The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 (33 page)

L
ILY SURVEYED THE
contents of her knapsack one more time. She and the others had agreed to pack lightly for this trip to Castle Saria. None of them, not even Graciella, who was supposed to stay there until her baby was born, wanted to linger there. Lily thought about leaving the lady at home in the Clearing within the protection of the University. But Graciella jumped at every loud noise, was often distracted, and broke into tears frequently.

Perhaps Maigret and Linda could watch over her. But they had charge of Jule and Sharl, along with Maigret’s two boys and the burden of missing Robb preying on them all. There was also the added responsibility of Maigret assuming the chancellorship of the Forest University when Marcus returned to the old University in the city. Lily couldn’t ask them to take on more responsibility.

So, she checked Graciella’s pack as well. Her fingers curved around a small, lumpy, cloth sack she didn’t remember adding to the change of clothes, essential food and emergency medical herbs and bandages. Slowly she withdrew the unknown sack, fearing what she’d find.

One whiff of the contents told her. Rosehip candy. “I thought we got rid of all this,” she muttered as she threw it all into the low burning fire in the cabin hearth. “Why does she still crave this if she’s decided to keep the baby, protect and nurture it?”

“Because my lord husband is not the father of this brat,” Graceilla said flatly, coming in from the Clearing. “The others are waiting for you. They sent me to find you,” she said without any more expression than before.

“There are other ways to lose the baby. Safer ways,” Lily said. She began spinning plots in her head to find a balance in the woman’s mind and body.

Graciella looked away.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Lily said gathering both knapsacks. “We’ll decide if you stay at Castle Saria or come home with me after . . . after we complete this mission.”

Graciella stared at the fire longingly for a moment.

Just as Lily was about to say something to break Graciella’s absorption, something pale and flat fluttered to the ground in front of her. A quarter-fold piece of parchment sealed with a heavy blob of sea-green wax bearing an ornate impression, like a royal seal. “A letter?” She bent to retrieve it, reading the address on the front as she straightened.

“Skeller,” she called.

He appeared almost immediately. His face lost color and his smile vanished as he spied the seal. Mutely he took the letter from her, turning it over and over without opening it. Finally he eased a finger under the wax and pried the missive open with only a little tearing of the parchment, like he knew how to do that from long practice.

“Is it important?” she asked, knowing it must be, for someone to take the trouble and cost of dispatching it with magic.

Skeller kept his eyes on the written words before him. “Nothing unusual,” he said, refolding the parchment and slipping it into his harp case.

Lily’s heart skipped a beat. He’d never lied to her before. At least she’d never caught him in a lie. “No one wastes the money and energy to dispatch a letter unless it is
very
important.”

“My father thinks it is important. I don’t.”

“He wants you to come home and do your duty as a royal son.” Why else would King Lokeen of Amazonia go to the trouble of finding a magician to dispatch the letter when few magicians lived on Mabastion and didn’t hold the respect of kings and nobles as they did in Coronnan?

“Duty,” he said flatly.

Lily flashed him a weak smile. They all seemed chained by duty of one sort or another. She reached to add a packet of flusterfoot powder to thicken Graciella’s blood.

Skeller might dismiss the letter. But she couldn’t. He might be a wandering bard now, but . . . What would he be when he stopped wandering and started heeding his father’s demands?

He pulled her into a tight hug. “I have no intention of leaving you, my little love. My gentle Lily, who can’t hurt anyone or anything. You calm violence just with your presence. My father and his followers incite it. I’ll wait while you grow up a bit more in order to claim you. We were meant to find each other and be
together
.
” His words sounded defiant, fierce. Angry. “I can’t live the way they want me to anymore. I need you and your gentle ways to guide me to a better life.” He kissed the top of her head and released her.

She shied away from his banked temper.

Slowly, sensation returned to Skeller. He kept his eyes closed until his feet felt fully anchored on stone and his hands had a firm grip on Lukan’s arm. Only then did he allow a sliver of light to penetrate beneath his eyelids.

