“From where do you hail, fellow traveler?” Zolltarn led Jaylor to a stump beside the largest fire.
Caution, Jaylor warned himself. Rovers had a talent for reading thoughts. He couldn’t allow this barbaric chieftain to suspect he was a magician on quest. He’d come this far without violating any of the rules of secrecy that surrounded such tests.
Except that in the last village a one-eyed derelict had called him “magician” as he left the pub.
“Here and there. Over the next hill and beyond.” It was the truth in a way, just not the whole truth. Another of the rules on this endless journey.
“Your accent speaks of education. Why is it you rove when you could be usefully employed? Why is it you bring with you no trading caravan when only merchants follow the roads of Coronnan?”
“The only goods I have left are in my pack,” Jaylor said truthfully.
“Your hair is ruddy brown, not black, your eyes are soft and your skin pink like that of a city dweller too long in the sun. You have not the look of a Rover.” Zolltarn’s eyes squinted in the smoke from the fire.
“One roves. One looks as one looks.” Jaylor avoided Zolltarn’s probing gaze. “Was there no magician at the border to grant or deny you entrance?” he parried Zolltarn’s question with another.
Several Rover men moved closer. Jaylor felt his armor strengthen. His magic didn’t trust these people.
“In this forgotten corner of Coronnan? No one bothers with a border. Not since Lord Krej inherited the province, anyway.” The Rover snorted as he fingered the wicked blade in his belt. “Your question tells me you did not cross the border at this point. Perhaps you never crossed it at all.”
“The people of Coronnan do not rove, as you said. Therefore, I must hail from elsewhere.” Did that qualify as a lie? He was concentrating so hard on keeping Zolltarn at bay with words that he didn’t care if he spoke the truth or not.
“Magicians wander on quest.” Zolltarn eased his body closer to Jaylor. “Magicians whose hair almost always shows traces of red.” The smell of Tambootie now dominated the camp odors. “Your aura, too, bears the colors of magic, traveler of Coronnan.”
“If I were other than a weary wanderer, would I tell you?”
“No answer tells me all, magician.” He laughed loud and long. The men joined him in the momentary revelry.
Jaylor stiffened his spine. He didn’t see anything funny about being a magician. It was a talent he held with pride. Most of the time. As long as more adept magicians didn’t ridicule him because a traditional spell failed.
He scanned the hollow nervously. The women were busy around the fires. He caught the eye of a girl just barely of marriageable age. She smiled and ducked her head flirtatiously. Her eyes continued to seek him through long lashes.
“It takes the strength of a sledge steed to become a magician.” Zolltarn’s mirth eased. “I imagine you need much food and wine to maintain your powers. We’ll feed you well, magician.”
Why did his statement seem unfinished?
“Are you going to share this handsome stranger, Papa?” The girl who had smiled at Jaylor stepped into the light of the fire. She was tall, like her mother, with a majestic carriage that showed her splendid bosom to advantage.
The men behind Jaylor moved back a half pace. Each man drew a knife from his belt and toyed with the overlong blade. Jaylor’s spine tingled with expectation of a killing blow at any moment. But he couldn’t concentrate on the men. The girl’s presence drew his mind and emotions.
Shifting shadows enhanced her beauty. Jaylor’s bones melted as his eyes traced the clean lines of cheek and nose, full mouth, snapping eyes. She had the blacker-than-black hair of her tribe, the wild-colored skirts and deeply dipping bodice of the other women. But she was younger, slimmer, more beautiful. Much more beautiful.
Suspicions faded from his mind, along with Zolltran, and the other men with their wickedly long knives.
Once again Jaylor caught the enticing smell of musk and Tambootie. He felt himself falling into the alluring spell of the girl’s dark glance and blossoming womanhood.
“Ah, Maija, you find this stranger pretty?” Zolltarn laughed as he pounded Jaylor’s back heartily.
Zolltarn shouldn’t have been able to touch him! How had he penetrated the armor?
