Dragon Nimbus Novels: Vol II, The

by Irene Radford

  “What do you mean, she and Wiggles were separated?”

  “He wasn’t with her when Yaassima first brought Kalen to me, right after . . . right after Amaranth died and I was so distraught I couldn’t care for my own baby. Kalen must have felt much the same when she first arrived in Hanassa without Wiggles to comfort her.”

  “She had the blasted ferret tucked into her sleeves when Televarn pushed us into the dragongate near the village. Wiggles was with her the first week we were in Hanassa. I didn’t see him again, but you know how he hides.” Every muscle in Powwell’s body froze with fear. Fear that what he had perceived as the truth was false. Fear that Kalen had indeed deserted him by choice.

  Thorny gibbered at him from his tunic pocket. Powwell couldn’t understand all of the rapid ripples of emotions broadcast by the hedgehog. He did catch a sense of being told to run, Run quickly, back the way we came. Then the memory of being dragged through the dragongate.

  Silence echoed in Powwell’s ears.

  He fought the conviction that Thorny had heard Kalen tell her familiar to run away so she could avoid leaving by way of the dragongate with Powwell and Myri and Nimbulan—her family.

  “Where . . . where was the ferret when Kalen came to me? She said Wiggles wasn’t in Hanassa.” Myri, too, seemed afraid to move lest she discover an ugly truth.

  “I don’t know.” Powwell shook his head in denial of the entire issue. But Kalen’s duplicity wouldn’t go away.

  “When I first discovered evidence of Televarn’s Water spell, I saw tiny pawprints beside the trickle of water,” Nimbulan said. His left hand came up, palm out. The habitual gesture told Powwell that he sought information. “A moment before the trap crashed over me, I saw a small animal dash past me. At the time I thought it one of the rat-catching ferrets Quinnault keeps in the palace who was running from the wall of Water. Later, the guards searching for Televarn also reported a ferret in the clearing with the Rover. They disappeared together.”

  “Kalen and Televarn? I won’t believe it.” Powwell cringed inside, wanting to run far and fast—run from the idea of Kalen corrupted by the slimy Rover.

  “I caught Kalen in a terrible lie at the moment Wiggles returned to her. She told me Nimbulan had drowned.” Myri clutched at her husband’s hand as if to reassure herself that he lived indeed.

  “Kalen hated Televarn. She hated Hanassa and . . . and . . .” Powwell choked on the next thought. “And yet she thrived there. I watched her daily as she blossomed. I wanted to believe it was womanhood coming upon her and her love for me.”

  “The brat thrived on power, not love,” Scarface added, spitting into the dirt. “I saw her often enough in the city. The first week you arrived, she was always with Televarn. Even after the Rover chieftain left the city on his assassination commission, she never went out to the fields with the work parties, but she carried messages for the Rover clan.”

  “What do you know about it? You never met her!” Powwell wrenched free of the magician’s now gentle grasp. Anger exploded in his mind. He needed to slam his fist into something. Scarface’s ugly visage was the nearest satisfactory target.

  Scarface caught his wrist easily, restraining his blow.

  “Televarn used the girl as a messenger. She came to me and my men several times. I owed Televarn—some favors, favors that I resented and he never let me forget. I watched the girl manipulate people with words and with magic. She inflated men’s self-esteem with promises of sex with herself or the Rover women. She hinted at influence with Televarn and Yaassima’s growing dependence upon the Rovers. She was using Televarn’s plans to depose Yaassima to elevate herself to a position of power in the new regime.”

  “I loved her,” Powwell said. Defeat weighed heavily in him. He knew Scarface spoke the truth. He had watched Kalen’s manipulations. She had told him that she wanted to be in a position so that no one could use her for their own gain. Her parents had sold her talent for food and shelter. Ackerly, Nimbulan’s former assistant, had tried to sell her talent for gold that he kept himself. She had pleaded with him to forget his plans to help Myri. She was jealous of the baby, thought Myri had deserted and betrayed her by having another child, as she thought her mother had betrayed her for staying in Coronnan City with Kalen’s brothers and sisters.

