Dragon Novels: Volume I, The

by Irene Radford

  “Your Grace, I apologize for my unwitting remark earlier.” Those constantly moving hands found a mote of dust on a globe and brushed it away.

  “If you didn’t know my Council holds little regard for magicians, especially lords who are also magicians, then the apology is accepted, the insult forgotten.” He forced the words out. This was what Baamin had advised. Do whatever was necessary to keep the girl close and under observation. He didn’t have to marry her immediately. There was still time to evaluate her and the treaty.

  In other words, stall.

  “So easy, Your Grace? I expected punishment.” Her gaze flew upward in startlement.

  Her hands were suddenly, unnaturally, stilled.

  “Are you often punished, Rossemikka?” Sympathy for the young woman sneaked into Darville, an emotion he didn’t want to feel.

  “My . . . my uncle does not approve of me.” The princess took a step toward him. Her slippered feet seemed to snuggle into the woven carpet that surrounded the desk. She searched the room for something, then finally looked directly at Darville.

  He was amazed to see the hazel-green eyes flip from a slitted pupil to round as she stepped into the brighter light of the candelabra on his desk. Darville glanced down at Mica, willing her to look up at him. He had to see if the girl’s eyes were an illusion, or the exact opposite of his pet’s.

  Mica purred a little louder, arched her back into one of her massive stretches, then peeked above the rim of the desk to see who had joined them. “Merow?” Her little nose quivered in excitement.

  “Is that a cat, Your Grace?” Rossemikka’s voice cracked in fear. She stiffened in the center of the carpet. Her balance shifted forward onto her toes, as if prepared for flight.

  Her subtle shift in posture sent the light glinting on the streak of white hair at her temple. This couldn’t be the woman of his dragon-dream. The woman in Shayla’s cave hadn’t had that blatant streak in her hair.

  Legend claimed such a mark to be a witch’s brand. Long, long ago, before the Stargods came, witchwomen were said to be marked by the rigors of their initiation into the coven.

  Mica twitched her tail once before leaping to the center of the desk. “Mmbbbrrt!” she chirped and rattled her teeth, as she did while hunting. Her back claws raked Darville’s thigh in her haste to meet the princess.

  “Keep it away from me!” Rossemikka backed toward the door. Her slitted eyes, wide with terror, never left the cat.

  “There is nothing to fear from Mica.” Darville was bewildered by the woman’s reaction. “My pet is merely curious.”

  “Keep it away!” she cried. Her arms came up to shield her face as Mica crouched for another leap.

  “Calm yourself, Princess. Mica is merely curious. As you should be. I’m told this cat is a twin to the one you lost.”

  “My little cat was not so vicious.”

  “Mica? Vicious?” Curious she was, a nuisance at times, and a loving companion. But Mica vicious?

  “NO!” the princess screamed and ducked faster than Darville’s eyes could follow as the cat launched toward her. Rossemikka scrambled for the doorway. Mica landed clumsily on the flagstones beyond the carpet. She lay there a moment, stunned by the shock of her landing.

  Without another word, Rossemikka fled the private study of the king. Darville was hot on her heels. He barely noticed Mica scuttling into the shadows to nurse her wounded pride and jarred body.

  Chapter 8

  Brevelan stared at the roof tree of her hut. For the moment it was in focus. Quite an ordinary beam of wood, except for its age. The hut had been here, nearly intact for over three hundred years. It had sheltered many generations of witchwomen. The villagers claimed the hut and the clearing had been empty for a dozen or more years before Brevelan had claimed it, a little over a year ago.

  When Brevelan had needed a place to hide from her witch-hunting home village and family, the clearing had called to her, drawing her ever south until she had stumbled across the threshold. Frightened and confused, she had remained hidden for several months until the villagers had needed a healer.

  Now she needed help and healing. The child was draining all of her strength. There was nothing left of her to fight the magic that chained her to an invisible dragon.

  A new pain clawed at her belly and her back. The room swam out of focus. A scream started in the back of her throat and died there. She hadn’t the energy to push it out.

