The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

by Irene Radford

  “Stay away from me.” She backed away from him until the low altar rail pressed against her thighs.

  “I can offer you freedom and passage out of SeLenicca in return for the shawl. Your mother promised it to me three years ago. But she died before she could give it to me. I have searched long and hard for it. And for you, Katrina Kaantille.”

  “The stranger who offered to buy the shawl? M’ma refused your offer. Why should I accept it?”

  “Your situation is more desperate now. Your M’ma refused my first offer. Later, she promised to bring it to me. I waited for her until dawn on the night she died. Would she have committed suicide on the night she expected to gain enough gold to feed you all for a year or more?”

  Confusion clutched Katrina’s heart and mind. She turned her back on the man and knelt at the altar again.

  “Go away. I must think on this. I don’t trust you.” She bowed her head until she heard the man walking away.

  A long-fingered hand grasped her upper arm in a vicious grip. She jerked away, ready to scream at the stranger to leave her alone.

  “So this is where you hide.” Owner Brunix knelt beside her, crossing himself in the accepted manner as he lowered his long body onto the stone floor.

  “Not even you can deny me the right to say a prayer for the queen.” Katrina dipped her head and closed her eyes. Her heart throbbed in her ears. Her skin burned where he had touched her. Had he seen her with the stranger? Would his jealousy drive him to such anger that he forced her to his bed again?

  “Pray? Is that what you do for so many hours each evening?” he whispered in her ear. His breath fanned a stray tendril of her hair, just in front of her ear.

  She shuddered and leaned slightly away from him.

  “You have no reason to love our queen, or her outland husband,” Brunix said. “They deserve your curses, not your prayers.” Katrina schooled her face to immobility, her thoughts whirling in confusion. Had her mother truly promised to sell the shawl? Who was the stranger and why was he so desperate to get the shawl?

  Silence sat uneasily between them.

  “You are an educated man, Owner Brunix. What do those runes on the wall tell you?” Did he know more of them than the limited feminine alphabet used in keeping mercantile records?

  “Nothing. The Stargods wiped out all knowledge of that form of writing. They considered it a service to Kardia Hodos, along with eliminating a plague and erasing the cult of Simurgh. But the three who descended from the stars were ignorant and considered all of the ancient gods and their arcane knowledge as one with the bloodthirsty demon Simurgh. We lost many unique and special parts of our culture. A thousand years have passed and we are not likely to reclaim any of it.”

  “But surely there must be a legend of old text that preserves the meaning of those symbols, else they would have been plastered over or sanded into oblivion centuries ago,” she protested.

  “Legends about a prophecy of doom persist. Yaakke, son of Yaacob the Usurper, is supposed to bring about the disaster.” Brunix shrugged. “Why are you so interested, my Katrina? I thought you were lost in prayer for our queen.”

  “Beauty and symmetry,” she answered too hastily. “I would like to incorporate some of the runes into a design—bed hangings or perhaps a table runner.” Deep inside her, Katrina knew the sigils conveyed a message. An important message. She had to be the first to interpret it so she knew who to tell and who to avoid.

  “Not bed hangings, please. The prophecy of doom might carry over into . . .” Brunix rose hastily, turning his back on her. “City curfew is upon us. The factory curfew is long past. You will return with me now,” he ordered. “I don’t remember giving you permission to leave the factory.”

  “But you did! You told all of the lacemakers to say our prayers for the queen.”

  “I told my employees, not my slave. Such a flagrant disregard of the rules requires punishment. No breakfast for you tomorrow. If I dared, I’d deny you sun break as well.” He grabbed her arm again, hoisting her to her feet. His fingers remained clamped just above her elbow as he propelled her out of the temple.

  As Katrina stumbled in Brunix’s wake his words echoed through her mind.

  Yaakke, son of Yaacob the Usurper. A prophecy of doom?

  What could be worse than what she endured now?

  Chapter 22

  Rejiia contemplated a water droplet on top of her viewing glass. The circle of gold-rimmed glass lay flat upon a tripod above a short candle flame. The water tended to enhance her visions of distant places and events to come.

