The dog wuffled and snorted through his nose. Baamin continued to press his back against a cold stone wall, willing invisibility.
The dog found him anyway. He sniffed at the magician’s feet and hands, lifted his leg, and sauntered off. Baamin watched him go before slipping out of his hiding place back onto the path of magic he thought he had been following. It was the same route the dog had taken.
A silver glint off to his left winked at him. He whirled to catch a better glimpse of it. The lovely trail wandered back the way he had come, west to east, the path of the moon.
He stepped onto the line and squinted his eyes. The old, old planetary magic filled him, climbing through his tingling feet and legs into his hungry belly. It rested there a moment and then climbed higher into his sight.
Blue, silver, white, palest green, the colors burst through him. An entire web of power lay at his feet. He continued his tracing, following wherever the web led him, along the path of the invisible moon. He no longer needed the cloud-shrouded orb to guide his steps.
Now that he knew how to look for the web of power, he found the old magic had a luminescence of its own. How had he missed it all these years?
Because he hadn’t looked. Nimbulan had gone out of his way to eliminate all knowledge of the old magic when he discovered the power generated by the dragons. There was too much danger from magicians using magic for their own gain rather than for the good of the kingdom.
Only when the Commune could combine their magic against all others had magic become “safe.”
Krej had found a way to break the Commune. If there was no magic to gather, they couldn’t combine against him. Doubts gnawed at him again. Suppose Lord Krej had only capitalized on the work of another traitor?
Baamin would never know unless he mastered rogue magic and understood his own soul better. So he continued his cold lonely march around the city, weaving in and out of old alleys, through small houses and shops.
The city sat in the middle of a vast network of power. Its ancient location commanded more than the head of the Bay. It commanded the beginning and the end of the magic. No wonder the University had been situated here. Those buildings were older, much older than the central keep of Palace Reveta Tristile, which boasted a fair number of secret passages and subterranean tunnels. More secrets might yet be hidden within the ancient halls and cellars of the University, like Nimbulan’s library.
The courtyard between the University and the palace contained an outpouring of blue, so tightly wound together it appeared as a large column coming straight up from the center of the world. Here was where the kings were consecrated. Here was where the nimbus of dragons confirmed a man’s right to rule the kingdom and themselves.
He’d never seen an entire nimbus of dragons gathered for such a ritual. He’d never seen a single live dragon—unless his dreams were more memory than imagination. There hadn’t been a need in the past ten generations for a dragon to consecrate a new king. The crown had passed easily from father to son in smooth order since the end of the Great Wars of Disruption. Was that why the dragons had begun slipping away from Coronnan? Because they weren’t needed anymore?
But they were needed. Now more than ever. They needed to confirm Darville as rightful ruler and provide enough traditional magic to oust the usurping Krej. To control a rogue.
Baamin envied Jaylor, who had touched Shayla, talked to her, seen her fly. He just hoped the boy had had time to give her that tiny vial of medicine. Just two drops of the ensorcelled water would increase her litters and speed the maturation of her young to insure a healthy nimbus once and for all.
Jaylor had to find Shayla and break the magic hold over her.
Until then, Baamin would make use of whatever magic he could find. It was his duty to protect the kingdom and its rightful rulers any way he could.
Even if he discovered himself to be the villain of the piece.
If only he could see a dragon, he could happily die.
They are lost again. Such a simple trick. They are too stupid to learn that I am in control and will remain so. The journeyman is stronger than I thought. But he’ll never break the spell—even if he is smart enough to realize just how important the wolf is.
My spies tell me all. They can do nothing less. The wolf is still a wolf. I am in control of Council and Commune.
I don’t need the crown—though that token would be nice—for I have power. As long as I have my Tambootie, I need nothing more.
The weakling Darcine will soon die. Without Darville the Council will have no choice but to follow me.
“S’murgh it!” Darville cursed behind the hand he used to wipe rain from his face. “The charcoal burner’s hut.” Three days of plowing through rain and mud and they were right back where they’d started. Three days of wandering in circles, sleeping under hedges and getting wetter and more miserable by the minute.
At least Brevelan wasn’t really sick. The last time they were at this hut she had merely been suffering from exhaustion, physical and emotional.
“Jaylor,” he grabbed his friend’s arm. “You’ve got to do something. Krej has enchanted the pathway.”
“Like what?” Jaylor blinked back at him. He looked too innocent. Darville knew that look from their childhood years. Underneath the wide-eyed gullibility a plan was forming.
“You could summon up some of your legendary magic and break the enchantment.” They didn’t have time for these games.
“You could be less lumbird-brained and blaze a new path,” Brevelan accused.
“The existing pathway is most direct, easier walking, and level!” he asserted.
“The path is enchanted to draw travelers away from the capital.” Jaylor studied the twisted wood of his staff. His eyes squinted along its length back the way they had come. He was using some kind of magic to discern the nature of the problem. “I expect it’s part of Krej’s defense. If we can’t find Coronnan City, invading armies can’t either.”
“So, do something. You’re the one who broke his other spell.”
