The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

by Irene Radford

  “Design is your entrance to the palace and out of this rat’s maze,” Iza reminded her. “Show him the design today at the sun break. I’ll stand behind you.”

  “At the sun break,” Katrina affirmed with trembling hands and quaking heart.

  “Are you sure the queen is pregnant? So soon after her last miscarriage?” Jaylor asked the flickering image in the glass.

  A slight tickle in his mind told him that Brevelan listened to his conversation with the Commune’s informer.

  Three years ago, on the night of Darville’s coronation, he and Brevelan had been anxious to leave the capital before the Council discovered them. But he’d taken the time to recruit the spy. He needed information to keep his Commune safe. He couldn’t risk talking directly to Darville or Mikka.

  Though Margit had confirmed that Darville had not been with the army that attacked the monastery three years ago, Jaylor and his best friend had agreed to end all association and communication until prejudice against magic subsided throughout Coronnan. That couldn’t happen until the dragons returned. Bringing control back to the magicians.

  “I overheard her tell the king. She isn’t well, Master Jaylor. She’s as likely to lose this baby as all the others,” the spy said. Her voice was clearer than her face.

  Was it her lack of control of this spell or something else that interfered with the summons? Jaylor had only had time to teach her the basics of a summons and extending her listening senses when he recruited her.

  Yaakke had noticed her carefully hidden talent without recognizing her as the source. After three years, her powers hadn’t increased. She’d never qualify as an apprentice. She made a very good spy, however, despite her chafing at the confines of her work as a maid in Rossemikka’s household. Her need to be away from people and buildings had prompted her to dress as a boy and follow the king on a wild tusker hunt the day he appeared to be outside the old monastery. Her unauthorized actions had given Darville a welcome alibi.

  “Do the king and queen plan to announce this pregnancy?” Jaylor pushed a little of his own magic into the spell, though the girl had initiated it. Her image remained dim and flickered in and out of focus.

  “Not for a while. She’s miscarried so often, they’re afraid of offering false hope of an heir.” The girl paused. Swirls of gray and blue clouded Jaylor’s glass. “I’ve got to go. The queen is calling for me. I wish you would allow me to find other employment in the palace. I hate being indoors all the time as much as I hate cats.”

  “I need you where you are, Margit. Take care of the queen. Try to make her stay in bed as much as possible. Brevelan says . . .” His glass cleared. All he could see through it was the candle flame, greatly magnified.

  “I have to go to Mikka,” Brevelan said from behind him. She grabbed several handfuls of herbs drying in the rafters of their home and stuffed them into her small satchel.

  “You can’t go. It’s not safe, for you or for our baby,” he replied. Gently he touched her slightly swollen belly where she carried their third child. “Our children need you here. You can’t take Glendon with you. One look at him and everyone would know who his father is.”

  “I can help Mikka. I can prevent a miscarriage. I should have gone a long time ago.” Grief and guilt crossed her face.

  “What if you had gone and helped her through a full pregnancy? If anyone suspected her new midwife had any magic, the child would be removed from the succession. They’d suspect the child as a potential witch or, worse, a changeling. Mikka might be put aside, too. No. The fear of magic is too strong in the capital. I won’t risk you. Darville won’t risk the Council sending Mikka back to her brother. That might start a new war with Rossemeyer. We have to find another way to help our friends get an heir.”

  “Mikka loves Darville too much to allow her brother to start a war. She’s close to Rossemanuel. He’ll listen to her.” Brevelan continued packing medicines.

  “Rossemanuel may be king, but he’s still very young. Their uncle’s party rules Rossemeyer. They still control hordes of mercenaries anxious to fight. Coronnan is as good a target as anyplace.”

  “If they are so anxious to fight, why haven’t they joined our war against SeLenicca? Maybe with their active support we could end this stalemate.” Brevelan set her carry pack on the table, next to Jaylor’s glass and candle. “I’ll take the boys over to the apprentice dormitory. Your students need practice in controlling our two hooligans.” A small grin touched the corners of her mouth. Three-year-old Glendon and his two-year-old brother, Lukan, managed to find more mischief than any ten normal boys combined.

