“I wanted a place to hide,” she whispered.
“Hide from what?” Nimbulan asked.
She darted a worried glance at Powwell then back to the ground. “Ackerly wanted me to do terrible things with my magic.”
Myri joined them and held the child close against her side. “If she doesn’t want to talk about it, don’t push it. When she’s comfortable enough with us to talk, she will. Don’t upset her.” She glared at Nimbulan.
Nimbulan returned Myri’s stare with love. He recognized the blooming of her maternal instincts and wished they could have children of their own. Children with her pale blond hair and beautifully expressive eyes. They showed hints of purple now, blue when she was sated with sex, fiery green when she healed. He longed for children he could teach to carry on the legacy of honorable magic, neutral in the realm of politics. The lack of his own children became a deep and empty ache.
He mentally shook himself free of the delusion. Denied children of their own because of their magic, they could only accept and love the ones the Stargods brought to them. Powwell and Kalen.
“It’s important that he knows what Ackerly is doing, Kalen.” Powwell encouraged the girl. “If you don’t tell him, I will.”
Kalen’s eyes flashed in anger at the boy. Powwell backed off and dropped his gaze to the ground. The boy might speak for them both, but clearly the girl was in control. Interesting relationship.
“Ackerly was teaching me to work a summons through a glass and a flame. He wanted me to try sending witchfire with the summons. He wanted me to burn whole armies. He wanted me to murder innocent people with magic and then collect gold for it. He’s evil, and Moncriith is right when he says demons control magicians. I don’t want to be evil. I don’t want to hurt people!” Kalen buried her face in Myri’s skirt. Huge sobs sent shudders down her small body.
“If Moncriith is right, then why were you so eager to get away from him?” Nimbulan asked. He touched the child’s back with a comforting hand. Her sobs eased a little.
“Don’t press her, Nimbulan,” Myri said, stroking her hair.
“Moncriith is as evil as Ackerly. He wants to burn all magicians, not just the evil ones. He does it to fulfill a vision from the Stargods—or so he says. Ackerly does it for gold. Moncriith wanted to burn me, too, after we found you. That’s why we ran away from him. I don’t want to be a magician. I wish I’d never been born.”
“Don’t ever say that, Kalen. Don’t even think it!” Myri knelt down and faced her, nose to nose. “Moncriith made me feel the same way. I spent my whole life running away. Now I have found a home and a man who loves me.” She reached a hand to Nimbulan and blushed. “Moncriith is wrong, Kalen. Magic isn’t evil. It’s how we use it for good or ill that matters. As long as you use your magic for good, you are good.”
“That’s why I started the school, Kalen. I wanted to teach magicians how to act for good, for peace, so that we could end the wars and make magic a tool of Life and Healing, not of destruction. Magic is a wonderful gift. We must use it to help those who don’t have the gift rather than for our own power and glory. Moncriith has a magic gift. He think’s he’s using it for the good of all, but he’s not.” Nimbulan explained to himself as well as Myri and the children.
“Moncriith thinks all magicians are worthless, except for himself.” Powwell spat on the ground. “He wants to be a priest-king of Coronnan. I think he wants to be a god-king instead.”
Nimbulan could see the boy’s quick mind working, putting pieces together.
“All people have value, Powwell. Those who have magic, and those who don’t. All of us were created by the Stargods for a reason. Sometimes it’s hard to find the reason and make the most of it. But we have to try.” I have to take the Rover ritual back to the school. I have to continue my work. I can’t do it alone. Will Myri go with me, or will she cling to her new home?
Chapter 28
Myri took Kalen’s hand and started forward on the path. Her little fingers felt cold against Myri’s palm. Questions clouded Kalen’s eyes. She needed time to absorb all the things they’d said about magic and self-worth. Myri hoped the little girl could believe it in time.
Saber ferns, rotting limbs, and rocks blurred and drifted out of Myri’s vision to reveal a path of sorts. Kalen kept looking forward and back, off to the side, through wide-open eyes then half-closed lids, straight on and out of the corners.
