Chapter 7
As the last tinkle of falling glass faded away, M’lani opened her eyes. Pebbles of shattered glass everywhere . . . except within a foot of her nose. Eyes right, then left. A narrow space of clear carpet, showing not a shred of glass, continued in a neat curved line around her arms, her chest . . .
Shock kept her from feeling the great weight pinning her down until it suddenly removed itself. Jagan!
“You can get up now, I’ve removed the shield. No, stop!” he barked as she started to rise. “Your slippers are missing.”
M’lani stilled, awkwardly poised with one palm flat on the rug. Jagan bent down, scooped her up, and headed out into the courtyard. When both were seated on the bench of crystal clear crystos that circled the fountain, they gazed back at the chaos left behind.
“The glass doors shattered as well,” Jagan offered, his voice perfectly neutral.
She could see that now and realized she’d heard the crunch of Jagan’s shoes on glass fragments for several feet out into the courtyard. Fizzit! If he hadn’t taken her down, shielded them both from the exploding glass, they could have been torn to bits. Her fury vanquished by shock, M’lani choose her words with care. “I admit I was a bit shrill, but really, Jagan, this is what everyone means when they say they don’t trust you. This fit of temper could have killed us both.”
“Me?” M’lani had never heard such outrage in a single syllable. “You think I did that?” He waved his hand toward the carnage, his darkly handsome face a portrait of incredulity.
Men! M’lani rolled her eyes. “Who else, Honored Sorcerer Prime? The glass didn’t decide to explode all by itself.”
“Mondragon! Highness! What happened?”
Their minders had arrived.
“A bit late, aren’t you?” Jagan drawled.
“Remember that the next time you demand a bit of privacy,” the major shot back.
Twenty minutes later they were all seated in the royal sitting room. Ryal and Jalaine had inspected the damage, M’lani had changed into an embroidered robe and slippers that had all three younger men sneaking glances in her direction. The two marines had unbent far enough to accept small glasses of ullali, Psyclid’s own brandy.
“Explain.” Ryal’s tone was enough to halt Sergeant Quint’s glass midway to his mouth. “What were you doing when the glass exploded?”
Jagan gave M’lani a long look but remained silent.
“I was pointing out that Jagan made a stupid mistake when he lost his temper and loosed a dragon on the local rebels,” M’lani offered.
“I didn’t do it,” Jagan protested. “Believe me, I have no suicidal tendencies.”
“Then how in the name of the goddess—” Ryal roared.
“Hush! All of you,” Jalaine cried. “Let me think.”
They all glowered at her, waiting. Not patiently. “M’lani, my dear,” she said at last, “were you very angry?”
“After what we were told about the dragon? Most certainly!”
Jalaine nodded. “I suspect,” she told them, “that M’lani has come into her gift at last, a gift so rare it has not been seen in two hundred years or more. And I greatly fear the Gift of Destruction is a mixed blessing, not easily controllable.”
“Fyd!” Jagan’s profanity echoed around them. King Ryal stared. As did the marines
“Gift of Destruction?” M’lani whispered, shaking her head. “No-o . . . you know I have no gifts.”
“Life has a way of surprising us,” Jalaine returned. “You have recently demonstrated signs of telepathy, perhaps even clairvoyance. In a multi-gifted family it is not shocking to discover other talents arising . . . even if they are not the talents we might have wished for.”
“Well, daughter,” Ryal interjected, irony tingeing his every word, “it appears I may have made a fatal error when I chose you as a calming influence on our Sorcerer Prime.”
“Oddly . . . ” Jagan paused as they all turned to look at him. “There is nothing like a roomful of exploding glass to make even a sorcerer stop and think.” His lips curled into a thin smile. “I wonder what you could do to my dragon, M’lani. To a Reg ship?”
“Stop!” Ryal stood, turning the full force of his authority on the Sorcerer Prime. “You will not turn my daughter into a weapon. Into a killer.”
“L’ira is. Why not M’lani?” A raw fact none of them wished to acknowledge.
“Self-defense is one thing,” Ryal declared. “Mass murder quite another.”
