Dragon Novels: Volume I, The

by Irene Radford

  A hush fell over the crowd. Gold- and green-clad musicians sounded the fanfare. Rejiia winced at the harsh sound.

  “Do you think the king will actually show his face?” she whispered into the silence that followed the trumpet blast.

  “Sshh,” a woman held one finger to her pursed lips, signaling silence to her husband.

  Rejiia smiled. The thrown-voice spell worked! “I heard Darville’s face was horribly disfigured in his battle with the magicians,” she commented louder, meaning for all to hear. King Darville’s face hadn’t been touched in the fateful battle with her father and aunt, but his sword arm was badly burned.

  With mischievous glee she fed the mundane superstition against the outlawed magicians of the Commune. Her purposes were served well if the crowd believed all evil sprang from the Commune—especially the coming assassination.

  Acolytes in white, swinging censers of burning incense, began the procession from the palace around the dais in the center of the courtyard. A choir of green-robed sisters of the stars followed next, bearing lighted candles. Their songs invoked blessings from the Stargods in six-part harmony.

  Behind the women marched a bevy of red-robed priests, silently carrying the books of wisdom left by the Stargods. All three groups circled the cloth-of-gold-draped dais.

  The crowd followed the clerics with their eyes. Rejiia was totally forgotten and ignored. Good. She could continue her assignment undisturbed. She faded backward, toward the protection of a guardroom.

  The priests took up positions around the dais. The sisters and the acolytes joined them, alternating silence, song, and incense.

  A ritual the Stargods stole from Simurgh. Rejiia felt the blood drain from her face as she realized the significance of the processional. Nine priests, nine sisters, and nine acolytes marched sun-wise around a place of reverence. Widdershins, you fools! she screamed within her mind ’Tis a ritual designed to raise power and inspire awe. Who knows what demons you will spawn by performing the ritual incorrectly?

  The incense thickened into a purple haze. Too sweet and cloying. Witchbane. Rejiia retreated farther from the dais. She had too much to do today to fall victim to her own plot. If any magicians hid behind delusions in the courtyard, the witchbane would cause their minds to wander aimlessly while their vision bounced and circled. If they tried to use magic to bring their senses back to order and restore their disguises, they would discover all power had deserted them, including their disguises. The mundanes wouldn’t know anything was amiss.

  Lord Andrall, most loyal to the crown of all the Twelve Lords of the Council of Provinces and a royal relative by marriage, emerged from the palace. He carried the Coraurlia, the splendid glass crown shaped into the head of a dragon. The crown that should have come to Rejiia. Costly rubies, emeralds, and star sapphires adorned the crown in gaudy splendor, none more precious than the rare glass of the crown itself.

  Lord Krej almost had the Coraurlia while he was regent. But Jaylor and the Commune had interfered. She wanted the crown, the title, and royal authority so much her teeth ached. She unclenched her jaw and concentrated on her tasks.

  “Aaah!” the assembly gasped. Many of them had never seen the dragon crown before.

  But I have seen the crown before. I know firsthand the magic power embedded into the glass. The Coraurlia protected King Darville in his battle against my father. By rights it should be mine. ’Twill look hideous against Darville’s golden hair and eyes. My raven hair and bay-blue eyes will enhance the glory of the Coraurlia when it is finally mine.

  I will be avenged for Janataea’s death and Krej’s humiliating imprisonment. Darville has to have the crown on his head to invoke the protection. He won’t live that long.

  Chapter 2

  Yaakke gasped for breath, pressing his back against the outside walls of the Grand Court. He had nowhere else to run. His lungs ached with each breath. Darkness pressed at the sides of his vision. How could he hope to escape his own probe turned malevolent?

  He blanked his mind, as if preparing himself for a trance. The all-but-invisible magic dart paused, seeking. It avoided the mundane minds of the dancers as they leaped and spun with wild abandon. Musicians increased the tempo of flute and drum. The probe sped forward as if enticed by the whirling music.

  Yaakke dove into yet another party of celebrants, letting their overt thoughts and conversations mask his mind.

  “Can you imagine the audacity of the healer?” a fat ore broker protested to his clinging companion. “He refused to use magic to banish the pox. Insisted that only herbs were legal now!”

