The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

by Irene Radford

  “I’d best send you home, Your Grace, before you are missed,” Jaylor said. He took a deep breath. His face still looked a little gray.

  “No more magic until you all eat!” Brevelan proclaimed.

  “Food,” Jack murmured, recognizing the cause of some of his disorientation. The afterimages continued to plague his vision like half-formed ghosts. His skin felt clammy, and his knees wobbled. “I need food.”

  An unknown journeyman stuffed a hunk of bread into Jack’s hand, followed by a thick slab of cheese.

  Jack ate hungrily, methodically. He had to restore his energies quickly.

  “Jack, I’ll see you in my study in the morning. We need to discuss security within the palace.” Darville swallowed convulsively.

  “SeLenicca,” Jack croaked. “You promised to send Katrina and me to SeLenicca as ambassadors.”

  “Later. I need you in Coronnan City more than I need you across the border now that the war is over. We still have an eavesdropping rogue to find.” Darville dismissed the suggestion.

  “I’ve got to take Katrina home, Your Grace. Now.”

  Three deep breaths and the void beckoned him. “Come, Amaranth.” The flywacket leaped into his arms. Three more breaths and he sent them both into the void in search of his true love.

  Chapter 22

  Zebbiah hustled Jaranda and the pack beast onto the sailing vessel amidst shouts for haste from the captain and crew—who all looked amazingly like the Rover except they wore blue and green on their black clothing instead of purple and red. The pack beast protested the plank up to the ship’s deck vehemently and tried to sit down again in the middle of it.

  The woman pushed the animal from behind with a sharp stick, trying her best to keep it from parking its rear anywhere but on the deck. Zebbiah called no orders to her, nor did he look to see if she followed. They had made a bargain; therefore, he must presume she followed.

  Eight passengers, all dressed in rough clothing, moved abruptly to the far side of the open-decked vessel giving the Rover and his beast more than enough room to settle for the long voyage upriver.

  The woman inspected the other passengers openly. All of the women but one wore a single plait that started at the crown and gathered closely to the head to the nape where it broke free into a thick rope of a braid. Two of them had not bothered with the complex four strand plait but sufficed with the simpler three strand braid. The other woman wore two plaits that started at her temples and stayed close to her head to the nape, then swung free for a short space and joined into a single thick plait halfway down her back. She must come from a merchant family. The others were all peasants.

  Not knowing who she was or what her status was, the unnamed woman had gathered her own hair into a thick knot at her own nape. Jaranda’s hair, she had tied back with a green ribbon to match her dress. They, like their fellow passengers, wore sturdy dark skirts and vests with white, long-sleeved shifts beneath.

  She caught the eye of the woman wearing two plaits. The merchant’s wife turned up her nose and spun on her heel to face the water on the other side of the vessel. The peasant women followed suit.

  The men talked amongst themselves and paid no attention to the newcomers.

  Jaranda did not seem to care about the people. She skipped about looking at everything, watching the crew as they cast off the lines and set the sail.

  “Zebbiah, what plagues them?” the woman whispered to her traveling companion.

  He looked up from tending to the stubborn beast that carried all their worldly wealth and supplies.

  “We made them late. They are displeased.” He shrugged and returned to the beast’s reins, tethering them to a brass ring embedded into the decking.

  “ ’Tis more than that, Zebbiah. Displeasure at our tardiness would evoke curses and grumbling, not this silent disdain.” Why did she know that? An image, a very old image, flashed across her mind’s eye. She stood and watched a parade of noblemen and courtiers as they exited the king’s audience chamber. One of them turned and faced her squarely. “This war with Coronnan will benefit no one. No one. We’d be better off governing ourselves than submitting to his demands for more money, more war, more slaves, more sacrifices.”

  She tried to put a name to the man’s face. She tried to place herself in the crowd. She tried to remember who he was.

  The images faded to mists.

  “You remembering something?” Zebbiah asked.

  “Not quite. Has our country been at war long?”

