Once in his room, Jason rematerialized. “Sit down,” he commanded. Seph subsided into a chair, gauging the distance to the door, trying to figure out how he could get past Jason.
“Now tell me,” Jason said, planting himself in the way.
“Leicester killed Trevor Hill because he was going to try to reach my guardian. It’s all my fault.” Seph trembled with rage and remorse.
Jason tilted his head to one side. “Why would your headmaster kill someone for contacting your guardian?”
“You of all people should know why.”
Jason leaned forward and put both hands on Seph’s shoulders, his blue eyes blazing. “You go into Leicester’s office with a bunch of accusations, and the first thing he’s going to think is,‘What’s happened to Clueless? Who’s he been talking to? Couldn’t be Jason Haley, could it?’”
Seph tried to look away, but Jason kept his grip on him. “And let’s say you confront Leicester, and you find out your theory is true? What exactly are you going to do about it?” Seph said nothing. “Don’t you see? Every piece of information you give him is a weapon. And there’s nothing you can do to him. Nothing.” Jason released Seph and stepped back.
“You don’t understand. Trevor tried to help me, and now he’s dead.” Images came back to him: Maia’s flesh disintegrating under his touch. Trevor’s scorched amulet amid the ashes at the amphitheater.
Jason dropped into a chair and closed his eyes. “If you’re asking me if I think Leicester would do it, I’d say yes, in a heartbeat. And for less of a reason, too. He’d do it because Trevor was your friend and supported you while Leicester was trying to make you crazy.” Jason shook himself, as if trying to dislodge a memory. “Haven’t you wondered why I don’t hang out with the other students? Don’t you think I’m tired of being alone all the time?”
He released a breath, a long, wounded sound. “It’s because Leicester can get to you through them. I talked Sam and Peter into going up against him. Now Sam is dead, and Peter . . .” His voice trailed off.
“You’re scared of him.”
“You’re damn right I am, and you should be, too. The Anaweir are so damned fragile.” He gripped the arms of the chair as if holding himself in his seat.
“Last spring I complained to my father about this place. I bitched so much he decided to investigate. He called Dr. Leicester, asking questions, even came out for a visit, but didn’t learn much. Everyone here was happy except me, blah, blah, blah. Still, Dad promised he would talk to a couple of psychotherapists, figure out if what was going on here was legitimate. Within a month, and before he could get very far with it, he died of a heart attack.”
“You think Leicester had something to do with it?”
Jason waved his hand impatiently. “Leicester has never taken any pains to deceive me about what he is, because I already knew too much when I got here. On the day my father died, Leicester called me into his office, and told me when and how and where it would happen. Then he made me sit there until the call came.”
“My God.” Seph swallowed down the sick that rose in his throat.
“He thought he’d found the way to break me. And it almost did, because I knew it was my fault.” Jason closed his eyes again, and Seph could see tears collecting at the corners. “If I hadn’t been such a jerk when my dad remarried, I wouldn’t have ended up here. If I hadn’t complained about it to my father, he’d be alive today.”
“How can you think it was your fault?” Seph whispered. “Leicester is a monster.”
“If I don’t get to blame myself, then you don’t, either. But I think you can see that if anyone has a reason to go after Leicester, it’s me.”
“I didn’t know,” Seph said quietly. “How can you stand it?”
“I can stand it because I know I’ll find a way to get Leicester and D’Orsay in the end. I’ll do it or die trying. I’ve stayed here because I need to learn enough to do it. And then I’ll join up with someone powerful enough and organized enough to help me. Right now, that looks like the Dragon, if I can find him.”
He looked up at Seph. “Leicester enjoys inflicting pain on people. I’ve been a source of entertainment for him. He thinks he’ll have me in the end. He can take his time. I’m an orphan like you. Nobody cares what happens to me.
“Just stay away from him. At least, you can tell yourself you’re not sure about Trevor, because you aren’t. If you can’t do anything about it, it’s better not to know.”
