The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus)

by Irene Radford

  “The fire and the dragons were quite thorough,” Chess said, still not looking over his shoulder toward the smoldering ruins.

  Lukan took another deep breath to gather the courage to move. That’s when he saw the hunk of flesh missing from his calf and spewed all the water he’d just drunk, gagging and gagging like he wouldn’t stop until he’d turned himself inside out.

  CHAPTER 36

  ROBB DREAMED OF someone singing. A mournful tune of a lost love and deep regret. A light baritone, skilled, and . . . beautiful beyond imagining. He needed to cry and mourn along with that voice.

  Then he recognized a name. Lillian. The singer’s sweet and gentle Lily turned into an assassin by the evils of a rogue magician. Samlan.

  Bits and pieces of stories he’d heard over the moons of his imprisonment fell into place. Skeller, the bard who was really a prince, had said he’d seen the light of life drain from Samlan as his knife twisted in the magician’s heart. But he had not wielded the knife, Lily had.

  Robb could not imagine one of Jaylor’s twin daughters performing such a deed. Valeria, perhaps. But Lily? More robust than Val, the twin with the weaker talent resembled her mother—not only in coloring but temperament. Both were strong empaths, sharing both good and bad emotions in others, instinctively understanding ailments in mind and body. Neither one could bear to eat meat.

  So how could Lily have murdered Samlan?

  Robb didn’t understand any more than Skeller did.

  The song broke off on a sob and a discordant note from an abused harp. A rustle of movement, and quiet. The unnatural quiet of the sick room, people hovering outside, waiting to see if the patient lived or died. He’d sat many such vigils with Maigret over the years. If he reached out just a little, he should be able to envelop her hand in his and give her the comfort she needed, knowing that she could do nothing more. The will to live or die lay with the patient, not her skill as a healer.

  His fingertips brushed across his staff as he stretched with his hand, mind, and will to find his wife.

  A hand landed heavily atop his.

  Not Maigret. He knew that instinctively.

  His eyes flew open in alarm.

  “Who?” he demanded of the man whose scarred face filled his vision. The skin on the right side had been pocked and burned by acid. His right eye was an empty socket of scar tissue, no lashes or brow remained. The left eye, dark brown, burned with a strange hunger, or anger, Robb couldn’t decide which. A permanent grimace of pain had twisted his mouth and frozen it in place.

  For answer the stranger’s hand clamped tighter on Robb’s, squeezing until bones began to shift. “I’ll have the staff. Give it easily and no more harm will come to you,” he said. Educated tones overlay a rough street accent.

  Movement behind the stranger threatened to draw Robb’s attention away from the man.

  “Hurry, Geon. We ’ave ta git out of ’ere afore she discovers us,” a woman said. She totally lacked even a pretense of sophistication in her voice.

  Robb yanked his hand and staff back across the top of his body and squeezed his other hand tighter on the glass. A faint tingle of magic caressed his skin. Contact should have given him more power than that.

  But he was inside the castle. The Krakatrice drained magic from everything in order to maintain their protective bubble.

  The man, Geon, bared his teeth in his version of a grin as he clamped down on the wood that had twisted with every spell Robb had channeled through it over the last fifteen years. Perhaps the grain had begun to straighten in places from lack of use during his time of confinement. Not much. It still held much of Robb’s essence, and his power, even if he couldn’t tap it at the moment.

  “Yiieee!” Geon screamed and lurched away, holding his hand tightly against his chest.

  “Quiet y’ fool,” the woman hissed.

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that a staff has to be earned? It has to be given to you freely by the trees on Sacred Isle. You cannot cut a staff from a tree. Nor can you steal one from a magician!” Robb snarled as he swung his legs off the low cot that had been his sickbed for too long. He grasped the staff tightly between two knots in the comfortable place his hand had worn over the years. He and the staff fit each other.

  “That isn’t recorded in any of the books . . .” Geon protested.

  Robb pounded the butt of the staff against the rush covered wooden floor. The sound echoed around the room, and vibrations massaged his bare feet.