  “Over three years.” No further comment good or bad. No information as to the cause. Just that war had become a part of life.

  “And is all this devastation a part of the war?” She swept a hand to include the city behind the docks that drifted farther and farther away.

  “Partly.”

  She raised her eyebrows, waiting for more information. He sat down on a cargo bale and began plaiting a piece of leather he drew from the panniers.

  Slightly miffed, she marched over to the women crowding against the far railing. “Good morning, ladies. Are you traveling all the way to the end of the river?” she asked politely.

  Two-plaits sniffed as if she smelled something rancid. “Riffraff, tainting true-blood with dark-eyed outlanders,” she spat.

  “Wouldn’t have this problem if the council hadn’t made mixed marriages legal so Queen Miranda could marry an outlander,” a stout woman added. She wore a clumsy braid that looked as if it had not been washed or combed in a month.

  Two-plaits looked pointedly at red-haired Jaranda.

  “I don’t suppose you know my name, ladies?”

  “A name that’s too good for you, if you ask me,” two-plaits replied and moved as far into the bow as she could, away from them all.

  “Somehow, I didn’t expect you to say that.”

  “Stargods, they make a lot of demands for ghosts!” Yeenos, Vareena’s older brother protested. “Bad enough we have to feed two more of them with no respite from the last one. Now they want special herbs and minerals, crystals, and our soap-making cauldrons. I say no. We feed them because the Stargods decree we must. But no more!” He swung his shepherd’s crook in a wide circle before slamming the crook against a watering trough.

  “Yeenos, calm down.” Vareena ducked the staff, well used to her brother’s temper. She had seen Marcus do the same thing with his staff. Robb seemed to have better control of his temper and treated his staff more gently. “These new ghosts claim that another ghost, a true ghost of a man who has died, haunts the monastery and causes live men to become trapped there, halfway between here and their next existence.”

  “What else is a ghost?” Yeenos sneered, then he whistled for his dog to run the sheep farther uphill from the farm-house.

  “I don’t know. But they refuse to believe they are true ghosts, and they need these things to work a spell that will lay the other ghost to rest and free them from the trap.” Vareena rubbed her hands together nervously. She’d have gone to Uustass for help, but he had led a dozen men to the river this morning with scythes. The village needed fresh grass and reeds to repair the thatch on several dwellings and byres.

  Jeeremy Baker had gone with them, his burns heavily bandaged but no longer in pain.

  “I agree with Yeenos,” Vareena’s father Ceddell said, coming over to them from the byre. “We owe the ghosts food. That was the curse laid on this village three hundred years ago for refusing hospitality to a benighted traveler. S’murghin’ magician.” He crossed his wrists and flapped his hands as he spat onto the ground. “But we owe them nothing more. I’ll not be spending our resources to find these odd ingredients for a useless bit of magic.” He kicked the water trough and called his dog to his heels, away from the flock Yeenos worked with his own dogs.

  “But, Papa, if we can end this curse once and for all . . .”

  “We’ve had priests and magicians alike trying to end the curse with no luck.”

  “But these ghosts are magicians trapped b
y the curse, not magicians working outside of it. They might have a chance . . .”

  “You’ve gone and fallen in love with one of them, haven’t you!” Ceddell raised his voice and his hand in anger.

  Vareena stepped back but did not duck. She faced her father, refusing to submit to his violence. She might be as trapped here as the ghosts, but she refused to lessen herself by accepting any man’s abuse.

  “Your mother did the same thing, before I showed her the wrong of it.”

  “Showed her with your fists, no doubt.” Vareena schooled her voice and features to betray none of her fear or her disgust.

  “I’ll find you a husband this night. Then you’ll give up this nonsense.”

  “No man in this village wants me. I’ll have none you bribe or coerce into the act.”

  “You’ll marry the man I choose for you. The law of the land and the laws of the Stargods decree that you must obey your father.” Ceddell raised his clenched fist once more.

