The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2

by Irene Radford

  The voice had to come from a dragon. Had to. He wondered which one. Shayla, the matriarch, had the reputation of communicating more freely than the others. No. The voice was definitely masculine. Maybe Baamin, Shayla’s favored mate. He was rumored to hold the spirit of Jaylor’s predecessor as Senior Magician and Chancellor of the University. And to be a stern taskmaster, pulling the best out of recalcitrant students.

  “Please help me to prepare for your lessons,” he begged, pulling himself up until the lip met his waist. Three more steps up, and he’d be all the way into the upper room. For it was a room once more. He could barely see where the coils of colored light had been. Sunlight filtered through a dozen arrow-slit windows above the stacks of books.

  Relief washed over him. He knew this world. The realm of dragons frightened and thrilled him at the same time. He could barely wield sword and shield; how could he think about embarking on any kind of adventure other than through books and lessons?

  A distant chuckle rattled in the back of his head.

  (You will need no sword for this experience, boy. Look to your books for now.)

  “Which books?” Mikk replied eagerly.

  (Figure it out.)

  “When will I hear from you again?”

  (When you are ready. When you have grown from boy to man and back to boy again.)

  “S’murghit! What does that mean?”

  No answer. Nothing but a vacant feeling at the back of his head. Vacant enough to upset his balance again. A sensation of falling washed over him while he could still feel the press of the ladder rung against the soles of his boots.

  Using his forearms as a brace he crawled out of the ladder well onto the wide wooden planks of the floor. He sneezed out centuries of dust and collapsed onto his chest. The dust smeared his tunic heavily. Another curse almost escaped his lips at the mess the fabric absorbed. He needed to get himself upright. But his feet still dangled in the opening. He crawled forward again until his toes scraped wood. Only then did he attempt to rise to his knees, grabbing hold of the nearest stone bookcase and pulling himself upward. His head cleared. Dust motes sparkled in the streams of sunlight.

  Maybe he’d imagined those coils of light and had seen only clouds of dust.

  And maybe cats flew.

  He stumbled forward, right hand on the nearest shelf. His fingers bumped into a protruding book.

  (Figure it out.)

  Had he truly heard that? Or remembered it? Or imagined it?

  He pulled the book free of its mates—all snugged back into line. A thin book with a plain, undyed binding, frayed around the edges. If there had ever been a title and author impressed or painted on the spine or front cover it had vanished long ago.

  Almost afraid to breathe and cause the pages to crumble, he opened the fly to the title page. He saw letters but did not have enough light to decipher them. He tilted the book until one of the weak shafts of light landed on the fine lettering. Written in a clear and careful hand, common to all University students, he picked out the dark brown ink atop a light brown parchment:

  CHRONICLES OF A PIRATE

  OR

  HOW I BECAMES THE MAGICIAN OF CORONNAN

  BY

  KIMMER SSCRIBE OF THE SOUTH

  The chuckle filled the vacancy between his ears.

  “Do I have permission to take this back to my room and read in better light so that I might understand the lesson?” he called into the air.

  Silence.

  Skeller slung his harp case around from his back, thinking the caravan was lagging and in need of a tune. The second he loosened the flap from its buckles he knew something was different. In his view of life, different could mean very wrong and out of place or new and exciting and therefore wonderful. Like watching the girl with the red-gold braid as she gently maneuvered and manipulated the lady in her charge. Her eyes danced as she smiled. Surely this young woman enjoyed life and found merriment in all that she graced with her gentle touch.

  A new tune bounced from his mind to his fingertips. It began with her smile as she peeked from between the caravan’s draperies and laughed at the antics of a baby goat trying to keep up with its mother and snatch a quick drink from her udder.

  He reached into the carrysack for Telynnia with eager fingers. Instead of satiny wood and crisp strings he brushed a crackling fold of parchment. Good parchment, heavy enough to scrape clean and use to write music on later.

  Where did it come from? He’d brought no such obvious signs of wealth with him.

  Carefully he pulled it free of the harp, holding it by his fingernails. The sea-green wax seal made him pause.

