The Silent Dragon: Children of The Dragon Nimbus #1

by Irene Radford

  “Welcome, Fred. Come in, come in. Can we offer you hospitality? What brings you here?” Da’s deep baritone voice grew lighter with hearty good humor. He extended his arm. He and Fred clasped elbows and bowed in ritual greeting.

  “I forget my manners, my Lord Jaylor, Senior Magician.” Fred dropped his grip on Da’s arm and stepped back a pace, swept his cap off his head and bowed formally.

  Glenndon took a defensive position behind Da’s left shoulder, facing slightly outward. That gave them nearly a full circle of spell throwing room.

  He kept ready the confusion spell, followed by a fireball that itched for release. He didn’t want to be surprised by anyone who might be hiding behind that magical glamour surrounding the letter in Fred’s pocket.

  Fred stepped forward, eyes darting right and left until he’d examined the entire clearing. His eyes went wide as he took in Glenndon.

  “Stargods! I didn’t believe it,” he gasped.

  Da shifted his gaze from Fred to Glenndon and back again. “Believe what you want. Then forget it entirely,” Da growled like an angry saber cat.

  Believe what? Glenndon asked.

  His father just scowled at him, still angry over what Fred had said. Or not said.

  “Yes, my lord.” Fred bowed again and looked toward the simple log house at the center of the clearing. His entire face brightened with a smile when he noted Mama. He nearly ran to stand before her at the threshold.

  Glenndon hummed a different sequence of notes to close the clearing barrier even as he dogged the man’s footsteps.

  Da ambled along in their wake. His mind projected happiness at seeing an old friend, and a bit of wariness. He seemed blind to the alien magic Fred carried in his pocket.

  “Welcome, Fred,” Mama said, holding her arms wide for an embrace of greeting.

  “My lady.” Fred bowed formally, two paces in front of Brevelan. Then he advanced those last two paces to hug her heartily.

  “You are probably the only person left alive who calls me by title,” Mama laughed. But her chuckles carried a musicality that invoked a protective spell.

  Glenndon stopped short. Jaylor paused just behind his left shoulder.

  Titles?

  An old custom to ennoble the Senior Magician and his wife. From before the Leaving. Must be official king’s business for him to invoke titles, Jaylor returned on a tight beam. I don’t like it. He took a wider stance, bracing himself to face the unknown.

  Fred proffered the letter with another deep bow. “My lady, King Darville sends his greetings and his apologies that he could not come on this errand himself.”

  Da’s eyes opened wide when he spotted the shimmer of magic sparkling gold, brown, and dark red in a swirling aura about the missive.

  Who? Glenndon asked.

  The queen.

  That surprised Glenndon. By law, none of the royal family could throw magic of any kind—even before the Leaving. If the Council of Provinces found out about this little spell to prevent anyone opening or reading the letter, other than the one to whom it was addressed, they could, by law, arrest the queen and burn her at the stake.

  Glenndon didn’t want to think of the chaos and war that would follow. Queen Rossemikka’s brother, Rossemanuel, King of Rossemeyer—all the royals of Rossemeyer carried the prenomyn Rosse—might very well gather his huge army of mercenaries and invade Coronnan for the insult.

  “No!” Mama screamed. “Never. I will never agree to this.” Her hands shook and her face grew deathly pale. The fine lines around her eyes furrowed deeper. The gray strands in her sunset hair shone stark white.

  Glenndon barely caught her before she crumpled to the ground in a dead faint.

  The letter fluttered to the ground. The last line shone stark and menacingly bright. “I fear an assassin in my household.”

  An assassin targeting the queen? Or worse, the king?

  CHAPTER 8

  GLENNDON EASED HIS MOTHER to the beaten-dirt floor and twisted himself to kneel behind her. His blond queue dangled over his shoulder to tickle her nose. He thrust it back over his shoulder in frustration. Mama crumpled the letter in her hand and thrust it at him.

