Dragon Novels: Volume I, The

by Irene Radford

  “But, sir, Master Baamin needs me. I can’t leave him for long.”

  “Let him rest for a few hours.”

  The boy looked defiant.

  Jaylor clamped a hand on his shoulder, tightening his fingers until they dug deeply enough to insure the boy’s attention. “I mean it, Yaakke. This is important. Stay with His Grace.”

  “And where will you be, Master Jaylor?” Scrawny accused. “As Senior Magician and adviser to the king, your place is in Council.”

  “There may still be clues here. When I have examined them and made certain no harm came to my wife and son, I will join you.”

  “Preposterous!” Scrawny protested. “Women have no place in the University. And magicians have no business taking a wife. An occasional mistress maybe, but not a wife!”

  “Just shut up, you bloody bastard. Just shut up!” Yaakke was near to tears. The strain of the last day was telling on his youthful body and immature emotions. What little control he had snapped. “Brevelan’s got more magic in her little toe than you’ve thrown in the last thirty years.”

  Jaylor pulled Yaakke tight against his chest, letting juvenile fists pound out pain and frustration. When the storm was over, the apprentice turned to face the stunned assembly of master magicians. “I won’t apologize. Why should I? Scrawny’s no longer a true magician and has no right to be part of the Commune. His magic is borrowed. Probably from Krej. He stinks of Krej.”

  “Yaakke, what are you saying?” Jaylor turned his apprentice to look directly into his eyes. Yaakke didn’t have any tact or discipline and usually blurted out the truth without thought. He could keep secrets when he wanted to, though. What he saw with his wild magic talent was usually the best kept secret of all.

  “His magic is borrowed, sir.” Yaakke gulped around a new storm of emotions. “His aura isn’t true and his thoughts are chaotic—like someone else is telling him what to do and what to say. There’re others here, too, who lost their real magic when Shayla flew away. But they pretended, like, so they wouldn’t be embarrassed.”

  “And just who is lending these men magic?” Lord Andrall entered the room. The Council was slower in response to Jaylor’s summons than their magicians had been.

  “Krej!” Zolltarn interceded for the boy. “My lords, Guardians, our enemy seems to have left allies in our midst.”

  “His bastard daughter and her husband among them, perhaps?” Scrawny leaped toward Jaylor.

  Scrawny’s clawlike hands closed about Jaylor’s throat before he could throw out his armor. Heat impaled his vocal cords. Air burned in his lungs, seeking escape.

  The words of the spell wouldn’t form. Blackness threatened. His vision elongated and fuzzed.

  I am Jaylor. The solitary, Jaylor. He didn’t need words. Words were indefinite. He needed images. Behind his bulging eyes he saw gleaming armor. Thick metal armor, hot metal armor slid around his throat and neck, up into a helm, down around his torso.

  “Aieyeeeeee!” Scrawny screamed. Magic repulsion propelled him backward across the room in one mighty blast. Scrawny crashed against the wall with a sickening thud to his spine and bead. His sprawled hands were burned nearly free of skin.

  Magic flowed out of him in visible sheets of pink—a muted shade of Krej’s dark maroon magic.

  “Out. All of you get out of my suite!” Jaylor ordered. He reached to massage his bruised throat. “We’ll discuss bloodlines and true magic and traitors when my wife and the queen are both safe. Until then, remove yourself from my quarters. And take that . . .” He pointed toward the crumpled corpse of Scrawny with one hand, while the other continued to massage his injuries. “And take him somewhere where his body can be examined. We need information.”

  When they were all gone, the bolt of alien magic and the corpse with them, Jaylor spoke his thoughts. “Dragon dung! How did he break through my defenses?”

  “He attacked with his body, instead of his magic. You weren’t prepared for that from a master magician,” Darville recited in a monotone. “You did the same thing to one of Zolltarn’s guards. Remember?” He hung back, shoulders slumped, eyes lowered. His spine shuddered. Then he straightened and faced his friend with something of his old resolve and courage.

