The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

by Irene Radford

  Just inside the main tunnel, he ducked into a dark side passage that would take him to the Justice Hall and then down into the pit. He stumbled over something large and inert. It groaned and shifted away from his boots.

  Televarn stared at the crumpled figure lying prone on the ground, hands bound behind his back. Dim torchlight reflected off scar tissue on the man’s face.

  “Are you alive, Moncriith?” he asked. Best if he kept his distance until the man was fully awake. One blast of a defensive spell thrown when the Bloodmage was half awake could kill any innocent bystander.

  “Of course, I’m alive. Nimbulan didn’t have the guts to kill me or even do me serious harm,” Moncriith said as he spat dirt from his mouth. “Untie me.”

  “Nimbulan?” Cold raced up and down Televarn’s spine. Kalen had been right after all. The Water spell had claimed a different life from the one intended.

  “Yes, Nimbulan. You failed in your assignment. I don’t intend to disappoint the Kaalipha in mine. Untie me!”

  “I can’t. He’s wrapped magic into the rope that binds your hands and ankles.”

  The knots were very professional, the work of a mercenary and a magician. Scarface wasn’t the only magician disguised as a professional soldier, but he was the best of the lot. If he had allied himself with Nimbulan, there was trouble brewing this night. More trouble than Televarn could invent.

  His plans began to evaporate. Maybe he should just grab Myrilandel while she slept and flee through the dragongate.

  No. He’d worked too long and too hard to depose Yaassima. Everything was in place. He just needed to rearrange his plans. Maybe he could use the chaos created by Nimbulan’s rescue attempts.

  “Use your magic to break the bonds,” Moncriith ordered. “If we time it right, Yaassima will execute Nimbulan for us.”

  “Yes. He will try to free his wife. I can arrange for Yaassima to discover him,” Televarn replied. He continued to examine the knots, but didn’t try to release them.

  “You can turn Myrilandel’s anger toward Yaassima to your advantage,” Moncriith coaxed.

  “What will you gain? You want to kill Myrilandel, too.” Televarn didn’t trust Moncriith. No one did.

  “I want revenge against the Commune of Magicians and I want the Crown of Coronnan. I can’t successfully invade with my mercenaries as long as Nimbulan lives to guide Quinnault. If you keep the demon Myrilandel here in Hanassa, I have no need to seek her death.”

  “I thought you were recruiting on behalf of SeLenicca.” Televarn began working on the knots. The spell on them was hastily constructed and easily broken down.

  “I’m using SeLenicca just as you have been using Yaassima.”

  “We’ll need to coordinate our plans. Timing will be everything. Nimbulan has to be dead before we attack the palace. But Yaassima has to still be enthralled with his blood. She’s usually senseless for half an hour after an execution.” Televarn sat back on his heels, thinking.

  “I will sense his death.” Moncriith licked his lips as if savoring the taste of death already.

  Televarn resisted warding against evil with gestures and spells. Moncriith would interpret them as fear—or worse—cowardice. Televarn had no intention of appearing weak and therefore vulnerable to this very dangerous Bloodmage.

  “Nimbulan’s death will be my signal to dismantle the slapping rock at the palace gate. I saw the girl Yaala work on it earlier. This is the first use the girl has been since Yaassima refused to execute her when I ordered it. Yaala showed me how to put the rock to sleep without knowing it. You must hurry, Televarn. Nimbulan has had enough time to make his way through the palace to Yaassima’s quarters with Scarface and the other mercenaries.”

  “Scarface owes me his life. He will have to help us. I have weapons stashed inside the palace. I’ll kill Yaassima while she’s still in thrall. You’ll come in with your mercenaries and my Rovers. Hanassa will be mine.”

  “Ours.”

  Quinnault grabbed the intruder by the wrists, forcing him to release the pressure on Katie’s throat. He gritted his teeth, putting all of his strength and leverage into his efforts. The Rover only leaned back, pulling the corded silk belt tighter about Katie’s neck.

  Her eyes popped open, and she clamped her fingers around the garrote. The fibers were too fine and slick for her to get so much as a fingernail between it and her vulnerable throat.

