Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III

by Irene Radford

  Search as she might, she could not find the spider. An empty and torn cobweb hung from the far corner of her cell. She’d thrown witchfire at it before claiming the room as her own.

  The sweat beneath her shift chilled rapidly. She needed to move or wrap the covers more tightly about her. But if she did that, she might disturb the spider.

  The door burst open. Marcus and Robb, both bleary-eyed with sleep-tousled hair stood side by side. Each carried a large ball of witchlight. The directionless light illuminated every corner of the room.

  “Spider!” she hissed at them, almost daring them to search her blankets.

  Marcus strode forward with confidence and whipped the bedcovers away from her. He shook them vigorously.

  Nothing scuttled away from his search.

  “You must have had a nightmare,” Robb said behind a yawn. “We’ve both had them since coming here. Go back to sleep. The dream will fade with the dawn.”

  “I can’t go back to sleep.” She wished one of them, either of them, both of them, would hold her tight and banish the fear with their strength. Their ghostly energies kept them from touching her.

  “Then get up and do something. Best way to banish a dream is to use the privy and let it drain away. Bake some bread, clean something, count the bricks in the wall. You’ll be sleep again in moments.” Robb backed out of the room.

  “He’s right, Vareena. You need to do something to shake yourself free of the dream.” Marcus shrugged and exited as well.

  “He’s right.” Vareena stood up and took stock of her cell. No shadows hid from her witchlight. “Childish fears. I won’t let them rule me.” With determination, she dressed and went to find flour and yeast. Time to start baking bread for breakfast.

  My powers are weakening! My enemies have weathered every disaster I throw at them. Yet still they gather. Still they plot against me.

  Once, long ago, when I was just beginning, all others thought me weak and of little consequence. But I showed them. I gathered secrets as a miser gathers gold. I gathered power and I learned to use it subtly, so that they never knew from whence the attack came. I taught my children to do the same. They became almost as powerful as me.

  To protect myself and the source of my power, I must delve deep into my memories for a spell that will drain away all that these thieves hold dear. Then, when they are weak and vulnerable, I will scatter them, make them wander lost and alone, powerless. If that fails, I must murder them all.

  Chapter 25

  The unnamed woman sat staring into the crackling fire. Zebbiah and Jaranda had left her alone while they made a game of fetching water and washing the roots he had gathered earlier today. Her heart warmed whenever she saw the two of them together. Zebbiah would make an admirable father for the little girl.

  Would he make as fine a husband?

  She nudged the notion aside while she concentrated on the flames. Images from her past flitted in and out of her view.

  She tasted a name on her tongue. Miranda. A common enough name since a former king and queen of SeLenicca had given the name to their only child nineteen years ago.

  Miranda. The name tasted smoky, like the air on this crisp and clear night in the middle of a remote mountain pass.

  Miranda.

  Could that truly be her name?

  She stared into the green-and-yellow flames, seeking answers, wondering if she’d asked the right questions.

  Images danced with the flames, teasing her mind. The strong, red-haired man with deep blue eyes, older than she by many years, dominated every scene she managed to mine from the deep recesses of her fragmented memory.

  Jaranda’s eyes. Her daughter had inherited those midnight blue eyes. True-bloods tended to have eyes as pale as their hair and skin. Washed out. As depleted of color as the land was depleted of vitality and resources.

  She heaved a sigh and tasted the name again. She heard it whispered behind her back by the other travelers. It resonated within her as if it belonged.

  Queen Miranda had married a red-haired outlander: Simeon the sorcerer-king. In her youth and naïveté, Queen Miranda had granted him joint ruling powers. Then she had turned over the government to him so that she could spend all of her time making lace—the proper place for a woman in her culture.

  But Simeon had imposed crushing taxes on her people. He had forced a war with Coronnan. He had enacted stringent laws. For even the tiniest infraction of the new laws he had exacted the extreme punishment, slavery or execution. The executions had been carried out as sacrifices to his blood-thirsty demon god Simurgh.