  Vareena stood her ground. “Touch me, and I move into the monastery permanently. The villagers will have to bring food, clothing, and bedding to me there. They will have to come to me for healing. How far will your authority stretch, Ceddell, once the Ghost Woman removes herself and her witch healing from your household?”

  “Enough!” Yeenos nearly screamed at them. His nostrils pinched white and his mouth pursed to a thin lipless line. “This village has borne the burden of this curse too long.”

  Both Vareena and her father stared at the young man as if he had lost his reason.

  “You say these new ghosts are magicians, Vareena?”

  “So they claim. I have seen no evidence of their talent other than lighting a fire from a distance. But I can do that.”

  “Lord Laislac sent around a newscrier three years ago,” Yeenos said, almost gloating. “Magic is illegal in all of Coronnan now. I’m going to the capital to talk to the priests, and to the Council of Provinces. I’ll get the obligation removed from us. Ghosts or no ghosts, there will be no more food and supplies wasted upon those who haunt the monastery.”

  “You can’t!” Vareena gasped.

  “You can’t stop me, Eena. It’s time.”

  He whistled one last time to his dog and turned his crook over to his father. Then he stalked into the house and began throwing journey rations into a pack.

  Vareena took off running for the hill crested by the abandoned monastery.

  “Vareena!” her father roared. “Come back here.”

  “Never. I have to save my ghosts. I can’t let them die of neglect.” She had to find a way to bring Robb back to life. Marcus, too. If the Stargods showed any mercy at all, they’d allow her to kiss her love just once in this existence. She’d give up the freedom Farrell promised her for one kiss from Robb.

  “How much time do we have?” Robb asked at Vareena’s breathless news.

  She shrugged her shoulders, inhaled deeply, and spoke. “A week. Perhaps two. Depends if Yeenos changes steeds along the way, or if he talks his way onto a barge.”

  “We’re doomed.” Marcus slid to a heap in the corner of the refectory. He wrapped his arms around his knees and began rocking.

  Robb wanted to do the same, but refused to give in to the despair that his friend exhibited.

  “ ’Tis a long way from here to the capital and back.” Robb finger-combed his beard. Years ago he had copied the thinking gesture from Jaylor. Now he’d done it for so long that it had become a part of him. “We’ve walked from the capital to the border often enough in the past three years. Even with magic urging a steed to greater speed and endurance, the trip always took at least a week each direction. Once Yeenos reaches the capital, he’ll need to gain an audience, first with the priests at the Royal Temple, then with the Council of Provinces. That could take weeks. Moons. Until he returns with an edict withdrawing village responsibility for us, we have food and supplies. We have time to trap that ghost in the library and get some answers.”

  “Papa has agreed to village responsibility to feed you two until Yeenos returns. But he refuses you the supplies you need for the spell.” Vareena turned her face away from him.

  Robb wished he could watch her eyes, know what she hid. But the mist that separated her from the two magicians veiled her eyes and her mind from his probes.

  Strange how physical objects retained their crisp outlines, but the people looked as insubstantial as a dragon. He could touch physical objects, lift them, probe them for long-lost memories, but a kind of armor prevented him from touching other people—except Marcus.

  Perhaps if they probed the walls rather than trying to climb them, he could discern the nature of the spell that kept them within. Later, when he was alone and could concentrate. Hard to do since the entrapment.

  “Can you find these supplies for us?” Robb asked Vareena.

  “Some of them. The herbs are common enough. Some of the minerals, but crystals and the cauldron . . .”

  “We’ve got little crystals in our supplies. We’ve got a little cooking pot. They will have to serve for now. A smaller spell. Less chance of success, but perhaps enough to show us what can be done.”

  “I’ll bring you what I can.” She rose up on tiptoe as if to kiss his cheek, then reared back, repulsed by the energy barrier. “I’ll go now.” A tear formed in the corner of her eye, like a perfect dew drop glinting in the sun. Then she ran off on her errand.

