The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

by Irene Radford

“I am stronger than this!” he muttered through gritted teeth. “First things first.” He lifted Katrina free of her skittish mount. He cradled her in his arms, soothing her shock and pain. A cursory examination of her bleeding hand showed him deep cuts from the leather.

  “I don’t have the healing touch, love, but I’ll do what I can,” he apologized. “It’s going to hurt terribly, but I have to wash it.”

  She nodded, white-faced. “I trust you,” she whispered so softly he wasn’t certain he heard her as she clung to him with her free hand, resting her head upon his shoulder.

  He kissed her temple and carried her to the creek beside the road.

  Margit wheeled her horse and galloped back to them. “I’ll take care of her. You go after that demented cat of yours.” she said. “We can’t afford to lose the supplies on the steed.” She swung her leg over the saddle horn and dropped to the ground in one swift movement.

  Jack released Katrina reluctantly. He took off running after the steed that was rapidly disappearing in the distance. “Stop, s’murghit,” he panted. He couldn’t call up his FarSight or enter the beast’s mind while he put all of his energy into running. He didn’t dare stop running lest the steed and Amaranth got too far away.

  The steed would not cease its blind flight until Amaranth stopped shrieking and flopping about in panic. He could still hear his familiar protesting in the distance.

  Quiet, my friend. Quiet, he whispered directly into the flywacket’s receptive mind. The bonds between them guided his words. Hush, little one. He repeated the lulling words over and over, all the magic he could muster while maintaining his ground-eating lope.

  At last, winded and nearly doubled over, gulping in huge draughts of air, he sensed that Amaranth worked his talons free of the tangled mane and the padded leather of the pack saddle. But the steed plunged on and on.

  Jack repeated his quiet litany, seeking the equine brain. Steeds usually responded to humans, being nearly as physically compatible as cats. This one’s panic blocked all of the normal channels of communication and control.

  He sensed Amaranth launching into flight, having had enough of the steed’s wild thrashing through the thickening woods.

  Track it Amaranth. We can’t afford to lose it! he called to his friend.

  Amaranth swooped onto Jack’s shoulder instead, barely digging in his claws at all. He kept his feathered wings half engaged, flustered, frightened, and bewildered. His voice reverted to baby shrieks. No telepathy at all.

  “Go after the blasted steed, Jack!” Margit ordered him with mind and voice.

  “Go, Amaranth. You can do this. The steed did not hurt you. Hunt it and show it to me as you fly.”

  Amaranth rubbed his face along Jack’s cheek, heaved a sigh, and pushed himself into the air.

  The absence of his weight on Jack’s shoulder left him feeling terribly alone, almost empty. He stared after his familiar for several long moments, then returned to the women.

  Katrina sat on the creek bank with her head between her knees, and her left hand held out for Margit’s ministrations. Margit knelt beside the water rinsing a bloody rag. Mud and everblue needles stained the knees of her leather trews.

  “I can’t make it stop bleeding, Jack,” Margit said. A touch of panic edged her voice. “It’s stiffening up, like there’s a tendon damaged.”

  Katrina gasped, then bit her trembling lip.

  Jack knew her thoughts without reading her. She feared she’d never hold her lace bobbins again.

  Margit closed her eyes, then spoke without looking at either of them. “Jaylor’s going to kill me if I fail in this mission. He told me specifically to take care of her.” She worked her cheeks in an effort to control her own panic. “Even last night when I reported that I was an unnecessary extra on this mission, he ordered me to stay with her.”

  “Let me see,” Jack took her place beside Katrina. He concentrated on sending out an aura of calm authority to both of them.

  When Margit’s eyes quit darting about, he took Katrina’s hand gently, probing the wicked cut across the palm, just below the finger joints. His eyes saw torn flesh and new puddles of blood. His magic found the severed blood vessels and gashed tendon. He took three deep breaths to trigger a trance.

  “Are you going to cauterize it?” Margit rested her hand on his shoulder as she watched.

  “Sort of.” Jack narrowed his focus. “A healer would do this without effort and without pain to the patient. Just bear with me, Katrina.” A nearby ley line winked at him with silvery-blue energy. He tapped it to fuel his work.

