“What the dragons need is not necessarily what we need,” she said quietly to bolster her courage.
“My da always told us to trust the dragons,” Lily insisted. But she held her staff away from the grain, not touching anything flammable.
“Your da knew magic. For that you must trust the dragons, creatures of magic. My gran knew the land. I trust her wisdom in this matter.” Souska touched three grains of dirt to her tongue.
Gritty sand and smooth clay. Damp. Mold. Something acrid. A hint of the barley growing now. A whiff of the beans that had grown here last year. The sickness was there, but faint, nearly overwhelmed by the damp and the . . . and the . . . salt. She licked a bit more dirt off her fingertip. “Salt. Loads and loads of salt!”
“Of course, we are supposed to sow salt into the Kardia once we’ve burned . . .” Lily said. She sounded uncertain.
“No. The dirt is already laden with salt. Much too much salt.” More curious than concerned, Souska entered the field, where the grains grew thickest. She tasted the dirt again. Just a couple of grains. The gritty taste of loam dominated, more damp and mold, less of the acrid sickness (it seemed to be evaporating), all of it filtered through her senses. Then the overwhelming sharpness of too much salt. Her tongue wanted to shrink and curl in upon itself. More salt here than at the edge.
Rising from her crouch she faced Lily and the village elder. “I don’t think we should burn everything.”
A sigh of relief worked all around the edge of the fields.
“There’s barely any sickness left in the ground. But there is too much salt. So much salt that little will grow here next season. This whole area needs to lay fallow with a season of fireweed, letting the animals browse that, and then two seasons of legumes.”
“But the dragons . . .” Lily protested.
“The dragons got it backward.” Souska stood firm. “The snakes try to kill the land with lack of moisture and salt. The salt is so thick it burns anything that tries to grow. That is how they create a desert out of lush farmland. They kill the land even as they remove the water. Where they live, they leave behind salt and more salt.”
“Can we safely eat the grain?” the elder asked. He held his torch down, like he wanted to grind it into the dirt to extinguish the flames.
Souska raked a few kernels into her palm and examined them closely, turning them over and over again with a questing finger. They looked whole, ripe, and unblemished. A little small, and not as many as should be on each stalk, but then this was the second planting, after the storm winds stripped a lot of new growth from the first planting. Resolutely she brought her hand to her mouth and sucked up three kernels. Nutty, sweet, raw, and salty. No trace of the malaise that had felled nearly the entire village. Maybe soaking would rid them of some of the salt. Maybe they’d just have to learn to cook without adding any more salt. “They taste clean,” she said on a long exhale.
“I’m scrying for Maigret,” Lily said. “This decision is beyond my journeyman skills and your apprentice prejudices.” She marched back to the hut she shared with Souska. “No one goes against the orders of the dragons!” When she ducked beneath the low lintel she threw Souska’s pack back out.
“I will defy the dragons if they are wrong,” Souska whispered. “That’s why I’ll never make a good magician.”
CHAPTER 30
FURIOUSLY LILY TOSSED pot after pot aside looking for the right one. It had to be ceramic. It had to be bigger around than her piece of glass, and deep enough to hold reflective water. She sorted as she examined and cast aside each one. “The dragons are never wrong,” she insisted. “Both Mama and Da said . . . They said to trust the dragons.” She choked on a sob. Her parents were dead. Her twin at home forging new friendships and alliances without her. She wandered in self-imposed exile. Skeller, the man she loved, had taken himself across the sea to a foreign land.
She had no one to help her with this crucial decision. She had only herself. And Death.
“If we do not burn the fields and salt the land, then we can’t kill the miasma. It will come again and again. It will take everyone here. We are too few. Too weak. Too . . . Alone.”
She dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Alone.
Her fingers brushed the cold spot on her forehead. The touch of Death.
Before she could think through her actions and change her mind, she bolted out of the hut, around the field Souska had saved, and up the hill toward . . .
Empty. No mist. No hovering presence. Nothing. Death no longer haunted this village. She’d moved on.
“You took no more of the patients I begged you to leave behind,” she whispered to herself. And in the speaking she knew that she had become a conduit between life and death. Death would take only those patients of Lily’s that she begged to be granted release from pain and illness. If Lily touched a patient and begged for life, then the patient would live, so long as Lily gave proper treatment.
The village was safe now.
Had Death taken the miasma with her?
Maybe . . . just maybe Souska had the right of it. Maybe . . . maybe Lily should start making her own decisions and stop relying on the dragons.
Trust the dragons. She almost heard her mother and her father, voices blended into one.
“Trust them, but rely upon myself. That’s why you forced Val and me to follow separate journeys. We had to learn to rely upon ourselves, not each other. And not the dragons.”
She let her gaze linger on all the grave cairns in the local cemetery. There were as many new ones as all the old ones combined. But she hadn’t sung the funeral hymns in three days.
“The time has come to follow Death to the next village.”
(Perhaps. Perhaps not.)
“What is that supposed to mean?” she shouted to the four winds.
Nothing. No whisper of a presence in the back of her mind, either of Death or the dragons.
The cold spot on her forehead suddenly warmed.
