The Silent Dragon: Children of The Dragon Nimbus #1

by Irene Radford

  But he was Glenndon, first son of Jaylor, Senior Magician and Chancellor of the University of Magicians. The Circle expected more of him than of the others.

  Some days he hated being the son of such a powerful man, a man of duty and honor and responsibility who never relaxed his vigilance. Ever. And everyone expected Glenndon to be just like him. Without a journeyman’s staff to aid his magic.

  Not today, he thought. Today I am just me, in need of a rest, in a place away from all the overanxious minds that batter at my mental walls.

  For a few moments he basked in the spring sunshine with a light breeze playing across his face. Afterimages of tall everblue trees, their spiky, blue-green needles clustered in tufts at the ends of the branches, swayed gently across his closed eyelids. He imagined white, puffy clouds drifting across the sky. One of them obscured the sun. Shadow bathed his eyelids.

  His eyes flew open as he prepared to defend his momentary idleness to an irate master magician.

  Or his busy mother. She understood his inability to throw words past the blockage in his throat; she comforted him when he tried to speak and failed. But she also insisted he fulfill his duties as an apprentice magician.

  Shimmering light wavered in front of him, gradually coalescing into the outline of a crystal furred dragon with deep, dark blue tipping his wing veins and spinal horns marching from forehead to tail.

  In this strong sunlight those veins and tips showed a hint of a purple undertone. But Indigo was a blue-tip dragon, not a rare purple-tip.

  Indigo, he greeted the adolescent dragon with relief. Glenndon here, he added, maintaining dragon protocol.

  (Indigo here,) the dragon replied. Then he plopped into the pool, sending a shock wave sloshing both banks, splashing Glenndon above his knees and dampening the boulder beneath his seat. Adolescent the dragon might be, but he was still as big as a sledge steed—the really big ones that hauled heavy trade goods around the country.

  You are as clumsy as a newborn dragonet even if your fur has grown more silvery. I can see patches of clear crystal on your wings.

  Indigo preened, spreading his wings. Light shone through the translucent membranes, revealing the colored veins that gave him his name. He looked bigger and more translucent than the last time they’d met. But thinner too. Glenndon could almost count the dragon’s ribs, and his horns looked dull, both in sharpness and in color.

  What brings you down from the mountaintop, my friend?

  (I am troubled.)

  Glenndon didn’t know how to answer, so he gave the dragon silence in which to gather his thoughts. Or his courage.

  (My three siblings do not thrive. They cry with hunger every night even though they eat plenty of fresh game. I am hungry all of the time. Our fathers hunt most efficiently to feed the nimbus.) He hung his head, slurping up some of the sulfurous water, seemingly liking the volcanic taint from the hot springs better than clean spring water.

  (I feel as if half of me is missing. I think I may have had a twin, lost at birth like so many others. And yet I am not a purple-tip, and only purple-tips are born twins.)

  Dragon lore insisted that there could only be one purple-tip at any time. They were always born twins. So before the second birthday, one of the two had to become . . . something else.

  What do you need? What can I do to help? Glenndon asked, sitting up straighter. This was dire news. And what was that about three siblings only and none of them Indigo’s twin? He thought he remembered Shayla, the matriarch of the nimbus, had produced a full twelve dragonets in her last litter. But sadly no special twin purple-tips.

  And when had that litter been born? When Glenndon was still a baby. Apparently she hadn’t mated since.

  Unusual.

  (My sire, Baamin, the bluest of blue-tips, tells me that there is no longer enough of the Tambootie to feed all of the dragons. Without the Tambootie we cannot produce magic. Without the Tambootie we die. I die.)

  I won’t let that happen! Glenndon scrambled to his feet, ready to bound off in any direction. Not any direction. To the east. The Tambootie tree that sang to him grew over there, on the far side of the pool and . . . and a quarter league away. He just had to search tree by tree to find it.

  Indigo slurped more liquid, as if trying to fill an empty belly with . . . something, anything.

