The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2

by Irene Radford

  His mind turned to the task at hand. “If Krej used wheels in the kitchen, what other things did he do within the castle that the Stargods forbade?”

  “He turned living creatures into statues,” Ariiell said hesitantly. Then her words gained steadiness and verve as she let her anger build. “The creatures lived inside their frozen sculptures, still aware, but unable to move. More than once he bragged how he held Shayla, the dragon matriarch, captive.”

  “That is why the dragons left Coronnan,” Lukan affirmed. He turned toward the narrow staircase that twisted upward into the hall, Ariiell close on his heels.

  Twenty steps up, without a landing, the air grew fresher, his sense of space around him opened. He encountered a leather curtain. Beyond he heard nothing.

  Ariiell stopped short. Heartbeats, she reminded him.

  Lukan focused his hearing once more. Two, he mouthed, holding up two fingers.

  Ariiell nodded. Then she pointed straight forward with one finger. Her other hand fluttered around.

  Krej was still, Rejiia pacing.

  “The ley lines are disrupted. I can’t get the candle to reflect in the water,” Krej complained.

  A summoning spell. Lukan’s gut grew cold. He couldn’t allow Krej to find out yet about the chaos in the city and the disruption at the University. He’d take advantage of the crisis to regain control of the government and the Circle.

  They needed time to recover.

  “What about the dragons?” Rejiia asked. Her voice faded as she moved farther away.

  “Nothing! Are you certain this glass is pure?” He kicked something, perhaps a chair or table leg.

  “It was your spare glass, hidden in the secret recess in the inglenook. You took it out yourself and examined it.” Her voice rose again, with strong emotion as well as proximity.

  She’s still ruled by the cat, Lukan thought.

  Dangerous. Cats are unpredictable, Ariiell agreed.

  Lukan smiled as he readied an old trick. A prank he used to play on Glenndon when they were little.

  A pump in the kitchen below. He found the mass of metal in his mind and followed it. Iron pipes led down into a cistern. And up. He had water in the alcove on the exterior wall, across from the massive fireplace on the interior wall.

  I need to see where she is.

  Ariiell pushed the leather curtain aside three finger-widths without disturbing the rings and rod that suspended it.

  Lukan prepared himself, watched and waited . . . waited . . . He had to be as patient as when he watched and waited for Glenndon to tread across the right part of the path near the creek.

  Rejiia, tall and proud, with a fabulous mane of black hair streaked with blazing white from left temple to the ends near her knees, looked . . . far too young to have spent sixteen years trapped in a cat body. Twenty-five, he guessed. No more. How?

  Krej, though, looked old, stooped and slowed by a joint disease that twisted his fingers. Older than he should look; ancient instead of late middle age.

  Something had gone amiss during the restoration spell. As if Rejiia had shoved some of her real age onto her father.

  If she could do that, then . . . a truly formidable sorceress stalked across the far side of the hall, came to the center to peer over Krej’s shoulder, then marched toward the mantel. “Your candle is too short,” she said succinctly. “It’s not reflecting properly. You are rusty, old man.”

  She moved again, unable to sit still. Like a cat twitching its tail. Two more steps. He needed her to move two more steps . . .

  And he pulled.

  Water responded, spouting out of a gilded faucet into a shallow basin. He pulled harder. More water. It moved too fast to settle into the bowl and bounced up, showering Rejiia with a steady stream.

  She screamed and ran toward the main entrance as if fire burned her. She had to escape. Now! She covered her head with her hands, dodging drops that became streams seeking her specificially.

  Lukan pulled more water through the pipes and sent it showering across the room to drench Krej’s white hair.

  Rejiia’s emotions flooded the room, nearly sending Lukan scurrying back to the kitchen.

  Krej paused only half a heartbeat before following her, ducking and hunching his shoulders against the assault of water.

  “They aren’t too separate from their animal selves,” Ariiell chuckled.

  “I’m guessing they learned to react together for self-preservation,” Lukan admitted. He walked cautiously toward the tall table in the center of the room, keeping an eye on the main entrance. The door remained open and untended, creaking in the constant sea breeze.