Jason unfolded from his chair and began pacing, a cat in the small cage of the room. He could never stay still for long. “If Trevor was killed because he was going to talk to your guardian, then Leicester didn’t want that to happen. I bet the whole story about them committing you is bogus, and Leicester is worried about what might happen if you contact Sloane’s. So maybe Sloane’s is your key to getting out.”
With the death of Trevor Hill, the old guilt returned. Trevor had found a way to survive at the Havens until Seph had come along. Even though he was Anaweir, he’d risked everything for Seph. Now Seph’s nightmares were mostly about Trevor.
Along with the guilt came a hatred for Leicester that smoked and smoldered under his breastbone like a deep mine fire. He began wearing Trevor’s pendant, along with the portal stone and Maia’s cross. Images of revenge alternated with dreams of escape.
Seph took his lead from Jason and kept his distance from the other students. Sometimes he ate lunch with Troy, Harrison, James, and some of the others, but he never accepted their invitations to play racquetball, or tennis, or to go up to the movies in the auditorium. He spent his free time in his room, reading, or roaming the campus by himself.
Seph did his best to project the image of one whose hold on reality is tenuous. He let his appearance go. His hair grew long and curly for lack of cutting, and he rarely combed it. He still hallucinated during the day, checking in and out without warning. Sometimes whole chunks of time went missing.
He mumbled to himself in the hallways, flinched away from phantoms, and sat through classes as if in a trance. Some of the other students seemed to regard him as they might a fly caught in a dangerous web. Get too close and you might become entangled yourself. So they left him strictly alone.
On the other hand, the alumni continued to take an unwelcome interest in Seph. Now it seemed that everywhere he went, Warren Barber turned up, offering help with homework, music downloads, pills and peppermint schnapps and potent South American weed that might settle Seph’s nerves. Bruce Hays and Aaron Hanlon invited him to eat with them in the alumni dining room, and to work out in the fitness center in the basement. On Leicester’s orders, no doubt.
Seph went, hoping to glean information that might prove useful. But the alumni were more resistant to mind magic than the Anaweir.
Now that he knew the stakes in the game they were playing, Seph was extraordinarily careful about using magic in the open. He kept his distance from Leicester for fear the headmaster would see the truth in his eyes. He and Jason spent as much time as possible in the alumni library. Jason tapped volumes of notes into a tiny electronic organizer, while Seph used his knowledge of Latin to decipher the Middle English manuscripts.
They spent hours trying out incantations in the hidden corners of campus, mostly attack charms and charms of protection and influence. As Seph became more self-aware, he emitted fewer “sparks,” as Jason called them, that is, unintentional releases of power. When Seph noticed the magical tension building up in his body, he found ways to use or dissipate it.
Jason proved to be reckless, a risk taker when it came to magical experiments. He would launch powerful combinations of charms without a clear notion of the consequences. Sometimes Seph wondered if he had a death wish.
Seph tried to fit the concept of magic into math and physics: the teleology that he had always taken as the truth. As far as he could tell, physical magic was most useful in generating energy: light and heat and air currents, the movement of molecules that were loosely packe
d to begin with.
The other important role of magic was in influencing others. As Jason said: the Anaweir had little protection against wizards in that regard.
“Anaweir women can’t resist wizards,” he said. “All that barely controlled power. They can sense it, you know. The touch of a wizard drives women wild. That kind of direct physical magic is called persuasion.” He grinned and laced his fingers behind his head. “It can get very complicated.” Jason apparently thrived on those kinds of complications.
Seph thought of the way girls responded to his touch, the power that spilled from his fingers. He hadn’t used it inappropriately—had he?
He was more comfortable with spoken charms, because he could better control the outcome. Seph loved the cadence of magical language. He rolled the ancient charms off his tongue, conjuring words from the ancient magi. Sometimes the words came from within, like a spring bubbling up from a deeper pool. He had never been more convinced of the power of language, the leap from symbol to reality.
He noticed Jason watching him as he drew the spells off the page and spun them out, like shimmering flames in the air. “You really have a gift, Seph,” Jason said once. “You’re more powerful than I’ll ever be. If you could find a teacher, I bet you could blow Leicester away.”
