Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III

by Irene Radford

  “My mother killed Televarn with the poisoned knife Televarn used to try and kill her,” Yaala explained. “Maia watched her do it. So did I.” She fell into a silent reflection.

  “Then almost everything she told me was a lie. Or she blocked out the memory.” Kinnsell shrugged. “But then, I knew she lied, and I enjoyed her attempts to manipulate me anyway.”

  The long-range sensors flashed a terrain map into one corner of the viewscreen. “Got it. There’s a plateau ahead. A long way without engines, but we may have enough wind to keep us aloft that long.”

  “How far?” the old man called from the cabin. “Powwell’s in bad shape. I need a dragon to help him.”

  “Dragons, bah!” Kinnsell hadn’t really seen a dragon sitting on top of this very shuttle. He’d been sick, feverish, hallucinating. “Once we land, I’ll show you the miracles of modern medicine. I’ve got scanners and bonesetters and antibiotics. We’ll patch him up almost as good as new. I’ve also got a stash of Tambootie if nothing else works on the boy.”

  “Our healers can do as much with dragon magic to fuel them and more healers to amplify the magic,” Rollett argued.

  “Believe what you will, but shut up now. I need all my concentration to land this without a decent runway.”

  Kinnsell gritted his teeth and memorized the plateau. Then he closed his eyes and visualized how he had to ease the shuttle down. He shed altitude and dropped the landing gear. The vessel slowed to stall speed, except there were no engines to stall. The control panel beeped at his unusual command. “I suppose you burned out the vocal control?” he asked at the third warning beep.”

  “The voice in the control panel?” Yaala asked, still gripping her seat with white-knuckled fists. “Yes, it is gone with the rockets, the jets, and the fuel.”

  “No great loss. My second wife programmed her voice into it years ago. Time to change it anyway. My current wife gets jealous every time she flies with me.”

  He shed more altitude. The wheels bounced off the rough terrain and hopped back up. Too high. He dipped the nose and felt the first scrape of dirt beneath the cabin.

  “Brace yourselves. This is going to be rough!” he shouted, clinging to his own chair with what little strength remained to him.

  The shuttle skidded along the narrow ledge. The ceramic/ metal alloy screamed in protest as rocks scraped the belly and tree limbs lashed the roof and viewscreen.

  Kinnsell ducked instinctively.

  With a wild screech, the left wheel snapped off. The heavy tail end of the shuttle skidded around while the nose kept plunging forward.

  “Brakes, I need brakes,” he yelled at the controls. A confusing array of lights flashed on and off. He couldn’t make sense of what worked and what didn’t. “How do I stop this damn ship?” he asked the air.

  (You must stop now!) A voice sounded inside his head. An alien voice he couldn’t recognize.

  “Who?” he asked the air. “How?”

  Before the words finished echoing in his head, the sound of metal crunching against rock screamed throughout the shuttle.

  Yaala and Rollett held their ears. The old man dropped to the floor, bracing his legs against a bulkhead while he draped himself over the still unconscious Powwell.

  The sounds of protesting metal wound down to an annoying whine. The shuttle struck some large obstacle. For a moment it hopped back into the air. Three seconds of absolute silence deafened him. All he could see out the front viewscreen were rocks and more rocks. The sensors relayed information too quickly for him to comprehend. Then the shuttle dropped again. Kinnsell’s stomach lurched toward his throat. He shuddered with the vessel as it struck ground once more. A great tearing sound ran the length of the cabin. The deck split in the wake of the horrendous noise. The cabin canted sharply backward and to the left. Stopped. Suspended. Where?

  Kinnsell unclenched his jaw. He rotated the joints a couple of times, fearing he’d cracked a bone or three. When his chin and cheeks stopped popping, he took a moment to appraise the situation.

  His sensors and the view outside the window told him the shuttle was precariously balanced upon the edge of the plateau. A tangle of tree limbs kept the stern of the shuttle from teetering into a steep and broken ravine.

  A worse fate awaited him out the front viewscreen.

  “Not again,” he moaned and buried his head in his hands. When he spread his fingers a little and looked out the broken window, he slammed his eyes shut again. “I have to be feverish. I have to be hallucinating.”