  For the blink of an eye Brevelan saw all of the auras around every object and being within sight.

  Jaylor was all blues and reds, with hints of crystal and copper. He was weighing his staff in his hands, as if judging the temper of the wood. His colors spread out and included his favorite tool.

  “Jaylor, you mustn’t try to sever the bond to Shayla,” she whispered. The pain receded, leaving her limp and sweating. “Your heart won’t support the magic.”

  “You can’t hold on much longer, Brevelan. I have to do this for you or die trying,” Jaylor insisted.

  Brevelan fought the next wave of pain, rose with it, rode it to its crest, then tumbled back down to the reality of the hard bed in a small, smoky hut. It would be such bliss to just let go. Allow the blackness on the edges of her vision to take over, sink into the oblivion that beckoned her.

  “I love you, Brevelan,” Jaylor whispered, as he lay one end of the staff across her heart, linking them together. He took one deep breath, held it for the required three counts, and released it.

  Instantly, Brevelan felt the calm separation from reality induced by the first stage of his trance. Another deep breath and blue and red lines began to pulse around him, along the staff and through her body.

  “Don’t risk it, Jaylor,” she pleaded, uncertain if her voice was loud enough to be heard.

  A third deep breath and the magic Jaylor projected braided and folded back along the staff. Brevelan’s own breathing deepened, slowed. The confines of the hut disappeared. They were floating in the void between the planes of existence. Blue and red mists supported them in a sea of colored lifelines. Time warped and became meaningless. The awful pain and weakness were left behind, part of another body, another life.

  “Look for crystal.” Were those her words or their thoughts? When Jaylor’s spirit had been lost in a Tambootie overdose, she had tethered him to reality with a strand of copper life from her own heart.

  “There are too many colors, all braided together!” Fear made Jaylor’s voice acid sharp in the swirls of magic. The sounds echoed, becoming dull and hollow with each succeeding reverberation. They filled her head, yet left a vacancy.

  Brevelan couldn’t see her husband through the clouds of her mind. She needed to reach out and touch him, reassure him before his fear of failure broke the spell.

  The magical nature of the void revealed the patterns of Jaylor’s life, but not his physical body. One layer of his aura, a blue halo around his heart, was incomplete.

  The next contraction racked a body. Her body, and yet not hers. She felt no pain, yet was acutely aware of it and unable to continue her telepathic communication with Jaylor. This wasn’t working. Exposed to magic, as they were, the labor intensified. Shayla was too close.

  “Colors define and describe,” Brevelan gasped.

  “Copper for you,” Jaylor panted, as if out of breath or short of blood. “Red and blue for me. Red and green for your father. Who is gold?”

  “Gold?” A golden wolf danced across her mind’s eye. A golden prince who was lover and best friend. A child with golden hair stood beside her, eldest of six, in a dragon-dream.

  “Darville,” she sighed. Or perhaps the child. “Follow him to Shayla.”

  Jaylor picked his way through the pulsing stands of life. At last he touched crystal entwined with gold and copper, but not blue and red.

  The body he left behind doubled over, a fist clenched over his heart. The staff fell from his nerveless left hand.

  The void took on form and solidity. Brevelan fell back
into the bed with a whoosh and a new wave of pain.

  “I am so sorry, my dearest love. I’ve failed you again.” Jaylor hung his head in guilt and regret. His fingers clenched and opened against his chest as the pain eased with the passing of the magic. “We need help.”

  “Why, Baamin?” Darville asked. “Why did the princess exhibit such terror in the presence of my cat? Her fear of Mica seemed to provoke the attack.” Darville stroked and soothed Mica where she lay limply across his chest and shoulder. She nuzzled his jaw in weak appreciation of his love and attention. He sensed that her awkward landing on the hard stone floor was still troubling her.

  Darville’s stomach rumbled and cramped. How much longer could Shayla’s labor last? He needed the soothing contact with Mica to keep his stomach under control as much as she needed him.

  With each pain rode an awareness of another entity also in pain. He prayed that she was safe, protected by the male dragons. Was he, Darville, safe if anything happened to Shayla during this vulnerable time?

