Dragon Novels: Volume I, The

by Irene Radford

  As the mass of birds, a hundred or more, swooped low, Jack fought the urge to duck. At the last moment he opened his armor and caught the wounded bird with a touch of levitation. It dropped into his hands, exhausted and shivering. Above its eyes were two bald spots where tufts of white feathers should be.

  “Corby?” Jack caressed the sleek black head with a gentling finger.

  The bird tried to tuck his head beneath his wing. The effort of movement seemed too much. “Caged! Caged, caged,” he croaked. “Big light.”

  “Someone caught you and caged you. They left you in the sun? Without water?”

  “Reji comes, Reji, Reji.” The last words drained the jackdaw of energy. He collapsed in Jack’s hand, a heavy, inert weight.

  “Don’t you dare die on me, Corby!” Lonely tears swelled his throat. Through all his pain and years of toil only Corby had remained from his days as Jaylor’s apprentice—the only time in his life he’d been happy and cared for. Loved. Until now. He had Katrina now. Maybe.

  Light shimmered and distorted not six yards in front of Jack. He needed to cuddle and protect his companion, but urgency prevented that. Hastily he spared the magic to send the unconscious bird into a pocket between two spines on the blue-tipped dragon’s back.

  “Please keep him safe, sir,” he pleaded as he ducked the first bolt of magic thrown by the now solid forms of Rejiia and Simeon.

  “Take all your dragons out of here, Shayla,” he yelled. “Without dragons, Simeon has no magic!” A flash of blinding white light followed his words.

  Katrina held the last round doily in place over the edge of the ugly black wound in Shayla’s wing. Never had she seen anything to match Simeon’s cruelty in maiming this magnificent dragon. She counted carefully to ten for the glue to set while her heart hammered rapidly.

  The skin on the back of her neck crawled with the sense of impending danger. She smelled the difference in the air when Simeon and his mistress materialized. A sharp scent of foliage beginning to rot.

  (Now!) Shayla commanded. (We must leave now.)

  “But it’s not set. The patch will come off when you fly.” Katrina held the doily in place, willing the liquid wax to congeal faster.

  (No more time. I must fly as it is. Come.) The last word commanded the babies as well as Katrina.

  The lacemaker wasted no more time. Shayla was too weak to take her. With a prayer and a leap she clambered onto the blue-tipped male dragon’s back. Two spinal horns cradled her like a saddle. Corby lay between two smaller spikes in front of her, a black spot of reality in this fantastic adventure. She scooped the bird into her lap to keep him safe.

  “P’pa, climb up behind me!” she called. Her father continued to stare at the three magicians.

  “P’pa!”

  (My mates will see to him,) Shayla explained. (I must leave now.)

  Huge shoulder muscles stretched beneath Katrina as the male matched Shayla’s movements. They spread their wings. Some of the dragon’s joy in the movement filtered into Katrina’s mind.

  (Too long since I have flown,) Shayla groaned. Her wings faltered in their upward movement. Before they quite reached the peak of the arch, Shayla thrust them downward and gathered her legs beneath her. (Not enough strength. We’ll have to run for it.)

  Katrina’s dragon moved into position behind Shayla, encouraging and protecting her at the same time.

  Above them, the dragonets fluttered and chirped. Higher still, more dim outlines circled. The sense of urgency pressed on Katrina like a weight.

  Rejiia raised her arms in preparation for an assault on Shayla. Simeon’s spell was aimed at Jack.

  Shayla and her mate sprang forward in unison.

  “Look out, Jack!” Katrina screamed into the rushing wind.

  A blast of magic fire burst from both dragon mouths, directly at the sorcerer-king. Rejiia’s attack faltered as she diverted her spell to protect Simeon. Dragon fire ringed them both, beat at invisible armor and died out. Neither of them flinched.

  Both dragons ran past Simeon, gathering speed with each long step. Two more steps, two more sweeps of the huge wings, and Katrina felt the rush of air flow beneath her. A sudden release of the weight that held her to the Kardia and she knew they were airborne. A sense of wonder filled her as the vale diminished in size beneath her.

  She looked down one last time. P’pa appeared as a heap of rags collapsed by the pool side. A ball of dark-green flame crashed through Jack’s armor toward his eyes.

