Dragon Nimbus Novels: Vol II, The

by Irene Radford

  “It’s a special secret.” Kalen lisped the esses, not badly, but enough to hint at why she shied away from others.

  “Special, yes. I can make fire, too. Does that make me as special as you?” Ackerly snapped his fingers and blinked. A tiny flame appeared on the end of his finger. Quickly he damped it and shook his hand as if the witchlight had burned him. Then he sucked the finger, making a rueful face.

  Kalen giggled. “I don’t burn myssself,” she announced proudly and imitated the trick, holding the flame much longer than Ackerly did.

  He watched her face for signs of fatigue. Her gray eyes remained calm and shining long after he would have collapsed from sustaining the spell.

  “That’s a very nice fire, Kalen. Can you do anything else?”

  “Sieur Moncriith says I mustn’t. He says the Stargods won’t like it if demons find me cause I can work magic.”

  Curse the wandering misfit. This wasn’t the first potential apprentice who’d had magic scared out of them by the wandering preacher. Ackerly had sympathized with Moncriith when it cost him nothing and gained him an ally. But now the Bloodmage stood between him and gold.

  “The Stargods only get angry if you use your magic for bad things, like hurting a pet cat or making your brothers look like fools. Surely it wouldn’t hurt if you showed me your special secret.” Ackerly opened his eyes wide, willing the child to trust him.

  “But it’s a secret,” she protested, looking up at her mother. The woman caressed the girl’s hair soothingly. The father glared hard at her, lifting his upper lip in an almost sneer.

  “Then perhaps you can show me if we go out into the corridor where no one else can see?” Ackerly held out his hand to her.

  Her mother prodded the girl’s back with an open hand. “It’s all right, Kalen. He won’t hurt you, and we won’t tell Sieur Moncriith when we see him.”

  Shyly, Kalen put her tiny hand into Ackerly’s pudgy one. Ackerly stood up stiffly and walked her through the open doorway of his office. A few weeks ago this large room had been Nimbulan’s private study. Only one of many things Ackerly had claimed as his inheritance from his former master.

  Now he was Master of the School for Magicians. He knew how to run a school that earned money instead of draining it from Nimbulan’s purse. Acquiring a truly talented child could fill his coffers faster.

  In the long echoing hallway, Ackerly sat on the empty bench where supplicants usually waited for him. Kalen’s family was the last of the day’s applicants. No one else lingered within sight.

  Kalen climbed up beside him. She sat with her hands in her lap and her feet swinging above the floor. She looked out the narrow window to the central courtyard rather than at Ackerly.

  “Now will you show me what you can do, Kalen?”

  Every door along the corridor slammed shut, loudly and without the aid of human hands.

  Ackerly jumped at the sudden noise. “Very good, Kalen. Can you open them, too?”

  She nodded as each door in turn creaked open, one right after the other, starting at the far end and progressing to his own office. A tiny smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “Want to see what else?” She didn’t lisp now.

  Ackerly nodded, trying not to show how impressed he was by the strength of her talent, nor question the sudden confidence in her demeanor. Telekinesis and fire before the age of ten! She’d match Nimbulan in power, if she took to disciplined training.

  Kalen closed her eyes in concentration. Ackerly watched her small face scrunch up. Her skin turned pale beneath her muddy brown braids and the spray of freckles across her nose. Was that a touch of auburn in her hair? Red hair usually accompanied a magical talent inherited from the Stargods. Neither of her parents showed a trace of red in their hair.

  Suddenly he lost touch with the Kardia. Vertigo sent his vision whirling. His stomach dropped into his feet. The distress passed quickly and he looked down. The bench floated an arm’s length above the stone floor. Slowly, Kalen turned the bench, with them on it, around and gently set them back down.

  “Very good, Kalen. I think we’ve found a place for you here in the school.” Ackerly jumped off the bench before she sent him flying again.

  If her communication spells developed as easily, she could keep him in contact with the far corners of Coronnan and beyond.

