The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 (24 page)

“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.

“E
ASY, 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 more 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, unfiltered 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.

No time to commiserate or wonder. Later. When all were safe Mikk would tend to that wound himself if he had to.

“Sir, is there a way to block the cistern so it doesn’t flood with seawater?” he asked, not certain he’d chosen the right words, or even the right question.

The general frowned as questions, brighter than the pain haze, flashed across his eyes. “Oh, shit!”

Then Mikk saw panic in the man’s mind. He’d asked the right question. And knew he would not like the answer.

G
LENNDON FORCED HIMSELF
to think. Hard. Very hard to do, what with the wind howling in circles above him. The rain pelted every hard surface as if it were a tightly strung drum, adding a strange and off-rhythm counterpoint. And thunder. Rolls and rolls of thunder that sounded like every dragon bugling at the same time!

He cringed with each peal, imagining dragons fighting the wind and bellowing their discontent and pain.

And then there were the walls of near-blinding lightning that revealed the white and frightened faces of his companions.

What could they do but hunker down and wait out the storm. Wait for the wild clash of magics to resolve on their own.

If only his head didn’t hurt so much.

If only . . .

The staff at his feet began to pulse with power. It had been inert since the storm began, as if the storm sucked all the magic from the land, the dragons, and him. What was the white dragon bone doing pulsing red in time with his heartbeat? Why was his heart returning to a normal rhythm after the excitement and fear of enduring the hours of being battered by this unnatural storm?

He drew a deep breath and winced as his head ached with new pain. Something was changing. He didn’t need to think to know that. But why?

And why was he so sensitive to that change?

He had this massive, living tree sheltering them against the storm. With that much wood between him and the elements he should have a solid barrier protecting his awareness as well as his body.

He took a deep breath, measuring the steady in, hold, out, hold. Two more to center himself and ground his magic in the Kardia. The tree hollow seemed to smooth out and curve to the shape of his spine and the back of his head. He rested easily, letting the life within the tree merge with his consciousness. Part of him dug deep with the roots, tangling with the land and the rocks, reaching deeper and deeper, anchoring against the onslaught of wind and rain, repulsing the burning lightning. This tree had learned long ago the pain and loss of becoming victim to the living fire that shot from the sky.

Then he sent his awareness upward along the trunk, feeling the way its skin rippled as the wind threw pebbles and branches torn from other trees at it. They bounced against the resilient bark. Its own branches bent and flowed with the ceaseless and relentless wind.

It had learned from experience, this magnificent tree. It had learned not to stand rigid and defiant, for that presented a solid wall for the wind to push against. Now it channeled the air around it. The roots too shifted a little bit here, a little bit there as water creeping up from below ate away at the dirt that held it in place.

Rising water. Vanishing dirt.

Glenndon brought his mind back into his own body trying to assess if their den remained safe. If this tree toppled when the water completely undermined the root system would they be safer outside or in.

A gentle reassurance washed around him. His staff gave off a whiff of The Tambootie, its parent tree. This tree had sacrificed a branch to Glenndon for a staff. It would not let him down now. It had needs that only Glenndon could fulfill. It needed Glenndon as much as Glenndon and his companions needed the tree’s shelter.

He checked his staff. The bone continued to pulse red, as if stained with blood, or blood red light. Or. . . .

He shifted the staff so that the tip pointed toward the opening of the den, an opening that no longer faced the lee of the storm, but remained open to the grinding destruction that pelted them from all directions at once.

Yet none of the rain or lightning penetrated an invisible wall across that opening. None of the water creeping up from below reached the soft nest of leaf litter, crumbling wood, and clumps of animal fur and feathers.

The staff shot away from him toward the entrance, stopping abruptly when it reached the opening.

Like to like, it seemed to say to him; demanding that he release it so that the bone could join its like.

