The enemy controlled all four elements, combined them, and inflicted massive destruction well beyond his reach.
“Stargods! Lily and Val are in as much danger as Glenndon.”
He paused to gulp back his trepidation.
“It’s okay, Da. You’ll figure it out,” Sharl reassured him.
The faith of a child. Her faith in him strengthened his wavering courage. He couldn’t fail. He had to save the twins and Glenndon for their own sakes, his own, and their mother’s. But he also couldn’t fail because a six-year-old had faith in him.
“Baamin, I’m going to need some help. Bring every dragon to the University.”
(Not enough room.)
“Then perch on the roofs and in the trees. We’ve got work to do. A lot of hard work.”
Wet. Soaking wet. Wet running off his face, down his neck . . .
Glenndon blinked to clear his eyes. Gloom lay thick among the shadowed trees. Silhouettes wavered and blurred. He took a cautious breath to make sure he wasn’t underwater.
Memories of Lucjemm trying to drown him in a pit on Sacred Isle pressed against the logic of knowing he’d survived that incident with the help of a Tambootie tree and his staff.
“My staff?” he croaked out.
“Beside . . . you . . . sir,” Frank said gruffly, back to him. He drew a deep breath between each word.
The wet continued to soak Glenndon to the skin, chilling him to the bone. His teeth began to chatter.
“Almost there, sir,” Keerkin reassured him. He too seemed to be working very hard to breathe around his words.
Glenndon remembered to look for his staff. Beside him. Where was he and . . . His hand found the rain-slick knob at the top of the length of twisting wood. He found the three smooth circles that had been the anchor point of twigs. Then his fingers reached down and around. The straight dragon bone embedded in the wood felt warm and reassuring and . . . dry.
Dry? In all this wet? The swaying edges of the trees began to make a little sense. If his men carried him. But he swayed, rather than bounced.
“Found it!” Keerkin crowed. “Fox den in an old tree, burned nearly hollow at the base.” He jerked his head to the right.
Frank angled that way. In five heartbeats—Glenndon counted them, not able to decide what else to do—he found himself lowered to the ground and rolled up against a tree trunk, facedown. His right arm stretched farther than it should if he was against a solid tree.
Wiggling his fingers, he found a crumbling edge to a triangular opening. A fast-moving fire, long ago, must have damaged the tree, scorching the bark. Over the years the tree rotted behind the damage but continued to grow upward, healing and compensating for the hole.
“Anybody home in there?” Frank yelled, beating against the trunk with a rock.
Something small and furry scurried over Glenndon’s fingers and exited. A small rodent had taken up lodging. Nothing as big as a fox.
“Can you get inside, sir?” Keerkin asked, neatly folding a blanket. The blanket the men must have carried Glenndon on.
“Where did you get a blanket?” Glenndon’s mind was still as fuzzy as his eyesight.
“I’ve gotten to know you, sir, over these past few months. When you say your errands will take a couple of hours at most, something always happens and we’re gone most of a day. Or night. Never fails. My da says your father was the same way. Your da . . . um . . . Lord Jaylor too, for that matter. I always have extra food, water, blankets, and bandages in my pack.”
“Always?”
“Always. Even for a trip to Market Isle. Now crawl in there and feel around. Should be big enough to shelter all of us if you don’t mind rather close quarters.”
“If it will get us out of this rain, I don’t mind.” Glenndon reached around the opening. At least four feet high and five across. Must have been a bad fire. Then he leveraged himself to his knees and crawled forward. His shoulders cleared the edges. Three more cautious knee-steps forward before his head brushed something semisolid. A shift of balance and his left hand was free of the soft nest of rotting wood, shed fur, and decaying leaves. Stretching it forward, he encountered a layer of spiderwebs before reaching solid wood. The tree was huge. Not unusual on Sacred Isle, where the trees were considered holy and no one dared disturb them, except journeymen magicians on quest for a staff or priests performing arcane rituals.