“I really don’t like that spell,” he muttered, releasing Lukan.

“Gets easier with time.” The young man grinned wickedly.

“Can’t prove it by me.” Skeller disengaged from Lukan, as if turning his attention elsewhere would settle his stomach and make the room stop spinning. They were in a room. That meant the interior of Castle Saria. He hoped they’d come to the right place anyway.

“I followed Lady Graciella’s images to her private bower here in the castle,” Lukan reassured him. He turned in place taking in the stark furnishings, a simple bedframe with a thin mattress and no draperies, a straight chair and table with a shielded candle stand, no candle. A small trunk on the bare stone floor beneath a high arrow-slit window.

“The lady’s bower?” Skeller asked. “And where are the others?” He had trouble swallowing around the lump in his throat.

“Uh?” Lukan seemed surprised.

“You’re in my maid’s room,” Graciella called to them from another room close by. “We are in the bower.”

Skeller pushed his way past Lukan through the small doorway—he had to duck ungraciously and he wasn’t overly tall—into a larger room, a little more luxurious with curtains and a wider, softer bed, but not much else.

“Life is rather primitive here in the wilds,” Lady Ariiell sneered.

“We don’t spend much time here.” Graciella ducked her head as an embarrassed flush crept across her cheeks.

“I can see why. My prison tower room was more gracious than this.” Ariiell picked at the threadbare coverlet, releasing a cloud of dust.

“They’ve been in the city since early spring,” Lily defended her lady. “There should only be a few servants and guards here to maintain the buildings.”

“They obviously weren’t instructed to clean the place for your expected arrival.” Ariiell continued a restless prowl. “But then you are only recently the lady of the castle and haven’t established your authority over a bachelor household.” She shrugged and perched on the long chest at the foot of the bed. It was well polished, if coated in a layer of dust, and covered in graceful flower carvings.

Lily shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. Skeller strode three long steps to her side and placeed his arm around her shoulder. “Cold?”

She nodded. “The sea breeze.” She thrust her chin toward an unshuttered window, narrow by Amazonian standards but wider than the one in the maid’s room.

Skeller didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary.

Valeria lifted her head, also looking out that window. It faced northeast, toward where the high outcropping of rock marked the barrier between ocean and bay. Skeller had seen the shape of the place on maps. It didn’t look inviting in a drawing. Less so in person. “He’s coming,” Val whispered. “I can feel him.”

Ariiell’s and Lukan’s eyes widened as they nodded in agreement.

Lily buried her face in Skeller’s chest. He took the opportunity to enfold her with both arms. “Do you feel him too?” he asked. She’d said that her talent was minor, but with so many strong magicians in her family he wondered if she hid her powers. There was so much about her and her family he didn’t know; wanted to know; feared knowing.

At some point he had to accept that magic was an everyday part of life in Coronnan. Magic and ignorance powered their world instead of wheels, levers, and learning.

“Barely,” she said into his tunic. “Mostly I share the tingling along Val’s arms. She feels it as approaching magic. I just feel cold.”

He held her tighter.

“What about Rejiia and Krej?” Val asked. “Would they come here first?”

Lukan shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. But I thought the locals welcomed Jemmarc with open arms as a relief from Krej.”

“Not the way I heard it,” Ariiell said. As the oldest among them, though not so very much older than Skeller, she alone had firsthand knowledge of the former Lord of Saria. “He talked big. Demanded control. But he was never cruel. Not like The Simeon and Rejiia. Krej felt he was doing Coronnan a favor by getting rid of Darville and his father, that he was the only person who knew what was best. Inside his province, and as regent of Coronnan, he only punished when there was a crime to punish. His people might still revere him.”

They all stared at each other in indecision.

“We’ll look for him later,” Skeller said, taking control of the group when no one else would. “After we deal with Samlan.”

“Let’s get on with this,” Ariiell said, decisively. “I’m tired of that man interrupting my dreams.”

