The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

by Irene Radford

  For a moment he wanted nothing more than to be a part of the intricate dance of life-that-was-not-Life.

  Some force beyond his ken had given him back his life. The destiny planned for him by the Stargods had not yet been fulfilled.

  And yet the void was so beautiful, so peaceful. . . .

  “Snap out of it!” he admonished himself. The Stargods had returned him to his body for a reason.

  Carefully, he turned his head to the open side and flicked another ball of witchlight ahead of him. Crumbling skeletons filled a few of the other niches. Most people avoided these older crypts because of the sight of so many generations of the dead. No one would think to bring flowers to his tomb and rescue him.

  He had to find his own way out. Only one niche lay between him and the stone floor. He drew up his stiff knees as far as the ceiling of his tomb allowed and inched closer to the edge. He tried to swing one long leg out, only to discover both legs bound together by a shroud. The same shroud, hastily and scantily wound about his body kept his hands crossed on his chest. He could wiggle his fingers but not move very far. Whoever prepared him for burial used just enough winding cloths to keep him in place, and no more.

  He couldn’t break the hold the few cloths had on his limbs. Very well, he’d have to roll out of the niche all at once and hope he didn’t break any bones during his fall.

  As he squirmed and wriggled free of his tomb, the shroud tore and loosened across his chest. He’d been bound in a threadbare old sheet rather than sturdy new linen. He worked his right arm free and felt for the edge. His hand measured the distance and found a small ledge to grasp and ease his fall. Ready to swing his legs out, he paused and wondered why the shroud hadn’t completely covered his body and head in tight wraps of linen soaked in preservatives. Surely Ackerly had access to necessary funerary regalia. Lord Quinnault de Tanos would have provided a shroud and servants to wash and prepare the body for burial.

  If Ackerly had bothered to ask for them. If Ackerly had informed anyone of Nimbulan’s “death.” Surely lords and peasants alike would have noticed the lack of proper burial clothes and herbs.

  “I thought you my friend, Ackerly. Couldn’t you spend a little money for the old women who tend the dead? Didn’t you have enough respect for me to provide a proper funeral with shroud and priest and mourners?” Anger heated Nimbulan’s cheeks. He allowed his emotions to fuel his cramped muscles and propel him outward.

  With one hand braced on the ledge, he landed safely on his side a few feet below his “final” resting place.

  “Why the haste?” he kept asking himself as he stripped off the winding cloths and discovered he was still wearing his everyday tunic and trews beneath his formal robe—not the newest or cleanest one at that.

  Why?

  (Who?)

  Nimbulan looked around, seeking the source of the voice in the far corners of the crypt. Had he truly heard it or was it an echo of his spirit journey in the void? No answers came to him. He aimed the witchlight toward the shaky ladder carved into the wall that led to the trapdoor entrance.

  (Hasten not from one death into another.)

  This time Nimbulan used the last of his reserves to fill the subterranean crypt with light.

  “Are you a ghost? Perhaps the guardian spirit returned?”

  No answer. Only the echoes of his own whispers and the lingering memory of the warning bounced in his head.

  Hasten not from one death into another, the voice still echoed in his mind.

  Who wanted him dead? Who could have arranged it?

  The aftertaste of Timboor returned to his mouth. Timboor. An overdose of the poison fruit on top of the extra doses of Tambootie he had ingested for his experiments.

  He’d destroyed all of the remaining bits of Timboor after his bad experience with it while Ackerly was in Sambol. None of the apprentices would have had the boldness to contradict his orders and give it to him.

  Keegan had deserted him when Nimbulan thought the boy well-loved and loyal.

  No. Rollett and the others weren’t as cynical, nor as ambitious as Keegan. They trusted him.

  Didn’t they?

  Who? Who had been around that day? He had no way of telling how long ago that was. A few hours perhaps or several days? Possibly a week. He was hungry enough for that amount of time to have passed. A murderer could have slipped the Timboor into the Tambootie dosage and left the island before Nimbulan was pronounced dead.