He turned and sat with his back against the charred wood. Only a faint hint of smoke reached his nose. He brushed away a layer of wet from his face and banished the smell. Only an echo of memory from the tree.
“Come on in. Nice and cozy,” he called, drawing his knees up to his chest to make room for his companions.
His head ached and his eyes didn’t want to focus. Something about a tree splitting after a lightning strike . . .
He felt around the back of his head. His skull ached before he encountered a thick knot. His hair seemed stuck in the mess. Just touching his barely retained queue sent needle pricks all over his scalp.
“Um . . . Frank? About those bandages . . .” He felt the two men crawling in beside him, one on each side. He didn’t care which was where, only that their combined body heat lessened the chill threatening to invade his bones.
“Later. We need to figure this out, sir.”
“Figure what out? It’s a storm. A bad one,” Glenndon dismissed it. That didn’t sound quite right. If only his eyes would focus properly.
The inside of the tree was darker than the gloom outside. He could barely see outlines and the opening in the tree.
“A storm fueled by magic, sir,” Keerkin said quietly, as if afraid to venture an opinion.
Memories flooded back into Glenndon. He gasped as he relived the oppressive weight to the air, the irritation of every sensitive spot on his body, and the ugly copper color of the cloud underbelly. Copper shaded with sulfur.
“How bad is it?” he asked, wondering how long he’d been unconscious.
“The river is receding,” Frank said flatly.
“That’s good.”
“There’s an awful lot of water coming down.” Keerkin’s voice sounded as if he’d turned his head away from the conversation.
“And the tide was still coming in . . .” Frank sounded as if he wanted to say more but something held him back.
“The river was rising when we beached,” Glenndon countered them.
“Now it’s not.”
“What does that mean?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Storm surge,” Frank said. He sounded firm, as if there were no other explanation. He knew the river better than Glenndon or Keerkin. He’d grown up in the city with all its tales and lore.
“Explain,” Glenndon demanded.
“The eye of the storm is still offshore, gathering energy.”
“Gathering water,” Glenndon finished for him. “Pulling water from the Bay and the river.”
“Aye.”
“And when it has gathered enough and moves toward us?”
“It will release that extra water in one gush.”
Glenndon closed his eyes and gulped. He did not want to visualize a wall of water engulfing the city, drowning the islands. Washing away thousands of people. The king and queen, his half sisters. His family!
“How big?” he finally whispered.
“Don’t know, sir. Stories tell of a time before the covenant with dragons and Quinnault became king with his foreign wife, Katie. A battlemage had lost a battle he should have won. He was angry. Wanted revenge. He conjured a storm.”
“Like this one?”
“Maybe. No one knows for sure. The rain fell for days and days. People moved to the mainland or the bigger islands with some height to them. It wasn’t enough. When the surge came it wiped out everything. People, buildings, animals, everything. When the water receded—in almost as big a gush as it came in—the only things left standing were the old keep and the monastery that became the University.”
“T
hat’s a lot of water,” Keerkin breathed.
“We have to get back to the city. We have to warn everyone to evacuate, or climb higher.” Glenndon rocked forward, shifting to crawl out of their refuge. He ignored his aching head and the new trickle of warm blood from the wound.
“Can’t do that, sir.” Frank held him back with one hand. “Nothing can cross the river now. Not without magic. And with that knot on your head, I doubt you can even give us a bit of flame to light this hole.”
“How high are we?” Keerkin asked into the darkness.
“This tree is older than the stories. If it stood through the last storm, it’ll stand now. It’s got big roots that spread far and tangle deep. Land might wash out from around it, but foxes know the best trees to nest under. We’ll be safe.”
“It’s a Tambootie tree,” Glenndon said. Maybe even the same tree that had sacrificed a branch to become his staff. He held his instrument up, anchoring the tip in the soft ground and willing the dragon bone to glow with enough light to show him the truth of his statement. An eerie green light shone upward, almost high enough for him to stand upright at the center, sloping to a short ceiling on the sides. The cave had ample room for them to fold their legs under them and sit comfortably, shoulders touching.
