He’d needed Katrina and her Tambrin lace to truly heal Shayla’s wing. Tonight he needed Katrina by his side to anchor him, give him reasons for succeeding.
“Your Grace, time to convince your pesky cat to find a new body.” Jack bowed to Queen Mikka. “Is everyone ready?”
“Will it hurt?” Mikka asked.
“Perhaps. I don’t know, Your Grace.” Jack shrugged his shoulders.
“Very well. Let us proceed.” Mikka stood up and handed the bawling baby back to Brevelan. As she turned to face Jack, she presented a regal calm. Her multicolored hair, like a brindled brown cat’s fur, flowed smoothly about her shoulders. As tall as Brevelan was short, she radiated authority and determination as well as acceptance of tonight’s procedures—complete with risks.
Precisely the queen Darville needed to help him govern the fractious lords who sat on the Council of Provinces. The couple ruled by the grace of the dragons. But the lords no longer respected the dragons.
Jack sensed the other magicians arranging themselves around Amaranth in a circle. Shayla nudged Iianthe, the second purple-tipped dragonet to join them. Iianthe held back. He’d always been shy around Jack.
That other time Jack had used a purple dragon to give him extra magic to heal Shayla’s wing, Amaranth had willingly joined him. The spell had awakened their unique rapport before the dragonet was mature enough to understand or control it. Iianthe had hidden rather than participate in something new.
“We need symmetry with the original spell that bound the queen and her cat into the same body,” Jack announced. He tapped several of the master magicians on the shoulder and indicated they should leave. “That means eight men working around a center point. Your Grace, if you will take the center with Amaranth.” He beckoned the queen over. Jaylor followed her.
Four years ago, Jaylor had been the center of the spell. The Rovers had agreed to straighten out his warped magic. Their massive working had involved an eight-pointed star, dance, music, and fire. Mikka and her cat had been on the sidelines then, along with Brevelan and Darville. As the Rovers unraveled Jaylor’s talent and then bound it back into his body, the cat had crawled into her mistress’ lap and the two had been caught in the spillover of magic.
Jack couldn’t let that happen again. Carefully, he positioned two journeymen in front of Brevelan and the babies. Then he beckoned Darville to stand behind them as well. “I want a full bubble of armor around the nonparticipants the entire time,” he whispered to the journeymen as he returned to his core of magicians.
Quietly he chalked the important points and junctions of an eight-pointed star on the ground. “We’ll need a second fire over there, to balance this one. I don’t want the fire in the middle. That will destroy the balance.”
Amaranth obliged by igniting the pile of reserve firewood. It blazed merrily and the dragon bounced back to Jack’s side.
The spell was taking shape.
“Where’s Zolltarn? He needs to be here.” Jack looked around, blinking slightly as he roused from his deep concentration and memories.
“He did not respond to our summons.” Jaylor shrugged.
The Rover Chieftain obeyed his own rules—rules he made up as he went along.
“He designed the original spell,” Jack half protested.
“He’s your grandfather, boy,” Old Lyman half sneered. “The blood tie is complete.” The elder librarian hobbled about the cave with the aid of his staff. Jack was glad he’d kept the old man out of the spell.
Three years ago the Rover spell had put too much strain on Baamin’s heart and hastened his death. Jack did not want to be responsible for that happening with Lyman.
Old hurts. He needed to put them aside and make new memories. With Katrina.
“Let’s get started.” Jack squared his shoulders with new resolve. The sooner he completed this duty, the sooner he’d be on the road, following his love. No matter that departing abruptly, without explicit permission would look like a repeat of his youthful misdeeds that had led him to SeLenicca and Katrina the first time.
Jaylor could not hold him. Only Katrina could do that.
“Amaranth, into the center with Queen Mikka.” Jack pushed the dragonet from behind.
Amaranth hung his head and dragged his tail. He knew something strange was about to occur and feared it. Jack was afraid, too. Afraid of failing yet again, afraid of losing Katrina forever. Afraid of hurting his friend, the baby dragon, and the queen.
