The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

by Irene Radford

  Neither said anything for a moment. She shouldn’t see or speak to this dark-eyed outlander. She ignored the impulse to open her thoughts and emotions to him well beyond the realm of safety.

  Katrina bent her head to the pillow, pointedly ending the conversation.

  “Is this thread Tambrin?” the watchman changed the subject abruptly. His fingers came close to the finished length of lace, as if to examine it more closely. Then he jerked his hand away.

  “What difference does it make?” she returned rather than answer with a lie.

  “A great deal of difference if you work at night, in secret, with a thread that is forbidden.”

  “Hadn’t you better go back to your job, guarding the warehouse?” She stared at him, willing him away.

  “If you are worried about another theft, don’t. No man will get past my . . . er . . . traps.”

  “You have been forbidden to speak to me. Go back to your work and let me continue with mine.”

  “Or what? What can you do to me?”

  “Report you to Owner Brunix. You will be dismissed, if he doesn’t kill you first.”

  “But I am not a slave he can murder without question. You shouldn’t be either. How did this come about?”

  “Go!” She couldn’t relive that humiliating night when The Simeon gave her a choice between slavery and a torturous ritual. Nor could she allow this outlander to discover all that went on between her and Brunix.

  Perhaps he already knew. They were both dark-eyed outlanders. Only Brunix would dare hire another outlander when there were so many true-bloods out of work and homeless.

  “Ssshh!” the watchman hissed. He extinguished her candle with a pass of his hand. “Stay here,” he said so quietly Katrina wasn’t certain she actually heard him or merely understood from the press of his hand against her shoulder.

  Jack listened with all of his senses for the faint sound of movement. Nothing. Puzzled, he crept back down the stairs to the warehouse level.

  He’d left Corby perched on top of a stack of crates in the corner, a ball of witchlight in front of him to keep the complaining bird awake. If anyone but Jack entered the cavernous room, Corby would set up a fuss loud enough to wake the entire factory.

  Corby was quiet. Too quiet. Almost as if he slept. But birds did not sleep in the presence of light and they did not sleep with their heads erect, standing on both feet.

  Jack stopped in the doorway, willing himself into invisibility. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows of the warehouse, he opened his senses to alien sensations. His nose itched, as if to sneeze. The scent of magic hovered in the air around him. A very small amount of magic, and it carried the distinctive musky flavor of dragons.

  The softest of footfalls behind him brought his hand up to still any further noise from Katrina. His enhanced awareness of the building and all who dwelled within it told him she had followed, even before she descended the first step. He found her mouth with his left hand and gently covered it in a signal of silence.

  With another thought, his staff sprang into his hand. Silently he moved into the warehouse, nose alert for a concentration of magic.

  Light flared from the end of his staff, illuminating the room in a shadowless light and wrapping armor around Jack. He broadcast a very mild delusion of an ordinary lantern in his hand and another beside Corby. Best not to betray his magic with the obvious witchlight.

  Every crate in the warehouse, empty or filled with reels of lace, stood revealed to his sight. Bent over one of them was a man dressed in the dark gray of the palace guard. Gleaming white tendrils of lace spilled from his hands.

  Someone too stupid to respect the Rover wards at the doors? Or was he too strong a magician to worry about them?

  Startled by the light, the intruder looked up, unblinking in the new brightness. Corby awoke from his trance at the same moment and set up a strident fuss guaranteed to bring Brunix and his burly employees running.

  “So, since the queen is ill, has the palace stooped to stealing lace rather than making it?” Jack asked. He couldn’t alert this barely talented man to his own magic.

  He had to act fast and turn the matter over to Brunix, before his armor faded. Unable to replenish his magic from ley lines or from dragons, he had to rely on his own bodily strength to support his spells. Years of heavy mine work had given him muscles and stamina. These were not infinite.