  Lately all she saw was death and destruction converging on a single point. There clarity ended and symbolism took over. Three feathers for the Rovers. A black bird for the dragon nimbus. Unnatural red flames must be the coven. What could the frothy sea foam covering it all stand for? Surely Rossemanuel’s death by poison wouldn’t be represented by that symbol. The eels that provided the oil to bind the ingredients of the poison lived in river bottoms, not in the tops of waves near the shore.

  A summons spell hummed within Simeon’s huge mirror on the wall of her private apartment before she found an answer. As tall as Rejiia, and nearly an arm-length across, the glass was incredibly valuable. Something only a king could afford. The images it revealed were imperfect, warped and wobbling, but better than polished metal and larger than the exact reflection from Krej’s master glass.

  Simeon kept the mirror in her quarters to feed his vanity. He spent more time preening naked in front of the mirror than using it to bring his ambitions to fruition.

  “Since this tool was entrusted to me, I will answer the summons and act upon it.” She stood awkwardly from her chair and faced the demanding mirror. The growing baby in her womb kept her from moving quickly or gracefully.

  At the center of the glass, colors spun outward in a growing spiral until they filled the surface of the mirror. Greens and browns dominated the pattern. Gradually the spiral steadied and cleared. Lanciar appeared, life-sized against a barren landscape of scrubby hillsides.

  Gray-green and greenish-brown were the signature colors of his latent magic.

  Rejiia placed her hand against the glass in greeting, wondering where he was and who threw the summons spell for him. He returned the greeting with a raised hand, imitating her gesture image to image. She wished she could touch him across the distance of time and magic. Lanciar had such gifted hands. He was her favorite partner during the coven’s ritualistic couplings.

  “Lady, I have found a new magician. If we hurry, we can bring him into the coven.” His voice sounded strained.

  “Who? Where are you?” she asked. Excitement blossomed within her. A new magician. A new lover during the rituals. More power to funnel into her spells.

  The face of a young man with Rover-black hair and beard flashed from Lanciar’s mind to her own. Features fell into place. Long, straight nose, middle height, broad shoulders and burning black eyes.

  “Yaakke!” she cried. Come back from the dead to haunt her. Her dreams of power faded. That wretched, incompetent boy had more power than the full coven.

  “He seeks the dragon,” Lanciar informed her. “He must not be allowed to reach the lair before we convert him to our cause. He might be able to break the spell that keeps Shayla captive in SeLenicca before he understands why she must remain.”

  “Yaakke will never willingly join the coven. We must kill him before he reaches the lair. Without the dragon, Simeon is nearly powerless.”

  “And so will be the others in the coven, Lady Rejiia. I will undertake the mission to destroy the magician. My magic has awakened and it is fueled by the dragon.” Lanciar smiled in a sensuous way that sent Rejiia’s senses lurching. He promised more in that smile than just magic. “Upon my return to the capital, I will request full membership in the coven. I will serve at your right hand to make certain you remain as the center of the eight-pointed star.”

  As long as Simeon believes the child you carry is his, he will b
e content to allow you to be the focus of the coven’s spells. The unspoken words seemed to come from the tin weasel. Rejiia grinned, knowing her father had somehow managed to break through some of the barriers in his magical prison.

  “My gravid body anchors the eight-pointed star to the Kardia as no other can,” she replied. “I won’t give up that position once your grandson is born.” With Lanciar at full power to support her, she intended to remain the focus. Krej had fought for the center and lost it to petty bickering within the coven. Janataea, too, had been kept from the coveted role. Rejiia wouldn’t relinquish it—especially to Simeon whose spells were increasingly erratic.

  “The boy must be stopped, Lanciar. I shall send those I trust. Magicians from the coven who owe me much. Men who will not hesitate to kill the boy if he refuses to be recruited.”

  Jack heard the waterfalls before he saw them. Swollen by spring runoff, little creeks joined, became rivers and thundered over cliff tops in untamable torrents. Delicate mists drifted from the primary falls almost a mile up the valley. His ears roared as he entered the fog bank caused by cold, airborne water meeting thermal currents rising from the sun-warmed valley floor.

