The Wizard's Treasure (The Dragon Nimbus)

by Irene Radford

  “Do you see what I see?” Robb whispered.

  “I hope I don’t. That . . . that looks like a ghost. A real ghost.” His balance and perceptions twisted. He stumbled and clutched the gold-laden shelves for balance.

  “That ghost looks very angry indeed!” Robb wasn’t standing easy on the rolling floor either.

  “Run!”

  CHAPTER 18

  Marcus skidded to a halt on the slick paving stones at the end of the colonnade. He had to bend over to catch his breath. Still, icy bugs seemed to climb his spine. He imagined the ghost slicing into his back from the base of his spine upward.

  Robb careened into him. They looked at each other, eyes wide. Marcus’ heart beat loudly in his ears.

  Without a word spoken, they took off again, away from the buildings toward the graveyard and the foundations for the old temple.

  Vareena stood just inside the gates, holding a covered basket—probably full of food.

  “What ails you, Marcus, Robb?” Vareena gasped, clutching her throat in alarm.

  “A—g-gho-ghost!” Marcus panted. He leaned heavily against the gatehouse wall as he drew in deep draughts of air.

  “But you are the ghosts here. No one else,” she protested. She furrowed her brow in puzzlement, tilting her adorable little nose down.

  Marcus reached out to smooth tight worry lines from her face. A barrier of burning energy repulsed his hand. He clenched it into a fist instead.

  “We. Are. Not. Ghosts,” Robb stated breathlessly. “We did not die, leaving our spirits behind.”

  “You only forget your passing, Robb. You are both truly ghosts,” Vareena insisted.

  “No, we aren’t,” Marcus agreed with his friend. “That—thing—haunting the library is a real ghost. And it is royally pissed . . . um . . . I mean perturbed by our presence.”

  “If there is truly another ghost in this place, why have I not sensed his presence? Why have I not seen him in all these past twenty years? I assure you, you two are the only ghosts currently residing here.” She placed her hands upon her hips and pursed her lips as if reprimanding errant children.

  “I beg to differ, my dear.” Robb assumed his normal preaching tone, so obviously missing earlier today. “The entity we encountered in the library has most certainly staked a claim there. You admitted that you had not explored any part of the monastery other than the rooms occupied by your guests. The villagers shun the place unless required by you to make repairs, and even then they usually restrict themselves to the residential wing. Why should anyone have disturbed that thing other than your other guests who examined the building out of boredom, or seeking an exit. I can only presume they, too, were frightened away by this true ghost and did not explore further. Therefore, I must conclude that the answer to our quest for escape lies within the library.” Robb finally paused to breathe.

  “I am not going back to that library!” Marcus trembled. “It wanted to carve out my heart with that sacrificial knife. Didn’t you see how much blood it dripped, how it reeked of the grave, and carried the chill of the void between existences?” Had he truly felt all that, or had his imagination filled in the gaps from old stories passed around apprentice dormitories late at night on Saawheen Eve?

  “Yes, I did see all that and felt the same unnatural chill,” Robb said thoughtfully, tapping his teeth. He began to pace a serpentine path around Marcus and Vareena. “That is how I know it to be a true ghost.”

  “A ghost is a ghost!” Vareena protested. “I shall prove it to you. You two are the only ghosts here.” She set down her basket, pushed past the two magicians, and marched back along the colonnade toward the library. Her footsteps echoed against the flag-stones.

  Marcus suddenly realized that he and Robb made no noise as they moved about the old place. Their boots with sturdy leather soles and hard wooden heels should clomp noisily with every step.

  The gloaming seemed to absorb the sounds of their passing. He wondered if they stood on the edge of the void between the planes of existence. The sense-robbing blackness of the void when one first entered could also rob a man of his sanity if he did not have a purpose, a question to ask. Only when he held that purpose or question firmly in his mind did the multicolored umbilicals of life become visible. If one had patience and courage, a man could sort through the life forces that surrounded him in the void that represented all those important to him in reality.