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that coven magic is centered upon pain,” Geon sneered. “We draw power from pain, both given and received. We thrive on chaos. The Krakatrice feed us magic—like to like—while they drain it from you.” He held forth his reddened hand. Cracks gouged the inside of his knuckle joints. Blisters popped up on the pads of his palms where he’d gripped the staff.

  He reached again, his hand actually trembling with pain. All the while his mouth twisted upward showing his pointed teeth. “Give me your staff,” he demanded.

  “What can you do to me that Lokeen and his pet snakes have not done already?” Robb replied. He drummed the staff against the floor, letting the musical cadence of wood against wood feed his soles with energy.

  The woman approached from the corner, holding a long kitchen knife forward, as if she intended to butcher a boar for cooking. “I can dismember you piece by piece,” she said. Clearly she was the more dangerous of the pair, reacting without thought of consequences.

  Keeping his eyes on the woman, Robb swept the staff out and up, catching the butt behind Geon’s knees and then the top under his chin. The man grunted as he stumbled backward, jerking right and left for balance. He flailed with both hands, trying desperately to grab something, anything for balance. His right hand found the back of Maria’s empty chair. He jerked the damaged skin away with a shout of pain and continued his desperate attempt to keep from falling.

  For good measure Robb grabbed his staff with both hands and rammed it into the man’s groin. Geon collapsed to the floor, doubled over and groaning. His good eye rolled upward as he fainted.

  “I’ll kill you for that!” the woman screeched. She shifted to an overhand grip on the knife and dashed forward.

  Balancing on one leg, Robb shifted his staff into a wide swing against her arm. The snap of her breaking bone was almost as loud as the door banging open and his own thud onto the floor.

  “What is the meaning of this!” Gerta demanded as she kicked the knife across the floor, out of everyone’s reach.

  “They tried to steal my staff,” Robb said stiffly. His burst of energy drained from him like a receding tide. He wondered how he was going to get up far enough to collapse onto the cot.

  “Not a good idea, I’d say,” Gerta continued, surveying the scene. “Even without magic, you are a rather intimidating man,” she said and bowed slightly in respect.

  “I think they were trying to escape from their mistress and wanted my staff as a weapon against her,” Robb panted. His head started to spin. He’d been abed too long, and now his body rebelled against the sudden action.

  “You don’t think they were stealing it for Princess Rejiia?” Gerta asked.

  Robb shook his head, then regretted it as the walls faded in and out and he lost touch with his sense of up and down.

  A feral smile touched Gerta’s face. “I think we can accommodate their goal of depriving the princess of their support and power in her magic. But they won’t be walking free anytime soon. It’s the dungeon for them. Separate cells, close to the snake pit.”

  Four more women in palace guard uniforms marched in and dragged the prisoners upright, barely noting their screams of pain and wails of despair. In seconds they’d all departed, leaving Robb on the floor and Gerta standing over him with hands on her hips. “I suppose after your magnificent display of defending yourself without magic you are now too weak to care for yourself?”

  “Something like that,” Robb admitted. He tried to get his legs benea
th him but they felt like unwhipped egg whites.

  Badger and Scurry appeared at a gesture from Gerta. Badger wiggled behind Robb and got his hands beneath his armpits. Scurry grabbed his ankles. Together they lifted and swung Robb back onto his bed.

  Robb patted his staff as he nestled it alongside himself again and made certain his glass still hid amongst the covers.

  He was asleep before the door closed; dreams of burning pain and gaping emptiness plagued his mind.

  Souska felt the warm, moist wind before she heard the rush of angry air in the treetops. Instinctively she braced herself for thunder.

  Across the field where she and Lily helped harvest the scanty grain and dwarfed tuber crops, Lily smiled and lifted her face with closed eyes.

  A dragon roared a greeting. No name or telepathic communication followed. At least nothing she could sense.

  “Lily knew they were coming before I did,” Souska grumbled. “She welcomes them while the villagers cringe in fear.” Souska wondered what she’d done to offend the dragons.