  The companion-for-hire nodded and made sympathetic noises. She arched her back, displaying more of her bosom.

  The ore merchant wandered off with his companion, leaving Yaakke alone in the crowd. The magic probe slid around and through the musicians straight for Yaakke’s eyes. Nothing stood between the apprentice and the witch bolt.

  A dark shadow flitted across Yaakke’s vision. For a moment he thought the probe had found him. Then, miraculously, a large black bird dove between him and the glittering dart of magic.

  The probe couldn’t divert its path around the bird and plowed directly into the shining black breast feathers.

  “Braaawk!” the bird screamed. A cloud of tiny feathers burst from his breast. His flight faltered and the bird dropped heavily and clumsily to the ground at Yaakke’s feet. The splash of white head feathers over its eyes rose and fell several times. Angrily the jackdaw stabbed at the wound with its beak.

  “Yuaaawk!” The bird spat more feathers from its clacking bill in disgust as it danced in a circle. The bird’s body jerked forward with each step in a rhythm peculiar to his kind.

  Yaakke breathed a sigh of relief. The probe had found a victim. Wouldn’t the armored magician be surprised when the only information revealed was a litany of abuse from a bird! A raw wound in the jackdaw’s breast marred the smooth velvet of his coloring and reminded Yaakke of the sacrifice the bird made for him. What would happen to it now? Did a jackdaw have enough of a mind to be stripped by the probe?

  “Thanks, bird.” Yaakke saluted the cranky creature still preening and pulling damaged feathers from its breast.

  “Corby, Corby, Corby.” The bird cocked its head and repeated the sounds as if speaking directly to Yaakke. Its beady black eye probed him almost as deeply as the witch bolt would have.

  “All right. Corby you are. I owe you one, Corby.” Yaakke turned to push his way through the crowd toward the Grand Court entrance—where he should have met Jaylor over an hour ago.

  “Owe me one. Owe me one. Owe me one,” Corby repeated.

  Yaakke paused a moment at the shift of the pronoun. The bird was just mimicking sounds. Wasn’t it? Whoever heard of a jackdaw smart enough to speak? Unless the probe had given the bird the intelligence it would have stripped from Yaakke. He twisted his neck to look at Corby one more time. The white tufts above his eyes waggled again. The resemblance to Lord Baamin was so strong in that instant, he almost saw his dead master peering out of the black, beady bird eyes.

  “No. You aren’t Old Baamin. You’re just a bird.”

  “Corby. Corby. Corby,” the bird repeated as it flapped its wide wings and launched itself into the sky.

  Yaakke dismissed the bird with a shake of his head.

  Jaylor needed to know about the smuggler and the foreign magician running free in the capital, not about weird birds. Right away. Yaakke sent another message to Jaylor. Still no answer.

  At the entrance to the Grand Court, Yaakke dropped to his hands and knees in the middle of the crush of people. He found paths between legs. He avoided trouncing feet with the skills he’d learned as a child while avoiding bullies and thieves. He dared not throw a spell of invisibility to let him pass through the tight crowd. One jostling elbow would rip right through the spell and get him into more trouble.

  Already today he’d passed magic coins at the tavern, revealed his magic to an alien magician, and lost all tra
ce of the smuggler. He really needed to avoid any other problems.

  No one noticed his natural thin and ragged urchin body as he crawled between the legs of a cloth merchant and under the crossed pikes of the guards. All attention seemed directed toward the center of the courtyard where King Darville and Queen Rossemikka moved in stately procession toward the dais.

  “But I provided the queen’s gown. I have a right to view the coronation,” the cloth merchant above Yaakke argued with the guard.

  “You’ll have to wait for the procession across the city bridges, sir,” the guard repeated the same phrase he’d probably been saying all morning. “One more person in there and the whole court will sink back into the river.”

  Breathless and sweating, despite the autumn nip in the air, Yaakke crawled through the crowd to the wall of the court where it hung out over the River Coronnan. He tried to stand up, but couldn’t force himself through the mass of legs and brocade robes, velvet slippers and leather boots.

