The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

by Irene Radford

  “M’ma would not have left the house at midnight without her gown, or shoes, or cloak if she merely wanted to sell the shawl.”

  A fierce pounding on the kitchen door roused them both. Katrina’s eyes widened in greater turmoil. Stargods! What other disaster could plague them? For only the direst emergency would bring unannounced visitors to the basement door in the dead of night.

  Fraanken yanked open the inner door and unlatched the outer with fumbling haste. A dour-faced man in the black uniform of the city guard glared at them. “Do you recognize this?” He held up a sodden and filthy length of lacy silk.

  “M’ma!” Katrina gasped.

  P’pa held the shawl as if it were a great treasure. He suddenly appeared old, shrunken, feeble.

  “We found that floating in the river right after a passing member of the palace guard reported seeing a woman jump from the bridge.”

  Chapter 11

  Yaakke concentrated on the clouds. He forced a clump of moisture to gather above the ruined monastery.

  “You can’t save them.” A feminine voice interrupted his spell.

  He whirled on top of his rock, almost losing his balance. A black-haired young woman, with incredibly beautiful white skin, stood at the base of the boulders, hands on hips, huge blue eyes angry and accusing. The skirts of her black traveling gown and the length of her unbound hair billowed out behind her in the rising wind.

  Vaguely he realized his manipulations of the clouds and temperature had created the wind.

  “I’ve got to try!” Yaakke returned to his task. The clouds above the ruins sagged, heavy with water. A little shift of the temperature beneath them and they dumped their load of thunder and lightning, but no rain.

  Yaakke tried again, lowering the clouds into the ruins of the monastery. Still no rain, only a dense oily fog rolling through the crumbling masonry.

  None of the soldiers noticed the strange weather. They were too busy mauling tapestries depicting the descent of the Stargods. Crude ale splashed from golden winecups. But no one burned a book or smashed delicate glass and brass instruments.

  “Trying to smother the enemy with a mist?” The girl laughed, rich tones sliding up her white throat. “Like as not you’d have more success putting out the fire if you spat on it.”

  Yaakke blushed from his ears to his toes. “You destroyed my concentration.” His voice cracked into an embarrassing squeak.

  “You still can’t save them. You’re too late,” she stated. “But you can exact vengeance from the lords who sent the army to destroy your precious Commune.”

  The clouds above the monastery thinned and drifted back to a more natural pattern. The wind faded with them. Once more Yaakke sought Jaylor’s spirit within the ruins.

  Nothing.

  With mounting anxiety he probed for any member of the Commune: prickly old Lyman, wily Fraandalor, gentle Brevelan, or even her baby, Glendon.

  No response.

  “I told you, you’re too late. But I will reward you mightily if you blast Lord Jonnias and the Marnaks—Elder and Younger—to hell and back again.” Her eyes smoldered with fanatical hate.

  “Who are you?” Yaakke twisted into a sitting position on top of the boulder. He rested his head in his hands, massaging his temples. Where were Jaylor and the others? They couldn’t all have died. He’d have felt their passing, he was sure of it.

  The barriers surrounding Brevelan’s clearing had been down. Surely not because she had died! That was weeks ago.

  How had the spell gone so wrong? He’d been careful to visualize rain, torrents of rain to douse the fire.

  “Don’t you recognize me?” The girl hiked her skirts and began climbing up to Yaakke’s perch. She revealed an indelicate amount of ankle and calf beneath the black cloth.

  “Danger! Danger, danger,” Corby croaked, circling above.

  “I saw you at the coronation,” he muttered.

  “I’m Rejiia.” She sat beside him, mimicking his cross-legged pose.

  “Krej’s daughter?” He barely acknowledged her presence. Why hadn’t he centered his magic and found Jaylor by summons as soon as he’d departed from the dragon? He could have reported everything and maybe received some more clues on where to look for Shayla. Jaylor would then have known where Yaakke was, so he could have sent a summons for help in time.

  The barriers around the clearing were already down. How long had he been in the void? Long enough for all his friends to die?