  “You must stay here, Brevelan. The journey to the capital is too long. I won’t risk you and the baby.” Jaylor picked up the satchel and began replacing the small crocks and vials of medicine on their shelves.

  “Then send me by the transport spell.” Brevelan returned her potions to the satchel as fast as he removed them.

  “No! I have forbidden the use of that spell except for the most dire emergencies. We haven’t any dragons to guide us through the void. I can’t allow you to go.” Panic sent his heart racing. The thought of losing Brevelan to magic or to those who feared her magic made his world bleak and empty. “Think, Brevelan. Think of the consequences.”

  “Then you will have to find us some dragons. Quickly. Mikka needs me!”

  “I have no one to send in search of Shayla yet. The only alternative is to let me go, as I should have gone three years ago.” Yaakke’s death still weighed heavily on his conscience. When would he have the courage to send another journeyman in search of the dragons?

  “I can’t let you go, Jaylor.” Brevelan clung to him, crying silently.

  Queen Rossemikka seems to be barren. The Council looks elsewhere, outside of Coronnan to distant relatives of Darville, for an heir. Rejiia’s son died at birth. Now she has deserted her husband and disappeared from Coronnan. Lord Andrall’s son is mentally defective and hasn’t been considered a possible heir to the Coraurlia for more than twenty years. The Council and the increasingly powerful Gnuls will not countenance an illegitimate birth. If they did, they would have to look at witchwoman Brevelan as next heir. If they could find her. Krej acknowledged her as his eldest. If the Council insists on a male, they would look to Brevelan’s oldest son, Glendon—likely a magician born and bred. She never claimed Darville to be the father. We all know he is. Descended from two royal lines, her son has the strongest blood claim to the throne—if the people of Coronnan could put aside their prejudice against magic.

  The coven is so close, and yet so far, from achieving domination of the Three Kingdoms. I have waited years for events to move themselves. My patience is at an end. I must stir some mischief to move events forward.

  Chapter 14

  Mid-afternoon brought a thinning of spring clouds. All of the lacemakers gratefully grabbed their cloaks and trooped onto the narrow walkway that separated the factory from the river. Katrina wasn’t sure where or when the custom of a sun break had begun, but it was now a time-honored tradition. Fines for denying workers their right to an hour of sunlight in the middle of the day—even when it was storming—could financially ruin an employer. Too bad she spent most of the time waiting in line to use the necessary.

  The men who worked in the factory warehouse would have their sun break after the women returned to the workroom.

  Katrina looked askance at the welcome sun. Neeles Brunix did not always join his lacemakers on the walkway. A break in the clouds almost guaranteed his presence. He was here today, ahead of the women. His long body leaning against the sand-brick wall of the factory, almost the same color as his hair, he stared at the rushing river. No flicker of his dark, hooded eyes acknowledged the presence of his employees until Katrina appeared at the end of the line. As soon as she threw back her hood and raised her face to the sun, Neeles Brunix stood straight and his eyes sparked with unconcealed desire.

  The younger lacemakers scurried out of his way, not willing to ha
ve those intense eyes rest on their bodies.

  “I hear you treated the new girl very harshly this morning.” Brunix appeared at Katrina’s side before she had a chance to gather her courage and take a deep breath.

  “You make me responsible for her training. Therefore I am also responsible for her mistakes and dirty lace.” She looked at the river rushing past the levee. It smelled clean today, refreshed by snow melting in the hills. An unwelcome urge to follow her mother in the water’s endless journey to the sea gripped her. To end the struggle. To know peace.

  She didn’t want peace. She wanted to avenge the wrongs done to her and her family by King Simeon and a dark-eyed magician boy. In her mind the magician looked very much like a younger Neeles Brunix.

  “I would free you from slavery if you would add certain other responsibilities to your . . . work.” His eyes opened as they skimmed her cloaked body.

  Did he know she made certain her clothing was too large for her and that she bound her full bosom extra tight to disguise her figure from his gaze?