“We’ll be safe.” He knew it in his soul. But would anyone in the city survive?
And who would dare conjure such a storm?
He’d worry about that later. First he had to warn the city. No tools for a summoning spell, or a scry. He had more than enough water and could probably find a puddle just by sticking his head out the opening. But flame? It probably wouldn’t stay lit outside and he wouldn’t insult this wonderful tree with another fire.
He drew in a deep breath on a count of three, released it on the same count. Again. And a third time. His headache lessened. His companions and the confines of the shelter faded from his awareness. He accepted the welcoming embrace of the spirit of the tree; let his mind mingle with its memories. He knew everything the tree had endured, from the drying up of the ley lines that fed its magic, to the welcome of the dragons nibbling on upper leaves, to the long cold of winter and triumphant burst of spring. And the fire. The pain that continued even after the flames had moved on, consuming underbrush and wildlife and leaf litter in a hungry dash, moving before the wind that drove it.
He lifted his mind through the tree and beyond. He let the magic essence contained within its sap fuel his quest for a receptive mind. “Queen Rossemikka? Stepmother?” he whispered across the miles, knowing her mind could receive him.
His words drifted away, dispersed within the clouds. More magic adding fuel to the storm’s rage against confinement by a mage. It needed to move, surge in one direction or another, but the mage kept it in place, forcing it to gain more energy. Destructive energy the storm didn’t want.
A very powerful mage with a determined circle behind him controlled the storm. No solitary magician could have that kind of power unless standing within the Well of Life. The liquid energy of the source of all ley lines would fry a magician, burn him to ashes in a moment.
Glenndon knew only one master magician with the audacity to try conjuring such a storm.
Samlan. In exile with a few other masters and journeymen. Not enough for a full circle.
Or was it?
With the right spell, the same spell, and a way of tapping both ley lines and dragon magic, he might be able to do it.
“Da!” he called. “Da, you have to do something. You must gather every master you can to fight this thing,” he called into the air, hoping that somehow, someone would be able to pick his thoughts out of that pall of clouds laden with as much magic as rain.
CHAPTER 26
THE STORM HAS wrenched control from me and my circle. It has become a living entity whole unto itself. A greedy being, never satisfied. The eye has become a great maw, opening bigger and bigger with each passing moment. It pulls in air and water across a much broader expanse than I had planned. Even with a full circle and the artifact gifted to me by my sponsor in Amazonia I cannot control this monster.
The ancient bone drapes across our arms, connecting us far more efficiently than staffs and hands upon shoulders. The tool allows us to open into a half circle mimicking the back edge of the swirling mass of air.
I fear that the magic the storm has sucked up will damage my other weapons, the ones entrusted to my ally deep in Coronnan.
I must leave it all in the hands of the Stargods. Perhaps even they cannot control this thing.
Perhaps the Amazonians have it right. The Stargods are new to the pantheon of Kardia Hodos. My protector and his people believe in the Great Mother who created this world. She and her magical creatures were here long before people. Long before the dragons. Long before the Stargods.
I will offer this magnificent tool of magic to her in sacrifice. We will release our spell and cast the tool over the side of our ship. It will float and circle within a whirlpool, gathering energy from the churning waves. Then it will sink reluctantly, taking the maelstrom with it. The Great Mother must grant my petitions and tame the fury of the storm. It is no longer mine. Even the magic I gathered is no longer mine. It is all in the artifact. Savage, untamable, waiting for another mage to find it at the bottom of the ocean. And use it. For the bone’s purpose. Never at the whim of a mere human.
The destruction and havoc this storm wreaks is the will of the Great Mother. Not mine, not the dragons’, and definitely not the Stargods’.
