The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2

by Irene Radford

  She reached to grab Graciella and exit as fast as they could.

  The lady was nowhere inside the litter.

  Mikk pelted down the stairs from the rear courtyard to the narrow postern door of the palace. No time for formality. No time to think. No time to worry. He had no idea if Geon had followed him or not. If the tall servant had pocketed the book from the library or returned it.

  That didn’t matter. Getting the palace organized and safe did.

  He skirted scullery boys with their dirty pots and kitchen maids with armloads of vegetables. “Gather food for a week and get it to the top level of the palace and the old keep. Water too!” he shouted in passing.

  The kitchen grew silent and still. Dozens of gazes landed on him. “Do it! The flood of the millennium is coming.”

  Immediately a busy bustle began as people scurried and ordered and organized. They knew about floods. They knew what to do.

  “Sh . . . shall I ring the bell?” a boy of about twelve stammered.

  “Yes.”

  “Not before the king orders!” returned a senior cook.

  “Wait and you’ll drown. By my authority as cousin and second heir to the king, I order you to sound the alarm!” He turned and dashed upward toward the formal rooms on the ground floor. Before he’d touched the first step, a solemn, deep-throated gong sounded from the old keep. The lighter and sharper Temple bell from the palace compound picked up the series of long and short peals and spread them to the next tower and the next.

  The scullery boy was still rooted in place near the exit.

  Good. Someone else in the palace knew about the flood.

  That didn’t slow his steps. He continued upward, thankful for the hard exercise General Marcelle had forced upon him to build up his wind.

  He didn’t bother pausing on the first landing and darted across the carpeted minor hall between this servant stair and the formal staircase, which rose broad and proud toward the semiprivate offices and suites on the next story.

  In his hurry he grabbed the knob on the railing and used it as a lever to swing around the bottom step and up in one smooth motion.

  Except . . .

  He barreled into Lady Miri as she descended.

  He grabbed her about the waist. They teetered a moment, staggering and clinging for balance.

  “What is all this fuss?” Lady Miri asked imperiously, as if he were a mere servant. She smoothed her skirts and patted her hair to make sure her tiny cap and veil were in place.

  “Not now.” Mikk wanted to scream at her. The urgency of his mission pulled his attention upward, toward the king. “The alarm bells. A massive flood is coming.”

  “The river is receding, a bit rapidly, but heading out to the Bay,” she replied, still holding her nose in the air, and not just to look at him on the step above her.

  “Receding?” He felt the blood drain from his face, leaving him slightly dizzy. “That makes it all worse. The storm is pulling all that water outward, as fuel for its fury. Then it will push it all back, at once. Master Aggelard said we haven’t seen anything this bad in five hundred years. I wonder if there has ever been a storm and flood like this before.” He grabbed her shoulder as the nearest solid object to hang onto.

  “What? What can we do?” She looked pale. A trace of panic crossed her beautiful brown eyes. But she mastered it and held firm.

  “Gather the princesses and their ladies and anyone else. Take food and water, medicine, bandages, whatever, and get to the top level of the keep. Get up there and stay up there until the king says it’s safe to come down.” He gathered his energy and pushed himself to separate from her. He had to rely his own balance.

  “Can I trust you to do this?” he asked quietly, not yet certain of his ability to climb.

  “Yes.” She whirled around decisively, grabbed his hand, and pulled him upward. “This is what I was born and bred to do. Take control in an emergency and see that as many people as possible get to safety.”

  She left him outside the king’s office and continued upward to the private suites and the two young princesses. “She’ll make a grand queen someday,” he whispered, then pushed his way into the king’s presence.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked empty air.

  “Mounting steeds in the forecourt,” Lady Chastet said, coming up behind him, breathless but attempting to remain calm.

  Mikk sighed in relief. He should have known the king and queen knew about the storm, and the impending crisis. But . . .

  “They don’t have time to get to higher ground on the mainland.” He turned and dashed back the way he’d come.

  At the bottom of the grand staircase he skidded across the floor toward the wide double doors, left ajar in someone’s haste.

  “Your Grace!” he called, gasping for breath on the edge of the landing. His boot toes tipped over and downward. He willed himself to stop even as he prepared his balance to keep moving forward if he had to.

  King Darville glanced his way as he boosted Queen Rossemikka into her saddle. She looked so frail and pale sitting astride the tall chestnut steed that almost matched her bright, multicolored hair, undulled by the pelting rain. He realized in that instant that in the last few months she had regained some of her youthful vibrancy, but not all. Never all of it. Age and illness had taken its toll.

  But she still cut an awesome and majestic figure when she needed to.

  The king looked almost as magnificent. His loose four-strand queue leaked strands of wet hair and his crown—the heavy Coraurlia that protected him from magic, not the little replica he used for day-to-day appearances—sat a bit awkwardly and atilt upon his head. But his tunic was clean and unwrinkled though wet from the deluge pouring from the sky.

  “Your Grace, Master Aggelard sent me,” Mikk gasped, ignoring how wet and uncomfortable he was from his run across the islands and now standing in the open.

  “The flood?” Queen Rossemikka demanded.

