The Treasure Keeper d-4 Page 5

  Yet the hollow awaited him without motion. Even the mists that had begun to lift and clump with the damp were at rest down there, dull, slaty strips of fog unrolled between the weeds.

  Like skeleton fingers. Like cloudy poison.

  Rhys spat out a sliver of nail, dropping his hand. He had come all this way. There was no reason not to finish the job. He'd be the only one he knew who'd ever done it. It would gain him the unmitigated envy of his brother and no doubt a buss or two from one of the more daring village girls, and there was no reason at all not to move his feet and go forward, except that he realized he'd begun to respire rather too quickly, and he was feeling light-headed, yes, definitely lightheaded, and the sound of his lungs laboring for air had become much, much too loud in the leering, eager, poisonous silence—

  He was no longer beneath the oak. He was on his knees on the path falling downward to the Field, scrabbling to stop himself, his hands clawing at the dirt, mist in his eyes—

  The dirt broke his hands apart. He shattered, his hands and arms and chest and body—shattered into smoke, so quickly, so horrifically, he didn't even have time to squeak with shock.

  He was aware of his clothing falling away. Shirt, breeches, the tie in his hair. He was aware that he no longer felt the path, or gravity, or his heart in his chest.

  All he felt was pain.

  As a toddler he'd once stuck his fist into a scalding pot of tea when no one could quite stop him in time, and it had been like this: an instant of nothing but surprise, then searing, shrieking agony that bubbled his skin and the world went red and raw and weeping, and there was nothing he could do about it—he was still breaking apart, thinner and thinner—

  The stars were spinning above him, below him. The Field of Bones was a yawning dark mouth, ready to eat him, ready to swallow. A fearsome cold lightness was beginning to transmute the red-fire pain but somehow it actually felt worse, because Rhys knew it was the last of himself, dissolving.

  He was the same color as the mist. He was as chill and wan as the mist . less substantial. Gossamer. The indigo sky reached down and drew him into threads.

  No,he thought, from some deep, invisible place that was no longer inside him but around him, through him, lancing and connecting the very stars.

  No.

  He would not die like this. He would not be remembered for this, death in a field, profane, unforgiven.

  He focused on the ground. He made himself pull with all his might, with every atom of will he could muster,pull, pull, until the cold began to recede into a heavier weight, and he felt the smoke that used to be hands and feet and legs and head gain density, change shape—and with one final mighty heaving effort he found himself nearly back to earth.

  He reached for it with both hands. He stretched for it, pinwheeling, and finally connected at a full run.

  Clots of dirt spewed around him. Moss and grass kicked up, great ropy furrows ripped through the green, because he was no longer Lord Rhys Langford, a brown-haired boy unseen and unheard.

  He was Rhys the full-blooded drakon, and his talons were sharp and long, and his wings unfolded in bright canopies against his back, slowing his fall, then tumbling him into a roll until his head struck a rock that blanked everything into white.

  That was how he came to be a dragon the first time. That was his Turn. And when he'd come groggily awake, naked in that field, it was to spend the rest of the night putting human hands upon black and rotting bones, digging and digging and spitting the taste of mold from his mouth until his tongue swelled to dry leather and his lips chapped.

  It had taken hours to rebury the dead.

  So there had been no kisses from fair maidens. No envy from his brother. He'd never told a soul about going to the Field; he did not dare. When his mother had inquired, he said he'd gotten the gash on his head by leaping from the dock into Fire Lake, which everyone believed. Or pretended to.

  He'd always been the one who pushed his limits as far as he could; no one ever seemed to question that.

  Still, he'd sobered a bit after that night. Perhaps it was the notion of rubbing so closely against a vast Nothing. Perhaps it was the secret wonder at his own inner will, the unexpected ability to scrape his hide back together when so many others—boys he knew, boys he named friends—had not.

  Perhaps it was just plain fear. Twelve was damned young to be slapped in the face with the prospect of sudden annihilation. Whatever it was, from that night on Rhys found himself tempered. Not in a bad way. After all, tempered iron was strong steel, and the dragon in him appreciated the power of steel.