  Visions of gold piling up as he controlled a network of Battlemages from the school almost sent him into sexual ecstasy. Lords would have to come to him for access to any magician!

  “With talent like hers, you shouldn’t need quite so much money,” her father stated, standing in the doorway. His brown eyes turned cold and calculating. “You’ll be able to sell her services earlier than most apprentices’. You should pay us for the privilege of training her.”

  No sign of gold winked at Ackerly from the mother’s hands where she stood beside her husband. She refused to look at anything but the floor. Her posture reminded him of someone. . . . The name “Guillia” jumped into Ackerly’s mind. He wondered how he knew that.

  Ackerly swallowed, trying to think. He needed that gold, not half memories of a quick tumble in the hay somewhere on his journeys. “Training is very expensive. Kalen must have books, equipment, and a variety of teachers, who must be paid. There is rent and food and firewood to be purchased.”

  Kalen’s father held up a hand to stop Ackerly’s protests before he uttered them. “Perhaps we can strike a bargain. You need a steward, someone to deal with suppliers. Someone who can travel and find your books and special equipment, as well as recruit new students who have gold to pay in tuition. Parents will pay more if you provide someone to oversee the raising of your students in matters other than magic. They are, after all, children in need of parents. My wife is an excellent cook. Our other children can run errands. Take in the entire family and you won’t need to rely upon Lord Quinnault for servants and supplies. You will be beholden to no one and can sell the services of magicians to the highest bidder rather than give them away to the lord to whom you owe your livelihood.”

  “I can pay little. The school is not yet large and profitable.” Ackerly stalled.

  “For now, food and shelter will suffice. In a few moons, when we are all settled we can discuss my salary. A percentage of the profits, perhaps.”

  Chapter 21

  Nimbulan watched Erda, the ancient witchwoman of the Rover clan, strum a lute lightly. The soft notes drifted around the large single-roomed lodge where the extended family had settled for the winter. Beside the central hearth, Maia complemented the quiet melody with a lilting descant on a wooden flute. Her green bodice and yellow headscarf played games with the colors of the flames. Highlights of bronze and gold flushed her face with intriguing shadows and planes.

  Ah, Maia. He smiled at the thoughts of her nimble fingers stroking fiery music through his veins as they lay together beneath piles of warm furs each night.

  At first he’d been hesitant to indulge himself in her softly rounded body, but privacy was an implied thing in this close-knit clan. Living so close together they simply ignored each other when appropriate. Drifting to sleep with the sounds of other couples making love had quickly dispelled his shyness.

  The tune shifted to a more intense rhythm. The melody bounced into a compelling variation that set his toes twitching. Across the fire, a middle-aged woman and her man began a dance. They stamped their feet in counterpoint to the flute. She flipped her skirts, showing off shapely calves and knees. He bumped her hips with his own and clapped his hands over his head. In another quick gesture, his fingers tangled with the ties of her bodice, loosening them. Someone beat a new cadence against a skin drum. Others joined the suggestive bumping dance.

  Nimbulan straightened from his recline against a make-shift backrest of packs. Maia grinned and winked at him around the flute. Her eyes twinkled mischievously. The mole at the side of her mouth taunted him as she puckered her lips to blow into the flute rather than into his ear. He winked back, knowing the deligh
ts she promised later.

  How could he have believed himself content with his semicelibate life before joining the Rovers? To them sex was a open and joyous affirmation of life, not some furtive fumbling in the dark—paid for and quickly forgotten.

  He leaned back again, watching the dancers. This clan made their own amusements. Night after night they found something new to while away the long hours of winter darkness. Music dominated their evenings and their days. They all worked hard at assigned tasks, then spent the rest of their time in pursuit of pleasure. He was amazed at the number of hours he had each day for contemplation and enjoyment.

  No bickering and passing off of responsibility among these people. Nor any question of authority. They all knew who led them and what their role in the clan was. Sometimes Nimbulan wondered if their minds were all connected, passing thoughts and commands back and forth.