  Perhaps . . . If he could summon enough magic for a trip into the void, he could find a way home.

  “Robb.” He stopped his friend from following Vareena with a hand upon his shoulder. No barrier of energy repulsed his touch as it did with Vareena. “Robb, maybe we are ghosts of a sort. Our boots make no noise, we can touch each other but not her. Perhaps we are at the edge . . .”

  “True. Our condition is not normal. But we cannot pass through walls, we require food and drink—we both eliminate bodily wastes regularly. And we have no memory of injury or death. None of that indicates that we have left our bodies behind as we would in death or on a trip through the void. We have bodies. We just aren’t truly in one reality or another, but trapped halfway between.”

  “Isn’t that what happens to a ghost? His body is in one reality and his spirit in another.”

  “Our spirits and bodies remain intact. ’Tis reality around us that wavers.”

  “You’ve got a point there. Let’s follow and see what Vareena conjurs up in the library.”

  “An apt description, I believe.”

  Together they caught up with Vareena as she pushed open the door to the library.

  “I don’t remember closing the door. Did you close it, Robb?”

  Robb shook his head and scrunched his face in a puzzled frown. “I believe the ghost wishes to be left alone.”

  Marcus tasted the air with his magical senses. Dust, mold, stone older than time, staleness, and . . . and something sour tingling on his tongue that did not belong there.

  “It’s waiting for us,” he whispered.

  “Stuff and nonsense. I’d know if another ghost had come here. I’m a sensitive.” Vareena resolutely pushed the door open and stepped into the vast room. “Yoohooo! Anybody home?”

  Her words echoed around the nearly empty room. Silence followed.

  Marcus and Robb poked their heads around the door, Robb above, Marcus slightly stooped. Diffuse sunlight filtered through the dust in broken shafts. “The dust should have settled by now. There isn’t a breeze to stir it,” Marcus whispered.

  “I know,” Robb replied.

  “Look for the sparkles, for movement.”

  Vareena walked around the free-standing bookshelves. Her skirts raised clouds of dust in her wake. It swirled and eddied, drifting to new locations. But none of her dust stayed in the air more than a moment or two.

  The other dust—the stuff that lingered in the corner far away from her circuitous path—took on a vaguely human shape, the glint of red and metal showed the knife now tucked into his old-fashioned belt sash over yellow tunic and orange sleeveless robe. Brown trews and boots faded into the shadows, making him look almost legless. He made mocking faces at Vareena, waving his arms in a parody of drawing attention to himself.

  Eventually, Vareena climbed the spiral staircase to the second-floor gallery. The gloating dust followed her only within touching distance of the cold iron structure. Then it jerked back as if burned.

  “Behind you,” Marcus hissed at her.

  “What?” Vareena turned on the sixth step, looking over her shoulder at them.

  “The ghost. In the dust. Behind you.” Marcus held his breath, not daring to come closer, yet fearful for her well-being.

  “I see nothing.” Firmly she marched up the stairs.

  “She didn’t even look,” Robb protested.

  “Perhaps she truly cannot see this ghost. Her sensitivities are limited, as is her magic.”

  “I wonder if all of her other ghosts have been mundane,” Robb mused.

  �
��If so, they might not have seen this ghost. If mundanes couldn’t find a way out, perhaps the solution lies in magic.” Hope brightened Marcus’ heart for the first time since coming here.

  “But our magic has become quite limited by whatever force holds us here. Without a dragon to combine and enhance our powers, we may not have enough magic to break the spell.”

  Ariiell loosened the ties of her gown and shifted the pillows behind her back. She sighed at the relief of pressure on her swelling belly.

  Outside her bedchamber her father and stepmother continued to argue over her plight. Her father’s second wife wept more than she spoke. “Think of the disgrace of bringing that monster into our family. Everyone will know ’tis not a love match. ’Tis not even a good political move.” Lady Laislac choked out the words between sobs. “Better we send her to a convent overseas for a year and foster the baby elsewhere. It’s likely to be as hideous as the father.”