“Pretty enough.” The girl slid onto the narrow piece of stump on the other side of Jaylor. Her bare arms brushed against him. The smoothness of her skin sent shivers to his groin. She, too, was touching him when her hand should have been repulsed. “And strong. He will breed sons with strong magic. We need strong men with stronger magic in the tribe.”
This beauty presented a greater danger than any of the armed men. They could only deprive him of his life.
Stargods! She could deprive him of his magic.
Once more he scanned the scene, this time estimating his chance of escape. The men continued to ring the log where he sat.
He stood, separating himself from the girl and her hypnotic beauty. “My road is long. I cannot afford to linger with you.” He stepped toward his pack and staff. When had he allowed them out of his grasp? A young Rover with broken teeth and a malicious grin stepped in front of the gear.
Maija edged closer to him. The heat of her body penetrated the worn leather of his journey clothes. He felt his neck and face grow equally warm. Her breath whispered across his nape. Desire for her masked the danger of the men and their knives.
He longed to enclose her in his arms, to fit her close against his body. Her womanly scent, heightened by Tambootie, clouded his senses.
When did a magician know if his magic was strong enough to withstand an encounter with a woman? Was it before or after he achieved his quest?
Did he dare take the chance?
Not yet! He was too close. With a tremendous effort Jaylor pushed her away. A knife blade across his throat stopped any further movement.
“Sit, magician. You will stay the night. You will provide us with what we need,” Zolltarn hissed behind him.
But it was Maija who wielded the sharp blade that tickled the sensitive skin beneath his half-grown beard.
No wonder his armor had broken down. His own lust had lowered his defenses. Reluctantly, Jaylor sat. Maija’s knife disappeared, but he had no doubt she could draw it again and slit his throat faster than he could escape.
Jaylor searched for idle conversation that would engage them all until his mind cleared. Something he could concentrate on other than Maija. “You’ve wandered far. Have you had any trouble with dragons?”
“Dragons! The curse of us all. Do not speak of them, lest they hear you and come again.” Zolltarn and Maija both made a superstitious, and useless, gesture of protection, wrists crossed and hands fluttering like wings. A gesture that was older than the cross of the Stargods. Perverted magic was the only evil. Gestures couldn’t help against a rogue magician.
“Come again? You’ve seen them?” Jaylor pressed. This was great news. He was closer to the end of his quest than he thought. The information gained during a night in Rover company could shorten his journey considerably. He’d learn what he could from these people, but he wouldn’t give them what they demanded.
“Nay. Who ever sees a dragon? They toy with us instead, sending their s’murghin’ dragon-dreams.” Zolltarn shook his head in grief. Maija pouted.
“Dragon-dreams?” Old Baamin had evaded discussion of that undefined term with great dexterity. “Of what nature are these dreams? I presume they are dangerous.”
“Dangerous! Nothing less than murderous. May the Gods who descended from the stars protect us.” This time he crossed himself in the accepted manner.
Zolltarn’s wife thrust bowls of stew into their hands, then gestured with her head for the girl to come away with her. “Wait until he has eaten,” she whispered to her daughter.
Sad silence hovered around them. The older man stirred his dinner absently with a horn spoon. The other Rovers turned away from Jaylor and
ate with grim determination. Their knives were still too lose in their sheaths for Jaylor to risk running.
Jaylor tasted his meal. The spices burned his tongue. A welcome discomfort if it kept his mind off Maija. She sat with the women, her back half turned to him. Restlessly, she shifted her position, hiking her bright skirt to her knees.
“Why are dragon-dreams so dangerous?” Jaylor spoke softly, enticing an answer from a preoccupied Zolltarn. His eyes strayed to Maija’s shapely calves and ankles.
“My clan is murdered and you ask why the dreams that delude are dangerous!” Zolltarn shouted again as he leaped to his feet. The others stared. He sank back to his seat heavily. “Six men and three boys, nearly men. One night after moonset they were caught in some grand vision of bliss and just wandered off. By the time we found them, some had fallen, their bodies crumpled at the bottom of a cliff. Others were lying facedown in small creeks too shallow to be a danger to anyone. They all died with beautiful smiles on their faces. Two men we never found. I hope they died before wild beasts got to them.” The man looked older, his shoulders slumped.