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “It’s worse than we thought,” King Darville said as he prepared to swing into his own saddle on the white steed—a very visible and commanding animal. The right steed for a king who demanded attention.

  “Yes,” Mikk admitted. “Nothing like it in five hundred years. That storm and resulting flood was also mage-born. The chronicle of the spell used is missing. That one was conjured by a single rogue magician. This one is commanded by a circle of magicians,” he blurted out. No time to make it sound nice and polite, within royal protocols and formality.

  The queen blanched and the king looked up toward a dirty line across the middle of the old keep tower. The last remnants of the old flood, one hundred feet up.

  “We have no more time, my dear. We must get as many people clear of the city as possible.” King Darville swung his leg over the steed’s back and kicked it into motion in one smooth movement. The queen followed him out the gate; at the last moment she leaned over and grabbed trumpets from awaiting heralds.

  “Do you need me?” Mikk called after them, not knowing quite what to do now that he’d delivered his message.

  “Look after my daughters!” the king called back. “Their safety is your responsibility. Live up to your potential as a leader,” the king added, his words fading as he put distance between himself and the safety of the palace.

  CHAPTER 27

  “EASY, CHAMPION,” SKELLER sang to the huge sledge steed, more a hum beneath his breath than an actual song, but music of a sort. Music that would force the beast to listen to him.

  Dried grass, small branches, feathers ripped from flusterhens’ hides, fabric, and anything else not tied down, lifted free of the Kardia, spun, and gave in to the relentless pull of the air. Skeller’s eyes burned from the dust pelting him. Every inch of exposed skin felt scraped raw at the constant assault.

  “Easy. I need you to listen to me and not your instincts. I know you want to run. Be smart just once in your life.”

  Champion rolled his eyes showing mor
e white than dark gray iris. He pulled against Skeller, nearly ripping the bridle from his hands.

  “Don’t you dare rear and bolt!” Skeller forced into his song every bit of authority he’d ever heard his father yell. “I promise you there are no spotted saber cats hiding within that wind.” He didn’t know what else might be using the wind as a mask. The spotted saber was supposed to be the only predator big enough and mean enough to take down a steed of this size shod with heavy iron.

  At last the steed began to calm. He still shied and shifted his weight right and left, forward and back, but he seemed to listen to Skeller. Accepting him as leader of the herd.

  “Good, boy. Now, down on your knees. Down, down.” Skeller tugged on the bridle, just so, to ease Champion onto the ground. Champion resisted, knowing that up was safe. Up gave him the opportunity to run from a predator. Up offered options. Down did not.

  “Listen to me. You cannot run from the wind. Especially this wind. You need to be down. I need you down to shelter me. Together we are safe. Listen to me!”

  Reluctantly Champion dropped lower, first onto his front knees, then his rear legs folded. Finally he settled his body upon the ground and he tucked his head around to the side away from the relentless wind.

  Skeller crouched on the lee side of the beast and took a deep breath, temporarily free of the wind. His lungs stopped straining and his chest eased enough to let his heart slow to a more natural rhythm.

  Then he chanced a look over the steed’s back. Drovers right and left were urging their animals to follow Champion’s example and taking refuge from the storm on the inside of the circle. A few managed to drag goats and caged flusterhens with them. He knew the animals, large and small bleated, cackled, neighed, and threw out a deafening ruckus. He saw their mouths working and heads bobbing in their distress.

  He heard nothing over the malicious roar of the wind.

  Then he saw Lily flailing with the smothering curtains of the litter. Lady Graciella didn’t seem to have stayed to help her companion.

  “Stay!” he ordered Champion.

  The steed sort of bobbed his head in compliance. Skeller couldn’t be sure how long he would obey. Hopefully long enough.

  He left his harp within her case beside Champion. With a little luck the steed would accept her presence as a minor substitute for Skeller himself, and the wind could not grab it from his back and use it to strangle him.

  He drew a deep breath and dashed toward the litter. Only a few feet away. He bent double, battling the wind for every inch of ground.

  He persevered, gaining one step forward for every three he took.

  The wind fought back, pushing him sideways and back, driving him away from his objective. He had to close his eyes to barely a slit and drape his sleeve across his mouth and nose to keep the dust from smothering him.

  Using every bit of strength he’d built up from years of working caravans around Amazonia and her territories, he gained ground and reached the litter at the same moment Lily stumbled out, smacking the ground with her face.

  He braced himself on the flimsy litter frame—meant to support curtains, not withstand a storm a quarter of this magnitude—grabbed hold of Lily’s collar, and pulled her to her feet.

  She clung to him, frantically turning her head right and left in search of Lady Graciella.

  “Have to find her!” Lily screamed into his ear while holding onto his leather jerkin with both hands in a death grip.

  “Not safe,” he screamed back. Then he whipped around putting his back to the wind and dragged her to his shelter behind Champion.

  Just in time. The steed’s hide quivered with fear. He rocked forward, trying to get his feet beneath him.

  Skeller did his best to calm the animal with touch and hum while shoving Lily to safety.

  “She’ll be killed,” Lily sobbed the moment he dropped beside her.

