The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus)

by Irene Radford

  “I doubt Master Marcus would lie to us,” Souska grumbled.

  “No, he will not. But others might. Best to learn to do this properly the first time. And every time.”

  Thankfully, Maigret had chosen a wide bowl for the spell, wide enough for the two of them to slide their fingers into the depths and loose the glass as it touched the fresh spring water. Never stale water. That much Souska knew. Water that had not been in a vessel anyone had drunk from. Water that had not had a chance to mix with something else. Water as fresh and pure as a free-running mountain stream.

  Following Maigret’s example, Souska withdrew her touch on the glass and placed both her hands primly in her lap. They tingled from the flow of magic through them. She resisted the urge to clamp them next to her body under her arms and still the vibrations.

  “Marcus . . .” Maigret said, circling the rim of the glass in the water until it hummed. Her magical signature color, a reddish brown that mottled together to be one color more often than two separate ones, followed her finger, wavering in and out like waves lapping the shore of glass. “Master Marcus.”

  Slowly a delicate orange infiltrated the border of color, blending with it, swirling around and around, brightening as the connection grew.

  Souska’s thoughts circled and circled. Nothing existed but those colors, merging in a friendly dance.

  A sharp jab of Maigret’s elbow into her belly forced Souska to blink and revive. “You can’t afford to lose yourself in the spell,” she whispered.

  Souska withdrew her mind a bit. Then Marcus’ weary face bloomed into the glass.

  “What now?” he asked anxiously, blinking rapidly as if banishing sleep. From the lines on his face, that must be a rare commodity of late.

  “Souska has had a report from Lukan,” Maigret said without preamble. She didn’t need to introduce herself. Marcus would know who summoned him by the colors in his own vibrating glass.

  “Souska? Who is Souska and why would Lukan summon her?” he asked sharply.

  “Lukan has been mentoring and teaching my apprentice from afar,” Maigret said. Her jaw worked, as if she wanted to be angry with the Chancellor of the Universities and Senior Magician to the king.

  “What is Lukan’s message? An illogical means of getting around the prohibition of calling home except in cases of dire emergency or peril to the kingdom.” Marcus leaned his head heavily on his hand and closed his eyes.

  “This might very well imperil the kingdom.”

  Marcus roused himself from his doze. “Tell me exactly what the boy said.”

  Maigret nodded for Souska to supply the answer.

  “Lukan said ‘Tell Marcus that Rejiia is in the city.’” She had to think a moment to remember his exact words. So much was foggy from the last message. Had she lost something important in her memory lapse?

  “Rejiia, eh? She is not enough of a threat to warrant breaking the rules. She has done nothing, thrown no magic, or recruited new members to her coven.”

  That sounded familiar. Had Lukan said anything about the coven?

  “Tell me this again when every magician in the city and half those in the mountains isn’t worn to the bone working from dawn to sunset clearing debris, salvaging building materials, rebuilding, replanting, trying to find enough food and clean water to continue one more day.” He held a hand over his scrying bowl and clamped his fingers shut, ending the spell.

  But just as his last finger bent, another color shot into Maigret’s bowl. A disembodied voice shouted, “Help me!”

  “Robb?” Maigret gasped, and fell to the floor in a dead faint.

  CHAPTER 10

  “ROBB!” MAIGRET’S VOICE came through the glass in fading echoes.

  “My love,” he gasped. He didn’t have much time. If Lokeen found out he still had his glass, there would be hell to pay. The spell dissipated back into the water quickly. “I’m a prisoner in Amazonia!” he called back to his wife as loudly as he dared. But the colors and life had faded from the spell before he finished speaking. He had no way of knowing if she heard him or not.

  Suddenly Maria flung open the door so hard it bounced against the wall and would have slammed into her face if a tall guard had not held it back.

  “What is the meaning of this? Who is it that you call your love?” Anger infused her face with high color bordering on purple. She panted with rapid, shallow breaths and swayed on her feet.

  Robb clenched his fist over the water bowl and fished out the glass in one swift movement.