“First we’re going to get dry and have a meal,” Brevelan insisted. She turned and began trudging through the gray trees toward the gray shadow that was the hut. The rain was gray, too, as was the mud beneath their feet. Even their clothes and faces looked gray.
Coronnan was losing its vibrant colors. The life of his kingdom was draining away in the incessant rain. Darville had to get back to the capital before Krej destroyed everything.
“We don’t have time,” Darville returned.
“Don’t argue with her.” Jaylor grabbed his arm.
Darville shook off the restraint, anger and frustration feeding his normal restless impatience.
“Haven’t you yet learned that she’s the strongest of us all?” Jaylor reclaimed the sleeve. His powerful fingers threatened to rend the cloth.
Darville stared at the restraining hand. Jaylor stared at his staff. Brevelan stared at them both.
“I suppose we should take one more night to dry out before we try again.” Darville surrendered to their superior advice. “There’s a farm about another hour further along.”
“The farmer is one of Krej’s spies.” Jaylor pointed his long staff at Darville’s chest. “Do you really want to be a wolf again tonight? You make a very handsome pet.”
“Don’t start that, Jaylor. I have very little patience left. Why don’t you call someone at that University of yours and find out what’s happening in my capital?”
“I can’t waste my magic on a summons if I’m going to break another of Krej’s spells in the morning.”
“You’re stalling! Why?” Darville accused. He reached once again for the sword that should hang at his hip. He felt empty, off balance without the weapon.
“I’m conserving my magic for important spells.”
“And what’s more important than getting me back to the capital?”
Just then Mica chose to slash his shoulder with her claws. Pain jolted him back to th
e reality of their circumstances. The little cat arched her back and hissed at both of them. Her claws continued to dig into his flesh, through several layers of heavy cloth.
Stop it!
Darville wasn’t sure if the cat or Brevelan shouted in his ear. The voice that halted his next verbal assault sounded like both of them combined.
“Stop this childish bickering,” Brevelan commanded. Her delicately shaped hands rested on her hips, her lower lip quivered. Her eyes, slitted just like the cat’s, held him captive. Beside him he felt Jaylor also squirm under her gaze. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps Brevelan was the strongest of them all.
Silence settled over them. Mica broke her defensive stance by cleaning her front paws while still atop his shoulder. Darville felt just a little weak-kneed when Brevelan finally looked away. He stiffened his spine to correct for the weakness.
“Now,” Brevelan took command once more, “we need more dry wood and clean water.”
Darville stomped off the path in search of any bit of old wood hidden beneath something that would have kept off the worst of the rains. He needed to move quickly and strongly to shake off the lingering effects of Brevelan’s control. A control that came from her own strength and his love for her, not from any magic.
He kicked himself for allowing her that much power over him. As prince of the realm, he had to learn to be independent of outside influences. A strong king listened to his advisers, weighed the merit of their words, and then made his own decisions. Something his father had never learned.
And he, Darville, would never, ever, be as weak as his father.
But Brevelan had been right. He and Jaylor, and Brevelan, too, couldn’t afford any petty bickering. But he should have been the one to make that decision. He should have noticed the enchanted pathway would not only lead travelers astray but disrupt their unity as well.
It was classic military strategy. He’d learned it from ancient textbooks before he was ten.
Divert. Disrupt. Demoralize. Destroy.
This was a lesson he would remember when the time came to rescue Shayla. Krej was proving to be a sound strategist. Darville would just have to be smarter.
“Master?” Boy poked his head into Baamin’s study as dawn crept across his windowsill.
“Yes, Boy?” He propped one eye open from his brief doze at his desk. He had spent another long night tracing lines of magic power. The hours of extremely hard work were taking their toll on his aging body. He’d had to have several robes altered to fit his decreasing girth.
But when he finally slept, he slept soundly and dreamlessly.
“I heard somethin’ in the palace last night.”
Baamin sat up straighter. If the boy risked coming to his study, even at this very early hour, the news must have import.
“Lord Krej, he’s expecting some ’bassadors.”
“Ambassadors,” Baamin automatically corrected the boy. “Speak properly, Boy.” He spoke more curtly than he’d intended. With a great show, he unscrewed the cap from his flask and took a swig. Would Boy read his thoughts again and know the restorative in the metal bottle was only sugar water?
“Ambassadors, sir. From Rosie Mire. Something about an alliance.”
“Rossemeyer?” Rossemeyer, a poor desert kingdom with an abundance of nomadic mercenaries, the treacle beta, and not much else. The warriors they bred preferred real wars instead of training exercises to keep up their legendary strength. They were coming to enforce their ultimatum. Darville as bridegroom to their beloved princess, or war.
Which natural resource did Rossemeyer covet—black fire rock, gemstones, the lush flood plains of Coronnan River? Perhaps they knew Prince Darville was missing and the entire charade of alliance was an excuse for invasion.
Then again, Rossemeyer could be searching for an abundant supply of the Tambootie.
Baamin didn’t know why he thought of the aromatic wood as a natural resource. Once the idea took root, he began to see it as the answer to many questions.