He couldn’t let his fears govern his actions. He had to impart some measure of reassurance and love to Amaranth.
“I need you to help the queen, Amaranth. Only you can do that.” The dragonet’s head came up, and he emitted a bit of pride. “Remember, when this is over, you get to stay with me forever, as my cat.”
(Be your familiar?) The baby dragon looked at him with hope and adoration.
“My familiar?” A peculiar warmth untied itself from his inner knot of loneliness. “Yes, if you like.” He half smiled. Something good might come of this night’s work after all. He’d have Amaranth’s help while he tracked Katrina. He’d have another to share his hopes and fears, to plot and plan, to dream with.
Reluctantly, tail and muzzle drooping, Amaranth trudged to the center of the circle. He paused to look back at Jack three times before he settled on his haunches at the queen’s side.
“Touch the dragonet, Your Grace. You need a conduit for the cat to follow out of your body.”
She rested her left hand on Amaranth’s head, behind the stubby horn, and gently scratched his ears. He began to hum, just like a cat purring.
“Iianthe, here, beside me.”
The other purple-tipped dragon slunk behind his mother.
“Shayla.” Jack looked toward the mother dragon. Exhaustion seemed to feed upon every little setback in this procedure. He needed to be gone, in search of Katrina. He took a deep breath and continued addressing Shayla. “If Amaranth is to become the flywacket, I won’t be able to gather magic from him. I can only gather magic from a purple-tipped dragon, unlike my companions. I need Iianthe to complete this spell. We need the augmented power of dragon magic to make this work. Solitary magic isn’t enough.”
The other master magicians looked at Jack with small frowns of disapproval.
By the laws of Coronnan and the Commune, he must be able to gather dragon magic or go into exile. But the situation had changed and Jack’s solitary magic had saved the Commune more than once.
He frowned back at them. All but elder Librarian Lyman looked away in embarrassment. That old man made his own rules and set his own standards of acceptability. He slammed his staff into the dirt as a prompt to get the spell moving.
Iianthe retreated farther behind his mother. Amaranth began to shift his weight uneasily beside Mikka.
All of the magicians looked at each other blankly.
“I’ll get him,” Jaylor heaved a sigh. He might be Senior Magician, but except for Jack, he was the youngest and strongest among them.
Shayla nudged Iianthe forward with her muzzle. A touch of her long spiral forehead horn applied judiciously to his rump brought him abruptly to Jack’s side.
“Everyone get ready. We may not have a lot of time once I start,” Jack warned.
“Perhaps one of us should take over the managing of this spell,” Slippy said. He’d taken his name from the eels that nestled near the shore of the Great Bay. Cooked properly, they had a sweet nutritious meat. Handled incorrectly, they poisoned all they touched.
“None of you were there during the original spell. None of you have the feel of what happened,” Jack asserted.
“Jaylor was there,” Slippy corrected him.
“Jaylor was the object of the spell. As such, he was a passive participant.”
Silence greeted his assertion.
“Look, nothing would please me more than turning over the entire procedure to one or all of you. I have business elsewhere. Pressing business. But you chose me for this spell. Me.
The rogue who was too stupid to have a name, and too irresponsible to follow orders. Me. I developed the transport spell. I saved the entire Commune from Rejiia. I found the dragons and brought them home. You chose me for a reason.” Jack clenched his fists in a serious effort to keep from shouting and throwing flashes of fire from his staff.
“What do we do?” Jaylor asked. He ignored the tension that grew almost tangibly among his master magicians.
“Link together, Jaylor to my right with Iianthe between us. Each of you stand on a point of the eight-pointed star.” Jack forced his hands to relax as he gently caressed Iianthe’s horn bud. Unlike Amaranth’s, this one had grown. It had started to spiral into a sharp point.
Shayla crooned in the background. The baby dragon coiled his tail around himself. At least it wasn’t sticking straight out and elevated in preparation to bolt.
“Rovers induce a trancelike state through music and dance. They then draw magical energy from all life by reaching out and touching it with their heightened senses,” Jack reminded the other magicians. “That’s how the original spell began.”