  “May you all wallow in dragon dung,” he grunted as he pushed his back against the wall and inched upward. Stone and mortar scraped his skin through his simple homespun shirt. He ignored the burning scratches until he was fully upright, staring straight into the bay-blue eyes of a tall, black-haired girl with beautifully clear, pale skin. His heart almost stopped beating as he gasped at her beauty. Long black lashes framed her big eyes. She lifted a hand to sweep a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. Graceful. Elegant. She was taller than he by half a head or more and seemed to be about his own age. But those eyes spoke of knowledge and pain, and were old beyond her years.

  Something about the set of her jaw and the penetrating look she gave him was familiar. Brevelan’s eyes. Another of Lord Krej’s get. The deposed regent had scattered his seed as indiscriminately as his magic. Which of his many daughters was she? Before he could remember, she turned and dissolved into the crowd. None of her thoughts were open to his telepathy. She didn’t seem to be armored, just elusive. He watched the spot where she had disappeared into the crowd, hoping to catch another glimpse of her.

  “I don’t have time for this,” he muttered.

  Yaakke searched the crowd for Jaylor and Brevelan. All he saw was satin and brocade and jewels, fortunes in jewels. Wealth and prestige were the only things that counted in the Grand Court today. His everyday country trews and tunic, as well as his youthful face and small stature would mark him as an outsider and unworthy to attend the coronation. He draped a little delusion about himself, making sure that each citizen saw his tunic and trews as equal in cost and grandeur to their own.

  And he’d better avoid the numerous guards scattered throughout the crowd. Palace guards were notoriously strong witch-sniffers. One whiff of his magic and he’d end up in the same dungeon cell as the hideous statue that Krej had become with a heavy dose of witchbane to keep him there.

  “I don’t mind King Darville wanting more money for the army,” a lavishly garbed town dweller complained. “We’ve got to protect our borders since the magicians deserted us and took their protective barriers with them. But Darville thinks we should feed the poor, too. I say let the wretches find honest work or join the army. I have trouble enough keeping the wife in SeLenese lace.” He and his equally elegant companion strained anxiously to see the king he discredited.

  SeLenese lace? All imports and exports from SeLenicca were banned. Could that be where the smuggler aimed to take the Tambootie seedlings? Yaakke strained to follow the speaker with his eyes, but lost him among the throng of taller observers.

  The mood of the crowd seemed to echo the speaker—half wildly enthusiastic for the king and half faddishly bored, unable to approve of anything.

  With the slightly crossed eyes required for TrueSight, Yaakke scanned the courtyard for any hint of Jaylor. All he could sense was a tiny tune of peace and love just ahead of him. That had to be Brevelan, Jaylor’s wife. An island of calm radiated outward from the delicately framed witchwoman. Her witch-red hair and magic were disguised. No one who didn’t know her would suspect that the quiet tune she Sang to her new baby was really a spell to keep the overwhelming emotions of the crowd away from her empathic sensitivities.

  Disguised or not, Jaylor wasn’t beside her.

  Yaakke climbed to the top level of seats erected around the central dais, almost to the top of the wall. He ignored Corby perched atop the wall ten arm-lengths away as he preened scorched breast feathers. Tendrils of black floated on the wind, like ash, with each stab of his sharp beak.

  Scanning the crowd for anyone wearing a magic disguise or delusion—friend and enemy alike—Yaakke avoided jostling elbows that threatened to push him over the outside wall into the churning river that encircled Palace Isle. The jackdaw cackled laughter at his concern.

  “Rotten weather for a celebration.” A sergeant in the green-and-gold uniform of Darville’s personal guard remarked beside Yaakke.

  “Yeah, could rain any minute.” Yaakke looked at the sky where the jackdaw now flew, rather than at his unwanted companion. He swallowed heavily and tried to ease away from the young sergeant.

  “Do I know you?” the Palace guard asked, peering closely at the black-and-silver tunic Yaakke had chosen for his magic disguise. He thought it went well with his dark hair and eyes. Then he remembered the girl with raven hair and bay-blue eyes. She had been wearing black and silver too.