  Black sigils danced and swam before Glenndon’s vision without meaning. He wrestled the letter from his mother’s hands and glared at it. He crossed his eyes and let the meaning of the words flow into his mind rather than fight to read it.

  “Send my son Glenndon to court to assume his duties as heir to the Dragon Crown.” And then the signature at the bottom. “Darville, King of Coronnan by the Grace of the Dragons.” The threat at the bottom of the missive was written in a smaller hand, less formal, cloaked in a different spell, less noticeable.

  Mama? He propped her higher while still cradling her head in his lap.

  “Jaylor, he mustn’t go,” Mama said. Her voice shook as badly as her hand. “The city will destroy him.”

  Glenndon groaned some awful sound, Mama, how can this be?

  “Jaylor, promise me that you will not send my boy away!”

  “Sweetheart, I can promise nothing until I read the letter.” Jaylor knelt beside her, shoving Glenndon aside, oblivious to everyone but his wife. Gently he took the sheet of parchment from Glenndon’s hands. One look and he frowned in contempt. “I thought I taught Mikka to encode her letters more effectively.”

  The queen could code letters magically? Glenndon’s thoughts whirled in wonder. Who knew? The urgency behind the words became clearer for her to risk discovery of magic. Illegal magic.

  Da made the magic sparkle disappear from the page with a pass of his hand. Then he read the words. He shook his head in disbelief and sat back on his heels abruptly. His thoughts remained guarded and closed to Glenndon.

  “Send my son Glenndon to court . . . heir to the Dragon Crown,” Da whispered. He did not lower his eyes to the warning of assassination.

  “He cannot go.” Brevelan struggled to sit up.

  Glenndon had to help her.

  “Promise me you will not send my boy away, Jaylor.”

  “I . . . I always knew this day would come,” Da said. Color drained from his face. He suddenly looked older, less vigorous.

  What does this mean?

  “It means, Glenndon, that our past has caught up with us,” Da said. He dashed moisture away from his eyes.

  And my mother? Panic boiled in Glenndon’s middle. How could this be? His place in the world, everything he held dear and familiar shifted and would not settle into a pattern.

  He’d never had a true place in the world. A blond outsider in the clearing, a silent magician at the University. This must be why.

  He had to brace himself as he lost his lock on the southern magnetic pole. His sense of up and down, right and left, center and outward disappeared with it. Only the packed-dirt floor beneath him seemed real.

  “I am your mother, dear boy. That much of your life is real.” Mama twisted and hugged him.

  He rested his head on her breast, breathing in her unique smell of spices and baking tubers and the sweet flowers she mixed with her soap.

  Safe. As long as she held him he felt safe and grounded.

  Gradually he realigned his senses upon her. She was the center of his world.

  But his conversation with Indigo kept intruding on his sense of well-being. Could any magician ever be safe from the loss of dragons? Dragon magic allowed many magicians to join their powers and overcome any solitary. They could impose honesty and ethics; they could guarantee ordinary people that magicians had their best interests at heart.

  He wished he’d made his father understand the urgency of the quest to help dragons thrive again before this turmoil erupted.

  Were they safe from the strangeness that invaded their home the moment this Fred person arrived?

>   Sudden anger shot from his gut to his throat. With an inarticulate roar he launched himself upon Fred, ready to claw out the man’s eyes, to shed his blood, to make it all go away.

  “Glenndon!” Da’s voice did not stop him.

  Da throwing a magical barrier between them did.

  Glenndon bounced back, landing on his butt beside the hearth, jarring his spine. Lights flashed before his eyes.

  “Apologize to Fred, Glenndon,” Da demanded. “He is only the messenger. He is not to blame for this. If anyone is, ’tis I.”

  The small windowless room seemed to close in on Glenndon. Too many people in here. Not enough air or room for all of them.

  Without thinking further he shot forward and upward, catching his stride by the second step. He burst free of the dark confines of the house. Another dozen steps and he broke through the protective barrier around the clearing.