Myri almost laughed at her puzzlement. She had no idea why none of her companions could see the path.
A broad alpine meadow opened before them. Off to the right, the landscape opened up to reveal peak after snowy peak jutting into the stunningly blue sky. The urge to fly swamped Myri’s senses, demanding she let go and soar upward.
Amaranth screeched as he glided past her and pounced on something in the lush grasses. He emerged from the greenery, wings half-furled, shaking his empty paws clean of damp soil. With all of his cat dignity and arrogance, he perched on a rock for a much needed bath. Bright sunlight gave his black fur and feathers a dark purple sheen—a darker shade of the same color of wildflowers that hovered like a mist above the greenery.
He paused in his ablutions, head cocked as if listening. His head reared up, ears flat. He chittered in excitement.
“What is it, my friend?” Myri gathered him into her arms, scratching his ears affectionately.
He nuzzled her chin once and squirmed to face forward, paws resting on her arms in preparation for launch.
“Something awaits us,” Myri said.
“Did Amaranth tell you that?” Nimbulan turned a full circle, scanning the meadow with eyes and magic senses. He suddenly stilled. “Something is waiting and watching. In that tumble of boulders and fallen trees.” He pointed to the wall of cliffs that enclosed three sides of the meadow. A stream cascaded down over a tumble of boulders at the base of the cliff into a brook that meandered through the grasses. At the edge of the meadow, the stream plunged over the precipice in a wide waterfall.
Amaranth burst upward in a thunderous flap of wings. “Merawk!” he cried over and over. He dove and looped, flipped and soared in a wondrous display of acrobatics. As he swooped down for the third time, claws extended, he grabbed Myri by the hair, tugging upward in an invitation to flight.
“Let go, you silly flywacket. I can’t fly,” she protested as she laughingly disconnected his talons from her fair hair.
(Can, too!) Amaranth squealed and flew off again.
Dreams of flight. More than dreams, memories lashed through all her senses. She lifted her arms as if they were wings. The wind caught her sleeves. She closed her eyes and relived the sensation of soaring. Had Amaranth’s dreams invaded her mind?
Suddenly, the puffy white clouds shifted. A ray of sunlight struck the jumble of rocks. Light arced out and up, filling the meadow with rainbows.
The children squealed in delight and danced about, trying to catch the pretty colors.
“Our oldest legends, before the days of the Stargods, tell us that rainbows are symbols of peace and goodwill,” Nimbulan said in wonder. He turned a slow circle, eyes wide with amazement. “This isn’t possible. Light doesn’t refract through air this way. It needs a prism source. That waterfall isn’t big enough to provide enough water for a rainbow. There must be crystal all about his meadow. Only a massive amount of crystal would make this happen.”
“Look!” Powwell gasped and pointed above the little waterfall and the jumble of rocks.
Myri looked and saw only water and boulders and a few common plants.
“Dragons!” Kalen whispered. “A full nimbus of crystal dragons.”
“I can’t see anything but the rainbows,” Nimbulan said.
“Who told you there are dragons here?” Myri stared at the little girl rather than the wonder of the rainbows. Memories pushed at her, demanding attention. Memories of . . . The familiarity vanished. “And how did you know to call it a nimbus and not a herd?” She knew a mating group of dragons was called a Nim
bus. The dragons invented the word.
How did she know that?
“They told me,” Kalen said, eyes open with genuine awe this time.
“Who told you?” Something akin to panic swelled within Myri’s chest. She wasn’t sure if she let it burst, it would free her of her forgetfulness or push it down again and find solace in not knowing.
“They told me.” Kalen pointed to the sky above the waterfall. “The dragons told me, just like they told you.”
“How long have the dragons spoken to you?” Myri didn’t dare breathe. If she gave in to the longing to join the dragons, she’d have to remember everything, and challenge everything she knew about herself, including her new-found love for Nimbulan and the children.
“They spoke to me right after I discovered Nimbulan wasn’t in the crypt. They led me to you and the clearing and your house. The clearing is going to be my home, too. We’re all going to live there like a nimbus of humans and be happy.”