  (I do not know. I do not know why the Tambootie withers before it becomes big enough to feed dragonkind.) Dragons cropped the tops of new growth as they flew.

  I’ll find you a tree right now, if I have to chop down half the forest to find it, so that you can sate your hunger. Then I must study this. Surely the University library contains texts . . .

  (Perhaps. But this is arcane knowledge, the province of dragons, not of humans. Not many learned men have written about the way dragons, the Tambootie, and ley lines are linked.)

  My Da will know. Glenndon tromped across the shallow pool and searched for a game trail through the thick underbrush.

  This time Indigo answered with silence, giving Glenndon time to gather his thoughts and organize them.

  Da has read much. But if not many have written about this, then perhaps the text is among the lost—the library left behind in Coronnan City, or burned during one of the purges.

  (Perhaps.)

  If the knowledge is written anywhere, I will find it. I will do what I can to help you, my friend. You and all of the dragons. Perhaps if he found the answer, the Circle would find him worthy of promotion. At the age of seventeen, nearly eighteen, he should have advanced to journeyman status a year ago. At least. There’s a tree this way. Glenndon pointed with a finger guided by his senses. I’ll find it, and then you can fly over and grab some leaves. Or should I gather some and bring them back here?

  (Here, please. I have looked for that tree, but it has not breached the canopy for easy feeding. That is why I came to you with my troubles, though the elders say that mere humans cannot help dragonkind. If there is an answer, you, Glenndon, will find it. I trust you.)

  I hope I am worthy of your trust. He’d start by talking to his Da.

  (You are my friend. That is enough.)

  Is it?

  CHAPTER 2

  “THERE, BAAMIN, THERE!” Senior Magician Jaylor screamed to the blue-tipped dragon he rode. The wind tore his words away.

  He had no doubt that Baamin heard his mind, if not his words. They’d worked together a long time.

  The huge beast beneath him tilted to his left, his transparent wings, veined with vivid magician blue, flapped once to guide their turn. They sped to the broad river valley deep within the craggy foothills that dropped to the sea on their right.

  A blacker-than-black smudge along the silvery streak of the riverbed looked like a shadow, something to be dismissed as natural at this distance. But this shadow did not belong in the spreading fields of newly sprouted grain.

  “S’murghit, that’s three in the last year,” Jaylor muttered with mind and voice. “Not a random egg hatched on the wrong continent. We’ve got to find the nest.”

  (Or the one who nurtures each egg with blood,) Baamin replied.

  The dragon circled the rim of the valley until the sun was at their back. Then he tucked his wings and dove straight at the smudge.

  Quickly, too quickly, details of the valley sprang into view. Jaylor saw narrow tracks running from a cluster of simple thatched houses to the river. Stone walls bordered the track and each field. He saw figures hastening along those field separators with spades and hoes and scythes. Useless against the black menace. Cries of distress rose faintly, almost drowned out by the wind of their rapid descent. Almost. Not quite.

  Anger. Pain. Fear slammed into Jaylor stronger than the words.

  He clutched Baamin’s spinal horns with both hands to keep the ocean of emotions from dislodging him.


  The black smudge took on form and dimension: long and undulating. Blacker than midnight on a moonless night. To be visible from one hundred feet up, it had to be huge, ten feet long and as thick as one of Jaylor’s thighs.

  A creature out of ancient legends. And nightmares.

  “It doesn’t have wings, thank the Stargods. It’s male and juvenile,” he muttered. If a winged matriarch wreaked havoc this close to the Great Bay, they’d have a full infestation of the monsters, not random juveniles.

  “This was Krej’s old province. Do you suppose he left a nest as a weapon for him to use later?”

  (Too many years have passed. The eggs can go dormant in extreme cold for a time and still hatch when revived. Not fifteen years in a warm and wet land.)

  “Someone new nurturing the eggs?”

  Baamin didn’t answer the obvious.