  Ariiell frowned. Her stepmother repeated some of the arguments Ariiell had put forth against the marriage to Mardall. Arguments she expected and hoped to lose.

  “My honor is as much at stake as the girl’s. She’ll never be able to make a more advantageous marriage. Whoever we pawn her off on will know she’s not a virgin and will renounce the marriage on the wedding night.” Lord Laislac’s boots pounded the floor rushes into a distinctive path from his repetitive pacing.

  Her father always won family arguments regardless of the wisdom or rightness of his position.

  The best way for Ariiell to get what she wanted was to counter her father with the opposite of her goal. In four years of marriage, her stepmother had never learned that little trick. Her father’s wife deserved the unhappiness Lord Laislac dealt her every day.

  “To bring that . . . that thing into the family!”

  “That thing is blood heir to the throne,” Ariiell’s father reminded his wife.

  “Precisely,” Ariiell whispered to herself. “Mardall will never take the throne. But as long as Queen Rossemikka remains barren, my child is next in line.” She smiled hugely, rubbing her tummy.

  The baby kicked in response to the slight pressure. A good sign of the child’s health and vigor. Her mentor had promised the child would be normal.

  “I will be the mother of the next king of Coronnan,” she whispered to herself. No sense in losing the battle with her father by stating the truth. “As soon as the marriage takes place and the child is declared legitimate, I must find a way to eliminate Darville. I’ll certainly be more successful than those idiots from the coven and the Gnuls who have bungled every attempt these last three years.”

  She reached beneath the mattress for the book of poisons she had recently acquired. She wasn’t supposed to be able to read—no person other than the now outlawed magicians were allowed to learn the arcane art of reading and higher mathematics. But Ariiell had watched the family magician priest as he sounded out the letters and words on letters and reports. The priest was supposed to consign written communications to the fire as soon as he read them to the lord. A little sleight of hand had brought most of those messages into Ariiell’s possession.

  Careful study had brought the words to life.

  So now she plotted out ways to coat the inside of Darville’s riding gloves with a fast-acting poison. She’d need time to gather all the necessary ingredients. Time to insert herself into court life. After the wedding.

  By this time next year, she intended to be regent for her infant son and the coven.

  Earlier today, her guardian from the coven had tried another assassination upon the king. But this one was intended to fail. The coven needed Darville alive until Ariiell’s child was born. But they needed him frightened of dying without an heir so that he would name Ariiell’s child as next in succession. The man must have failed. He hadn’t reported back to her, and the king had not sent word to hasten the marriage.

  Time for a change of tactics. In a few hours she’d summon her nameless guardian and give him a new task—the poison ingredients would work just as well on Queen Rossemikka.

  “I think I have a problem, Jaylor. I can’t throw the spell. I can’t come to the lair in three days or even tonight.” Jack schooled his voice and his face to slip through the summons spell on a note of calm. Panic gibbered inside him, demanding he pace, he pound, he seek Katrina in any way possible. He’d even travel into the void by himself, without an anchor, in order to find her.

  He sent this summons alone, deep in the night. As he had always been alone. He’d hoped Katrina would be the one to fill the aching void in his life. Now she was gone, too!

  He intended to fight to bring her back.

  Moonlight filtered through the rare glass window of the king’s study tower. Hours of searching had resulted in no new information as to Katrina’s direction or means of transportation. The scrying bowl had revealed only that she fled away from him.

  The king had had less luck in interrogating the scullery maid from the tunnel. She had disappeared from her locked room before anyone could question her, and no one from the kitchen remembered her ever working there. And yet Jack knew he’d seen her there just the day before . . . a puzzle he did not have time for.

  Jack’s only hope of finding his beloved lay in Katrina’s lack of magical talent. She couldn’t transport herself and had to travel on foot or steedback. She’d not get beyond the reach of his transport spell. But he had to have a landmark, something recognizable to home in on.

