The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus)

by Irene Radford

  “I need to think on this,” Maria said, letting the parchment flutter to her lap. She broke the seal without a crest on the second page and scanned it. It said much the same thing but with less damning words, affirming Lady Ariiell’s refusal to annul the handfasting. This was the one meant for the king to see.

  “I think you should burn both pages.”

  “No, Frederico. I need to hide mine until I make my decision. I may need Darville’s words and his intact seal as a weapon in the coming weeks.”

  “I know a place neither the usurper nor his guard captain would think to look.”

  “A place you can access to show to others of like thinking?”

  He pushed Maria’s boot back on her foot and laced it tightly. Then he stood straight, tucked the folded parchment into his tunic, and backed out of the room, clenching his fist against his heart in silent salute to her.

  The sound of keys rattling in the lock of his cell sent Robb’s heart racing in trepidation. Three days Lokeen had left him alone. Three days to ponder what drove the man to the extremes of torture and hideous execution. Three days to wonder if he would be next.

  “Come,” said the guard Robb had nicknamed Scurry—so like the little gray animals, with quick darting movements and furtive looks in all directions before and after each dash from here to there.

  “Where?” Robb sat up on his pallet but did not rise or proceed any closer to the door. As uncomfortable as it was, the cell was safe. A known place with known dangers. Unlike the cell two doors down the corridor.

  “His Majesty has need of you,” Scurry replied with his usual jerking of his neck as he scanned every corner and shadow inside and outside of the cell.

  “I have no need of him.” Robb shifted, as if to lie back down.

  “You will come,” Badger, Scurry’s broad partner, announced in stentorian tones that echoed up and down the corridor. If Lokeen hadn’t guessed at Robb’s reluctance before, he knew it now.

  With a big sigh of resignation he moved stiffly to his feet. As he straightened his back, he groaned, not because he hurt or had weakened much more over the last three days, but because he needed the advantage of his captor underestimating him.

  “Where are we going?” Robb asked as he pulled his old blue robe over his head. They’d taken the black and red one from him, fearing that the cloth would grant him power.

  It didn’t even grant him peace of mind.

  “His Majesty does not tell us anything more than that he has need of you,” Scurry said. He bobbed as if bowing out of respect to Robb but afraid to acknowledge it. In other words, he tried to please everyone, ever-fearful for his own safety.

  Robb shuffled out of his cell and held his breath. The stink of Krakatrice feeding had subsided, but just the thought of it gagged him yet again. He kept his breaths slow and shallow until they’d mounted the first set of stairs into the cellars. Once they’d cleared those two levels and he reached the half-submerged kitchen level he drew a long breath of the hot air, redolent of cooking meats, roasting vegetables, and fresh, flowing water.

  In the moons he’d been here, it had only rained twice. His mind and body longed for the sweet moist air of home.

  “I thought this land had recovered from its desert origins,” he said idly, not realizing he’d spoken until he heard his own words. He’d been living inside his head too long.

  “Last year or so we’re going back to the dryland ways. If ’tweren’t for the three rivers coming down off the mountains to the east and the sweet springs popping up out of nowhere, we’d be dried-out husks,” Scurry admitted.

  “A year? Um, do you know when my predecessor, the other mage, began counseling His Majesty?” Robb counted back. Samlan left the Circle of Magicians last spring. This was high summer, and Robb had been here half that lapsed time. How fast had Samlan worked to gain Lokeen’s confidence? Or had Samlan’s betrayal begun long before his final exile?

  “Himself ’as been dropping in and out unannounced for years. Didn’t come to stay ’til last equinox,” Badger said, as quietly as he could, but his voice still carried to the far ends of the cellar. “Disappeared just before the solstice.”