  The snake continued to push mounds of dirt into the river, oblivious to the danger from above. It used its massive head and coils to gather loose soil from the fields, uprooting crops and rocks along the way; damming the river with more and more precious soil.

  It responded only to its instincts to stop the flow of water, divert it by the shortest route into the sea, leaving the land dry and sere behind.

  At fifty feet up Baamin opened his jaws and loosed a thin stream of fire, directed at the snake. Too weak a flame. Not enough Tambootie in the dragon’s system. The fire singed a straight line across the massive head.

  The creature reared high, red eyes blinking in surprise. Then it narrowed its focus and bared fangs as long as Jaylor’s arm. From twenty-five feet away he spotted the glisten of venom on those fangs.

  Fighting his own dread and the incessant pull of the land, Jaylor fumbled to open the leather sack slung upon the spinal horn in front of him. Blindly he pulled forth a single spearhead made of rare obsidian. His last one, and there would be no more until Rovers brought more volcanic glass out of Hanassa. Dragons could only guess when that would be. A spell forged in dragon fire sharpened the points to slice through magical shields as well as flesh.

  He affixed the precious tip to a spear and pulled it free of its loop on the sack strap.

  He had time for one deep breath to access his store of dragon magic and send it along his arm and fingers. With a thrust from strong back and shoulder muscles the spear sped on an arrow-straight and magic-true path directly into the snake’s spine at the base of the skull.

  The snake flinched, then rippled once, flipping the spear out of its thick hide. It abandoned its work and turned to face the dragon and the magician. Its tail slapped the first of the villagers across the chest and sent him flying into the crowd of his fellows behind him. The ox-shoulder spade the man carried spun away, digging a deep furrow in the grain as it slid along the ground.

  Baamin loosed another trickle of flame. Not enough to damage a damp twig.

  Jaylor didn’t have time to wonder at the weakness in Baamin’s primary weapon. He found four throwing stars and sent them flying toward the snake’s eyes. Three went wide. The fourth cut through the magic bubble surrounding the beast that the spear tip had weakened and embedded itself deep in the left eye. A spurt of black blood shot forth. The green land withered and turned brown wherever it touched.

  An unworldly screech nearly split Jaylor’s eardrums.

  The villagers dropped to their knees, abandoning their tools to cover their ears with their hands.

  Baamin dug his hind claws deeply into the ground as he landed, running toward the snake and spreading his wings to slow his momentum.

  The snake responded with a lightning fast strike to the dragon’s chest. Immediately the translucent skin and crystal-clear fur darkened.

  “Baamin!” Jaylor screamed.

  (Surface burn only. He cannot damage me,) the dragon replied as he continued running over and past the enemy.

  Jaylor swung his leg over the top of the spinal horn that held him in place and slid to the ground before the dragon came to a full halt. He dragged the sack with him. Before he’d cleared the wide wing he’d grabbed three knives, exquisitely balanced for throwing.

  The snake undulated toward him, hissing and glaring with every coil and lunge. Its screeches ran up the scale almost beyond human hearing.

  No time to protect his ears. Jaylor had to bring down the beast. He held the first knife by its tip in his right hand, narrowed his vision to the vulnerable open mouth, and let the blade fly.

  It spun through the air and collided with the fangs, bouncing away harmlessly. The second knife sunk uselessly into body flesh.

  The villagers sprang forward with tools held high. A young man, probably in his twenties, slashed at the snake’s back with his scythe. An older man with a thick gray queue pounded at the tail with a hoe as if digging weeds out of it. A third man, no older than Jaylor’s oldest son Glenndon, hacked with a rare metal spade at the center of a coil that undulated away from the other attacks.

  Jaylor’s third knife flew true, sliding between the fangs, deep into the open mouth.

  Venom sprayed indiscriminately as the blade pierced the poison sack in the roof of the mouth. A few more ripples and the snake collapsed. Its black skin shriveled and the muscles fell slack.

  As one, the villagers descended upon the carcass with renewed vigor, reducing the massive creature to bloody pulp.