  A huge dragon eye stared back at him through the cracked window.

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

  Bessel slipped up the stairs to his room while the royal couple and their friends made plans. He pulled together a disguise out of odds and ends and returned to the kitchen by the back staircase. Luucian’s attention was on the servant’s spyhole. Bessel tiptoed around him and opened the kitchen door of Myrilandel’s house cautiously. A dozen black-clad mercenaries from Rossemeyer lined the alley. They stood tall and formidable, made more imposing by their voluminous black robes that could hide two dozen weapons, and by their elaborate black turbans with one end draped over their faces. Their black eyes glittered with menace as they surveyed Bessel.

  He swallowed his fear and opened the door a little wider. As he took the one step down to the stoop, he held his lower back with one hand and balanced his weight to emphasize the large bulge of a blanket wadded up under one of Myrilandel’s maternity gowns. His “pregnancy” was held in place by a wide belt. With a kerchief over his hair, he just might pass for a woman nearing the end of a difficult pregnancy.

  Provided Mopsie stayed quiet and didn’t squirm around too much within the blanket.

  Two of the mercenaries stepped forward, hands on the hilts of their swords.

  Bessel waddled up to them, keeping his eyes open and frank. He couldn’t betray the truth by even so much as a twitch of fear on his face.

  “Allow me to assist you, madama.” The mercenary on Bessel’s left crooked his arm, ready to take Bessel’s weight, should he choose to place his hand there.

  Bessel suppressed a grin as he leaned heavily against the man. He placed his other hand, still holding the basket, beneath his tummy bulge and moaned a little.

  “I’m off to market for some special herbs to ease the birthing pains,” he said in falsetto. “I should ever so much appreciate your company on the journey. One never knows when the babe might burst forth.” Bessel clutched his belly again and moaned louder. This time he swayed a little.

  “Um . . . um . . . shouldn’t you stay home and send someone else to market?” His mercenary escort hesitated. The soldier looked frantically toward his companions for inspiration.

  Few men, even healers, were comfortable around women in childbirth. Bessel had learned that much through his mother’s numerous pregnancies. At the first sign of a labor pain, all the men in the village found urgent work elsewhere.

  “There is no one else. They are all held captive in the street. Can’t you hear the commotion? I must go now, I can’t delay.” Bessel moaned again as he took a few mincing steps down the alley.

  “Then I fear you must go alone, madama. We cannot desert our posts.” All of the mercenaries bowed low.

  Bessel took several more steps—a little longer stride this time while they weren’t looking.

  “Please stay close. I may need you to boil water and fetch supplies by the time I return.” Bessel dismissed them with a wave of his hand. The strangers drifted away from Myrilandel’s kitchen door in an effort to separate themselves from Bessel.

  Bessel fought to keep his steps short and awkward until he had rounded the corner into a wider street. A few people passed him without a second glance. Their attention was fastened upon the commotion at the front of the house on Embassy Row.

  The crowd milled. Anger dominated the aura of the gathering. But it had no focus.

  Supp
ressing a grin, Bessel shouted above the noise. “I saw one of the blackmailing Rovers with the foreigners. They’re in league with the foreigners.” The crowd took up the litany, linking their current troubles with the mercenaries from Rossemeyer rather than with the king.

  He wanted to join them, but he had an important task.

  Chapter 45

  Inside Kinnsell’s shuttle on a plateau deep in the Southern Mountains

  Yaala stirred cautiously from beneath a pile of seat cushions and broken equipment. When the shuttle came to a screeching halt, she had been thrown into a bulkhead. She slipped on the sharply canted deck trying to get her feet under her.

  The shuttle shifted again. The deck tilted more steeply. She froze in place.

  A quick assessment showed Rollett stirring on the other side of the cabin and Kinnsell staring wide-eyed and gaping out the window at the baby dragon peering in through the window. A faint hint of blue along wingtips and horns highlighted the dragon’s dark pewter color. Afternoon sunlight glinted off his fur. He appeared about the size of a small pack steed, quite young.

  “Don’t move, Rollett,” she commanded. He froze, much as she had. “We’re balanced precariously.”

