Dragon Nimbus Novels: Vol II, The

by Irene Radford

  “You sneaky creatures. You’ve been priming all of us for this moment. Maybe using us is a better word. How many of Quinnault’s words of peace came from you?” He laughed in admiration of their foresight—or precognition. How much of past and future did dragons see?

  Shayla nodded her head slightly. A light chuckle of approval and agreement whispered across his mind.

  “What if I can’t gather their magic?” Myri interrupted his speculation.

  “You will. It just takes a bit of searching to find it. The air is filled with it. Breathe it in, like a heady aroma then concentrate and push the air deep into your being, behind your heart.”

  “I’ve tried again and again. I can’t even smell the Tambootie in the air that you and Powwell can. Kalen can’t find it either. What if this new magic belongs only to men?”

  (She may be right.) Shayla speared them with her big crystalline eyes. Looking directly at the refracting light drew Nimbulan out of his body, deep into the sparkling colors, so like the colored umbilicals he’d seen in the void.

  “We will try again,” Nimbulan insisted. “Myri must be a part of gathering and combining magic. You dragons singled her out of all humans to be your link to us. And I need her to be a part of everything I do. In this life and the next.” He kissed her again, long and full.

  The world drifted away. Only he and Myri remained, their bodies, minds and souls entwining like a spiral of sparkling light illuminating the void.

  “Can’t you two do anything but kiss?” Powwell loomed over them, hands on hips, a disgusted, but fascinated scowl on his face. “Dinner’s here. The dragons brought a deer. They even gutted and cooked it for us. But we’ll have to skin it. I’d love to ride a dragon while they hunt. Their fire must reach a hundred leagues!”

  (Far less than one league, child. Barely two dragon lengths,) Shayla chuckled.

  “Have you something to dig roots with? The dragonets will roast them for us, too. I’m hungry. Can you really throw flames that far, Shayla? I bet you’d end a battle real quick with just one blast.” Powwell said.

  The dragon stilled and almost faded from view.

  (Do not suggest that dragon fire be used as a weapon. We have vowed to teach you to control your magic and your battles rather than blast you away with our anger.)

  Shayla came back into view, her rainbow horns and wings glowed brighter than before. She bent her head as if listening intently to the young man. (Now that you gather dragon magic, you will need dragon food. Enjoy the meat we provide you.) A curious expression came over the dragon’s muzzle, a mirror image of Powwell’s hungry gaze at the deer carcass.

  Myri laughed, breaking away from Nimbulan. Nimbulan chuckled, too. Adolescence must be catching up with Powwell for him to be so concerned with food. Nimbulan faced his fiftieth birthday next winter. He shouldn’t be so hungry his stomach felt like it was wrapping around his spine.

  “There are fresh greens growing on the bank of the brook, Powwell. Pick those and eat them raw. ’Tis the wrong season for roots.” Myri stood, brushing off her skirt.

  “Raw vegetables! Ugh.” Powwell stuck out his lower lip and tongue, scrunching up his nose in distaste. A young dragon did, too.

  “You ate my ma’s greens all the time, Powwell,” Kalen informed him. She stretched and yawned from her nest in the dragon paws. “And you liked greens back at the school well enough to ask for more.”

  “But your ma boiled them in soup stock and dressed them in vinegar and spices. Myri wants us to eat this stuff raw! A man needs his food cooked.”

  “A man needs nutrition any way he can get it. We’ll eat the greens raw.” Nimbulan tried to look sternly at Powwell. Memories of his own childhood view of good food and “women’s food” tickled deep inside him. He wanted to bellow with laughter and good will.

  His good humor continued through the improvised meal. He and Powwell ate ravenously. Myri and Kalen only picked at their food. “Why don’t you and Kalen watch for a while, Myri?” Nimbulan suggested. “Perhaps you can learn something to make the task easier.”

  “I feel like I should remember how to do it.” Myri turned haunted eyes up to him. “I want to remember how to do it, just like I want to remember how to fly. When I don’t want my past to touch me, events and people parade before my mind’s eye with annoying regularity. When I need to remember, I can’t find any part of myself in the past.”

