Dragon Nimbus Novels: Vol II, The

by Irene Radford

  All day and most of the night the battle had raged. Keegan’s spell was a desperate attempt to tip the balance.

  Nimbulan ran the words of the spell past his memory. Keegan had said them correctly. The spell would begin as planned. Keegan sought to encase Nimbulan and his army in a stasis field, unable to move or protect themselves. Lord Hanic’s smaller army could then slaughter Lord Kammeryl’s troops at leisure. If the spell worked.

  But the light of the sun was so much stronger than the stars. Keegan’s magic would distort and destroy all of them. “No, Keegan. No,” Nimbulan moaned.

  Perverted by the fading moon and stars, the stasis field would freeze all life within ten leagues, including the grass, air, and river. Nimbulan’s belly chilled at a vision of winds from all of Kardia Hodos rushing to fill the vacuum created by the spell. Tornadoes, dry hurricanes, all manner of catastrophic storms would wreak havoc across half the planet.

  Keegan was too young and too arrogant about his talent to realize the dangers of his actions. He wanted only to win this battle.

  “I can’t let you do it, Keegan,” Nimbulan mumbled as he rammed his staff into the Kardia to steady his own spell. He raised his left hand, palm outward, fingers slightly curved to weave the energy of the Kardia. Trickles of magic power meandered up the twisted grain of wood into his palm. Not enough. The ley lines that fed his magic were empty. He needed fuel for his inborn magic talent.

  Nimbulan snapped his fingers impatiently. A fat green leaf with pink veins appeared in his hands. A leaf of the Tambootie, the tree of magic. He licked the essential oils from the veins and spine as his mind formed words and images of a great wall surrounding Keegan.

  Fire burst upon Nimbulan’s tongue. He chewed the leaf eagerly. Colors sang through his blood and into his eyes. Ugly sounds of battle faded, and the Tambootie took hold of his talent. His raised palm tingled, ready to weave his magic into a protective spell.

  Keegan completed the last hand motions and singsong words. The chant lingered in the air just below hearing level.

  Power began to vibrate within Nimbulan. Time slowed.

  Keegan wound a spell into a tight wad and drew back his arm to hurl his magic outward with all the might of his youthful body.

  Nimbulan’s invisible wall rose out of the depths of the Kardia.

  Keegan’s spell crashed into it. Power erupted. The shield buckled. Sparkling shadows flitted along the wall.

  Thunder rolled. Lightning flashed. Sparks flew in all directions. A crack spiderwebbed around the wall of magic from the point of impact with Keegan’s spell. Natural green fire, unholy red, magical blue, and blinding yellow followed the crack lines and sprayed backward into Keegan’s eyes. A momentary outline of a winged form spewing fire appeared on the damaged shield, then vanished, taking the fire with it.

  “A dragon! We’ve been cursed by a dragon!” men from both armies cried at the fleeting shadow as they threw down their arms and fled.

  “Yieee!” Keegan screamed. His own spell backlashed and knocked him flat, drenching him with magic gone awry.

  The battle stopped. Both armies froze in awe and fear.

  Nimbulan covered his ears. His apprentice’s screams reverberated deep in his skull.

  The screams echoed a distant time when he’d heard another apprentice scream in pain and desperation.

  He’d been thirteen at the time, a new journeyman. Most boys didn’t pass Druulin’s arduous magical tasks to become journeymen until they were much older and better trained. Ackerly, his best friend and fellow apprentice, had recently failed Druulin’s tests for the third time.

  And been beaten for it.

  Druulin’s rages and beatings formed an expected part of the boy’s life. The hot-tempered and often irrational Master Magician claimed he taught his apprentices defensive mechanisms by flailing them with various magic tortures.

  The day Ackerly failed his journeyman tests for the final time, Druulin took a mundane whip to the boy’s back.

  Seven apprentices and journeymen stared in horror at the viciousness of Druulin’s attack. Only Nimbulan found the courage to wrap Ackerly in defensive armor with one spell and freeze Druulin’s right hand mid-stroke with another.

  “A few days in the dungeon without food or light will cure you both of insolence!” Druulin said between gritted teeth. His eyes narrowed in speculation, noting the precise moment Nimbulan began to tire. He broke the spell and quickly cast another to compel both Nimbulan and Ackerly into obedience.