Jason’s strength lay in the area of glamours: deceptive images and visions that carried no firepower, save their ability to confuse, distract, startle, and scare. And that was enough. Sometimes, out in the woods, Seph would walk into one of Jason Haley’s fever dreams. He’d encounter a gryphon grazing on ferns or a satyr or a phoenix perched in the branches of an oak, or a great ship sailing through the trees crewed by impossibly beautiful mermaids.
Seph asked about Weirbooks.
“You have one somewhere,” Jason said. “It was created by the Sorcerers’ Guild when you were born, and it can’t be destroyed. If you could find it, it would tell you all you want to know about your family.
Jason showed Seph his own Weirbook. Jason’s name was recorded on the last page, along with his parents and grandparents. The genealogy went back to the tenth century. He kept it locked up, protected by a series of complicated charms. “You don’t want your Weirbook to fall into your enemies’ hands. Then they have your history, and they know your weaknesses and strengths.”
Seph was fascinated by the idea that, somewhere out there, his history lay between the covers of a book, if he could only lay his hands on it.
By the end of April, spring was visiting the Havens in frustrating fits and starts. The snow melted away to patches where the heavy drifts had been, and daffodils glittered among the trees. Gregory Leicester had visitors, also. Rental cars and cars with out-of-state plates appeared in the parking lot, feeding what appeared to be a series of small meetings. One morning, Jason intercepted Seph on his way to class, pulling him into a stairwell.
“D’Orsay’s here,” he whispered. “Gamemaster of the Council. Let’s go.” Within seconds, they were both unnoticeable, loping across the grounds, heading for the administration building.
This was a very private meeting, just Leicester and D’Orsay, held in Leicester’s office on the third floor, with Hays and Barber stationed in front of the door like bouncers at an exclusive club. Seph and Jason had to wait in the hallway for two hours until Martin Hall arrived with lunch. They managed to slip through the doorway behind him when he rolled the cart in.
D’Orsay and Leicester sat at the table by the window, bodies rigid, faces stony, like a quarreling couple interrupted midspat. Papers were spread out across the table and a notebook computer sat between them.
Claude D’Orsay was a tall wizard with close-cropped gray hair and custom-tailored clothes. He wore a heavy gold chain around his neck, the emblem of his wizardly office.
When the door closed behind Martin, Leicester hissed, “I can’t believe the Dragon’s that difficult to find. He puts up new messages every day. Listen to this.” Leicester pulled his laptop toward him and read from the screen. “‘One wonders what games the Gamemaster is playing. Sources tell the Dragon that D’Orsay has scheduled a series of secret meetings leading up to the Interguild Conference. If you’ve not received an invitation, I suggest you watch your back.’ Where the hell does he get his information?”
“Guesswork and speculation,” D’Orsay suggested, sipping at his wine.
“Really? He goes on to list the dates, participants, and locations of three of the meetings.”
“Let me see that.” D’Orsay turned the screen so it faced him. Then swore softly and pulled out a cell phone. He punched in a number and spoke into it, low and urgently. Jason nudged Seph with his elbow.
When D’Orsay put the phone away, Leicester said, “We’re running out of time, Claude. He’s got the Roses murdering each other in the streets. How long before they come after us? He knows we’re meeting outside of the usual channels. You promised you’d run him in to ground before the conference.”
“We almost had him in London. We’ll get him the next time. Nora Whitehead’s working on it.”
Leicester frowned. “Nora? This is too important to hand off to her. Why aren’t you handling it yourself?”
“I am handling it. Nora’s working for me.”
“She doesn’t stand a chance, if it comes to a duel. If it’s who we think it is, he’ll cut her to pieces and then where will we be?” Leicester didn’t seem to be as concerned about Nora as worried his quarry might get away.
D’Orsay flicked imaginary lint off his trousers. “Don’t be theatrical. I’m not planning on a duel. There’s no one we could send against him, one on one.”