  He began to see his life in the shire in a new light. He began to take better note of all the rules, all the regulations, not so he could trick his way around them but so that he could understand the forces that had shaped his history, his tribe. He began to appreciate the beauty and natural order surrounding him, his family, their society, the sprawling village and shady cobblestone lanes and the sparkling manor house itself. Trees and grass-swept knolls, farms and orchards and the tribe's single flock of sheep moving from hill to hill with the seasons, bunched like cotton puffs along the dales.

  It was, without question, a golden world. And by and large, Rhys Langford was determined to do his part to keep it that way.

  He kept only a single secret still. Save for one pretty girl he was trying to impress, his first true love, he kept the secret of his Turn—because being tempered didn't mean there weren't nights when the need to fly rolled through him in waves of sharp, throbbing desire, and he was still young enough to laugh at the thought of soaring sly and out of bounds. The girl never told, and he never told; Rhys kept that secret until he was fifteen, and it became too cumbersome a thing to carry any longer.

  A golden life, aye. A charmed life.

  He tried to be grateful for every minute of it.

  It was a lovely condition, to be rich and lucky both. He enjoyed the luxuries of his world; he enjoyed the savage splendor of his animal self, of becoming one with the heavens. And he enjoyed the more human elements too: fine food and wine, art and conversation, boxing and fencing. Ladies.

  Music.

  Oh, the music. Somehow, lately, he'd learned to appreciate all the music around him so much more than he ever had. Not just the celestial melodies of the moon and sun and stars, those electric vibrations that reflected off dragon scales, that sent ripples of harmony back through the skies. Nor just the silent, delicate songs of all the jewels and stones and metals that blessed the earth. Even human music held a sudden new appeal.

  Handel, Haydn, Mozart. Italian opera, romantic ballads, street girls crooning verses about lovers across flowing rivers ... it was all so ... engrossing.

  Why, the concert he was at right now, for instance, was certainly one of the finest he'd ever experienced. He never used to enjoy the symphony so much, but frankly, the entire affair was sublime. It was almost ridiculously better than any of his previous concerto experiences.

  The performance chamber was baroque, heavily elaborate plaster friezes done up in shades of mauve and rose and rich buttery cream. He sat not in the middle of the audience but just off to the left, in a satinwood chair far more comfortable than what he remembered. Because Rhys knew this place, knew it right down to the oiled planks of the dais the orchestra played upon. He was in the Von Zonnenburg assembly hall in Soho Square. In London. He'd been here countless times— well, perhaps not countless. A dozen times. It was a venue that suited very well his parents' notion of proper aristocratic entertainment. The Marquess and Marchioness of Langford played their human roles with expert skill, and they'd insisted that each of their children learn to do the same.

  Rhys had dozed off on all the other occasions he'd come. He was fairly certain of that. But now—

  Every candle in the six dangling crystal chandeliers was lit. There were at least two hundred of them, two hundred tiny sweet flames magnified, their light chopped into prisms that cast chips of color all across the chamber. They managed a lumin
ance he'd never discerned before, perfect white candles dripping perfect little tears into their crystal cups. Their brass polished chains shimmered like molten gold with the rising heat.

  The candlelight lent a soft-shadowed clarity to the musicians before him. He admired their satin jackets and old-fashioned rolled wigs, their hands moving over bows and valves and strings in effortless agreement. Rhys didn't know the piece they were performing, but it illumed his surroundings as much as the chandeliers did. It was light and loud and complex and simple and . blissful. He could lounge in the satinwood chair all night, hearing it.

  It wasn't particularly bothersome that he seemed to be the only member of the audience in attendance. He thought that perhaps this might be a final rehearsal, something of that sort. He was, after all, a lord; rules were bent all the time for the ton. And it wasn't as if he didn't appreciate the artistry, the splendor, of their work.

  He leaned back, a half smile on his lips, tapping his fingers against the arm of his chair. The music thrilled on and on, and he thought he'd never been so content in his life.