  Stanil looked up with a frown, worrying his lip with his teeth. Fatigue and worry added deep lines to his still-pale face. He was too young for the job of headman, not more than early twenties. Who else was there to take the responsibility? Then he continued scything the grain stalks, limping painfully forward in grim determination. He couldn’t wear a boot yet, so Souska had wrapped layers of raw wool and cloth over his bandage. He had to be hurting from his barely healed foot wound and fever. And yet he continued with the hard, grim work of bringing in whatever harvest he could.

  Souska followed behind him, tying the fallen grasses into slender sheaves. She had to move slowly so she didn’t overtake him.

  She had finally remembered he had a name. As did the women coming behind her, loading the sheaves into baskets to carry to the thresher. Lanette and Barbo.

  Lily knew them all, had learned their names the first day she came here. She could name the dead as well as the living. She’d shared each death. In some ways she lost a bit of herself with each passing. Death had touched her in more ways than one. With each passing she grew stronger, almost as if she gained wisdom and maturity from each one.

  Souska didn’t want to know their names until she knew they’d live. Stanil would live.

  The dragon came into view, a shimmer of crystalline light tipped in blue that shaded toward the green of deep water. A bit of silver still clung to the tips of the spinal horns.

  (Taeler here!) the dragon proclaimed with exuberance.

  The remnants of silver meant he was still quite young. This might be his first solo outing away from the lair. The same age as Krystaal?

  Lily started to run to meet him, then paused, returned for her staff, and raced toward where he landed on the meadow to the west of the village. Normally two dozen sheep would graze there, but they’d been moved farther south to avoid any possible contamination from the plague.

  Souska adjusted her broad-brimmed straw hat and followed Lily more sedately. Barbo stepped up to take over the chore of binding. They didn’t really need two gatherers. The crop was too scanty to require more than one. They’d easily finish the harvest tomorrow. Two days of moderate work with a scant ten men and eight women with only a dozen children in tow when it should take ten days of hard labor by a full village of twenty-five or thirty adults and a dozen or more children.

  She should have felt dismay, or worry, or something. Instead emptiness surrounded her. As if she’d been stripped of all but the ability to move from one task to the next.

  A tiny bit of relief niggled at her back brain. They hadn’t had any new cases of the plague since Stanil, nearly a week ago. Maybe, just maybe, it had run its course.

  A young man in medium blue journey leathers slid down from the back of Taeler. He left his staff tucked between two thick horns at the base of the dragon’s neck.

  “Journeyman,” Souska decided from the color of his uniform and the presence of a staff.

  Then another blast of wind from the east sent her hat flying. A second dragon circled the village and descended toward the same meadow.

  “It’s getting crowded here,” Souska said.

  (Krystaal here,) the all-color/no-color dragon said, somewhat meekly. She touched down on the other side of the meadow. No rider graced her back, but it looked like several sacks of grain, tubers, and seeds had been tied between the biggest spinal horns. A closer look revealed a few more of the sacks on Taeler’s back.

  Souska’s knees nearly gave out. “They didn’t forget us,” she cried. Tears burned behind her eyelids. “We’ll survive the winter. Thank you, Krystaal. Thank you.” She wanted to run to the dragon and stroke her long muzzle but couldn’t seem to make her legs work.

  A growing babble from the harvesters told her that the villagers had noted the supplies as well.

  “Linder!” Lily called with nearly as much excitement as the dragon had exhibited. She threw herself into the man’s wide-open arms. He grabbed her around the waist and spun her around. “Lily, what have you been up to that has got the entire University bounding to do your bidding?”

  No mention of Souska and her part in healing the villagers, calling a dragon and requesting food, knowing how to cut the infection from Stanil. No idea that Souska’s tasting of the dirt had proved more informative and beneficial than Lily’s blind acceptance of the dragon’s wrong pronouncement.

  “Souska figured it out,” Lily said, laughing.

  “So I have heard,” Linder said, setting Lily back on the ground. “You must be Souska,” he added, giving her a brief bow. “I am to fetch from you a pot of noxious something and return it to Mistress Maigret as soon as possible.”

