No more of a headache than dealing with the Council, Glenndon reminded her.
“Anyone who has been at the Council with P’pa more than twice knows he’d more likely to leave the Coraurlia on the table and wear only the demi-crown,” she completed her thought. “He’d be dead from both the acid and the magic. If Glenndon hadn’t sensed it first.” Her knees weakened, and she had to sit on the edge of the lounge next to her mother. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how close she’d come to losing P’pa. How close they’d all come to losing their king.
“I’ll need more help than just herbs to put this to rights,” M’ma said, inspecting the wound, which seemed bigger, redder, angrier than just a few moments ago. Blisters had formed in the center of the red. Little white circles that grew as they watched.
Just then Indigo sauntered in, walking a mazelike path toward Glenndon, making sure he rubbed his face against every piece of furniture and leg he passed.
Lucjemm jumped out of the way at the cat’s slightest touch. His eyes took on a strange cast as he hugged the wall by the door. Lady Anya bent and scratched Indigo’s ears. He purred loudly in response. But he didn’t linger. He aimed for Glenndon.
“Who is this?” M’ma asked, her voice full of caution. She held herself rigid, leaning away from the cat.
“Indigo. He’s special,” Linda replied.
“Aside from being big, what makes him so special?” M’ma continued, not touching the cat. She never allowed a cat into her suite and barely tolerated any in the palace. She allowed a few in the storerooms to keep the rodent population in check, but never, ever above stairs. Ever.
A bit of a wing poked out from beneath the extra flap of skin.
Linda noted that the wing was on the side away from Lucjemm’s line of sight.
M’ma hid her quick intake of breath with a flurry of hand movements over the cat.
“Master Lucjemm, will you inform His Grace that we will be some time in figuring out what to do?” Lady Anya asked sweetly.
“May I inform his Grace and the Council of your surmise about the wound?”
“Yes,” M’ma replied. “Tell them everything, including our suspicions about the reason for the attack.”
Lucjemm bowed and backed out of the room. His gaze lingered on Linda a moment longer than accepted protocol.
When he’d closed the door firmly behind him and his footsteps retreated some distance, Linda remembered to breathe again.
“Now that we have privacy, we can do something about the wound,” M’ma said, shifting her position so that she could hold Glenndon’s arm with one hand and keep the other on the flywacket’s head.
Indigo had indeed become a flywacket now, a creature of magic, mystery, and legend, with black feathered wings fully extended and raised, as if ready to catch the next breeze and launch into the skies.
Or the ceiling.
“Linda.” M’ma gestured for her to kneel beside Glenndon. “You are closer to him in blood than I. Therefore you must take the lead in this, use your strength for I have not enough. You must do everything I say, precisely when I say it, without question or hesitation. I cannot do this without making myself ill again, but I know how to do it. Can you follow me without thinking?”
Linda nodded, swallowing any trace of uncertainty.
“We have not much time. Within minutes a crowd of people will burst through that door and demand explanations. Anya, stand in the hallway and stall them. Latch the door on your way out.” M’ma paused to close her eyes and breathe deeply.
Linda noted that Glenndon did the same. She took a deep breath and forced the air downward until calm blossomed outward from her middle. Another breath and her limbs went lax. A third and her ears and eyes seemed to open fully for the first time.
She heard her own heartbeat, distinguished it from her mother’s and her brother’s. Without thinking she urged her own pulse to match Glenndon’s. A moment later her mother’s came into synchronization.
Linda, you need to place your left hand on Indigo and your right upon Glenndon’s arm, M’ma said directly into her mind.
As she spoke, M’ma placed both her hands on Indigo’s extended wing.
Linda looked to her brother. He nodded. She complied. Left hand on the flywacket’s other wing, dominant right on Glenndon. Was there a reason for that? M’ma had been most specific.