  Just then a movement to his right caught his eye. Rhys glanced over. A woman was taking her seat three chairs down, skirts and petticoats rustling.

  Her attention was fixed upon the musicians, just as his had been. She was gentry at least, dressed in a frock of rose damask and cream ruffles to match the hall, a wrap of stiff white gauze framing her shoulders. Light pooled around her; her ringleted hair was very pale, her powdered skin was very pale; compared to the rest of the chamber she was alabaster and shimmer, actually a little too bright to behold. His eyes began to tear.

  She opened her fan; he was dazzled by the flash of pink rubies on lace. She lifted it to her face and turned her head, meeting his gaze from beneath kohled lashes.

  He thought she might be beautiful. It was damned hard to tell, what with all the candlelight, but of course she was beautiful. On this stupendous night, in this soaringly exquisite place, how could she be anything but?

  She murmured his name. He sat up straighter and offered her a civil nod. She was young, and she was fair, and if she knew him, the last thing he'd want to do was ignore her, because who knew what the night would bring after the music ended—

  Her fan lowered. She studied him with eyes of velvety black.

  "It's not real," she whispered. "You do know that. It's not real. None of it."

  His mouth opened. He wanted to speak and could not; no sound emerged. His hands gripped the chair but that was all he could do. He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe. For one long, horrible moment the entire world went dark. The music played on, but it was different now, it was sly and terrible and crept in tendrils through him, eating away at him like a cancer.

  The woman stood. She turned to face him; the wrap slipped down her arms.

  "Is this the best of you, then?" she asked in her cultured voice, cool and sensual, a blade of light surrounded by that darkness. "Is this the best I can expect of you? You lazy bastard. I'm not going to risk my neck helping you if you don't even try."

  Lazy bastard. Lazy bastard—

  He knew her. Her realized it just then. Her name escaped him—he'd loved her once, and he knew her—

  Rhys did not wake up. He could not evade those tendrils even now, not enough. He still couldn't really move. He couldn't see, or Turn.

  But he did manage a single, heaving breath. And it didn't taste like Soho, or London, or anything civilized. It tasted like cold, wormy dirt. It tasted like death.

  And that, Rhys realized, was real.

  His teeth were clenched. His jaw locked. His back and legs and entire body were a frozen spasm of rigid agony, and the symphony never ceased.

  He tried to shut it out. He reached for the first clear image that flashed behind his lids—light; the bright and unforgiving face of—

  "Zoe."

  She jolted awake in the night, instantly, awfully, her every sense flooded with dread, her skin slick with cold sweat. She did not gasp or twitch; she didn't breathe at all. She lay in the bed with her eyes wide open and knew that whoever had crept into the suite with her would see only a mattress and gems and strangely rumpled sheets.

  The wash of her Gift hummed across her body, disguising her, an instinctive defense. The power of it chilled her blood even as the man's voice she'd heard echoed back into nothing, a memory. A bad dream.

  But she lay there a very long time anyway, as motionless as she could be. She listened to the sounds of the city pushing over the treetops of the park, past her walls: dogs barking. Horses sighing, plodding hooves, iron-wheeled carts being pulled over cobblestones. Men and women laughing, even at this hour, and tavern music, and the very clouds above her dissolving, particle by particle, drop by drop, with the slow building heat of the coming morning. And no one spoke her name again.

  She'd dreamt it. That was all.

  God,what a fright. It hadn't felt at all like a dream; when she'd opened her eyes she would have sworn there was a man standing over her, shadowed and close. But there wasn't. There was no human smell anywhere nearby.

  Slowly she sat up in the bed, rubbing her hands over her face, the rings on her fingers warm and rigid against her cheeks. With her head bowed she sucked in a lungful of air, released it, and watched as the locks of her hair became once again visible, phantom-pale strands shrouding her face and shoulders.

  Without meaning to, she glanced at the mirror. It was exactly where she had left it, propped against the wall. The crack down the middle became a sharp silvery thunderbolt in the dark, frozen forever against the blue.

  The ghosts shifted and sighed against it. They brightened and faded, and tried so hard to speak.

