Pain washed back into Brevelan from the rogue magician. His spotted saber cat features blurred and faded for just a moment. His familiar face and hair as red as her own burst through the disguise.
Recognition tore at Brevelan’s consciousness.
“Enough!” Thorm shook his arm, flinging Mica to the ground. With the same gesture he righted the statue with a magic tether. His feline mask reasserted firm control over his appearance.
“Mica!” Brevelan’s scream echoed around the cave, bounced against the walls, and crashed back to the bells of magic isolation.
No response. The little cat lay limp where she had fallen. “The same fate awaits you, little witch,” Thorm—and yet not Thorm—sneered. “I’ll be back for you and your lover. Only your deaths won’t be as quick.” With one last hate-filled glare, the beast-headed monster stalked out of the cave, his glass prize in tow.
Brevelan’s anguish slammed into the green and red hazes. Now that Thorm was no longer present to maintain the magic, they shattered under the violence of her revulsion and grief.
Brevelan ran across the cave. Her hand brushed against Mica, checking for damage. Mica breathed in a painful wheeze, but there were no broken bones. She scooped up the cat and moved onto Darville. With a heart full of love, she gathered the quaking wolf and the little cat into her arms. A soothing melody sprang from her heart to theirs as she rocked gently in time with her song.
Slowly the animals’ pain and confusion drained into her. She absorbed it, contained it, then dispersed it outward. Mica stirred and snuggled deeper into Brevelan’s lap. She butted her head against Brevelan’s hand, urging her to examine the wolf more carefully.
Brevelan’s fingers sought deep into Darville’s fur for hurt, while she searched his eyes for understanding.
“To be a man, trapped in this other body. Do you know of your entrapment, Darville, or has he taken away your mind?” A confusion of emotions disrupted the flow of her magic. She paused in her litany of grief to rub her face in his fur. Her tears dampened his neck.
“Brevelan.” Jaylor’s hand touched her shoulder. She gathered its warmth and strength so she could pour more of herself into the wolf.
“Brevelan.” Jaylor’s voice was stronger, more demanding. “Dear heart, let me take care of this.”
The endearment passed over her understanding. She heard only the insistent tone. Jaylor could take care of the problem. “What? How?” she stammered.
“I saw what happened. Thorm didn’t have enough magic to transform Shayla and maintain Darville as a wolf while keeping us trapped as well. He had to pull some magic away from Darville to complete his spell.” He looked about the cave, as if searching for clues. “I think I can break the enchantment.”
Relief flooded through her.
“Please, Brevelan, step away. I need a clear field to work.” His hands pulled her up and away from the wolf.
Golden eyes marked her movements with questions. The wolf clearly didn’t understand what was happening, had happened, to him. But Brevelan knew that during the time the magic was pulled away from him he had suffered through the entire experience again.
Jaylor stepped between her and Darville. She moved aside to watch. He glared at her. For some reason he didn’t want her to know how he did it.
She glared back. Darville had been her constant companion since last winter. She had nursed him through injury and illness. He had comforted her in her loneliness and despair. They both needed to be a part of this transformation.
“This won’t be pretty,” Jaylor warned even as he began the deep breathing she knew was the beginning of his spells.
“Not very much in this life is.”
His eyes pleaded with her to step behind him again. She refused.
“Then make yourself useful. Get my cloak out of my pack.” Even as he spoke, his breathing deepened further.
She fetched the cloak. When she returned to his side, his attention was beyond her, turned deeply within himself.
The staff snapped into his hand. He angled it so that it pointed at the wolf’s heart. Darville looked up. Expectantly?
A low hum issued from the twisted wooden fibers of the staff. It echoed the tune Thorm had chanted while he danced magic around the cave. Jaylor, too, began to hum. His hands trembled on the staff. He gripped it tighter to control his focus. The staff shook and jerked away from Darville.