Finally Myri swallowed the panic in her breast and looked where Kalen pointed. Letting her magic talent flow freely, without plan or push, her eyes followed Amaranth’s antics in the sky. He traced the outline of a huge dragon. Glimmers of crystal wings and body outlined in a faint swirl of rainbow colors jumped into her vision.
Amaranth leaped to another point, and she saw a second dragon, silvery in body and outlined in green. Several more creatures appeared before her, each bearing a different hue on wing veins and spinal horns. Only the massive central dragon held all the colors around the edges.
Myri’s heart beat double time. Her lungs labored to draw air. “I see them now,” she admitted. Joy replaced her anxiety. Lightness filled her until she thought she could lift free of the Kardia and soar with the magnificent crystal beasts.
(Welcome home, my child. You all have much to learn. Come, eat your provisions, drink from the stream. We will begin to teach you a new form of magic when you are rested.)
Warmth and love folded around Myri as if the dragon had wrapped her in soft wings, like she would one of her own dragonets.
“The dogs have found something,” the sergeant blurted out, rushing through the underbrush toward Moncriith. “The trail leads straight through the woods, no apparent path at all, but the scent is strong and the dogs are eager to make up for lost time.”
“Then we must be off. The witchwoman and those children must be brought to justice before the spring campaign season begins.”
“Yes, Sieur. Children, Sieur?” The seargeant tugged at his maroon-and-green tunic as if it suddenly fit too tight. His face paled and a tightness thinned his lips. “We have never hunted children before, Sieur.”
“I will make an example of both of them. They deserted my just cause to warn the chief demon of my pursuit. They forsake the people of Coronnan so that they may enjoy the power of demon magic. They won’t enjoy it long. Their deaths will prove to the lords once and for all that they can’t go to war with demons in their midst. And without demon magicians to protect their troops, they will think long and hard before entering battles.”
“Coronnan will know unity at last.” The sergeant parroted Moncriith’s doctrine. His eyes remained fixed upon some distant point beyond Moncriith’s shoulder. “Freedom from war and freedom from enslavement to demon magicians. Moncriith is the prophet of the Stargods. Only he knows the truth.” He saluted the Bloodmage automatically and turned woodenly back to the task of finding Myrilandel and the children.
Moncriith smiled to himself. The guards Kammeryl d’Astrismos had assigned to him were deep under his control. They’d never have a thought of their own again. He’d see to it even if he had to draw their blood to reinforce his spells. All Coronnan would bow to him, unquestioningly, before the end of the campaign season. His followers already regarded him as more god than priest.
(The words you speak matter not. Only that you say them in unison and the words contain the essence of your requirement. Speak together as you shape the magic you have gathered into the form of your spell.) Shayla, the all color/no color female dragon, directed Nimbulan and Powwell. The silvery young dragons with primary colors on their wingtips rested on nearby boulders and clifftops—too old to cavort like children, too young for their fur to be transparent crystal. All four of the dragonets were male.
Each of them sported a different color, no two alike. Shayla, the lone female, maintained the all color/no color crystal sparkles along her spinal horns and wing veins as well as her entire body, each hair as clear as crystal. The spiral horn sprouting from her forehead caught the light, swirled it away from the fine fur of her body, and flung it around the meadow in a dozen rainbows. The prismatic arcs terminated at a spot just behind her. The casual eye swept with the rainbows around the dragon, never seeing her magnificent beauty. Nimbulan found it impossible to look at her long. Yet he couldn’t look anywhere else.
He drew a deep breath. Powwell did, too. They released the air at the same time and recited the simple spell formula.
“Wisp of flame, burning bright
Travel far beyond my sight
Bring to view the other true
Pass the word of magic might.”
Nimbulan concentrated on the tiny candle flame on the other side of Powwell’s apprentice glass, held proudly by its owner. Magic energy pulsed around them in unison with their heartbeat. A visible aura of power blended around both their forms, binding them together. They watched through the glass the vision of the flame skipping across the meadow behind them. Without turning to watch with physical eyes, they monitored the progress of the flame until it burst into the still pool at the edge of the stream.