  The Rover laughed at her efforts. Quinnault shifted his grip. If he could only find the one vulnerable nerve beneath the man’s arm. He closed his eyes, remembering the trick taught him by his tutor in the monastery. Sometimes a priest had to defend himself without weapons. He fought the loose folds of the man’s black shirt and the thick embroidery on his vest, seeking, probing. Pressing.

  There.

  The Rover’s hands went limp.

  Katie rolled out of the bed and away from her assailant in one panicked movement. She gasped and pried the cord away from her throat.

  “Call the guard,” Quinnault ordered as he shifted his grip once more. This time he captured the Rover’s head with his left arm and controlled his right wrist with the other.

  “Your name,” he demanded.

  The Rover laughed again in response.

  “I’ll have your name now or by torture later.” He twisted the man’s arm back and up. A grimace of pain crossed the man’s face but he kept silent.

  Quinnault twisted harder. Another fraction of an inch and the arm would break.

  “My chieftain calls me Piedro,” the intruder said through gritted teeth.

  Quinnault relaxed the pressure on the arm a fraction. Dimly he was surprised at his lack of revulsion in causing the man pain. His priestly training to preserve all life seemed to have fled the moment Katie was threatened.

  “That tells me that you answer to another name.” Quinnault reasserted the pressure on the man’s arm.

  “Don’t we all?” Piedro shrugged within Quinnault’s tight grasp. A desperate gesture to twist free. Quinnault didn’t let him. One of the small bones of Piedro’s wrist slid out of place under the fierce grip.

  Piedro dropped his head. His defiant pose melted. But the tenseness in his thighs belied his acquiescence.

  “Who sent you?” Quinnault gestured with his head for Katie to call for help.

  She just stood there, the bed between herself and her assailant. She held her tiny hands to her throat, gently probing for injury. She stared straight ahead, wide-eyed, mouth working silently.

  “Katie, get help. I can’t hold him forever.” At the same moment he pushed upward on the arm he held while pulling back on Piedro’s throat.

  “Yihee!” Piedro screamed as his shoulder dislocated.

  Katie moved at last, staggering slightly as she hastened to the door and yanked it open. “Guards!” she croaked. Then she swallowed deeply and repeated her call, louder, more confidently.

  “I estimate you have less than one hundred heartbeats to tell me who sent you before I turn you over to my very efficient guards. They were not trained as priests and have less respect for life and pain than I do.” He tightened his grip on the man’s throat.

  “Can’t talk if you throttle me,” Piedro said calmly. Too calmly.

  “I’m not letting go. Who hired you? I don’t think you are smart enough to think up this plot on your own.”

  “I have my reasons for killing your bride with the belt to your own dressing gown, Your Almighty Supremeness.”

  “Cut the sarcasm. I know who would profit from such a plot to bring down my kingdom.” Too many people. “Which of them hired you?”

  Piedro laughed as the sound of heavy boots pounding in the corridor foretold the entry of the household guards. “Oh, they are properly embarrassed that you captured me in the middle of the crime. You who they are pledged to protect. They never suspected I walked right past them.”

  “A magician. I know how to control you now. Throw him in the dungeon. Have three magicians working together seal th
e door. I’ll interrogate him myself. When I have time. In a week or two. If you think of it, you can feed him in the interim. That will give me time to import a professional torturer from Maffisto.” Quinnault stared at the wall, fighting his urge to become as vengeful and violent as Kammeryl d’Astrismos had been. He would not succumb to his base urges and destroy the peace and harmony of Coronnan with his own bad example.

  Piedro put up a little resistance as three burly guards wrestled him through the doorway. He dug in his heels. “There isn’t a dungeon made that can hold me, Your Supreme Loftiness. I am a Rover.”

  “Make sure three magicians seal the dungeons. And don’t leave him alone until they do,” Quinnault returned. “Tell them it needs to be a spell that even Nimbulan couldn’t break.”

  “You’d best look to your own house before you start throwing accusations far afield, and trusting every magician, lord, and peasant in the land,” Piedro called over his shoulder.

