several months. “I read that human transformation could only be done by the person himself.”

  “Yes,” Mordecai said, running his long fingers through his beard. “That’s usually the case. Certainly, by now you’ve seen enough to understand that Count Washur has found ways to circumvent the usual rules. It’s—perhaps—possible that he might have enlisted the help of another magician to transform him. Maybe. It’s never been done before that I’m aware of.”

  “You think he got another wizard to transform him into the body of Grand-mère’s brother?”

  “I’m considering the theory.”

  “And under this theory, what would have happened to the real Gustave?”

  “I’m afraid, my child, that the fate of the true Gustave is entirely uncertain. Count Washur might have had him murdered. Or more likely, he may have stolen his soul if he was still able to do so with his magic bound. I doubt someone like Washur would waste an opportunity to extend his life by another decade and grace the planet with his most amazing presence.” Sarcasm dripped from Mordecai’s lips in surprising fashion, before he returned to his usual composure.

  “It will be difficult to reconstruct the events that led to Washur’s transformation into Gustave, and where Ariadne’s real brother might be, until we understand more.”

  “Have I missed something?” Brave spoke up. “How can we even be sure that Gustave isn’t who he says he is and that he’s my father in Gustave’s body?” Brave looked to Marcelo, who’d originally concluded that Gustave was not who he said he was in the kitchens, and then to Mordecai.

  Marcelo’s shoulders slumped. “We can’t. We don’t know hardly enough to draw conclusions with accuracy. We need to know more, we can’t wait any longer.”

  He walked a straight path to Grand-mère, who still sat in the recliner by the window. He was careful to avoid looking to Mordecai and the warning glance he was shooting at him from across the room.

  Marcelo crouched in front of Grand-mère and took her hands. She startled, her eyes a bit out of focus, but was able to train them on the sea blue eyes that searched out hers. “Ariadne, this is very important. Will you please try to follow what I say?”

  “Hm?”

  “Will you please try to pay attention to what I’m saying?”

  “Oui, mon cher.” From where I stood, I could see the effort behind Grand-mère’s struggle to focus.

  “Was that man your brother?”

  “What man, cher?”

  “The man that was here earlier, the one you thought was Gustave.”

  “Ah, Gustave.” Grand-mère’s eyes grew dreamy. Marcelo’s attempts had already failed. “My brother. How sweet he is to me.”

  Marcelo grunted a little more gruffly than he meant to and released Grand-mère’s hands. He stood and brought his right hand up to his hair. I wondered if his hair would ever be able to rest flat against his head again. He muttered some things under his breath that I couldn’t hear, and was glad that I couldn’t make out. Gertrude’s cat eyes grew bigger in confirmation that what Marcelo said in his frustration and impotence to help those he cared about wasn’t for the ears of a lady.

  It was clear that no one else had a plan, so I took Marcelo’s place in front of Grand-mère. Like him, I held her hands. I stilled in front of her, waiting for her to look at me. Her memories of her brother occupied her for another minute before she realized I was crouching in front of her. When she did, she met my smile with one of her own.

  “I hope that some day you’ll get to meet my brother. He’s so nice.”

  I thought that might be confirmation enough that the man that just kidnapped Humbert and Anna wasn’t the real Gustave. There was nothing nice about the Gustave we met.

  “I’d love to meet him, Grand-mère. What’s he like? Will you tell me about him?” I said in a voice meant to sound as dreamy as her own. It turned out to be the winning tactic.

  “Mais bien sûr, ma chérie. Oh, how you’ll love him. And he’ll love you, I know it. He’s quite a bit like you, really.” She chuckled. “I guess he’s more like me than you though.”

  “Oh,” I said, nonchalantly,
working hard to control my tone to complete the effect I was going for. I succeeded in keeping the urgency from my voice. “What makes him more like you than me?”

  She chuckled again, reminiscent. “Well, he looks like you, but that’s only because you look like me.”

  I felt every set of eyes in the room, save Sir Lancelot’s, zero in on us. “Is that so?”