Bored. I am bored. King Lokeen has very old-fashioned ideas about what is proper for a princess and what is proper in bed. No imagination. Less stamina.
But if this is my only path to power, then I will tolerate him. But only long enough for him to say his wedding vows and crown me queen. He’ll make vows to rule Amazonia in my name. He probably won’t live long enough to issue a single decree.
I shan’t be bored when I feed him to his own snakes. My guard captain and I shall watch and enjoy each other while the old king screams himself to death.
In the meantime, I need to learn the ways of this castle, who will serve me, who will not. Geon has learned much, but he spends his free time in the library now. Always with his long nose in a book. One cannot learn magic from books! He replies most calmly that he learns other things, like history, culture, law, and how to read what a person is thinking by “tells” in their posture and eye blinks.
Bah. I learned all that at my father’s knee. And more. Except for the intricacies of the law. That could be useful information in the days to come.
Now I personally must learn, and not from any book, who is most loyal to the hideous dwarf. Those must find employment elsewhere or die. I cannot have a household of divided loyalties.
My father tried that and look at him now. He’s an old man who sits by the fire and daydreams about past greatness now lost. I will not lose my greatness or my power. Not now, not ever.
Lukan lay flat among the withering grasses on the slight ridge surrounding the farm. He could see all activity in the open compound, but he doubted anyone moving from house, to barn, to slave dormitory, to snake house could see him. Even if they bothered to look slightly up and directly toward him. None of them did. Few thought to look up for intruders. They all seemed weighed down, diminished, shuffling as if walking upright required too much energy.
He’d feel safer if he had a place to climb up, away from the ground. But there weren’t any higher hills on this wide and dry plateau. And he hadn�
�t spotted a free-flying dragon all day. Not even a light chuckle in the back of his mind. Trees were scarce, spindly, and too far away.
“Fifteen guards by my count,” Gerta said. She stretched out beside him, watching the movements with keenly trained eyes.
“Fifty or sixty slaves, all adults, I see no children,” Lukan returned, barely moving his lips. He liked working with Gerta. She didn’t flirt, didn’t dissemble, and didn’t defer to him. She knew what had to be done and who was best qualified to do it. No nonsense. Just raw strength. Unusual.
Attractive.
Well, maybe not unusual in Amazonia where women used to rule and fight. In Coronnan he expected women to defer to their men. He’d seen it often enough. Except for Maigret. She stood up to Robb, fought with him, conferred with him, made plans with him. And loved with him.
He hated to think that failure here at the farm might keep his mentor apart from his beloved wife any longer.
“There isn’t much water in those creeks,” Chess mused. He stretched out on his belly a little way off, surveying from a slightly different perspective. “Not enough water to stop the snakes if they really wanted to get away.”
Lukan had a sense of waiting. Waiting for what?
His mind harkened back to the growing bubble of magic around the castle snakes. Stargods, I hope there isn’t a female here that is giving them strength and guidance.
“What about the pond on the far side, where the livestock are kept?” Lukan asked, jerking his mind away from the possibility of a matriarch. Fire and water. He needed both, lots of both to kill the monsters. Fire he could conjure. Chess could control it better than he.
For water? They both needed help.
What he really needed was a storm. A huge storm that would dump rain, a lot of rain, over the entire plateau. Thoroughly wet, deep mud would be better. Mud would burn the snakes’ bellies all the way to their spines.
“The pond looks like it is drying up,” Chess said. “The banks are shrinking. Whatever it is that the snakes do to turn a land into a desert, it’s working here.”
“So what’s the plan?” Gerta asked, looking to Lukan for answers he didn’t have.
“If we throw firebombs onto the roof of the farmhouse, that will drive all the guards outside . . .” he said, more thinking out loud than knowing what they should do.
“The slave quarters look more flammable,” Gerta added.
“Guards are the enemy. Slaves are potential allies,” Lukan insisted. “We do our best to keep them from harm. Lokeen has harmed them enough already. Look at them! Walking skeletons, dispirited, almost ready to give up. Saving them is as important as killing the snakes.”
“Fine,” Gerta held up her hands in mock surrender. “I was just noting conditions. Did you notice that the roof of the snake barn is slate? It won’t burn.”
“But the walls are dry wood. Very dry wood. A few tiny gaps between the planks. If we set fire to that building, then the only route of escape the snakes have is through the door to the courtyard.”
“Where they’ll start a feeding frenzy on the slaves,” Chess said flatly.
“S’murghit! I wish I was up,” he muttered.
“Sleeping on the roof of the castle tower wasn’t high enough for you?” Gerta asked.
“You were up there with me, studying the stars, looking for dragon shadows,” he reminded her. Though he wished they’d done more together up there away from prying eyes and keen ears. “Right now I need to be able to see the entire farm from a better perspective. And there isn’t a high hill or a dragonback to help.”
“Then we need to circle around and look from different angles,” Gerta said, rising to her knees and scooting backward below the ridgeline before standing.
“We need to see if there is a back entrance to the slave quarters.” Lukan said. He craned his neck to look, but it was at the wrong angle.