  “Almost there, Fraank,” he shouted to his companion over the sound of the booming cascades.

  Fraank didn’t look up from his concentrated trudging. Nor did he respond. All of his energy went into placing one foot in front of the other.

  “Come, Fraank, you can’t let King Simeon win. You’ve got to fight to get well.”

  Fever and lung-rotting mine dust dulled Fraank’s upturned eyes. Sadly he shook his head and plodded forward, each step an effort.

  Jack stretched his senses forward and back; a difficult task now that they were deep into SeLenicca and the pockets of rejuvenated magic were scarcer than the widespread villages. He sensed three large life-forms behind him, at least two days away. He couldn’t tell if they were men, steeds, or deer. He didn’t have enough magic to hone in on details and find out if Lanciar had summoned reinforcements.

  Up ahead a different sensation sent his body tingling and humming with joy. LIFE! Vibrant, buoyant, joyful life. Dozens of lives, dominated by one, much larger than the rest. The primary mind picked up his probe and sent it back to him with greeting.

  (Welcome, Magician. I have waited long for you. Come, eat, rest. There is much work to be done.)

  Jack reared, propelled backward by the strength and clarity of the mental command.

  “Shayla?” Jack asked the air around him. Who but a dragon could penetrate his armored mind?

  (Who else would live behind a waterfall and play with a dozen silver dragonets?) The dragon chuckled. Her voice filled him with rich images of immature dragons frolicking in the rippling pool beneath the waterfall.

  Feeling fresher and stronger than he had in weeks, Jack supported Fraank around the waist and marched the older man deeper into the rift between enclosing hills.

  A path cleared by clawed dragon feet opened before them. Not a single pebble marred the surface of the packed dirt to trip them or lead them astray. Boulders had been pushed aside to allow passage of wide dragon bodies with delicate wing membranes. Above them, the mountain walls rose steep and sheer. What need had dragons of climbing upward when they could fly?

  “Just a few more steps, Fraank. A few more steps and you can sleep,” Jack urged his friend.

  Half a mile farther, Fraank was drooping visibly, as if the end of the quest marked the end of his life. Stubbornly, Jack shouldered the older man’s nearly empty pack, along with his own and continued to hold him up, almost carrying him as they penetrated the mist.

  The valley corridor widened into a deep bowl ringed with cascades in many sizes. Sunlight struck water and sent rainbows arcing in all directions. Directly ahead, a huge waterfall thundered. The outline of a crystal dragon head pushed through the curtain of the falls. Sunlight struck water and dragon together, granting a wild array of colors to the mist.

  Jack blinked. More of the dragon appeared outlined by the water. Rainbows danced around the crystal horns marching from forehead to tail. Then Shayla broke free of the main cascade of water. Droplets shone on her crystal-fur. Each tiny hair reflected the bright sunlight back to Jack’s eyes, defying him to look directly at her.

  And yet Shayla was so incredibly beautiful with her all-color /no-color fur, he couldn’t look anywhere else but directly at her.

  The male dragon who had shown young Yaakke a dragon-dream of this valley had been touched by blue along his wing veins and tips. Jack suspected the unnamed dragon’s fur had held just a hint of color on the end of each hair too. But not Shayla. Every color visible to the human eye bounced off her body giving her the luster of pure, rare glass, a substance that could only be forged by dragon fire.

  Gracefully, Shayla waded from her concealment behind the curtain of falling water through the pool to where Jack and Fraank stood. Jack watched her progress as the water lapped halfway up her side, splashing occasionally onto her wings and neck.

  The pool was immense. And deep. At the shoulder, the dragon was twice as tall as Jack, and equally as wide. The pool was at least six dragon-lengths across. Shayla didn’t seem to be swimming. Jack wasn’t certain dragons could swim. So the water was at least as deep as he was tall, maybe more.