  He couldn’t forget that his father, as consecrated king, had been so closely tied to the dragons that Shayla’s ensorcellment had killed him.

  “Stop pacing. I can’t think while you prowl this room like a caged wolf,” Baamin grumbled from his chair beside the king’s massive desk. It was a comfortable armchair, soft and firm in the right places. A low stool cradled the old man’s feet in front of him.

  He kicked at it aimlessly.

  Darville squinted at Baamin. The old man’s green and yellow robe hung on him in pathetic wrinkles, his body almost shrinking before the prince’s eyes. He’d been old for as long as Darville could remember. Now he seemed more ancient than anyone had a right to be. The loss of the dragons and traditional magic weighed heavily on the Senior Magician’s formerly strong shoulders.

  Baamin took a long swallow from his legendary flask, winced and cursed as he refitted the cap.

  His temper hadn’t improved much either.

  “An apt description,” Darville growled and continued to prowl his study. “I’ve been accused of being more wolf than prince a little too frequently of late.” Even his sympathy for Old Baamin couldn’t take the sting out of that particular insult.

  Once more a full moon hung above the battlements. An entire cycle had passed since Darville had traversed the tunnels to share in Baamin’s summons to Brevelan.

  The prince drew thick brocaded draperies across the window to block out the silvery glow. The noise of the sliding rings on their rod was loud and abrasive in the quiet room.

  “You have always demonstrated that characteristic restlessness, Brat. Your need to be out-of-doors, free from the constraints of court rules and strict guardians, riding fast with the wind in your face, a fierce hunter. . . . Your own personality shaped Lord Krej’s transformation spell. Even if you had never spent those four or five moons as a wolf, you would be called one.” The old man pulled out his flask once more and took a long swig of cordial followed by a mint to cover any telltale odor. The recipe for that soothing liquid was Baamin’s treasured secret.

  “Your father was more like a stag, proud and silent, easily startled.” Baamin capped the flask and secreted it again in one of his numerous pockets. “I am rather like a frog, ugly and knock-kneed, loud and offensive.”

  Darville snorted a laugh at the old man’s attempted humor. “Better an offensive frog than a poisonous eel or arrogant flustercock that is more voice than substance, like some members of your Commune of Magicians I could name.”

  “Too many of your Council of Provinces are more squawk than thought; easily led. A strong king can control and use them to advantage. An evil regent could easily destroy the entire kingdom because of them.”

  “Tell me your thoughts, Baamin. Why would the princess become hysterical at the sight of a cat? Especially a cat who is supposed to be a duplicate of her own beloved pet?” Darville stopped his pacing long enough to look directly into Baamin’s tired eyes.

  “Perhaps Mica is the cat, Rosse, who vanished from a locked tower room over two years ago. She has demonstrated some magic.” Baamin reached up a trembling hand to scratch the cat’s ears. Mica leaned into the caress and purred a little louder.

  “I don’t think she is Rosse.” Darville finally sat in his own chair, a smaller, more comfortable version of the dragon throne in the Council Chamber. He’d demanded it be brought out of storage shortly after his meeting this evening. For the first time in his life, he realized how well his frame fit the height and depth of the demi-throne.

  “Why couldn’t she be Rosse?” Baamin’s shaggy white eyebrows lifted in curiosity.

  “Did I ever tell you what happened in Shayla’s cave while the beast-headed man, who I still believe was Krej, threw the spell that changed the dragon into a glass sculpture?”

  “A little of it. I heard most of the story from Brevelan.”

  “Brevelan didn’t see what I saw.” Darville sorted through the images in his head.

  “There was so much magic ebbing and flowing, Krej couldn’t maintain the shape-change spell on me. I took back my own form for a few moments. At the same time, this cat grew into the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She rose up like a goddess, hair streaming to her hips. She lifted her arms and her voice in a glorious song.”

  He paused in his recollections a moment, stroking the purring cat. “Then she collapsed back into Mica’s body.” There, the words were out, the confused images in his mind took firm hold and became reality. “I think I returned to the wolf form at the same time, so I’ve never been totally certain of what I saw. Yet the image has haunted me.”