“Enough,” Jalaine pronounced. “M’lani has barely begun to come into her talents. She had no idea she shattered that glass and, I’m sure, no concept of how to repeat the feat. It will take some time for her to explore her power and harness it into some kind of control. Therefore, this discussion is moot, a matter for another time. The immediate question is, how do we reconcile Jagan and his equally hot-headed rebel.”
“I can do it,” M’lani offered. “Or at least that’s what L’rissa said. And she should know,” she added, fixing a stern gaze on Jagan, “because T’kal Killiri is her brother.”
Jalaine turned to Jagan. “A meeting must be arranged at once. Including M’lani, just as Killiri requested. If you and he cannot work together, then Psyclid will never be free.”
Jagan winced.
A half-hour later, M’lani walked Jagan to the door of the royal apartments “I need to thank you for the shield,” she murmured. “I could have been sliced to bits.”
His black eyes glinted. “Consider it self-preservation.”
“You threw yourself on top of me. If the shield had wavered, it is you who would have died.”
Jagan shrugged. “As you so effectively pointed out, I have a weakness for women.”
M’lani’s shoulders slumped. “You really don’t like me, do you?”
“I assure you, tonight my respect has increased a hundredfold. Along with my fear. Hopefully—for the future of Psyclid as well as our own—the worst of your talents will cancel out the worst of mine. Perhaps, in the end, there may be some sort of accommodation—”
Accommodation! M’lani slapped him so hard her hand imprinted his cheek. And suddenly the Archeron Ambassador, not Jagan, was standing before her, flashing a challenging smile. “Rather rude treatment of a diplomat, Your Highness.” He clicked his heels together, bowed, and then he was gone, allowing the door to bang shut behind him.
Blue Moon
Kass glared at her personal portapad and its seemingly endless scroll of inventory—every last house, farm, field, person, and animal on Blue Moon. Fizzit! Did even the horses, pigs, and cows pay taxes? And why must she know about this anyway? Surely she commanded people who actually liked facts and figures, who would enjoy analyzing all this nonsense. She, after all, was up to her neck in a revolution. She had a husband to soothe, a position on the bridge of Astarte, a place of honor in the Hierarchy, the council that would decide their next move in a rebellion. A rebellion that had grown to the point where something more than a holding pattern was possible—
Flames shot up from the carpet six feet in front of her face.
K’kadi, I’m going to wring your neck!
Ah, fizzet, it must be important, because there he was in the flesh, stalking through the doorway, the flames rising to dance above his head as he stood, arms crossed, scowling as if whatever was wrong was all her fault. The flames cast dancing red highlights on his long pale hair and turned his azure eyes to glowing purple.
“Tell me,” Kass said.
The flames were replaced by a face it took her a moment to recognize. Where had she seen it? Crystalia. The rebel in the park. K-something. Killiri? Yes, T’kal Killiri, the man who had caught them sneaking away from the palace. As always, Kass was amazed at K’kadi’s ability to reproduce anything he had ever seen.
A dragon materialized, expanding to the point of sending Kass leaping from her chair, scooting back against the wall. “Enough, K’kadi! That’s not funny.”
T’kal Killiri’s he
ad dashed for the door, the dragon following, its flaming breath licking at the long braid hanging down the rebel leader’s back. “Pok,” Kass breathed. “He didn’t. Tell me Jagan didn’t actually do that.”
K’kadi folded his arms across his chest and simply stared at her. To emphasize his point, one pale eyebrow shot up, wrinkling his youthful forehead. Finally, after several moments of suspense, Killiri’s head popped back into view.
“He’s all right?” K’kadi nodded. “Bless the goddess.” Kass closed her eyes, a sigh of relief whooshing out as she sank back into her chair. But she wasn’t the ParaPrime Designate for no reason. Without opening her eyes, she groaned and said, “There’s more.” Perhaps if she kept her eyes closed, she wouldn’t have to find out what.
A hand touched her shoulder, warm and firm. Kass slitted her eyes to discover her brother’s face radiating disappointment that she was refusing to accept news from Psyclid. Well, pok! Little brothers—particularly weird little brothers— could be a pain. Reluctantly, Kass nodded.