  “What does that mean?” Quinnault grabbed a handful of Piedro’s thick black hair and yanked backward.

  Piedro laughed. “All of your tortures are nothing compared to what my chieftain doles out every day. I have no reason to blab.”

  The tunnels within Yaassima’s palace wove an intricate pattern through the ancient mountain. Nimbulan could never be sure how many times they doubled back on themselves. All of the passageways seemed to lead back to the large hall that had once been a temple to Simurgh. He shuddered with residual pain and terror every time they neared the place.

  Finding Myri was proving more difficult than expected. His heart cord pulsed strong and true but gave no indication of which direction led to his wife.

  Few guards patrolled the corridors. The first one they encountered, a dark man in an ill-fitting uniform, turned Nimbulan around and pointed back the way they had come, without being asked for directions. “The Justice Hall is along that tunnel, take the first left then the second right.” He moved on his rounds without checking to see if they complied. Obviously, if they had gotten into the palace they weren’t considered dangerous.

  The next guard, also Rover-dark and uncomfortable in his clothes, gave them the same directions.

  “Some transgressor must have been caught. There will be a trial and execution shortly,” Scarface whispered.

  “We have to find Myri and the children, my children, fast.” Nimbulan paused at the first turning. He savored the taste of those words, my children. Firmly he pushed aside his need to stop and wonder at the beauty of such a simple phrase. Since his brief mental contact with Myri he’d finally come to believe in those words. “My children.”

  “I don’t know where the Kaalipha’s apartments are,” Scarface admitted.

  “We need to split up. But we’ll keep a light telepathic contact all around.” He directed the gathering of mercenary magicians to follow three different tunnels. “Rollett, I need you to dismantle the slapping rock at the main gate.”

  “Easy.” Rollett grinned. “I can disrupt the magnetic fields with mundane tools and no magic.”

  The observant young man had sensed more about the slapping rock than Nimbulan had.

  “I trust you, Rollett, to be thorough and remain unobserved.”

  “With pleasure, sir. I’ll have an exit ready for you.” The young man’s white teeth flashed through the accumulated dirt on his face. He stepped backward and faded into the shadows, a trick Nimbulan had taught him.

  Nimbulan and Scarface took a fourth tunnel that he could have sworn they had not tried before. Within two dozen long strides they found themselves back at the still empty Justice Hall.

  “How long a march to the staging area in SeLenicca?” Nimbulan asked to keep his mind off the memories embedded into the rock walls of the Justice Hall. Myri’s empathic talent would center on this horrid room and trap her in a useless whirl.

  “A week at the most. We’re scheduled to march through an obscure pass in the Southwest while King Lorriin advances through the pass at Sambol at the same time. Rossemeyer will try a new invasion of the Bay.” Scarface gestured them forward along a major passageway.

  “Rossemeyer tried the Bay a few days ago and lost the battle. I don’t think they have enough ships left to try again.”

  “That was last week. The summons spells have been flying fast and furious for two full days. Rossemeyer is itching to avenge their reputation as the fiercest fighters in all of Kardia Hodos. They will find more ships and mercenaries even if they have to buy them from the Varns.”

  Nimbulan chuckled briefly. The mythical Varns weren’t due to appear in the port cities for another fifty or sixty years. Even then, no one ever bought anything from them. The Varns bought food, vast quantities of grain, produce, and livestock. The only currency the mysterious beings recognized was diamonds.

  Rossemeyer wasn’t likely to find a source of shipping from the Varns—or anywhere else.

  One less worry. He still had to get back to Quinnault and avert this new threat to Coronnan. After he rescued Myri.

  “You said that Yaassima appears magically upon the dais after everyone is assembled?” He prowled around the stage, carefully avoiding the hideous altar in front of it.

  “One minute the space is empty. The next moment she appears in all her glittering cold beauty.”

  Nimbulan pressed against the tapestries covering the back wall. His first encountered resistance long before he expected. He stepped back and examined the perspective of the woven pictures of a mountain meadow ringed by mountain cliffs. A waterfall seemed to tumble over a pile of boulders near the center.