  “Got yersel’ a dispatch,” Garg, the head drover said gleefully. “Them’s rare and expensive. Only magicians can send those things so they always find who they’re addressed to and only them.” He came up beside Skeller, peering avidly at the document.

  Sure enough, Skeller’s long, pompous, legal name appeared across the front in his father’s florid hand. Had he truly used royal purple ink? Showoff, he thought contemptuously.

  “Kin you read it?” Garg asked him skeptically.

  “Yes,” Skeller replied. The man’s awed expression told him not to add, “Can’t you?”

  “Must be University trained. Sure, no one but a magician could turn a simple tune into magic that Lazy Bones would follow. Only magicians got business sending and receiving dispatches.” He jerked his head toward the adoring sledge steed that even now tugged his load a little faster so he could drape his head over Skeller’s shoulder.

  Skeller kept silent, neither admitting nor denying his education. But the old man had taught him something. A dispatch sent by a magician. His father had a magician as chief counselor and spymaster, a man who’d appeared on and off over the last several years and schemed his way into the king’s good graces with too much ease to be anything but magical manipulation.

  “Well, ain’t you goin’ t’read it?”

  Skeller glanced around. Only Garg and the big steed seemed to be watching him. The contents he could keep to himself if he needed to. He slid his fingernail beneath the seal, as he’d been taught, to pry the wax loose without damaging the parchment and keep the seal intact at the same time. Never knew when you’d need proof of the sender.

  “My dear son,” Father began the missive. Skeller had never been dear to the man, and rarely acknowledged as a son. Father usually ignored him completely rather than admit he’d sired a male with no interest in politics or political power.

  “Wonder what the old man wants this time.” Skeller scowled at the written words. “Great Mother, he wants me to marry my cousin Bettina!” he nearly shouted.

  “That a good thing?” Garg asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Ugly as sin so she can’t attract anyone but a cousin in an arranged marriage.” Garg chuckled knowingly.

  “She’s pretty enough.” His gaze strayed toward the litter with the girl he’d been watching.

  “But . . . ?” Garg pressed.

  “I’d have to go home and I have no interest in going home,” Skeller finished. He didn’t mention that Bettina had a fascination with watching huntsmen and butchers prepare meat for cooking. He wondered if her fascination would tip over to the need to kill the animal herself or possibly another human. Her father and mother, who ruled the neighboring city-state of Venez, executed criminals. Publicly. Maybe that was where her bloodthirsty interest had come from.

  Violence colored Bettina’s attitude daily.

  Skeller’s father had many faults, but at least as long as his wife lived, he’d sent people into exile, and never executed one.

  But before Skeller fled the continent on his current mission, he’d watched Lokeen order the private execution of a man and his wife who’d publicly questioned a man’s right to rule without a wife to grant him authority.

  Violence in the streets and marketplaces became more common each year; people settling their differences with fists and cudgels. Women dis
puting a husband’s wandering eye with heavy iron pans swung with malicious accuracy. He’d needed to escape this descent into a primitive lack of civilization.

  Running away hadn’t cured the situation. If anything, it got worse. In the back of his mind he recognized his duty to return to Amazonia and do something.

  He wasn’t ready.

  “If’n you returned home, you’d get a pretty wife and you wouldn’t have to sleep out in the open under the stars with old Lazy Bones as your only friend,” Garg reminded him.

  One glance at the man’s swollen knuckles and stiff gait told him Garg was nearly ready to retire. He didn’t have many more long journeys in him.

  “I like sleeping under the stars and listening to the music of the world as I drift off to sleep,” Skeller said. “I’m not ready to settle with one woman, in one place yet.” But if the girl with the red-gold braid showed any interest in him, he might reconsider.

  But if he pursued the girl, he failed in his duty as his mother’s son.

  “My lady, do you truly want that rosehip candy?” Lillian asked Graciella, somewhat shocked that of all the foods available to her, even sweets, she chose the one that would make her intermittent bleeding worse.