A full-length image of M’lani and Jagan formed, about one-third their actual size. A hologram was a child’s sketch compared to K’kadi’s perfect reproductions. And . . . a chandelier? This was something new.
Suddenly, M’lani’s face turned red, the chandelier shattered. Both miniature figures hit the floor.
“They are hurt? K’kadi, tell me this instant!”
Her brother, eyes rolling with impatience, bounced both figures back to their feet and repeated the scene in greater detail, clearly showing M’lani’s anger, the windows shattering as well as the chandelier, and Jagan saving them both.
Mouth agape, Kass turned toward her brother. “M’lani has the Gift of Destruction?” Solemnly, he nodded.
Pok, dimi, and fyd! What now?
Chapter 8
Jagan, his invisibility bubble firmly in place, stared up at the fourteen-foot walls of Crystalia. Last time he’d been in this spot, their merry band of five had L’ira to toss them up and over the wall as easily as if she’d been a child playing veriball. Frankly, telekinesis wasn’t one of his primary skills. In fact, he’d never done more than occasionally hurl some object of little value at one of his minions’ heads. Well, there was that time he and B’aela had gotten more than a little creative . . .
The wall. He had to get over the blasted wall. And after a nasty argument, in which he’d had to admit telekinesis was far from his best talent, that he might drop his marines onto the sharp spikes jutting up from the outer wall, he was on his own, his bodyguards waiting in the shadow of a cluster of trees. One good thing—as long as he remained invisible, there was no one to see him if he sprawled ignominiously, half on, half off the top of the wall. Or fell on his ass.
Or his head.
Jagan considered his options. Waiting for the gates to open for a supply truck was out of the question. M’lani had an appointment with Fate. Tonight.
He should have practiced while still at the Ambassador’s residence. But there had been too many people. And besides, the Sorcerer Prime did not practice. The Sorcerer Prime knew everything. Accomplished magic effortlessly.
Jagan stifled a groan—he might be in a relatively dark part of the royal park, not far from the service entrance, but there was an armed guard some thirty meters to his right, another about the same distance to his left. Ah well, perhaps he should actually take the time to speak the flying spell instead of just thinking his feet off the ground.
But whatever you do, don’t think about the challenge of flying both of you back out again!
Fizzit, he felt like some stupid schoolboy muttering incantations. The thought of failure, humiliation, Killiri’s laughter, stopped him mid-sentence. Stupid, stupid, stupid! He was Jagan Sitric Cormac Mondragon, Sorcerer Prime, and he could command any fizzeting magic he wanted. Without incantations, without his minions, without an assist from that genius of telekinesis, L’ira fydding Rigel.
He’d swear he left his stomach on the ground, even as his guts clenched at the sight of the sharply pointed black spikes as he sailed over the top of the wall. His eyes were, in fact, so fixed on their nastiness, he hit the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of him. He lay there, cursing softly, thanking the goddess his invisibility cloak held fast.
He’d have to do much better on the way back.
Jagan had no difficulty after that—he and the royal sisters had been in and out of every secret passage in Crystalia a hundred times over. Not that he wasn’t tempted to blow hot breath in a maid’s ear or kick a Reg guard in the ass, but sanity prevailed. Without Killiri’s help the Psyclid rebellion was going nowhere. Huff and puff as he would, no walls would tumble until he had the people’s backing.
Thank the goddess, M’lani was ready, wearing some kind of newly created garment that almost broke his determined calm. The too-short version of a classic asymmetrical Psyclid gown wasn’t so bad, but the skin-tight black leggings showed curves no one but a mate should see . . . ? Fizzet! This was what she was wearing to a meeting with T’kal Killiri? He opened his mouth to order her to change, caught the matching challenging looks on her parents’ faces, and his shoulders slumped in frustration.
A vision of dropping M’lani onto the wall spikes stabbed through his head. Just terror, not wishful thinking. Really.
His inner voice laughed even as Jagan thought he might be sick.