  A large hand clamped over his wrist before he could pocket the circle of glass. The nameless guard pried the tool loose from his fingers and passed it to Maria. He juggled it briefly as the golden rim, still ripe with the scrying spell, burned his fingers. Maria finally took it from him with a corner of her apron. The guard blew on his hands, trying to soothe the magical wound.

  Robb did not feel inclined to pull the spell back into him. Serve his captors right if a little ungrounded magic went wild and shimmied all over the castle. If he thought long and hard enough about the consequences, they’d happen.

  Maria didn’t give him time. “How dare you abuse my kindness!” The last word came out on a long uncontrolled hiss, like a snake about to strike. She slapped him hard across the face with her open palm. For all the weakness in her leg and her tongue, her hands and arms were strong.

  Robb recoiled from the blow, straining his neck as he turned his face too quickly. Every instinct wanted to flinch and withdraw, push his stool all the way across the room.

  Showing fear now could either save him, or condemn him. Maria needed an ally. A strong one. In the end she’d respect strength and come seeking it again.

  He hoped.

  He met her gaze levelly with silence. She worked for the man who held him prisoner. He owed her no explanation.

  “Take him back to the dungeon,” Maria ordered. The high color faded from her face, leaving her paler than usual. Her tone and her expression were glacial.

  Robb stood as tall as he could, towering over her stunted frame. The top of her head barely reached his breastbone. Against a truly tall man, like Jaylor or the king, she’d appear a dwarf. And yet she ruled the castle, if not the kingdom, with ready authority.

  The guards nodded to her with respect. Then one on each side of Robb grabbed his upper arms and a third prodded his back with the sharp end of a spear. He had to move forward or die.

  But would Maria truly have him killed? She needed him alive. Subdued and compliant, but alive.

  Robb resisted the physical propulsion of the guards, digging in his heels and bending his knees to weaken their grip. He’d learned a few tricks over the years. He and Maigret had wandered far during their journeys. They couldn’t always access magical weapons.

  The spearhead pricked his skin through the heavy woolen robe and his linen shirt.

  “Cooperate, Wizard!” Maria lisped. Her words always slurred more when strong emotions gripped her.

  Ah, that was why she fought so hard to remain calm and controlled. And in control of others. So that she would not reveal her handicap any more than she had to.

  “Why? So that you can kill me later rather than right now?” He wasn’t sure, but he had to goad her. Force her to do something she would instantly regret. Then she’d have to apologize. Have to give him more freedom to gain his forgiveness.

  “There will be no more talk of killing my mage!” Lokeen yelled from the top of the stairs. He crossed the landing and threshold to Robb’s cell in three strides, reaching his hands to grab Maria.

  “He betrayed you,” she said simply, turning to face him.

  The guards retained their fierce grip on Robb, but the one with the spear eased the pressure on his back.

  “He’s a prisoner. He’ll betray anyone he has to in order to escape. But he can’t. Not while I have my pets in the cellars.” Lokeen leaned forward and captured Maria’s gaze with his own piercing stare.

  “He kept his glass hidden afte
r he dispatched the letter for you.”

  “I expected him to. How else was he to know when the desert-cursed missive reached its target?” The king adopted a more relaxed pose. Still the cords on his neck strained. His calm was all an act, feigned for the benefit of Maria and the guards. He released Maria from his penetrating glare and let his gaze wander about the room, stopping when he spotted the ceramic bowl and ewer of water. Then he looked again, pausing when he saw the glass held within Maria’s plain linen apron, between her two fingers. He whipped out a square of fire-green silk from his sleeve. Casually he scooped up the cloth and draped it across his palm, then lowered it in front of Maria, holding firm until she released the glass into the protective covering.

  S’murghit! The silk would negate the wild magic left in the glass and the gold.

  “I shall keep this for now.” Lokeen tilted his head to study Robb. “Has the letter arrived?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Believe? Only believe?”