  Resolutely, he picked up the palm-sized glass circle edged in silver from the basin of water. A journeyman’s tool. “I’m a journeyman now. I claim this as my right.” Deftly he wiped it dry on the cloth clumped nearby, then wrapped it in a neatly folded square of silk.

  “Can we go back to your sisters now?” Ariiell asked anxiously. “I’m feeling a need to stomp and throw things and screech uncontrollably.”

  “Hang onto your sanity a few more moments. I think we need to walk out the front entrance and around by the village, make sure Krej and Rejiia aren’t coming back for a bit. They need to run until panic gives way to logic again. The old Krej would never have left the room. How long now?” He offered her his arm and escorted her from the ancient and gloomy castle.

  “There is no other way?” Lily asked her companions. She watched the waves beyond the treacherous jutting rocks in the cove. Just after low tide, the rocky strand was bigger than she had envisioned, stretching a mile or more between headlands. The mouth of the natural cave that led to the castle cellars was well above normal high tide lines. On the ocean side of the promontory, she saw little evidence of the storm and flood.

  All of the rain and surging waves had gone directly into the Bay and up the River Coronnan.

  Just beyond the tallest of the jagged spires a sailboat tacked back and forth, waiting for the tide to turn and begin to fill the cove once more.

  She saw a single man sitting at the tiller, manipulating both rudder and sails with magic instead of hands.

  Samlan. The man who had destroyed a large portion of Coronnan with his vengeful ambition. The man who had caused both of her parents to die.

  “We agreed,” Val replied.

  “This is something the Circle of Masters should be doing,” Lily replied, trying to find a different path.

  Only one path remained, and Samlan turned his boat onto it.

  “The Circle has other tasks,” Skeller said gently, squeezing her shoulder. His other hand fingered the pommel of his dagger.

  Lily knew the keenness of that blade. When she’d first met Skeller she’d watched him skin a rabbit with it in a few quick slashes; as efficient as Mistress Maigret or Val.

  Since that time, Skeller had given up eating meat. He’d shared her distaste for taking a life. Any life. Val still ate meat. Val didn’t share the pain and terror of the victim—large or small—that Lily did. That was a talent, or a curse, she’d inherited from their mother.

  But Skeller’s knife remained sharp, the blade straight and true.

  “Samlan sent the Krakatrice eggs to Ariiell’s father, knowing they would wreak more destruction when they hatched,” Graciella said, coming out of her vacant state for a moment. “He restored Krej and Rejiia to their natural forms. This castle once belonged to them. They used this cove for executions. Horrible executions.” She shuddered, then set her chin in determination.

  “The Circle uses every magician they can find to fight off the Krakatrice and to rebuild the city,” Val continued. “We are the only ones left.”

  “Lukan . . . ?”

  “Is searching the castle, making sure Krej and Rejiia don’t sneak up on us,” Val reminded her.

  The sailboat wove a convoluted path among the rocks. As Lily watched, the boat keeled over, mast almost touching the waves to avoid a rock that would rip the hull to shreds. The
n it righted and continued forward. Samlan seemed calm and assured. He touched the waves and rocks with the tip of his staff to aid his navigation through the maze of obstacles, both obvious and submerged.

  “He’s powerful,” Val stated. “Can you feel the magic he’s using to guide him in?”

  “I don’t have to,” Lily said flatly.

  “He’s exhausting himself,” Graciella added. “See how he falters beside Traitor’s Rock?”

  “I see.” Val raised her hands, fingers pointing directly at the boat. She walked toward the incoming waves and adjusted her feet for better contact with the ley lines within the Kardia. Her eyes closed and her brow furrowed in a deep frown as she pushed her magic out toward the boat, the water, and that viciously sharp rock.

  Her aura spiked bright purple slashed with red. She used a huge amount of energy.

  Samlan responded with a stronger push with his staff against the rock, forcing his boat away from the knife-like protrusions. But he overcompensated into another rock, just as sharp above and below the water.

