Rise of Allies (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 4) (9 page)

It was exhausting. Soon, sweat stood out on his forehead. His chest heaved; his temples ached. The earth shook each time one of the great standing stones dropped out of the air into position, but thankfully, none of them toppled over, which would have forced him to redo it.

Twenty minutes later, his kid-sized Stonehenge was coming along all right. But for his part, he was feeling very poorly.

There is no way Merlin could have done the real Stonehenge in one day,
he thought, his breath ragged.

Sweat now covered most of his body, and all his limbs felt shaky. His head throbbed like a star being born inside his skull. He felt queasy and dizzy, unsteady on his feet. But though his brain screamed for him to stop, he refused.

He’d either become a Lightrider one day or die trying.

It took a long time, but he had put the standing stones of all four doorways into place.

The audience was silent. He had forgotten about them. All that mattered was proving to the Old Yew that he was worthy to follow in his parents’ footsteps.

Why, maybe his father had even had to perform this same feat at
his
Assessment. Jake did not know, but the possibility gave him fresh strength.

Then it was time to wrangle the lintels. There were four of them—about as welcome as the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Lifting the first one with his mind drove Jake to his knees with a low cry of pain. It still wasn’t high enough. He held his head with both hands, squeezing his eyes shut—the brief respite of darkness helped to soothe his raging migraine—but he had to open his eyes again to aim the thing and guide it into place.

Feeling physically ill, he lifted his hand weakly until the boulder rose high enough to top the standing stones. He managed to lower it onto the east doorway, then fell onto all fours in the cool grass for a moment.

He hung his head, heaving for breath. His skull felt like it might explode. No position he tilted it in was comfortable. His eyes felt dried out, burning, and glassy; with all the world watching, drool ran out of his mouth as he panted, head down. He wiped it away with his sleeve, beyond embarrassment.

He couldn’t
believe
he still had three more to go.
No.
It wasn’t worth this much pain. What cruel-hearted madman had planned this assignment for him, anyway? He was going to fail, and he wasn’t sure he even cared anymore. Why had he ever wanted this so badly in the first place?

Logic then posed a simple question: If he was going to fail, then why keep trying?
Please just let it be over.

And right when he had all but decided to quit, a high-pitched voice with the hint of an Irish brogue suddenly yelled out across the silent field: “Keep going, Jakey! You can do it!”

He groaned, recognizing Dani’s voice.
Leave me alone!
he thought in irritation. Then he heard Isabelle and Archie join in, urging him on, and Derek shouting encouragement while Henry let out an insistent wolf-howl.

An angry sound tore from Jake as he realized he couldn’t disappoint them.

He couldn’t let his parents down, either, if somewhere, somehow, they were watching, too.

Failure was one thing, but quitting was another matter entirely. A Lightrider could never quit.
Argh!
He shook his head violently, trying to cast away the pain.

The whole crowd cheered when he climbed to his feet again and focused his bleary gaze on the second lintel stone.

The slight break had helped give him back a little more strength. Sixty seconds later, he had the west-facing lintel in place. Now for the north.

He took a deep breath and whipped his hands out in front of him, pushing the air forward and underneath the boulder. It rocked but did not rise. He shut his eyes and concentrated harder, his heart pounding.

Move!

It just sat there in all its rugged bulk, huge, obstinate, and silent.

“I said, you
move
,” he whispered to the stone.

Refusing to be stopped now after having come so far, Jake decided to just drag the ponderous brute across the grass with his telekinesis, only heaving it up off the ground once he had got it close to its standing stones.

It worked well enough, though it was slow going. By the time he crashed it into place, he was having tunnel vision, the blackness closing in.

The crowd was silent, holding its breath. Jake knew that, somewhere out there, Dani had her fingers crossed for him.
One more to go…

The last stone waited, surly in its immobility.

He had already given up on doing anything with the smaller stones. A boy had his limits. But by Red’s last feather, he’d get that final lintel up onto the south gate if it killed him. He merely took a moment to catch his breath.

The end was in sight.

Then he focused all of his remaining strength on the last big rock. His hands were shaking as he held them out, commanding the stone to rise.

It floated up off the ground at once, to his surprise.

The hope that this would soon be over must have given him one last kick of power. It wasn’t much, but it might just be enough…

Then, as he made the lintel stone climb through the air to surmount the last towering pair of standing stones, he felt a sudden blinding stab in his skull.

A cry wrenched from his lips, and he almost dropped the stone completely. Somehow he held it aloft until the moment’s agony had passed. Dry-mouthed, his stomach heaving with nausea, he had to fix the position of the lintel as it hovered over the uprights, manipulating it in midair with his hands.

Engrossed in his task, he did not notice the crowd already on its feet, cheering him on to victory. Indeed, he was so bent on finishing this and not passing out that he did not even notice the trickle of blood coming out of his nose or another from his ear.

The moment the lintel stone crashed into place, its unfathomable weight released from his control, Jake staggered backward and started to turn unsteadily toward the Elders to confirm that it was done. Black dots veered across his vision, and then he felt something hot dripping out of his nose.