  The blackness of the void engulfed her senses and her heart.

  Chapter 38

  ‘We cannot deny you access to the child, Darville,” Jaylor said quietly. “But taking him to the capital now would cause more problems than it would solve.” The two men faced each other, arms crossed, similar grim expressions on their faces.

  “Don’t you think that once Glendon is away from all these magicians, these receptive minds, he would learn to speak?” Darville gestured to the pair of apprentices who occupied the children.

  “Possibly. But not before the Gnostic Utilitarian cult had sniffed out the presence of his magic. The law forbidding magicians from being lords and lords from being magicians has never been revoked,” Jaylor reminded him. “Legally, Glendon can’t be your heir.”

  “Legally, Glendon is already my heir. No one on the Council has questioned that he is my illegitimate son.”

  Brevelan called the boys to their breakfast from the doorway of the cottage. She glared at the men, warning them not to bring arguments into her home.

  Both men turned to drink in the wholesome beauty they had both loved for so long. Darville looked away first, seeking Mikka.

  “If we do not find solutions to our problems, Mikka will not stay with me,” Darville mused. “My love for Brevelan is strong and special. But it cannot compare to the soul-deep love I bear my wife. I am nothing if she leaves me.”

  “I have assigned a team of magicians to the problem and summoned Zolltarn, since it was his binding spell that caused the problem,” Jaylor reminded his friend.

  “Shayla!” Brevelan called, startling both men out of their preoccupation. “Shayla’s come back.”

  Mikka appeared behind Brevelan within the hut, hair unbound, and a glow of relaxed joy on her face.

  Jaylor looked in the direction Brevelan pointed. A hint of a shadow passed between the sun and the clearing.

  “Are you sure it’s Shayla?” Jaylor called as he bolted to his wife’s side.

  “If she isn’t certain, then I am,” Darville confirmed. He stared at his left arm, eyes wide and mouth agape.

  “What?” Mikka rushed to his side. Without waiting for an answer, she freed his arm from its sling and rolled up his shirt sleeve.

  “Darville, your arm!” Brevelan gasped. The twisting black mass of the old burn faded and shrank before their eyes.

  “If my dragon flies, then she must be healed, and so must I.” The king smiled as he searched the sky for signs of the dragon.

  Suddenly the air was filled with dragons. Big and small, tipped with color and luminescent pearl. The central figure glided in lazy circles around and around the clearing. Each pass was narrower and closer to the ground.

  “Someone’s riding the blue-tip,” Jaylor announced at the same moment the others pointed to the human outline atop the nearly invisible dragon. “Suppose it’s Yaakke?”

  “No, it’s a woman. Shayla is tiring. She’s going to crash!” Brevelan shouted. She dashed forward to rescue the two little boys standing in the center of the meadow, watching the spectacle.

  Jaylor was faster. One son under each arm, he dashed for the safety of a bank of saber ferns. Sharp, jagged leaves stabbed at his ankles and dragged against his trews. But the boys were safe.

  Two heartbeats later, Shayla stretched out her claws and grabbed tufts of grass. Her legs buckled and her nose nearly hit the ground. Her distress was evident in the drooping half-furled wings.

  “Where are we, Shayla? Are we safe? Who
are all these people?” Katrina scrambled off the male dragon’s back to check Shayla’s wing.

  The male extended his wings in preparation for flight. Katrina grabbed Corby and cradled him in one arm before the dragon took off again.

  Shayla didn’t answer. Exhaustion dragged nearly transparent eyelids over the jewel of her eye.

  “We are friends,” the blond man spoke hesitantly in a strange accent. “I know a little of your language.”

  He was tall, with a commanding presence, Katrina shrank away from him. The solid wall of Shayla’s side prevented her from retreating further.

  (Trust them.)

  Katrina gulped back some of her fear. Outlanders. Her ingrained distrust rose. Jack was an outlander and he had proved himself more a friend to SeLenicca than her own king.

  The man was blond, like a true-blood. Only his golden-brown eyes betrayed his lack of citizenship. The woman who stroked Shayla’s muzzle and crooned a healing Song had proper blue eyes, but her red hair and something about the shape of her chin made her look too much like Simeon. The other tall man, holding two small boys under his arms, looked the friendliest, but his hair and eyes were almost as dark as Jack’s.