  Graciella turned her vague gaze from the decorative box of treats up to her companion. “I . . . I have craved them for weeks now. I always feel better after a cup of rosehip tea, or rosehips shredded on my greens, or rosehip jam on my bread, but especially rosehips dipped in honey.” She popped the confection into her mouth and smiled with eyes closed in near bliss.

  “My lady,” Lillian tried again. “Do you know what rosehips do to your body?” She tried narrowing her eyes and focusing her gaze above Graciella’s left ear. Nothing. She caught no trace of the woman’s life energy or colors surrounding her head. If only Val were here to loan her a little talent, a little skill, a little something to help her figure out what was going on in Graciella’s head.

  “Does it matter?” the lady asked, eyes suddenly clearing and her tone sharpening.

  Lily’s attention snapped back to her charge. “Yes, it does matter. You carry a new life within you. You have a responsibility to keep yourself healthy for the baby’s sake. I have the responsibility to help keep you healthy.” Lily reached for the pretty wooden box. A lovely golden grain swirled through the slightly darker oak. Pink and yellow rosettes of satin ribbon and costly lace had been glued to each corner of the lid. The latch gleamed in gold flourishes that spread up and down, almost the full depth of box and lid together. A costly container for a potentially deadly gift.

  But did the giver know that the rosehips, which could help cure many ailments, thinned the blood as well, thinned it until it stopped clotting and leeched strength?

  “My husband gave me these as a parting gift. He knows how I crave them,” Graciella said flatly and turned her face away. “A craving is a woman’s body telling her she needs something in that food to help the baby grow. My husband wants what is best for our—my child.”

  Lillian stilled, thinking furiously. Had Lord Jemmarc given her the treats because she craved them and he truly cared for her, or did he promote the craving knowing that if she ate enough of them his wife could bleed to death, especially if she miscarried.

  Then there was Lady Graciella. She looked so vague and lost, like she truly didn’t care if she lived or died. Or was she trying to force a miscarriage?

  Oh, Val, I need you. Less than an hour away from you and I’m already lost.

  Look and listen. It’s what we do best. That is why Da sent us on these separate journeys. Look and listen, Valeria returned. Not so very far away yet.

  I’ll have a scrying bowl and candle set up awaiting your summons tonight. I can receive even if I can’t send. Lillian touched the tiny shard of glass in her belt pouch, a true symbol of their father’s trust in them as journeywomen. Only magicians carried precious glass.

  Lillian breathed deeply and focused on the tiny lines around Graciella’s mouth and eyes. Only a year or so older than herself, she was far too young to look so burdened. Yes, burdened, not vague and uncaring. She carried secrets behind that mask of bored listlessness.

  “I hear there is a spectacular variety of cabbage rose that thrives in the brisk sea air of Castle Saria,” Lillian offered. “I love roses. We don’t cultivate them at home in the mountains. They require too much land and effort that is better applied to kitchen gardens. If you crave something sweet, I can make you a yampion pie. It’s the best dish for restoring energy after a hard day of work.” Lillian knew she prattled, a lot like Old Maisie had. She covered probing questions in an avalanche of words.

  “Not meat,” Graciella spat. She shuddered in revulsion, much as Lillian and her mother did. “But yampions?” Graciella’s eyes brightened. “We used to have that at home. Jemmarc never allows it to be served in his manor, or the castle. Peasant food, he calls it.”

  “After near three months in the palace and the old University, I think plain country food is better tasting, and better for you, than all the fluffy and fancy, but inedible, decorations the nobles eat,” Lillian said, looking at Graciella sideways. She caught just a glimmer of energy and interest spiking from the lady’s mind. Not a true reading of her aura, but–something.

  “I’ve heard that Castle Saria has little in the way of gardens. Something about the brisk sea air being too windy, too cold, and too salty.” Graciella turned her head to stare out of the litter into the far distance, or deep within herself.

  Lillian couldn’t tell the difference.

  “There are ways to sweeten the soil. Ways to shelter delicate plants from the ceaseless seeking wind. I’d like to help you restore the gardens.” She wanted to say something about Lady Lucinda, Graciella’s predecessor, having no interest in gardening, but thought that might not be polite.