  “I’ll wait with you, Jaylor. Brevelan may respond to me,” Darville offered.

  “No, old friend. Your place is in Council. Yaakke and the Coraurlia will protect you until I get there. And don’t worry. We’ll find Mikka. We’ll get her back for you.”

  “At least, leave Yaakke here to protect Brevelan,” Darville protested.

  “I’m sending her back to the clearing.”

  “No.” Brevelan stood up from the corner, between the wardrobe and the wall. She reached to hug Jaylor close. “Forgive me for rejecting your touch. I feared the kidnappers would mimic your signature in order to lure me out.”

  Jaylor hugged her hard in relief. He kissed her hair, and then examined both her and the baby to make sure they were all right.

  “Please go back to the clearing, beloved. You’ll be safe there.”

  “I will stay here,” Brevelan asserted. “Mikka will need me when she is found.”

  “How do you know?” Darville asked.

  “The one who sought to steal my son entered the room in the guise of a harpy, the evil messenger of Simurgh.”

  “Stargods and dragons help us all,” Jaylor sighed. “I do hope they haven’t reverted to human sacrifice.”

  Chapter 29

  Rosie clutched her thread cradle tight against her chest so that it wouldn’t tangle. Softly, with a cat’s stalking instinct, she tiptoed to the door of her windowless tower prison. The sparseness of the chamber reminded her of the days of her imprisonment at the hands of her uncle.

  This incarceration, however, was much more dangerous, much more frightening than the last time. Her uncle was cruel and vindictive. But Janataea and her half brother were evil. So very, very evil.

  Visions of Janataea and Krej shape-changed into giant harpies brought nausea into Rosie’s throat. The ordeal of flight must have lasted many hours, many leagues. Her sense of time and distance were badly warped by the drugs shot into her by Janataea. All she remembered of the flight from the palace were the vicious vulture claws that encircled her shoulders, penetrating her thin shift and skin. Hanging, suspended in the thin, cold air, blood dripping down her body, she had lost all sense of up or down, right or left. Vertigo claimed her senses until, mercifully, her mind had closed.

  The drug in her system had lasted just long enough to blot out the pain of the talon wounds in her back and shoulders during the flight. When she awoke, every movement of her arms and back sent sharp pains all through her body.

  Now she was locked into a small room with stale air and minimal light. She wanted to sleep, but she hurt too much to rest. The strong and sensible person in the back of her mind seemed gone. No comfort there. No warmth anywhere. She needed reassurance and love. If only something, anything, in her prison smelled familiar, she could hope for an end of this nightmare.

  Right now she would even welcome Darville.

  Rosie held her breath and listened to the angry voices in the outer room. The words were incomprehensible through the thick panels of the door. But the tones were unmistakable. Janataea and Lord Krej were disagreeing again. Good. The longer they shouted at each other, the longer they left her alone. She could nurse and lick her wounds in private.

  Hold your breath, Rosie. Don’t let them hear you, the voice of the other person inside her head directed. Open your ears. Listen like a cat in the wild. Rosie pressed her ear to the wooden door. No help. The words were in a language she couldn’t comprehend.

  Help me understand, Rosie pleaded with the other person.

  Mikka’s frightened consciousness surged to the front, just enough to add intelligence and learning to the sensitivity of a cat. She dared not come further to the surface. When Janataea—in her own form—had pushed Rosie into this small prison, she had spoken as if
she didn’t know that both Mikka and Rosie were in the same body. Mikka wanted her presence, her intelligence, to remain hidden. That secret might make the difference in effecting an escape.

  “What do you mean, you’re impotent?” Janataea screeched. The accent was strange, but the vocabulary was one of the ancient tongues, from before the foundation of the three kingdoms.

  Mikka, but not Rosie, had learned to read the nearly forgotten language as part of her classical education. But no one knew the exact pronunciation anymore. Or did they?

  She’d heard the Rovers speak some of these words, and guessed a dialect had been adopted by the solitary magicians and exiles of Hanassa—a place where the wandering Rovers were welcome. Who were Krej and Janataea, that they used this archaic tongue so easily?