Jaylor fought the staff back to his target. It jerked away again just as braided lights of red and blue, green and yellow, with a strand of purple down the center, sprang from the tip. Magic light encircled the bewildered animal in a loose spiral. The magic widened to include Jaylor and Brevelan. Shock waves rippled through the magician. Jaylor broke off the spell before it went any farther awry. Pain clamped around his chest.
It was a good thing this was a solitary spell rather than a traditional one. He had ended it with a thought rather than a lengthy recitation of formulae.
“He laid a trap in the spell,” he whispered. “The staff knew it and refused to direct the magic where I aimed it.”
Brevelan sent him strength. He stood straighter, but not to his full height. His eyes squinted with the effort to keep them open.
“But now that I’ve found the trap, I can go around it.” He began his work again. Magic plaited around the staff in vivid colors. It sprang backward through Jaylor, around the cave and over to Darville, twisting in the opposite direction from before. A single arrow of multicolored magic pierced the wolf’s thick fur. Darville took on the colored glow as the power grew and brightened. He shed his fur, grew longer, paler. His legs and arms straightened. His head reared up and his eyes became aware.
The magic retreated from Darville and surrounded Jaylor. For a moment the magician donned a mantle of golden fur, shot with the red and brown of his own coloring. Then the hair broke free and fell from him in a shower of pinpoint lights.
Jaylor sagged. His skin took on the tinge of gray exhaustion. Each breath rattled in his chest.
Instinctively Brevelan reached her arms to hold him up. He clutched the cloak she held against his chest. “If I could sit a moment. I’m so cold,” he whispered. She eased him onto a boulder. When his breathing slowed, she turned her attention to Darville.
Quickly she assessed the long clean limbs and golden hair of a tall man, crouched on the ground. One long foot lifted to scratch his ear in a parody of a wolf’s gesture. He looked puzzled that the foot didn’t fit, his back didn’t twist, his head hung too high.
Only then was Brevelan aware that Darville, her prince, was naked. She turned her eyes away even as she held the cloak out to him. Jaylor had known this would happen. That was why he had asked for the cloak, why he had tried to block her vision.
“You’ll need this, Your Grace.” She held out the garment. He didn’t take it.
“Darville!” He looked up at her. Understanding began to glimmer in his eyes. Still he crouched on the ground, looking as if he wanted to wag a tail that was no longer there.
“I was afraid this might happen,” Jaylor said.
Brevelan looked at him as she spread the woolen cloak over Darville’s now shivering form.
“He’s been a wolf for many moons. It’s going to take some time for him to remember what it means to be fully human.” Jaylor’s voice gained a little strength. The pulse in his neck still beat in irregular tattoo.
“Will he remember the time he spent as a . . . as . . . under my care?” Heat crept up her face. During that time she’d had no need for modesty. Darville had been just another animal. Why should she hide her body from him?
“I don’t know.”
She turned from her embarrassment to practical matters. “We need to find a place to camp for tonight. I know you are both exhausted, and Mica still hurts, but Old Thorm will come back. Soon. We must hide from his wrath until we are all rested and stronger.”
“We have to go after that man,” Darville croaked. He stretched his legs and stood slowly. She c
ould see discomfort cross his face as he adjusted to his new posture.
“We’d waste more time than we’d save,” she asserted, then looked away. She’d forgotten who he was. One didn’t address the prince of the realm in that tone. She should have shown him more respect. That was hard to remember when she had been coaxing and ordering him around for moons.
“She’s right,” Jaylor groaned. His eyes were shadowed and his skin still had that gray tinge. “I have to rest, to eat. There is no more magic in me and not enough strength to gather more.” He sniffed the air and frowned. “If there’s any magic left.”
Darville surveyed the cave. His eyes sought every crevice, assessing it as if it were a military encampment. “Very well.” He strode to the entrance. His back was straight now, his step firm. “We might as well stay here. It’s sheltered. There’s wood for a fire and a spring at the back of the cave.”
“What about . . . what about our enemy?” She couldn’t bring herself to name him.