A bubble of pale blue light shading into lavender and darkening around the outer edges seemed to engulf them in a protective barrier from the outside world. As details in the room dimmed, those within the bubble brightened, took on sharper definition. She saw every stitch in every seam of Glenndon’s tunic and trews. The fine embroidery and lace on her mother’s gown became equally distinct, as did the pores in their skin, and the way each hair lay upon their heads.
Indigo purred louder, the rhythm taking on the same cadence as a heartbeat, their joined heartbeats. The bubble of purply-blue light emanated from him.
Linda admired the silky texture of the feathers, seeing how each tiny fluff joined another and another along the spine. Really just extremely fine fur patterned in branching arrays along a thicker spine of cartilage instead of individual hairs attached to the skin.
“Now that you have made the connection to Glenndon, place your right hand above his wound. Do not touch the red, but let your spread fingertips rest on his skin around the burn.”
Sharp tingles rose up her arm when she touched his bare skin. She looked closer, seeing their common blood flowing back and forth from her body to his.
Concentrate on the burn. See the edges, feel the depth of it in the skin. Now in your mind confine the burn into one solid mass. It resisted, shooting out tendrils.
She firmed her image of control, enveloping the mass, much as the bubble of light isolated the four of them. Linda felt the damaged tissue gather itself tighter, its urge to spread fading.
Now lift the mass free of your brother’s hand.
Linda yanked at the blob, expecting resistance. A great tearing sound filled her mind where her mother’s gentle voice had been.
Glenndon screamed. Physically and psychically. The sharp burning stab in his hand repeated itself through her blood bond with him. Fire raced from her fingertips to her shoulder and over the top of her head into her eyes. A blackness full of steel knives jabbed in and out of her mind.
She hadn’t the strength to utter more than a whimpering moan.
Gently, Little Lindy. Gently. Think of snow. Think of winter chill invading every crevice in the stone wall of the inner keep. Think of the icy wind ripping across the hills as you ride Belle.
Linda obeyed her mother, as she’d promised.
The sharpness of Glenndon’s pain receded inside her to a numbing ache.
There is a root in that burn. Imagine the deep, probing taproot of the great oak at Last Bridge that toppled last winter in the windstorm. See it in your mind. Now transfer that image to the burn. See the root escaping your envelope of magic. Do you see it?
“Yes,” Linda murmured. And she could. A nasty black thing that had broken through the wall she’d encircled the burn with.
Pull it back.
Pain, sharp and intense flared up to her eyes and down into her legs.
Breathe with it. Synchronize your breath and heartbeat to the pulse of the root. Glenndon’s mental voice came through, weak but firm. Each syllable found the rhythm of the pain. Like a good swordsman, he’d found the magic’s weak point, flowed with it, understood it, and . . . and mastered it with a neat undercut and long lunge.
The root withdrew.
Linda pulled some more, found a misshapen lump further up and pulled that too. She didn’t know what it was, only that it didn’t belong inside her brother. Then she slapped a mental patch on the magical envelope containing the burn and its root.
Her pain eased. Glenndon breathed easier. His facial muscles relaxed.
Breathe deeply, Linda, M’ma coaxed. In, two, three, hold two, three, out two, three.
Linda obeyed, finding her lungs eager to work again.
Again. Breathe on my count. Find your center. Breathe again, anchor yourself to the Kardia. Breathe.
Glenndon matched the count. His chest moved in and out in time with hers. Their hearts beat as one. His mind opened to her. Hers to him.
In a flash she shared all his memories, his fears, his loneliness, all his knowledge, the books he’d read, the trails he’d explored, his bond of love with his family, his friendship with Indigo. And for this brief time out of time she shared his talent.
Linda knew what to do. Gently, slowly, she inserted her mind around the encapsulated burn. It fought her. She eased back and came at it from a new angle, wiggling here, pushing there, like a worm finding its way through rocky soil.
She felt Glenndon’s mental shout of triumph when she finally got underneath the thing. Together they eased it upward, sliding it free of his body.
Don’t touch it! M’ma warned as the blob burst free of Glenndon’s skin.