  A little magic bound him to his love. A little more opened his TrueSight to the layers of tissue and energy in her hand. Flesh became translucent. Beneath it, he saw the pulsing vessels, the twitching joints, the binding tendons and cartilage.

  “Sing something, Katrina. Sing your magic to match my own,” he breathed, still within the throes of his trance. “You knew how to heal burned-out ley lines with your Songs. Sing to heal yourself now.”

  “I—I can’t.” She grimaced. Her pain became a visible layer of blackened red infiltrating all the layers of her aura. She kept trying to tug her hand out of his grasp.

  “Trust me?”

  “With my life.”

  He caught her frightened eyes with his own gaze. In a moment she quieted. Her breathing slowed to match his own.

  A small Song of magic worked its way out of his heart into his voice. Their song. The little lullaby she’d sung in their prison cell. The one that had spawned tiny, spidery ley lines of energy where no ley lines had existed for many centuries. Together they had discovered the magic all women invoked when singing over mundane tasks. Unconsciously, they set up layer upon layer of protection for those they loved.

  He’d tapped the ley lines Katrina had brought to life to release their shackles and aid their escape while Queen’s City shook and crumbled in the aftermath of multiple kardiaquakes.

  Slowly, gently, with the Song still lighting his mind and his magic, he sent a needle-fine probe of magic to the first small blood vessel. He encouraged it to mend. Then the next, a larger one this time. He needed a second, hotter touch to make it seal off.

  Katrina gasped and tried to wrench her hand away.

  He held her tighter, seeing precisely how much pressure he exerted with his solid hand against her seemingly transparent flesh.

  A moment more and the last vessel closed. He encouraged the tendon tissue to knit and expel foreign matter so tiny only Jack’s magic could see it. Then he brought the muscle and skin together, binding them loosely with magic. Best if they finished healing on their own.

  At last he sat back on his heels and withdrew from the intimate contact. Sweat poured from his brow and his heart pounded erratically. Too tired to eat, he just wanted to curl up and sleep. He closed his eyes and still saw the pulses of energy and layers of color in the hand he kept within his own.

  “You did it, Jack,” Katrina said quietly. “I knew all along you had the healing touch. It only hurt a little.”

  Judging by the quieting layers of energy in her aura, that was a lie she almost believed.

  She brushed a stray lock of hair off his forehead. Her fingers lingered and traced his cheek. He turned his face just enough to kiss her palm.

  “It will be stiff for a few days, while it finishes healing. But you’ll be handling bobbins with ease after that,” he reassured her.

  “Time to get moving,” Margit said brusquely. She stood up and brushed her trews clean of the creekside debris. “Has your cat found the pack steed yet?”

  “He’s working on it.” Flashes of images began to penetrate Jack’s mind. Tall trees, rising terrain as they neared the mountain barrier between SeLenicca and Coronnan. A scatter of small buildings at the base of a hill. More trees and then—atop the hill a jumble of stones with many pack steeds and sledges milling among the stones. A great deal of black with purple-and-red trim adorned the saddles, packs and rounded huts atop the sledges.
He knew who owned them.

  He sat up straighter, pushing Amaranth to focus more closely on the stones.

  Not jumbled haphazardly. Worked stone stacked carefully and mortared into thick walls. A steedshoe-shaped building—squared off at the corners—with an exterior wall connecting the two outthrusting wings and forming a wide courtyard.

  And there, quietly nickering to one of the smaller beasts harnessed to a sledge, stood Margit’s white pack steed.

  “Found him!” Jack stood up, dragging Katrina with him. “Only a mile or two off, that way.” He pointed west and slightly south where they could see the beginning of the rising ground and the dense forest around the hill. The line of everblues blocked their view of the building.

  Margit threw dried meat and journey bread at Jack from her pack as she leaped astride her mount. “Eat as we ride. You need to replenish energies lost while working magic. We need that steed and its supplies. If we delay, it may wander farther.”

  More slowly, Katrina stuck her foot into a stirrup. Jack pushed her into the saddle. Then, closing his eyes and forcing Rosie to the back of his consciousness, he clambered up behind her.