  “She wanted to be in control of herself and everyone around her.” Powwell didn’t realize he’d spoken until her heard his own words. “I thought it merely a childish dream. No one has that kind of power over people.”

  “Yaassima did,” Yaala said in her deep voice, so husky he could never tell if she verged on tears or not.

  “Kalen and Televarn would make quite a pair.” Nimbulan shook his head sadly. “With his ambition and her plots, they could have ruled all of Kardia Hodos in time.”

  “If either of them lives,” Powwell added. He didn’t think Kalen was dead. But where could she be and still live? Their bonds had been close before they had been kidnapped with Myri. After that she had changed, and the closeness, the whispered confidences in the slave pen, the shared tears, holding each other to keep out the cold and the terror, were all a sham. On her part. “I love her. I would have taken care of her. I wanted to marry her as soon as she was old enough.”

  “You do realize, Powwell, that Kalen was your half-sister? The physical resemblance between you is too strong to be coincidence,” Nimbulan said.

  “She wasn’t!” Powwell screamed. “She couldn’t be. I won’t believe it.”

  “I doubt that Stuuvaart sired her,” Nimbulan continued. “He has no trace of magic in him, neither does Guillia or your mother. I believe a magician seduced both women and then abandoned them. Not an uncommon occurrence in the war years.”

  Powwell took a deep breath and released it. Stuuvart, the self-serving steward at the School for Magicians, was the last man he wanted to acknowledge as his long-lost father. But who? He didn’t want to think about it. Was afraid to believe it.

  “The physical resemblance between you and Kalen is too remarkable,” Myri reinforced her husband’s statement. “Your speech patterns and gestures are also too similar. It is right that you should love each other and be friends, but you can never be intimate with her, never make her your wife.”

  “You have no proof that Stuuvart isn’t her father.”

  “When we get back to the School, I will find a way to prove it to you, Powwell,” Nimbulan said, resuming his trek eastward, toward Coronnan. “Now would be a good time for the dragons to return.”

  “That won’t stop me from finding a way to go to Kalen.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think your sister will appreciate your efforts, any more than my brother will welcome my return to Coronnan,” Myri mumbled.

  Chapter 33

  Shayla! Myri called into the vastness of open sky.

  Her mind and her heart remained empty of the dragon’s presence. She huddled closer to Nimbulan and the small fire they allowed themselves while she nursed her baby and they all ate of the dry journey rations. The absence of the dragons left a chill deeper in her heart than the winter wind that whipped through the pass.

  “I can’t hear Shayla at all!” Myri tried again to summon a dragon—any dragon. “This is as bad as when I was in Hanassa. I can’t hear the dragons.” All her life she had listened to the voices in the back of her head, guiding her through life when no one else cared for or trusted her.

  She understood they would not go near Hanassa in any way, even to reassure one of their own trapped within the boundaries of the volcanic crater. Their vows of separation from the stronghold of the renegade dragon, Hanassa, who had taken human form, had lasted for centuries. Dragon memory was long.

  She wondered briefly if Old Lyman who had been, in his previous existence, the last purple-tipped dragon before Amaranth and herself, had known Hanassa.

  This emptiness was something more than the dragon’s avoidance of Hanassa. The dragons roamed free over this land. Shayla had been calmly munching on a stunted T
ambootie tree when Myri and the others emerged through the dragongate. Almost as if she expected Myri to emerge there and wanted to make sure her daughter was safe.

  Now Shayla shunned her call for help and reassurance.

  “I can’t raise Lyman at the school,” Nimbulan said, staring into the fire. He held his glass, minus the gold frame, before his eyes, magnifying the flames and his spell. “We have to get news of the invasion to Quinnault before he marries the temptress. I wonder where she really hails from and who planted her in Coronnan. I have a lot of questions about the princess who appeared as soon as I had left the capital.”

  Myri looked closely at his bland expression. He had locked away his emotions from her gentle probes since Powwell’s terrible accusation.

  “Talk to me, Nimbulan,” she pleaded.

  “I just spoke to you about the summons spell.” He continued to peer into the fire through his glass.

