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Authors: Irene Radford

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BOOK: The Wizard's Treasure (The Dragon Nimbus)

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“Link together, Jaylor to my right with Iianthe between us. Each of you stand on a point of the eight-pointed star.” Jack forced his hands to relax as he gently caressed Iianthe’s horn bud. Unlike Amaranth’s, this one had grown. It had started to spiral into a sharp point.

Shayla crooned in the background. The baby dragon coiled his tail around himself. At least it wasn’t sticking straight out and elevated in preparation to bolt.

“Rovers induce a trancelike state through music and dance. They then draw magical energy from all life by reaching out and touching it with their heightened senses,” Jack reminded the other magicians. “That’s how the original spell began.”

There’d be no dancing to recreate a Rover spell tonight. Jack had to remain rooted beside Iianthe in order to gather dragon magic.

But the men of the Commune could sing and move their feet while standing in one place.

Jack gave out his instructions quietly. No sense in spooking Iianthe. He reached for the shoulder of the man to his left. Jaylor placed one hand on Jack’s shoulder to complete the circle of eight magicians.

They chanted the poetry of the Rovers, words Jack had dredged up from his memory and sent to the other men to memorize earlier in the day.

And then they marched in place, keeping time with the rhythmic repetition of the song.

Iianthe shifted uneasily beneath Jack’s hand. He sped up the chant and the march. His eyes crossed as the power rose within him. It grew, expanded, writhed like a living being in a myriad of colors representing each of the magicians in the circle.

Jack drew a deep breath and grabbed the power, molding it to his will. Between one heartbeat and the next the auras of every being within the circle took on the lavender-and-silver overtones of his magical signature.

Amaranth responded to the compulsion within the chant, shrinking, collapsing in on himself, absorbing all the light his silvery hide normally reflected. He darkened as he shrank until . . . until . . .

A black cat, so dark its fur reflected purple lights stood beside the queen. It yowled loudly and fluttered black-feathered wings. A flywacket. A creature of legend and prophecy.

In that instant, Jack grabbed at the source of the queen’s double aura and yanked.

Amaranth yowled again.

Iianthe reared up, breaking Jack’s contact.

The circle of magic dissolved.

Jack doubled over in exhaustion with a curious pain in his gut. Strange afterimages showed around everything he tried to focus his eyes upon.

“I’m free!” Mikka shouted as she sank to her knees. Her head looked too heavy for her neck to support. “I’m free of that blasted cat.” Tears of joy streamed down her face. Her husband rushed forward and knelt beside her, scuffing the marks of the eight-pointed star. He cradled her against him, kissing away her tears.

“Are you hurt?” Darville cupped her face in his long-fingered hands.

“A curious emptiness. Tired. A little dizzy—disoriented.” Her strength gave out. She collapsed in a faint. Darville caught her.

“Thank you, young man.” Darville looked up from his wife’s peaceful countenance. “We—all of Coronnan—owe you a debt of gratitude. Hopefully, now we can stabilize the succession without Lord Laislac and his daughter.”

“I’d best send you home, Your Grace, before you are missed,” Jaylor said. He took a deep breath. His face still looked a little gray.

“No more magic until you all eat!” Brevelan proclaimed.

“Food,” Jack murmured, recognizing the cause of some of his disorientation. The afterimages continued to plague his vision like half-formed ghosts. His skin felt clammy, and his knees wobbled. “I need food.”

An unknown journeyman stuffed a hunk of bread into Jack’s hand, followed by a thick slab of cheese.

Jack ate hungrily, methodically. He had to restore his energies quickly.

“Jack, I’ll see you in my study in the morning. We need to discuss security within the palace.” Darville swallowed convulsively.

“SeLenicca,” Jack croaked. “You promised to send Katrina and me to SeLenicca as ambassadors.”

“Later. I need you in Coronnan City more than I need you across the border now that the war is over. We still have an eavesdropping rogue to find.” Darville dismissed the suggestion.

“I’ve got to take Katrina home, Your Grace. Now.”

Three deep breaths and the void beckoned him. “Come, Amaranth.” The flywacket leaped into his arms. Three more breaths and he sent them both into the void in search of his true love.

CHAPTER 22

Z
ebbiah hustled Jaranda and the pack beast onto the sailing vessel amidst shouts for haste from the captain and crew—who all looked amazingly like the Rover except they wore blue and green on their black clothing instead of purple and red. The pack beast protested the plank up to the ship’s deck vehemently and tried to sit down again in the middle of it.

The woman pushed the animal from behind with a sharp stick, trying her best to keep it from parking its rear anywhere but on the deck. Zebbiah called no orders to her, nor did he look to see if she followed. They had made a bargain; therefore, he must presume she followed.

Eight passengers, all dressed in rough clothing, moved abruptly to the far side of the open-decked vessel giving the Rover and his beast more than enough room to settle for the long voyage upriver.

The woman inspected the other passengers openly. All of the women but one wore a single plait that started at the crown and gathered closely to the head to the nape where it broke free into a thick rope of a braid. Two of them had not bothered with the complex four strand plait but sufficed with the simpler three strand braid. The other woman wore two plaits that started at her temples and stayed close to her head to the nape, then swung free for a short space and joined into a single thick plait halfway down her back. She must come from a merchant family. The others were all peasants.