The litter draperies billowed inward on the side facing away from the caravan circle. Lillian grabbed hold of them to keep her balance as the entire conveyance tilted again, threatening to tip into the circle of sledges.
Lady Graciella screamed and clutched her belly.
“The babe?” Lily called anxiously, over the roar of the wind. She dropped her death grip on the fine tapestry to lay her palm flat over her companion’s stomach.
The rapid, steady throb of a heartbeat tingled against her hand. Graciella’s neck pulse, however, fluttered arrhythmically against her skin. Too fast. Too light. The woman’s panic radiated from her in thick waves that nearly infected Lillian.
She closed her eyes and willed her own heartbeat to a strong and steady rate. Just as she had so often with Valeria. Giving strength and soothing the panic of one too weak and spent to breathe normally was her only magical talent. She’d practiced it a lot over the years.
Soon she could no longer hear the thud within her, only the roar of the wind above, below and around them. When she looked toward her companion, Graciella had visibly calmed as well.
“We need to get the curtains open,” she said matter-of-factly. “They act as sails. We may find ourselves flying away like dandelion fluff.”
“Did . . . did you grow up around boats?” Lillian asked grabbing a big handful of brocade and dragging the inside drapery to one corner, securing it quickly with a thick strap meant for that purpose.
“Yes.” Graciella tugged fruitlessly at the outside curtain. The assault from the wind came strongest from that side. At the moment. Lillian rocked to her knees for better leverage and reached to help her. Their hands touched.
A jolt of magic burned through Lillian’s fingers and up her blood to her shoulder and down the other arm.
A frightful image of Lucjemm,with the hideous black snake draped around his neck filled her mind on the heels of that energy transfer. Gaciella’s fear became Lillian’s. Something about that snake . . . A Krakatrice, she knew now. Her father and brother had killed the female—obvious from the six wings sprouting from her spine, too tiny to help her fly at the time. But they would have matured along with her. The distant cousin and strongest enemy of the dragons.
“We killed the matriarch.” She sank back on her heels, nearly overwhelmed by her companion’s emotions.
“Did you?” Graciella asked, blandly.
Lillian knew in that moment that the lady had spent so much time hiding her memories and h
er fears that she couldn’t react to her own emotions.
“Yes. I watched Da and Glenndon blast the beast with more magic than I thought existed in all of Kardia Hodos. She burned to ashes. There weren’t even any bones left.”
“Was she the only matriarch?”
“I . . . I don’t know. King Darville banned the importation of any more of their eggs.”
“Easy enough to smuggle in a cargo. One box of eggs could start a whole new tangle.”
Lillian gulped, smelling again the taint of foul magic gone awry, the burning flesh and blood, and . . . and she didn’t know what else, only that it made her nose crinkle in disgust and a need to run far, far away from it. “Can’t worry about that right now. We’ve got to secure that drapery and get into the middle of the circle, or under the litter. We aren’t safe here.”
With renewed purpose she helped Graciella with the brocade. The second it opened even a small slit, the wind found its way to them, billowing the remaining fabric inward. Folds and folds of the heavy stuff covered and wrapped around Lillian’s head. It squeezed her neck, much like the chokehold of a snake. Or a Krakatrice.
She couldn’t breathe. The brocade carried the hideous scent of the black snakes.
Gasping and choking she clawed at the material.
Graciella screamed.
Lillian fought for calm as well as a reprieve from the smothering brocade. A ragged fingernail caught on a loose thread, ripping both. Not caring about the burning pain around her bleeding quick, she pulled and pulled again until the tear in the fabric gave her room to breathe, enough air to think.
Quickly she found the edge and unwrapped the clinging folds before they took on a life of their own.
“There’s magic in that storm,” she said.
The growling wind seemed to agree.
She ripped faster until she could wrestle free. The rotten odor of Krakatrice filled the air and her head: too sweet, like fermenting apples, with an overlay of intoxicated skunk, sulfur and sorrow.
The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 Page 21