  That explained a lot. Samlan had been unhappy with Jaylor as Senior Magician for a long time. Jaylor dispatching Glenndon to the court had been the final act to sever the older magician’s confidence in the elected leader. Of course, Samlan had no way of knowing that Glenndon was King Darville’s son and was needed in the capital as heir. Most of the Circle thought only that the young magician had been sent as Jaylor’s spy, or possibly to counsel the king on behalf of the magicians. A situation that spawned a great deal of jealousy, neither side willing to share information.

  “Do you ride?” Lokeen asked abruptly the moment Robb and his guards moved into the ground floor reception rooms.

  “I used to ride dragons into battle against the Krakatrice all the time,” Robb replied, almost too tired to guard his tongue.

  Lokeen frowned. “Steeds. Do you ride steeds?”

  “I’ve done so, but not for a long time.” Not since his journeying days with Maigret.

  “As long as you can keep your seat. We aren’t going far today.” Lokeen marched past Robb toward the grand double doors that opened into a walled courtyard.

  Robb had to blink rapidly against the bright sunlight bouncing off the light-colored stone walls and paving stones. He hadn’t seen true daylight in so long! He had to stand with his eyes closed, drinking in the air and light, letting it bathe him in hints of freedom.

  When he opened his eyes again, he shuddered in fear. This stone-walled courtyard looked so much like another in the center of Coronnan City. The courtyard of the old University of Magicians. He’d been only a boy, a new apprentice, when he’d left that University to join Jaylor in the mountain refuge that became the new University. So when Jaylor summoned him to the city with two apprentices and three journeymen to help defend the city against Krakatrice, a rogue had been able to insert the image, the feel, and the smell of this courtyard in place of Robb’s diluted memories.

  He’d landed here. In that first moment of confusion that always beset a magician at the end of a long and tricky transport, Lokeen and his armed guards had been waiting for him. He’d shouted for his students to run and hide, get away any way they could.

  He had no way of knowing if any of them had.

  “Come, the farm awaits us,” Lokeen said on a giggle, gesturing eagerly toward the saddled steeds awaiting them. “My farm. My precious farm where they breed my pets!” The king fairly leapt upon his mount, laughing with glee.

  “He is insane,” Maria whispered, appearing beside Robb. “Power has gone to his head. The power of magic. The delusions fostered by those hideous monsters.” Then she retreated into the shadowy interior, disappearing as if she’d never been there.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Robb muttered, and warily mounted the placid mare awaiting him.

  CHAPTER 15

  LUKAN BIT INTO the silver coin the ship’s captain handed him, like he’d seen his shipmates do. The metal tasted sharp and made his teeth ache.

  His staff, lashed into its canvas cover and strung across his back, remained inert, not warning of deceit.

  “Test the other two coins,” Skeller hissed in his ear.

  Lukan did so. Then he looked at all three together on his palm. King Darville’s distinctive profile stood out from the worn and tarnished background. He had to stare a moment as the image blurred a tiny bit and became Glenndon’s. He shook his head clear of that little bit of prophecy. “But . . .”

  “Accept them and move on,” Skeller ordered. He grabbed Lukan’s elbow and yanked him away from the line of sailors waiting to collect their pay.

  “Do the merchants here accept coins from Coronnan?” Lukan asked as he and the bard negotiated the narrow gangplank reserved for the crew to depart. The passengers had a wider plank with a rope railing to guide them to the dock.

  Rejiia followed the scarr
ed man down the plank, with her loathsome maid right behind her. None of them looked his way, but his back itched as if they watched him keenly.

  “No, they only want Amazonian coins with the profile of the first Maria stamped into them.” Skeller searched the crowded and bustling area for something.

  Lukan hoped he looked for a way away from the ship’s berth and the stench of dead fish and rotting seaweed beneath the heavy brine of the salt water.

  Not to mention Rejiia and her servants counting and organizing their luggage. The man shouldered three large packs and hefted two oversize satchels. Lukan had no desire to confront either of the women again.

  With another yank on Lukan’s elbow, the pair headed inland, between two featureless stone buildings that were probably warehouses. “It’s a common trick. Pay us in dragini so we have to sign on for the return voyage to use the money, then pay us in Amazonian sand dollars when we get there so we have to sign on again.” He flashed Lukan a wicked grin.