“I’m tired of him messing with storms and destruction,” Lukan added.

“He killed our Mama, and our Da,” Lily and Val said together.

Graciella bit her lip. “I don’t know if my husband is alive or dead. What will become of me if he can’t protect me?”

“He hasn’t been doing such a good job of that this last week,” Ariiell said. “How do we get down to the cove?”

“There’s a track to the village,” Val said leaning out the window and pointing. “I imagine we can make our way from there to the shore. I can see fishing boats out on the water on the bay side of the outcropping.”

“That’s a long walk,” Skeller said. “He might make land on the ocean side before we can prepare for him.”

“There . . . there’s another way,” Graciella said, still biting her lip. “I only know about it because Jemmarc told me how to find the secret door before I left the city. He said I needed to know in case of danger.”

“Of course there are secret escape routes. There are always secret escape routes in every castle, palace, manor, and tower I’ve ever visited or heard about,” Skeller said, mocking his own shortsighted plans.

“Get the women and children to safety first,” Lukan mused, pressing his hands against various stones on the uncovered walls. “Give the women and children easy and immediate access.” His circuit of the room took him back to the maid’s alcove.

Graciella nodded to him. “Open the chest beneath the window.”

“A trapdoor beneath a pile of ladies’ underthings. Marauding soldiers would not think of looking deeper unless alerted ahead of time,” Skeller said. Ingenious. He hadn’t heard of that sort of entrance before. He’d have to suggest it to his fa . . . to Aunt Maria.

If he ever went home again.

He had a duty. He seemed the only one willing to fix the problems Lokeen had created in Amazonia.

He could almost hear the latest letter from the King of Amazonia crackling inside his harp case.

M
IKK PUT HIS
back into sliding his shovel into the layer of muck filling the kitchen courtyard, lifting the heavy load, and letting it fall into the waiting tub. Mud and slime oozed into the hollow he left behind in front of the low double doors that led to the cistern access. He cursed under his breath and dug in again, shoulders protesting more from this work than hours in the practice arena with a heavy sword and buckler.

Glenndon could do this better with his broad shoulders and strength. But Glenndon had his own job to do, clearing another portion of the palace grounds. Everyone worked today, including the king, his pampered daughters, and his frail wife.

Mikk could have chosen to supervise the raising of a collapsed bridge to restore foot traffic between Palace Isle and University Isle. He came here because he had to. He had to be the one to reopen the cistern. He had to be the one to determine how much clean water had returned, and if they should, or could, reopen the river doors to regulate the depth and flow.

He owed General Marcelle. Everyone did.

Not yet, though. He couldn’t face the idea he’d find General Marcelle’s drowned and mangled body. The river had not yet returned to normal levels below the runoff tunnel. No one could open those doors until it did. General Marcelle’s body might be floating well out in the Great Bay by now.

He would not think of fish feasting on his flesh, or on any of the other bodies they hadn’t found yet.

He dug in again. This time his back rebelled, sending lines of fire from his butt up to the base of his skull and along his arms. His hands shook as he dumped the latest load into the tub.

A kitchen lad dragged the tub away to the dumping grounds, wherever those were.

“Good silt will make a barren garden fertile again,” Glenndon had said earlier.

Another lad shoved an empty washtub into place beside him. “I hope the city kitchen gardens flourish with all this muck,” Mikk grumbled. He leaned on his shovel handle, trying to remember how to breathe.

“Sir?” the boy asked hesitantly.

“What?” Mikk tried not to sound surly, since he was grateful for the few moments of respite. “Sir, wouldn’t it be easier to start by the kitchen door and work backward? That way the mud wouldn’t slide in to fill the space you just cleared.”

“The center of the courtyard is the lowest point and it drains out beneath the enclosing wall and into the river. The cistern access is actually higher than the kitchen steps to keep normal runoff from seeping under the doors and tainting the water.” Actually, the ground behind the doors sloped upward another few feet until reaching the ladder that led down into the natural cavern. He hoped that the design had kept the water supply clean. At least clean enough that Glenndon could remove any taint with a quick spell.