  “My stepmother is Lord Jemmarc’s sister. She took me to the castle once, just after . . . after Lady Lucinda left,” Graciella said hesitantly, as if she’d followed Lillian’s chain of thought. “She hoped that my lord would ask her to stay on as chatelaine of the castle. He didn’t. Luc . . . Lucjemm didn’t like her.”

  “Lucjemm liked very few people. I think that’s why he adopted those awful black snakes as pets. He thought they were his only friends.”

  Graciella’s mask of boredom slipped over her expression again. “I’m tired. I think I should nap.” She shifted uneasily against the mass of pillows behind her and closed her eyes. Shutting out Lillian as well as the rest of the world. Within moments her breathing evened and deepened. The tight lines around her eyes and mouth relaxed.

  Lillian saw her simple beauty beneath the cosmetics of her newly privileged position. A sturdy country girl thrust into the thick of complex politics at court, married off (against her wishes?) to an ambitious man with an unstable son.

  Our beginnings are the same, she thought, I pray that we both find a happier ending.

  Carefully she eased the fancy box of rosehip candy out from under Graciella’s hand and dumped the sticky contents out of the litter.

  CHAPTER 7

  JAYLOR HELD TIGHT to Brevelan longer than he needed as solid ground materialized beneath his feet.

  “That never gets easier,” Brevelan said on a heavy exhale. She kept her eyes scrunched closed, as if in pain, while she clung to him.

  He sensed that her legs weren’t quite stable enough to support her yet. Common enough reaction from people who didn’t experience the transport spell often.

  “You’ll think differently next time you sense one of your chicks in danger or I have to be gone for more than a few days. Then you’ll fly off to where you think you need to be before you can consider the transport dangerous and uncomfortable.” He kissed the top of her head and gently eased away from her, still keeping his hands on her waist to make sure she didn’t stumble.

  She squeezed his shoulders and stood straight on her own. As straight as she was wont to these days, anyway, a little hunched over her belly, pro
tectively. “How long can you stay home this time?” she asked, finally looking up at him.

  “’Til dawn at least.” He kissed her lightly, thought better of it and kissed her again, deeply, passionately, thoroughly. “Then again, perhaps I ought to leave Glenndon alone for a few days to see how he copes on his own.”

  The glass disc in his tunic pocket began vibrating. Both he and his wife sighed. “The responsibilities of being Senior Magician, Chancellor of the University, and councillor to the king. Someone always needs my attention.”

  “And your wife is always last to get it.” Brevelan moved away from him toward her cabin. Always her cabin, never theirs, as it was before they met.

  He swallowed the chill of her leaving and removed the palm-sized glass from his tunic. Without a scrying bowl and candle flame he saw only a swirl of red and yellow curlicues. He wet his fingertip on his tongue and tapped it against the glass three times. “I’m coming, Marcus. I’m coming.” He set his footsteps on the half-mile path to the Forest University buildings.

  Life was easier in the old days when there was only one University in the capital. But in those days magicians didn’t keep wives, never acknowledged their children, and were a lot lonelier. Somehow his connection to his fellow magicians while in a magical circle, their talents building and compounding into far more than the sum of their individual parts, that complete unity of mind and purpose, paled in comparison to holding a newborn babe in his arms and knowing that out of his life had come another, and another. Or the joy of loving Brevelan, totally and completely, even when she was pissed at him.

  The scent of fresh, raw yampion tubers being peeled and sliced enticed him back toward the cabin. Hours yet before the sweet, rich pie finished baking. He plowed on through the forest to his responsibilities, knowing a hot meal, a warm hearth, and a loving family awaited him at the end of the day.

  “What demands my attention so urgently,” he demanded of Marcus the moment he cleared the doorway into the master magician’s office. He’d given over his place here at the Forest University when he reopened the old University in the capital several months ago. Still, the changes his former apprentice had made shocked him. Different books lining the shelves, a smaller and more upright chair than his own—which now graced his office in Coronnan City—a long smooth wooden pen and bronze inkwell instead of Jaylor’s pile of quills and silver inkwell, all made him feel as if he had walked into a stranger’s private parlor.