He wiped it away and saw his hand coated in crimson.

Why am I bleeding?
he thought in alarm, finally noticing it.

The crowd had gone silent, staring at him in dismay; some of the Elders had risen to their feet.

But the sight of them faded into darkness as another wave of pain hit him. Jake doubled over with a cry, clutching his head, and the crowd gasped in horror as he collapsed, unconscious, on the field.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sweet Dreams & Nightmares

N
ixie thought her Assessment had gone pretty well, except for the stupid mud rabbit, which had flopped into a ruin much too soon. She was too tired to fret about it, though, and had shuffled straight back to her assigned bedchamber to claim the reward she had promised herself, at last.

Luxurious sleep!

Maybe
in a few hours’ time she would get up and go down to supper in the dining hall. Or maybe she would just sleep on till morning like a hibernating bear.

She was snoring the minute her head hit the pillow and would have happily remained so till dawn—except that it wasn’t long before she learned her enemies had found her, after all.

Boneless glided out of the wall and flew right through her, cold and wet and faintly slimy, waking her like a tendril of spiteful fog.

Past the point of horror at their unrelenting haunting of her, Nixie could almost feel her heart breaking to think they had found her even here. Still, she refused to believe it, refused to open her eyes.

She told herself it was just a draft. She tugged the covers up higher against her cheek and buried her face further into the pillow.

But when she heard the slow, ominous footfalls of the Headless Highlander walking across her room, she started shaking and pulled the covers all the way over her head.

Just a bad dream. They can’t come here. They can’t get into Merlin Hall. Too many protective spells…

But apparently no one had told that to Nuckalavee.
Oh, please no,
Nixie whispered in her mind, wincing in revulsion as she heard the gory creature’s horrible whinny.

That Nuckalavee should have left his refuge in the water told Nixie just how angry the Bugganes were at her attempt to escape them.

Just a dream, just a dream,
she kept telling herself with a small whimper under the covers.

But the Bugganes did not intend to let her ignore them. Not after they had tracked her all this way.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Nixie braced herself, hearing Nuckalavee’s horrible, wet, squishing hoofbeats gallop across her room as the skinless bogey-beast charged her beautiful canopy bed.

In the next moment, her attempt to pretend they didn’t exist was shattered. She screamed as the monster rammed the corner of her bed and made it spin.

“Stop, please!” she cried, coming out from the covers to grab onto the headboard to keep from flying off the whirling bed and splatting into the wall.

A witchy cackle filled the room as the leader of the Bugganes, Jenny Greenteeth, stepped out of the mirror, already mocking her. “Oh, please!” the hideous hag mimicked her cry. “Thought you could give us the slip, eh?” she taunted, then she made the spinning bed levitate off the floor.

“You can’t do this to me here!”
Nixie wailed as the torment went on.

But it seemed they could.

Just another day.

#  #  #

Dani never knew how to feel each time Jake nearly died.

She wanted to punch him and hug him at the same time, neither of which he would’ve welcomed, so she did neither.

Instead, she went quiet, still clutching her rosary in her pocket, even hours after it seemed fairly clear that the blockhead, as usual, would live.

Why, oh, why could he never be careful?

His brushes with death had always happened with distressing frequency, even during his pickpocket days, but now they were all the more common. He never seemed to mind. She could’ve sworn the glock-wit practically enjoyed it.

He was just
like
that, she thought in frustration, always taking risks, charging headlong into danger. But to think that this time, he had done it to himself—all for his stupid Assessment! It made her want to strangle him.

She kept her mouth shut, however, only relaxing a tiny bit when he regained consciousness long enough to sip some water. Then she and Archie and Isabelle were herded off to wait in the next room while the physicians treated him with medicine, both human and magical.

Alas, not even Red could help him this time, for word came that the molting Gryphon had no magical scarlet feathers left to give at the moment.

Jake’s cousins and she looked at each other in alarm when they overheard Her Ladyship shouting at Sir Peter and Lord Badgerton for giving a mere boy such an assignment.

Even the Elder witch was scared that her great-great nephew might not make it, and that had frankly terrified the three of them.

But of course he survived. That was Jake. Nearly indestructible, Dani thought in shaky relief. At least
he
seemed to think so.

She
wasn’t quite sure.

Eventually the doctors came out and told them the bleeding had stopped and he was resting comfortably. They still weren’t allowed to see him, though.

He slept for the rest of the day. Then Her Ladyship went in to check on him around half past four in the afternoon and found him doing much better.

Relief washed through their whole party when they heard that Jake had sat up in bed and announced that he was hungry.

That was always the sign that he was back to his usual self. The boy was a bottomless pit. Now that he could have food any time he wanted, he had grown half a foot taller in the past six months.

In any case, the three of them waited anxiously in the next room while Jake got dressed to go down to supper.

At last, he stepped out of his room, still looking pale and moving slowly, and Dani and his cousins encircled him in one huge hug. He insisted he was fine, but the color only began returning to his cheeks after he had finished the meal that they all ate together in the busy dining hall.