  Someone with a boat. Two messengers had arrived from Lord Kammeryl d’Astrismos. One had waited, one had left a parchment. The words written on the parchment had bounced and wavered as if written in magic code. He did remember the pattern of the writing had fallen into verse, like a spell. Could the Timboor have been rubbed into the parchment and combined with a spell? He had just come out of a Tambootie trance. His system was sensitive to all forms of the tree at that point. Perhaps his skin had absorbed the poison.

  Or the poison had already been in his system causing his vision to blur.

  He had no way of knowing now. If someone had tried to kill him once, they would try again.

  He needed more information.

  He needed a plan, a place to hide until he knew who had poisoned him and could guard against him.

  Who? Who? Who? The question ricocheted around his skull with no answers.

  A place to hide. Nowhere on the island.

  How to escape from this tomb? He’d lift the trapdoor and find out what time of day awaited him. At night, when all slept unguarded, he’d leave.

  He had to get off the island unobserved.

  Chapter 19

  Nimbulan dragged the little rowboat onto dry land beyond the sucking mudflats of the Great Bay. Winter dormancy made the beach grasses brittle and sparse. A stiff offshore wind smelled of salt and a new storm hovering on the eastern horizon. He needed to find shelter soon.

  The night was clear and icy cold. Starlight and a crescent moon lighted his way. He pulled a thick winter cloak tight across his chest and shouldered a pack of provisions.

  His raid of the pantry and storeroom had been surprisingly easy. Almost as if someone expected him to wake from the dead and flee the old monastery. He hadn’t dared pilfer his private quarters for his staff and glass. Perhaps he should transport them here. No. Someone might witness the disappearance and trace the transport.

  He would cut a new staff for his new life and career. What about the glass, expensive and difficult to replace? So many spells depended upon the qualities of perfectly clear glass to work. He’d just have to improvise with a clear pool of water.

  He spared a moment to regret leaving his boys. But he had confidence in them. He’d trained them well, taught them honor and respect. He could imagine Rollett gathering all of the apprentices in the dormitory late at night, telling them stories and passing on the message of peace through community. Nimbulan’s dream would live a little longer. At least until he came back with Rover secrets and new spells to implement the dream.

  Which direction?

  (East,) the frigid south wind seemed to sigh.

  Rovers lived in the south more often than not. A Rover spell might give him the clue to combining magic. Because of the curve of the Great Bay, east was the fastest way to the lands south of Coronnan. Once he had information about how Rovers worked their magic together, he’d return to the school and his work to remove magic from battles and politics. And find the man who had tried to murder him.

  (East.) As good a direction as any. He centered his magic, concentrating on south, the closest magnetic pole. With his left hand up, palm outward and fingers slightly curved, he turned in a slow circle. A slight stab of awareness pierced his palm. South lay up that dune and to the right about twenty degrees. He must have drifted into the great curve of the Bay. If he kept a true course, halfway between east and south, he’d run into the trade road within a mile or two. Rovers traveled the highway.

  The well-trod road wandered from village to village offering
Rovers many opportunities to sell their distinctive metalwork and earn coins by entertaining the locals with music and dance. Eventually the road crossed the Southern Mountains at a point almost due east from Quinnault de Tanos’ islands, and then into Rossemeyer. He had no desire to explore the high desert plateau of that impoverished kingdom. The road went many places before it reached the mountain pass.

  Many places. Many choices. The sudden freedom of his situation swamped his senses. His friends and students and patrons thought him dead. He had no obligations. No responsibilities. No expectations.

  For the first time in his forty-nine years he could go anywhere, do anything, and not keep a schedule. Giddy laughter sent him to his knees.

  “I am free!” he yelled into the wind. Was that a laugh he heard in reply?

  Nimbulan stared at the tree on the bluff above the beach. Just an ordinary tree. He tried remembering the last time he stared at a tree for no reason other than to stare at a tree, and failed. For the past thirty years, at least, he’d had to weigh the location of the tree, its height, how much wood it could provide campfires, would it become a rallying point to turn the tide of battle, how many men could hide in it for ambush . . . ?