“When? When did this happen?” Jaylor pressed while Zolltarn was still vulnerable.
“At the solstice, just after the big storm.”
No wonder so many of the women were breeding. This Rover clan desperately needed to replace the lost men and boys.
As soon as he’d eaten he’d find a way to escape. He had a knife of his own tucked into his boot. Staying the night looked more dangerous than the value of their dragon lore.
He took another bite of stew, savoring the sizzling seasoning. A drum and a string-gamba sounded on the other side of the fire. Jaylor felt the vibrations of the primitive music through the ground against his thin boots. The hot spots on his tongue thrummed an answer to the beat.
Two huge gulps finished his meal. Its fire made his eyes and ears swell and throb in tempo with the rising music. He cast around for a place to put his empty bowl while he watched the camp celebrate the first full day of spring. Perhaps when they began drinking and singing, he could slip away. The bowl vanished into willing hands, the same hands that pushed him closer to the ring of fires.
Maija stood, swaying freely to the music. Her skirts swirled about her ankles and bare feet, her hips undulated in a rhythm suggestive of a more primitive, more intimate dance. Her feet stamped out the music as she circled the camp, once, twice, a third time.
Jaylor’s teeth throbbed, his blood sang with her steps. Each spin lifted her skirts higher, revealing more and more of the length of her lovely legs, drawing his eyes and imagination into the secrets of her body. Her movements grew faster with the increasing tempo of the music. She circled and spun widdershins around the fire in a parody of a planet around the sun.
All thought of magic and defense drained from Jaylor. He could only think—feel the dance. When a slender, feminine hand reached for his, he needed to extend his arm, to touch her in order to complete the pattern of sun and moon and stars. He became the music, swirling, pounding, undulating. One more note, one more beat in the rhythm of time.
Chapter 5
“You put too much timboor in his stew, Maman!” Jaylor heard Maija’s strident complaint through the fog that numbed his tongue and made jelly of his limbs.
Timboor. The fruit of Tambootie was a dangerous drug avoided by all, even a master magician. It could calm a hysterical child, ease a racing heart, or put one to sleep—forever.
As part of his training Jaylor had had to spend a night and a day in a closed room with only a Tambootie wood fire for heat and light. It was a rite of passage as well as a test of his abilities to control his magic under the drugging effect of the smoke.
There had been only one door in that cold stone room. It, too, was stone and securely bolted from the other side.
He’d left that stone room dizzy, sick, hallucinating. In his delirium, his heart had beat irregularly for weeks afterward, while his newly awakened loins ached for release.
One obscure text in the University library claimed that in the right dosage, timboor gave a man the stamina of a wild steed in rut. Or at least enough to satisfy a small harem.
This band of Rovers must be very desperate for his seed if they’d dosed him with timboor.
As he puzzled over the implications of his predicament, Jaylor found a spell deep in his memory. If he could just lift his leaden hand to form the proper gesture with the murmured words of the traditional spell. Hair’s widths at a time, he moved his hand into view. It was so heavy he needed the other hand just to lift it. But that hand was heavier still.
In the end, it was easier to roll onto his side and leave the weary hand resting on the pounded dirt beneath him.
He placed an image in his mind of his hand following the prescribed gesture.
“He’s not dead,” the voice of Maija’s companion announced. “See, he rouses.”
Jaylor froze in mid-thought.
“Rouses. Not rises.” Maija spat. “He’s useless!”
“Useless now, perhaps.” The older woman cajoled. “Later, while he’s still docile, he’ll be more than ready to give you his seed, again and yet again.” Her chuckle was rich with lusty possibilities. “He’ll give us the child who will insure us a homeland at last. No magician’s border will stop such a child. Fifteen years we’ve searched for a magician whose strength could overpower the Commune. Fifteen years since your sister was lost and her babe with her.”
