The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

by Irene Radford

  (He is your father.)

  I wanted to love him. He wouldn’t let me. His ambitions and greed got in the way.

  (He is your father.)

  Every contact with him created greater bitterness between us.

  (You cannot love where you do not recognize the truth. He is your father.)

  I cannot love him. He won’t let me.

  (Then you are not ready to recognize the truth.)

  With a stomach-wrenching jolt, Katie returned to her body. She swayed on her feet. Gravity weighed too heavily on her limbs after the freedom of flight to the void.

  “I have got to sit,” she mumbled as her bottom found the ground. Almost sick to her stomach, she dropped her head between her knees, breathing shallowly to keep any more Tambootie smoke from penetrating her lungs.

  “Katie!” Quinnault knelt beside her, seemingly unaffected by the smoke. He hugged her close, offering her an anchor to reality.

  “What did you see in the smoke?” he asked after a moment of silence.

  “Dragons.”

  “Dragons!” Myrilandel and Nimbulan exclaimed together.

  “What have we done to her?” Myrilandel turned stricken eyes on her husband.

  “Perhaps we have made a magician of her,” Nimbulan said softly, almost below hearing. He didn’t move any closer.

  “This is what Scarface fears in lighting bonfires of the Tambootie in plague-affected villages,” Quinnault added. “The smoke will enhance minor talents, make untrained magicians of minor talents who cannot be controlled.”

  “We must never mention this again,” Katie said fiercely. “Women can only weave rogue magic. I will be condemned by the Council and Commune. I will be forced into exile with my daughter. The people will demand Quinnault marry another.” Tears threatened to choke her.

  Quinnault gathered her closer in a fierce embrace. “I will never give you up, Katie.”

  “If we have awakened magical powers within you, Katie, I will give you enough training to hide those powers,” Nimbulan said.

  Katie looked up at the sadness in his voice. The world spun a moment, then settled. Crystal continued to outline everything she saw. Her eyes focused in sharper detail than she ever thought possible.

  Nimbulan moved slowly, almost painfully. The crystal light around the edges of his life flared sharply in orange and black. Blue tinged his lips and spread to his pinched nostrils. He clutched his swollen left hand in the center of his chest. His right arm hung limply by his side.

  “Lan!” Myri jumped from her crouched position beside Katie to catch Nimbulan as he crumpled to the ground.

  Overhead, Kinnsell’s shuttle roared in a low and erratic trajectory.

  Katie spared a half glance at the wavering path of the shuttle. The metal/ceramic craft listed to the left and dragged its tail.

  “Don’t crash, Daddy. I’m not finished with you!” she screamed at him.

  Then quite suddenly the jet engines gave way to rockets and the shuttle rose in a new trajectory straight south toward a polar orbit. With the shuttle went her last hope of communicating with her brothers, her last hope of intervening before her father set loose the seeds of the plague on this planet.

  She turned her attention back to the people she could help. Nimbulan lay unmoving on the ground. Myri wept silently by his side, holding his limp hand with the blue-tinged fingernails. “I am so sorry, Lan. I dare not help you. The life within me has just begun. We agreed not to taint your son with magic.”

  Katie realized in that moment that her father also took with him access to all of the advanced medical equipment aboard the mother ship—equipment that might save Nimbulan’s life.

  Late afternoon, Coronnan City

  Bessel crept through the city, Mopsie at his heels. He crossed bridge after bridge, winding among the islands in a convoluted path that confused him as much as anyone who might follow him.

  The fishermen had given him dry, mostly clean clothing, but no boots. They usually went barefoot. The yellow tunic and white trews seemed overly bright to Bessel. But the fishermen assured him the clothes represented safety to them. The bright colors were easier to see underwater, should one of them fall overboard. And the colors held no resemblance to the sober blue of the Commune. He’d look like any other fisherman gone to market.

  He bypassed the University and its library twice. As long as Scarface ruled that enclave, he’d never be able to delve into the treasure trove of knowledge without help.

  As long as Scarface ruled the Commune of Magicians, Bessel would not return, even if invited. He knew the truth now. He was a rogue magician with a familiar. Nimbulan might overlook his crime, but Scarface never would.