  “Don’t push it, Myri. Memory is like quicksilver. It looks tangible until you touch it. Then it spurts away, breaking into hundreds of sparkling, unrelated entities,” he soothed.

  (You must remember, my child,) Shayla said. (Without you, all our efforts are for nothing.)

  Suddenly, the dragon reared her steedlike muzzle in alarm. Steam seeped out of her nostrils. Her eyes shifted rapidly from nearly colorless to a wild array of primary colors, never lingering on one for more than two heartbeats. With a loud blast of sound, almost above human hearing, she burst upward into flight.

  Chapter 29

  At last the trail dog put his nose to the Kardia and yelped with excitement. Moncriith breathed a sigh of relief. Myrilandel and the children had tried to fool him by walking down the center of a stream, but the dogs had found where they left the water. The dog dragged him through a brambleberry thicket. Thorns snagged and tore his new red robe—bright red, closer to the color worn by priests than of old blood.

  “Simurgh take you to all the living hells!” he yelled at the dog as his cuff clung to yet another bush. This one was sticky and tried to wrap itself around his arm.

  He stumbled and ran, desperately clinging to the animal’s leash. A long branch of the clinging shrub detached itself from the main trunk with a sickening slurpy sound.

  The dog yelped again and dashed forward.

  They were close. Moncriith sensed Myrilandel’s presence just ahead. The witchwoman wasn’t alone. The evil magic he smelled grew to enormous proportions. She must be hiding in the demon lair! Not far now. After all these years of tracking demons, he would finally rid Coronnan of all of them at once.

  A doubt wiggled into his mind. How would he handle several large demons at once? Did he truly know the strength of a demon? He buried his misgivings where he’d hidden his memories of Magretha and his father. The Stargods had chosen him to rid Coronnan of the demons. The Stargods would not, could not fail him now. Not when he was so close.

  The dog stopped running so abruptly Moncriith nearly tripped over him. Frantically the animal dug at a hole in the ground. Dirt flew behind him, pelting Moncriith with large clods and small rocks.

  “S’murghin’ useless beast. First you can’t find a scent at all, and now you track a path even a striped lapin couldn’t follow into a mole hole!”

  More frantic yelps from the other four dogs sounded in the near distance. They, too, had caught an elusive scent and converged on the same mole hole.

  Moncriith dropped the leash from his sweating palm in disgust. Five dogs digging in one tiny hole in the center of a tangle of brambleberry vines would lead his quest nowhere.

  He thrashed his way clear of the thorny vines that reached out and grabbed him as he passed. “What is wrong with your dogs?” he asked the nearest guard.

  The young man blushed and stammered, unable to meet Moncriith’s gaze.

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with them!” Moncriith shouted. Heat flooded his face and sent twitches through his hands. “Your dogs . . .”

  The forest stilled. No bird song lightened the heavy air. The tiny rustlings in the underbrush ceased. A pricking sensation sent the fine hairs on the back of Moncriith’s neck standing on end.

  “What?” Moncriith searched the forest for the source of danger one and all sensed. Even the dogs had ceased their digging and yelping. They stood with their neck ruffs erect and teeth bared in silent growls.

  A huge shadow blocked the sun.

  “Yikkiiiii. . . .” The lead dog tucked his tail between his legs and ran downhill. The others burst from the
thicket, pelting in different directions as if Simurgh himself pursued them.

  “A—a dragon, Sieur!” A guard pointed upward. All color drained from his face. His mouth flapped open and shut several times before he could speak again. “It’s hunting, Sieur. Hunting us.”

  “Nonsense.” Moncriith tried to present an aura of calm. Lumbird bumps erupted on his skin and his mouth went dry. He followed the guard’s pointing finger and nearly fouled his trews.

  He saw the outline of a dragon above the trees.

  “Stargods, preserve me.” He crossed himself again and again. The shadow did not go away.

  A sense of peace flooded his mind, replacing his anxiety. The frustration of the past days of searching vanished. He smiled in triumph. He had already killed all the demons and Myrilandel and Nimbulan. He must return to Castle Krej with the good news. Immediately.

