The Dragon Heir (The Heir Chronicles #3)

The Dragon Heir (The Heir Chronicles #3) Page 3

Jason pushed on, the cave wind blowing against his face. Good, he thought. That might keep the mist at bay.

The passage ended in a chamber the size of a large ballroom. Far above, the wind whistled through an opening to the outside. That, then, was the source of the fresh air. Jason tried to push light to the ceiling, but the dark vault soared high overhead, beyond the reach of his puny lamp. The Weirstone glittered, a long shaft driving far into the mountain.

Soot smudged the walls all around, as if from the smoke of thousands of ancient fires. In one corner bulked a great raised platform, eight feet off the floor. Jason found fingerholds and scrambled to the top.

Here were fragments of fabric: velvets and satins and lace that disintegrated when he touched them. More large bones lay piled neatly in a corner, including what might have been human skeletons. Human and animal skulls grinned out from niches in the wall. He was in the lair of some great predator or the site of a long-ago battle.

At the far end of the platform was a massive oak door.

Jason eyed the door. In a movie, that would be the door you shouldn't open.

But of course you would.

By now, the ghyll, the mist, and the wizards searching for him outside seemed a distant threat. He had to get past that door. Something drew him forward.

Jason pulled the dyrne sefa free once again. Using it like an eyepiece, he scanned the entry. It was covered with a delicate labyrinth of glittering threads, invisible to the naked eye. Another kind of web.

Extending his hand, he muttered, “Geryman.” Open. The door remained shut.

Jason looked about for tools. Lifting one of the long leg bones, he came at the door from the side, extending the bone and poking cautiously through the web of light.

With a sound like a gunshot the door exploded outward in a blast of flame. Had he been standing at the threshold, he would have been incinerated. As it was, he almost wet his pants.

When his rocketing pulse had steadied, he approached the doorway, again from the side, and peered through. Beyond the entrance was yet another door, set with six panels of beaten gold, each engraved with an image. It took a moment for Jason to realize what he was seeing.

Each engraving depicted one of the Weirguilds. A beautiful woman with rippling hair and flowing robes extended her hands toward Jason, smiling. She obviously represented the enchanters, who had the gift of charm and seduction. A tall, muscled man in a breastplate and kilt charged forward, swinging a sword. That was the warrior, who excelled in battle.

In another scene, an old man gazed into a mirror, tears rolling down his wrinkled cheeks. He must be a soothsayer or seer, who could predict the future, though imperfectly. In the fourth, a woman ground roots with a mortar and pestle. She was a sorcerer, expert in the creation and use of magical tools and materials. Finally, a lean-faced man in a nimbus of light manipulated the strings of a marionette who seemed unaware of the puppeteer.

Well, there's the wizard, Jason thought. The only one of the lot who could shape magic with words, and for that reason most powerful.

The center panel, the largest, was engraved with a magnificent dragon, clawed forelegs extended and wings spread.

The legend was that the founders of the magical guilds had originated in the ghyll as cousins, slaves to a dragon who ruled the dragonhold. Eventually, by working together, they'd managed to outsmart the dragon. In some versions they killed it, in others they put it into a magical sleep. They'd renamed the valley Raven's Ghyll, preferring to forget that the dragon had ever existed.

Then four of the cousins were tricked into signing a covenant that made them subservient to the fifth cousin.

The wizard.

By the sixteenth century, the hierarchy of the magical guilds was well established. The ruling wizards had organized themselves into the warring houses of the Red and the White Rose, whose incessant battles decimated the houses over time. The system of tournaments known as the Game had been launched to limit bloodshed among wizards. The Dragon House, to which Jason belonged, harked back to a time before wizards assumed their dominant role.

Jason studied the engraving of the dragon, knowing such pieces often held important clues. The work had been done by Old Magic, using an artistry lost to time. Power seemed to ripple under the dragon's metal scales, and humor and intelligence glittered in its golden eyes. An elaborate cloak poured in glittering folds down the dragon's back, to be caught in the arms of a lady who stood just behind the beast.

The lady was well-dressed for a servant, if that's what she was. Her hair was carefully arranged and she wore a necklace with a single glittering gemstone set into the metal. Although she was tiny next to the dragon, she seemed unafraid. She rested one hand on the dragon's leg in an affectionate way and the dragon's head arced down toward her as if to continue an intimate conversation.

In a faint continuous script around the center panel ran the words, “Enter with a virtuous heart, or not at all.”

Well, that shuts me out, Jason thought. Though by wizard standards he might qualify.

Who would have made something so cool and then hidden it in the mountain to be found only by chance? And what lay behind it?