  “Glenndon!” Da called after him.

  His head pounded with fierce pain at each jarring step.

  “Come back here. Now. We have to talk about this,” his father demanded.

  Not his father.

  The only father he’d ever known.

  Glenndon guided his feet upward without thinking. Up the mountain. Away from home. Toward . . . toward the dragons. The dragons, who were fewer each year. The dragons, who were starving for lack of something vital in the Tambootie.

  The dragons were his true family. He belonged with them in their lair, fighting to help them survive and thrive, not in the clearing. And definitely not in Coronnan City at the court of the king.

  His breath came in sharp, shallow pants. A stitch gnawed at his side.

  Still he ran. Upward, along familiar paths known only to him and a few gray scurries. He pushed his body to the limit and beyond. Still he ran. Not thinking. Reacting blindly to the need to get away.

  To escape.

  At last, a root tripped him. He landed face first in soft moss, the top of his head barely a hand’s breadth away from a jagged rock. He shuddered at his narrow escape from having his head split like a flusterhen egg.

  For many long moments he lay there panting, hearing only his heart thudding in his ears.

  Slowly he became aware of the rush of water over a cascade of rocks. He knew this place. Instinctively he’d sought the glen where he’d idled away many long hours when he needed to be alone, away from people and the pressure to speak. The glen where Indigo came to speak to him.

  When his breathing returned to normal and the pinch in his side eased, he sat up and unlaced his boots. Chill air stabbed at his bare feet. The spring equinox was still a few days away.

  So he wouldn’t have to think about . . . about his mother and the king. His father. The king.

  His parents sending him away. A great deal of urgency bled from the final cryptic note of fear of an assassin and the magic that encrypted it.

  The warm water caressed his feet and relaxed his entire being. In a few moments he’d stripped off his clothes and sunk into the balm of the small plunge pool.

  Resting his head against the bank, queue half in the water, he let his mind wander, open, receptive to any stray dragon thoughts. Within moments he heard the rush of wings as one of the beasts fought air and altitude to land in the creek above the fall.

  Glenndon here, he informed the dragon before he looked to see which one splashed water enthusiastically.

  (Indigo here,) came the reply.

  Glenndon smiled. No matter what turmoil clouded his mind, Indigo remained true and loyal. Closer to him than his brother Lukan. His half-brother.

  He turned to look at his friend. Welcome.

  Slanted sunlight bounced off the crystalline fur of the dragon, directing his gaze elsewhere, anywhere but at the beast. And yet he couldn’t look away. Fascination kept his eyes probing for the spirit behind the reflection. Only the extremely dark blue of his wing veins and tips remained visible. Because his tips were darker than most dragons, Indigo was easier to spot from a distance. In some lights he looked almost purple, the deep rich color of the mountains in winter twilight.

  Indigo’s size had never intimidated Glenndon. He’d known the dragon when he was still a clumsy baby no larger than a lady’s pony.

  They’d grown up together.

  (You are welcome as well, my friend. Your mind is troubled.)

  Glenndon flashed a replay of the day’s events from one mind to another, without editing. He had nothing to hide from Indigo.

  (Two fathers. You should be excited. The more fathers the bigger and stronger the litter.) An aura of sadness clouded his eyes. (Shayla will not mate again until we find what is missing and thrive again.)

  But I don’t know the king. I would have to move to the city.

  (Your brother would jump at the chance to see the city.)

  I’ve never wanted to see the city. I like living close to the dragons.

  (I think I should like to see the city. ’Twould be different. Exciting.)

  You sound like Lukan, Glenndon snorted.

  (If you never go anywhere else, how do you know that this is home? If you don’t fit in anywhere else, how do you know where you belong? If you never try something new, how do you know that you have found your life’s work?)

  In a flurry of wings and a flash of light reflecting off his fur, Indigo took to the air and disappeared. (I hear there is a secret archives beneath the palace,) he whispered back to Glenndon from a distance.