“I doubt he’ll be back for several days. He’s wounded, thanks to Mica. He’s fatigued from throwing too much magic, and he must continue the spell to transport Shayla. We’re safe here for tonight.” Jaylor yawned and seemed to shrink within himself.
“I’ll scout the perimeter,” Darville announced. At the cave entrance he started to lift his left leg, just as the other Darville, the wolf, would have done to mark the edge of the camp. Face flaming, he stood straighter. “I don’t suppose you have an extra pair of trews in your pack, old friend?”
Baamin guided his seeking flame back up the mountain. Slowly, warily, it crept toward the cave entrance. He pushed beyond aching eyes and throbbing head to make the flame go where he sent it.
He met no resistance at the cave mouth this time. The weakened spark of green flame hovered and tried to retreat again. Apprehension grew in the old magician’s breast. Never before had a spell fought him like this. Drawing on his newly found reserves of magic, he forced the tiny flicker of light to move onward, deep into the mountain.
There, finally, it found its like, another fire maintained but shielded by a magician’s stare.
“Jaylor, at last!” Baamin breathed a sigh of relief. “What is happening? Where is Shayla?”
“Baamin?” The boy’s startlement relieved the older magician’s subtle fears. They were back to their normal relationship of master and journeyman. Last time they had talked, Jaylor had been in control of the magic as well as the interview, a man fully grown and worthy of his master’s cloak.
“Who else would call in this manner?” Baamin almost chuckled. But his errand was too vital to linger in polite conversation. “Answer me. I fear that time is of the essence. Where is Shayla?”
“Gone, sir.”
“Gone! She can’t leave. She is tied to this kingdom by instinct and by magic.”
“Perhaps I should say stolen and enthralled. The rogue transformed her into glass.”
The image of a giant crystal, reflecting back the light of a hundred moons flooded Baamin’s mind. “How? Why?” He stammered.
“To gain a kingdom.”
“And the wolf?” Defeat dragged at his shoulders. With Shayla enchanted so, too, would the king be. If the golden wolf were indeed the missing prince, as Baamin had suspected all along, he had to be restored and returned to Coronnan City. Now.
“Nearly his old self, sir.”
The boy didn’t elaborate. No image of the wolf or his restored form came through the flame. Something was wrong.
“There was a man beneath the glamour of golden fur, wasn’t there?”
Jaylor nodded wearily.
“Can you do anything about him?”
“I did.”
The image of Darville riding through the woods on a spirited steed flashed across Baamin’s mind’s eye. Darville as he had been last autumn, before his disappearance.
“Wonderful, boy. Wonderful.” For the first time in weeks, Baamin knew relief. “We need him in Coronnan City immediately.”
“Weeks of travel at best, sir. And, sir, there are . . . um complications.” Jaylor stalled.
“What am I to tell the Council of Provinces and the king?” If the king were still alive.
“As little as possible. We follow the rogue at dawn.”
“To what purpose?” The candle flame leaped higher. An ember of hope glimmered from Jaylor’s end of the summons.
“To rescue a glass dragon.” Jaylor hadn’t used that flippant tone since he’d broken the spell on the wine cellar door and replaced it with one even the masters couldn’t reverse. His inebriated, taunting laugh had haunted them for weeks. “Are you drunk, journeyman?” Baamin forced sternness into his voice.
“No, sir.” His reply was slightly subdued. “Just fatigued beyond caring.”
A sense of the great magic the boy had worked that day washed over Baamin. He understood. He gulped. If Jaylor had truly fought Krej’s rogue that hard and then found enough strength to restore the prince, his magical prowess was greater than anyone had believed possible. He was a master already, without the talisman of the cloak.
Baamin was talking to a stronger magician than the entire Commune combined. He needed more information.
Chapter 20
Fatigue pulled Jaylor’s eyes closed. The campfire Brevelan had built at the rear of the cave gave him enough warmth to still his trembling muscles. His stomach was pleasantly filled with one of her rooty stews. Already the nutrition had begun to replenish his body. An herbal tea soothed his body’s aches. Mica purred gently in his lap. He should be able to sleep.