  “But what good are the coins to us? We don’t want to go back to Coronnan. At least not yet.” Lukan diverted a small part of his attention to scan the skies for a sign of his elusive dragon friend.

  (Verdii here. I follow.)

  Lukan spared a moment to look more intently for a flip of iridescent wing or a lacework of green.

  Nothing.

  Verdii chuckled into the back of his mind, and he heard a big splash far out in the ocean, almost to the horizon.

  That wasn’t close by human standards. But for dragon wings . . .

  “Come on,” Skeller insisted. “I know a moneychanger. It will cost you half a coin, but it’s worth it not to have to argue with merchants about the purity of the silver.”

  Trust the dragons, Da had always said. Glenndon too. Lukan was a little closer to accepting advice from them both. Only a little, but in this case, he had to.

  As Lukan followed his traveling companion through the narrow alleyways of the port into the scrambled openness of the marketplace his magic began to tingle. Every time he turned, the staff banged against a stall, or a shopper, or something. He paused long enough to extract it and let it settle into his left hand. The tool felt warm and welcomed his touch, almost as if every time he held it, the wood molded to his hand. Walking with it, hearing and feeling a satisfying kerthunk every time it touched the bleached sandstone walkway, anchored him to the ground. Every step with the staff became more natural. His legs swung forward in an easy stride.

  Did the brightly clad people who flowed through the district with sun-darkened faces and white head coverings make way for him? Or was it Skeller they fell back for. Their gazes followed the bard, lingering on the harp case slung across his back. He carried the instrument as comfortably as Lukan carried his staff. No awkwardness. He knew where Telynnia was at any given moment and how to walk so that she didn’t touch anything or anyone but Skeller.

  The deeper they moved among the striped tents and awnings the more a sense of wrongness crept up Lukan’s back.

  Finally, when Skeller stopped before a solid white tent with a black pennant atop the center pole, hanging limply in the still, hot air, Lukan realized what made him so uneasy.

  No one talked. Even when they jostled each other, or sought to bargain for the same item. Not a word.

  He heard a faint susurration in the back of his head, sort of like dragons whispering nonsense words. But . . . it must be his telepathy picking up thoughts. Lots of them, all at once so that no one idea or image came through clearly.

  The normal sounds of seabirds calling, waves sloshing against the strand, and fabric flapping as people moved had masked the absence of speech.

  And the presence of the lad dressed in blacksmith leathers who crept behind them, always just out of sight but still there. His thoughts were fully masked, like a magician with complete barriers around his mind.

  Skeller gestured Lukan forward and opened his mouth to speak.

  Lukan placed a finger against his lips, then passed him his three coins.

  Skeller started to protest, then cocked his head as if listening. His eyes widened in shock. Abruptly he turned back to the moneychanger—a man in a loose robe of vertical white and black stripes—and completed the transaction quite quickly with hand gestures. The man’s hat, swaths of alternating black and white wrapped around his brown hair and trailing down his back, bobbed with every head movement as he looked rapidly between Skeller’s harp case and the coins moving from hand to hand.

  When Skeller stepped back and bowed deeply, Lukan shifted his attention back to the crowd. Hand gestures suddenly took on meaning for him. And the lad, visible only by his absence, felt significant too. Then he followed his companion away from the busy market toward low stone houses that marched inland toward a tall, fortified building built upon a slight rise; a sprawling building with a round tower that dominated the city. Instead of a wide railed platform, the tower boasted a conical roof with long narrow windows—and a lacy pattern that was repeated the full height of the building. A narrow walkway with a decorative stone parapet encircled the base of the cone.