  Zoe slipped from the bed. She padded to the glass, her feet chilled against the floor, and knelt before its wide, clear expanse, the bangles at her wrists chiming softly as she moved.

  She touched it lightly. It was cold, very cold, beneath her fingertips.

  "Hayden?"

  No response. In the silence of the chamber, in this dark small hour, even the beings that haunted her on the other side seemed to have grown weak.

  "Hayden, are you there? Was it you?"

  Something did stir then. Something did change, a new shape forming against the endless blue. It looked like the outline of a man . perhaps a man, shaded and haloed with smoke . and then nothing: The smoke and man curled up and away.

  She leaned forward, staring harder, but the light was too murky, and whatever she'd seen did not appear again.

  Zoe leaned back on her heels, the anklets stretched tight against her skin, then gave it up and sank all the way to the floor.

  She thought of her bed back in the cottage at home, the plush feather mattress. Of the nightingales that would rouse at dusk, serenading her as she'd sit and dream by the parlor window. The silver-faced clock gently ticking upon the mantel, a wedding gift to her great-grandparents. The Wedgwood creamware on the shelves in the kitchen, the handsome rosewood chairs and table, the silk azure curtains she'd help sew herself as a child.

  The dense eastern woods. The soft summer nights.

  She'd imagined a hundred different lives in that cottage. She'd imagined being married in the vine-covered gazebo in back, as Cerise had done, and cutting greens for her husband's meals from her garden. She'd imagined her own children growing up there, admiring the clock, pouring the cream, stroking the curtains as they gazed at the wild woods just beyond reach. Just as she had done.

  Hayden or something else, the shade in the mirror did not reappear, no matter how firmly she pressed her fingers to the glass. So Zoe went back to bed.

  Chapter Five

  The most prized possession of Zoe Lane's youth had not been a doll, or a blanket, or a carved toy pony, all the things her sister and friends had cherished to the point of battered oblivion. Even as a girl, Zoe privately thought that dolls were a silly waste of time, and blankets were meant for babies. Toy ponies were fine enough, but since she'd likely never own a real one,
idolizing a creature that would only bolt at the sight of her seemed, well, stupid.

  No. While Cerise and all the other girls would gather and giggle over their pretend games, playing house-on-the-hill, picking boys for pretend husbands, Zoe was usually alone in her room or the lush cool forest, nestled in a bed of crushed buttercups or forget-me-nots. Studying the

  Book.

  Her Book.

  She'd found it at Uncle Anton's house, dusty in his library, its spine an intriguing gleam of Gothic, silvery lettering. Young Zoe liked books and always had, their scent of ink and fine paper, the crack of their bindings, rough-edged pages. Words and words and words that sometimes made sense and sometimes did not, but that always seem to beckon to her with the answers to questions she'd never even thought to ask.

  This particular book was thick and heavy and had very few words. It was mostly pictures. Engravings.

  Of dragons.

  They were extremely frightening. Certainly Uncle Anton would never have given it to her had he bothered to look through it;Mr. Merick's Compleat Compendium of Dragones, Merfolk, and Other Fiendish Creatures was stuffed chock-a-block with violence and gore, the likes of which had never before darkened the genteel doors of Myers Cottage. Until Zoe had sneaked it in under her pinafore.

  By candlelight, by the dappled light of the woods, she'd examined the pictures and memorized their gruesome tales. None of the dragons looked like anyone she knew. There was no beauty to them, no lithe, ribbony elegance. They were fat-bellied and repugnant. They had fangs that dripped venom, and bulging snake eyes, and forked tongues. They terrorized villages and kidnapped virgins, and breathed fire across crops and frantic peasants waving pitchforks.

  And none of them, not one, were heroes.

  None of them had wives or little children waiting for them at home. None of them took tea with crumpets, or harvested wheat by the autumn moon, or played chess, or danced a jig. Zoe's own father had died a mere year after she was born, so she had no memories of his doing any of those things. But she knew how other drakon fathers behaved. As far as she could tell, there wasn't a stolen virgin anywhere to be found in Darkfrith.