  “Stargods! She’s in love with you,” Marcus choked on a sob. “I might as well curl up and die. I’ve lost everything.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Marcus moaned and buried his head in his knees. “I can’t do anything right, can’t even love the right woman!”

  “Marcus, stop wallowing in misery and help me. We have a ghost to trap.”

  His friend only moaned again.

  “Marcus.” Robb stalked over and shook him by the shoulder. “What are you talking about? Until we got here, you were madly in love with Margit—and she with you. Before Margit, you loved that little dairymaid in Hanic. You are always in love with someone. Now you think you love Vareena, and you think she loves me. You aren’t thinking straight.”

  “I can’t think of anything else but Vareena. This place twists everything back to her.” Marcus clutched Robb’s hand in a painful grip that bordered on desperation.

  “Perhaps this place does cloud our thinking.” Robb had kept visions of Margit in his heart and his dreams for a long, long time. He focused hard on her each night before sleeping to stave off the recurring nightmares of attack and fruitless defense. But she obviously had strong feelings for Marcus. He did not want to come between his two best friends if their affection was genuine.

  Now?

  “What a tangled mess.” He slumped down beside Marcus and draped an arm around his friend’s shoulders.

  Marcus rested his head on Robb’s shoulders and sobbed.

  “Vareena loves me,” Robb mused. “I love Margit, Margit loves you, you love Vareena . . .”

  “I love you, too, Robb,” Marcus sobbed. “You are right. My feelings for women are temporary. Illusions. My love for you will last forever.”

  Horror shuddered through Robb. He stood up jerkily, putting as much physical distance as he could between them.

  “Snap out of your adolescent hero worship, Marcus. I’m going to climb the tower, see if a summons spell works from there—above the level of the walls.”

  Chapter 23

  Unlike my son, those who seek to capture me are bumbling beginners. My son would have known how to break my spells and leave this cursed place. My daughter, too. They did not need this paltry dragon magic to bring them anything they wished. Nor did they need the convoluted and time-consuming rituals of the Rovers.

  And yet these amateurs do not panic easily. They have been trained to think a problem through—as Nimbulan did. I could have trained them better.

  Let us see how they handle my next little trick. Their own fear will force them
to leave me alone long before I finish with them. They shall die in another ninety-seven days if they remain here. Soon I will be alone again with my power.

  The nameless woman surveyed the long line of pack steeds, sledges, merchants, and other travelers who had banded together to cross the pass safely into Coronnan. Every traveler had to be wary of bandits, out-of-work mercenaries, and rogue magicians. They were too close to the border of Hanassa for comfort.

  A flash of memory lanced her mind right between her eyes. Images of battles, war, displaced families, hungry people, noble and peasant alike, fire, flood, kardiaquakes without end.

  She clutched the mane of Zebbiah’s beast for balance as the world spun around and around, taking her with it.

  “M’ma!” Jaranda screamed.

  She fought her way through the maze of images to find the coarse, mottled brown-and-gray hide of the pack beast. It brayed loudly, threatening to sit again in protest of her fierce clutch on its mane.

  Her memory flashed again to another steed, one she rode, a docile little mare that was greatly intimidated by the mighty war stallion beside her. Her husband sat atop that horse, surveying the battle below. She had eyes only for the red-haired man who commanded the troops. “I was too young to see beyond the glamour of being in love with the notion of love,” she whispered. “I worshiped him.” He was a powerful general with tangled political connections, a strong and handsome man: what more could an idealistic young girl ask for in a man? He took care of her, protected her from . . . she couldn’t remember from what, only that she cherished his domineering presence.

  And she thanked him daily for the child he had given her.

  “Jaranda,” she whispered.

  “M’ma!” Jaranda tugged on her gown. “Wake up, M’ma. I’m scared,” the little girl implored.

  “Jaranda,” she said again, louder, firmly. “Jaranda, my love. Do you remember your father?”

  Strange, she felt no sense of loss at the man’s absence. No regret. She focused entirely on her daughter, stooping to put herself on the same level as the child.