  He prodded the boys with the whip handle until they marched down the spiraling stairs. Down they marched, from Druulin’s private study and bedchamber on the top floor, past the common workroom and dormitory, down another flight to the ground floor past the kitchens with the enticing smell of supper cooking.

  Nimbulan’s mouth watered at the thought of fresh bread and meat. The two spells, thrown without preparation, had drained him. He needed food and rest to replenish his magic. His knees weakened as they marched down yet another flight of stairs into the storage cellars.

  Druulin conjured a small ball of witchlight to keep himself from stumbling on the damp stone steps. The light didn’t extend to help Nimbulan and Ackerly.

  Nimbulan tried to step carefully and avoid slipping. A fall now could result in nasty broken bones at the bottom of the steep flight.

  Ackerly wobbled and clung to the wall for support. His face was gray with pain and his back bled through his torn tunic. A night in the dirty dampness of the dungeons would probably infect the wounds.

  Nimbulan ached for his friend. He didn’t dare give in to the tears that clogged his throat and made his eyes burn.

  At last, they staggered off the last step into total blackness—as black as the void except for Druulin’s tiny wisp of witchlight. The old magician shoved the boys forward into a tiny room, then slammed a heavy door closed before releasing the compulsion spell. “Think about your crimes against me, you ambitious little upstarts. When you are hungry enough and sick enough to apologize, I’ll think about letting you have some light and food.”

  The little glow of witchlight vanished. An ominous series of clicks signaled a locking spell on the door. Druulin’s retreating footsteps faded quickly.

  Ackerly collapsed upon a heap of rags in one corner, moaning and crying. Nimbulan felt his friend’s forehead. No fever yet. “We’ve got to get out of here, Acker.”

  “Not yet. Not until Druulin settles down for the night with his liquor.” Even in pain and defeat, Ackerly thought ahead better than Nimbulan.

  “What then? I don’t think I have enough strength left to break his locking spell.” Nimbulan snapped his fingers and produced a little witchlight. He looked carefully at the lock but couldn’t figure out the spell. Quickly he doused the light as his stomach turned over. He was so hungry he was queasy.

  “Rest a little, Lan. Then you can open the door with magic, and we’ll sneak out and steal some food. We’ll come back and relock the door. Druulin will never know the difference.” Ackerly shifted uncomfortably.

  “We’ll also steal some medicine. We can’t let those wounds fester.” Nimbulan wiped his running nose and eyes on his sleeve. The dungeon was colder and wetter than he remembered from the last time he’d been punished. He wished he knew some healing spells. Ackerly really needed help.

  He’d never known Druulin to lose control of his temper so badly before.

  “Maybe we could run away together when we get out?” Nimbulan asked. Hope of escape from Druulin’s tyranny filled him with a quivering warmth.

  “Where would we go? No other magician will take us on since our parents gave us to Druulin. Even masters of other trades won’t take us on until Druulin releases us. And he won’t let you go ever, Lan. You’re too good a magician. He needs you to correct his mistakes,” Ackerly replied between sobs.

  “Then I’ll have to take care of you. You could settle nearby—but not so close Druulin would find you,” Nimbulan offered. The hope in his belly t
urned into a cold fearful lump. Neither of them would ever get away from Druulin. The old man intimidated all the mundanes for miles around. They’d betray Ackerly’s presence.

  “What will I do? Magic is the only thing I know and that not very well,” Ackerly asked.

  “You know lots more, Acker,” Nimbulan soothed his friend. “You think ahead and plan much better than any of us.”

  “But I can’t do the great magic. That’s what makes a Battlemage,” Ackerly protested. “That’s why Druulin got so mad when I failed the tests. He needs stronger apprentices to make up for his failings. He’s getting too old to do it on his own.”