Not knowing who she was or what her status was, the unnamed woman had gathered her own hair into a thick knot at her own nape. Jaranda’s hair, she had tied back with a green ribbon to match her dress. They, like their fellow passengers, wore sturdy dark skirts and vests with white, long-sleeved shifts beneath.

She caught the eye of the woman wearing two plaits. The merchant’s wife turned up her nose and spun on her heel to face the water on the other side of the vessel. The peasant women followed suit.

The men talked amongst themselves and paid no attention to the newcomers.

Jaranda did not seem to care about the people. She skipped about looking at everything, watching the crew as they cast off the lines and set the sail.

“Zebbiah, what plagues them?” the woman whispered to her traveling companion.

He looked up from tending to the stubborn beast that carried all their worldly wealth and supplies.

“We made them late. They are displeased.” He shrugged and returned to the beast’s reins, tethering them to a brass ring embedded into the decking.

“ ’Tis more than that, Zebbiah. Displeasure at our tardiness would evoke curses and grumbling, not this silent disdain.” Why did she know that? An image, a very old image, flashed across her mind’s eye. She stood and watched a parade of noblemen and courtiers as they exited the king’s audience chamber. One of them turned and faced her squarely. “This war with Coronnan will benefit no one. No one. We’d be better off governing ourselves than submitting to
his
demands for more money, more war, more slaves, more sacrifices.”

She tried to put a name to the man’s face. She tried to place herself in the crowd. She tried to remember who
he
was.

The images faded to mists.

“You remembering something?” Zebbiah asked.

“Not quite. Has our country been at war long?”

“Over three years.” No further comment good or bad. No information as to the cause. Just that war had become a part of life.

“And is all this devastation a part of the war?” She swept a hand to include the city behind the docks that drifted farther and farther away.

“Partly.”

She raised her eyebrows, waiting for more information. He sat down on a cargo bale and began plaiting a piece of leather he drew from the panniers.

Slightly miffed, she marched over to the women crowding against the far railing. “Good morning, ladies. Are you traveling all the way to the end of the river?” she asked politely.

Two-plaits sniffed as if she smelled something rancid. “Riffraff, tainting true-blood with dark-eyed outlanders,” she spat.

“Wouldn’t have this problem if the council hadn’t made mixed marriages legal so Queen Miranda could marry an outlander,” a stout woman added. She wore a clumsy braid that looked as if it had not been washed or combed in a month.

Two-plaits looked pointedly at red-haired Jaranda.

“I don’t suppose you know my name, ladies?”

“A name that’s too good for you, if you ask me,” two-plaits replied and moved as far into the bow as she could, away from them all.

“Somehow, I didn’t expect you to say that.”

“Stargods, they make a lot of demands for ghosts!” Yeenos, Vareena’s older brother protested. “Bad enough we have to feed two more of them with no respite from the last one. Now they want special herbs and minerals, crystals, and our soap-making cauldrons. I say no. We feed them because the Stargods decree we must. But no more!” He swung his shepherd’s crook in a wide circle before slamming the crook against a watering trough.

“Yeenos, calm down.” Vareena ducked the staff, well used to her brother’s temper. She had seen Marcus do the same thing with his staff. Robb seemed to have better control of his temper and treated his staff more gently. “These new ghosts claim that another ghost, a true ghost of a man who has died, haunts the monastery and causes live men to become trapped there, halfway between here and their next existence.”

“What else is a ghost?” Yeenos sneered, then he whistled for his dog to run the sheep farther uphill from the farmhouse.

“I don’t know. But they refuse to believe they are true ghosts, and they need these things to work a spell that will lay the other ghost to rest and free them from the trap.” Vareena rubbed her hands together nervously. She’d have gone to Uustass for help, but he had led a dozen men to the river this morning with scythes. The village needed fresh grass and reeds to repair the thatch on several dwellings and byres.

Jeeremy Baker had gone with them, his burns heavily bandaged but no longer in pain.

“I agree with Yeenos,” Vareena’s father Ceddell said, coming over to them from the byre. “We owe the ghosts food. That was the curse laid on this village three hundred years ago for refusing hospitality to a benighted traveler.
S’murghin’
magician.” He crossed his wrists and flapped his hands as he spat onto the ground. “But we owe them nothing more. I’ll not be spending our resources to find these odd ingredients for a useless bit of magic.” He kicked the water trough and called his dog to his heels, away from the flock Yeenos worked with his own dogs.

“But, Papa, if we can end this curse once and for all . . .”

“We’ve had priests and magicians alike trying to end the curse with no luck.”

“But these ghosts are magicians trapped by the curse, not magicians working outside of it. They might have a chance . . .”

“You’ve gone and fallen in love with one of them, haven’t you!” Ceddell raised his voice and his hand in anger.

Vareena stepped back but did not duck. She faced her father, refusing to submit to his violence. She might be as trapped here as the ghosts, but she refused to lessen herself by accepting any man’s abuse.

“Your mother did the same thing, before I showed her the wrong of it.”

“Showed her with your fists, no doubt.” Vareena schooled her voice and features to betray none of her fear or her disgust.

“I’ll find you a husband this night. Then you’ll give up this nonsense.”

BOOK: The Wizard's Treasure (The Dragon Nimbus)

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