  The cat within him roiled and wanted to spit. He fought it. His need to remain close to Katrina overcame the cat’s hissing fear. More like a need to have its own way than a real fear.

  Jack almost laughed out loud at this insight. “I’ll match you stubborn for stubborn, cat,” he said to himself.

  Katrina looked over her shoulder at him in question.

  “I think I found a solution to my problem,” he whispered into Katrina’s ear as he wound his arms around her waist. “Our steed found a bunch of Rover steeds. I believe they belong to my grandfather. The original spell that bound the queen to her cat was danced by Rovers. We’ll have my grandfather’s people reverse it for me and put the cat into Amaranth’s body where it belongs.”

  “Rovers.” Katrina gulped and stiffened in his arms. She did not urge her mount forward.

  Neeles Brunix, the man who had owned her for three years; used and abused her for his own gain, had flaunted his half-Rover connections, the same blood mix as Jack.

  Chapter 32

  “There’s a village,” Margit whooped. “We’ll purchase supplies and a new pack steed here. No sense going off on a wild lumbird chase after the other one.” She set her heels into the sides of her mount.

  Katrina did likewise.

  Jack bounced uncomfortably on the spine of the animal, clinging to Katrina for dear life. The cat spirit rose sharply to the front of his senses. His back arched, the hair on his nape and along his backbone stood up. A curious itch in his bottom felt as if a tail twitched in agitation. He swallowed the angry hiss that climbed from his gut to his throat like a too-long-suppressed cough. Rosie really did not like this steed.

  “I am stronger than you,” he hissed at the cat.

  “What?” Katrina spared him a look over her shoulder while she gripped the reins firmly with her right hand, fully in control of her mount. She rested her bandaged left hand in her lap.

  “Nothing, love. Take this path angling off to the south.” He relived the course Amaranth had flown in pursuit of the errant steed. Even now the flywacket perched atop a high stone tower, trying to make sense of the images that wandered in and out of his vision. Jack couldn’t make sense of them either. He hoped the confusion came from Amaranth’s youth and lack of experience and not what he feared.

  “But Margit . . .”

  “Margit will follow. Her mission is to take care of you. She won’t let us stray too far without her.”

  “Her true mission is to find Marcus. She can do that a lot easier without me. And now that you have come to see me safely into SeLenicca she will go off on her own, no matter what Jaylor orders.”

  “And leave you without a chaperone? Not likely. She knows her best chance of finding Marcus and Robb is to stick with me. Just guide this monstrous beast up that path to the top of the hill. I have a feeling we’ll all find answers up there.”

  He blinked rapidly trying to sort the curious double vision. Amaranth’s continuous feed of bizarre images, much clearer now that he perched atop a tower than when he flew, overlaid his own sensory view. He had to fight for balance the entire time. Then Rosie had to add her own confused perceptions, relying more on scent and sound than sight. Jack nearly lost his meager breakfast.

  Amaranth sensed Rosie’s need to understand through her other senses, and he began to relay scent impressions more than visual. Too many bodies confined together. Too many bewildered steeds. Strange cooking smells that relied heavily upon timboor, the fruit of the Tambootie tree, and something very old on the verge of decay.

  And then Amaranth focused sharply on a curious statue perched atop the largest and gaudiest of the Rover bardos. A tin weasel. At one time the statue had been dipped in gold and the outermost layer had begun to flake off. The flywacket knew the weasel form, but could not understand why the statue did not smell of weasel.

  Krej. Jack’s heart fell. Another problem for him to deal with before he could take Katrina to SeLenicca.

  (Gold!) the flywacket proclaimed.

  At one time the dragons had told Jack that they valued gold and jewels almost as much as humans. Gold represented the power of the kardia, a symbol of the beauty of life.

  Rosie recognized the value humans placed upon gold and reared up, ready to make Jack pounce.

  Hold back, Amaranth. Do not announce your presence or betray your wings. I will be there, in a few moments. We can investigate together, he ordered his familiar.

  Ruthlessly, he forced Rosie away from the front of his consciousness. It fought him every finger-length of the way.

  Amaranth reluctantly folded his wings but continued to peer avariciously at the statue.