Chapter 28
Jaylor sighted along his staff. He pointed it straight down the main north-south road. Or rather, he pointed it where the road should be. Due north. But the road appeared to be coming from the northeast. The edges of the road wavered with more than just the distortion of rain on mud.
He changed position, aiming the staff and his concentration along the new sighting. Stargods! The road shifted, too. Now it appeared to be more to the northwest.
“Where is the road now?” he asked of Brevelan and Darville who stood directly behind him, far enough away not to interfere with his concentration.
“Looks like it runs due west, straight into the Bay,” Darville replied. “But it shouldn’t.”
“No, it shouldn’t. Which means we are fighting a delusion. A very strong delusion.” Frustration gnawed at Jaylor’s concentration. With all this strange magic bouncing around him, he couldn’t think or see straight.
“If we followed the sun, rather than the road?” Brevelan’s voice was tentative.
He gathered her hand into his own to reassure her, and himself. “The time has come to start breaking down some of Krej’s spells. By the time we reach his castle, I want his magic in tatters. The more energy he spends repairing what I have torn apart, the less he’ll have to throw at us.”
She gulped and nodded. He did the same and knew that Darville mimicked their actions.
“What about those blue lines of power you described?” Darville asked. He, too, was squinting, trying to see where they should be going. “Can you tap into them, or use them as a guide?”
“Lines of power,” Jaylor mused. “The dragons showed me lines of power, running through Coronnan, like so many irrigation ditches, emanating from the very depths of this world.” His vision focused backward to his flight with the dragons.
Blue-silver webs encasing the world far below him. Tambootie trees seeking them out. Veins of copper ore filling the hollow paths of burned out power.
When he’d come out of the Tambootie-induced vision of dragons, he hadn’t been able to focus his eyes if he looked at something head on. Only when he inspected individual items from the side could he maintain a clear view.
The trap in Darville’s transformation spell had been laid for a direct attack. Breaking the spell had required a roundabout route. Jaylor turned his body due west. He looked sideways at the road running north, moving only his eyes.
There! The thoroughfare ran true to form with no evidence of magic glamour distorting the edges.
“The Tambootie has caused Krej to approach everything sideways,” he announced.
“So?” Darville cocked his head in a very wolfish way. Jaylor grinned at his friend.
“So all I have to do is decide which direction he faced when he threw the spell. Then I face opposite to unravel it.” Jaylor nearly danced in front of his friends. Impulsively, triumphantly, he gathered them in a massive hug. His warmth and joy spilled over to include them all. “I know his secret now!”
“Mrrew,” Mica informed him that he was a little late of coming to this knowledge. She poked her head out of the folds of Brevelan’s cape. “Mbbbrrrt!” Beware the tricky magician.
“Of course, Mica. We should have known Krej would never do anything directly.” Brevelan scratched behind the cat’s ears. “You daren’t take any more Tambootie, Jaylor. Can you reverse his spell without it?”
“If I let the web beneath my feet power the spell . . .” His thoughts tumbled out of order. “Lines of power run straight. Tambootie twists.”
Jaylor sought the blue-silver lines. His eyes squinted nearly shut. Colors blended together, grass and sky, trees and road. A bright spring flower faded to nothing in the kaleidoscope he created with his vision.
He isolated the traces of yellow and banished them from his sight. Red, too, he eliminated. Shades of purple and brown were easy. The greens were prevalent. They took more concentration. But finally they, too, fled from the swirl of colors.
O
nly the blue was left. A strand of the single color danced about, twined, and braided back on itself. Elusive, lovely, powerful. It strung itself forward and back, into a delicate tracery of magical lines. Some ran up the trees into the sky. Some danced around his feet. But one line. One long, straight, and thick line ran directly beneath his feet, from south to north.
He needed to make his spell twist though he drew power from a straight line. Six paces back, the road bent unnaturally around no natural barrier. He looked closer at the bend. Two power lines joined at an oblique angle. If he traced one line into the junction and the other line out, he almost saw a curve. The original road builders had left the junction clear. Remnants of an ancient Equinox Pylon lay crumbling there.
He moved back and stepped directly onto the joint.
“Just twist the magic around and get us out of here,” Darville grumbled. “We aren’t getting any drier standing around waiting for the road to straighten itself out.”
“Easier said than done, my prince. But I’ll see what I can do.” Jaylor turned to face east. Krej’s castle lay to the west. His Great Hall filled with unnatural statues gave him inspiration.
The road bounced within his vision again. He ignored it, seeing only the true direction of the blue lines. Slowly he drew power through his feet, up his legs to his belly and chest, then out along his outstretched arm and staff. The road aligned with his vision. “Got it!”
Slowly, he pulled more magic up further into his heart. It resisted, humming a discordant note. He pulled harder. The magic fled from his body, leaving a sour sound in his ears.
“Tricky bastard! He should have faced west, so he didn’t.” He shook his head to clear it of the lingering noise.
“Give me a moment to clear my head.” He faced west. Brevelan’s small hand touched Jaylor’s shoulder. He leaned his cheek against it. Warmth and reassurance filled him.
The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I Page 26