The Scarlet Dragon (The Witching World Book 5)

by Lucia Ashta

  Instead, I was shaken so hard that my brain felt as if it would rattle loose in my head. My head lolled around on my neck until the world of water came crashing down around me, shattering as if a solid wall of crystal crashed as violently as a ten-foot tall wave.

  “Oh mon Dieu. Finally, ma chérie.” Grand-mère fanned herself with a silk fan that was much more elegant than the flustered look which overpowered her striking features. “What were you doing? What were you thinking? You could have died!”

  I looked around the room startled, blinking away the water that insulated me from the reality that Grand-mère wanted me to grasp.

  “What’s wrong?” For those final lingering moments between the worlds, my voice rang out like a symphony. I smiled placidly, for I knew I’d done nothing wrong. In fact, right then I knew that nothing at all was wrong. Everything was working its way toward the place it was ultimately meant to be. We would all get where we needed to be.

  Marcelo caught my eye then. He didn’t share Grand-mère’s frantic concern or astonishment. His smile contained as much magic as anything I’d just experienced. I chose to lose myself to that smile for as long as I could. Regrettably, it was only a second.

  Grand-mère was shaking me again. “Snap out of it, Clara. What are you doing?”

  How could Grand-mère sound so angry when I felt so pleasant? I wondered. Didn’t she know that there was pleasantness all around us all the time? We just forgot to see it.

  “I’m well, Grand-mère. I’m very, very well. Mirvela is in the sea and Count Washur is on his way to find her.”

  Marcelo’s eyes grew wide. I rode along in his surprise. I hadn’t realized I knew this until I spoke it.

  “Is Anna with Washur?” he asked, his voice overly gentle.

  I smiled at him, still returning from somewhere else. “Yes.”

  “And the dragon?” Mordecai was also at my side now.

  “The dragon is free now. He rides alone. He rides toward home.”

  “To here?” Grand-mère asked.

  I shook my head, still smiling. “No, Grand-mère, he goes to his home. He flies toward the high mountains in the east.”

  Then came Sir Lancelot’s squeaky voice, filled with the pride of a job accomplished. “Mathieu is approaching.”

  Grand-mère whirled away toward the window. She said nothing to the beat of the five clicks of the pendulum. “Are you certain? I see nothing.”

  “I’m certain, Lady Ariadne. He’s coming from that direction, from the direction of the ocean. He’ll be here soon, perhaps as soon as ten minutes.”

  How this little owl could see that far in a blizzard was a mystery, but then there were so many mysteries floating around the castle, intermingling, that no one bothered to question him further. Instead, they waited, and they stared at me.

  I stared back, with the love of every single element blazing to life in my champagne eyes. I thought then that I would never consider another thing imperfect in all my life.

  Chapter 33

  The occupants of the room had shifted away from me to watch Mathieu’s predicted approach. Only Marcelo and Gertrude remained with me, and even Gertrude left me alone with Marcelo once she felt the love coursing between us. Animals sensed emotions more readily than humans, but she might have felt what passed between us even in her own body.

  The ginger tail trailed across the parlor slowly, and Marcelo moved closer toward me. He took my hand, the one with his ring on it. “It’s warm still.”

  I followed his gaze to the ring. I nodded. I didn’t understand what this ring did to me. Like so much of magic, it was still an enigma. I knew Marcelo had forged it for me with magic; it was a unique representation of our love for one another. Already, I knew that love was the most powerful force there was. Love encompassed all the elements; it was the manifestation of a pure and perfect balance.

  “You had another vision.” Marcelo said. It wasn’t a question. There was no other way I could have known that Count Washur was on his way to Mirvela.

  “Yes. Although this one was different. I didn’t realize what I was seeing until after it was gone. And it left behind a knowing.

  “Did you see Carlton with Mirvela?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I don’t know if Carlton was with Mirvela. I wasn’t led there.”

  “But you are sure that Anna was with Washur?”

  “Yes.”

  “So Gustave is definitely Washur?”

  “Yes.”