Thinking about all that water made him thirsty. Again. Did he dare ask for a drink of the cloth-filtered and boiled water the queen rationed? She alone commanded the respect of all the refugees to obey her strictures.

Mikk returned his energy to the chore. One more tubful. Six more shovelfuls and he’d take a break. Then he’d feel he’d earned a few sips of water.

“Sir, I can see the bottom!” the lad cried in triumph. He knelt in the filth and began raking away the last few inches of accumulation with his hands.

Mikk sagged with relief. This truly would be his last tubful of muck for the day.

(
A job well done is its own reward
,)
a voice announced in the back of his mind.

Shayla? Mikk here
.
He remembered naming protocols.

(Shayla here, and Baamin, and the entire nimbus at our king’s disposal.)

An ear piercing bugling, like a deep-throated horn, echoed around the palace walls, bouncing and growing with each reverberation. The lad slapped his filthy hands over his ears and ducked his head.

Mikk searched the skies for a trace of a dragon. They were close. He could feel them in the back of his mind. Was that truly a glint of yellow, as sun struck around the edges of a crystalline dragon wing?

“Dragons!” he cried in relief. “The dragons have come to help.”

“Where?” the nameless lad cringed against the stone shed that housed the cistern access.

“They won’t hurt you. They’ve come to help.”

“But . . . but what can they do? They’re so big. Big as two sledge steeds across and two more high. My grandda says so. He saw a dragon once. Once when the king was new to the crown.” He pressed himself harder against the stones, as if trying to merge with them.

“They won’t harm you. I don’t think they can. They are bound to the king by blood, tradition, and magic. They’ve come to help clean up after this disaster.” Mikk shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun with one hand, still propping himself up with the shovel handle.

“Fat lot of help they’ll be. They’re just too damn big,” the boy snorted.

“They can lift collapsed bridges off the river bottom, or rake a city street clean, or even retrieve a boat from a rooftop,” Mikk chuckled.

“If you say so, sir.”

Mikk returned to his work with a renewed sense of purpose. He could do this. He had to do this.

(Of course you can. And you will.)

Something tingled its way outward from behind Mikk’s heart, filling his arms and legs with new strength. His feet stabilized against the slippery courtyard with refreshed balance. Details of dirt and plant life and of tiny rotting fish jumped to the front of his awareness.

Suddenly he felt as if he could accomplish anything.
Shayla, what is this
?

(A gift to help you learn what you must more quickly than most.)

“Magic,” he breathed.

A low chuckle echoed around the back of his skull like the dragon call had echoed around the courtyard.

He pushed his shovel into the ground and cleared a few more inches of muck.

“We are not alone,” Valeria whispered. Her small sound echoed off the slimy walls encasing an iron spiral staircase. She hated gripping the cold metal that sent chills through her entire body. Lukan descended in front of her, keeping close enough so she could clasp his shoulder for balance. Skeller did the same for Lily. The iron didn’t seem to bother them.

“Servants,” Graciella dismissed her worries. She led the way, walking with a surety that led Val to believe she’d been here before. Possibly Lucjemm had led her this way when threatening her with the razor-sharp rocks in the cove.

Unspoken fear lodged in Val’s throat. Was it all echoes of the past? She knew criminals had been led this way to their executions upon the rocks.

No, this was something newer.
Lily, what do you feel
?

Graciella is trembling inside
.

Maybe that was it.

Ariiell stopped short behind Val. The ball of witchlight she carried on her open palm wavered and nearly blew out. It shouldn’t. Only withdrawing the spell would extinguish witchlight. She grabbed Val by the shoulder and held her back. “They are here,” she whispered. Her words did not echo or carry ahead to the others.

“Who?” Val asked, holding Lukan back as well. Had it been wise to place the three strongest magicians at the back of the line? Lily and Graciella had little magic to defend themselves with. Skeller had a long knife. Would that be enough if their enemy awaited them below?

