The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

by Irene Radford

I left clues. If only you had sought them. You were both children when I departed Coronnan. If I had left the gold in an obvious place, it would have been stolen from you. You might have been murdered for it.

  Powwell turned back to face his father. He took two steps forward only to stop, or be stopped by the iron stairs.

  Marcus sensed something important was going on. He needed to listen and learn, perhaps heal his own hurts by their example.

  The scent of woodsmoke drew his attention to the doorway. Flames shot upward across the courtyard. The door to the lesser tower exploded outward.

  Rejiia stalked through the fire, free of her bonds.

  Chapter 44

  Jack watched as Rejiia, with a deceptively subtle gesture, knocked flat three determined Rover women armed with rolling pins. Black-and-red spikes of magic radiated from her aura. Everything that came in contact with those layers of energy was in danger.

  How had she overcome the magical dissipation of the gloaming? Then he realized he could see her quite clearly. She had discarded the coin that trapped her between dimensions as soon as she broke the bonds he, Marcus, and Robb had wrapped around her.

  And she reeked of Tambootie. The leaves of the tree of magic, which she probably kept about her person at all times, could temporarily enhance her powers. But once the effects of the drug wore off . . .

  Three more women, Zolltarn’s head wife in the lead, jumped to attack the renegade witch with pots full of boiling water. Everything they threw at the determined woman bounced off her armor and back in the faces of her attackers.

  The women cowered away from her, covering their eyes.

  Around them, Rovers, nobles, and the others confronted the villagers with whatever weapons came to hand. Miranda stood on the observation platform of the northwest tower calling to Lord Andrall the activities of each attacker still outside the walls. The noise of that battle distracted Jack from the impending magical duel with his old enemy.

  Rejiia’s eyes burned with her need for revenge. Flames nearly shot from her gaze. But her hands shook. With pent-up emotion or a side effect of the Tambootie?

  Jack wanted to cower away from Rejiia and the memory of what she had done to him in the prison cell in Queen’s City. The last time he’d battled her, she’d been calm and controlled, almost mocking in her superiority.

  But she’d fled in defeat when confronted by a united Commune.

  The weasel statue of her father, Lord Krej, rocked on top of the bardo as she passed. The muzzle and ears had joined both front legs and the tail in becoming realistically furry. His mouth opened, and he drooled. More of the tin casing dropped away from his head. Not a trace of humanity touched his features.

  Before Jack could think of a ploy to stop or delay Rejiia, the inner gate split and tumbled forward on top of the jumble of bardos. Hopefully, the maze of sledges and cabins, of milling steeds, squawking flusterhens, and bawling children would slow them down until Ackerly’s angry influence had been negated.

  Where were the soldiers and Gnuls from the capital? How much time did they have? Amaranth didn’t know and didn’t care. He only wanted to hide his head under a wing and pretend all this chaos and noise would go away.

  Jack sent him safely into the air to search.

  He had no idea how the breach in the defenses of the monastery would affect the curse on the gold. Would it spread or dissipate? Maybe nothing at all would affect it but a true reversal of the curse. Whatever, they had to finish before the army with the Gnuls and witch-sniffers arrived.

  His fellow magicians looked anxiously back and forth between the melee at the gate and Rejiia’s advancing menace.

  Jack waved them over to the gate. “Take care of Katrina for me. I’ll be with you shortly,” he said. “Rejiia is mine.”

  “And mine,” Lanciar added. He took up his position shoulder to shoulder with Jack. “We may have been enemies once, but in this we are allies.”

  “We forged some interesting bonds on that frigid mountain pass . . . comrade,” Jack replied.

  “Friend. And kin.”

  Jack needed more time to forgive Lanciar. He nodded his acceptance that one day they might walk side by side as friends. One day. Not yet.

  Together they faced their foe.

  “Jack, Rejiia’s element seems to be fire,” Margit said, almost breathless.

  Jack raised an eyebrow at her.

  “I did some research on opposing elements for Jaylor. Air and Fire are linked. Water and Kardia oppose them. Use Water and Kardia. You can negate her magic without harming the others around her. Trust me.”