  Marcelo looked at me strangely. Then he smiled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You sound as if you are speaking of something wonderful, not the threatened lives of our friends.” He looked into my eyes. There he found confirmation of what he already felt. “But I understand it. You have found peace within the elements.”

  I nodded, absently. It was a big thing. Yet it seemed perfectly natural. After all, it was there all along.

  I smiled. He squeezed my hand. Whatever else he might have intended to say, he offered to the flames. When confronted with love and peace, everything else, even expressions of them, were extraneous. The crackling of the fire, now back to its usual behavior, spoke eloquently for us both.

  Chapter 34

  Sir Lancelot gave a little jump at the window. “Hurry. Someone open the window.” He flapped his wings nervously, hurrying to get out of the way in time.

  “Mathieu is heading straight toward us. And it doesn’t look like he has any intention of slowing down.” Sir Lancelot was a sudden mess of nerves and excitement, hovering just out of the way.

  Grand-mère stepped in front of the window, to the place Sir Lancelot had just vacated. “I don’t see anything. Are you quite certain, Sir Lancelot?”

  Mordecai swept Grand-mère gracefully out of the way, revealing that he’d once been well versed in the ways of the gentlemen of the aristocracy. “Lady Ariadne, surely you haven’t yet fully recovered from your ordeal if you are questioning Sir Lancelot this much.” She turned to him, slightly flustered and startled, but no less beautiful than her usual self. Every speck of her intelligence was back, and she blushed at Mordecai’s implication.

  Mordecai steered Lady Ariadne to the side. He unlatched the window and threw both panes wide open. A gust of frigid wind burst in, rudely, and fat white flakes trailed it in like an ill-mannered guest. “I’ve known Sir Lancelot for quite a lot of years, and I haven’t once known him to be wrong.” He had to raise his voice to rise above the howling complaints of the wind.

  “Of course I believe our little friend here, it just seems so difficult to imagine that he could see through this blanket of white. Not even the sun can see down to where we are, I don’t believe.”

  “You may want to step aside a bit further, Ariadne.” Mordecai took her arm and began to lead her to the settee.

  A sound tore through the air, ripping it to shreds with magnificent efficiency and elegance. And before it seemed possible, Mathieu materialized from the blanket of white. Like a cannonball, he shot into the parlor, rattling the glass in the open window panes and knocking a startled Grand-mère back into Mordecai’s waiting arms.

  “Mon Dieu,” she whispered; her voice shook. She reached a trembling hand up to her hair to push silver pins, which fought a valiant struggle to subdue her curls, firmly into place.

  I was too distracted to think much about how Grand-mère allowed herself to lean into Mordecai’s chest. It was only when I noticed Marcelo’s eyes on them instead of Mathieu that I idly followed his gaze.

  Mordecai seemed younger somehow. His hair was still gray, his face still etched with the passing time. Yet the longer Grand-mère remained where she was, the more youthful Mordecai’s face appeared to become. By the time she finally stepped away, with a furtive glance at the man behind her, his eyes were shining with the optimism and idealism of youth.

  Grand-mère stepped toward Mathieu, who’d landed impeccably in the center of the parlor, atop the braided rug and next to the central tea table. When Mor
decai noticed that Marcelo had been a witness to what he and Ariadne shared, at first he feigned annoyance at Marcelo’s unspoken implication. Marcelo hadn’t moved a muscle on his face, yet it was clear that he was speaking of the shared intimacy regardless. But then Mordecai simply smiled. He looked truly young again, making me wonder if there was a way for him to reverse time. He’d already found the way to stall the aging process. Could he not also manipulate it in the other direction?

  “Oh Mathieu. I was so worried about you, my darling.” Mathieu’s green opalescence temporarily disappeared behind a rustle of iridescent greens and blacks. Only after Grand-mère released Mathieu from her embrace did Marcelo’s interest shift to them. In all the years Marcelo had known Mordecai, he’d never seen him like he was with the scent of Lady Ariadne under his nostrils.

  “What happened?” Grand-mère exclaimed, funneling the many hours of waiting and worrying into every word. “Are you all right, my dear Mathieu?”