Darkness pressed close against them, rapidly filling the gap between Lukan and Lily. Graciella’s candle lantern flickered and disappeared around yet another curve. Its light did not penetrate the shadows between them.

“The weasel and the cat,” Ariiell said.

“Didn’t Graciella see them transform?” Lukan asked. He kept a wary lookout, peering over the inside railing for signs of the others.

“They are still a weasel and a cat inside their human bodies,” Ariiell spat.

“Were they animals trapped inside human bodies before the spells? Then humans trapped inside animals . . .” Val had to ask. How else could she explain the longevity of two wild animals that should have succumbed to starvation or predators long ago. Sixteen years they’d lived wild.

“Which part of them dominates now is what we need to know,” Lukan said. “Are they cunning magicians or wild animals?”

“Both,” Ariiell insisted.

They continued downward more cautiously until they reached a broad landing where the others awaited them. A heavy door leading inward to the lower levels of the castle filled most of the wall. The stairs spiraled downward into the murky darkness. Graciella’s candle did little to alleviate the gloom. Val wondered if even witchlight would push aside the shadows down there.

“Listen,” Skeller whispered, turning toward the continuing stairs. “I can hear the boom of surf crashing onto land.”

Val picked up the sound more as a thud against her belly than noise tickling her ears.

“I have to leave you here,” Ariiell said. “I’ll guard your backs, make sure the cat and the weasel do not follow or interfere. Help me with the door, Lukan.”

“If you stay, I have to stay,” Val said hesitantly. “It is my duty . . .”

“I discharge you of your duty. I am sane now. I have acknowledged the sins of others against me as their sins, not mine. As for my own sins? I know what I did and why. I’m learning to cope with my guilt. Go, Val. Go to your other duty.” Ariiell turned her back on them and shot a hot, white stream of magic into the lock.

Before Val could follow Ariiell, Lukan hauled the door open. The massive panel nearly filled the landing. Graciella, Skeller, and Lily had to retreat down the stairs to make room for it.

“I can’t let you go alone,” Val protested. “You have not kept up your magic . . .”

“Neither have they,” Ariiell said.

“I’ll go with her, Val,” Lukan reassured his sister. “Lily needs you beside her. We’ll meet you back in the bower. Keep your mind open for our messages.” He stepped through the portal after Ariiell and pulled the heavy door closed behind him him.

That left Val the only true magician facing Samlan, a ruthless master in full command of his power.

I long to feel the Kardia beneath my feet once more. This endless rock and sloshing works against what little healing I can manage. Geon’s poison has left me weak. I can barely force myself to eat and drink to replenish myself.

Solid ground will heal me more than time or remedies.

There is little dragon magic for me to gather. I used too much in my spell to conjure the storm. This reminds me of the days right after Shayla and her consorts flew away, nigh on twenty years ago. Jaylor forced us to learn to use ley lines in order to survive as magicians. I learned, but I hated every moment of every spell. My voice rejoiced the loudest when the dragons returned.

Now I am forced once again to seek out elusive bits of magical energy that drift through the ocean. I use it to cleanse water and catch fish so that I may survive. There is barely enough magic left over to cook the fish.

But the end of my ordeal is near. Yesterday I spotted land on the horizon. Today I can make out the ragged headland that marks the opening of the cove that will shelter me. My minions await. They have been most agreeably vulnerable to my dream probes since the end of the storm. They have no choice but to serve me so that I may restore Coronnan to greatness. They will learn the necessity of my cleansing the land of the corruption brought on by Jaylor. They will worship and obey me as their savior.

Now I must watch and wait for the precise moment just after the slack tide when the currents will carry me forward. The worst of the rocks will submerge and the rest will be exposed enough for me to steer around. Fishermen have used this technique for centuries. I shall be perfectly safe if I am patient and wait just offshore for the right moment.

I have infinite patience. I have waited twenty years for Jaylor’s death and my elevation to his position so that I may guide the king along the proper path.