  Finally, when both he and Mopsie knew that none of the assassins from Rossemeyer had spotted them, he turned toward Ambassador Row. Footsore and exhausted, he limped down several side streets to avoid passing in front of the Rossemeyerian Embassy.

  Myrilandel’s tall, narrow stone house looked blank and uninviting. The barest flicker of smoke emerged from the tall chimneys at either end of the building, as if all the fires had been banked. Bessel knew that Myrilandel and Nimbulan rarely used the formal rooms at the front of the dwelling. Life centered in the kitchen for them.

  Myrilandel should have stoked the kitchen fire by now to prepare the simple evening meal. Unless the family dined at the palace with her brother the king.

  Bessel and his familiar scooted down an alley to approach the house from the rear. Closed shutters and a firmly locked door greeted him. Fortunately, he remembered the sequence for opening the lock with magic. Nimbulan had given him that key last night. This was supposed to be his home until the issue of rogue magic and the death of Jorghe-Rosse had been settled.

  The settlement meant nothing now.

  A chill of unease and stale smoke rippled across Bessel’s senses as he stepped down into the kitchen. A mixing bowl and several baking ingredients lay neatly on the worktable, as if set out ahead of time; so, too, were a pile of tubers and cone roots ready for chopping.

  But no one greeted him. No one sang while working.

  “Anyone here?” he asked the empty room. The fire remained a bank of smoldering coals. The house smelled empty.

  Wherever Myrilandel and Nimbulan had gone, they had taken Amaranth with them. Not unusual.

  “Well, if we are hungry, Mopsie, I’d best set about fixing something.

  “Woof,” Mopsie agreed. He waddled over to the pantry door and sniffed eagerly.

  “Why did I know you’d be hungry, pup?” Bessel opened the door and followed the dog to the trapdoor leading to the cool cellar. The leftovers of last night’s stew should be in the shallow underground room. Mopsie jumped down the four steps and found the covered pot before Bessel could bring a ball of witchlight to his hand for better visibility. Myri had left a bone beside the pot on the shelf, just above Mopsie’s reach.

  “If I give you the bone, do you promise to be neat with it? I can’t have you messing up Myri’s kitchen.”

  Mopsie sat politely and wagged his tail across the stone floor.

  “Take it up to the mudroom, then.” Bessel handed the bone—longer than the dog’s head was wide—to Mopsie. The dog grabbed it with eager teeth and trotted up the stairs.

  There he stopped and growled, dropping the bone to bare his teeth in warning.

  Bessel set the stew pot back on the shelf very slowly, very quietly. Then he consciously set his magical armor in place. Spells would dissipate before reaching him. Mundane weapons should bounce off him—if he could hold the protection in place long enough. He wasn’t used to relying upon ley lines to fuel his spells.

  Cautiously, he mounted the first step. The armor sharpened his sight enough to spot the weaknesses in the wooden board that might creak and betray his presence.

  His head and shoulders cleared the trapdoor entrance. He searched the pantry with every sense available to him. Once certain that no one had entered the little room and nothing stood bet
ween him and an exit, he doused his witchlight and climbed up the remaining three steps.

  He paused at the closed door to the kitchen and listened. Someone moved about, restlessly, picking things up and putting them down again.

  Who examined the kitchen so precisely?

  Then the intruder bumped into the table. He mumbled a curse, barely audible to mundane ears. The wood groaned and a knife clattered against the floor. Four thuds suggested some of the vegetables had followed the knife.

  Whoever prowled the room didn’t know it well.

  Mopsie crawled to the door, belly down, neck fur raised, and teeth bared.

  Bessel put aside all of his reticence from invasion of privacy and opened his mind.

  “Where have you been, boy?” Lyman angrily threw open the pantry door. “And where are Nimbulan and Myrilandel? The house is as empty and silent as a grave. Do you mind telling me why you and that scruffy mutt are hiding in the pantry like thieves?”

  Bessel sagged with relief, leaning against the doorjamb.