“Unlikely,” Gerta said. “Back entrance invites escape.”
“Let’s go see,” Chess said. He flashed his teeth in a grimace that might have been grim humor. “If I can open the back door, or rip some of the siding off, we give the slaves an avenue of escape.” He too scooted backward and joined Gerta in stretching stiff muscles.
“Then we fire the farmhouse first, and the snake barn second.”
“Where are you going to get enough water to kill the snakes?” Gerta pointed out the one flaw in the plan.
Lukan scanned the sky. Not a cloud in sight. Nor a dragon on the wing.
“In the really old legends, dragons are supposed to control weather,” Chess offered hopefully.
“Let’s hunt up a ley line while we scout the back,” Lukan said. “I think you and I are going to have to do this the hard way.”
Maria dipped a clean rag into a basin of cool water, wrung it free of drips and placed it on Robb’s brow. His fever continued to burn so high his skin felt as dry and crackling as ancient parchment. He tossed restlessly, calling out in agony for the woman Maigret. Who was she that her name was the only one on his lips?
She guessed the woman was a healer, but more than that to Robb. A lover?
She wiped away a tear in her own grief. More likely Maigret was spouse to this strong and proud man. He demonstrated fierce loyalties. He’d only give his love to the woman he married. He would never merely keep a lover, or love outside his marriage bond.
For that she respected him. For that she regretted having dared dream that he could care for her misshapen form. She’d been cast out of the line of succession because of her twisted limp and shrunken body. She’d been relegated to being housekeeper for her sister, and then her sister’s husband. She hoped to remain as housekeep to her nephew’s spouse. Even as she dreamed of exchanged affection with Robb, she knew he couldn’t give her more.
But he had suggested he could bring a magical healer to her. He offered a chance at straightening her leg so she could grow stronger, walk without a limp. For that she must save his life. He wouldn’t have offered her that tiny bit of hope if he didn’t care for her a little bit. He’d never love her, not like he did this Maigret. But he could care for her as a friend.
She hadn’t hoped for much more. Not really. Only wistful dreams that scattered in sunlight like dew rising to the hot sun.
“My lady, the healers will not come,” her under-chatelaine said from the doorway. She scrutinized the wooden planks in the flooring most thoroughly.
“What do you mean, they won’t come. One of them at least must respond to royal orders from the castle.” Maria trembled and grew cold on the inside. This was unprecedented betrayal from the heart of the city. Dared she petition the followers of Helvess?
“They all said that once they set foot within the castle, they might as well be dead. If they try to cure the magician and fail, His Majesty will execute them for that failure. If they cure the magician, His Majesty will execute them to keep their method a secret, or for allowing him to get sick in the first place.”
The crushing weight of conflicting emotions sent a sinking blackness through Maria. They were right. Lokeen had begun to invent excuses to execute anyone. So had the captain of the guard.
Soon, she predicted, Princess Rejiia would as well. How long before the entire city rose up in total rebellion? Or deserted the city in the middle of the night to seek out new lives among Amazonia’s rivals? The healers had already begun.
She had to do something and quickly. But what? She couldn’t rule because . . .
Robb had promised to bring a healer to her. If she walked without a limp, perhaps she could hold the throne until Toskellar married and begat a daughter. Robb had to be alive, healthy, strong, and in command of his magic to summon a magical healer. She did not know this terrible fever with a racing heart. But she had herbs to treat the symptoms.
“Bathe his face and hands frequently. Give him as much water to drink as he will take,” she said to her under-chatelaine. The young woman hovered by the doorway, wringing her hands, not entering the r
oom by a single step. “I do not think you will catch this illness,” Maria added sharply. “You have never been into the bowels of the dungeon. The miasma lingers in the air and the ground but does not rise to this level.”
“Where . . . where . . .” the girl stammered. “May I fetch something for you so that you need not leave his side?” She finally raised hopeful eyes.
“No. Only I have the keys to the cupboards in the stillroom.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, I fetch dangerous herbs that if misused will kill the patient. I know how to use them properly, mix them, dilute them. You do not.”
“Perhaps it is time I learned.”
“Not yet. You do not add empathy for the patient into the work.”
“Magic? What good is magic, except for lighting candles and sending letters, things just as easily accomplished without waiting for a magician to do them?”
“You’d be surprised. Until you understand the need to love in the planning and preparing a cure, you cannot do it right. That is why the followers of Helvess succeed where others fail.” Unless she loved the patient, even as a friend, she doubted she’d have the courage to blend foxglove with arnica. Ardently she wished they’d had more rain this year to replenish the withering willow along the riverbanks. Willow bark worked better on fever than arnica. She’d do the best she could.
Maybe if she bathed Robb’s entire body with beta arrack from Rossemeyer, the distilled spirits would wick away more heat than just cool water.
Maria gathered her skirts, making sure her keys jangled authoritatively from her belt, and swept out of the room as gracefully as she could manage. She might limp—less so with the new lift in her boot—but she had dignity and royal heritage to keep her head high and her back rigid. But her hand reached automatically for the goddess pendant hidden beneath her bodice.
The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus) Page 23