  “I seek a piece of lace more important than any of this paltry export trash. A piece made of Tambrin and designed by that girl’s mother!” The magician in gray challenged Jack and Katrina. “King Simeon would give a life’s pension for that lace. The coven will give even more!”

  “How valuable is a life’s pension if my life only lasts a day beyond giving over such a piece of lace—if it exists?” Jack returned.

  “The piece exists. We have, this night, captured a Coronnite spy who seeks the same lace. I believe he offered Owner Brunix a great deal of money for it. He won’t live until dawn. Our leader has seen the lace in the glass. A magnificent and unique piece.”

  He’d said Our Leader, not The Simeon. Interesting.

  Katrina said nothing in reply to the man’s statement, which sounded almost like an accusation. But Jack could feel her trembling in fear behind him. She was either very brave to remain there in the face of so much fear, or too stupid to know she could run.

  Run where? The thought occurred to Jack that Brunix might not offer her the haven she needed. Her fear of her owner could be as great as her fear of her despotic king.

  “I dispute The Simeon’s ability to see anything in a magician’s viewing glass. Else he’d know his enemy’s movements ahead of time and would have conquered them years ago,” Jack taunted, hoping the magician would reveal more.

  “Simeon does not rule the coven.”

  “His black-haired mistress!” Katrina spat, coming out of her fear-induced paralysis. “She is responsible for Queen Miranda’s illness. She leads the coven and corrupts the queen’s government.”

  A clatter of footsteps on the stairs signaled the arrival of reinforcements. Good. Jack’s reserves were growing thin. He’d held the armor too long after several hours of stretching his awareness far beyond his normal limits.

  Corby ceased his noisy fuss and swooped from his high perch to Jack’s head. “Nasty man,” he quoted. “Dragon man. Nasty man. Not a dragon.”

  Jack reached up to soothe the bird’s feathers. He wished fervently that Corby would learn to keep his thoughts to himself. “Some familiar. You cause more trouble than you help me get out of,” he whispered under his breath.

  “Trouble, trouble, trouble,” Corby repeated.

  “What is the meaning of this disturbance?” Brunix burst into the room. He glared fiercely at Katrina. A gesture of his head toward the stairs dismissed her.

  His dramatic dressing gown of black and purple draped around his elongated figure, and the arrogant gesture toward Katrina reminded Jack of Zolltarn, the Rover king, dressed in black and purple. Whatever blood kinship Jack might share with the two unscrupulous men, his armor remained firmly in place without conscious reinforcement.

  The intruder in the gray of the palace guard seemed to assess the true authority in the factory within a heartbeat. Immediately all of his concentration turned to Brunix.

  “I search this factory with a warrant from the king,” the magician announced. “Rumors of the forbidden use of Tambrin have reached the ears of the palace lacemakers.”

  “Then search openly and honestly,” Brunix defied the man. “I dare you to find anything in this building that is not authorized and approved by the king personally.”

  Really? Jack wondered. What about the Tambrin on Katrina’s pillow? What about the mysterious piece designed by her mother?

  Now that Jack had felt Tambrin, he knew he’d never mistake any other fiber for the shimmering white thread that glowed with magic. Katrina’s lace sent tingles of power up his arms. His fingers had never made contact with the lace. H
e didn’t need to get any closer to it than a finger-length to recognize the energy stored within the depths of any Tambootie tree. A tree that was poison to mundanes and led magicians into irreversible insanity. Only dragons consumed it with impunity.

  Jack faded into the background. Let Brunix and the agent of King Simeon settle the issue of the warrant between themselves.

  He found himself standing beside Katrina in the dim hallway. A faint tingle of power pulsed from the ground beneath her feet. He squinted and detected traces of silvery blue. A ley line? Interesting.

  He edged closer, seeking the source. The girl or the land?

  “Do not touch me!” she hissed so that only he could hear. “You are a magician. A dark-eyed magician. I saw the witchlight and your delusion! There cannot be two such as you. ’Twas you who interfered with the shipment of Tambootie seedlings. ’Twas you who bankrupted my father, killed my sister, and drove my mother to suicide.”