  And yet Simeon himself had broken every law he enacted. He’d taken several mistresses—one of them, Rejiia, his own niece. He’d consorted with foreigners. He’d paid no tithes to the temple as required, yet he stole temple funds for his own bizarre religion.

  And then he had outlawed the ancient and beautiful worship of the three Stargod brothers.

  SeLenicca had crumbled under his crushing rule.

  Change had come to SeLenicca. Dramatic, catastrophic, and none too soon.

  The SeLenese had long believed that they were the Chosen of the Stargods. The land was theirs to exploit. Nurturing the land, growing crops, and raising livestock had been delegated to lesser peoples in other countries. By the time Miranda came to the throne, the Chosen of the Stargods had bled SeLenicca of all her natural resources. They had nothing left except their arrogance, their prejudices, and their lace.

  Dared she believe that she and the meek woman who had allowed all that to happen while she closeted herself with her lace were one and the same. Did she want to be that woman?

  What other reason for one and all to desert her and her young daughter in the palace when they fled the kardiaquakes and the fires and the flooding? What other reason than to condemn her for their troubles?

  Miranda.

  “I’ll do better when I return. But first I have to find the strength to be the kind of queen my people need. I need to remember everything, not just bits and pieces glued together with supposition.”

  A noise alerted her to the presence of another. She wasn’t ready to face Zebbiah and Jaranda yet, so she continued staring blankly into the fire. Part of her senses remained focused on the shuffling steps and wheezing breath of the intruder.

  Not Zebbiah.

  She listened more closely and shifted her eyes, but not her head, to catch a glimpse of whoever hovered behind her, near the pack beast and the panniers; the panniers filled with her lace pillow and countless yards of priceless lace.

  “You there!” She stood abruptly and whirled to face the caravan leader.

  He held a long strand of lace, as wide as two joints of her pointing finger.

  “Thief!” she screamed as loud as she could.

  The leader took off running, trailing the lace behind him.

  “Stop, thief!” she screamed again.

  Loud footsteps ran closer. Men crowded close to her. Off to the side she caught a glimpse of Zebbiah running in pursuit.

  “The leader stealing?” someone whispered behind her.

  “What have we let ourselves in for.”

  “We can’t continue with a thief for our leader.”

  “Is it truly theft to steal from a Rover and his mistress?”

  The thief stumbled, tripping over the long strand of lace he tried desperately to gather as he ran. Zebbiah tackled him. They both landed facedown in the dirt.

  “Leader, I accuse you of theft from the queen!” Miranda announced. She fought the hole in her gut that felt like he’d stolen her soul as well as her identity when he stole the lace. “The presence of Tambrin lace in your hand is all the evidence we need to convict you.”

  Stunned silence rang around the campfires at her pronouncement.

  “You are sentenced to exile. Escort him from the camp,” she ordered.

  “But who will lead us? Who will guide us?”

  “You caused this!” the stout merchant woman with two plaits from the
boat shouldered her way to Miranda’s side. “You and your slutty ways. If you’d married a true-blood we’d not have had your outland husband bring the wrath of the Stargods down on our heads. If you’d acted the queen and ruled rather than surrendering to your sorcerer husband, he’d not have ruined our beautiful land. Now you consort with another outlander. Aren’t true-bloods good enough for you? We should exile you!” She raised a fist as if to hit Miranda.

  The former queen stood straight, facing her accuser.

  Excited whispers broke out among the men and the few women in the caravan. They retreated a step or two, leaving Miranda alone in the circle with her accuser.

  Jaranda broke into wild cries.

  Zebbiah wrestled the purloined lace from the thief.

