The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 (35 page)

T
IME 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 heart.

“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.

“I have to go back to Amazonia,” he said, coming to a decision that had nagged him since the first letter from his father. A letter that reminded him of his duty elsewhere. “I hope not forever, but for a time.”

“I know,” Lily said, raising her eyes from her study of the staff, learning every line of the wood grain.

Skeller touched the letters in his script. “My father calls me home. He has corrupted Amazonia in partnership with Samlan. There are others who could end his tyranny, bring peace and compromise back to my homeland. But I seem to be the only one who will do it. I have to go. It is my duty.” Deliberately he released his hands from her and took a step toward the path away from this awful place of carnage.

“Skeller!” Lily reached out toward him. When he made no move to capture her hand with his own, an extreme effort, she dropped her hand to her sister’s shoulder. She leaned heavily on the bit of driftwood. No, it was her staff, highly prized among magicians. “I did it for you, Skeller. So you would not have to live with that man’s death on your hands.”

“I was prepared. I could deal with it because it was necessary.”

“Exactly,” Val said for her sister. “It was necessary. Lily did by mundane means what Samlan least expected and could not defend himself against.”

“I have no magic. I could have done the same,” Skeller said softly.

“Could you?” Lily captured his gaze with her own. All he saw was pain.

“Or would Samlan have expected a mundane attack from a bard, the son of King Lokeen?” Val continued for her sister. “He wouldn’t expect a mere woman to deal the death blow. My memories of him at the University taught me that he had little respect or use for women. He wouldn’t consider Lily capable, and so dismissed her as a threat. You, Skeller, could not get close to him.”

They all stood in silence a long moment, instinctively edging away from the incoming tide, but not toward the natural cavern that led to the castle. No, they moved toward the village, toward mundane life.

“So, you are returning to Amazonia,” Ariiell summed up the conversation. “I’m taking Valeria back to the Clearing in the mountains so that she can heal and regain strength. We’ll look after Jule and Sharl.”

Val didn’t look too happy about that. Then she sighed and nodded acceptance. “It’s what I need.”

“Where do I belong?” Graciella asked, looking up toward the forbidding walls of Castle Saria. “Not here.”

“Then return to your husband in the city, or to your mother. Or go back to the Forest University. The choice is yours, my lady,” Lily said.

Graciella looked frightened at the need to make a decision. A choice.

She hugged herself and looked at nothing.

Ariiell rolled her eyes in near disgust and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll help you sort through your choices. The University for now, I think. But only for so long. I’m having trouble holding to my own decisions.”

“Where’s Lukan?” Skeller asked, drawing his awareness to the larger group and away from his own hurt and emptiness. The time had come to travel again. His feet itched to start the journey he didn’t want to take, though he knew he must. Just like the first time he’d run away from home—wishing to stay, knowing he couldn’t. Shouldn’t.

Great Mother, he wanted to hold Lily close and kiss away their hurts. But if he did that, he’d never do what he must. Go home.

“Lukan is following Krej and Rejiia,” Ariiell said. Briefly she recounted their encounter with the infamous rogue magicians.

They all found a bit of humor in Rejiia’s reaction to a drenching. Skeller heard the chords of the rousing chorus of that tale in his head, felt it in his fingers.

“They are still a threat, Ariiell,” Lukan said, stumbling down the steep path to join them. “When Rejiia stopped running just beyond the curtain wall, I threw my knife. She’s bleeding from the upper left arm. Maybe she was already wounded and running opened it again. I don’t know. They are running again, out beyond the fields. Even if they return, they won’t find Krej’s glass. His magic is crippled without it.”

He held up a wad of silk with near-reverence. “Coronnan has a bit more time to heal before those two are ready to gather forces and launch an attack. I was promised a staff and a journey. I’m taking it.”

Lily straightened enough to pull him into a hug. “Where?” she gulped.

“I’ll deliver Da’s letter to Glenndon. Then I’ll find a staff and go in search of Master Robb and his apprentices. I’m thinking Amazonia. The scrying spell sent the pendulum swinging across the map from Lake Apor to Amazonia. We know Lord Laislac was in league with Samlan and Lokeen. That’s the connection. If Robb isn’t in Aporia, then he’s across the ocean. Do you need a traveling companion, Your Highness?” He bowed slightly toward Skeller.

Skeller could only nod acceptance. Sadness at separating from Lily choked him beyond speech. Realization of all he was leaving in Coronnan dug deeper into his gut. He wanted to double over in physical pain.

“Coronnan needs nurturing. The land needs seeds and a gentle touch. The people need healing.” Lily looked off into the distance. “I need time alone with my grief and pain.”

“You can’t leave me,” Val protested, holding her sister tighter.

“You and I will never be totally alone.” Lily returned the hug with a weak smile. “I’m only a thought away. The sea gifted me with a staff. I’ll take my own journey.” She held up the smooth stick and examined the wood grain closely, committing it to memory. It was a constant reminder for her of why she would wander the land. Alone.

Perhaps more alone than Skeller would ever be. “Someday . . . when we all have grown away from this terrible day, I will come back for you,” he whispered.

If duty and family and arranged marriages didn’t interfere.