  Nimbulan searched the skies for signs of Shayla in flight. A few moments after her departure, the female dragon flew back into the meadow with a wild screech that sounded oddly triumphant. She clutched the carcass of a tracking dog in her front paws.

  Nimbulan looked questioningly at the bloody animal.

  (This creature picked up your trail with its sensitive nose. It led men too close to this meadow. We cannot afford an interruption until you have learned what we have to teach you.)

  “How close?” he asked. Televarn? Only a Rover as tenacious—obsessed, Myri had said—as Televarn had the audacity to follow them into the wilderness.

  (The one who pretends to priesthood cannot find you. The other dogs have scattered in fear. The men wearing the clothes all alike ran with them at sight of me. Only the one in new red persists, and I have given him a dream that will take him back where he started from.)

  “Moncriith!” Myri paled. “He will remember. He has no other reason for living than to watch me burn.” She stared at the dragon with less effort than Nimbulan could.

  (If he remembers outside the dragon dream, then you can, too. You must remember how to gather dragon magic.)

  “Why me? I can’t do it, but Nimbulan and Powwell can. Why me?”

  (You are the one we trust. We have guarded you for many years, waiting for you to forge a covenant between dragonkind and humans.)

  “If you want her to remember, then she must have done this before,” Nimbulan mused. “If she did it before, she would have a memory, but all her memories come and go, as if she were breaking through a spell. A very strong spell that is renewed each time she tries to break free. Did you impose the spell?” Nimbulan forced himself to look Shayla directly in her eye. With effort he maintained his sense of self and kept the dragon within view.

  (Dragons have limited magic. Our defenses have always been in our size, our flight, and our fire. Against human magicians these are not always enough.)

  An old grief assailed Nimbulan. Reflected in Shayla’s eyes he saw men battling across a wheatfield near the River Coronnan. At first he thought he saw the battle last autumn when he had been forced to kill Keegan. Then, he noticed the style of uniforms dated back twenty years—to the time when an out-of-control spell had burned the field and all who stood within it. Druulin, Boojlin, and Caasser had died in the hellish fires that day.

  Nimbulan and Ackerly had escaped death only because Nimbulan had finally broken Druulin’s binding spell on Ackerly the night before. The cunning old man had known that Nimbulan could break any spell placed upon him. But the spell placed upon another—especially one that held death in the breaking would defy him for a long time. Druulin also knew that Nimbulan wouldn’t leave without Ackerly. So the spell had been placed upon the lesser magician. Nimbulan took ten years learning to break the spell. They had run away to take service with Kammeryl d’Astrismos the night before the fateful battle.

  His perspective shifted to an aerial view. The Kardia no longer supported his feet. He looked around and discovered himself flying alongside Shayla—arms outstretched like wings, the wind buffeting his face and keeping him aloft. His stomach lurched with the unaccustomed sensation of flight.

  A vague tingling ran up and down his leg. He shared Shayla’s pain as magic gone awry pierced them both. His belly cramped as Shayla began her premature labor.

  Anger at the irresponsible magicians below boiled within them both. They opened their jaws wide, sending forth a blast of dragon, fire. He watched as flames engulfed the people below, spread to the dry wheat, and up the few trees. He heard Druulin and his assistants scream in agony as fire took them.

  He took no satisfaction in the revenge. The ghost of dead baby dragons haunted both of them.

  Suddenly he was free of the hypnotic contact and knew who he was and why he stood in this mountain meadow learning a new form of magic.

  (We can give you dreams of what has happened or what you want to happen. Rarely, we can give you a glimpse of what will happen. Nothing else that we can tell you is within our power. Yet we are a source of magic for those who choose to accept our covenant,) Shayla said.

  Knowing her grief, Nimbulan wanted desperately to be among those who formed the covenant between dragonkind and humans, to use Shayla’s magic for peace and control of those who wielded magic indiscriminately and harmed innocent bystanders. Caasser had thrown the spell that wounded Shayla—a spell Nimbulan had devised and taught his fellow magician.