There’d be no dancing to recreate a Rover spell tonight. Jack had to remain rooted beside Iianthe in order to gather dragon magic.
But the men of the Commune could sing and move their feet while standing in one place.
Jack gave out his instructions quietly. No sense in spooking Iianthe. He reached for the shoulder of the man to his left. Jaylor placed one hand on Jack’s shoulder to complete the circle of eight magicians.
They chanted the poetry of the Rovers, words Jack had dredged up from his memory and sent to the other men to memorize earlier in the day.
And then they marched in place, keeping time with the rhythmic repetition of the song.
Iianthe shifted uneasily beneath Jack’s hand. He sped up the chant and the march. His eyes crossed as the power rose within him. It grew, expanded, writhed like a living being in a myriad of colors representing each of the magicians in the circle.
Jack drew a deep breath and grabbed the power, molding it to his will. Between one heartbeat and the next the auras of every being within the circle took on the lavender-and-silver overtones of his magical signature.
Amaranth responded to the compulsion within the chant, shrinking, collapsing in on himself, absorbing all the light his silvery hide normally reflected. He darkened as he shrank until . . . until . . .
A black cat, so dark its fur reflected purple lights stood beside the queen. It yowled loudly and fluttered black-feathered wings. A flywacket. A creature of legend and prophecy.
In that instant, Jack grabbed at the source of the queen’s double aura and yanked.
Amaranth yowled again.
Iianthe reared up, breaking Jack’s contact.
The circle of magic dissolved.
Jack doubled over in exhaustion with a curious pain in his gut. Strange afterimages showed around everything he tried to focus his eyes upon.
“I’m free!” Mikka shouted as she sank to her knees. Her head looked too heavy for her neck to support. “I’m free of that blasted cat.” Tears of joy streamed down her face. Her husband rushed forward and knelt beside her, scuffing the marks of the eight-pointed star. He cradled her against him, kissing away her tears.
“Are you hurt?” Darville cupped her face in his long-fingered hands.
“A curious emptiness. Tired. A little dizzy—disoriented.” Her strength gave out. She collapsed in a faint. Darville caught her.
“Thank you, young man.” Darville looked up from his wife’s peaceful countenance. “We—all of Coronnan—owe you a debt of gratitude. Hopefully, now we can stabilize the succession without Lord Laislac and his daughter.”
“I’d best send you home, Your Grace, before you are missed,” Jaylor said. He took a deep breath. His face still looked a little gray.
“No more magic until you all eat!” Brevelan proclaimed.
“Food,” Jack murmured, recognizing the cause of some of his disorientation. The afterimages continued to plague his vision like half-formed ghosts. His skin felt clammy, and his knees wobbled. “I need food.”
An unknown journeyman stuffed a hunk of bread into Jack’s hand, followed by a thick slab of cheese.
Jack ate hungrily, methodically. He had to restore his energies quickly.
“Jack, I’ll see you in my study in the morning. We need to discuss security within the palace.” Darville swallowed convulsively.
“SeLenicca,” Jack croaked. “You promised to send Katrina and me to SeLenicca as ambassadors.”
“Later. I need you in Coronnan City more than I need you across the border now that the war is over. We still have an eavesdropping rogue to find.” Darville dismissed the suggestion.
“I’ve got to take Katrina home, Your Grace. Now.”
Three deep breaths and the void beckoned him. “Come, Amaranth.” The flywacket leaped into his arms. Three more breaths and he sent them both into the void in search of his true love.
CHAPTER 22
Zebbiah hustled Jaranda and the pack beast onto the sailing vessel amidst shouts for haste from the captain and crew—who all looked amazingly like the Rover except they wore blue and green on their black clothing instead of purple and red. The pack beast protested the plank up to the ship’s deck vehemently and tried to sit down again in the middle of it.
The woman pushed the animal from behind with a sharp stick, trying her best to keep it from parking its rear anywhere but on the deck. Zebbiah called no orders to her, nor did he look to see if she followed. They had made a bargain; therefore, he must presume she followed.
