“Promise me, Darville, that if we find no solution to the succession, you will put me aside and remarry.”
“I won’t even consider it. I’ll match your strong will against my stubbornness. We will find a solution.” He kissed her palm with loving tenderness. The wall of silence crumbled but other walls threatened to rise up.
“You sure this is the right path, Your Grace? Seems to fade into nothing more’n it goes forward,” Fred asked.
Margit moved up beside him and giggled. “The clearing wouldn’t be secure if just anyone could find it.” She strode forward with a masculine swagger.
“This is the right path, Fred.” In more ways than one. For the good of the kingdom, Darville realized, he needed to make peace with Brevelan and Jaylor over Glendon. More important, Mikka needed to settle the issue of the cat persona sharing her body.
Only Jaylor and Brevelan could help. So the royal couple had journeyed to the southern edge of Coronnan in search of the magicians.
They had left their military escort in the foul-smelling pub of a fishing village near the foothills to the Southern Mountains. Fred and Margit were the only ones allowed to accompany them on the long climb up hill.
Both Darville and Mikka knew the trail well. Four years ago, they’d traveled it often enough. He’d been a golden wolf then, and she a multicolored cat, familiars to a red-haired witchwoman.
Now he was a king, with a kingdom straining toward stability and she was his barren queen. An heir to the throne would give the people of Coronnan the confidence to continue their quest for peace among themselves and with their neighboring kingdoms.
Darville had acknowledged as heir his own bastard son, Glendon, over the claims of Rejiia de Draconis, daughter of his father’s cousin. Rejiia’s husband had petitioned the Council of Provinces time and again to proclaim his wife heir. But Rejiia had been absent from the capital for nearly a year. Rumor placed her variously in SeLenicca, in Hanassa, and in her home—locked up and beaten regularly by her jealous husband.
Rejiia’s claim was tainted by her father’s involvement with a forbidden coven of Simurgh. Glendon might never be allowed to ascend the throne because his mother was an acknowledged witch and illegitimate as well. So far, Darville’s acceptance of the boy as heir had met with only minor opposition from the Council of Provinces. They still hoped the king would put aside his barren wife and make a new alliance to produce a better successor to the Coraurlia. Few outland kingdoms had come forward with prospective brides, but the lords themselves had dozens of noble daughters.
The broken boulder that signaled the approach to the clearing appeared before him. Both Fred and Margit marched around the split rock in the direction the path seemed to follow. Darville stepped between the two pieces, on the left-hand side of the tree that had grown between the halves. Fred and Margit were immediately lost to sight.
Twenty paces beyond the boulder, the path crossed a creek and died.
“Look over there, Darville.” Mikka pointed through the trees.
“I don’t see anything.” He squinted his eyes to peer closer in the direction she indicated.
“The barrier to the clearing. There’s a big hole in it. We can walk right in without Brevelan opening it for us.”
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the barrier. “Something’s terribly wrong. We’ve got to get in there!”
Rejiia left in a sweep of black skirts, the men following in her wake. The door slammed closed behind them. The click of the lock tolled Jack’s doom like a bell in the remaining silence.
Darkness descended upon the cell until the torches further down the corridor filtered light through the bars that formed the wall. Once Jack’s eyes adjusted, he picked out the details of Katrina’s huddled form on the pallet opposite his. The single chain binding his left wrist to the ring in the wall was obscured by shadow.
The building grumbled beneath his weary body. Every joint and muscle screamed at the least movement.
“Oh, Jack, are you alive?” Katrina whispered. She crawled toward him, as far as her chain would reach. When she could get no closer, she stretched her free hand, as if to smooth his brow. Inches separated them. He couldn’t move closer to accept her gentle touch.
“Not sure,” he breathed the words, careful not to jostle any part of his body.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that. It was awful to watch. I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been to endure.”
Her sympathy reached across the space between them, even if she herself couldn’t. A little of the pain lifted free of his mind.
“Don’t try to imagine it. You’d hurt more than I want you to have to endure.” The thought of the girl’s plight suddenly pained his heart almost as much as the jailers’ blows hurt his body.
“She didn’t have to kill your bird. I know he meant a great deal to you. That just added insult to injury so you’d be more vulnerable.”
As soon as Jack was certain the others were out of earshot he flexed his now unbound right wrist to check for damage and grinned to himself in the shadowy twilight that settled in the cell. “Don’t be sorry for me. That wasn’t Corby.”
“How can you tell?” Astonishment and the smallest measure of hope shone through her words.
In Jack’s imagination she’d never looked or sounded more beautiful. Even knowing her face was marred with bruises didn’t diminish his gladness that his imprisonment was lightened by her presence.
“That was a crow, bigger and no white spots on his head. My bird is a jackdaw. His white spots look like an old man’s bushy eyebrows. I sent Corby back to the dragons this morning. He shouldn’t be anywhere near the city.”
“He obeys you so well?”
“He is my familiar.” Jack shrugged and regretted the movement. As a magician he needed no other explanation for the bond that now existed between himself and the bird. “How’d you get those bruises?”