  Nimbulan looked at Shayla and her children with new sympathy. “I take responsibility for those who hurt you. I was not at the battle, but I could have been. I could have woven the spell that cost you the lives of your babies.”

  (Will you work to end the irresponsible use of magic?)

  “I so swear by the Stargods and all I hold dear.”

  The dragons didn’t respond immediately. Nimbulan searched Shayla’s eyes for some indication that he had been accepted by them.

  He fell into the glittering whirlpool of Shayla’s eyes. Dizziness overwhelmed him. Then he awoke, sitting in a thronelike chair padded and covered in blue and silver, the signature colors of his magic. Around him, other magicians sat in similar chairs, each covered in different colors. He recognized none of the men, all much younger than he. Except . . . was that Lyman to his right, his face shadowed by the torches stuck into wall brackets directly above him? In the center of the circular stone room rested a table unlike any he had seen before. One solid piece of black glass. No forge in all of Kardia Hodos could generate enough heat to burn away the impurities of black sand to create true glass of a quality to stand up to daily use. Only one source of clean sand existed that could make the small glass lenses used by magicians.

  No man could afford a table of solid black glass.

  (No one man could afford the table, but a commune of magicians in covenant with the dragons could request dragon fire to forge such a rare symbol of their combined power.)

  Abruptly, Nimbulan was back in the meadow, standing next to Myri, facing Shayla, a live dragon who promised them a way to create peace. His hand still tingled with the cold, smooth feel of black glass. . . .

  “Can you give Myri a dragon dream of her past so that she will know how to gather your magic?” He pressed his temple to push away the lingering memory of the magicians working in concert around that magnificent table. The magnitude of the spell they shaped awed him.

  Beside him, Myri gasped and shook her head in denial of those memories.

  (Myrilandel is not ready. When the time is right, she will know what is important. Her lineage and her childhood will become clear.)

  “What about the near past? The days that come and go without my awareness, though I march through them?”’ She clung to Nimbulan’s hand, her sweating palm nearly slipping away.

  (The near past is under your control. When you can accept what you have done and what has been done to you, you will remember.)

  “But I need to know!”

  “Think of the quicksilver, Myri. The images will come when you need them.” But Nimbulan wasn’t sure. He’d seen several people so traumatized by the
wars and the ghastly deeds perpetuated in the name of right that they chose never to remember. Not even their birth name. Some invented exotic pasts that had nothing to do with reality but recreated the person into someone they would rather be than themselves.

  Who was Myrilandel? Could Moncriith’s delusion of demons spring from his interpretation of the dragons that protected her and guided her? Only the dragons knew for sure. They trusted Myri, believed in her, depended upon her for a most important mission. He committed himself to do the same.

  “I still don’t know if the dragons warned me that the villagers would betray me. They may have sent Moncriith to follow us,” Myri said as she and Nimbulan headed back to the clearing. The clearing, with a small hut they had called home for a time. A home where they could live safely, privately, raising Kalen and Powwell.

  “If you don’t trust the villagers, we’ll have to wait until we reach the School for Magicians to be married,” Nimbulan said. “Powwell said that two retired priests had signed on to the faculty.”

  She didn’t want to go with him. The dragons had promised her a home. She’d found that home. But Nimbulan was not destined to be part of her family in the clearing. He had greater things to accomplish at his school.

  But if she didn’t go with him, she would be alone again.

  I am tired of being alone.

  Amaranth landed on a branch above her head. The rising wind made him clutch at his perch with fully extended talons. (You aren’t alone. You have me. You have the dragons. We are your family,) he said.

  She looked at Nimbulan, felt the heat of his hand holding hers as they walked. Ahead of them, Kalen and Powwell skipped and capered down the path toward home. Love and joy filled her heart at the nearness of them. The physical pleasure of touching another human being for no other reason than to touch overwhelmed her. She raised her hand, still linked with Nimbulan’s and kissed their entwined fingers.

  He smiled down at her and returned the gesture. “We will be married at the first opportunity, Myri. I promise.”