Yet the image of Lord Krej’s face slipping through the mask of the beast-headed monster disturbed him almost as much as his own exhaustion. He had to put a stop to the man’s treachery. But who would believe him? To accuse a member of the Council of Provinces, without physical evidence, invited trouble. The evidence of his eyes and ears while ensorcelled by a rogue magician was no proof a mundane man could accept.
His mind tumbled and spun with the day’s events and the conversation on the other side of the fire.
“I feel as if I know you.” Darville nursed a cup of the same herbal tea.
“You do,” Brevelan’s soft lilting voice replied in even tones. Yet Jaylor could hear the tension behind her words.
“No. I’d remember you if I did. You’re too beautiful to forget.” The prince’s voice became lilting in flirtation.
Jaylor knew how the patterns of Darville’s speech changed when he spoke to women—whether he wanted the woman or not. It was his nature to flirt with all of them, old or young, beautiful or plain.
Jealousy gnawed at Jaylor’s innards like a hunger.
“Why were you in the wild mountains with Krej last winter?” Jaylor found himself interrupting their quiet conversation.
“He wanted to hunt a spotted saber cat.” Darville replied. “I needed to get away. It seemed like the ideal recreation.” His eyes never left Brevelan. He reached to touch a tiny curl at her temple but stopped short of touching her.
Mica ceased purring. Her head lifted, ears back, eyes narrowing suspiciously. She watched the prince through rounded pupils. She knew what was happening, even if Brevelan did not. Jaylor willed the cat to distract her mistress.
“We encountered a saber on our journey here,” Brevelan said. Subtly she shifted away from Darville.
Jaylor breathed a little easier. As much as he liked his royal friend, enjoyed his company, he didn’t trust him around women. Their teenage escapades were more legend than truth. Still, Darville had never been forced to curb his natural curiosity and hunger for women as Jaylor had.
“Perhaps it was the same saber cat. Krej said it had escaped from his nets and he’d tracked it this far.” Darville gave up watching Brevelan.
“The only saber reported within the kingdom in the last generation was the sculpted one in Krej’s hall.”
Darville looked from Jaylor to Brevelan and back again in obvious question.
Brev
elan turned her gaze away from both of them. “Krej, or his magician, captures rare animals and changes them into precious metals. Didn’t you hear him say his spotted saber cat was bronze, but he had to let it go?” Now her eyes sought Jaylor’s, seeking confirmation.
“I wasn’t paying much attention. I was too busy fighting his magic.” But he had heard other, more disturbing things.
“That makes sense,” Darville mused. “I saw the saber cat. We were tracking it. Then Krej disappeared and that monster attacked me with magic.” His voice rose in anger.
“Krej led you into a trap,” Jaylor asserted. “You are all that stands between him and the throne.”
“My father . . . ?”
“Your father is ailing. He has never been strong. Your disappearance and supposed death could very well kill him. He may be dead already.”
“And this traitor of a cousin,” Darville spat the word, “has been hiding his pet rogue for years. That is the only way he could hope to defeat me. A conventional attack by a warrior would not have succeeded.” He stood up and began to pace.
His borrowed trews were too short and too loose. He looked less than majestic as he prowled the perimeter of their camp. “What will happen to the kingdom now that Shayla has been enchanted?” He whirled to face Jaylor directly.
“I don’t know.”
“Can the Commune of Magicians maintain the border without the dragons?”
“Doubtful. It was breaking down weeks ago when I passed through it.”
The prince paced again. “We have neighbors who envy our peace and need our resources. As soon as they discover the open border, we are vulnerable to invasion.” He sat again, not on a rock, but on the ground, crouched. His head tilted and one foot came up to scratch. But his body no longer twisted in that manner.
His face and neck flamed in embarrassment.
“What am I, magician, a man, or a wolf?”
“You are a man now. You were a wolf for many moons. Some of those instincts linger. It may take a few weeks to forget.” Jaylor looked into the fire, hoping to find some solutions in its green flames.
The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I Page 19