  Across the courtyard the other magicians joined the Rovers and nobles in shoving obstacles in front of the invading villagers. Queen Miranda moved atop Zolltarn’s large bardo with Lord Andrall for more immediate observation and direction of the defenses.

  Amaranth showed Jack images of the soldiers led by Vareena’s brother on the far side of the river. They were still almost a league from the ford. Without the professionals backing the locals and urging them to battle, Jack and his companions had a chance to end this without giving or receiving serious injury.

  With the transport spell, he could then evacuate all of the magicians from the place and keep them safe from Gnul persecution. Zolltarn could tend to his own people quite nicely.

  Rejiia raised her hands, fingers arched, fire at her command, murder in her eyes.

  “Let’s see if your research works, Margit, because I don’t have any other ideas,” Jack muttered. He took a deep breath and began his spell. “Gather together, drop by drop, seek your like, find the path,” he chanted calling upon the element of Water to oppose Fire. “Gather to a trickle, spread to a stream, climb to a wave.”

  All the water in the courtyard that had been flung at friend and enemy alike responded to his plea, willingly bonding with its own kind. It gathered in puddles that traveled quickly to join with other rivulets streaming from the well. Then the puddles piled on top of each other, fed by the deep underground spring, forming a wall of water traveling forward toward Jack.

  “Air rush to fill the emptiness,” Lanciar chanted beside him. “Join with Water, swell the wave. Oppose each other in battle, aid the brave.”

  The wave grew and spread wide. A strong wind pushed it higher yet. The two elements raged where they met, churning each other, adding pressure to the path they followed.

  At the moment the wall of water reached Rejiia’s back, Jack and Lanciar both dropped their hands. “Water seek your complement. Ground in the Kardia taking Fire and Air with you,” they chanted together.

  The wave crested over the witch. For a moment Rejiia was lost within the roaring water, pushed forward, off balance. She thrashed about, spluttering for air.

  Water retreated. Fire sought its opposite, ready to do battle, and fled her fingers to ground itself harmlessly in the Kardia.

  “Aid me, Air, reignite my Fire,” Rejiia called, still spitting water from her mouth. She emerged sputtering from the rapidly dissipating Water, hair drenched and scraggling in thin and tangled tendrils. Her once elegant black-and-silver gown hung upon her body in ugly, misplaced lumps. Her skin looked pasty. The boost to her magic given by the Tambootie was wearing off.

  Air ignored her, rushing onward.

  “From North, South, East, and West and the lesser points between, I call upon the coven to come forth. Aide me, brethren. Defeat our enemies now and forever,” she called, turning a full but wobbling circle with her arms outstretched.

  Again the magic fizzled as soon as it left her body.

  “They aren’t coming, Rejiia,” Lanciar taunted her. “Your summons never left the compound.”

  She raised a fist and shook it at him in anger. Some of her lumpy padding dislodged and settled near her waist.

  Lanciar giggled slightly. “All those tempting curves were nothing more than cotton padding,” he said. A touch of magic projected his words to the farthest corners of the embattled courtyard.

  Mor
e giggles rippled around the crowd, many of them from the throats of villagers. Much of the anger that had propelled them dissipated, much like the water retreating toward the well.

  “You can’t do this to me!” Rejiia screamed. Frantically she pushed at the lumps in her clothing, only misplacing them more. Her hands trembled. A convulsive shudder vibrated her entire body. She looked as if her knees would no longer support her.

  At that moment Jack realized that humiliation was the one weapon Rejiia could not fight—especially not with her magic drained and an exhausted body. She’d not restore herself soon without more Tambootie. He detected no more leaves in her possession.

  “She couldn’t even bother enhancing her appearance with a magical glamour. She just used the common artifice available to any mundane woman,” Jack chortled.

  “I’ll show you magic!” Rejiia raised her hands again. This time she held half a dozen metal stars in each palm. When accurately thrown, the wickedly sharp points could take out an eye, or penetrate to the heart.