  “It’s over by the midden.” Lily waved north and west of their location. The wind rarely blew from that direction.

  “What is Mistress Maigret going to do with it?” Souska asked. She had no solution to the problem herself.

  “Bait,” Linder replied on a grin. “Or at least most of it. The Krakatrice hunters will set out a bit of it to see if we can draw in any surviving snakes. Some of it, the mistress insists, she’ll keep to study, see if she can make an . . . an . . . anti something out of it.”

  “Antidote,” Lily supplied the missing word.

  “Or a vaccine for the snake hunters,” Souska added.

  Lily shuddered at that idea. Hadn’t they listened to that lesson taught by Master Marcus last year? He wanted the healers to find ways to give the general populace who didn’t have access to magical healers a tiny bit of a disease, to make them slightly sick. They’d recover quickly but have the immunity to that disease for a long time. Possibly a lifetime.

  Souska liked that idea. She didn’t trust magical healers if they listened to dragons who didn’t know everything.

  Linder just looked blank. Then he shrugged and turned back to his dragon. He began untying the sacks of grain.

  Lily took the first bag from him, still laughing. Souska went over to Krystaal and began releasing the sacks. The knots were sturdy and twisted and did not yield easily. “Can you crouch down a little, Krystaal, so I can reach these better?” she asked as she indulged in running her hand down the sleek fur of the huge animal.

  Krystaal turned her head away and promptly plopped down onto her belly, legs tucked neatly beneath her.

  She’d announced herself properly but had not directed any more communication into Souska’s mind.

  “What’s wrong, Krystaal?” Souska asked quietly so that Lily and Linder could not hear over their own jabbering.

  (I am not worthy.)

  “Nonsense. You are a perfectly normal dragon.”

  (I spoke too soon with not enough information.)

  Ah, so the dragons did know that the solution the female dragon had given them was incomplete and potentially disastrous.

  (Female dragons are not as numerous as males. So we are made to feel special. I believed myself too special to listen to my wiser elders.) She closed her eyes and hu
ng her head so that the long, spiral forehead horn nearly touched the ground.

  “I forgive you, Krystaal. I understand. I’m not much better when it comes to magic.”

  (You could have been harmed. The village could have been destroyed. You saved them. Not I. It was my duty to save you and I failed.)

  “We all worked together. You told us fire and salt. We thought we had to burn and then sow salt. But we need to burn the fields after harvest, not before, and scrape up the extra salt, not add more. Your words set me thinking along the right path.”

  (Is that enough?)

  “For now.” Souska gave the dragon hide an extra vigorous rub, then set about loosening the knots.

  “May I help?” Stanil asked, hovering a good ten paces away from the dragon.

  “Yes, thank you,” Souska replied. The headman didn’t move.

  “Oh, yes, I forgot I have to introduce you. Krystaal, this is Stanil, headman of the village. Stanil, this is Krystaal, a young female of the nimbus of dragons.”

  Stanil bowed his head in respectful greeting before taking those ten hesitant steps forward. He made a show of putting weight on his bandaged foot, but he still limped and pain clouded his eyes.

  “She won’t eat you. Or flame you. She’s my friend.”

  The dragon lifted her head from her depressed slump and turned her big all color/no color eyes on the newcomer. (Krystaal here. Welcome, Stanil.)

  “Did . . . did she . . . just speak to me?” Stanil’s eyes opened wide in wonder.

  “Yes, she did.” Souska suppressed a giggle. Then she paused, surprised that she actually felt the little bubble of mirth. Warmth and the need to reach out and touch her friends filled her. Suddenly she felt as if she belonged here, wanted to become part of the village community, to learn everyone’s name and share with them.

  Hesitantly she laced her fingers with Stanil’s and guided his hand to scratch Krystaal’s muzzle where she knew it itched. “Announce yourself,” she whispered.

  “Um . . . Stanil here, Krystaal. Welcome to our village.” He looked away from the dragon long enough to capture Souska’s gaze. “Our home.”