  “A woman trapped inside the cat’s body, just as you were trapped in the guise of a wolf?” Baamin’s expressive eyebrows crashed downward until they formed a solid line across his brow.

  “Rossemikka looks to be the twin of the woman I saw ensorcelled. Except for the streak of white hair at her temple. The princess bears a witch’s brand. Mica does not.”

  “Let me see her. Have you noticed the names, Darville? Princess Rosse-mikka owned a cat named Rosse, the cat’s twin is Mica—Mikka is not so far off in pronunciation.” Baamin brought Mica into his own lap. Her purring stopped as she squeaked a protest at the move.

  From the deep folds of a hidden pocket, Baamin produced a round of glass. This wasn’t the large master’s glass in a gold frame he had used for the summoning spell. It looked more like Jaylor’s journeyman glass. A more useful tool to carry in a pocket than the larger one the Senior Magician was entitled to.

  Baamin peered through the magnification of the lens. His free hand stroked Mica’s back in long gestures that outlined her bone structure from nose to tail.

  “Hmm . . . very interesting.” He paused in his examination to look for inspiration in the ceiling. “What are you, Mica?” Baamin mused as he examined the cat.

  “Does she tell you?” Darville remembered the times of near telepathic communication with the creature. Brevelan was empathic with animals and people. She had named the cat based on her emotional communication with her. Could Mica have “told” Brevelan a version of her own name?

  “There is something very uncatlike about her, but it is well cloaked. Where is the Princess Rossemikka, Darville?”

  “In her suite, with the doors locked and her dragon of a governess standing guard.”

  “The blonde with the . . . um . . .” The old man cupped his hands in front of his chest depicting the magnitude of Janataea. He blushed more heartily than a man his age should have.

  Darville chuckled for the first time in many, many hours. “I have seen a true dragon and lived to tell about it,” Baamin stated proudly. “One overprotective governess shouldn’t trouble an old man like me. Though she’d be a lot easier to handle if she were a man.” Baamin gathered his voluminous robes about him and stood. For all of the strain and fatigue that showed in his eyes and his greatly reduced body, Baamin’s shoulders were unbowed.

  “Are you well, Baamin?”
Darville couldn’t imagine life in Coronnan City without this most trusted of wise men. But then he hadn’t been able to imagine life without the dragons, or his future without Brevelan not so long ago.

  “I’m old and tired, Darville. But the news that Shayla is back in contact with you takes several years off me.”

  “ ’Tis a contact I’m not appreciating at the moment. Her labor is most uncomfortable, though I’m only getting echoes of her contractions, rather than real pains. How do women stand it?”

  “I must find Yaakke. He will work the summons. There must be a way to channel and focus magic from one person, through another, the way I use my staff.” Jaylor pushed authority and decision into his voice. Much more than he felt. Brevelan was weaker. Dangerously so.

  If only there were a little dragon magic, they could link and increase the power of the spell.

  But the solution to Brevelan’s problem might forever end the possibility of dragon magic in Coronnan.

  “Very good, young man. You’ll make a proper, thinking magician yet.” Krej sneered behind Jaylor.

  Jaylor whirled to see the red-haired lord leaning negligently against the doorjamb. Yaakke stood silently behind Krej. The boy lifted his shoulders in an apologetic shrug.

  Brevelan needs him, Yaakke explained in Jaylor’s thoughts. I know I’m not supposed to transport people, Master. Yaakke backed away from the hut as if he expected to be beaten for his audacity.

  Jaylor forced himself to remember the boy had been a nameless kitchen drudge not so long ago. He’d never known any form of correction other than punishment. Considered retarded because of his slow physical development, he hadn’t been allowed an education or the right to a true name. Only when the dragon magic faded and Yaakke’s rogue powers were unmasked did his intelligence, and his uncontrolled talent, become evident.

  You could have killed a member of the Council of Provinces! Jaylor sent back telepathically. Only when the words left his mind did he realize his throat was closed in awe of the boy’s success at a spell that had defied magicians since time began.