  “I think that baby dragon sitting on the nose of the shuttle is all that is keeping us on the ledge,” he whispered back, as if afraid that the sound of his voice would upset the balance.

  “Can you see Lyman and Powwell?” she asked. Wreckage blocked her view of the central cabin.

  “Lyman’s legs. Not much else,” Rollett replied.

  “I’m alive,” Lyman whispered back. “Powwell is burning up with fever.” Yaala picked out the outline of Lyman’s body amid the debris piled around them. He shifted his legs, trying to get his knees under him.

  “Don’t move,” she and Rollett ordered together, much too loud.

  The shuttle shifted again.

  “I . . . if th . . . that monster is real,” Kinnsell stuttered, “can you make it sit on the nose, like a teeter-totter?”

  Yaala and Rollett looked at each other and shrugged off the strange words.

  “A lever and a fulcrum, dammit! We need a counterbalance on the front to offset the heavy engines in the back.” Kinnsell’s exasperation broke through his stunned staring.

  “Where there is one baby dragon, there will be a dozen more. They don’t stray far from the lair at that age. Mama Shayla should be around here somewhere. She’ll provide an adequate counterbalance,” Lyman said. He lifted his head, cocking it to one side. The gesture was so common to him, Yaala hadn’t recognized it as a listening pose until now.

  “Do you speak to the dragons, Lyman?” she asked.

  “Often. I missed them while I was in Hanassa. The dragons won’t let their thoughts penetrate that city,” Lyman replied. “The dragonets are too young to communicate with humans. I’m only getting baby screeches from them, no images or words.” He tilted his head in the other direction. “Ah, there’s Shayla, coming in from a hunt. She understands.”

  A loud thump vibrated down the length of the shuttle. Metal screeched again as huge talons tore at the strange skin. Then, slowly, the deck straightened.

  “She’s perched on the roof,” Rollett said with a smile. “She wants us to open the hatch and very carefully slide out. The shuttle weighs more than she does, and she can’t hold it long.”

  “I’m not going out there,” Kinnsell protested. “I’m not going to become that monster’s next meal.” He continued to stare at the baby dragon.

  Yaala couldn’t help giggling. The baby was tiny. Wait until he saw Shayla!

  “I—can’t—open—the—door!” Lyman said through gritted teeth as he pushed buttons on the control panel and kicked at the hatch.

  “There are dragons out there. Can’t you gather some magic and force it open?” Yaala asked.

  “The air in here is sealed tighter than anything we have encountered before,” Lyman reminded her. “The dragon magic can’t get in, and I haven’t enough reserves to levitate the locking mechanism.”

  Yaala looked to Rollett for inspiration.

  “The engines aren’t running. We’re going to run out of air very soon,” Kinnsell stated calmly.

  Yaala wondered if he’d rather suffocate than face the dragons. “Look for a manual override. If the shuttle has them for wings, surely it will have them for the hatch.”

  They all jerked their heads back to the hatch as a great tearing sound came from the metallic skin of the shuttle. A glimmer of daylight, followed by the tip of a red dragon talon pierced the hatch door.

  “I believe rescue is on the way.” Lyman grinned.

  Seconds later fresh air penetrated the stale chemical tainted odor they’d been breathing since Hanassa. Yaala gulped in the fresh sweet scent of green trees and moisture. Her throat constricted with thirst, reminding her she hadn’t drunk in hours—days?

  Rollett and Lyman took deep gulps of air. They both sighed in satisfaction.

  “Dragon magic!” Rollett opened his arms wide as if to embrace the air. “It’s been so long. I didn’t think I’d ever fill myself with it again. I didn’t think I’d live long enough to find another dragon.”

  “You can breathe later. We’ve got to get out of here before the whole shuttle falls into a ravine.” Yaala crawled toward the hatch where she could see most of a dark gray dragon paw and some of a red-tipped dragon nose poking through the crack. Blue-tip was still sitting on the nose staring at Kinnsell.

  A sudden ripping sound sent the shuttle teetering on the edge again. Back and forth the craft wavered. Up and down.