  “Aren’t you going to ask why I want you to kill my husband, Marnak the Younger, his father, and their best friend, Lord Jonnias?” She sounded aggrieved that his attention had wandered away from her beauty. What good would he do helping Shayla if there were no more Commune to gather the dragon’s magic?

  Rejiia’s pout dragged his attention back to her question.

  “You must have your reasons for wanting those men dead. They don’t concern me. I’ve got to save the Commune.” Yaakke dismissed her. Why hadn’t the king stopped his lords from waging war on the magicians?

  “King Darville doesn’t know this was their mission,” Rejiia answered his unspoken question.

  “You read my thoughts. Do you have magic?” Yaakke hastily erected some armor around his thoughts lest she read his lonely pain and find him vulnerable.

  Yaakke started scrambling down from the rock. He had to see for himself that the monastery was destroyed and that all of his friends were dead.

  “I have some magic,” Rejiia said interrupting his descent. “Not enough to do more than a few parlor tricks. My father never saw fit to test or train me. He had no use for his daughters, except to marry us off for power and wealth.”

  “And now you want freedom from your chosen husband.” Yaakke let his eyes wander away from her toward the mass of soldiers behind them, seeking a sign of Marnak the Younger, or evidence of Jaylor’s demise.

  “You won’t find Marnak in the field. He directs things from the safety of his tent,” she spat the words with disgust. “And yes, I want my freedom. Faciar is my province—from the capital to the southern mountains, from the Great Bay inland five leagues. All of it is mine. I won’t let my husband destroy it with his greed.”

  “Why not destroy him yourself?” Yaakke completed his slide to the ground, prepared to fight his way up to the smoking ruins if anyone stopped him.

  “I told you, I don’t have enough magic to kill him with suitable subtlety and get away with it.” She frowned petulantly. “What good is killing him if I am caught and burned at the stake?”

  Yaakke dismissed her petty anger. She might have reason to dislike and distrust her husband, Marnak the Younger. Yaakke had the more immediate grudge. The greed of both Marnaks—Elder and Younger—as well as Jonnias’ superstition, had destroyed the Commune. Yaakke’s Commune. His friends and family.

  A great ball of magic built within him on the heels of the grief turned to anger. Not enough. He found more magic beneath his feet. He pulled energy from a storm building to the east. His newly awakened alignment with the magnetic pole centered the magic. All he had to do was shape it into a weapon, address it, and send it forth.

  “That’s right, use your magic. Wreak havoc through this army of destruction,” Rejiia coached in excited whispers. “Revenge is sweet.” She licked her lips in almost sexual satisfaction at the power he gathered.

  Yaakke didn’t know why he hesitated. An image of a young woman with moon-bright hair and pale blue eyes reddened with sadness came between himself and Rejiia’s excited face. Then a memory of the blue-tipped dragon superimposed upon his preparation to hurl the magic.

  “There is never a right time or place to throw magic for harm.” The dragon spoke with Old Master Baamin’s voice, reciting the first rule of Communal ethics. “Magic is for health, for growth, for the benefit of Coronnan and all who live within our boundaries. Magic can never be used to destroy lest we destroy ourselves in the process.”

  “What does right have to do with this? They killed m
y friends!” Yaakke screamed into the wind. The magic fireball burned for release within his gut.

  “Do it, boy. Do it and I’ll take you to my bed. A bed where I never allowed Marnak to exercise his privileges.” Rejiia’s aura pulsed with sexual vibrancy.

  He needed no reward, only vengeance. The magic came into his hand. He shaped it with anger and addressed it to the image of skinny, sniveling Marnak the Younger, Krej’s puppet, whose loyalty landed wherever was most convenient to Marnak.

  With a mighty thrust of his shoulders, back, and arm he lobbed the magical firebomb into the air in the direction of the field tents behind the massed soldiers.

  The magic sought the symbols on a standard raised above one particular tent. Through the air it flew, heedless of wind or missiles thrown to divert it, with Yaakke’s mind close on its heels. Faster and faster the bomb flew. Yaakke became the magic fire as it fed on his mind. They gathered speed and intensity from the cries of fear and horror growing within the army; horror that invaded Yaakke. He tried to jerk his mind away from the bomb but found himself trapped within it.