  At last Skeller jogged across an open square filled with fountains. Tall trees with long fronds instead of branches with individual leaves swayed in the light breeze created by the moving water. Thick succulent plants arranged around pebbled paths—each path a different color of stone—led a wanderer inward toward the refreshing sparkling waterdrops playing in the air as they fell inevitably toward the pool where they mingled together. Then Skeller stopped before a building that could only be a temple, a temple in miniature. The columns supporting a broad overhang and a domed roof gave it away. It looked like every temple Lukan had ever seen, large or small, this one as small as the neighborhood worship places he’d passed in Coronnan City. When the bard sank onto the top step, within the shade of the overhang, Lukan did too.

  “What was that all about?” Lukan asked. “Are all your people mute?”

  “Not by choice,” Skeller said after a long pause.

  “Then what?”

  “Couldn’t you smell it?”

  Lukan thought back to the nearly overwhelming wave of hot air laden with exotic spices, roasting meats and vegetables, sea air, fish. Always fish. And . . . and . . .

  “Fear,” he whispered.

  “Fear,” Skeller echoed. “They are afraid to talk. I can only guess what atrocity my father has performed to cause it.”

  A woman laughed loud and long not far away. It sounded like bells chiming in the wind. “Oh, how delicious. Everyone here is afraid. Deathly afraid. My magic feeds on it and infuses my entire body,” Rejiia said from where she stood beside the rim of the fountain in the center of the square. She threw up her arms and spun in exultation, splashing her companions playfully.

  I see the bard and the magician hiding in the shadows of this obscure temple. It is famous among my kind, yet deliberately forgotten among the populace. The followers of this hidden goddess live for a bizarre philosophy that no one wants to admit.

  They believe that at some point in the far future the people of this world will become so numerous, consume so much land, that food will become scarce. Our need to breed will diminish to a rare few and the rest will embrace members of the same gender for love, companionship, life-mates, and sex, rather than succumb to the primitive instinct to procreate.

  It really is an excuse for their attraction to their own kind. Some I have encountered do not realize their true preferences until they encounter their one true love, who just happens to be of the same gender. They make whatever excuses they have to in order to survive in a disapproving society.

  No one knows where this prophecy or excuse came from, yet some say it is as old—or older—than the Stargods themselves.

  They worship the goddess Helvess.

  In the meantime, those few who keep this way of life are shunned, persecuted, and driven into exile. Some are tortured and mutilated. They know pain and fear. Some even appreciate the giving and receiving of
pain. As do I.

  I have borne a child—he lives with his father among the Rover tribes—and see no reason to have another. Children deprive me of the pleasures of this life, demand time and attention I care not to give them. So in this, I too am like the followers of Helvess. I don’t care if my lovers are male, or female, or both at the same time, so long as they give me pleasure and I can give them pain.

  That is why I seek out this small temple for my temporary refuge in a foreign land. I have heard rumors that one among these people has access to the king. I need the king in order to gain political as well as magical power in this world without dragons.

  I wonder why the bard and the magician have come here. Could their bonds of friendship extend deeper? Oh, how delicious. I can use their humiliation and guilt to expand my little coven. I know Bette appreciates lovers of both genders, though she nurses hurts from Lukan’s rejection of her attentions.

  Will Geon accept two new men into our group? He will have to, or leave us. Lukan can tap into ten times the power Geon can, with or without sex or pain as his fuel. With or without the books about magic Geon hauls around with him. He’s lowborn and has not enough magic to enter the University. How did he even learn to read? He has no right to know how to read. But he does, and the esoteric things he learns can be useful to me.

  But what is this? I hear something strange and menacing on the wind. No! It cannot be. A dragon bellows in triumph to all who will listen. It has hunted and caught something. Something menacing to people.

  This land has never known dragons. I will not have a dragon in this kingdom. I will not!

  And so I enter the temple in search of the one who will introduce me to the king. I must convince the king that the dragons must never, ever, under any circumstances, fly here in Amazonia.

  CHAPTER 16

  “WHY ARE YOU alive?” Stanil asked accusingly as Lily emerged from Sella’s hut.