  “Oui.” A big smile spread across her face. She looked beautiful despite the semi-absent glaze across her amber, sparkling eyes. “I know some people that don’t like having a twin.” I dared not breathe while Grand-mère continued. “But I’ve always loved it. And so has Gustave, he tells me so all the time.”

  Heartbeats sped by, bursting through my ears. No one said a word.

  “Where is Gustave anyway? I thought he said he’d be coming here. Oh, I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

  I couldn’t wait to meet him either. It was quite apparent to every single one of us in that room that not one of us had.

  Chapter 31

  Grand-mère’s alertness arrived with a bang the next morning. Sleep seemed to void the spell the magician posing as her brother placed over her, washing away all remnants of it with her dreams. Once lucidity took its usual place within her fast-thinking mind, she couldn’t sit anymore than Marcelo could.

  Every one of us, save the staff, was in the parlor on the ground floor, which was beginning to resemble a war room. Marcelo couldn’t bring himself to enter his father’s study, not even under the circumstances, but Mordecai didn’t share Marcelo’s wariness. Brave accompanied Mordecai, and together the two men brought down piles of magical study books, including dark ones that ranged from the frowned-upon to the outright-forbidden.

  The books, opened to pertinent spots, covered every available surface, including much of the seating. Sylvia sat occasionally, but not even she perched for long. And Marcelo, as much as I wished he would rest, did no such thing. We all paced, mulling over thoughts and theories, even the most outlandish ones, making the room feel as crowded as it was.

  Perhaps for the hundredth time since morning, Grand-mère consulted the clock on the wall opposite the fireplace. “I don’t understand why Mathieu isn’t here yet. He was gone all night, and still isn’t here.” She glared at the brass pendulum within the clock, as if it swung only to mock her frustration. “It isn’t like him not to return immediately.”

  “I asked him to return right away, I’m certain that he will,” Marcelo said, not for the first time either. “Something must have held him up.”

  Even though all we’d done that morning was ponder the possibilities, even the most remote ones, not one of us really wanted to think about what that ‘something’ that could have held Mathieu up might be.

  More moments passed, punctuated only by the pendulum as it clicked the seconds away. I couldn’t think of anything new, and certainly I could think of nothing that I hadn’t thought of already or that one of the others in the room had already suggested. I descended heavily into the armchair closest to the fire and drew near it.

  The snow hadn’t ceased falling outside since the night before, at least not for long. At the moment, it drifted downward in large flakes. They floated downward slowly, as if they had much to see on the way down, and eventually covered the already-white landscape with more silence and more white.

  “Do you see anything, Sir Lancelot?” Again, this wasn’t the first time Grand-mère asked this question either.

  “I see plenty of snow, Lady Ariadne, but no sign of Mathieu. I’ll let you know just as soon as I spot him.” Sir Lancelot, like the rest of us, knew that his promise of prompt notification wouldn’t halt the questions we’d already cycled through many times this day.

  I leaned back into the armchair and watched everyone. However, there was so much pacing and so many nervous gestures that I closed my eyes. If not, I feared I’d soon yell at everyone to sit down and stop moving before they drove me mad. I breathed prolonged breaths that I hoped would be loud enough to block out the sounds of Mordecai’s shuffling and occasional dragging of his cloak; of Marcelo’s clipped paces, never stopping; of Grand-mère’s feminine pacing, swirling skirts, and frequent sighing; and of Brave’s side-step and bouncing in place.

  It didn’t work. I could hear every sound around me, dancing its nervous dance around the clicking of the clock, marking a pace to which no one seemed to know the tune. I sighed louder than anyone else and popped my eyes open.

  They found the fire. I knew that I could find peace there within it. Once my eyes flicked to the flames, they knew they had me. Immediately, they began to dance their most beguiling dance for me, knowing how easily they could captivate me.

  And it was easy. I didn’t resist the fire’s pull. I never did. I wasn’t even sure I could.

  I dragged the armchair a few inches closer to the fire. No one seemed to notice amid the consuming details: time passing, increasing the danger; heavy snow that enclosed us, contributing to the feeling of being trapped by our circumstances; a dragon, an imposter, and two staff members missing; and a firedrake that might hold the answers, invisible in the whitewash.