  Meanwhile, Brave rushed to the window, face turned away from the severe gust that tried to argue with him and claim its right to blow into the parlor and do what it wished with us in it. Brave shut the window, the wind, and its futile argument out.

  Once Brave moved away, Sir Lancelot returned to his perch on the windowsill. His talons made marks like flowers in the snow the wind had blown in.

  Grand-mère leaned toward the firedrake, where only she could interpret the animal sounds that held the answers she desired. She nodded, and we all let out a sigh of relief. Mathieu’s mission had been a dangerous one.

  “Is it true that the man that claimed to be Gustave is truly Count Washur?”

  She leaned forward again in a faint rustle of skirts before standing to interpret for us. Her lips were set in a straight line of disapproval. “He says that the man is most certainly Count Washur. Apparently, once the Count got far enough away from the castle, he dropped the facade entirely. Mathieu is certain that the man is the Count.”

  “But how is that possible?” Mordecai sounded genuinely confused. “I bound his magic, he can’t unbind himself. Only I can. And he can’t transform himself unless he’s in possession of his magic.”

  “That’s what Mathieu says, so there must be a way,” Grand-mère said.

  “It simply can’t be,” Mordecai said as much to himself as to any one of us.

  With the excitement of Mathieu’s arrival, the world the flames presented me with was retreating, and I was growing more interested in what was being said. I wanted to prod Mordecai with what he’d told me so many times already: that anything was possible with magic. There simply was no ‘can’t be’ in magic, and Mordecai knew it.

  We all waited. Mordecai would get there on his own.

  Long fingers tangled in his long beard. I could almost see the thoughts racing behind intelligent pale blue eyes.

  “The only thing that makes sense is that Washur coerced another magician to transform him into someone else. It has to be. He would have had to find a powerful and skilled magician to do it, as this is very advanced and secretive magic. He could have threatened him, or paid him, to do it. And this other magician could have potentially created the effect of Washur looking like a different person.”

  We continued to wait. I didn’t have the answer to the conundrum, and I much doubted anyone else did. The art of magical binding was straightforward. Once a magician’s magic was bound, only the casting magician could unbind it. Until then, the bound magician was fully disconnected from his magical powers.

  No one spoke. The sound of the crackling fire and Mathieu’s heavy breathing filled the room in the absence of other sound. Then there was the sound of porcelain beads clinking against each other as Mordecai absently twirled the braids in his long hair, deep in thought. The clinking sounded like music, albeit unpredictable music, with a rhythm that played to its own tune.

  I was just about to allow my gaze to return to the fireplace, where it longed to immerse itself, when Mordecai arrived at the conclusion. He didn’t make a sound when he did, other than a particularly startled shaking of the beads in his hair. However, the realization seemed to sweep the room with the intensity of its arrival.

  “That’s it,” Mordecai said with a certain amount of awe. “It must be. It’s an outlandish proposal, but I cannot conceive of any other way that he could have done it. It has to be. Wow. It’s incredible. This is magic greater than any even the books conceive of.” Mordecai chuckled to himself. He forgot the imminent threat amid his fascination. Mordecai was ever a student, ever an eager pupil of life—and especially of magical life.

  “Well?” Grand-mère was not nearly as patient as I was in the moment, still sedate from the expansion of the flames. “Tell us already, Mordecai, or do we have to figure it out on our own?”

  He laughed to the sound of more soft clinking. “It’s most remarkable. See, Washur has been stealing the souls of other magicians for more than five centuries. Magic is such a part of the wizard that it becomes intertwined at some level with his soul. This must be, if not the rest of my theory cannot work.”

  He chuckled again before continuing, unable to keep the admiration from his voice. “When I bound Washur’s magic, I only bound his magic. But a man who has stolen souls filled with magic must possess a certain amount of the magic of others as well. And he may well be accessing that magic now.”

  “But he was unable to do magic at Washur Castle? Or was that just for show?” Brave, more than any of us, knew that his father was capable of pretense—whatever was needed for survival and possession of greater power.