Dutifully, he made obeisance to Ryal and Jalaine. Then taking M’lani’s hand, he wrapped them both in invisibility and led the way through passages he suspected she hadn’t seen in years. The outer wall loomed before them. He’d make the leap, if only to erase the skepticism so clearly visible on his betrothed’s face. Just to make sure they both went together, he tightened his grip on her hand. Her face snapped back to determinedly bland. Control of her emotions was good. If he dropped her, he didn’t care to be exploded for his efforts.
Miraculously, their feet touched down on the far side of the wall as if he’d been transporting people all his life. Jagan choked back a sigh of relief. Without letting go of her hand, he set out for the meeting site T’kal Killiri had chosen.
As the rules of this particular engagement—carefully negotiated by M’lani and L’rissa—stated that only M’lani enter the room where the Psyclid rebel leader waited. Jagan, the penitent, stayed outside, exchanging desultory conversation with the sister. A handsome, intelligent woman, L’rissa Killiri—cool under stress, holding her emotions close. Another time, another place he might have . . .
But those days were over.
Unlike B’aela.
Still hoping to pry L’ira away from Rigel, he had tried abstinence on that long voyage back from Hell Nine and found it decidedly wanting. Particularly with L’ira making it plain their betrothal was no more than a parental dream, a dynastic coup no longer possible in a world where his horizons, as well as hers, had expanded so far beyond Psyclid that the old ways had disappeared into the mists of time. The Psyclid world that emerged from the venture forged tonight would be new. As would the world L’ira was building with Tal Rigel.
Jagan circled back to the center of his own personal universe, searching inside himself for the unknown person he had to be to play his expected role in creating these new worlds. All he found was a shadow, a gray formless nothing.
It would have to be enough.
M’lani stared at the man who had gone from stiff parade rest—arms behind his back, feet wide—to kneeling at her feet, head bowed. All she could see was a pair of broad shoulders and a thick braid that extended all the way down his back. “Please rise, Daman Killiri, I should like to see your face.”
T’kal Killiri rose to his feet so nimbly, it was almost like magic. One moment he was at her feet, the next looking down at her from a height not as imposing as Jagan’s. “Welcome, Your Highness. A veriball club house is scarcely what you are accustomed to, but it seemed an unlikely place to find nosy Regs.”
“No doubt I shall have to accustom myself to a great many n
ew things, Daman Killiri. May we sit and talk?”
He led her to a pair of chairs so well used the natural shine of the crystos was long gone, leaving them closer to gray than their original white. Until she started to sit down, M’lani had not realized just how short her tunic was. Feeling quite naked—and seriously questioning her desire to look more like a daring rebel than a princess—she swallowed hard, reminding herself this meeting was about reconciliation, not seduction. War, not love.
And definitely not about sex.
M’lani looked T’kal Killiri straight in the eye, not missing the depths—the confidence, the courage, the experience of a man more than a decade her elder—and said, “I understand there were—ah—tensions when you met with the Sorcerer Prime. I assure you . . .” She held up her hand to stop the words that were clearly forming on his tongue. “I assure you he deeply regrets the dragon and apologizes for the incident. Their Majesties have termed it ‘egregious’ and have been assured nothing like that will ever happen again.”
M’lani allowed a mischievous smile to play lightly across her face. “Unless of course the dragon is targeting the Regs.”
“May I speak now?”
A regal nod that would have made her mother proud. “You may.”
“I have led the Psyclid rebels for some years now. I . . . ” Killiri scrubbed a hand over his face, adding, as if the words were being dragged out of by force, “Highness, I may have been less accommodating than the situation called for.”
“And I have never been known as anything more than an ornament,” M’lani returned, “yet now I find myself a diplomat, a rebel, and a watchdog. No one knows better than I that change is not easy.” Once again she studied Killiri’s rugged, square-jawed face and did not find him wanting. “Daman Killiri, may I invite your sister and my betrothed to join us?”
Arms crossed over his chest, dark eyes unfathomable, he examined her face. “For you we will fight, Highness. And may the goddess give us strength enough to work with the Sorcerer Prime. You may tell them to come in.”
Sorcerer's Bride (Blue Moon Rising Book 2) Page 6