  What an interesting idea. If he could figure out how to do that, then his school could train magicians to truly work as a team, even if they never learned to properly join their magic.

  An ache of regret formed a knot in his throat. He missed his boys. But he couldn’t return to them yet. He had secrets to learn.

  Someone had tried to murder him to keep him from pursuing his quest for unity among magicians. He had to be careful.

  An image of Powwell’s freckles turning darker against his pale skin as he concentrated on a spell, invaded his mind along with an intense wave of loneliness. He pictured Powwell turning his wide gray eyes up to him, begging for an easy answer.

  And Rollett, the orphaned apprentice who stood by his side in battle. Without his keen observations of all that happened during the battle, many of Nimbulan’s spells might be misdirected. Rollett, who looked to him as a father. . . .

  He gulped and pushed the emotions aside. This lazy routine of wandering was his life for now. The Rovers had accepted him as one of their own—mostly. He needed their complete trust before they’d show him the secrets of their rituals.

  “My family works together very well, does it not, Lan?” Televarn sat beside him.

  “You move as quietly as a cat. You should announce yourself.” Nimbulan breathed deeply, trying to quiet his racing heart. People had never startled him before he met the clan. His magic hummed a warning whenever someone approached. How did Televarn avoid his natural alarms? He couldn’t detect any countermagic.

  How had the Rover known the precise angle of his thoughts?

  “Why should we announce ourselves? Enemies could be warned as easily as family.”

  Without that sense of awareness, Nimbulan would never truly belong to them. Some of the warmth went out of the lodge and his life. His longing to return to his boys and the school intensified. He belonged there.

  “There are ways for you to participate in our Kardiagenea, friend,” Televarn said casually, watching the dancers rather than Nimbulan.

  “Kardiagenea,” Nimbulan murmured and stroked his new beard. “You make your own Kardia? Impossible.” While his words denied the process, his heart leaped into his throat with eager anticipation. Televarn offered him a chance to share in the clan’s unique bonding. Perhaps they’d finally reveal some of their magic.

  “No, we seek to become the Kardia. All the elements and the cardinal directions combined. We merge with the blue lines that lace the surface of the land, connected by energy to the source of all knowledge, all magic, all life. Think of it, Lan. You could share the most intimate relationship of all. Better than joining your body to Maia’s. You would join yourself to all life in your thoughts, your emotions, your very being.” Excitement tinged Televarn’s voice, infecting Nimbulan with the possibilities.

  “How is this done?”

  “With magic. Special magic.”

  “How can you know that I am capable of this magic?”

  “You are a powerful magician. I sensed it the first moment we met. I knew it when you refused to give your true name.”

  “You have not asked for proof of my magic.”

  “Rovers know when they are in the presence of one who can work our magic. It is part of the Kardiagenea. We need no proof that you have Rover blood in you.”

  “If I have Rover blood in me, then why am I not part of the Kardiagenea already?” Part of him screamed a denial that any of his ancestors had stooped so low as to introduce Rover blood into the aristocratic family. He might be only the second son of a second son with no chance to inherit land or title, but he was proud of the lineage traceable back to the time of the Stargods. His dark auburn hair—before gray had faded much of it—proclaimed his pure ancestry.

  “You need to be awakened if you are not born among us and exposed to the Kardiagenea from the moment of conception. Maia wants another child. Our clan needs more children. Children are the only true wealth of Rovers. You must be truly one of us before the child is conceived.”

  “You have too many mouths to feed now, Televarn.” Nimbulan wasn’t about to dash the man’s hopes and deny himself access to this new magic. True magicians rarely sired children, and females with magic never carried a child to term. That was a fact of life he’d tried to compensate for with his numerous apprentices over the years, seeking a son or daughter in each one who came to him for training.

  He’d lost them all to disease, accident, betrayal. Keegan’s death had been the worst loss of all. The emptiness in him yearned to be filled. Televarn offered him the chance. . . .