  Jaylor sagged, bracing his hands against his knees. He dragged in huge gulps of air. His heartbeat sounded loud and too rapid to his own ears. His neck pulse felt as if it would break through his bearded skin.

  (I remember a time when you could throw spells for half a day without resting,) Baamin reminded him, sounding intensely weary himself.

  “Neither of us is as young as we once were.”

  (Nor as full of vigor. I shall need to rest before we fly home.)

  “Sounds good to me.” Jaylor forced himself upright and stumbled over to the snake head. The dead and glazed red eye still seemed to stare at him accusingly. Jaylor stared back, and struggled to retrieve the spear tip where it was stuck between two scales. The obsidian was too precious to leave behind.

  The older man with the thick gray queue—a normal three-strand braid held in place with a leather thong, unlike the four strands Jaylor wore as a symbol of his seniority in the Circle of Master Magicians—stopped taking slices out of the snake carcass and approached Jaylor and the dragon, bloody hoe still in hand. “And who might be you,” he asked on a surly snarl.

  “Jaylor, Senior Magician and Chancellor of the University of Magicians,” he replied, straightening up. “This is Baamin, mate to Shayla, the matriarch of the dragon nimbus.

  The villager looked him up and down, taking in the stained and worn blue leather traveling trews and magician blue linen shirt with disdain. “Don’t look so grand,” he spat.

  Baamin reared up, spreading his magnificent wings. The blue in his wing veins and horns pulsed with outrage and thick smoke leaked from the sides of his mouth.

  Jaylor decided to ignore the man’s attitude. “Don’t eat the meat of that beast. It’s poison,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “You going to order your flying steed to help clear the river for us?”

  “That is not the job of a dragon.”

  “Then what good is it? Just another ravening beast, like the snake.” The villager turned away, hacking at the churned soil with his bloody hoe.

  “Excuse me, that snake was a Krakatrice! A dragon, a mature dragon is the only thing that can take one on and hope to win. Just be glad the Krakatrice was a juvenile. In another year, it would be twice as big and three times more deadly,” Jaylor fought to keep his words from growing into an angry shout.

  “Good thing we killed it now instead of later. Now take that bloody big beast away before it digs up any more of our crops.”

  I awake i
n a cold sweat, thrashing against the confines of the sheet wrapped around me . . . or is that the straw in the box for my lovely that is so confining. She feeds upon my blood and I feed upon her dreams.

  One of her consorts is dead, murdered by a magician and a dragon. Our hatred of both increases. Without consorts she will never mature into the graceful matriarch she is destined to become.

  But the dream is more to me. I saw not the death of a Krakatrice. I relived the moment my mother rejected me and my lovely. She ordered . . . ordered! . . . her retainers to kill my beloved. In rejecting my lovely pet she rejected me. Her love is false. Her lessons of tolerance toward magic and respect for all people—noble and peasant, magician and mind-blind—are false. That was the day I arranged for my father to send her away in disgrace. But he claims he loves her, he needs time to make that decision.

  We have made our decision, my lovely and I. We know that my father’s wife must go. She must be disgraced.

  That was the day I learned she was not my true mother, that I am baseborn of a fleeting union between my father and a servant. That mother abandoned me as well. I have only my father. He adopted me because his lady could have no children of her own. He is the only one who understands my need for the pretty pet. He is the only one who understands that when he legitimized me and took me to the capital city for the ceremony, my pet had to come with me.

  In the city we find more eggs that will hatch and become consorts for her when she matures and sprouts her six batwings.

  Then she and I will take revenge upon all magicians and their supporters. We will rule this land together, without interference from a weak and indecisive council. My father will be allowed to give us advice. No one else.

  CHAPTER 3

  “YOU DO NOT WANT to be late to this Council meeting, Your Grace,” Fred, King Darville’s bodyguard, said as he poked his head into the royal office.

  “Yes, yes. A moment more. I need to dispatch this letter . . .” Darville signed the document with a flourish, folded it, and lifted a candle to drip wax for a seal.