  “Do you know a man named Jack? A dark magician.” She formed her words carefully to make sure they understood her.

  The dark man spoke a few words in a strange language full of lilting, singsong phrases.

  “Speak freely.” The blond man smiled reassuringly. “The blond child understands you and translates.”

  Katrina stared at the squirming children. She hadn’t heard them speak. Jack didn’t need to speak. Were these people magicians as well?

  “Jack sent us here for healing.”

  “Jack?” All three adults shook their heads.

  “Yaakke!” proclaimed the dark man after exchanging a long stare with the blond child.

  “He said his name was Jack.” Her Jack wasn’t part of a legend, though he’d performed some pretty miraculous feats. He hadn’t brought about the prophecy of doom. Simeon had.

  (Jack, Yaakke. Same man. Different attitude,) Shayla interjected.

  “Where is the man you call Jack?” the dark-haired man asked slowly but in perfectly accented SeLenese.

  “I fear King Simeon and his witch killed him. They killed P’pa too. And they killed SeLenicca. Queen’s City is in ruins,” Katrina cried. Tears fell down her cheeks unchecked. “All is lost.”

  “The Simeon destroyed his own capital?” the blond man asked anxiously.

  “Jack thinks . . . thought . . . said that the influx of magic put too much strain on the burned-out ley lines. They . . . the lines collapsed. Earthquakes. Fire. People trampled to death. Rovers looting everything.” Suddenly the horrors she had witnessed during the last two days caught up with her. Her teeth chattered with unnatural cold. Her body trembled uncontrollably. She nearly dropped Corby. The second woman, the one with hair the colors of a calico cat, took the injured bird from the basket of Katrina’s skirt. She caressed him gently, cooing and murmuring soothing phrases.

  (They come!) Shayla proclaimed. The anger and fear in her mental voice proclaimed the approach of foes.

  Jack felt more than heard an audible whoosh of wind and a crack of the sky opening to the void; the signal that Shayla had successfully departed the valley.

  The resulting vacuum dragged the breath from Jack and destroyed his balance. Rejiia and Simeon seemed equally disoriented; balance off, eyes unfocused.

  Jack used the distraction and the falling sensation to duck out of his armor and roll behind a scrubby willow shrub. He left the protective spell in place, around a fuzzy image of himself. Rejiia’s next magic attack crashed through the armor but found no target.

  The black-haired witch recovered with amazing speed. She held up two white feathers. A wicked smile played over her lovely face.

  A magician was tied to his familiar beyond the simple bonds of a pet. More than that, the stupid bird was the only friend and companion Jack had ever truly known. S’murgh it, she was beautiful, even when she personified evil. Rejiia de Draconis enjoyed watching others suffer.

  Rejiia wove a complicated gesture around the feathers, summoning the owner of those feathers to return to her.

  But Corby was unconscious. He couldn’t move. Would the spell levitate him back to Rejiia? Or worse yet, would it force Shayla and her mate, who carried him, to return to the vale?

  Jack didn’t wait to find out. An arrow-shaped probe formed in his hand. He threw it at the feathers and dove for a clump of tall grasses, armor returned, before Simeon found the spell to launch a new missile. The sorcerer-king looked dazed and distracted. His eyes kept wandering toward the sky.

  The probe found the feathers, latched onto them, and yanked them from Rejiia’s hand. In the blink of an eye, spell and feathers disappeared into the void. Hopefully they would find Corby and keep him in place.

  Rejiia looked tired. She hadn’t many spells left in her. But Simeon was still strong and filled with the need for vengeance. He’d conserved his spells for the lace shawl. His obsessive gaze landed on the heap of inert rags laying by the pool that could only be Fraank. Alive or dead?

  Dragon magic was still in the air. Simeon gathered it and returned his attention to Jack. He stalked his prey, vision narrowed to one purpose, face set in grim determination.

  If I can divert one more attack, Jack thought. Just one more assault, then Simeon will have used up the last of the dragon magic.

  A blinding flash of sunlight on crystal flashed between Jack and Simeon. The big blue-tipped male dragon had come back. A huge supply of magic was at Simeon’s fingertips while Jack’s internal reserves were dwindling fast.