“Doesn’t the man have a family? Someone we could use to draw him out of hiding?”
“I was told they were all murdered back in the day,” D’Orsay said, frowning, as if this was most inconvenient. “Apparently that’s the source of his fanaticism. But we think we may have found a vulnerability.”
“A vulnerability?” Leicester raised an eyebrow skeptically. “What?”
D’Orsay glanced about, as if there might be spies behind the stonework. The outing of his meeting had clearly rattled him. “Ah . . . let’s see what comes of it. We should know, fairly soon.”
“Fairly soon?” Leicester rolled his eyes. “We’ve spent years on this project. They’re too close to you as it stands.
If they trace us back here . . .”
D’Orsay’s expression morphed from disappointed to annoyed. “Unlike you, I have other responsibilities. While you’re playing schoolmaster, I’m courting seven different sides, trying to keep this whole scheme from unraveling. Keep in mind that there are advantages to having the Dragon at large. When items disappear from the Hoard, he always gets the blame.”
He stood and dropped his napkin on the table. “No one wants to catch the Dragon more than I do. But just now I have to go and reschedule three meetings before our colleagues walk into a trap.”
The two wizards glared at each other, emitting faint showers of sparks.
“I’ll call you when the roster is finalized,” D’Orsay said, stuffing a sheaf of papers into a briefcase.
Seph and Jason managed to slide out after him when he went out the door.
Back in Jason’s room, Jason fizzed with excitement and worry, pacing back and forth. “Did you hear that? ‘If you’ve not received your invitation, watch your back.’And did you hear D’Orsay? They don’t know who they’d send against him—he’s that powerful. The Dragon’s got this network of spies all over the world that he works constantly . . .”
“Do you think they really know who it is?” Seph asked. “They seemed pretty confident.”
“I’ve heard rumors.” Jason shrugged. “Seems to me the Dragon would be dead by now if they did know.”
“So Leicester’s online,” Seph muttered to himself, sorting through a pile of CDs. “He must have a wireless network in his office, at least.”
“But they think they’ve got something on him,” Jason leaned aga
inst the doorframe. “I wish there was some way to warn him.”
Seph chose a CD and slid it into the player. “If I could just get into Leicester’s office, I bet I could break into his system.”
“To warn the Dragon?”
“No. To e-mail Sloane’s. So I can get out of here. And don’t give me that look. I don’t really want to get involved with the, um, wizard politics, as you call it. You don’t have enough information to warn the Dragon, anyway. What are you going to say? ‘Be careful, they’re on your trail? Watch your back?’”
Jason wasn’t really listening. “Maybe it is time to leave. Maybe I should get out and try and find him. Tell him about the meeting here, the alumni, and all that. See what he makes of it.” He tugged at his earlobe. “Then again, I could hang around, see what else I can find out. I wish I knew when this Interguild Conference they’re talking about is.”
Seph fastened on the notion of leaving. “How would you deal with the wall?”
Jason grinned. “I think I’ve finally got that nailed. Barber’s the architect, you know. I heard him bragging about it when I was lurking in the alumni dining room. So I tossed his room and found some books on the subject.”
“So how does it work?” “It’s a real, physical wall overlaid with confusion charms. So you can’t stay focused enough to get over or around it. I’ve put together some countercharms that should work.”
“Should work,” Seph said skeptically. “Then let’s try it.”
Jason shook his head. “I don’t want to tip Leicester off before I’m ready to leave.”
“If you can leave, you should. Before something happens.”
“I really don’t care what happens to me. As long as I get Leicester.”
In the end, Jason decided to stay a little longer to see if he could gather more news to take to the Dragon. But Leicester and D’Orsay didn’t meet again.
A few weeks later, in mid-May, Seph brought his workout gear to the Alumni House one evening, intending to meet Jason to go over some books they’d taken from the library. He ate dinner with Martin and Peter, then walked through the common room and into the stairwell. He took a quick look around, then spoke the unnoticeable charm. Just then, the door flew open behind him.