  Just then, Taalia sauntered by, her wrap drooping on her shoulder to reveal the deep neckline of her bodice. Her heavy breasts swelled above the white cloth. A dusky shadow peeked out from the skimpy confines of her clothing in blatant invitation to Brunix. She rotated her hips as she walked, making little thrusting movements with her pelvis.

  Katrina turned away, embarrassed.

  Brunix never took his eyes off Katrina.

  “This is the only additional responsibility I ask.” Katrina thrust the new pattern under his nose so he couldn’t ignore it. “I want to draw new patterns.”

  “I have no need of new designs. I have all of the patterns you inherited and I bought. I do need you to warm my bed,” he stated as he took the pattern from her and examined the flowing lines of the floral motif.

  “No.” Katrina stood her ground, wishing she could turn him into a living torch like the witches of legend.

  “I own you, Katrina Kaantille, just as I own your inheritance. I could order you to submit.”

  “But you prefer your women willing, just like King Simeon.”

  Brunix blanched at her comparison.

  “I am not willing.”

  “Compromise!” Iza hissed as she pushed her frail body between them. “The pattern is good and it is unique. You will make money from it, Brunix.”

  “It is also complex. Only the most skilled lacemaker could work it. I’m not certain Tattia Kaantille could work the design, let alone her half-trained daughter.”

  Katrina gasped at his audacity. By invoking her mother’s name, he reminded them all of the taint of suicide that clung to Katrina. Tattia’s ghost was said to haunt the workroom at night. Superstition claimed that Katrina, too, would become a ghost upon her death because of her mother’s sin.

  “We seem to be at an impasse,” Brunix sneered at Katrina. “I will examine the design. If it is worthy, I will consider adding it to my stock.”

  “No.” Katrina grabbed the pattern from him and walked over to the edge of the walkway. There she held the strip of leather over the rushing river. “I have many more ideas for new patterns—exporters always need new designs. All of my ideas are exclusively yours in exchange for my freedom. End my slavery, or I destroy it.”

  “That pattern is mine! And so are you.” Brunix lunged to grab it away from Katrina. As his hands curled around her arm, she opened her fingers. A puff of wind caught the contested prize, swirled it, and then dropped it at Brunix’s feet. He retrieved the strip of stained leather before the next breeze drowned it in the river.

  “Stupid bitch. You’ll pay for your insolence!” Brunix screamed. “I’ll make a fortune from this design and the others. You owe me your life and I intend to keep you my slave for a very, very long time.”

  “I hope the cost of a license for Tambrin to work the design properly will beggar you.” Katrina stalked back to the workroom alone.

  Jaylor raised his head and listened to the clearing. “Someone comes,” he announced to Brevelan across the open space where she hung the laundry.

  “Another victim?” She cocked her head as if listening. “Build up the fire and start some water boiling. Fetch some bandages, too. I sense pain. Serious pain.” She hurried toward the west path.

  Glendon ran ahead of his father into the hut. Two-year-old Lukan planted a reluctant lop-eared rabbit onto his hip and toddled in her wake.

  Light shimmered in a sense-lurching flash of colored arcs as the forest shifted and the entrance to this hidden clearing opened.

  A nondescript young man dressed in common trews and homespun shirt used his sturdy staff for balance as he dragged a smaller body up the hill.

  “Another victim,” Jaylor acknowledged, knowing his wife had been correct in her assessment of the newcomers. He hastened to set a cauldron of water to boil for whatever healing herbs and poultices she might need. Bandages. The stock was low. This was the third refugee in the past moon. He sent Glendon to tear strips from the store of linen in the loft.

  The young man he recognized as Journeyman Marcus. One of the few boys of talent who had remained with the Commune since Baamin’s death and the disbanding of the University. Journeyman quests now revolved around rescuing the victims of the Gnostic Utilitarians. In the last year the cult’s hatred had gained momentum. Why?

  Whether the child with Marcus had true magical abilities or was hounded away from his home because of unfounded accusations of witchcraft remained to be seen.