“Tell me I did not just see that,” Keerkin said on a violent shudder. “Or hear that. Staffs are tools. They do not have minds of their own. No other magician can steal it from its master. It has to be surrendered voluntarily.” He spoke as if reassuring himself rather than informing the others.

Glenndon chuckled, despite the danger in their predicament. He trusted the tree to protect them as long as it could, but even trees this formidable had limitations. Limitations he needed to be aware of.

Still, the tree was Tambootie, the channel between the magic within the ley lines and the dragons. The staff was the child of this tree.

What were they trying to tell him?

A tree of magic. The tree could give him magic while the storm sucked the dragon magic out of him.

Before he could move to the next thought a shaft of burning crimson light shot from the dragon bone at the top of the staff out into the chaotic wind, driving a path upward into the sodden clouds and met a bolt of lightning. Fire to fire. Magic to magic.

The two forces met and exploded into a blinding starburst.

Release me
!
it demanded.

Glenndon held on to the base of his staff though it bucked and fought his grip. The magic within it twisted and fought his hands with heat.

He cried out, but still he clung. Keerkin placed his hands over Glenndon’s, adding his strength and minor talent. Desperately they sought to contain the magic.

Another pulse of light near-blinded Glenndon. He had to let go. He couldn’t. His hands felt as if they had melted and merged with the staff, never to be parted again. Together forever, for good or ill.

Right now he felt very ill. Very ill indeed.

And frightened.

“Do you smell that?” Lillian shouted over the howling wind, neighing steeds, screeching flusterhens, and bleating goats. Noise all around her. The sounds of terrified creatures and humans. The odor must be especially noxious to penetrate her thoughts above the mind-consuming racket.

Skeller wrinkled his nose and sneezed out dust. He shook his head. “Too dry to smell,” he called directly into her ear. Then he tightened his arm around her, pulling her down until she kissed her knees as they ducked for the fifth time in as many minutes to avoid flying debris. This time it looked like a fish pulled out of the dry stream, or maybe just a waterlogged branch.

The storm had wicked all the moisture from the creek, from the air, and from the land.

Champion, the solid sledge steed, writhed and tried to rise and bolt. Skeller soothed him with a caress and a firm word. Champion still quivered with the need to run away from this very nasty predator. Reluctantly Skeller wiggled his jerkin off from beneath the harp straps and fashioned it into a blindfold for Champion. Instantly the steed settled, though his nostrils twitched and his skin still rippled.

Around them, the other drovers did the same for their own frightened steeds.

“There is definitely something rotten in the air that wasn’t there before,” Lillian insisted the moment he settled back beside her, not certain if Skeller heard more than every other syllable.

He shrugged and encouraged her to rest her head on his shoulder, his shirt cool and wet beneath her cheek. They watched the circling air another moment, crying inwardly as trees, rocks, and more animals succumbed to the sucking power of the wind. Darkness began to fall, discernible only by a shift in the density of the clouds that covered the sky from horizon to horizon.

“Fermenting apples and a skunk getting drunk on them,” she said, trying to separate out the scents within the malodorous air. A renewed gust of wind wrapping around the continent so that it could reach the Bay and the center of the chaos brought the smell more intensely. She nearly gagged.

It came from the west. The same direction Val had taken with Ariiell.

“Val!” she gasped. “Val, where are you?” Lillian turned her head toward the source of the foulness. Her heart lodged in her throat. She shifted to get to her knees and send her thoughts to her twin.

Skeller yanked her down again. “You can’t do anything now! Even if you can get to your feet without being blown over, you can’t walk into the wind. It’s too strong. You have to wait. Think and wait. You are not a steed too frightened to know what is safest!”

Lillian blinked tears out of her eyes, as much in fear for Val as from the dust and the sharply acrid smell. “There’s magic underneath the rot.” She wasn’t sure if she said that or merely thought it. The raging wind yanked her breath out of her body faster than she could draw new dust-laden air into her lungs.