“Brunix. He slapped me for speaking to you last night.” She paused a moment, rubbing her jaw. “Is he really dead?”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. Did you care so much for him?”
“I hated him. But life with him was better than death during one of Simeon’s rituals. I don’t care that I have a power the king wanted to release. If having power means being like him or Brunix, I don’t want it.”
“I’ve been a slave, too, Katrina. I know the limited choices you’ve had. But if Brunix left you a virgin, then he was a better man than I hoped.”
She bit her lip and turned her head away in embarrassment. “What will Simeon do to me when he finds out I’m not?”
A new pain awakened in Jack. Brunix had raped her. Like all Rovers, the factory owner had no respect for anyone not of his race and clan.
“Brunix only took me once. Mostly to prove he could after Simeon violated some private agreement between them. But Brunix grew tired of waiting for me to come to him willingly. He promised to rape me tonight, after he finished his business. I wasn’t as important to him as his business and his money.”
“The business had something to do with the runes in the temple. They cost him his life. The coven murdered him in the temple square. I wonder if they knew what he’d done to you, and death was his punishment?”
Further conversation ended with the rattle of the door again. The gap-toothed guard with the iron bar entered with a bowl of gruel and a cup of steaming liquid. Light from the corridor chased away some of the shadows.
“Dinner time, sweetheart.” He bent and placed the meal at Katrina’s feet. “Ain’t ye gonna thank me?” He reached out and pinched Katrina’s breast hard.
She winced and closed her eyes but said nothing. Then a mask of total blankness descended upon her. No emotion betrayed the pain and humiliation she must be feeling.
“Frigid bitch,” the guard spat and left. He made a great show of locking the door behind him, making certain the prisoners knew he was free and t
hey were not.
“You need this more than me.” Katrina shoved the bowl and cup as far as she could reach. By pushing gently with her toes, the food inched to within reach of Jack’s fingernails.
“Just a sip of the broth.” He grimaced and held his stomach. “Take the rest, you’ve got to keep up your strength to survive whatever Simeon plans for you.”
“If I don’t escape, I’ll make sure I don’t live long enough to face his rituals!” Hesitantly she fished the long divider pin from her tousled plaits. The thick portion, gathered close to her scalp from temple to nape, had hidden the tool during the guard’s earlier search for weapons. Even when they knew her to be free of anything dangerous, her captors had continued to paw her breasts and between her legs.
How would she do it? A slash across the wrist and slow bleeding to death? No, the guards would find her and stop her. A stab to the heart? Her hand shook as she held the sharp pin up for inspection.
“We’ll get out of this, Katrina. I don’t know how yet. Simeon’s insanity and Rejiia’s arrogance can be turned against them. If I push Simeon hard enough, maybe he’ll admit that he’s a bastard and not descended from Jaylene of Rossemeyer. That will end his influence in SeLenicca and in the coven. They need his claim to Rossemeyer. But we have to stay alive to escape.” He stared at her pin with eyes that speculated and evaluated even as he pleaded with her. “I don’t think I told her everything.”
“We’ll share the food.” Determination to survive replaced her earlier despair. “You’ve got to eat, Jack. I don’t know how long this will take, and that bitch may return at any moment. They got the wrong shawl. If we can get out of here I think I have proof that Simeon is a bastard, with no royal blood and has no right to rule. M’ma coded a message to the queen into the shawl three years ago. Queen Miranda and her councillors would have annulled the marriage, and set Jaranda aside as heir, if they thought Simeon a bastard. I know where the shawl is hidden and I intend to use it.”
She’d picked one lock today with this pin. The manacles shouldn’t be that much more difficult.
“Rejiia is probably hoping that watching you eat will make me hungrier and weaker, hasten my death.” He sipped at the cup and coughed, nearly retching. The spasm went on and on, wrenching his body and draining him of even more energy. At last he lay back groaning. His face flushed with the onset of fever from his injuries.
Katrina bent to her task with the pin. They didn’t have any time to lose.
Chapter 35
Jaylor stood before Darville and Mikka in the middle of the broken barrier into the clearing. With his arms crossed sternly, and his face totally blank of expression he presented a formidable barrier himself. Years ago, the king would have been able to read his friend’s emotions by his posture. Too much time had passed. The bond of trust had been weakened.
“I come with an apology and a need to consult the Senior Magician, my chief adviser,” he stated simply. Beside him, Mikka nodded her agreement with the statement.
A little of Jaylor’s rigidity melted.
“You haven’t needed to consult your ‘chief adviser’ very often in the last three years,” Jaylor returned. “Why now?”
“I miss your friendship. I miss your wisdom. Most of all, I miss you and Brevelan. The thought of losing you forever pains me deeply.” Eye-to-eye, he and Jaylor stood, assessing each other’s strength and sincerity. So they had challenged each other time and again since adolescence. Each time they had ended with laughter and stronger bonds. This time . . . ?
“Could you please address the problem of Mikka and her cat? If we find a solution, the question of my heir might no longer exist.”
“You have the right of it, Darville. The cat is the problem, not custody of Glendon. I think you need to meet my sons to know why.” Jaylor turned and gestured at the impenetrable wall of the forest. Abruptly, the path appeared before them, straight and smooth. The three of them stepped forward, not quite side-by-side, not quite separated.