Glenndon sent her a new thought. She lifted her hand from his, still keeping her fingers cupped.
The blob followed her until it hovered several finger widths above the back of Glenndon’s hand.
Quickly he snatched his hand away, cradling it beneath his opposite arm, pressing on the bleeding wound.
The blob started to drop. Linda’s skirts lay in its path. She knew it would burn through the thick fabric and petticoat to her thigh. She tried to jerk free.
Indigo’s long black tongue darted out and in, like a giant lizard snapping at a fly. He chomped on the magical blob and licked his lips.
“Indigo!” Linda squealed in concern.
“He’s a dragon at his core, Linda. A creature of magic. It won’t hurt him like it would us mere humans,” M’ma said. Her face paled. Deep lines drew her mouth down. She sagged wearily.
“Cut the circle,” Glenndon ordered. “You have to cut the circle so we can get her help. We’ve exhausted her beyond her physical strength, even though you did most of the work, Linda.” The most he’d spoken in his entire life.
“Circle?” Linda asked. Her bond with her brother remained, though it faded in intensity. “Oh, the bubble of light.”
He rolled his eyes at her as if she were the stupidest and rawest of apprentices. Well, she was. She’d never even seen magic worked. Never in her wildest imagination had she dreamed of performing such an intense spell.
“Does this make me a magician?”
(Anyone can gather magic from a purple dragon,) Indigo reminded her. (But there is more to you than you know. You could have done this alone, needing only your mother’s guidance. I just made it easier.)
“Cut the circle, Linda,” Glenndon demanded.
With no knife or scissors available, she stretched out her hand and stabbed the light with her fingernail. The magic shredded and dissolved as she slashed her hand downward.
Only then did she hear pounding on the door and shouts from the landing outside. “The witchsniffers have found sorcery. Black sorcery!”
Her hand hurt as Glenndon pushed aside the latch. Blood dripped to the floor from both of them.
CHAPTER 32
“MIKKA! ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” Darville demanded as he shouldered his way through the opening door. Silent and observant, Fred followed no more than half a step behind, where he always was in time of trouble. Dimly, Darville noted that Linda and Glenndon were on their feet, but not looking well. “Lucjemm said there was magic in the wound.”
His rapidly beating heart and sweating skin told him he’d had too much drink. But he needed another. Now. Without it he couldn’t think clearly, calmly.
His head pounded with a sharp ache from temples to nape and back again.
Mikka lay back on her couch, calmly reading yesterday’s dispatches, as if nothing untoward occurred.
“Certain herbs and poultices will counter simple magics,” Old Maisy said, bustling toward them from the back room—the bedroom where another hidden entrance led to the tunnel system. Darville and Mikka had happily explored them when newly married.
Maisy carried a pile of gauze and linen. The tip of a cat’s bushy black tail disappeared around the corner of the doorway as the seamstress swished her skirts.
A cat in Mikka’s rooms? Strange occurrences indeed. Mikka hadn’t allowed cats anywhere near her since Ambassador Jack had found a way to separate her from the cat spirit that had shared her body for years.
“And simple magic it was, hurried and unpracticed,” Maisy whispered so that only Darville and Mikka heard. “Now, Your Highness, I need to bandage that wound, so sit yourself down on that stool and I’ll be about finishing up.”
Both Linda and Glenndon stared at their hands: his left, her right.
“Those look more like knife gashes than magical burns,” Lord Jemmarc said, pushing his way into the room behind Darville.
“And what would you know about magical burns, my lord?” Only old Maisy could get away with such bold talk among the nobles.
Darville smothered a laugh behind a cough into his crooked arm. Laughing made his headache worse. He needed a drink to banish it.
Mikka shared an amused gaze and a half smile with him. They’d known the not-so-ancient and not-so-decrepit seamstress a long time.
“Well . . . well, only what I’ve read,” Jemmarc blustered. “But burns don’t bleed.”