  “I don’t know, child, it may be that your father pretended so that we’d leave him be and he could regroup for the attack he laid on us in the guise of Gustave. Or it could also be that he didn’t discover the effect of the remnants of magic within him until after our departure. I presume that his magic has never been bound before?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “It may have taken him a while to realize it, but once he did, then he would have known that he could access the powers of the dozens of magicians he killed, to steal not only their lives, but now also their magic.” Mordecai looked around the room, meeting all of our shaken gazes. Count Washur was frightening enough before. I didn’t know what he was now that he had access to the power of so many others.

  “It wouldn’t be the full capabilities of the other magicians, would it?” Marcelo asked. Hope crept into his question. If Count Washur could access the full magical powers of nearly fifty magicians, then there wouldn’t be much we could do. Whatever resistance we came up with would almost certainly be futile. “Washur would only be able to access a diminished version of the magic of each magician whose soul he stole. Right?”

  I wasn’t the only one in the room remembering that Count Washur had stolen souls of magicians as powerful as Albacus.

  “Let’s hope you’re right, my son. Because if not….” Mordecai trailed off. There was no need for him to finish. We all knew how bad it would be.

  Mordecai shook his head to dispel the negative path his thoughts had begun to follow. The beads rang out a joyful tune that contradicted the tension that filled the parlor.

  “Why did Washur look like someone other than Ariadne’s brother then?” Marcelo asked. “Why wouldn’t he have just transformed into Gustave? It would have made his ruse more believable. He would have been able to dupe us into a much more dangerous situation than the one we find ourselves in now.”

  “Hm. Yes. That’s true, my son. Why indeed.”

  “Would he have had to have physical contact with the magician he wanted to impersonate?” Brave asked.

  Mordecai, Marcelo, and Grand-mère swiveled to face him. “Yes,” all three of them said in unison.

  “Then if my father couldn’t find the real Gustave, then he would have resorted to transforming into another magician, and using a spell to confuse Lady Ariadne so that she couldn’t give him up.”

  Mordecai was nodding his head fervently. “Yes!
Absolutely. That’s it, child, it must be.” Mordecai seemed delighted by the intellectual exercise. The stakes appeared fully forgotten.

  I was following along, my alertness fully restored. “So that would mean there’s a very good chance that my true great uncle is unharmed. Correct?”

  Grand-mère’s face expressed so much sudden joy and relief that a lump of emotion rose in my throat, surprising me with its suddenness. “Oui, ma chérie, that’s a very logical and very wonderful conclusion.” She smiled at me with approval for a moment, before her face fell again. “Although that doesn’t guarantee Gregore’s safety.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Marcelo was up and pacing again. “It would depend on whether Washur met up with Gregore in his search for Lord Gustave or not.”

  “I’ll dispatch a messenger to Acquaine immediately,” Grand-mère said, though she made no move to leave. Instead, she returned her focus to Mathieu, who continued to stand at attention, as committed to his duties as Sir Lancelot was to his, alert at the window. “Where did Count Washur go, Mathieu, my darling?”

  She leaned her head toward him then nodded as he spoke in sounds that only the magician he had bonded with could understand. “And Anna? The maid? Was she with him?”

  She nodded and cooed. “I see. And Humbert?” She flashed her eyes toward me. I’d already told her what happened with the dragon. She wanted to be certain.

  “Hm-hm. Very well.” I saw confirmation flash through her eyes. Humbert was indeed now free to be himself again. He would undoubtedly shed the name Grand-mère gave him as he flew, and reach his home as the magnificent beast that he was, once again incapable of being dominated by another creature.

  “Is there anything else you can tell us that will help, my darling?”

  A few more sounds followed before Grand-mère embraced the firedrake again. “Merci. You can join Sylvia now.” And she released him from her swaths of green and black to Sylvia’s ready welcome. I was watching, and not a single thing changed on Sylvia’s long opalescent face. But the admiration she reserved for Mathieu was as evident as Mordecai’s had been for Grand-mère after Mathieu’s arrival.