  The bomb slammed into the standard with crackling intensity. Magical blue light glowed from the flagpole and raced down, down into the tent. It consumed wood and fabric as it sped toward its target, greedy for more interesting fuel. Marnak, wearing light field armor, lounged against the tent pole. He rejoiced with his coconspirators, a cup of pilfered wine in one hand, precious altar linens edged in SeLenese lace in the other.

  His smile turned to shock and then to agony as the firebomb leaped from tent pole to head, to hand, and body. Flames burst upward, followed by screams.

  Indiscriminate screams gathered harshly on Yaakke’s conscience and slammed him back into his body, but he still sensed all that happened within range of the bomb he had exploded in Marnak’s face. The smell of burning flesh and cloth, of hot metal and pain beyond imagining, violated his senses. Rampant emotions from a thousand sources filled his mind, contorting his perceptions. He became the instrument of destruction and, in turn, was its victim.

  Hate. Fear. Greed. Desperate prayers. Revenge. Mindless flight.

  Every soldier, officer, and lord broadcast his feelings directly into Yaakke’s being. No magical armor could block the intimate sharing.

  The onslaught of foreign emotions tore at Yaakke’s sanity. Who was he? Which thoughts were his own? Whose body did his mind inhabit? What did he feel? Painful wounds stabbed and burned into his heart.

  Suddenly the riotous noise of a thousand men swelled within Yaakke’s ears. The wind increased to a howl and seemed to stab his skin with the force of arrows. His blood pounded and roared within his body.

  He had to get away. Away from the noise. Away from Rejiia. Away from himself.

  Jaylor coughed the smoke from his lungs. Desperately, he heaved the fallen beam away from Brevelan where she had fallen when the roof collapsed. With blackened hands, he clutched his wife tightly against his chest and transported them out of the inferno that had been the monastery library.

  The shocking cold of the void roused them both from the stupor induced by roiling smoke and blistering heat. Reality slowly formed around them. Still kneeling in the position he’d been in when he transported out, Jaylor coughed again and blinked his gritty eyes. He clung to the sensation of holding his beloved in his arms while he concentrated on maintaining his balance.

  “Where’s the baby?” Brevelan whispered, then coughed.

  Other coughs and grumbles penetrated Jaylor’s awareness. He counted bodies, eyes still too blurred to distinguish faces.

  Forty-three. “Where’s the baby?” he asked louder.

  “Glendon?” Brevelan asked again.

  “Right here.” Elder Librarian Lyman stepped forward with a grimy bundle cradled in his arms. “Took to the void like he was born there. Little tyke never uttered a squeak.” He clucked and shifted the baby against his shoulder, rubbing his back and cooing nonsense as if he’d always cared for infants instead of living the lonely, celibate life of most magicians.

  Brevelan reached for Glendon before Jaylor could settle her onto the rough cave floor. Anxiously she removed the smoky blanket and checked her baby for any signs of distress. Little Glendon looked up at his mother, eyes focusing in his narrow field of vision. A slurpy gurgle followed by a toothless smile brought a sigh of relief from the entire gathering.

  “My son wasn’t born in the void, but he was conceived there,” Jaylor murmured to himself. Stiffly he stood and faced the ragtail gathering. “We’re all safe. Did the equipment make it through?”

  “All except one shelf of books—duplicates most of them.” Slippy surveyed the array of books and observation equipment littering the floor of the cave that had once been a dragon lair.

  “It’s damp here, Jaylor. Not good for my books,” Lyman reminded him. “Not good for my old bones either. At least we’re safe from those heathen lords and their troops. For now.”