  I moved both hands closer to the flames. The warmth was comforting. But even then, I realized there was more to it. There was always more to my pull to the fire than warmth and comfort.

  I wouldn’t resist it. The fire didn’t want me to, and neither did I.

  All of a sudden, I realized how long it had been since I’d consciously connected with the elements that were so great a part of me. They leapt at the knowing that I was again seeking them, reaching out to feel their uniqueness. Today they felt like liquid silver to me, as I imagined it would feel when the silver was hot and molten if I could touch it. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised to discover hot liquid silver flowing through my veins.

  They were there, all five of them. Now that I’d identified the fifth element, it was always there. It felt as soft as silk, viscous like blood, carrying the essence of all magic within it.

  The fire heated my hands and traveled up my arms, heating the flesh beneath my sleeves. It heated Marcelo’s promise ring too. I felt the band around my finger begin to glow. I couldn’t turn my eyes from the beauty of flame to observe the glowing gold. In that moment, it seemed that nothing could be as beautiful as ballerinas that swayed back and forth in a dance meant just for me. Their leaps, the flames that reached boldly out of the hearth, made my breath catch with their elegance. The intertwined embraces of male and female ballerinas, coming together in tune with the fire’s music, made me think that I’d never before seen anything quite so beautiful.

  I didn’t know it then, but it was Gertrude who was the first to notice what was happening. Unlike Sir Lancelot, she’d long given up on surveying the castle’s approach. After all, beneath the ginger fur, Gertrude was a young woman, and there was only so much snow that a young woman could look at.

  Marcelo almost stepped on Gertrude when she approached him and tried to line herself up with his paces. Instead, he kicked her. It wasn’t enough to hurt her, but it was sufficient to bring Marcelo to a halt. Gertrude shrugged off his concern. She stalked toward me, looking back to make sure Marcelo was following. He did, but only until his eyes discovered me, and then he stopped. He didn’t move.

  Gradually, everyone in the room turned to look at me. Even Grand-mère tore her eyes from the mocking pendulum. Stillness descended upon the room for the first time since after breakfast that morning. Every set of eyes, except for Sir Lancelot’s, were upon me, waiting, hoping that I’d find the answer somewhere within the tantalizing dance of flame. It was no less plausible than anything else we’d considered that day.

  I noticed none of the changes around me, the fire made sure of this. There was nowhere I wanted to be more than within those flames.

  As if they weren’t my own, my hands inched forward until they met the fire. I didn’t hear the many gasps that erupted behind me—only Marcelo and Mordecai had seen this before, when things ha
d been very different and Albacus was still alive.

  My fingers reached to meet the tendrils that danced away from the fire to twist around my fingers. I caressed the fire while its tendrils wrapped around me in constantly-moving play. I laughed at the fire’s beauty, but my lips didn’t release a sound.

  The ring across my finger, the one that combined my power with Marcelo’s, symbolizing a union greater than that between man and woman, grew hotter. And it had nothing to do with the fire that surrounded it, licking at the golden dragon and serpent as it did my flesh, causing no harm.

  Then, in a searing flash that seemed impossibly brighter than the flames, an image yanked at my brain until it gained control. The fire and I separated. I wasn’t prepared for the violence of the parting. Instantly, I yearned to touch the flame again as much as I’d ever yearned for anything in my life.

  However, I couldn’t reach out to touch that fire that raged with such contained power and beauty. Even then, halfway between worlds—the world of the mind and the world of the heart—all I could see was water.

  Chapter 32

  It was difficult to understand what Grand-mère was saying. I could barely hear her. Her words sounded garbled, as if I were very deep beneath the sea, where human words weren’t meant to mean anything, where messages were carried through music and where meaning was much different than in the dry world.

  I could see her waving her hands frantically. I could see her turn from me to Marcelo and Mordecai and wave her arms at them.

  I closed my eyes because I imagined that if I did I’d see light refracting through the water that surrounded me. That was one of my favorite things from the merworld: the way the sunlight filtered through the water. Everything was more magical when you could see the light.

  But I didn’t get to see the light I was longing to see. I was right there. It was right there. We were ready to delight in each other.