  “You said words, but you haven’t talked, haven’t reacted to the terrible hurt Powwell dealt you with his words.”

  “He didn’t hurt me. He spoke the truth. I hurt myself with my regret and my guilt.”

  “You won’t heal, Lan, until you talk to me.”

  “There is nothing to talk about. I valued my apprentices above you and Kalen. ’Tis my shortcoming. I must learn to live with it.”

  A chill ran through Myri. “Do you mean to abandon me again? Me and Amaranth, your daughter?”

  “I don’t know what I will do after I get word to King Quinnault about the invasion. I don’t know if I’m capable of loving anyone enough to . . .” Without another word, he traded his glass for a journal and began writing with a black stick he kept tucked inside the book.

  Myri looked at the intricate marks on the page, wondering what he recorded. She’d never learned to read and hoped Nimbulan would remain with her long enough to teach her.

  “Why do you ask where the princess comes from, Lan?” Myri asked. “I’ve heard of Terrania in old legends.”

  “Do you remember the landscape of the desert with red sand we saw through the dragongate?”

  Myri nodded.

  “That is Terrania,” he replied grimly. “No one has lived there for many thousands of years. Quinnault’s bride is a fake.” He returned to his journal.

  Scarface watched from the edge of the rock overhang that sheltered them in a mountain pass from any mercenaries patrolling in the area. The ones they’d left behind should have recovered by now. They had no way of knowing if the witchsniffers would pursue revenge for the massive headaches the paralysis spell would leave with them and the loss of their cloaks and food, or if they would retreat to nurse their injured emotions and minds.

  “Could Televarn have planted the princess?” Yaala offered. “He thrives on convoluted plans. He sold his women to the brothels for politics as well as money. Perhaps he plotted with this woman for the purpose of inciting a war. If he can create enough chaos, then he can step in and take over for lack of leadership.”

  “That sounds like Televarn,” Myri agreed. During the moon she had lived with the Rover more than a year ago, he had proved false in his protestations of love and loyalty.

  “Televarn doesn’t need to be sneaky. He just needs to read your mind once, and he’ll never leave you alone,” Maia said bitterly. “He uses people like candle stubs. When they are used up, he throws them away.”

  “I left him before he could discard me. So he has to pursue me. No one else may possess me until he decides he is finished with me.” Myri added.

  She checked the now sated and sleeping Amaranth rather than dwell on the Rover chieftain. Satisfied that the baby was safe from the blazing emotions that had run rampant a few hours ago, she shifted her attention to Powwell. The boy sat, sullen and staring into the distance. He systematically stripped a long stem of grass, then plucked another, stripped it, plucked another. Myri wondered if he knew what occupied his hands.

  “Maybe I can summon Kalen,” he said quietly. “She was always receptive to communication spells, though she hated sending them.” His words barely reached across the fire to Myri.

  “Even if she answered, Powwell, we can’t help her yet. We need to get to the capital, fast,” Nimbulan said. He stood abruptly and scanned the skies. “But I promise you, as soon as I have arranged for the safety of my king and the kingdom, I will return to Hanassa for Rollett and Kalen. Maybe if we join our magic, Powwell, we can catch someone’s attention in the capital.”

  Powwell stood up, lethargic, his attention still on the distant hilltop and the dragongate.

  “I would be interested in this new magic,” Scarface said.

  “Before I can even test you to see if you can gather dragon magic, I must have your life’s oath of loyalty to the Commune, Aaddler.”

  Myri raised her eyebrows at Nimbulan’s use of the man’s real name. Involving a real name among magicians seemed a gesture of intimacy or intense seriousness.

  “I understand.” Scarface nodded his acceptance. “I must think on this. A lifelong commitment like that cannot be taken lightly.”

  “I respect that more than a hasty agreement that might be regretted later. I find the fellowship and ideals of the Commune easier to live with than the constantly changing rules and loyalties of solitary magicians and rogue mercenaries,” Nimbulan replied. He turned his back on the stranger as he took Powwell’s hand in his own.