  “There’s a broad valley between here and Brevelan’s clearing,” Jaylor told them. In his mind he saw a meadow at the base of a cliff. A small waterfall tumbled down the cliff into a scattering of boulders. That same cliff Prince Darville had fallen over when Krej ensorcelled him into a wolf and left him for dead. Neither of them had known at the time that Shayla, the resident dragon, was so tied to the royal family by honor, blood, and magic that she would compel Brevelan to rescue the injured wolf from the snow-drifts. Jaylor could think of no better place to rebuild the University: to honor a now dead friendship.

  “We’ll begin building as soon as we have recovered from our journey and the weather warms enough to fell timber. By summer we’ll have a refuge for all those who flee the persecution of magic. This attack against us smells like the work of that new cult, the Gnostic Utilitarians.”

  “The Gnuls have less of a sense of morality when it comes to magicians than the coven does,” Lyman grumbled.

  “I fear the attack on our monastery was just the beginning of some very hard times to come for our people,” Jaylor said sadly. He had to contact his spy among Queen Rossemikka’s maids. Surely the girl had eavesdropped on enough conversations to know what Darville meant by sending the army to the monastery. If Darville had authorized it at all.

  Rejiia latched onto the boy’s magic, sucking and feeding upon it as a leech draws blood from its victims. She had watched her father do this. A little giggle escaped her. She ignored the hysterical quality of the mirth. If the mighty and arrogant Lord Krej could see her now, he wouldn’t dismiss her as worthless.

  She had every intention of murdering the loathsome boy as soon as she’d drained him of his magic and his secrets. He wasn’t hard to follow. The flaws in his magic screamed at her through the tentacle she’d attached to him. His power rose to amazing strength and then fell abruptly to nothing in unpredictable waves. He committed the ultimate folly by allowing his emotions to affect his magic.

  She took a deep breath in preparation. At the next hint of a waver in his talent, she’d drop a compulsion on him.

  He ran furiously. Legs pumping. Arms straining.

  In her mind, Rejiia followed, feeling what he felt, seeing what he saw. She couldn’t read his thoughts and his secrets yet. The power was still rising in him.

  “Give me the transport spell!” she whispered through her tentacle of magic. “The coven will reward me well. They’ll have to give me full membership if I discover the secret. I’ll surpass my dear father in power and prestige. Then when I revive him, he will have to look up to me!”

  “Spirits of the dead, spring forth in freedom from fleshly concerns,” the magistrate implored as he released a sack of ashes into the River Lenicc. “As these last remnants of your corporeal bodies dissolve, so shall your attachments to this life. Your possessions are dispersed. Your families are reconciled to your passing. Your next existence beckons. Release your hold on this one!”

  Dry-eyed and numb, Katrina watched as Hilza’s ashes spread across the icy water like a gra
y blanket. The sluggish current caught the smothering cover of ashes, swirled them into an ugly soup, and dragged them down. All that remained of sweet little Hilza sank into watery oblivion.

  A commoner’s funeral. No expensive priests, no professional mourners. Not even a proper grave. Merely ashes of the dead cast into the almost-frozen river by one of King Simeon’s officials. A duty the man had performed too often these last moons.

  The ground was frozen deep. No one could dig graves this winter. There was barely enough wood for a single funeral pyre. So, the numerous dead—from hunger and disease—were heaped together in a common bonfire, their remains mingled, and their funerals held at the same time. There was no way to separate the ashes for the grieving families. The poor and the homeless gathered around the pyres in a morbid search for warmth, cheering as each new body added fuel to the noisome black smoke.

  Katrina wouldn’t have an urn to set beside the hearth to cherish, for either Hilza or Tattia. Tattia’s body had not been found. All that remained of her was the lace scarf. P’pa had wanted to burn it along with Hilza’s body. Katrina had cleaned the precious reminder of her mother and hidden it where her father and the persistent merchant would never find it. Why was the stranger so eager to purchase the piece, tainted as it was by Tattia’s suicide?

  Ten other families joined Katrina in mourning the loss of a loved one on this cloudy day. Families huddled together for warmth, comfort, and shared memories. No one stood beside Katrina.

  Oncle Yon and Tante Syllia refused to be seen near the family of a suicide. Tattia’s ghost would haunt her kin for five generations.