  (We swim when the water is deep enough.) The dragon answered him before he could ask the question. (We swam in the Great Bay often when we flew the skies above Coronnan.)

  Embarrassment tinged Jack’s cheeks and the tips of his ears. He looked into Shayla’s half-closed jewel of an eye. The whorls of spinning color didn’t seem to mock him. Did dragons have a sense of humor? He clamped down on that question before Shayla could answer him.

  She cocked her steedlike muzzle to one side as if puzzled by the closure of his thoughts.

  (Don’t you trust me to be honest with you?)

  “Of course I trust you, Shayla. I’m just not used to having my thoughts read and my questions answered before I’ve thought them through.” He looked away from the compelling jewel eyes.

  The dragon loomed so high above him that the only place he could look without overbalancing was along her side to the folded wings. The transparent membranes fluttered slightly for balance as Shayla emerged from the pool.

  A twisting black burn, as long as Jack’s body and as wide as his two thighs pressed together, marred the beauty of the left wing. Charred by magic that snaked along veins and bones, the wing hung lower, heavier and more painful than its undamaged mate. Unable to heal herself and unable to fly to a healer, Shayla was trapped in the beautiful prison of this valley with the rainbow waterfall.

  Jaylor studied the misty colors of the clearing’s barrier with his magic-heightened senses. A tiny crack in the armor glared back at him. A crack that might admit an enemy. Since Brevelan refused to move her family or the Commune, Jaylor had to make sure the protections of the clearing were intact, impregnable.

  “How are we going to explain this to your mother, Glendon?” he asked his son.

  Sorry. The boy hung his head and stared at his feet. No words escaped him now. No words had ever come out of his mouth. What need had he of words when his mind relayed all the information he needed to impart?

  “What were you and Lukan doing?” Jaylor shook his head in dismay. Brevelan was the chosen guardian of the clearing and the dragons. She had been the only person capable of opening and closing the barrier until Jaylor’s spirit journey with the dragons. As Brevelan’s husband, the dragons had granted him the privilege of sharing the guardianship. As far as he knew, the boys were not included in the privilege of opening and closing the clearing.

  Stargods help them all if Glendon got loose to wreak his personal havoc and tricks on the world at large!

  Wrestling, Glendon replied.

  “Wrestling with what?” The image the boy relayed to his father didn’t mesh with Jaylor’s idea of normal little boy activity.

  Dead silence surrounded Glendon. Not
hing escaped his mind.

  “Have you two been experimenting with magic again?” Jaylor tried to keep the panic out of his voice. He had gained early admission to the Old University at age ten because of his precocious talent. His sons were only three and two and they’d managed to crack armor that even their grandfather, Lord Krej, had been unable to weaken.

  Krej had managed to come through the barrier by shape-changing himself and his followers into small animals, then transforming them back into normal form once they were through. Glendon and Lukan hadn’t figured out how to shape-change, yet. Or had they?

  “If you don’t tell me, Glendon, your mother will extract the information from you. Do you want her mucking about with your feelings?”

  Glendon had the grace to blush. Somehow he turned the expression into a scowl at the same time. Brevelan had a unique way of making the boys feel guilty and regretful for their infractions of rules. Her empathy projected her own hurt and disappointment into her children.

  “Well, son, what were you wrestling with?”

  Witchballs.

  An image of giant globes, almost as large as Glendon, formed of moss and dirt and leaves, held together by a magic glue, formed in Jaylor’s mind. He’d made witchballs for the boys—small ones—among their earliest toys. The balls had the advantage of being as light or heavy as a child could handle, easily replaced, never lost, and could be broken down with a thought before they crashed into some fragile object.

  Who would have thought the clearing barrier was vulnerable to a witchball?

  “How many rocks did you put into the center of the balls?” Jaylor had a brief nightmare of the boys forming their latest toy around a boulder and rolling it into the walls of the house.

  No rocks, Glendon replied.

  “Then what did you put into them?” Jaylor tried not to shout. Sometimes the boy’s cryptic remarks made him wonder if Glendon might have been fathered by Old Baamin or maybe by a dragon.