  Chapter 29

  ‘Did King Simeon plant you in this factory to spy on me, to find some new way to torment and destroy me?” Katrina backed away from the magician. The anger and hatred she’d carefully nursed for three years burned cold and clear in her mind.

  “The sorcerer-king is more my enemy than yours.” He followed her retreat, never allowing more than two steps between them.

  “I doubt that. Who has lost more, suffered more at his hands than I?” One step up the stairs. He closed the distance. She could feel the heat of his body, see a pulse beating anxiously in his neck. His pet crow had flown off when Brunix arrived. Now it landed two steps above her. She couldn’t retreat much farther without disturbing the noisy bird and drawing more attention to herself.

  “The soldiers who die by the dozens, cold and hungry, bogged down in mud up to their knees, with disease plaguing their ranks more than the enemy ever could, have lost as much. That goes for both armies. All because ruining SeLenicca isn’t enough. King Simeon has to conquer more.”

  “We need trade to stay alive. Coronnan is rich with farmland and resources but has repeatedly denied us access to them, even though we pay for them!” The argument was old, repeated often. “Coronnan has to be responsible for the food shortages, the unemployment, the . . .” Her words trailed off.

  “SeLenicca could grow its own food, become self-sufficient if Simeon would let you.”

  “No. ’Twould blaspheme the Stargods. We are the Chosen. The resources were provided for us to exploit.”

  “In Coronnan, we believe ourselves to be the Chosen and our duty is to nurture the land and ourselves, in memory of the bounty bestowed by the Stargods. SeLenicca has been methodically stripped, rather than nourished, for a thousand years. But this political argument doesn’t settle the conflict between us. Why do you accuse me of the king’s crimes?”

  “King Simeon did not stop the shipment that caused P’pa’s bankruptcy. You did.”

  “I stopped a foreign spy from escaping my country. A spy who had organized an assassination of my king on the day of his coronation. Would you have done less?”

  Katrina had to think about that. Hatred of the man who had caused her poverty, hunger, grief, and humiliation had focused her desire for revenge. In the first years of her slavery, little else had kept her from following her mother into the river. She needed to nurse that hatred back into life. She had nothing, was nothing without it.

  “What makes you think Simeon would have allowed your father to profit from that shipment of Tambootie seedlings if it had won through?” He mounted the step to stand beside her. In the cramped space, only a hair’s breadth separated them. His quiet words caressed her ear while the closeness of his body threatened her senses as Brunix’s lovemaking never could.

  “There is only one use for Tambootie. Simeon needed my father to market the fiber for lacemaking.”

  “Tambootie feeds dragons. Simeon has a small nimbus of dragons to supply magic to the men of his coven. The palace guard arguing with Brunix gathers dragon magic. He admitted to being part of the coven. None of that Tambootie would have been made into thread.”

  “Dragons? Where?” Fear, or was it the watchman’s nearness, sent shivers through her body.

  “Your father is protected by the dragons. My quest is to send them home so that Simeon no longer has a source of magic. Without the dragons he can’t work his evil on SeLenicca anymore. Without his magic, Queen Miranda will recover.”

  Jaylor opened the fragile book with tender reverence. How many times had he passed it by in the library of the new University of Magicians? He wondered if he ignored the book just as someone searching for the clearing would walk right past the proper path.

  But the crack in the clearing barrier widened daily. Brevelan still refused to move. Jaylor feared that soon an outsider would stumble into the clearing without knowing he shouldn’t be able to. An agent of the Gnostic Utilitarian cult would be as happy to find the clearing as to find the hidden University with its priceless library of magic secrets. The Council of Provinces and the coven had been trying to penetrate the Commune’s defense of secrecy for years.

  Darville knew how to find the clearing. Mikka could open the crack and snatch Glendon away. . . . Jaylor couldn’t dwell on that possibility. Fear of losing the boy paralyzed all thought.