  “It seems to me, I am headed into exile, as are you and the rest of these people. What more can you do to me?” Miranda finally spoke. “But thievery from me is only a symptom of this man’s dishonesty. Do you truly wish to risk traveling so far with him? Do you truly wish to be led by a man who will steal from each of you as easily as he does from me? I am no longer your queen. Decide for yourselves how you will treat a thief. I am going to eat my dinner.” She sat down on her rock beside the fire once more.

  “Somehow, I thought you’d find a rod of iron in your backbone once you started to remember,” Zebbiah said quietly. He cuddled Jaranda close to his side.

  Miranda took the lace from him and began rolling it into a neat coil, brushing dust from it as best she could. “How long have you known who I am?”

  “Since the beginning. Who else would haunt the palace like the most beautiful ghost this world ever saw?”

  “Why did I know you’d say something lovely like that?” She smiled up at him, welcoming his open admiration of her.

  Marcus waited until the faint sounds of Robb settling back into his bed filtered through the wall separating their rooms. Barefoot, he crept across to the doorway and waited again. Vareena had quieted, too. The chill of the ages seeped from the stones into his feet. But he dared not put on his boots. He needed quiet and privacy. Not even the ghost must hear him.

  He was convinced the ghost had given or augmented Vareena’s nightmare. He had to be stopped. And Marcus had to be the one to stop him.

  He’d oiled the leather hinges of his door this afternoon with a bit of fat from his breakfast bacon. The door opened silently. He closed it again behind him, leaving it just slightly ajar so that even the click of the latch would not alert another to his movements.

  A tiny bit of light showed around the edges of Robb’s door, as it did most nights. For some reason the absolute darkness within the monastery bothered him. He set a ball of witchlight in his window each night and let it fade as he fell asleep.

  Vareena’s room was dark, but a little light glowed from the refectory.

  Marcus welcomed the dark tonight. He needed stealth.

  Thirty paces down the colonnade brought him to the doorway of the corner master’s suite. No one else seemed to have noticed that this room remained unused by those seeking sanctuary here. The previous prisoners should have sought the relative luxury of the larger room with its own privy. Even he and Robb had instinctively chosen rooms at the end of the wing of the building rather than bunk in here.

  Why?

  In asking the question, he knew the room must contain answers to the entrapment puzzle. But the answers were hidden and not easily ferreted out.

  The door opened easily and silently at his touch. He’d greased these hinges as well as his own. Once inside, with the door closed, he brought a ball of cold light to his palm and held it aloft.

  Nothing seemed changed, or out of place. An ordinary room reserved for the most senior magician who would administer the place from the office portion of the room. The bed niche behind the half wall would allow him to rest in relative privacy. From here he had easy access to the tower observation platform where he would monitor the movements of the stars and moon in the endless wheel of time.

  Marcus had seen many towers and many observation platforms in his career. Answers might lie in the stars, but those patterns were subject to interpretation. What he needed was communion with the ancient spirits who had lived here long ago, when the first ghosts came here to die.

  Inanimate objects could absorb strong emotions. Stone walls might reveal things that people forgot.

  He placed the ball of witchlight in a niche beside the tower stairs. It nestled in there as if born to the place. The builders must have placed the small opening there as a night light for weary magicians moving up and down the staircase when they watched the stars for omens and portents of the future as well as answers to the present.

  Breathing deeply, Marcus stared at the wall that adjoined the library, seeking a vulnerable place; some stone that might have been struck in anger or frustration, a place where a weary man had leaned for a moment of rest.

  A trance settled on his shoulders, and the light in the room seemed to magnify. The tiny chinks and crevices blazed forth. The stones and the mortar took on a luminescence. He could see every fleck of minerals on the surface.

  There! The stone a little below shoulder height, five blocks away from the doorway, seemed to have a handprint outlined in tiny glowing dots of white marble within the granite. Marcus placed his own left hand over the handprint. His longer and narrower fingers spread beyond the print, but his palm seemed an almost perfect match.

  Already, he got a sense of the man, shorter than himself, probably stouter. And there, a darker splotch, about his nose level, where he had rested his head. He mimicked the posture.