Through the glass they watched Myri and Kalen from the perspective of the bottom of the pool. Their features took on focus with the slight distortion of looking upward through water. Kalen reared back her head, startled. Myri peered closer, puzzled and curious.
Nimbulan mouthed “I love you.” She smiled and returned the silent greeting.
The vision faltered, then cleared. All he could see was a burned-out candle wick standing behind the small scrap of precious glass he held in his hand.
“We shouldn’t have been able to do that, Powwell. Myri wasn’t using any of her magic senses to channel the flame. And she looked into water, not glass. The spell couldn’t have worked with one magician alone using the old magic.”
“Let’s try it again. I’ll work with Myri. You combine with Kalen.” The boy dashed across the full length of the meadow to join the women.
A brief conversation ensued that Nimbulan couldn’t hear. But Kalen’s exhausted posture told him volumes. The new procedure drained her of energy. He didn’t understand why. Magic was merely fuel for an inborn talent. Weren’t Kalen and Myri gathering the dragon magic at all? He’d already checked that there were no ley lines near this meadow to interfere with the new procedures.
They’d quit soon and have some dinner. He needed to try the spell one more time, to make certain he had the formula memorized. Maybe after Kalen and Myri ate, they’d be more receptive to gathering dragon magic.
The dragon nodded agreement. Nimbulan clutched Kalen’s hand as he lit the candle once more with a snap of his fingers. The new magic flared easily from his fingers.
His belly growled with hunger. Dragon magic also demanded more bodily fuel to hone an inborn talent than the old forms. One more time with the summons spell, then he’d eat.
“You’ve memorized the words, Kalen?” Nimbulan asked.
She nodded, breathing deeply as she’d been taught. They spoke the words together.
The magic remained inert. The flame stayed firmly rooted to the candle.
“Let’s switch again, Powwell. Kalen’s too tired. Send Myri over here.” Nimbulan called across the meadow toward the streambed where they crouched.
A few moments later, with Myri’s hand clutch lovingly in his own, they recited the words again. Nothing happened.
“What’s the matter, Shayla? What are we doing wrong?”
The dragon shrugged her massive shoulders in a curiously human gesture. The dragon’s long, spiked tail swished impatiently, back and forth in the grass. She had already swept a clear circle around her with the wicked spines. No part of the dragon came close to touching, or harming any of the humans.
“I’m the problem. I can’t do it.” Myri turned her back on Nimbulan and Shayla.
Nimbulan wrapped his arm around Myri’s waist and pulled her head onto his shoulder. “We’ll rest a while and try again.” He dismissed Kalen and Powwell from their perches at the edge of the brook.
Kalen visibly drooped with fatigue and disappointment as she curled up in the forearms of the now-reclining dragon. Shayla’s wings fluttered and stretched into a protective posture—as if Kalen was one of her own offspring. Kalen drifted off to sleep almost immediately, curling into the dragon’s warmth. But Powwell looked as bright and alert as ever. He dove into the pack of provisions, pulling out a fistful of jerked meat. He made a face at the dry journey food but bit deeply into the tough fare.
(Fresh meat will replenish your body better than that. The little ones will hunt for you.) Shayla dipped her head as her telepathic speech fell to a whisper so as not to awaken Kalen.
“You are all so beautiful,” Myri said as she watched the smaller dragons launch into the air. “Why didn’t I know before that you were the voices who guided me through life?”
“How long have they been urging you to come to them?” Nimbulan asked, spreading a blanket on the grass near their packs, just outside the circle of Shayla’s tail sweep.
“Nearly a year now. I kept delaying while I stopped to help people who needed healing.”
“Like you stopped at the battlefield. I’m glad I had the chance to see you work before we were thrust together again by fate.”
“By fate or by dragon lure?” She laughed and caressed his cheek with her palm.
“Maybe both. I do remember a voice in the wind telling me to go east. I’d find what I sought in the east. This dragon magic is better than Rover ritual.”
The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II Page 28