  Then the bits and pieces of cloth and flesh moved, revealing Fraank’s face. Neither the king nor Rejiia seemed to notice the man they had brought so low. The morning sunlight didn’t reflect off the dull iron of the knife blade in Fraank’s hand.

  “You are bastard-born, an incestuous adulterer, and a traitor to your own kind, Simeon,” Jack taunted, keeping the sorcerer’s attention away from Fraank. “Even if you kill me, the coven will destroy you. You will have gained nothing.”

  Fraank staggered to his feet two paces behind the king. Jack had to distract the madman for two more paces.

  “You betrayed the ship full of Tambootie,” Simeon growled. “You were responsible for the economic disaster that followed. If the ship had won through, SeLenicca would have thriving exports once more. Food and jobs would be plentiful. The people would love me so much they’d welcome Queen Miranda’s death so that I could rule!”

  “Idiot!” Rejiia admonished. Her breathing was ragged and the strength had drained from her shoulders. “Stop talking and throw the s’murghing spell.”

  Simeon’s armor flared a warning. If Fraank plunged his knife through the magic shielding, he’d die in an instant of blinding fire.

  Jack flashed a warning to Katrina’s father, his friend.

  I’m a dead man already. The lung rot has worked into my bones and my heart. Let me kill this thing before I die.

  Fraank raised the knife above his head.

  Simeon whirled to face the new threat. With a flick of his wrist he dismissed the knife and its wielder. “No mundane can dare attack a magician, a king, a priest of Simurgh!”

  Fraank staggered back a few steps as if struck, still clutching the knife. With the grim determination of a martyr he regained his footing and leaped forward. “You are a traitor to your country and my queen. Die like the miserable cur you are.”

  “Cease your attack or die!” Simeon screamed just before the iron knife plunged into his heart.

  His armor had been set against magical attack, not a physical penetration. The armor ignited. Blood spurted. Smoke and flame and the stench of rotten Tambootie took them both into the void.

  Not even a flake of ash remained of either man.

  Jack flinched from the backlash of pain and death.

  Rejiia absorbed it an
d swelled with a new source of magic. She seemed to grow and swell with dynamic power.

  “Now it is your turn to die, boy.”

  (His name is Yaakke!) The blue-tipped dragon’s bugling pronouncement echoed up and down the valley piercing mental and physical ears. (Grab hold of my spines, Yaakke. Shayla and the little ones are safe now. I’ll take you away from SeLenicca and the evil spawned by Simeon and this female.)

  “I can’t leave. I have to finish this.” Jack poured his remaining strength into his armor.

  (Another time. Your life is too important to waste on such as she.) The dragon reached out his strong forepaws and clamped Jack around the waist without touching ground.

  With a massive sweep of wing and a blast of dragon fire, they lifted free of Kardia’s gravity and into the void.

  My enemies have done me a favor. Simeon can never cast doubt on the rights of my son and Princess Jaranda to marry and together claim the Three Kingdoms. No one must know that Princess Jaylene’s child, the true Simeon, died at birth, replaced by Janessa’s bastard, also named Simeon. Jaylene’s link to Rossemeyer is the key to dynastic unity. That wretched piece of lace with the runic message is attached to the dragon’s wing. I must find Shayla and destroy the lace before the Commune has the opportunity to read the secret.

  Shayla will most certainly fly to the Commune. Fortunately the boy told me how to find Brevelan’s clearing. If I take my sister or her children hostage, the dragon will surely give up her wing patch.

  Glendon would be the best hostage. He is tied to the dragons through his father’s blood as well as his mother’s. And if I eliminate the child, then I clear the way to name myself and my son heirs to the throne and the Coraurlia—the glass dragon crown.

  All sensation fled Jack’s body as darkness closed around him. Panic rode at the edge of his awareness.

  (We wait in the void,) the dragon told him.

  “Why?” The dragons knew the void better than any human. Maybe they wouldn’t get lost this time. Maybe.

  Colored umbilicals, symbols of life forces, drifted past him. Gold and crystal, copper and blue. His own silver entwined with white. White for lace and moon-blond hair. Jack and Katrina.