  “Too much of the Tambootie does that to you. Maman warned me about the backlash of fatigue from Tambootie-augmented magic. Shape-change exhausts magic. Your princess might have been a cat during the flight, but she retained the full mass of a tall woman. Carrying her here took all of my reserves. I couldn’t have done it without the Tambootie. But now I must recover,” Krej apologized, meeker than Mikka had ever heard the self-righteous lord.

  “Nonsense. A big man like you, in your prime. You’re afraid of her cat’s claws,” Janataea sneered.

  As well they should both be afraid. Rosie hoped her old governess would be scarred for life.

  Mikka wondered if the wounds to her back and shoulders would heal cleanly. Both she and Rosie shuddered with the pain of the still seeping marks of harpy talons.

  “Are you forgetting that I also stole the dragon throne and transported it here?”

  “But you couldn’t get the Coraurlia,” Janataea lashed out at her brother. “If you’d gotten the Coraurlia, Darville would have been proved unfit to rule. You’d still be regent.”

  “Darville has already slept with her. What makes you think her body will accept my seed over his?” Krej sounded testy as he yawned.

  Relief flooded through Mikka. If Krej were that tired, he might leave her alone long enough for her to escape.

  “Rosie’s body will accept you because she isn’t in season yet. Tonight, or tomorrow at the latest, the cat within her will be ready to breed.”

  “She’s a woman, for Simurgh’s sake.” Krej invoked the winged god who had been relegated to demon status, along with blood sacrifices, with the coming of the Stargods. “She becomes fertile every moon.”

  “She’s also a cat who becomes truly fertile only once every six moons. The other flow is false as long as the cat is trapped in that body.” Janataea paused. Soft footfalls indicated she was pacing closer to the door.

  Rosie pulled back, seeking a place to hide in the bare room if Janataea chose that moment to open the door.

  “Zolltarn reports that the cat, Mica, was lost in the void during their ritual,” Janataea continued. “Mikka can never influence Rosie again. Therefore, she’s more cat than woman. Trust me. Lay with her tonight and your offspring will rule the three kingdoms.”

  “I could rule the three kingdoms myself if I follow my own plans. Then maybe someone would let me sleep.” He yawned again.

  “Maman reviewed those plans and discarded them. The coven would still be outlawed by the Commune.”

  Janataea sounded near hysteria. That was when she inflicted the direst punishments against the princess. Rosie panicked, nearly losing contact with the other mind in her head. Mikka clung to consciousness, straining for mastery over the cat’s instincts to hide.

  “Damn the coven,” Krej shouted. “The silly magic games you play have done nothing. The breakup of the nimbus of dragons, the distrust the Council holds for Darville, Simeon’s marriage to Miranda, everything we have worked for was achieved through me. I am the real power in Coronnan. I have the dragon throne. I command all the troops. I will rule. And I will lay with the chit when I am ready, and not before.”

  Mikka shrank back from the door. She had to get away before Krej recovered. She’d kill herself before she allowed him to touch her.

  “Master magicians,” Jaylor confronted the members of the Commune outside the Council Chamber. “Before we enter this room, to serve as advisers and protectors of our lords, there is an issue we must address.” Leadership and responsibility sat heavy on his shoulders. He didn’t really want to do this. But he must.

  Twenty pairs of eyes jumped from the open door of the chamber to the Senior Magician, standing several feet behind them. Jaylor wished he could read the thoughts behind those eyes. Then he wouldn’t have to use this awful spell to unmask those disloyal to the Commune and Coronnan.

  “I agree, we must deal with the apprentice Yaakke’s accusation that some of us have borrowed magic. But not here, Jaylor.” Slippy stepped to the front of the pack of magicians, arms crossed, face set in determination.

  “This is a matter for the Commune, not the Council,” Lyman reminded Jaylor.

  “I disagree. The Council should have a say in the disposal of anyone who has borrowed magic from a rogue, a rogue with treasonous intent,” Jaylor affirmed. And the Council needed to know the cost of supporting men who borrowed magic and advice from such a wicked rogue.