  Jack sobered immediately. He needed to be in the courtyard, standing atop one of the ley lines to command enough magic to wrap Rejiia in a bubble of armor strong enough to contain those stars. He edged forward, Lanciar in his wake.

  “Merawk!” Amaranth screeched from atop the tallest tower. He spread his wings and swooped down, talons extended. Sunlight hit his feathered wings, making them glisten purple. He seemed to grow, to shed the light his black body absorbed. He skimmed over Rejiia’s head, grabbing several tufts of her dripping hair.

  “Yieeeeee!” Rejiia’s screech echoed and amplified as it bounced off the stone walls that confined them all. She dropped the throwing stars to clutch her scalp.

  Amaranth shrank back to normal size as he swooped about, displaying his trophy.

  The weasel rose up on its hind legs and nipped at the flywacket’s tail feathers.

  Amaranth screeched, compounding the noise. He flew higher, scattering tufts of Rejiia’s hair.

  A bald spot showed clearly just off center of her head.

  “Krej is nearly free of the spell,” Zolltarn gasped. “We must stop him from running.”

  “Or transforming back to a man,” Jack added.

  “I don’t want to go back to the days when he was regent,” Robb said as he ran up from the gate area. The fray at the entrance had given way to astonished gasps and stares.

  “I don’t think he can become a man again,” Lancier said, pointing to the now animate animal. “His humanity is so deeply buried within the tin, it will take magic to bring it forth again. He’s been a weasel for three years. A weasel he will stay.”

  Jack had the impression of dozens of people frozen in mid-scramble across the barricade of bardos. Their anger dispersed, much as Rejiia’s magic had.

  Some of the villagers scuttled away, crossing themselves repeatedly, making the flapping wrist ward against Simurgh in between each invocation of the Stargods.

  Then he realized that the Rovers were much easier to see. The haze had thinned. Sunlight began to penetrate to the courtyard.

  “The gloaming is fading. We have to finish this now, before Rejiia manages to escape again,” he said to Lanciar and anyone else who cared to help. He raised his hands once more to find a spell, any spell that would trap the witch.

  Just then the weasel broke free of the last of its tin casing and leaped from its perch on the bardo.

  Lancier flung his arm forward as if launching a spell or an invisible spear.

  “Come back here,” Rejiia screamed and dove for the slippery animal. It eluded her grasp. “Don’t you dare leave before I’m ready. I am your master as long as you are enthralled. I will be your master when you live.” She crawled after the elusive animal into the midst of the sledges.

  A pain ripped across Jack’s gut, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. What was he about to do? He touched his temples, trying desperately to ground himself. His eyes crossed and lost focus.

  Then his vision cleared of the afterimages he’d seen ever since Rosie took up residence in his body. His bottom no longer itched as if to twitch a tail.

  “Rejiia and Krej, Krej and Rejiia, father and daughter, daughter and father, bound together by blood and by magic, cling to each other in the chase,” Lanciar said quietly as he traced a sigil in the dirt with his toe. He followed with more words, spoken too rapidly in a language similar to Rover, but . . . Jack didn’t have the concentration to think through a translation.

  More pain attacked every joint in Jack’s body. He needed to fall to his knees. He didn’t dare.

  And then Katrina was there, holding him, giving him the strength he needed to continue, as she had done in that dank and miserable dungeon cell beneath Queen’s City.

  But this time the weakness that assailed him felt like a kind of freedom.

  Rejiia continued to crawl after her father, coaxing now rather than screaming. She stopped to groom her wet and straggling hair. Then she returned to her determined chase.

  “Did I see her lick her hand and wash her ears?” Jack asked. Feeling suddenly lighter, he patted his gut, his backside, all of his joints in turn. Rosie did not respond. He risked a minor trance to search his inner being.

  “Katrina, I think I’ve just lost one of our problems.” He couldn’t help grinning.

  Then Rejiia did pause in her mad scramble beneath the sledges to rub dust off her hands and lick them.

  “What?” Jack eyed Lanciar carefully.

  “I just put a compulsion upon her.”