  “Apprentices and journeymen helping the Master Magician is what makes a Battlemage. Not one man alone,” Nimbulan mused. “When I’m a full Battlemage, I’ll make you my chief assistant, Acker. We’ll be a team. Just like always. Remember the time Boojlin and Caasser ganged up on us and pelted us with rotten eggs all the way from the kitchen to the cellar? You were the one who thought up the idea of the bucket of water atop the door. When they opened the door, the bucket fell right on top of them. They both nearly drowned . . .” The two boys smothered their giggles at the memory of the two older bullies spluttering and choking as repeated cascades of ice cold water caught them unaware.

  Druulin had discovered the mess and made all four of them clean it up, and do without breakfast the next morning for wasting supplies and magic.

  “We’d never have escaped Boojlin and Caasser if you hadn’t thought of the water bucket,” Nimbulan whispered through his giggles.

  “But you were the one who had the magic to hold the water up there without a bucket, and keep it coming,” Ackerly reminded him.

  “See, that’s what I mean. We’re a team. We’ll always be a team. Now help me figure out this locking spell.”

  Thirty-six years later, Ackerly was still Nimbulan’s chief assistant, and they never beat their apprentices or made them go hungry. So why had Keegan run away? Why had the boy felt he had to prove himself a better Battlemage than Nimbulan before he was fully trained?

  Guilt piled on top of Nimbulan’s grief.

  “Why, boy? Why’d you have to push me to kill you?” Nimbulan shuddered in the cold mist that drifted over the now silent battlefield. The first rays of dawn almost pierced the gloom of fading witchlight. Clumps of sparkling moisture shimmered and wavered in the golden light, like the ghosts of the dead men who littered this unlucky wheat field. Would the victims of this battle haunt the site for generations to come?

  Nearly twenty years ago, two other armies had fought on this same field. Indiscriminate and uncontrolled magic had killed them all. Troops, lords, magicians, and camp followers, all reduced to ashes in a moment of screaming agony. The stump he stood upon now, an ancient elm tree so large three men holding hands couldn’t span its girth, had been toppled and blasted to ash by that same magic. A stroke of luck had sent Nimbulan and Ackerly elsewhere that same day. But not today.

  Druulin, Boojlin, and Caasser had been among the thousands who had died that day, eighteen years ago.

  Today Nimbulan had been forced to murder his most promising apprentice with magic in order to save the few men who still lived at the end of this most recent battle.

  Thousands more dead would haunt this field now.

  Nothing stirred within Nimbulan’s narrow field of vision. No one cried for help or solace. A peculiar mound of ashes on the rise opposite him silently taunted him with warped magic.

  Ashes that had once been Keegan.

  “I called you ‘son.’ ” His words dissipated with the mist as a chill wind blew up from the river, half a league away.

  The only response was a twisting groan of eternal pain that lay trapped in the ashes.

  “I’ll never have a son of my body. You could have filled that aching hole in my life, Keegan.”

  He’d have to liberate the ghost. A father’s duty. No one else was left. Trapped, unable to pass on to the void between the planes of existence, the boy’s spirit begged him for release.

  Nimbulan leaned heavily upon his staff, feeling twice his forty-nine years, as exhaustion drowned him.

  Many men had died on both sides of the fray. Many more suffered wounds so severe they shouldn’t live. For the first time in almost three decades as a Battlemage, Nimbulan wondered if the victory won by Warlord Kammeryl d’Astrismos was worth the cost.

  Keegan was dead. “You should have been my successor, boy. Not my enemy. What lured you to hire on as a Battlemage before your training was complete?”

  Placing one foot wearily in front of the other, Nimbulan trudged across the field toward the opposite rise. He had to avert his eyes from the carnage around him. Recognition of a corpse or wounded friend might deter him from his mission. Many of the soldiers had died an honorable death at the hands of an enemy. Many more had died from the volleys of magic lobbed back and forth across the battlefield by the magicians. He was as guilty as Keegan for their deaths. The lords may have called the men to battle, but the magicians working behind them determined who won and who lost; who lived and who died.

  Nimbulan stumbled and nearly fell over a dead man. Blood and mud obscured a uniform or identifying crest.

  “Keegan and I did this to you.” He shifted the outflung arms of the corpse into a more natural position. “Go in peace. Find your next existence and happiness,” he murmured the death prayer, too numb to do more.