  They all heard the crash and boom of the surf, the groan of sundered wood as the hull scraped stone.

  The boat rocked violently, sinking rapidly.

  Samlan scrambled to keep it afloat as long as possible, shedding mast and sail, using his staff to fend off more rocks. He lost his balance and toppled into the water, still holding his staff.

  He bobbed to the surface, gasped and sank again. The staff floated. He clutched it desperately.

  “Is the staff straightening back to its original grain?” Lily asked no one in particular.

  Beside her, Skeller shrugged. Graciella didn’t seem to hear and Val was too engrossed in her repulsion spell to pay attention.

  Lily held her breath, hoping, praying that the relentless tide and the punishing rocks would do their work.

  Val kept pushing, crashing the boat, pulling the ferocious waves inward. She sagged with fatigue. Color drained from her face while her aura deepened.

  Lily reached to hold her twin upright and feed her strength. Graciella and Skeller beat her to it.

  Val dropped her hands, unable to sustain her battle with wind and waves.

  Samlan rode a wave ashore. He landed on the pebble-strewn beach facedown, feet still in the water. The next wave tugged at his shirt and trews, but did not reach far enough to drag him backward, or drown him.

  Slowly he lifted his body, bracing on hands and knees, head hanging lower.

  He crawled forward three paces and collapsed again. “Help me!” He reached forward a plaintive hand, lifting his head, and stared sharply at the companions. His gaze burned deep inside, compelling Lily . . . to come to him, to carry him to safety.

  She had to obey. Her hands and feet moved without her willing them. And yet . . .

  CHAPTER 44

  TIME STRETCHED AND thickened. Val saw each breath, each eye blink, each move of her companions in slow motion. The air became difficult to breathe.

  Samlan lay across a ley line, all of its magical energy available to him.

  Val had used so much magic she had no strength left to even tap that line. If she could get to it.

  She watched Lily deftly grab Skeller’s dagger from its sheath. Val doubted he even noticed the loss of its weight against his hip.

  I’m sorry, Lily mouthed. Then she withdrew her mind from Val’s. The emptiness where her twin had always been, even when separated by many miles, left Val sagging and inert.

  Skeller’s hands on her rib cage tightened. Still trapped in the sludge of slowed time.

  Lily withdrew farther, breaking the time manipulation. Then she turned back toward Samlan and dashed across the rocks. They cut her bare feet, leaving a trail of blood. Val could not follow or stop her.

  Skeller blinked, too startled to move.

  Graciella dropped to her knees, gasping in horror.

  They all saw Lily twist her fist in Samlan’s shirt and hoist him to his feet.

  “Good girl. You know your true master,” he said on a weak smile, gaining strength and magic with every heartbeat where his feet shuffled for contact with the ley line.

  Too much magic. Val didn’t have the strength or the mastery to counter him again. She’d given all her energy to wrecking his boat.

  “Yes, I do know my true master,” Lily repeated back to him. “I am my own master. My dreams are my own. My life is my own. My magic, such as it is, is my own. And this choice is my own.”

  One strong thrust and the dagger impaled the man, driving straight for his heart.

  Blood gushed across Lily’s hand and from the man’s mouth. “The trouble with magicians is that they expect only magical attack. They don’t prepare for anything else.” Lily slowly withdrew the blade, staring at it as if she didn’t know what she held. What she had done.

  Val pushed through Lily’s defenses and rejoined her mind to her twin, giving her love and reassurance. Horror rushed back to her.

  Samlan’s eyes glazed over and his body sagged. And still Lily held him up by his shirt, a part of that terrible tableau, bound to him in death as she refused to be in life.

  A wave, much bigger than previous ones, poured over Lily and her victim, washing away some of the spilled blood. But not all of it. It left behind a dark stain on Lily’s gown and a stout, straight branch of hawthorn on the strand, just the right size for a staff. Samlan’s gnarled staff of sturdy oak rolled back to sea and split in two on impact with the first rock.

  Lily dropped Samlan and picked up the perfectly smooth and straight stick, stripped of bark, ready to use and twist into her magical signature, whatever it became.

