The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus)

by Irene Radford

  The stone walls shook.

  Maria felt as if the floor had dropped out from under her. Her precarious balance sent her stumbling backward. Both Gerta and Toskellar rushed to her side. Robb steadied her.

  When she righted herself, Lokeen was gone.

  The Krakatrice slither inside their prison restlessly. They poke and probe, desperately seeking an escape. No longer are they content to exist, fat and lazy, satiated on the fresh blood and human flesh the king feeds them. They have taken over his mind and his will so that he exists only to please them.

  In this state they do not freely give me power. I have to work at sending a sliver of my mind into their cell, penetrate the protective bubble that surrounds every scaly, black inch of them, and establish a flow of magic from them to me.

  For a day and a half I have worked at building this rapport. They do not easily trust me. They trust no one. They see humans as food. Magicians as a special treat. Royals are almost as fine a delicacy as magicians. Lokeen, they inform me, is not truly royal. Merely a tool.

  I, on the other hand, am both royal, though distantly so, and a magician.

  They want my blood. They have no need to give me power that I might use against them.

  I have to demonstrate my good intentions.

  Slowly, carefully, I search the emotions of the people around me. They are nearly as restless as the Krakatrice, uneasy. Some are frightened. Some are determined despite risks.

  A man’s mind flares with panic as a garrote tightens about his throat. I snatch the energy from his choking—for some strange reason I cannot fathom, he does not die. Another man flails and falls. His landing knocks the wind from his lungs but does not kill him. I add his fear to my store.

  And another, and another. One by one the male guards and soldiers disappear. Strong, logical women replace them. They assume places that were once theirs and denied them too long. They exude satisfaction. I cannot use satisfaction. It is no more useful than the complacency of satiation.

  I must find the displaced men and feed upon their fear. I sense a physical binding. Then they move too far away for me to bring them into my circle of power.

  Stavro sleeps heavily, as if drugged. A wise move on the part of our captors.

  Do I have the strength to continue my tasks? I would if I had some Tambootie, but my satchel of potions has been stolen from me.

  I must work without it. I have no choice. I will die if I face prolonged captivity again.

  And so I clench my fist as tight as I can and slam it into the unyielding stones of my walls.

  Sharp fire lances through my veins. Pain brightens in my mind. I husband the strength fractured fingers give me. I suck the blood from broken knuckles. My belly warms. My eyes see more clearly.

  Power tingles along my spine.

  A weakness in the mortar between two stones above the low door becomes obvious. The door is so low I had to nearly bend double to enter the room. Easily, I reach up to caress the stone and the crumbling mortar. I dig at it with my damaged hand. The additional pain keeps my power alive.

  The stone vibrates beneath my touch. It is not just any stone. It is a crucial piece in holding up the foundation walls beneath the weight of the stone castle above. A keystone.

  Slowly I stretch my being into the stone, feeling the way it needs decades to accept the responsibility of holding so much weight together. Centuries to forget the pain of being cleaved from its parent wall of granite. Millennia to cool after flowing as part of the elemental fire at the core of Kardia Hodos. It is a living part of the world.

  I need its patience. It needs me to take away the memory of fire and chisel.

  I step backward. The stone tries to follow me, scraping away from its fellows, inch by inch.

  Hours I work with the stone.

  Hours of standing in one position put a strain on my feet and back. I relish the pain.

  And then, at last the stone works free of the wall and drops to meet different fellows on the floor. It has left a hole that brings in no new light. The hole leads only to another cell. An empty one.

  No escape. But the stone sends vibrations to my feet. I easily interpret them. Its recent mates are adrift without its support. The stone to the left of the hole breaks free with more ease. The one beside it easier still.

  Then a dozen stones tremble and shift.

  The entire wall collapses into a pile of rubble.

  The ceiling sags.

  The Krakatrice scream in fear that they will be crushed as the entire dungeon shakes.

  “Escape while you can!” I yell at them. “Slither free and wreak chaos on your captors.” I fully intend to do the same.