  “I don’t think we’ve met.” Yaakke looked around nervously. He wished he could dissolve into the crowd like the girl had, without using any magic. This curious sergeant looked as if he might be trying to “smell” the presence of magic.

  A bizarre purple haze clung to the area around the dais. Yaakke wrinkled his nose against the odor of the incense. Cautiously he eased a light shell of magic armor around him. The overly sweet smell subsided.

  The sergeant opened his eyes wide and shoved his way down the tier of seats, like a boat forging upriver against a strong current, pushing noble and wealthy citizens aside without regard. Apparently he didn’t like the smell either.

  Yaakke watched, wondering at the sergeant’s haste and determination. Then he saw what had disturbed the sergeant. One of the acolytes wasn’t a young boy. Beneath a dissolving spell of delusion, he was a short, middle-aged man with a square-cut beard. No respectable citizen of Coronnan would wear a beard trimmed in the style affected by King Simeon of SeLenicca, the sorcerer-king who waged war against Coronnan.

  A sorcerer-king who ruled a land notorious for the absence of magic, A dragon could provide Simeon with enough magic to work his spells. He’d need Tambootie trees to feed the dragons who had deserted Coronnan last spring.

  Was the smuggler headed for SeLenicca and King Simeon?

  Assassin! The outside thought came into Yaakke’s head unbidden.

  He sent an invisible probe into the false acolyte’s head. Poison. The man was going to shoot poison into King Darville. Yaakke had to stop him.

  But how? He was too far away to get to the dais before the assassin acted.

  If he threw any magic at all—at this distance he’d have to summon power and focus the spell with gestures and a trance—the guard standing one tier away would arrest him for using outlawed powers. The guard might even think he, Yaakke, was the assassin.

  Rejiia eased out of the guardroom toward the King’s Gate. That magician boy had seen her. That meddlesome apprentice of Jaylor’s, who seemed to melt into walls and fade into obscurity while listening to the most private of conversations, was skulking around the coronation. She had no doubt he could penetrate her delusions. Perhaps he could eavesdrop on her private thoughts and telepathic conversations as well.

  If he overheard, the coven’s plans were in danger. The safety of many depended upon her role in today’s actions. She darted into her new hiding place, just inside the corridor to the throne room. She peered around the edge of the door to watch the coronation.

  King Darville and his foreign queen approached the dais with slow, measured steps. T
he gold of the king’s tunic seemed a perfect match to his barely restrained mane and yellow-brown eyes. He knew how to manipulate the crowd’s loyalty by projecting an image of beauty and power. Rejiia aimed for the same aura of authority with her black and silver gowns and sapphire jewelry—though her husband disapproved of her dramatic clothing. When she was queen, he’d not be around to scowl and whine at her.

  The crowd’s attention strayed from the majesty of the new king to the audacious display of bosom by his queen, Rossemikka. Her golden gown didn’t dip nearly as deep as her wedding gown had, but still, she challenged the modesty of all the other women present. Rejiia wished she dared expose so much of her own breasts. Her meek little husband and his father, Lord Marnak the Elder, had beaten and bruised her the one time she’d tried. They’d pay for that. Soon. When Darville was dead and she was queen.

  If all eyes were on the queen, then no one would see the magically armored assassin make his move.

  One of the acolytes ceased swinging his censer. Rejiia held her breath in anticipation as he lifted a small cylinder from the center of his incense holder. The assassin’s SeLenese beard poked through his disguise, making him look much older. Demon spawn! The armor did not work in the presence of the witchbane.

  No outcry rose against the hired killer. Perhaps no one noticed him amid the dazzle of the Coraurlia and the queen’s white breasts.

  A tiny dart head protruded from the bottom of the tube in the censer lid. The assassin held the tube up to his lips. He took a deep breath to blow. Rejiia filled her lungs as well, willing the poison dart to find its target.

  Almost done. A few more seconds and she would be queen.

  Hands reached out from beneath the dais and encircled the ankles of the assassin. One mighty yank from those hands and the hireling fell forward. Thunk! His face slapped the pavement with a hideous sound. He opened his mouth in a soundless protest and he inhaled the dart. The assassin’s eyes rolled up and his mouth foamed as the poison penetrated the delicate membranes of his mouth and throat.