  With one arm stretched along the steed’s side and the other wrapped around Lily’s shoulders, he fought for control. Breathe in, breathe out. Steady the chest and throat as if preparing to sing his heart out.

  He draped Telynnia’s case strap around his neck and under his arm, shoving it between his back and Champion’s side. They might crush the fragile wood and strings, but the wind could not steal her away from him.

  “Lily, listen to me. We might all be killed before this storm blows itself out. We have to save who we can. For the moment, that’s us. And Champion.”

  A mighty cackling screech made them both duck their heads into their knees tucked tight against their chests. Overhead a crate containing a brace of hens and a rooster flew into the wall of spinning compressed air.

  Cautiously he looked up to see a sky full of yellow-brown dust to the south and a sharp edge of black, water-sodden clouds to the north. As he watched, the dust merged with the black and curled east and north.

  A curling edge began to form, pulling the air into a wide rotation.

  “Great Mother, no!” he breathed. Numbing cold ran from his belly outward.

  “What?” Lily demanded around trembling lips.

  “A giant tornado, ten times bigger than any I’ve ever seen. And it’s merging with a . . . with a monster storm from the sea; a storm so big no one has seen the like. Ever. This land is doomed.”

  Lily’s arms tightened around his waist as she buried her face in his chest. “Hurricanes I’ve heard of. Even little ones can be deadly. But a tornado?”

  “A dry hurricane, moves faster, pulls everything in its path up and up and up and then spits it out miles away.” He shivered all over.

  “What? How? Val! I can’t find Val! She’s never more than a thought away.”

  “Great Mother, protect us.” He dropped his face to capture her mouth with his own. “If we die in this moment, let us die together with the taste of each other in our minds and hearts.” He kissed her long and deep, yearning to hold her even closer in an act affirming life rather than accepting death.

  Mikk stood on the open parapet of the highest tower of the palace. Even up here in the open he was not alone. Refugees from the city had poured in, all day. They did not all fit inside the palace above the second floor. The ground floor was too vulnerable to the storm surge. A full dozen city dwellers shared his lookout. Every other tower, many long abandoned and only today reopened, also contained wet and wailing people driven from their homes. Many came with words of praise that the king and queen had personally saved them from the coming flood, or curses that the king and queen had rousted them from their homes and places of business without reason, or forced them to leave their most precious possessions behind, bringing with them only food, medicines, and vessels for collecting water.

  “Eighteen jugs,” he muttered. “Not enough.” Each vessel resting on the uppermost stones collected rainwater. They ranged in size from twenty cups to three.

  Below in the courtyard, Mikk made out a mixed team of citizens and soldiers pumping more buckets and tubs full of water from the well. From the bits and pieces he’d gathered from Master Aggelard’s rambling account, he knew that the flood, when it came, would rush into the city with dirty, brackish seawater in less than an hour. The tides and flow of the river would need weeks to push it all out again. But the inward rush would be followed quickly by an outward surge just as damaging.

  There would be no more fresh water than what they gathered once the wall of water drove across the Bay and crashed over them.

  He already smelled the dying fish, rotting seaweed, and varying amounts of salt as the river retreated, mixing with the bay and ocean, churning together in a giant maelstrom.

  The cistern was the key to survival. Something was wrong with that, a distant memory, something he’d read, or something else. . . .

  He suddenly remembered a time when he was still a small child and a spring freshet had undermined the cistern at the home of his grandparents north and west of here on the mainland, but still within sight of the river. The cistern had flooded with dirty, unfiltere
d water. Grandfather had to order the entire system flushed and a new catchment basin dug . . .

  General Marcelle, the king’s commander-in-chief, dragged himself into the palace courtyard, urging a new line of citizens forward and upward toward safety. He was as wet and bedraggled as any of them, exhausted as well, but he still stood straight and tall and authoritative. Except . . .

  Except that he limped, barely putting any weight on his right leg. He used an upended spear for support.

  “General!” Mikk called down to the man. The wind whipped away his words. The drumming rain on the stone absorbed any sound.

  King Darville and Queen Rossemikka were still out in the city. They’d left Mikk in charge. He was tired and uncertain he’d done everything he could. He knew he’d not done enough. What had begun as a point of pride had quickly wound down to desperate searches for what to do next. He wished for paper and pen to make lists. He wished for a sense of organization and accomplishment.

  Desperately he needed older and broader shoulders to take some of the burden from him.

  Mikk ran down the slippery spiral stairs, barely keeping a hand on the rail for balance. Round after round he pelted downward, as fast as the rain. Not fast enough. When he finally reached the formal entryway he found it crowded with milling refugees, bewildered, frightened, and without direction.

  “Up!” he shouted, pushing them toward the broad marble staircase. “Up above the flood line.” He cleared the final steps and urged more people up.

  The moment he spotted a clear space, he sprinted through the crowd outside. General Marcelle had just placed one weary foot on the bottom step and paused, gathering his energy to put weight on the damaged right leg while he lifted the other.

  Mikk saw a ragged tear on the general’s trews, a mat of blood and badly bruised flesh. Something about the shape of the kneecap . . . Stargods! he’d either broken or dislocated his knee. ’Twas a wonder he’d managed to walk this far.