  CHAPTER 40

  LUKAN WOBBLED AS the flat roof of the tallest tower formed beneath his feet. He needed to open his eyes and find out why.

  Not yet, his mind and a dragon warned him. The magnetic pole, far away to the south, tugged at his back, begging him to turn and face it. Filtered sunlight glared beneath a cloud cover to stab his closed eyes. His boots muted the rough stones beneath his feet.

  A fresh sea breeze brought the scent of a wide-open ocean, pushing away the acrid odors of humanity packed into a city.

  Chess’ strong arm still encircled his waist and kept him from giving in to the pain and weakness in his left leg.

  And then the roof wobbled. Not much. Kardia quake? he asked himself and the dragons. He’d known those tiny tremors in the land all his life in the mountains. But this . . . this felt different.

  “Are we there yet?” Chess whispered from beside him.

  “Seems so,” Lukan replied, finally daring to open his eyes and confirm that the parapet they stood upon was the same one he’d visualized.

  A loud boom came from below, somewhere near the courtyard. The stones beneath them trembled again.

  “That isn’t normal,” Chess nearly screamed, clinging tightly to Lukan and keeping his eyes shut, so firmly his face scrunched into a mask of lines and wrinkles.

  “No, it isn’t normal. And we need to get off this tower!” The thought of hoisting up the trapdoor—he knew from experience it was heavy and the hinges stiff and rusty—and then negotiating the narrow spiral staircase downward sent Lukan’s innards roiling.

  “It might be easier if you sit and scoot down,” Chess suggested. His gaze tracked Lukan’s to the iron ring in the wooden square. Cautiously he loosed his grip on Lukan and bent to lift the portal. With barely a grunt he heaved and the heavy trap swung upward on a loud screech of protest. Those hinges really needed a good lashing with grease.

  Chess looked up in alarm at the noise.

  From the wails and chattering coming from a myriad of people in the courtyard, Lukan didn’t think anyone noticed. He peeked over the crenellated wall. Hundreds of people, noble and servant alike, poured out of the buildings from every doorway, and a few windows. They jabbered questions he couldn’t decipher beyond the lift of tone at the end of the utterances.

  And then to his horror a lone female appeared in a doorway he knew led to the dungeon. Long black hair flowed freely to her hips. A wide stripe of silver ran from her temple to the tips. Her rich gown of black and silver brocade appeared rumpled, dirty, and torn at the shoulder seams. Rejiia.

  She looked up and caught his gaze. A predatory smile creased her face. You are next, little magician. I will enjoy watching you die slowly and in great pain.

  “The Kraks already started the job,” Lukan muttered in reply.

  “Speaking of Kraks,” Chess said hesitantly from beside him. He pointed to a place in the low wing above the dungeons where the walls and roof seemed to sag. Five large Krakatrice slithered through a hole in the wall. Each was nearly twice Lukan’s height in length and as big around as his thigh. Their eyes gleamed red. And even at this distance he saw venom glistening on their bared fangs.

  “Now would be a good time for the dragons to show up,” Chess said.

  “Now would be a good time for my leg to heal and my magic to
return.”

  “Someone just teleported in,” Robb said as he righted his balance.

  “Lukan?” Skeller asked, holding his aunt by the elbows to keep her upright. She looked dazed, eyes glassy and unfocused, balance askew. Robb could barely hear the prince over the screams of chaos coming from all parts of the castle.

  He sniffed the air for a stronger hint than the actinic taste on the tip of his tongue. “Up,” he said.

  “That will be Lukan,” Skeller confirmed.

  “Up,” Robb mused. The trembling of the walls and floor stopped. He looked around to see who remained to help.

  Gerta dashed to the window inside Lokeen’s study. “Far wing damaged, on the edge of collapsing. Rejiia free of the dungeon, and . . .” she gulped. “And five big black snakes oozing free of some rubble at the far end of the barracks above the dungeon.”

  “And yet Lukan managed to transport in. That means that the protective bubble around the Krakatrice doesn’t extend as far as . . . wherever he landed. Skeller, I have to get up to the roof. The highest tower of the keep.” Of course he had to go up. All the times he’d hunted Krakatrice a-dragonback should have told him he needed to go up, not just away, to regain his magic.