The open meadow, the planted garden, the flusterhen coop, and the goat wandering beneath the line of laundry were as familiar as yesterday. But the one-room hut that had sheltered an ensorcelled wolf, a witchwoman, and a strange little cat had grown into a large cottage. Two rooms below, a large loft above, and a shed attached to the side.
“You’ve made improvements,” Darville commented, more to break the silence than to express himself.
Mikka smiled for the first time in weeks. Hope returned to Darville. The clearing had always offered healing to those in need.
Jaylor nodded toward the biggest improvement of all. Behind the coop two little boys stalked a beleaguered flustercock. The younger of the two, boasting a full head of red hair, clutched a bright tail feather that could only belong to the cock.
“He . . . they are wonderful, Jaylor,” Mikka gasped, an anxious hand to her throat.
It was the older of the two, with golden hair and eyes, longer of leg and narrower of hip than his brother, who caught their attention. As they watched, Glendon launched himself in a flying leap onto the cock’s back. He came up giggling and dusty but triumphant, a long tail feather clutched in his grubby fist. The flustercock squawked, flapped, and announced to the world his long-suffering displeasure.
Both boys dusted themselves off and ran back to the laundry line. Brevelan appeared from behind damp shirts in three sizes. She knelt on the ground to gather them both in a big hug as they showed off their treasures.
Darville smiled. This was his son, happy, playful, and handsome. He was growing up secure in the knowledge that both his parents loved him. Darville had not had such security. His parents had been monarchs with mountains of duties. As a young prince, he had been entrusted to a series of tutors and guardians, each more interested in his position at court than Darville’s happiness and welfare.
How could he and Mikka take the boy away from all of this love?
“I can’t get it, Jack,” Katrina whispered some hours later. She shook her manacles in frustration and put the long pin back into her hair.
Jack roused from a fitful doze. He was sure the perverted guard with his pet iron bar named Mabel had broken some of his ribs. The hot stabbing pain all across his chest and into his back never dulled. Cautiously he tested his breathing. Painful, but not wheezing. Perhaps he had escaped a punctured lung.
“If I had any magic left, I could open all the locks with a thought.” Now would be the time to do it. After midnight. The jailers were drowsy, the torches in the corridor sputtered and burned low.
The only things keeping the manor awake tonight was the irregular trembling of the Kardia beneath them. Something strange was happening in Queen’s City.
Jack’s time sense remained true and his alignment with the pole and all directions seemed intact. He had access to magic, just no strength to throw it. Rejiia’s probe had failed in one sense: she’d viewed information but she hadn’t stripped his mind as she threatened. And she’d had to renew her spell twice with Tambootie.
If only he were back at the factory and that little puddle of reactivated ley lines. Lines that grew beneath Katrina’s workstation—the place where she sang as she worked in the dark of night.
His memory called up scenes in villages between the mine and the capital. Women singing as they went about their daily chores. Songs of joy, of love, of nurturing.
In those villages the ley lines had glowed with life, like newly planted fields of wheat. There had been a few areas where the magic was stronger, where there were supposed to be villages—groups of homes and people visible to Corby, but not to Jack. Could the women have Sung a kind of armor around their homes?
Brevelan Sang all of the time and her clearing had the best protection of any place he’d encountered. Except the time he’d visited there on his way to and from meeting the blue-tipped dragon. The barriers had been down then. Because she was dead? He prayed that merely her prolonged absence had opened the clearing to him.
Men protected
their families with brute strength. Women were more subtle, and perhaps stronger, in their forms of protection. Nurturing and strengthening from within.
“Sing something, Katrina.”
“What?”
“At the factory, you created a pool of magic beneath your workstation. You Sang the magic into life. That’s the power Simeon sensed within you. But you awakened it by yourself. Please Sing.” He levered himself to a half-sitting position, balanced on his right elbow, the side that didn’t hurt quite so badly.
“I have no magic,” Katrina protested. But she leaned forward, almost eagerly, to listen closer to him.
“You are a woman. Therefore you have the strongest magic of all, even if you can’t throw it in specific spells. Sing me a lullaby. A healing lullaby.”
Just then the foundations rumbled for the tenth time since Jack had been captured. The sense of a series of small collapses in the land filled him with a new anxiety. They hadn’t much time before the burned-out ley lines gave way to the pressures of the abandoned and exploited surface.
All is quiet, all is still,
Sleep, my child, and fear not ill,
Wintry winds blow chill and drear,
Lullaby, my baby dear.
Katrina’s thin voice whispered into the darkness. She nearly choked on the last line. “The last time I sang this lullaby was to my sister Hilza.”
“The one who died?”
She nodded. Then she lifted her tear streaked face and sang again, stronger, surer.
Let thy little eyelids close,
Like the petals of the rose;
When the morning sun shall glow,
They shall into blossom blow,
When the morning sun shall glow.
Then the little flowers I’ll prize
Then I’ll kiss those little eyes.
And thy mother will not care,
If ’tis spring or winter drear,
Dragon Novels: Volume I, The Page 98