  “Your . . . um . . . pets emit a protective bubble around themselves which deflects most weapons and spells. That bubble has spread to include most of the castle. They must have grown a lot since hatching for the bubble to be so big. I can barely throw the simplest spells. I sensed a slight vibration a few minutes ago. Barely an acknowledgment. Couldn’t have been anything else.”

  Lokeen tapped his jaw with one finger, still cupping the glass in his other hand. “So, if I need you to scry for your predecessor, find out where he is hiding and how I can bring him back, you will need to leave the castle?”

  “Yes.” Yes!

  “Not today. Tomorrow or the next day I will personally escort you to the farm. Along the way we may stop and allow you to work your spell. For now, since Maria is so terribly displeased with you, a stay in the dungeon is called for.”

  “The same cell?” Maria asked a measure of satisfaction creeping through her disgruntlement.

  “No. That cell was too large and comfortable. It had a window, if I remember. Put him two doors west of the containment area.”

  Robb hadn’t heard that term used here. Containment? Containment! The place where the king kept his snakes and tortured his prisoners. The area where the protective bubble would be strongest. The cell where it would be all too easy for a guard to grab a small snake by the tail and slip it into Robb’s cell without anyone knowing.

  His knees turned to water and he sagged against his captors’ grip.

  “Death stalks this village, Journeyman.” Stanil the village headman stared into the cup of hot tea Lily had prepared for him.

  She saw how the villagers trudged back to their daily chores directly after burying the baby. Stanil’s baby girl, six moons old.

  “In the past week we’ve lost five people, and still the wraith of death lingers. Two more took sick last night,” Stanil continued.

  Lily sorted her herbs, laying them in a circle around her where she knelt beside the fire pit at the center of the village. She knew the contents of each packet by the color and texture of the wrappings—linen, canvas, silk, and that new fabric from SeLennica, cotton. She’d also invented a system of knots in the drawstrings, clusters of varying numbers and spacings. Finding them by feel inside a larger pouch inside her pack was easy and familiar. Too familiar, and about to become more so judging by the shuffling gait of these villagers.

  From the state of the huts, not a chimney among them, smoke holes cut in the thatched roofs, she guessed most meals were cooked and eaten here around a central fire. A community that worked hard together, sharing everything so that no one went hungry, and what little surplus they had was properly stored against a long winter or shriveled harvest.

  “The baby’s mother?” Lily prompted as Stanil fell into silence. She fingered a packet of betony and one of dried gillieflowers, wondering if she should add more of each to his cup. He needed strength now to keep himself from becoming vulnerable to the sickness. The hollows around his eyes and his gaunt cheeks could be from nursing his family night and day and failing. More than a bit of grief and guilt in his tone. Only time would heal that.

  “Death took her first. A week ago. Our village elder died next, leaving me in charge a decade or more before I thought I’d be ready to take on the chore.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He fell into a deep, brooding silence. Each of the villagers cast him a worried glance as they passed. They seemed to pass him more frequently than need be. Were they worried about him or curious about her?

  “I’ve some training as a healer,” Lily said, loud enough for all to hear. “I want to stay and help where I can.”

  “Run away, little girl. Run very far and very fast before Death takes you too.”

  Lily firmed her chin and settled her shoulders. “If that is my destiny, then so be it. But I will stay and help where I can. Now show me those who are sick.” That’s what Skeller would tell her to do. Duty came first. He’d finally learned that and returned to his home to fix the problems of an illegal monarch, or take the throne himself. She could only follow his example, since she couldn’t follow him.

  Stanil downed the last of his tea, knotted his belt through his cup handle and rose from the flat rock he’d chosen for a bench. “We’ll start with Old Milla. She’s the weakest and most likely to go wandering with Death next.”

  Lily shuddered at how this man referred to Death so lightly—as if she were an intimate. Maybe she was. But what had drawn her? Didn’t she have enough to satisfy her voracious appetite with all the thousands dead after the flood?