  “I don’t know where anyone is, and I was looking for supper when my familiar warned me of an intruder. Why are you here? I didn’t think you ever left the library.” Certainly he hadn’t left it long enough to keep up with current fashion. His knee-length tunics and silk sash were the objects of many apprentice jokes.

  “You don’t think much, then. I must find Nimbulan. Where could he have gone?”

  “I don’t know. I left early this morning and haven’t been able to get back until now.”

  Lyman paused to look at Bessel more closely. “Strange garb for a magician.”

  “But proper garb for a fisherman. The agents of Lady Rosselaara search for a journeyman magician.”

  “Ah, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.” Lyman tapped his lip with his index finger. “I should have suspected as much if my mind had been on this existence.”

  “This existence!” Alarmed, Bessel grabbed the old man’s shoulders. “You can’t die and pass on to the next existence yet. The University needs you. The Commune needs you. We have to counter Scarface’s fanaticism.”

  “And you need me to reclaim information in the library. Yes, yes, I read your mind. I couldn’t help it when you opened it wide to listen to mine. Well, you’ll have to find the books and read them on your own.”

  “Promise me you aren’t dying,” Bessel pleaded. He’d had too many upsets in too short a time. Lyman was a permanent fixture at the University. He couldn’t contemplate losing his mentor and . . . and friend.

  “No, boy, the duty I must perform is much more frightening than mere death. I am destined to plague apprentices with reading assignments for a good long time yet. But for now I haven’t time to discuss this. I must . . .” He trailed off as he cocked his head.

  “What do you hear?” Bessel whispered.

  “Everything and nothing.” A typical Lyman answer.

  “Steeds, a dozen or more.” Bessel heard them, too. “All metal shod, some moving quickly, others plodding at a steady pace. . . .”

  Anyone who could afford a steed stabled it on the mainland. The crowded city isle with narrow twisting streets put dwelling space at a premium and made clean up of human waste a big problem; adding steed manure to the compost only made the problem worse.

  “I fear we are needed.” Lyman turned away abruptly and headed through the house toward the front door. Bessel trailed closely on his heels. Mopsie began whining in distress.

  The sound of the moving steeds was cut off abruptly as the elderly librarian thrust open the door. Bessel stopped short at the sight of Nimbulan lying weakly on a litter borne between two placid steeds. His master’s tall, imposing presence seemed greatly reduced. He barely breathed, as if the effort of living weighed too heavily on his thin frame.

  Myrilandel walked beside him, tears streaming down her face. Something terrible must have happened if Myrilandel, the greatest healer in the kingdom, couldn’t cure her husband.

  Queen Katie rode just ahead of the litter. Her red-rimmed eyes bore more evidence of tears and disaster.

  Another clatter of hooves from the opposite direction announced King Quinnault’s arrival. He reined in his steed sharply. The beast’s hooves skidded on the cobblestones, almost throwing the king. But Quinnault mastered his steed and dismounted in front of the queen’s procession. Then he retrieved his daughter from the saddle, cradling her easily in one arm.

  “Get a healer, Bessel. Hurry. We need the best healers from the Commune now!” Myrilandel burst into tears once more.

  “I can’t go back to the University. Scarface has forbidden me,” Bessel whispered.

  “Then I must delay my quest a little longer.” Lyman sighed. “I will summon the healers.” He took three regulation breaths to trigger a trance and disappeared.

  Chapter 34

  Afternoon, home of Myrilandel, Ambassador from the Nimbus of Dragons, Coronnan City

  Bessel sniffed the air around Nimbulan. He reeked of sweet/bitter Tambootie smoke. Tambootie smoke!

  The only ritual calling for burning the tree of magic was the coming of age of an apprentice. He remembered his own trial by Tambootie smoke about two moons after he reached puberty. He’d endured two days and three nights in a sealed stone room with only a Tambootie wood fire for heat and light. The smoke had induced visions of drowning and being eaten by a bemouth—one of the monstrous fish that prowled the outer bay. The only predator large enough and fierce enough to hunt a bemouth was a dragon.