  Skeller released Maria as her eyes cleared and she found her balance. “Follow me.”

  “Robb, you do not have the strength . . .” Maria protested, resting a tiny hand on his arm.

  “I have to find the strength. I’ll rest later.” He gently removed her hand and walked as steadily as he could in Skeller’s wake, leaning on the staff a lot more than he wanted to.

  “Here, eat this, you’re going to need it. Fuel.” Skeller thrust a hunk of bread piled high with cheese into his free hand. Then he grabbed a goblet of wine from the side table near Lokeen’s desk, looked at Robb’s hands, one filled with food, the other with staff. “I’ll carry this for you.”

  “Lukan will need . . .”

  “Bringing more food behind you,” Gerta announced. “Been told all my life, the easiest way to control a magician is to keep him hungry. Never made sense until now,” she grumbled.

  “Lokeen?” Robb asked around his first mouthful of sustenance. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the bread near melted on his tongue.

  “My people are hunting him.” With one hand Gerta grabbed the entire tray of food left for the former king. With the other she freed her sword and held it in front of her. “Let me go up the stairs first.”

  “Wait,” Maria commanded from the corridor. “If the snakes are free, there is something you must have.”

  Gerta’s gaze shifted from Maria to both Robb and Skeller. “They can’t use it,” she said. “And I have no training with a spear.”

  “A male can use the sacred Spearhead if I give it to him with my blessing,” Maria said sternly.

  “Then follow us as you can,” Gerta said and thrust aside a tapestry to reveal a dark and twisting staircase. “You want up. This is the way.”

  “Skeller, can you sing without your harp?” Robb asked. His mind churned with ideas returning again and again to some, discarding others.

  “Of course,” he snorted. “Any bard worth his salt can sing unaccompanied.”

  “Can you sing a lullaby and aim it directly at the snakes?”

  “Never tried aiming a song. My style is more a broadcast, like an oversized fishnet to catch a single shark.”

  “That may have to be enough. Think about singing an arrow . . . or a spear.” Robb took another bite preparing for the arduous task of climbing up five stories to the top of the tower keep. His knees grew limp. “I don’t think I can make it up there.”

  Maria tried to brush aside the guard at the treasury. A man, left over from Lokeen’s rearrangement of security. He stood with feet braced and hand on the grip of his sword, as if expecting another quake.

  “I can’t allow you in there, my lady.” His sword suddenly appeared in front of her, barring the door.

  “Out of my way,” Maria ordered. Anger warred with confusion. As chatelaine of the castle no one had ever questioned her right to enter the treasury. Now she was . . . she had become regent by default. She borrowed a look of indignation from her older sister.

  The man bit his lip but his sword did not waver. “Stand aside. You dare question a female of the royal house?”

  “King Lokeen . . .”

  “Lord Lokeen is king no longer.”

  “Who, my lady? Who replaces him?”

  “I do.” There, she’d said it. Did that make it so?

  “She said, ‘Stand aside,’ soldier. Now do it!” a female said sternly.

  Maria turned her head a tiny bit and caught a glimpse of Frella in a palace uniform. Gerta must have sent her. She decided her best course was to ignore the man and leave him to the tall woman with a long sword and dagger.

  She reached for the latch. The man’s sword lowered so that the edge rested across her wrist. “My king said you were not to enter. You stole the magician’s staff and glass. You will steal nothing more.”

  “Then join your king in the dungeon with his pet snakes,” the woman snarled. The tip of her dagger pushed against his throat apple.

  Maria depressed the latch and ducked beneath them. She knew precisely where the Spearhead, almost forgotten, wrapped in silk, rested ignominiously in the midst of broken pottery shards on a shelf just to the left of the door. She grabbed it and turned to leave.

  A glint of light from the corridor caught the metallic body of the goddess. Maria paused to bow in reverence. “Protect us this day in battle,” she whispered the ritual prayer handed down for generations.