  The library had grown during these years in exile because a few educated men feared for the safety of their private book collections during the height of the Gnul’s fanaticism. The Gnuls didn’t believe in learning to read. Since the skill to interpret the marks in books into language had been the exclusive right of magicians for many generations, the cult had decided reading was another form of magic and therefore evil.

  Rational men who could not embrace the cult but found it politically expedient not to oppose it had found ways to insure the safety of their collections of books. Secret messengers left bundles of them buried in protective wraps near abandoned Equinox Pylons—festival landmarks that had been revered in Coronnan for so long even the Gnuls would not desecrate them. Only the coven did that.

  Jaylor enjoyed quiet time in the library, meditating and planning. Physical and psychic quiet was a rarity in the clearing. Glendon and Lukan didn’t believe in quiet, unless they were asleep. Lukan screamed at everything, with delight, anger, or frustration. Glendon tended to blast minds with his telepathic shouts. Anything done quietly, to them, was work. The same task or game completed with as much noise as their two young bodies could muster, was play.

  So Jaylor sat quietly in the library and stared at this slim volume that had lain hidden in piles of books, overlooked, pushed aside and forgotten time and again.

  “A book that doesn’t want to be found might contain a spell that obscures a place,” he mused. “Like the clearing.” Since he couldn’t persevere against Brevelan and make her move, he had to find a way to heal the barrier. If this book contained the spell that had originally set the protections, he might be able to analyze it and reset it.

  Page by page he skimmed the volume. The penmanship flowed with delicate swirls and loops indicative of a feminine hand. An apprentice of old, recording for her teacher and mentor? Or Myrilandel, the fabled wife of the magician who tamed the dragons and the first known inhabitant of the clearing, perhaps?

  If he could create his own protective boundary elsewhere, perhaps Brevelan would move and he needn’t worry about that damned crack.

  “It’s worth a try.” He ran his finger down a page and stopped on a poem entitled “Invisible Gate.”

  Spirit of air lift me high

  With the dragons let me fly.

  Protect us with a steady wind

  That blows nowhere but here within.

  Spirit of fire glowing green

  Descend from air and wind unseen.

  Heat my heart like purest gold

  Cast off dross of lies untold.

  Spirit of water, blessedly cool

  Drop by drop fill this pool

  Refresh my mind from life’s pain.

&n
bsp; Wash me clean of greed and gain.

  Kardia gather with the other three

  Root me through a mighty tree.

  Anchor me with your knowing love.

  Free to choose in the world above.

  Altogether, the Gaia you are

  bound as one, near and far.

  The poem danced through Jaylor’s mind with a familiar lilt. More a song than a chant. The words were similar to the spells the Rovers had used to bind Jaylor and his fractured magic together long ago, before Darville’s wedding and coronation. Combined with a ritual of candles and dance, the massive spell had drawn magic from the fabric of life rather than simply from the planet below or the dragons above.

  “I’m starting to think in song!” he protested to himself. “Brevelan sings her magic. Krej chanted his spells. There is power in the music, power in the singer.”

  A tune he swore he’d never heard before, yet was hauntingly familiar, trilled through his mind as he repeated the words of the spell. His tongue began to tingle and his feet vibrated in time with the pulsing life of the land beneath his feet. Too soon. The song only bound the singer to the four elements. He needed the spell for the boundary around the clearing before he unleashed that power.

  Carefully he clamped down on his mind and pushed the humming magic back where it came from, but not so far away he couldn’t tap it again.

  He turned the next page of the book and read carefully. “Six eggs gathered this morning. One-and-a-half buckets milked from the goat. Strung a line between the lower limbs of the everblues to hang washing.” Jaylor nearly slammed the book closed. A bloody list of daily chores!

  “One more page.” Then another, and another all the way to the end. More lists. The author of this book was methodical in keeping records. Every person who visited, every cure dispensed, stores of herbs and catalogs of clothing washed and mended.