  “Glenndon? Where are you?” his sister Lillian called.

  “M’ma says you must come home now,” Valeria, her twin, added. Dark shadows circled her eyes. Her skin was so thin he thought he could see her veins pulse purple beneath the surface.

  His sisters thrashed about in the underbrush, calling him and making enough noise to scare away an entire nimbus of dragons.

  You left me with something to think about, Indigo. But I still do not like any of this.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE TIME HAS COME. Father is ready to cast aside his lady wife. His eye wanders and lights upon a distant relative, young, fertile. Docile.

  Barely a year older than myself, this new girl should be my wife, but I seek someone greater, more beautiful. More powerful. Even my lovely begins to see the wisdom of bringing royal blood into the family.

  My lovely has grown enough now to sniff magic in Princess Rosselinda’s blood. An even bigger incentive to overlook my father’s latest light of love. I’ll have her first, just to make sure she knows who truly rules this family.

  I fear that my princess will not pass the test my lovely sets for her. Before we can mate, my lovely must feed of her blood. I do not think my princess will allow this. Is my princess more important than my lovely? Ultimately yes. Princess Rosselinda is the key to controlling Coronnan and ending the evil of magic. My princess is more . . .

  Time enough to worry about that later. My lovely has set up an aura around the herbal sachets my father’s wife scatters among our clothing. Father will find the one that burns his skin at first touch. We will inform him that only magic can do that.

  He is ready to accuse his wife of magic so he can get rid of her. He burns for his new love. But first he must exile his wife.

  I have waited nearly three years for this day. I glory in my power and the power of my lovely. My lovely knows all. She is a fountain of wisdom.

  But my princess . . .

  “Good morning, M’ma.” Princess Rosselinda curtsied deeply to her mother and the five ladies who attended the queen. Two weeks had passed since she’d overheard that awful discussion in the Council Chamber. Two weeks and no one had mentioned anything.

  Lucjemm had kept his distance as well, never mentioning how she’d abandoned him in the market. When P’pa allowed her into the practice arena, Lucjemm
pointedly found other bouting partners.

  She hoped they’d all forgotten those events. She and her ladies almost had. They’d found other diversion to giggle over, like the courtier who split his too-tight trews right up the seat when he bowed to the queen. Or the greater scandal of Lord Jemmarc formally putting aside his wife for witchcraft so he could marry a younger, prettier, and more fertile lady. Only the dragons knew where Lady Lucinda had gone with but one maid and one bodyguard as escort. At least Jemmarc hadn’t brought her to trial and burning for her crime. If he had, he might have had to return her extensive dowry to her family.

  Linda didn’t want to think about that. Ever.

  Rumor had it that he had no evidence of witchcraft. But he did have a new candidate for his wife. If he remarried, would he set aside Lucjemm as his heir as well?

  If he did that, she couldn’t use the boy to keep her half-brother, her bastard half-brother, away. She’d have to find another suitor. Um . . .

  No one came to mind. No one. Perhaps she should ask Uncle Andrall to investigate likely young men of noble birth on the Big Continent.

  M’ma’s ladies shifted position so that they ranged around the queen in a protective semicircle. Linda dismissed the ladies from her focus. She could never keep the ladies straight anyway. They rotated every few months and they all looked, dressed, and talked alike, as if to vary one tiny morsel from court-dictated fashions might weaken the kingdom and leave it vulnerable to invasion. Except Lady Anya, Miri’s mother. She was always at M’ma’s side, a friend and confidante as well as assistant.

  Linda flashed her skirts at the ladies, showing a gossamer trim on her petticoat, purchased on a defiant whim after she’d abandoned Lucjemm. Beside her, Miri and Chastet practiced the same flick revealing similar, but not as grand lace on their petticoats. A game they’d cooked up together. Now that Linda had reached the mature age of fourteen and been assigned ladies of her own, she’d discovered the joy in setting her own fashion with colored ribbons and touches of lace from SeLennica.