  Jack closed his eyes again, reducing the onslaught of sensations. His stomach slid back down from his throat to about the middle of his chest. Manageable.

  Silently he called Amaranth to him. Maybe if he could reduce the number of perspectives, he could conquer the queasiness.

  Amaranth remained stubbornly in place. (Must keep the gold from disappearing like funny men,) the flywacket returned.

  “What funny men?” Jack muttered.

  Katrina pulled on the reins and looked back at him questioningly. He motioned her forward.

  Then another view of the monastery with a thick haze over all. The vague outlines, as if viewing them through a thick fog, of mingling steeds and Rover bardos superimposed onto his already distorted visions. This one came from high above them. Briefly he caught a glimpse of himself and Katrina atop the lumbering steed. He watched them climbing the long trail that circled the hill half a dozen times before ending abruptly at the tree line a few yards from the gatehouse tower.

  His stomach lurched again. “Don’t fly, Amaranth,” he pleaded with his familiar. Then he realized that the new view came from yet another source. A dragon flew above.

  “Shayla?” he asked the unseen observer.

  “Shayla?” Katrina looked up in delight.

  (Baamin,) the blue-tipped male dragon replied with a chuckle. (Shayla’s son fares better than you do, young Jack.) Another laugh rippled across Jack’s consciousness. (You can sever the link between your minds upon occasion.)

  “I don’t want him to feel lost. We need this time of constant contact to solidify our bond.” Jack looked up trying to catch a glimpse of the magician turned dragon who had been his mentor and father figure as well as father in another life. “You taught me that with Corby, my first familiar.”

  Katrina patted his hand. “How sweet, Jack. I hope you are as considerate of our children.” She must have heard the dragon. Unusual. Normally, only Shayla communicated with her.

  “I’m glad you are still thinking of our future.” Jack nuzzled her neck, drinking in her unique smell and the silkiness of her hair.

  (There will be many times when you do not wish a third participant in your life, Jack. Amaranth will
wait for you.) Baamin broke off his verbal and visual contact. Abruptly, Amaranth’s contribution ceased as well.

  Jack sensed a tiny squeak of protest from his familiar just before his vision centered upon what his eyes could see alone.

  Relief came to his stomach with a sense of emptiness. The cat settled into a contented purr within him. The vibrations centered at the base of his spine. Since his attention was no longer divided between the cat and the flywacket, Rosie had nothing further to contribute.

  Jack almost panicked at the loss of Amaranth’s familiar presence in his mind. They’d been linked constantly since before the purple dragonet’s transformation. He took a deep breath and accepted the temporary separation. Temporary, he reminded himself and the cat.

  You know, if you had gone into Amaranth’s body as planned, you wouldn’t have anything to be jealous of, he reminded Rosie.

  The cat continued to purr without further comment, setting up an almost sexual satisfaction within Jack as the vibrations radiated out from his spine. His bottom stopped itching, as if his invisible tail curled around his hips in contentment.

  “What was that all about?” Katrina asked.

  “Did Baamin show you the view from above?”

  “I only caught bits and pieces through a thick fog. My contact with him is not as—as complete as it is with Shayla. But I sense his approval of me. He wants to deepen our contact. What is that strange building atop the hill that he seemed so concerned about?”

  “I’m guessing from the shape it’s an abandoned monastery from long ago. People who aren’t supposed to be there have recently taken up residence.”

  “What people?”

  “Rovers.” The bardos atop the sledges were distinctly Rover in construction and painted design. But why had the owners neglected the sledges and pack beasts? Rovers always attended to their animals very carefully before seeing to their own needs. Always. Steeds carried nearly as much value to them as the gold coins they wore on their sashes and caps. Only children represented more wealth than gold and steeds.

  The distinctive purple and red that dominated the colors of those bardos proclaimed them the possessions of Zolltarn, self-styled king of all Rovers, member of the Commune of Magicians, and Jack’s grandfather. That clan had an abundance of babies born in the last four years—to replace the men who had died quite suddenly the year before Zolltarn changed his loyalties from coven to Commune. The dragons had a hand in the loss of those men, and the Rovers had never quite trusted them as a source of magic or as a benign presence since.