  He supported Lord Kammeryl d’Astrismos, the one lord who might unify Coronnan. Time and again the rival lords proved that peace could only be achieved at the tremendous cost of war. He tried wrapping a cloak of justification around his emotions and failed miserably.

  He trudged up the hillock to where Keegan had stood. “The Stargods would never forgive me if I made you suffer the hell of your own spell backlashed against you, son,” Nimbulan sighed as he planted his tall staff beside the mound of ashes. “I would never forgive myself.”

  Tongues of unholy red flame licked outward from the still smoldering ashes. Sparks tried to reignite a life from the residue. Each time the essence of Keegan found an anchor, his final spell doused it.

  Echoes of torment lingered in the air.

  Nimbulan stretched out his hand, palm toward the pile of ashes, fingers curved as if capturing the essence of Keegan as he tried escaping his unholy prison.

  He had no strength to summon magic from the depths of Kardia Hodos to work this one last spell. Nimbulan’s bond with the four elements, Kardia, Air, Fire, and Water which together with the cardinal directions formed the gaia, had shriveled with the death and destruction wrought this day and night.

  The spirit in the ashes writhed again. An irritating burn crawled all over Nimbulan’s sensitized nerves. He resisted the urge to douse them both with water.

  “ ’Twouldn’t soothe either of us.”

  “Come, Lan, sup and rest before you discharge this final duty.” A new voice intruded upon the magician’s weary thoughts. “Perhaps if I grind a few Tambootie leaves into your meal, you will feel better.”

  “I’ve used enough of the weed today, Ackerly,” Nimbulan replied to his assistant. “I need food and rest, not drugs. When this spell is finished, I’ll be able to rest.”

  “At least wait a while before you weave this spell. The boy’s spirit deserves to linger in torment for a time. Perhaps he will be less impatient for power in his next existence if he suffers in a hell of his own making.”

  “ ’Tis a hell of my making! I’ll not wish that fate on any man.” And I loved you, Keegan.

  “Had he waited ’til his powers were fully grown, you’d not have defeated him. We are both getting old,” Ackerly grumbled. “Old and losing our stamina. That ungrateful youngster wouldn’t have wasted his strength liberating your soul from a pile of ashes.” Ackerly lifted his foot to scatter the residue with a kick.

  “No!” Nimbulan pushed him aside to keep him from spreading Keegan’s soul too thin to regather and liberate.

  “I
like to think my apprentice would do me this one last service. I tried to teach him respect for others and for the power we wield.”

  “He only wanted to learn the spells; not the right way to use them,” Ackerly spat. “Go back to your pavilion, Nimbulan. Let me perform this chore. I may not be a great magician who can weave the Kardia into my spells, but I can send this ungrateful wretch where he belongs.”

  “ ’Tis my responsibility. I caused his final spell to backlash.” Nimbulan shored up his sagging willpower. Ackerly’s manner suggested an animosity toward Keegan that would stand in the way of a proper weaving. Nimbulan could have plucked Ackerly’s true intentions and the source of his grievance from his mind. He wouldn’t.

  “I’ll speed the boy on his way to his next existence. Druulin wouldn’t have bothered. You know as well as I that I must do this.”

  Chapter 2

  Nimbulan rummaged in the pockets of his formal robes for a small wand of the Tambootie tree affixed with a perfect faceted crystal.

  Sadly, he looked through the crystal into the pile of ashes and chanted.

  “Walk with me, son of my learning,

  Walk with me one final time.

  Walk with me the paths of life,

  Walk with me to the place of your yearning.”

  “Greedy wretch doesn’t deserve this.” Ackerly turned aside, grumbling under his breath.

  Nimbulan ignored his companion as his mind sought a deeper contact with the essence of his apprentice. Bright green flames and burning pain flashed from the crystal into his weary eyes.

  One deep breath, hold three counts, let go three counts. A second breath filled his lungs and released. On the third inhalation he found access to the void between the planes of existence. His spirit lifted free of his weary body and found solace in the black nothingness. A second soul stood beside him, dim and unformed.

  Coils of pulsing colors that represented the lives of all the souls Nimbulan had encountered in the nearly fifty years of his current existence sprang into view. A silver umbilical, tinged with blue, symbolized his own life. It wound away from his sight into a tangle of life forces.