  “Magicians have always been subject to the Commune only,” Zolltarn reminded him.

  “And so they will be. I ask only that the Council observe our justice and be advised.” Jaylor stepped back a little more to give himself the space he needed.

  The dragons said this spell would work. It had to. He had no other choice. If the Commune were going to survive, he had to root out the traitors now, no matter the cost.

  He lifted his staff over his head, aiming the tip at the assembled Commune. Blue truth, fueled by Coronnan’s elemental forces, darted from the end of his tool. The mist of the spell spread out into a cloud over the magicians’ heads, then sank downward like so much blue rain. Magicians, priests, and healers were all bunched together. None of them could escape the truth.

  Slippy and Lyman and thirteen others, including Zolltarn, stood straight, accepting the spell. The blue fog became a dust and settled lightly on their heads and shoulders and remained blue, intensely, vividly blue. As blue as the depths of the Great Bay in sunshine.

  Five master magicians squirmed and twisted, trying to avoid the spell. The dust of truth turned fiery green as soon as it touched them, burning the truth out of them. None of them had enough magic to escape.

  “You five, stand aside, lest your false magic contaminate the rest of us,” Jaylor ordered.

  The men in question looked to each other, looked to their former comrades, looked anywhere but at Jaylor and themselves.

  “I said stand aside,” the Senior Magician roared.

  “We haven’t done anything wrong!” the youngest of the lot, a man nearly forty, squeaked. The dust of truth burned his tongue. He opened his mouth to scream in pain, but no sound came out. Where the dust touched his skin, on face and hands, he aged decades before their eyes. His bones shrank and twisted with rheumatism. Dark auburn hair turned gray, then white and brittle. The more he protested and fought the truth, the older he grew, shriveling and dying before their eyes.

  “I didn’t think you had this kind of cruelty in you, Master Jaylor.” Darville stared at Jaylor from the doorway, aghast at the torture the man endured. The Council hovered behind him, staring mutely at the horrifying sight in the corridor.

  “Stargods, no man should be forced to tell the truth that way.” Lord Wendray finally looked away.

  “Should I have sent them all, innocent and guilty alike, to the dungeon, and allowed mundanes to torture the truth out of them?” Jaylor allowed his anger to surface, anger at himself for throwing the spell, anger at Krej for making it necessary. “ ’Twas not my spell that caused the anguish of premature old age. ’Twas the nature of the magic they borrowed. That false power burned up their lives.”

  “Take them to the hospice. They no longer have magic of their own to escape a mundane cell, and they will
need care.” Darville bowed his head in regret for the loss.

  The other four impostors stood absolutely still, not daring to protest the truth spell in any way.

  “Send a loyal scribe to their rooms to record every detail of their confession. The truth is the only way these remaining four will escape the fate of their comrade.” Jaylor lowered his staff and entered the Council Chamber, grateful to the dragons for giving him the means to expose these men. Sick with himself for having to do it.

  Annoyed at yet another interruption to the day’s work, Darville nodded for the breathless messenger to enter.

  An obviously nervous priest eyed Jaylor as he edged into the Council Chamber. “Your Grace, my lords.” He bowed to one and all. His eyes slid warily around Jaylor. “I have just picked up a distress call in my glass. The city of Sambol reports that King Simeon’s troops have penetrated the outlying passes, as well as the main trade road into Coronnan, and are massing to besiege the city.”

  The priest backed out toward the doorway under a bombardment of questions. “I’m sorry, sirs. I don’t know anything more. I only picked up the general distress call. It was sent out in all directions, to no one specific. A weak spell from an exhausted healer.”

  “You may return to your duties.” Darville cut through the hubbub of voices. “Troop placements. How many? Exact locations? Supply trains? I need details!” he ordered the lords.

  “Perhaps the kidnapping of your wife is for the best, Your Grace.” Marnak the Elder stood by his chair, voice level and courteous.

  “What?” Darville roared. “You think Lord Krej’s treason a good thing?”