  He’d been there before. That was the meadow Shayla, the female leader of the dragon nimbus, had chosen to educate Nimbulan and Myri into the mysteries of dragon magic.

  Something was wrong with the angle of the water spilling down into a creek that meandered along the meadow.

  He touched the threads depicting the water with a single sensitized finger. Harder to do that now. His reservoir of dragon magic was gone. He had only the strength of his body to fuel his inborn talent. His stomach growled, reminding him he needed more fuel, and soon.

  The silvery threads of the tapestry parted as he thrust his finger, then his entire hand through the weaving. He stepped back in surprise.

  “Come look at this,” he called to Scarface. He plucked at the loose threads hanging free of the woven picture. They parted to reveal another tunnel snaking up a spiral staircase.

  “I bet this leads to Yaassima’s private quarters,” Scarface said. A grin twisted the straight line of the scar.

  Nimbulan looked at his heart cord. No clues. “Up those stairs,” he whispered.

  Scarface shrugged and hurried toward the narrow staircase. The steps were shallow and well worn, the edges rounded and slippery. They spiraled sharply around a metal center post. Damp residue clung to the black metal. It had been in place a long time. The passage became narrower and each step higher.

  “Are you sure this is the right way?” Scarface asked. his low tones echoed in the confined space.

  “Yes.” The silver cord tugged at Nimbulan now, urging him to climb faster. Myri awaited him at the end of that cord.

  He remembered the days right after she had partially healed him, almost a year ago. The cord had sprung to life, keeping them close together and dependent upon each other. They had both resented the bond, thinking it sprang from the other as a means of control. Gradually Myri had recovered from the draining healing spell. Nimbulan had healed enough to function on his own. The cord hadn’t evaporated, merely stretched. They had found love then, and the cord strengthened each day as did their emotional bonds.

  Until it snapped moments before Shayla announced the covenant with dragons was broken.

  That must have been the moment Televarn kidnapped Myri. Despite Nimbulan’s wrenched knee and aching shoulder, he increased his pace, taking the stairs two at a time. He stretched his legs and his love to reach forward to his wife.

  He rounded the final c
urve. A long corridor with many doors stretched before him. One door at the far end was taller, broader, than all the others. Heavy bronze panels, embossed and hinged with gold, blocked the entrance to an important suite. In front of the majestic door stood a grim-faced guard in black. Nimbulan counted at least six knives and a cudgel on him.

  The guard hunched his shoulders and widened his stance a fraction. His hands flexed, ready to grab a weapon.

  Nimbulan stopped abruptly, holding his staff ready to focus whatever defensive spell came to mind. If he had the strength to throw it.

  That’s Nastfa, Scarface whispered in his mind. He was kicked out of the assassins guild in Maffisto. Then Yaassima recruited him to lead her personal guard.

  He probably knows six dozen ways to kill us before we get close enough to launch a spell, Nimbulan replied.

  So close. He’d gotten so close to Myri. If he could just get through this one last obstacle she would be in his arms again.

  Nastfa smiled. His full set of white teeth shone in the yellow light of the dim ceiling panels.

  Nimbulan’s heart leaped to his throat. That grin could only mean that Nastfa enjoyed killing people. Why else would he become a professional assassin?

  Slowly, Nastfa raised his hand.

  Nimbulan blasted him with paralysis.

  Nastfa’s grin froze. His hand remained poised over the hilt of a small throwing knife.

  Nimbulan took one step forward. Nastfa didn’t move.

  The door behind Nastfa creaked open a slit.

  Nimbulan saw Myri’s incredibly long fingers curve around the panel.

  “Careful, that’s the Kaalipha!” Scarface said, aiming the end of his own staff at the door.

  “No, that’s my wife,” Nimbulan asserted. He pushed past Nastfa and yanked the door open.

  “Lan!” Pale and beautiful, Myrilandel stood framed in the light of the ceiling panels. Her nearly colorless hair reflected the strange light in a halo of gold.