  Beneath his ear, the stones seemed to pulse. He let his trance fall deeper, penetrate the wall taking him . . .

  Betrayed! The one who has claimed to be my friend our entire lives has betrayed me. He knows nothing of the reality of politics or economics, nothing of the greed of men. He knows only magic, the theories and techniques. Now he expects me to step aside and allow him to govern all magic and magicians in Coronnan. He’ll botch the job for certain. Without me working beside him to keep lords and merchants honest in their dealings, he’ll be bankrupt and disgraced before a moon has transpired.

  But I will not be there to drag him out of the muck of politics and economics. This time his insults and disdain go too far. I shall take myself and my meager savings to another. Another man will pay me well to be his Battlemage. My so-called friend will have to face me in battle. He shall come alone and unprepared, because I am not there to do the work for him beforehand.

  But first I must secure what is mine! No one shall find it in three hundred years.

  Marcus jerked away from the wall as if burned. The anger of the man scorched the very walls of this monastery. His palm continued to tingle and radiate heat. He’d learn nothing more tonight.

  “Ackerly. I think his name was Ackerly,” he whispered as he made his way back to bed.

  Chapter 26

  Robb sat atop the open northwest watchtower above the kitchen and refectory, watching the stars. The haze thinned up here, giving him a clearer view. Many hundreds of years ago, hundreds of magician priests, and retired magicians, healers, and Battlemages had taken turns sitting up here watching the same stars. He found the familiar constellations, noting their position in the sky automatically. His planetary orientation told him that his observations were correct—something he couldn’t discern down in the courtyard. The great wheel of stars around the moon had moved seventeen days since he and Marcus had arrived.

  And yet they had only slept three nights. Time as well as magic became distorted within the monastery.

  Another storm massed clouds to the west. But it would not arrive until tomorrow or the next day in real time, depending on the winds that pushed it. He didn’t think it would hit with as much severity as the last one, if it reached them at all. The time distortion might very well push the weather elsewhere. Only one storm in a thousand hit the forgotten enclave, and then only those storms of unusual fie
rceness.

  The scent of yeast bread rising wafted up to him from the refectory. What was he to do with Vareena and her obvious infatuation with him? “She loves the idea that I might take her away from here more than she loves me,” he decided.

  Idly, he tossed pebbles off the roof thinking of nothing and everything. Mostly he avoided thinking of Marcus and his declaration of love.

  How could he ever feel close to his comrade again?

  They had traveled the length and breadth of Coronnan several times these last three years. Many times they had faced danger together. Many more times they had fled from it. Never had they questioned their friendship or their dependence upon each other. But that need had never crossed over the unspoken sexual boundaries Marcus now teetered on.

  They both enjoyed women, looked forward to the day they could commit to just one. That they both wanted Margit hadn’t seemed to matter. Margit loved Marcus. Robb had convinced himself he’d learn to love another someday.

  But now? He’d rather watch the pebbles he threw, feel the rhythm of his shoulders and arms as he got the knack of aiming them to different parts of the monastery.

  The stones landed in the packed dirt of the courtyard with tiny plunk sounds. He cast the next pebbles farther, aiming for a peculiar twist in the silvery-blue ley line. It landed on the slate paving stones around the well with a satisfying thwack. The next six pebbles also landed anywhere but on top of a ley line. Curious. The lines might be illusory, part of the confinement spell. He put more energy into the next pebble, a slightly larger piece of rubble from this rooftop observation post. It soared over the walls of the monastery to land silent and unseen.

  “So, things can get out of here. People with magical talent can’t.” But could a spell?

  Shrugging his shoulders, he lit a candle and dug out his shard of glass. He went through the motions of setting up the summons spell without thinking. Just before he sent his mind through the glass into the candle, he sat back and looked up at the stars once more. They twinkled at him invitingly.