  CHAPTER 11

  LUKAN FIRMED HIS grip on the yardarm of the tallest mast on the deep-sea passenger ship, indulging in a moment of listening to the cold sea breeze playfully biting at his cheeks and chin. Whispers of exotic lands and oddly accented words drifted past him. For an instant he thought he smelled sharp spices and heavy incense.

  Then it was gone, and the sailor next to him shouted orders to release this rope, that knot. Lukan wished for his brother’s strong telepathic talent. Glenndon always understood what other people wanted because he could reach into their minds and find the true message that sometimes got lost in words. The Crown Prince had had his reasons for not speaking a word until after he went to court to become part of the king’s family.

  Cautiously, Lukan tried a minor probe into the sailor’s mind. Not easy with only a boat and water beneath him. He needed land. And trees he could climb. But he had climbed the mast, a solid mass of wood that had once been a tree. Could he find a trace of the everblue essence beneath the layers of varnish?

  His hands tingled. But he couldn’t tell if that was from the wood’s hidden life or from the cold engulfing all of his senses.

  Then he saw it, clear and shining like a beacon in the dark, the knot he’d clenched when he steadied his balance. He needed to pull the strand to his left and that would . . .

  Release the swaying rope he stood on.

  A practical joke to test the new man on the crew. To see if he was as experienced as he claimed when he signed on.

  Lukan tugged on the strand of a different knot, to his right and watched the mainsail loosen. As each man in turn manipulated the intricate lacework of lines, the heavy canvas dropped and flapped in the strengthening wind. Other men, on the deck below, secured other lines to tighten the fabric and its crossbar where they needed. Taut once more, the sail caught the wind and surged forward, warping the ship out of safe harbor and into the rolling waves of the Great Bay.

  Foam on the crests of the waves sparkled in the bright sun. The wind played with the misting water droplets, sending colored prisms shooting forward in the sun’s path.

  Lukan breathed deeply and flashed a grin at his potential tormentors.

  “In the nest w’you,” grunted the joker on his left. His gaze traveled upward to the very tip of the mast swaying with the ship’s movement, and the tiny platform up there. No railing. No ropes. Nothing to cling to but the mast itself.

  A mast
that had once been a tree.

  Lukan scrambled upward eagerly, letting his bare feet find the notches, only sorry that he’d had to leave his staff wrapped in canvas and tucked into the folds of his hammock belowdecks in the crew quarters.

  “Don’t laugh so readily, young’n. You’ll be up there an entire watch. That’s four hours with nothing to anchor your stomach,” the sailor warned him.

  Lukan nodded a brief acknowledgment. He knew what awaited him. Nothing worse than hiding from his father in the top of an everblue with only a dragon to ease his loneliness.

  He settled his butt on the platform and wrapped one arm around the mast.

  “Shout if you see aught cap’n needs to be wary of!” the joker called after him.

  “Aye, sir,” Lukan yelled back, knowing that was the response required; his link to the man’s mind hadn’t frayed completely yet.

  Then the line of experienced sailors scurried down the mast to where Rejiia’s minion watched every move Lukan made. Of Rejiia or her maid he saw nothing.

  Time passed. Lukan easily matched his body rhythms to the gentle sway of the ship. He noted the slow passage of sun from high above toward the western horizon, deep in the foothills of the mountain range that divided Coronnan and SeLenicca. From up here, the line was clear, dark green mounds reaching upward toward snowcapped peaks. In the city he could see only the next building. He liked the sea view.

  To the east he saw only the promontories, north and south, where the land curved in protective arms around the Bay. He guessed that they’d pass through the mouth of the Bay into open ocean about the end of his watch.

  Home. This felt like home. His mind reached no farther than his eyes could see, and contentment gathered around him.

  A roar of laughter jerked him out of a light doze. Hastily he checked to make certain he hadn’t slipped off the nest. Nope. He was firmly in place with one armed wrapped around the mast and the other hand shading his eyes against the sun’s glare. Another peek downward showed him all the sailors going about their business, swabbing decks, coiling lines, securing cargo against the bulwark. A few passengers strolled the cramped spaces. None of them Rejiia.