  And every minute he prayed that the Gnuls had not captured her. Their witch-sniffers had ways of shielding their prisoners from searches conducted by mundanes and magicians alike—much as Journeymen Marcus and Robb had disappeared some moons ago.

  He wouldn’t think about that. He knew he could find Katrina anywhere, any time, once he calmed down. Their souls were linked. His last journey through the void had shown him how the white and gold of her life force had entwined with his silver and purple.

  “Calm down, Jack,” Jaylor ordered. “What happened?” He looked more relaxed and coherent than the last time Jack had summoned him. The twin girls had made their entrance into the world. One came screaming, kicking, and protesting the transition. The other was much smaller and more placid, almost listless. Not all of Jaylor’s worries had ended, just the worst of them. Brevelan and the new babies slept . . . for the moment.

  Jack took three deep breaths, almost triggering a deeper trance that would take him into the void then and there. A haunting Song drifted through the blackness of the void, tempting him.

  (Answers can be found in the void. Are you ready to learn and accept what you find, pleasant or distressful?) Baamin asked. In his current existence Baamin wore magician blue on the tips of his dragon wings. He had befriended Jack more than once.

  Jack couldn’t see the wise dragon at the moment, but would recognize his voice anywhere.

  He held himself tightly to this world.

  “Talk to me, Jack. Don’t revert to your old habits of silence. In this case, keeping your mouth shut will not solve the problem,” Jaylor coaxed. He’d known Jack when he was a nameless kitchen drudge. He’d stood by Jack when he became an arrogant apprentice magician who chose the magnificent name Yaakke out of history. But Jaylor was not there when Jack had to live up to the name he chose. Jack had learned most painfully that the humbler shortening of the name suited him much better. Jaylor could not know how important Katrina had been to his survival through that long and grueling process.

  “She’s gone,” Jack choked out. Slowly, he found the words to explain how and why Katrina had fled rather than face the intimacy of marriage. “I have to bring her back!”

  “You need to follow her, certainly,” Jaylor replied. “But believe me, you can’t force her to come back to you. All you can do is wait patiently by her side and allow her to make the first move.” The Senior Magician smiled. His attention drifted as if he remembered something wonderful.

  Jack had to remind himself that Jaylor might hold
authority over all members of the Commune of Magicians, but he was only a few years older than Jack. And a new father, for the third and fourth time. Balladeers had been singing of his deep and abiding love for Brevelan for four years now.

  “Then I’ll follow Katrina now.”

  “No. You will complete your duty to Coronnan, the Commune, and our king! That is our oath as members of the Commune.”

  Jack’s sense of duty to Coronnan, Commune, and king had seen him through years of slavery, terrible dangers, and persecution. It had brought him many rewards, including Katrina’s love.

  “She’s not safe. I can’t fulfill my duties to anyone as long as she’s in danger.”

  “I’ll send Margit to catch up with her. My apprentice is most anxious to get out in the world. She says that she finds life at the University or at court stifling—she can’t breathe properly indoors. But I suspect much of her anxiety centers around the missing Marcus and Robb—Marcus in particular.”

  “Margit has no training. The only spell she can work is a weak summons. How can she protect Katrina?”

  “Margit has learned a lot in the last few moons, and as long as her breathing isn’t stifled while indoors, she does have more magic than we thought. She’s the best person to be with Katrina right now. They are the same age. They are both in love and having difficulty with the relationship. Margit can talk to her. They can share female secrets, where a man will just frighten your ladylove.”

  “But . . .”

  “No buts. Do your research and planning. Then transport Mikka and Darville to the lair three days hence.”

  “But . . .”

  Jaylor broke off the summons.

  Jack slumped against the king’s desk. His spine no longer had the stiffness to hold him up.

  “Be safe, Katrina. Be safe until I can come to you.”

  CHAPTER 19