It's no use. You're going in. You can't resist.

Taking a deep breath, extending his hand, he whispered “Geryman” again, expecting another detonation.

This time, the double doors swung silently in.

Once again, he used the dyrne sefa to examine the entrance for magical traps. And found none. Leading with the leg bone, waving it like a sword, he advanced through the doorway.

It was a storeroom, lined ceiling-high with barrels, chests and casks, strongboxes and coffers, baskets and bins.

He stood blinking stupidly for a moment, then dropped the bone and pried the lid off the nearest barrel. Recklessly thrusting his hand deep, he let the contents trickle through his fingers.

Pearls. In all colors, from precious black to creamy white to pale pink and yellow. Large and round and perfect. These must be worth a fortune, he thought.

He lifted the lid on a small brass-bound chest. Emeralds, in a deep green with fiery hearts. A small gold coffer was filled with diamonds so large that anywhere else he'd assume they were fake.

There were stones in all colors, spools of gold chain, both loose gems and jewels in medieval settings. Coins engraved with the portraits of long-dead kings and queens. Bolts of velvet and satin shrouded in sleeves of sturdy linen. Cabinets filled with parchment scrolls, fragile with age, and books in leather bindings. Paintings in gilded frames were lined four-deep against the walls.

In some of the large baskets he found the best treasure yet: talismans for protection, amulets for power, inscribed with spell runes in the mysterious languages of magic. Many were crafted from the flat black stones familiar from his own collection, the magical pieces he'd inherited from his mother. Others were made of precious metals—devised by methods now lost to the guilds.

They were carelessly jumbled together, and he sorted them into piles, his fingers itching to put them to use. Jason was not particularly powerful, but with these at his disposal, even Raven's Ghyll Castle might fall.

Was this the legendary hoard of weapons? It seemed unlikely. The hoard was said to be a living arsenal, regularly added to and used by the D'Orsays. These things looked like they'd lain untouched for centuries. While some of the sefas could be used as weapons, this was mostly fancy work— jewelry, books, art, gemstones.

Was it possible that D'Orsay didn't know this was here? Totally possible.

Jason leaned against the wall, rubbing his chin. Well, now. It wouldn't do for the Roses or D'Orsay to get hold of it.

He couldn't haul everything out in one trip, but he couldn't count on coming back, either. He might not make it out alive this time. And if he were caught, they'd quickly force the cave's location out of him.

He'd have to focus on smaller items, and choose carefully. He zipped open his backpack and set it on the cave floor.

The magical artifacts were the first priority. He and Hastings and the rest of the Dragon House were in this war for survival. Anything that kept the other Wizard Houses away from the sanctuary at Trinity was golden. The rebels could use these amulets to make the price of conquest too high for Claude D'Orsay or the Roses.

Jason methodically worked his way through the vault, torn between a growing claustrophobia and the fear he'd overlook something critical. He wrapped some of the more fragile and dangerous-looking pieces in strips of cloth he ripped from the bolts of fabric. Then he shoveled magical jewelry, crystals, mirrors, and scrying stones into the backpack, trying to be careful, hoping he wouldn't break anything or inadvertently set something off. It was like loading pipe bombs into a shopping cart.

At the back of the cave, a sword in a jeweled scabbard stood alone, as if its owner had leaned it against the wall, meaning to come back and retrieve it. He gripped the hilt gingerly. The metal tingled in his hand, a kind of magical greeting.

“What have we here?” Jason muttered, feeling a rising excitement.

The hilt and crosspiece were of rather plain make, embellished with a Celtic cross on the pommel, centered with a flat-petaled rose. It was somehow more beautiful for its simplicity. Jason was no warrior, but he recognized quality when he saw it. As he drew the blade from its covering, it seemed to ignite, driving the shadows from the corners.

Could this be one of the seven great blades?

Of the seven, only one other was known to exist: Shadowslayer, the blade carried by Jason's friend, the warrior Jack Swift, of Trinity. Stroking the glittering metal, Jason wished he could marry himself to a weapon the way Jack did.

But, no. Always better to be a wizard than a warrior in the hierarchy of the magical guilds.

Sliding the blade back into its scabbard, he carried it forward and set it next to the bulging backpack. Now what else? he queried the room.

Niches lined the back wall, in the blue shadow of the Dragon's Tooth. Some were empty, some displayed treasures, some were mortared shut. Reasoning that the closed niches might contain the most valuable contents, he took the time to break them open with cautious bits of magic. The mountain shuddered uneasily under the assault. Dirt from above trickled onto his head and shoulders.