“And sometimes one has to lance or even cut out alien infections,” Mikka said. She laid the pages on the couch between her and the back, out of sight of any who might steal a look. “Now what is so important that you felt you must break down my door and invade the queen’s privacy?” She gave the men crowding behind the king a malevolent gaze.
“The witchsniffers . . .” Lucjemm began.
“I thought I sent them home,” Darville snarled.
“The wound had magic in it all right,” Maisy said. She shoved Glenndon upright from his exhausted slump on his stool and began fussing with bandages. Linda she ordered to remain in place beside her brother with only a tilt of her head.
Both children obeyed, instantly and without protest.
“Unreliable, them witchsniffers. Can only smell magic present, not how good, bad, or indifferent, cain’t even tell who’s a throwing the spell, or if it grew out of somethin’ else.”
Darville whirled to face the middle-aged couple with glazed eyes and right arms swinging in uncontrolled, wide circles. “Return to your homes. Today. This hour,” he ordered them, his need for a drink making him angrier than he should be. “You have done your duty. I now discharge you. You are never to return to the city. Ever!”
They blinked rapidly, coming out of their trance. “Yes, Your Grace,” the man said on a bow. His wife curtsied. Both held out their hands, palm up.
Lady Anya appeared out of nowhere and placed a small silver coin in each palm. Fists closed greedily about the payment. The lady kept her head high and chin bold, deliberately avoiding eye contact with her king. He had no way of knowing if she’d taken it upon herself to reward the couple or if Mikka had discussed it with her first.
Darville decided the action was wise. They obviously had been promised money upon completion of their job and wouldn’t leave until they had it. But who had hired them?
His gaze rested on Jemmarc.
“Who are you trying so hard to protect by dismissing the witchsniffers, Your Grace?” Lord Jemmarc asked, matching the king stare for stare.
“Who are you trying so hard to accuse, without legal grounds?” Darville replied. “Last I heard, witchsniffers were dismissed as unreliable . . .”
“By an
old servant with questionable talents beyond her skill with a needle and thread,” Laislac added.
“Dismissed as unreliable by Nimbulan the greatest magician of all time, and the first to make covenant with dragons for their magic. King Quinnault agreed and made it law. Three hundred years ago,” Darville informed them. For a half a moment his head cleared of pain.
“But . . .”
“Read the law for yourself,” Darville spat. “Or find a priest to read it if you can’t. Witchsniffers rely upon ley line or rogue magic to fuel their powers. Only dragon magic is legal in Coronnan. Reliable magic gathered by many magicians who can add their powers, one to the other. Rogue magicians cannot gather magic and add their talents one to the other. Therefore, our magicians, with the consent and blessing of the dragons, can impose ethics, honor, discipline, and the law upon any rogue who takes their power beyond acceptable limits to manipulate any other being.”
He speared with his gaze each of the lords and servants who had followed him from the Council Chamber. “You are dismissed. I have no further business with you today. Possibly not for the rest of the week. Or the year!” If he got rid of everyone maybe he could take the time to drink his headache into oblivion.
Fred emphasized his words by placing a hand on each of his weapons, dagger and sword. He glared at each man in turn, making sure they knew that he was ready to follow his king’s orders with his weapons. He needed only the slightest provocation.
“Your Grace, you cannot dismiss the Council of Provinces. You are the first among equals, not a dictator!” Andrall protested.
“Try me,” Darville roared. “You have invaded my wife’s private apartments when she is ill. You accuse me and my family of performing illegal magic when one or all of you employs illegal witchsniffers as your tools of accusation. I should have arrested them. Be grateful I do not arrest all of you. I am done with you. All of you.”
Mikka shot him a quelling glance. Not good for a king to lose his temper. He pushed aside her silent advice. Sometimes a man, and a husband and father, had to lose his temper to make sure the rest of world knew how serious he was.
The Silent Dragon: Children of The Dragon Nimbus #1 Page 22