  More than two dozen refugees had found shelter in the southern mountains with the remnants of the Commune. Most of them had some talent; one or two had the potential to become true magicians and join the continual fight for the survival of the Commune.

  Unfortunately, most of the girls who found their way to the clearing were so traumatized by the rape gangs that wandered villages in search of “potential” witches, they’d never be brave enough to try magic. The mistaken belief that only virgins could throw magic was just an excuse for bullies to run wilder than magicians were reputed to.

  “Good thing we started a new cabin to house apprentices,” Jaylor remarked to the greenbird perched above the doorway of his own newly expanded home. The cluster of wooden buildings at the base of a cliff an hour’s walk from the clearing had grown from a single library to include Masters’ quarters and now apprentice dormitories. The two journeymen, Marcus and Robb, parked their weary bodies where they could when they were about. Mostly they wandered Coronnan, supplying Jaylor with information and new apprentices.

  Jaylor’s biggest worry lately was to find ways to feed them all without arousing the suspicion of the countryside.

  “News from the capital, Master.” Marcus eased his companion onto a cot before the hearth at Brevelan’s direction.

  While his wife tended the pale and frightened boy, Jaylor ushered his two sons and the journeyman ahead of him, out of the cottage. “How badly is he hurt?” He handed Marcus the length of linen and gestured for him to start ripping it into bandages.

  “A broken arm, I think. Straightened and splinted it as best I could, but I’m no healer. Lee’s da threw stones at him when he stopped plowing and ran to help a steed in distress foaling twins.” Marcus shook his head in dismay. “The boy was only trying to help the mare and save the foals.”

  “I know, Marcus. I know. ’Tis the same story we’ve heard over and over. The Gnostic Utilitarians have spread dire tales of the evils of magic. They encourage lawless vengeance against innocents. I wonder that King Darville allows it.”

  “I don’t think he sanctions the Gnuls, sir. King Darville is a good king and Coronnan has prospered these last three years, despite the war. I think the Gnuls have invented evidence of evil magic to regain the followers who aren’t afraid of magic now that life is getting comfortable again.”

  “Does this boy have true talent?” Jaylor changed the subject rather than dispute the issue with Marcus. The Gnuls claimed Darville had led the attack on the mo
nastery three years ago. Revealing the truth—that Margit had followed him on a wild tusker hunt in the opposite direction—might jeopardize the girl’s position.

  “Can’t tell what’s talent and what’s sensitive hearing. Lee feels guilty for having any magic. He’s bottled it all up so tight I couldn’t find it with my probes. But I think he must. The mare went into labor weeks early. She was pastured well away from where the boy was tilling. Yet he knew. Just reared up his head, nostrils flaring and eyes wide, like he felt the pain himself. Or heard her distress well beyond the reach of normal senses.”

  “Another empath? Brevelan does that.”

  “Good thing I was in the area. I ‘heard’ the boy cry out when the first stone knocked the wind out of him. If I hadn’t thrown a delusion of Lee running away and diverted the attack, he’d be dead now. Good thing he’s a boy.”

  A fearful father might have raped his own daughter to kill her magic. Boys were just murdered.

  “Someone is compounding the ugliness. I’ve heard reports of animals being stolen from secure pens and being found slaughtered—throats slit, blood drained in a ritual manner—miles away.” Marcus swallowed heavily as if keeping down bile.

  “I’ve heard those rumors, too. No evidence, though. It’s always in the next village.”

  “Now it’s in the capital. I talked to a woman whose cat was stolen from her arms, on her doorstep, by a gang of older boys. She found the cat on her doorstep the next morning. She claims she saw a cloaked man in the shadow of the next house directing the gang. Later the boys involved each had a gold piece they had no explanation for earning. Some of her neighbors are calling her a witch now. Just ’cause she’s old and alone.”

  “Hearsay again.”

  “I’ve alerted Margit. She’s looking for hard evidence. I’ve tried to teach her new spells, but she can’t seem to learn anything beyond a basic summons. She’ll have to rely on her knowledge of Coronnan City.”