  “You are the most beautiful tree I have ever seen!” he yelled as loudly as he could, throwing out his arms as if to embrace the world. “You are beautiful because you are just a tree.”

  He drank in the tranquillity of the moment until the winter air reminded him to move on.

  A pang of guilt almost sent him back toward the islands. He’d set up the School for Magicians in an attempt to force peace on the lords of Coronnan. The lords didn’t want peace. He’d tried. What more could they ask of him?

  (Success.)

  His only clue to success lay with the Rovers, along the trade road that wound its way east. He set his steps toward his journey. He’d find answers in the east. Maybe he’d find his life there, too.

  “Have you hospitality for a lost traveler?” Myri asked the stout woman who hovered in the mouth of an old sea cave. The ocean had changed levels many generations before and left the cave on a plateau a hundred feet or more above the beach. A village had grown up around the mouth of the cave. A fishing village judging by the nets strung out to dry and the boats hauled up for winter repairs.

  “A mite young to be out on your own, girl. Where you hail from?” The woman placed her beefy hands on her hips. Her girth and the double doors framed and hung in the mouth of the cave clearly blocked Myri’s passage into the domicile behind her. The raucous songs and the smell of spilled ale coming from behind the woman told her a tavern filled the cave.

  “I ran away from a great battle. The wars took everything from me, my home, my family. . . .” Myri cuddled Amaranth closer to her face as if hiding tears. In all the places she’d asked hospitality in the past weeks since fleeing Televarn and his searching Rovers, she’d learned to stretch the truth and portray emotions she didn’t always feel. Villagers empathized with those who’d been displaced by the war, a fear they all shared. Few trusted aimless travelers. Rovers, thieves, and marauding soldiers made them cautious.

  So Myri told them what they wanted to hear. The voices and the circling wind that kept pushing Myri east didn’t object to her half-truths and playacting. She couldn’t travel East any farther without running into the ocean.

  If only she could forget Televarn and the pain he’d left in her heart. She forgot so many things, why not the treacherous Rover?

  “Like as not, we’ll see more of your kind. Had a whole family through here last week. Thought they’d try their luck in Hanassa rather than put up with the wars here. Living with outlaws and thieves in that hole in the mountain can’t be worse than living with armies constantly tearing up fields and scavenging all they can cart away.” The woman dropped her arms bud didn’t move aside.

  “I’m very hungry.” Myri’s stomach growled loudly of its own volition.

  “Bet that cat is, too. Can’t afford to give everyone food. You’ll have to work for it. You don’t look strong enough to fetch and carry here in the pub.”

  “I know herbs and healing. I can sweeten the stale ale and make your bread so light it doesn’t need to be dipped in beer to chew.”

  “Healing? You a magician?” Suspicion darkened the woman’s eyes. Healers belonged with the armies that plagued them all. “We got no use for those bastards. Stealing out harvest and our young women. And if we don’t give ’em up fast and willing, they burn us out.” The woman crossed her arms across her ample bosom and stared hard at Myri, daring her to claim the extensive training required to turn a person of talent into a magician.

  “I’m only a witchwoman. I’ve never been trained in magic, and I wouldn’t accept it if offered. But I know what phases of the moon to gather witchwort.” Myri stared back, letting her own fear of magicians shine through her eyes.

  “If you want to hasten a birth . . . ?”

  “Pluck the freshest leaves of witchwort at the full moon and make an infusion of them immediately,” Myri replied to the testing question.

  “Every woman knows that. What else can you do with witchwort?”

  “Gather the blossoms at the dark of the moon and dry them until they crumble. Sprinkle them on porridge three mornings in a row and your courses will come regular again.” Or abort an unwanted baby.

  “I heard you had to use them five days in a row.”

  “Only if you are more than a moon late.”