  A scream, a whoosh of air. A metallic thud. A small throwing knife quivered where it stuck in the rotund belly of the goddess.

  “Duck!” Frella yelled.

  Maria dropped to the floor, grimacing at the pain in her hip. The new boot had made walking so much easier she had almost forgotten a lifetime of pain.

  More scuffles and thuds, the clash of blades.

  Maria clenched the Spearhead, its obsidian edges pressed through six layers of silk to crease her palm.

  Without thinking, she rolled to her feet, tugging the silk wrappings free as she moved. Then she raised the Spearhead high and surged forward. Momentum carried her. She stumbled again over Frella’s legs where she sprawled awkwardly on the floor stones. Lokeen’s man knelt atop her, knees pressing hard to her middle. She gasped as she writhed, trying to dislodge him. He brought the edge of his blade across her neck. She stilled.

  He drew a deep breath.

  Maria lunged and plunged the obsidian into the man’s back. It slid easily between his ribs. Blood spurted. He reared his head back in surprise then slumped, hands limp.

  “Your Majesty, gracious thanks,” Frella whispered as she wriggled out from under the man’s corpse.

  “I’m . . . I’m not . . . your queen. Only regent,” Maria gasped, hands before her mouth, trying desperately to keep from choking up hot, foul, burning bile.

  She’d killed the man. She’d killed him.

  “Majesty you are. You proved yourself worthy of the crown. Frella at your service.” The woman rose to her feet and bowed deeply. “May I have the honor of escorting you and the Spearhead of Destiny to the battle?”

  “Yes, you may.” Maria wrapped the silk around the Spearhead. Her personal guard tugged it free of its victim and presented it back to her with another formal bow.

  Maria accepted it and began the trek toward the tower.

  “Your Majesty?” the guard asked quietly from a proper two steps behind. “Your Majesty, will the spell still be intact on the obsidian? It’s just that I worry that since it has now been used to take a life the . . . the . . . that once it drew blood, the magic died.”

  Maria almost stumbled in surprise. “I . . . I hope that killing a mere man has not damaged it. This is the only weapon that can penetrate the magic bubble around the Krakatrice.”

  Loud screams from the forecourt diverted he
r trek. “I’ll never make it up those steps in time. You, Frella, you have to take it to the magician. Present it to him with my blessing. Make sure you say the words properly. Gift it to him with the queen’s blessing.”

  “With honor, Your Majesty. In the meantime, I advise that you wait in the throne room. It is near an escape tunnel. I’ll send guards to protect you. They will be led by Hannah. I trust her.” Frella took off at a run.

  CHAPTER 41

  ROBB FOUND A window in the throne room overlooking the forecourt. He threw open the shutters and leaned out. No glass hindered his view of five midsized Krakatrice oozing out of a crack in the wall at the end of the dungeon wing, near the corner that joined the curtain wall facing the city and overlooking the harbor.

  His attention rested on Rejiia as she climbed over a pile of rubble to take a stand near the middle of the open space.

  Rejjia, the source of many of his nightmares fifteen years ago, when he’d been a journeyman and she the most feared woman in all Coronnan. Until her own magic backlashed and she became her own totem animal, a black cat with one white ear. He’d know her anywhere.

  She raised her arms level with her shoulders and spat crackling energy from all of her fingers. Ancient mortar between building stones began to crumble all around the courtyard. Her body trembled with the massive amount of power she channeled. Her eyes grew completely black, no trace of colored pupil or white surround.

  Robb recoiled in instinctive fear of the woman who demanded absolute obedience from her minions. She wanted to be a goddess. Nothing less. By whatever means she could tap.

  Right now, she tapped the magic of the Krakatrice and made it her own.

  But . . . the bubble of magic around the giant snakes shrank. He had enough magic at his fingertips to see the shimmering black aura. That meant she drained them. Pain and fear fed her powers. Very like the food the Krakatrice needed.

  Robb’s question was: did they give it to her freely?

  The biggest of the black males reared his head and hissed at her, venom dripping from his fangs. Rejiia ignored him.