Eight passengers, all dressed in rough clothing, moved abruptly to the far side of the open-decked vessel giving the Rover and his beast more than enough room to settle for the long voyage upriver.
The woman inspected the other passengers openly. All of the women but one wore a single plait that started at the crown and gathered closely to the head to the nape where it broke free into a thick rope of a braid. Two of them had not bothered with the complex four strand plait but sufficed with the simpler three strand braid. The other woman wore two plaits that started at her temples and stayed close to her head to the nape, then swung free for a short space and joined into a single thick plait halfway down her back. She must come from a merchant family. The others were all peasants.
Not knowing who she was or what her status was, the unnamed woman had gathered her own hair into a thick knot at her own nape. Jaranda’s hair, she had tied back with a green ribbon to match her dress. They, like their fellow passengers, wore sturdy dark skirts and vests with white, long-sleeved shifts beneath.
She caught the eye of the woman wearing two plaits. The merchant’s wife turned up her nose and spun on her heel to face the water on the other side of the vessel. The peasant women followed suit.
The men talked amongst themselves and paid no attention to the newcomers.
Jaranda did not seem to care about the people. She skipped about looking at everything, watching the crew as they cast off the lines and set the sail.
“Zebbiah, what plagues them?” the woman whispered to her traveling companion.
He looked up from tending to the stubborn beast that carried all their worldly wealth and supplies.
“We made them late. They are displeased.” He shrugged and returned to the beast’s reins, tethering them to a brass ring embedded into the decking.
“ ’Tis more than that, Zebbiah. Displeasure at our tardiness would evoke curses and grumbling, not this silent disdain.” Why did she know that? An image, a very old image, flashed across her mind’s eye. She stood and watched a parade of noblemen and courtiers as they exited the king’s audience chamber. One of them turned and faced her squarely. “This war with Coronnan will benefit no one. No one. We’d be better off governing ourselves than submitting to his demands for more money, more war, more slaves, more sacrifices.”
She tried to put a name to the man’s face. She tried to place
herself in the crowd. She tried to remember who he was.
The images faded to mists.
“You remembering something?” Zebbiah asked.
“Not quite. Has our country been at war long?”
“Over three years.” No further comment good or bad. No information as to the cause. Just that war had become a part of life.
“And is all this devastation a part of the war?” She swept a hand to include the city behind the docks that drifted farther and farther away.
“Partly.”
She raised her eyebrows, waiting for more information. He sat down on a cargo bale and began plaiting a piece of leather he drew from the panniers.
Slightly miffed, she marched over to the women crowding against the far railing. “Good morning, ladies. Are you traveling all the way to the end of the river?” she asked politely.
Two-plaits sniffed as if she smelled something rancid. “Riffraff, tainting true-blood with dark-eyed outlanders,” she spat.
“Wouldn’t have this problem if the council hadn’t made mixed marriages legal so Queen Miranda could marry an outlander,” a stout woman added. She wore a clumsy braid that looked as if it had not been washed or combed in a month.
Two-plaits looked pointedly at red-haired Jaranda.
“I don’t suppose you know my name, ladies?”
“A name that’s too good for you, if you ask me,” two-plaits replied and moved as far into the bow as she could, away from them all.
“Somehow, I didn’t expect you to say that.”
“Stargods, they make a lot of demands for ghosts!” Yeenos, Vareena’s older brother protested. “Bad enough we have to feed two more of them with no respite from the last one. Now they want special herbs and minerals, crystals, and our soap-making cauldrons. I say no. We feed them because the Stargods decree we must. But no more!” He swung his shepherd’s crook in a wide circle before slamming the crook against a watering trough.
“Yeenos, calm down.” Vareena ducked the staff, well used to her brother’s temper. She had seen Marcus do the same thing with his staff. Robb seemed to have better control of his temper and treated his staff more gently. “These new ghosts claim that another ghost, a true ghost of a man who has died, haunts the monastery and causes live men to become trapped there, halfway between here and their next existence.”
The Wizard's Treasure (The Dragon Nimbus) Page 18