Magic. Rot. Her mind jerked back to the dreadful battle in the middle of the University courtyard. Jaylor and Glenndon had joined their magic and their staffs to control the geyser of pure energy shooting up from the Well of Life. Val was still in her flywacket form in order to heal, while a large black snake with six leathery wings along her spine advanced with her cohort of mates, killing all that stood in her path. She aimed for anyone with magical talent to feed upon their blood. Queen Rossemikka and Princess Rosselinda looked particularly enticing with their dragon-blessed royal blood and magical talents.

Lillian and Val had done their best to help two elderly magicians uproot the iron pole sunk into the Well. The iron poisoned the magic in the raw energy and drove it into eruption.

But those snakes? Krakatrice. Enemies of dragons. They thrived in arid climes and actively worked to build dirt dams that channeled rivers away from their territory, turning vast acres into sere desert. A thousand years after their destruction by the Stargods, the Big Continent was just recovering fertility beyond the damp coastline.

Last spring the matriarch Krakatrice—not fully matured but still nearly ten feet long and as thick as a twenty-year-old tree—had smelled like the air that assailed Lillian from every direction at once.

“Stargods! Those damnable snakes are invading Coronnan. Who would dare?”

Surely Skeller must have heard about them in the lore of his homeland.

“What?” Skeller demanded. He grabbed her by both shoulders, digging his fingers into her flesh with frightful urgency. “What about snakes?”

“Krakatrice,” she breathed. “They smell just like that.” She pointed west, toward where her silent sister had traveled.

“Great Mother. He wouldn’t dare.” Skeller dropped his head, resting his chin on his chest.

Lillian reached to smooth his tangled hair, darkened by sweat. It wasn’t long enough to pull back into a proper queue, not that the wind wouldn’t rip it free of any restraints. Her own braids and stray strands whipped into her mouth and eyes anytime she tried to peer around the solid bulk of Champion.

“Who? Who wouldn’t dare?” Instinctively she knew she needed this information and had to pass it on to Da. But how could she do that with Valeria so far away and unable to penetrate the magic that permeated the dust clouds? And Lukan? Where was her brother when she most needed him? He’d been silent for days, neither sending nor receiving calls from his sisters.

Never mind, she’d find a way. When the storm was over. For even a Krakatrice could not move through this unnatural storm. Unless they were the source of the storm, creating a desert here as they had done across the ocean.

“My father’s chief adviser, a magician from Coronnan. He seeks to destroy your king and his magicians. I don’t know why, only that he advises the King of Amazonia with subtle smirks and prods to break the alliance and build his army for invasion,” Skeller confessed. “They have offered a bounty for any dormant eggs found in the desert. They are using the snakes to subdue their enemies—make them cower in terror before an invading army.”

“Your . . . your father is a king?” Lillian gulped, barely hearing anything other than that.

Skeller nodded.

“And you’re a prince?” Her daydreams of finding a future with him withered into dust as dry as the stuff pelting them. The untalented daughter of a magician and a woods witch could never aspire to linking with a foreign prince. He had other, higher-born ladies awaiting him. Eagerly.

“Not really. In Amazonia—actually all of Mabastion—men aren’t supposed to rule, except through their wives. Father usurped the throne from Mother when she passed. I have no sisters. He’ll have to give up the throne to my cousins sooner or later. But until then he rules in his own perverse way, and now he listens to a magician bent on revenge. We don’t have much use for magicians. Early queens banished them to solitary towers and never listened to them. And . . . and King Lokeen plots to marry a highborn woman who will give him a daughter so that he can continue as her regent.”

“Samlan,” Lillian said flatly.

“Who?”

“A rogue magician who defied my father in a circle of magicians and left with a small cohort of masters and journeymen. We didn’t know where he went. Now I know. I have to tell my Da.” She looked around again, anxious to find a bowl and a flame to join with her tiny shard of glass. But there was no water left anywhere and the wind would extinguish any form of fire in a heartbeat, if she could manage to light one.