  “Our children are often born sickly. We mate too closely within the clan. Soon we must invoke the ancient laws against incest and banish all the young men to other clans as soon as they mature.”

  Nimbulan winced at the sense of loss each parent must feel if the boys were sent elsewhere, never to return.

  “Your child will be healthy and wouldn’t have to be banished,” Televarn whispered.

  “I would like a child of my own.”

  “As would I, but all the women of my family are too close to me. Many of the clans who might offer me a bride are also too close, or feuding with us. I must seek a mate elsewhere.” A wistful look came over Televarn’s face as he looked into the distance.

  Nimbulan sensed his mind floating to a different time and place. A woman who eluded him? “How does this magic work?”

  Televarn shook himself lightly, as if to banish his far away thoughts. “We have rituals that must be performed precisely. Any variation breaks our contact with the Kardia, and we must begin again. Interrupting a ritual, once we have begun, is death. A horrible death as the forces of sun, moon, and Kardia align and crush the one who interferes with the harmony. Are you willing to risk joining us tonight, as the full moon reaches its highest arc? We must begin soon for the ritual to climax at the proper moment. Timing is as essential as form.”

  “If the ritual is so dangerous, why do you risk it?” Once he learned it, would he dare teach it to apprentices?

  “For the reward of unity. Will you join us tonight, Lan?”

  Across the fire, Maia stood up. As she bent to place her flute on the floor beside her stool, her bodice gaped open to reveal the full globes of her breasts. She lifted her head and smiled invitingly to Nimbulan.

  “You will join with her afterward, and her thoughts will be yours. You will feel what she feels, know what she knows, and never lose the awareness of her presence again,” Televarn whispered.

  “What must I do?” Nimbulan swallowed deeply, trying to restrain his desire for the woman and his need to belong to someone. This ritual might prove the beginning of a whole new system of magic that would allow magicians to join their powers. Then, and only then, could they impose ethics and honor on all magicians. He could remove magic from the wars and politics allowing a natural balance of power to bring peace to Coronnan at last.

  But once he learned this magic, he’d have to leave the clan and Maia.

  “Forget the cold, soon the magic will take you,” Maia breathed in Nimbulan’s ear. She squeezed his hand and let it drop. Her scent lingered in th
e frosty air as she moved into her place in the ring of people outside the lodge.

  Every adult in the clan gathered in a circle around their winter home. They alternated male and female in even numbers. Televarn was the only unmatched person. He walked around the outside perimeter of people, lost in his own thoughts, mumbling to himself and breathing deeply.

  Nimbulan recognized his exercises as the beginning of a trance. The form of magic might be different, but a trance was a universal ingredient, essential for the magic to work with a body.

  He, too, inhaled on a ritual three counts, held it another three counts, and exhaled on the same rhythm. The women on either side of him did the same. Visibly their muscles relaxed and so did his. The chill winter night, the hand’s span of packed snow, the glittering stars in the clear sky, all receded from his consciousness.

  A second deep breath in three counts, hold three, release three, gave him access to the void. The blackness beckoned, urging him to take that third deep breath and release his body.

  “Not yet, Lan. Wait for the rest of us,” a voice reminded him.

  Televarn? Possible. He didn’t care. Only the trance and the void tugging at him in opposite directions mattered. He felt stretched almost to the point of dissipating into mist.

  The circle of people began moving to his right, widdershins, along the path of the moon. Each left hand held a candle. Every right hand circled in a complicated gesture, fingers weaving. He followed them, imitating every movement.

  Televarn wove in and out among them, odd man out and the binding force of the whole.

  Erda, who had strummed the lute, uttered the first phrase of a chant in an ancient language Nimbulan didn’t understand: the ancient pictorial language represented in the embroidery they all wore. The next person to her right repeated the phrase, then the next, and the next around the circle. By the time the words had reached Nimbulan, they had become a one-note song, sung to the peculiar rhythm of stamping feet and twisting hands.

  A web of energy, sparkling white, like snow crystals, followed Televarn’s progress through the clan. In and out, around and around.