  “Compulsions are illegal,” Marcus reminded him.

  “I’m not a member of the Commune and not bound by their conventions. Yet.”

  “What did you do to her?” Jack asked again.

  “She’ll follow the weasel until one or both of them dies. And until she catches it—alive—she can’t throw any magic.”

  “She’ll be tracking that thing for years before she realizes she’s under a compulsion!” Marcus chortled.

  “All Lanciar did was enhance her own inner demons,” Jack added. “She’s been obsessed with her father since before his spell against Darville backlashed and turned him into a weasel. I think that was why she embraced Simeon as a lover. He looked so much like her father, and Rejiia controlled that relationship from the beginning.” He didn’t add that with the cat persona embedded with her own, the compulsion would compound. No one could outstubborn a cat.

  “Even when Simeon thought he commanded the world, Rejiia gave him the commands,” Lanciar mused. “She controlled him as she never could her father.”

  “How long does a weasel live?” Marcus asked. “What happens when Krej dies? Are we back to battling Rejiia?”

  “I don’t think so.” Lanciar whistled a jaunty Rover tune. “That compulsion won’t go away unless she captures the weasel alive! She’ll search for him even after he dies.”

  “I think we need to get back into the library,” Robb reminded them. “The gloaming is lifting, but not gone. Vareena needs our help.”

  Chapter 45

  Vareena watched and listened as Powwell and Ackerly continued their bitter litanies against each other. Over and over, she tried to project love and peace into their hearts. She’d done this for every ghost who came under her care. She had to show these two lost souls the lighted path through the void to their next existence.

  ’Twas her destiny, her purpose in staying so long in this cursed and unforgiving place. If she could not help these two, she would never have freedom, even if she left.

  Ackerly and Powwell rejected every offer.

  “Stop it, both of you!” she finally insisted. “Stop and listen to yourselves. You just repeat the same arguments over and over, phrased a little differently, but accomplishing nothing.” She stomped her foot in frustration.

  Both ghosts paused and looked at her, acknowledging something outside their own bitterness for the first time.

  “You have both been trapped in this half-life, this nothingness, for three hu
ndred years. You’ve accomplished nothing in that time, a true reflection of the nothing you accomplished in life.”

  Both opened insubstantial mouths to protest.

  “What did you achieve?” she asked Powwell.

  “I was the greatest healer of my time. I researched the healing arts and brought new techniques to ease the pain and suffering of many,” Powwell intoned. The little hedgehog perched on his palm bristled as if protesting the statement.

  “According to this journal, written in your own hand, Powwell, many of those techniques were borrowed from rogue and blood magic. All of them have been rejected by the Commune since then. Your legacy is forgotten.” She held up the little book.

  I taught many new magicians in the University while Nimbulan wandered aimlessly in search of something that eluded him all his life, Ackerly returned.

  “Our histories tell us that Nimbulan found dragon magic and brought an end to the Great Wars of Disruption. You died opposing him in the final battle of the war.” Vareena allowed the silence to stretch for another endless moment. “We remember Nimbulan with love and adulation. No one remembered either of you until Nimbulan’s journals were found.”

  Nimbulan found peace with his wife and family. He died at the age of ninety, content with his life and his death. I was there. I guided him to the void that final time. Powwell almost choked on this thought/words. His words and form faded to a mere echo inside Vareena’s mind. If he faded much more, she’d lose contact with him altogether. He was the greatest man of his time. More a father to me than you, Ackerly. He loved me, nurtured me, wept with me when Kalen died.

  “Then accept him as your father and seek a new existence. Continue his greatness by passing beyond your misery and seeking happiness and good in a new life.” Vareena sensed Powwell’s hesitation. His form wavered, strengthening and fading in his indecision.

  “And you, Ackerly. Give up your gold, give up this illusion of power. True power is in the kind of love Nimbulan gave his family, his apprentices, and his country. You are reviled as a traitor by those who do know of you. You can have the kind of power Nimbulan had in your next life if you only try. You can have a family to nurture and love next time. But you have to give up the gold.”