Throughout supper, Dani was annoyed at all the strangers who congratulated him as they passed their table. She scowled at them all.
Don’t encourage him.

Jake, of course, loved getting the hero treatment.

At length, he proposed going out for a walk. Spending most of the day in bed was not the young adventurer’s custom, to be sure, especially not while they were in such an interesting place. He said he wanted to stretch his legs and get some air, and more importantly, now that he was well enough, he wanted to visit Red.

Dani knew that being near the Gryphon always made Jake (and all of them) feel better. His large, wise pet was probably the only one who loved the blockhead even more than she did.

But sometimes, oh, Lord, she wanted to kick him.

Red was so lucky he hadn’t been there to witness the awful sight of Jake lying motionless on that field.

Lord and Lady Bradford refused to let them leave the table until Jake promised to take it easy. Archie assured his parents he’d look after him, and Isabelle explained their intent to see how the Gryphon was faring. Her mother told her not to wander off too far, since Isabelle was to attend her first real, grownup ball tonight in the company of her parents.

The Floralia was the annual, flower-themed gala, a Beltane celebration that officially kicked off the Gathering each year, according to Miss Helena. Dani was depressed she couldn’t go, even though she was only eleven. Sometimes she hated being the youngest of the group. Always the baby!

It was just something else to be annoyed about. She wished Teddy were here to console her, but Merlin Hall was the one place Lady Bradford said she couldn’t bring her dog. She’d had to leave the little brown Norwich terrier in the care of servants back at Bradford Park. She knew they’d take good care of him, but she missed him anyway.

Ah, well. With so many strange folk about, it was probably safer for him there. It would not have surprised her if some breed of these creatures ate lapdogs as a delicacy.

At last, the four kids gained their freedom. It was now about six-thirty in the evening. The western sky glowed gold, and the sun cast long shadows across the emerald grass.

“Whew, I am
so
glad that whole ordeal is over,” Jake was saying as they walked toward the arched entrance of the magical zoo.

His cousins flanked him on both sides, while Dani followed a few steps behind, still in a bit of a mood.

“Now I can just relax and enjoy the Gathering,” he added.

“And your birthday tomorrow,” Archie reminded him.

“Honestly, how do you think I did on my test?”

“Coz, you were amazing!” the boy genius exclaimed.

“But was I good
enough
? I didn’t put those smaller stones in place. Do you think I did enough of what they wanted to be considered for the Lightrider training someday?”

“I’m sure of it,” Isabelle said in a comforting tone. “Of course, you’ll find out for certain tomorrow, depending on what group they put you in.”

Oh, the groups,
Dani thought with another scowl.

Tomorrow morning, all the magical children were to be broken up into groups, each headed by an adult expert in their respective magical domains.

Henry and Helena, for example, would be lecturing the shapeshifter children; Derek would be talking to the young Guardians.

“I hope they don’t put me with the psychics,” Jake was musing aloud. “It’s not that I don’t want to meet them. It’s just that I’ve pretty much got the whole ghost business in hand, you know?”

“Well,
I
hope they don’t put you with the telekinetics after what just happened,” Archie countered.

“Poor things, they’re all probably terrified after seeing what happened to you,” Isabelle agreed, “wondering if the same could happen to them if they ever overuse their gifts.” She shuddered at the memory.

“Which group do you go with, Izzy?” Jake asked, glancing at her. “Empaths or those who can communicate with animals?”

“Oh, they’ve always put us empaths into a catch-all group of the general healing arts,” she said with a shrug.

“I see,” Jake said, but when Dani let out a morose sigh, he turned around and smiled at her. “What’s the matter, carrot?”

She threw away the blade of grass she had been tying around her finger like a green ring. “Nothing.”

“Oh, come on, out with it,” Jake teased.

“Well—it’s just that I’m going to have nothing to do tomorrow while you’re all off with your groups! I’m going to be all alone again.”

“You can come with me!” Archie offered brightly. “I don’t have a group, either.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “These brains are all-natural, remember? We no-talent types have to stick together!”

She offered him a rueful smile, but a boy his age who already held two doctorates from Oxford could hardly be called talentless. “Thanks, Arch. Maybe I’ll take you up on that. What did ye have in mind?”

“I’m going to the library!” he said eagerly.

She rolled her eyes and let out a groan.

Isabelle chuckled fondly then put an arm around Dani’s shoulders. “Ah, don’t fret, dearest. You love books, and the library of Merlin Hall is actually rather fascinating.”

“That’s not the point,” she muttered.
Why do I always have to be the odd one out?

Jake simply didn’t get it. “Don’t worry, carrot, we’ll be done with our groups by noon and then we’ll make sure and do something fun all together. It is my birthday tomorrow, after all.”

“We know!” they said in unison.

He ignored their retort and forged on, more concerned with his own affairs than Dani’s shaken-up feelings. “So, if the Elders liked my performance today, maybe they’ll put me with the future Lightriders! I mean, it’s possible, isn’t it? What will the Lightrider group talk about, I wonder? What it’s really like traveling through the Grid, saving the world every day?”