  Then Lily’s empathy joined with her enemy and his death invaded her soul. And Val’s.

  The world grew dark, and a roaring of dragon anger filled their ears.

  “You aren’t the woman I thought you were,” Skeller staggered to hold Lily upright. They both sagged to their knees. The full weight of Samlan’s death weighed them down. He felt the sharp stab in his heart just as Samlan had, just as Lily did.

  Her empathy had forced her to share the awful moment when the man’s eyes glazed and life drained away from him. Her bond with Skeller, their growing love, had pulled him into that intimate moment of sharing death.

  Skeller had to fight his own bond with Lily to keep from following into the enticing darkness.

  (Not yet,) a dragon reassured him/them. (The realm of death is not yet yours to claim.)

  He blinked rapidly. The wash of another big wave dragged him back to awareness.

  The ache in his gut and in his soul remained.

  How much worse was it for Lily?

  She’d done what he didn’t have the courage to do.

  “D . . . don’t touch me. My deeds will taint you,” she stammered.

  They already had.

  “Lily, dear heart, you must live. You cannot allow that man’s evil to take you from me.”

  “He already has.”

  “No. I won’t allow it.” He dragged her and himself upright and away from the compelling grip of the tide. He thought to entrust Lily to her twin. But Val was exhausted, in dire need of strength. Strength and renewal she would draw from her twin by instinct, even though Lily had nothing left to give.

  So he held Lily close, wondering what to do next. How to . . . continue living with that horrible pain in his heart and his soul.

  “We need time,” he whispered. “Time to heal our minds and our bodies from this.”

  Lily nodded. A little color returned to her face but her eyes continued to stare hollowly at nothing.

  A sense of crowding pressed him closer to her. Ethereal pain, and aloneness.

  The cove had seen so many other bloody deaths, natural and not. The screech of dragons and gulls overhead sounded like so many ghosts haunting the place. Haunting them all.

  She’d killed a man.

  She couldn’t swat a fly.

  She drove the long knife straight and true deep into Samlan’s hear
t.

  “You were prepared to do the same,” Graciella reminded him. “I saw how you worried at the grip of your knife.”

  “’Twas my duty . . .”

  “I think we all had the same idea. The same perverted sense of duty,” Ariiell said, appearing at the head of the path toward the village and to the castle’s main entrance. Lukan was not at her side.

  Skeller didn’t care. His chest felt as if Lily had ripped it open, the same as she had Samlan’s. His head hurt with confusion and unshed tears.

  “I murdered him. Murder,” Lily whispered, still caught in the loop of her own empathy. How many times must she relive that moment of becoming the instrument of death?

  “Not murder. Execution,” Val snarled.

  “Execution,” he agreed. His father had brought executions back to Amazonia in place of exile. Veneza held public executions. He’d run away from that to find . . .

  Something better.

  “The land groans and mourns the loss of life,” Lily stammered. “Not just his life—all the lives lost to the storm and the aftermath. All the lives he was responsible for. The land is as wounded as the kingdom.” She seemed to be talking more to herself than to their companions. But Skeller felt every word drive into him as if his own.

  “If you help heal the land, can you heal yourself?” he asked gently. “If you help restore the lost crops, the downed trees, the despairing people, will you heal within yourself?”

  “I . . . I think so.” She looked up at him, eyes clearing. “The people and the land need seeds and cuttings. I can take them from unaffected places and plant them where they are needed. I can bring life back to Coronnan.”

  “And back to yourself.”

  She nodded mutely.

  “You will need time. I need time to accept what we have done here this day.”

  Questions appeared on all of their faces.

  “Lily may have wielded the dagger. But I carried the dagger. Graciella led the way. Val crashed his boat, made him vulnerable. Samlan called us to gather here. We are all responsible.” He drew a long shuddering breath.

  So did Lily. She bent low, as a new wave circled their feet. Something rolled and bobbed . . . The hawthorn bit of driftwood. She claimed it as her own, planting the broad base of it firmly in the gravel shoreline.