  “Seesaw Marjorie Daw,” Kinnsell singsonged on a giggle. He looked and acted drunk. Or frightened to near insanity.

  “We all have to get out now,” Yaala said, with all of the authority instilled in her by her mother.

  The hatch panel vibrated and split. An inquisitive dragon head poked through the opening. Red-tip scraped his budding spiral horn on the top of the hatch and backed out quickly with an affronted squeak. Yaala held her ears against the high-pitched protest.

  The shuttle shuddered and tipped backward again. Everyone froze in place until the rocking ceased.

  (Hurry!) a frantic voice pounded into Yaala’s head.

  Rollett and Lyman dropped to all fours and each grabbed one of Powwell’s ankles. They dragged him cautiously toward the gaping hole in the bulkhead, keeping close to the deck. They must have heard the voice as well.

  That left Kinnsell. How can I persuade him to leave the dubious shelter of the shuttle? Yaala asked herself. His skin had paled again and his eyes looked glassy with fever. Powwell’s cure must not have been complete.

  “I’m not going to let my best friend sacrifice his life for nothing. You come with me easy, or I knock you out and let the dragons drag you to safety!” She yanked him out of his chair and onto his knees.

  “Y . . . you w . . . wouldn’t,” he protested feebly. His skin turned ashen. He swayed to his feet.

  “If Powwell gives up his life to save yours, the least you can do is live.” Grabbing him by the collar and the seat of his pants, as if he were a dog or a small child, she propelled him toward the hatch.

  At least Lyman had persuaded the baby dragon to back away. He held the creature by the sensitive horn bud and peered directly into its eyes. Shayla lowered her long neck to peer at them closely. Lyman might have been a dragon once, but Shayla obviously wouldn’t allow him too many liberties with her babies.

  Rollett sat nearby on the ground, cradling Powwell’s head in his lap.

  The shuttle tipped again. Yaala heard a frantic scrambling of dragon talons on the roof. That decided her. Using every last bit of her strength she kicked Kinnsell’s butt. He tumbled out the hatch, landing on the rough plateau facedown. He lifted his head and spat dirt.

  “You will regret that, young lady. I am a very powerful man,” he sneered at her.

  Yaala jumped clear, sprawling next to him. “Out here the only power that counts is fri
endship with the dragons. You are decidedly powerless,” she returned.

  Behind her, Shayla screeched and flapped her wings in a mighty effort to get airborne. The shuttle creaked and teetered on the edge a moment, then tipped. It dropped abruptly down the hundred-foot cliff face, bounced on a lower slope and slid rapidly toward the bottom of a trackless ravine. Huge chunks of dirt and trees broke loose in the wake of the shuttle. Rocks the size of the baby dragons tumbled together in a mighty roar.

  Yaala crawled to the cliff edge to watch the shuttle tumble down, down, forever down to the forest below.

  Several long moments later, it landed. The rockfall continued, on and on until the wonderful machine disappeared in a cloud of dirt and debris.

  “It’s gone,” she whispered. And with it went the last tangible link to her machines, to Hanassa.

  “I flew it once.” She smiled. “That’s all I really needed.” Then she stood up, brushed dirt off her trews, assessed the situation, and began issuing orders.

  Late afternoon, home of Myrilandel, Ambassador from the Nimbus of Dragons, Coronnan City

  “This is ridiculous!” Katie and Quinnault said in unison.

  They quirked half smiles at each other. The familiar blending of their minds warmed Katie’s heart anew.

  “I am King of Coronnan. I will not be imprisoned in the home of my best friends by foreigners who do not like my system of justice.” Quinnault marched out the door to confer with his guards. The dozen uniformed men faced twice their number of mercenary soldiers famed for their fierce thoroughness.

  “At least you have a system of justice,” Katie whispered to him. She sent him that reassurance mentally as well. Then she turned back to their other business.

  “Now, while my husband deals with the soldiers outside, I shall tend to your medicine, Nimbulan.” Katie rubbed her hands together eagerly. She had something to do.

  “You have the gift, Katie.” Myri smiled at her. “People jump to your orders and believe themselves blissfully content. When I give an order, servants look at me as if I were talking to air. It’s easier to do the work myself.”