  The woman nodded her acceptance of the prescription. “Got me a great, honking boil under my arm. Won’t let me raise my arm or lift anything heavier than my drawers. Can’t sleep ’cause of it. All Granny Katia’s poultices didn’t help at all. Reckon you can’t hurt nothing if you lance and drain it. Do it proper so’s the infection don’t spread, then you’ve got a place to stay, girl. I’m Karry, short for Katareena. You got a name?” Finally, the woman stepped aside, clearing the doorway for Myri to enter.

  Warmth and noise blasted Myri’s senses the moment she crossed the threshold. The smell of unwashed male bodies nearly overwhelmed the aroma of baking bread and fermenting brews. Amaranth buried his head beneath her arm rather than face the men who halted their songs and stopped eating to stare at her.

  “She’s a healer, boys, not a whore. Go back to your drinks,” Karry said loud enough for all to hear, even in the back corners of the tavern.

  “What’s the difference between a healer and whore?” yelled a man with broken teeth and long ropy scars on his arms.

  “How much she charges!” replied a man from across the room. “Whores are cheaper.”

  “Ask your wife the difference when she needs a midwife, Timmon. She’ll bash your head in for looking at another woman after knocking her up for the ninth time,” said a man across the room as he shook his finger at the man with broken teeth.

  “Maybe she’ll welcome another woman to keep him away from her after the ninth babe gets here.” Timmon’s drinking companion slapped him on the back laughing.

  “Never mind them, girl. It’s winter, and they’re bored ’cause they can’t get the boats out. If the wind dies down by dawn, they’ll be out all day and too tired tomorrow night to know their names, let alone bother you. Though with that pale hair and clear skin of yours, you’d best keep your distance from some of them. The quiet ones are the ones you gotta watch. The loud ones are more interested in hearing their own words than doing anything about it. You got a name, girl?”

  “Myrilandel, and my cat is Amaranth.” Myri followed her hostess along a winding path through the crowded trestle tables toward a curtain draped across the back of the chamber. No man touched her, though she passed quite close to some. Apparently the tavern mistress’ word was law here.

  “Karry they call me, though I was born Katareena, like my Ma and her Ma before her. Did I tell you that a’ready? Name goes back almost as old as this cave and the pub in it. Always been Katareenas here. Probably always will be. My own daughter has the name and the
babe she carries will, too, if this one’s a girl. She’s got three boys already. But she’s carrying this one different. Hope it’s a girl. Need another Katareena to carry on the tradition.”

  “Is she having trouble with the babe?” Myri’s healing instincts awakened after weeks of dormancy. She hadn’t allowed herself to “feel” anything for the people she treated with herbs and simples along her journey.

  Suddenly this little village felt like home. They needed her. They’d welcomed her—after a fashion. Some villages begrudged her the bread and cheese they handed her and made her eat outside for fear of a stranger in their midst. Karry had invited her in. Granted she’d be expected to earn her keep. That was better than being denied admittance just because she was a stranger.

  She must have traveled far enough east and south for the wars to have remained a distant threat rather than an imminent peril.

  Is this the home you promised me? she asked the voices.

  No one answered, but the warm and comfortable feeling didn’t leave her.

  “Nothing much wrong with my Katey, but she’s carrying high and all in front. From the back she don’t look eight moons along. She’s tired all the time and her feet swell, but that isn’t unusual so close to her time, especially chasing three boys with more energy than sense.” Karry chuckled as she thrust aside a wall curtain to reveal a larger inner chamber that served as home and warehouse for the tavern.

  “Has the boil troubled you long?” Myri set Amaranth down on a barrel of ale. He sniffed the rim with grudging curiosity. When he was satisfied the barrel posed no threat, he jumped down and investigated the one beside it. He kept his wings safely hidden. He hadn’t flown since he tangled with Televarn’s fishing net. She hoped he’d healed, but she didn’t know for sure yet.

  “This boil started up as a little spot of rash going on two weeks ago. What you going to need, girl. Hot water? Mustard? Cobwebs for a bandage?”