The women turned their backs on him once more.
He had a few moments, Jaylor mused. No more. He had to hurry the spell.
Smoke from the fires pierced his nostrils with unusual pungency. He could hear the pacing of one of the men outside the tent as if he were standing beside his head instead of yards away, outside this tent. If he thought about it, he could identify the man by his smell. Jaylor sorted through the odors—the rich spiciness of the stew, the dank-ness of wrinkled clothes, and bruised grass—to find the unique smell of the youngster with the malicious smile and broken teeth. Jaylor recalled the features of the last man to sheathe his blade after Maija had approached Jaylor. A man whose own lust for the young beauty was strong, even without timboor.
A second man joined the first, his footsteps loud on the moist grass. The passage of wind as he swatted at an insect sounded like the raging thunderstorm at the solstice that had flooded an already drenched Coronnan. His senses were magnified; why couldn’t he move? He had to escape before Maija joined him on this crude pallet. If he waited much longer, his quest and his magic would end forever.
Slowly he manipulated his hand, mouthing the spell.
Feeling rushed with painful tingles back into his fingers. Each grain of dirt rasped against his sensitive palm. Concentrating on that hand, he reinforced the spell. His body responded.
He needed a focus. Something to channel the energy of his overactive mind to his limbs. His staff and pack lay nearby. Someone had moved them into the tent with his body when he blacked out. How long ago? Carefully, lest he alert the women, Jaylor reached for the staff. It was too far from the end of his fingers to grasp. He stretched as far as he could and only succeeded in pushing it farther away.
“Come here,” he commanded as he strained to reach it again. The staff obeyed, appearing in his outstretched hand almost before it disappeared from its resting place.
Jaylor grabbed the instrument and tapped each foot as he whispered the proper words.
Again, control and strength returned with a painful rush. He flexed and twisted his muscles until the pricking subsided. Now if he could just sneak past the two waiting women without being seen.
He gathered his energy slowly and levered himself into a crouch. The women’s conversation rose in distress. He froze in his uncomfortable position. They turned and stared at him.
“See how heavily he sleeps!” Maija wailed. “We’re running out of time. We have to move again at dawn or risk discovery.”
She didn’t see him, saw only what she tho
ught she should see. Or rather what Jaylor wanted her to see. How could that be? He hadn’t thrown a delusion at her. He shouldn’t have the energy for it. Any normal man would have been brought to the brink of death by that dose of timboor.
Cautiously, he stood. Maija continued her conversation as if nothing had changed. Jaylor summoned his pack. It thumped against his shoulder. He grabbed it with his left hand before it fell. Still the women saw nothing unusual.
He must be invisible! He looked back to the pallet. A shadowy form reclined there. In his need to escape he’d projected that shadow to delude the women.
Outside the canvas walls, pack steeds snorted, birds awoke, insect chirps faded. He smelled the dawn dampness and knew he must move quickly, before sunlight revealed his shadow and the women decided to investigate the form they thought they saw lying on the ground.
One bold step after another Jaylor paced to the tent flap. No one stopped him. He saluted the camp with his staff in relief as he silently slipped into the protection of the woods.
Large hands, callused, with splotches of dark hair on the back reached for Brevelan. They grasped her arms, cruelly. Bruises would form in the shape of his fingers. She screamed and screamed again. Desperately, she tried to wrench herself away from the hot breath of the black-haired man who held her. Each movement only tightened his grip, brought the heat of his body closer. One last scream and twist of her body. She was free!
She was awake.
Brevelan breathed deeply, trying to calm her racing heart. Cold sweat covered her face and back. She was so tangled in her blankets she couldn’t break free to clear her mind and body of the nightmare. She rolled off the oversized bed onto the hard-packed earth of her own cottage deep in the woods.
The cat, Mica, lifted one round-pupiled eye in mild curiosity then settled back into a sleeping ball at the foot of the cot. The wolf by her side lifted his head. His warm tongue darted out to lick her hand.
The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I Page 5