  By some unspoken agreement, Scarface also turned his back on the two communal magicians, continuing his watch of the low mountain pass—a narrow but easy passage from SeLenicca into Coronnan.

  Myri observed, through the magic cord that bound them together, Nimbulan’s preparations for the next attempt at a summons. Desperately she hoped that this time she would comprehend the secret of dragon magic. If she could figure out how to gather and use the special energy. Then, and only then, could she return to Coronnan legally with her husband, never be separated from him again.

  Once again the elusive process passed by her so quickly she missed the essential ingredient. Once again she was shut out of the special bond of communal magic.

  She sank back onto the ground beside Amaranth and Yaala. The need to open communication with someone prompted her to speak to the young woman. “Why did Yaassima exile and disown you? You seem like a woman who could lead.”

  “I don’t look like a dragon.” Yaala shrugged and shifted uncomfortably. She pulled her back straighter, away from the hard rock surface they had been leaning against. Her light blond hair had more color than Myri’s or Yaassima’s. Broken nails and encrusted dirt on her fingers couldn’t hide their slender length. But they weren’t extraordinarily long like Myri’s or Yaassima’s. Or baby Amaranth’s.

  “Do you have the spinal bumps?” Myri asked.

  “Very prominently.” Yaala wiggled her back again, trying to find a comfortable position.

  “Mine aren’t very obvious,” Myri volunteered. “I borrowed a human body for my dragon personality. Myrilandel was blonde and long boned already. My fingers and toes grew to accommodate Amethyst’s instincts to grasp and climb. I guess Amethyst also bleached the color from my hair and skin. But I couldn’t grow the extra eyelid that protects dragons from dust and the super brightness of the sun in the upper atmosphere.”

  Yaala stared at the flames, much as Nimbulan did to work the summons. A light film dropped over her eye.

  “Which person are you, Myrilandel or Amethyst?” Yaala shifted slightly, putting a few more finger lengths between herself and Myri.

  “Both and neither. Myrilandel was only two when her human body was on the verge of dying. Amethyst gave her the vitality to use her natural healing ability to correct the weak blood vessels in her brain. The two personalities were so strong that they compromised on forgetfulness, neither of them dominant, until I met the dragons and found a husband who loved me enough to let me explore my past without prejudice. I like to think I developed a personality all my own.” Unique, worth preserving. Yaassima had forced
her to fight for what she held important in life rather than running away. Did she have the strength and will to continue the fight for Nimbulan’s love?

  Yes. She had to. Her family wasn’t complete without him. She wasn’t complete without him.

  “Yaassima can’t allow anyone that kind of freedom and individuality.” Yaala pushed the words out through clenched teeth. “She has to control every thought, every gesture, every moment of their lives. I fought her. My father encouraged me. That’s probably the real reason she executed him and exiled me to the pit.”

  “And yet she is very lonely,” Myri whispered. “She needed to love you. Since you didn’t meet her expectations, she transferred her need to Amaranth and me. If only she had recognized that the strength you found to fight her was the strength you need to rule Hanassa, you . . .”

  “But she did recognize it. She hated it and saw me as a rival rather than a partner.” Yaala stood up, ending the conversation. “I think the summons is working.”

  Myri felt Nimbulan’s growing excitement through her talent. The silver cord vibrated in tune with the magic pulsing through the glass.

  “Lyman, you have to warn the king,” Nimbulan said into the glass. He looked tired and hungry from his efforts to contact his friend at the school.

  “Not now, Nimbulan. We’re all very busy.” Lyman’s voice was so strong they all heard the message. “Shayla says you are safe. That is enough for now.”

  The communication ended abruptly, leaving them alone on the vulnerable mountain pass.

  Chapter 34

  “Get a healer!” Quinnault bellowed. He lay Katie flat against the wooden platform of the dais and began breathing into her mouth.

  (She will be difficult to live with, Quinnault. Are you sure you wish to mate with her for all time?) Amusement tinged Shayla’s voice.

  “Be quiet, I’m trying to save her life, Shayla.”

  (She lives. Your efforts are redundant.) Again that irritating chuckle invaded his mind.