  Just the memory of those visions sent sharp pains into all of Bessel’s joints. He’d been powerless to fight the monster for three days and two nights. Then, finally, when he fell from the monster’s jaws, there was nothing left of his body or soul; he’d fled to the sense-depriving blackness of the void.

  Moments later Nimbulan had opened the magically sealed door and drawn him back, lovingly, into the protection of his enclave of Battlemages.

  Bessel supposed the continued nightmare of the trial that had introduced him to the void, had given him insight into the extent and limitations of his powers. Those limitations had taught him to take responsibility for his actions and never attempt something he couldn’t handle alone.

  He’d also figured out how to block any magical assault upon his mind or his person.

  Two of his classmates had damaged hearts and lungs after their trials and never practiced magic again. They’d had weak talents even before the trial. Tambootie had been proved poisonous to mundanes. Nimbulan had lost his magic a year and a half ago. . . .

  The chain of logic rocked Bessel to the core of his being.

  Only one disaster would require the queen and her two best friends to risk exposing themselves to the Tambootie. That risk was also the only disease Bessel knew for certain Myri couldn’t cure with her wonderful talent.

  “Does he have the plague?” he whispered to Myri as the royal guards passed them bearing the litter.

  Bessel’s time sense rocked backward and forward, superimposing the image of Jorghe-Rosse’s corpse being carried on a litter before the king.

  He pushed aside the memory for more immediate concerns.

  “Does he have the plague?” he asked again, a little louder.

  Myri shook her head, never taking her eyes off her husband.

  “Then why couldn’t you cure him?” he asked. A note of desperation crept into his voice. He had nothing left if Nimbulan died. No family, no Commune, not even his friend the librarian . . .

  Mopsie pressed himself against Bessel’s legs and whimpered. The fishermen had given him more consideration than the Commune. He could build a new family with the hearty seamen and their dogs.

  King Quinnault rushed up beside his sister. He thrust the baby into Bessel’s arms for safekeeping then hugged Myrilandel’s shoulders in comfort. “He asks a valid question, Myri,” Quinnault said quietly. “The law against women using magic be damned. Please do not let this great man die if you can do anything to help him.”r />
  “Do you think I would willingly watch my beloved die if I could help, law or no law?” Myri shook off the king’s embrace angrily. “I am newly pregnant. I can’t use my talent lest I harm the baby. He stopped me earlier today when I would have corrected the problem. . . .” She broke into sobs, unable to finish her sentence.

  King Quinnault cradled her against his chest, rubbing her back helplessly.

  Bessel mimicked the motion with the little princess. He’d had enough practice taking care of his younger siblings back home.

  “Does he have the plague?” Bessel insisted, still tending the baby. The plague kills the old, the young, and pregnant women first, his aunt had said. He had to get Myrilandel and the princess away from here.

  “No, he does not have the plague,” Queen Maarie Kaathliin said, entering the room. Shorter than anyone else by at least a head, she still radiated authority and commanded respect simply by being there.

  “Are you certain?” King Quinnault asked. Even he, the most powerful man in the land deferred to her.

  “Yes, I am certain. The Tambootie smoke would have killed the virus if our brief exposure had infected him.”

  “His skin is waxy and blue like the dragon dream Powwell shared with me,” Bessel argued, desperately needing reassurance and not daring to hope for it. “His breathing is ragged just like my mother’s was before she died.”

  “Your mother had the plague?” King Quinnault swung Bessel around, shaking his shoulders as if he had to force the information from him. “Where? When?” Why wasn’t I told!”

  “Master Scarface said that only the privations of a long winter and the aftermath of so many generations of war ravaged Lord Balthazaan’s province, especially the mining villages where they grow very little of their own food. But I remembered the smell. Powwell shared the smell with me telepathically when he shared the dragon dream.”

  “Stargods, the plague is here for certain, not just a ‘perhaps’ pushed aside for other concerns. How? When?” Quinnault paced the reception hall. He clenched his hands behind his back and hunched his shoulders. With the afternoon sun pouring through the open doorway, he was outlined in red-gold light like the silhouette of a young dragon.