The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2

by Irene Radford

  Mikk gulped, not liking the path his thoughts took. “Yes,” he breathed.

  “So did I. There is more going on than just our fears preying on our dreams. I need to talk to Da . . .” He stopped. “I don’t know if Da survived.”

  This time Mikk pressed his cousin’s shoulder in shared grief. “From what I know of dragons, I think they have more answers than we do.”

  “Yes. Let’s get that cup of water and open the paths of communication. Da always told me that when all else seems hopeless, talk to the dragons. They may be able to help us clear off the dead bodies. Or at least bring us a few tons of salt to sanctify a mass grave.”

  “Where would we bury them all? There must be thousands!”

  “The dragons will know. We can’t just dump them all into the ocean. Their remaining relatives need to know where they are, need to mourn, need a place to memorialize this event.”

  Mikk nodded glumly and trudged after Glenndon. They had a lot of hard work to do. Messy work. And he didn’t know if Geon had survived to help.

  Strange, this was the first he’d thought of his servant since running from the University to the palace over a week ago. He’d probably stayed at the University rather than take the risks Mikk needed to take.

  Some bodyguard!

  Inside the kitchen, three steps up from the courtyard, they found more stinking mud on the floor and small sticks and dead fish piled in the corners and along the walls. A flurry of frogs hopped quickly out the door the moment they spotted a path to freedom. This area had probably drained a day or two ago, trapping the frogs when they could no longer swim under the doors.

  Nearly gagging, Mikk made his way to the pump in the scullery off the main workroom.

  “Looks like they took your orders to heart and carried all the food and supplies up to the fourth story,” Glenndon said, kicking at a knot of rotting green stuff, too slimy to tell what it had been originally.

  The pump handle was dry. At its highest position it was about level with Mikk’s shoulder. Right now it was frozen about halfway. He placed both hands on top of it and pushed down. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Let me try. I’ve got a bit more leverage in height and shoulder,” Glenndon said, moving in front of Mikk.

  Mikk stepped aside gratefully while his cousin leaned hard on the pump handle. It moved about two inches down and stayed there. Its own weight should have pulled it lower.

  “It’s stuck,” Glenndon stated the obvious. “Probably got gunk in the pipes and it’s too dry from not having worked in a week.”

  “The scullery lads pumped the cistern nearly dry, filling every bucket, tub, and cup with fresh water before the flood. I doubt any sludge could get into the pipes,” Mikk replied, eyeing the contraption suspiciously. He tried to think through the method and mechanism for drawing up water.

  “Maybe if we both put all our weight on it,” Glenndon suggested.

  Together they managed to push the handle all the way down. Mikk’s feet dangled a few inches off the ground as he heaved himself up. Once down it stuck there.

  “Under it. Put your shoulder into it,” Glenndon ordered. They both crouched low with the handle resting on their shoulders and heaved upward. The handle moved a little easier.

  “Again.” Up and down. Up and down. Mikk pushed and pulled until he saw black spots before his eyes.

  “One more time, I hear something gurgling,” Glenndon shouted with glee.

  Mikk couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of his heart in his ears. He hadn’t worked this hard since his first time in the practice arena with a sword that was too long and heavy for his ability. Glenndon broke a sweat but still looked strong and eager.

  Three more pumps and a tiny trickle of lime-white water wandered out of the spout. Another five cleared the water of residue. At that point Mikk shoved a cup under the pump. Glenndon pushed down one more time and they had enough fresh clean water to reverse the spell.

  Mikk fought the urge to drink it down. That would come later. When they all had enough to drink.

  From the protection of tree branches ten feet off the ground, Lukan listened as Skeller plucked chords on his harp, matching his voice to the core note. Then he tried another, moving his voice up and around the scale expertly. Eventually he changed to single notes and he sang in a clear and pure baritone, “You can climb back to the Kardia in safety,” he said, plainly, without a trace of a song. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  Lukan dropped through a familiar pattern of hand- and footholds until he hung by his hands from the lowest branch and let go, falling only a few inches until his bare feet found purchase among the layers of moss and leaf litter.

  “How’d you know I was up there?” Lukan asked, dusting off his callused hands. “No one thinks to look up.”

  “I do. Ever since your sister showed me my first dragon flying overhead. She taught me to sing with your friends.” Skeller strummed a new tune that reminded Lukan of birds flying strong and free, accompanied by an odd chord that could have been a dragon screech sweetened up a bit.

  “Lily.” Lukan let his sister’s name hang between them.

  “Don’t worry. My intentions are honorable toward Lily. If she’ll have me.”

  “And if her family won’t have you?” Lukan tried raising one eyebrow in skepticism, like Da.

  He steeled his heart against the hurt of grief. He shouldn’t feel this strongly about Da’s passing. Except that Da had taken Mama with him. He’d never see his mother again. Never hear her gentle admonishment to stand straight, to wash his feet, to . . . to watch over his little sisters as they roamed the forest around the Clearing.

  “The decision is Lily’s, not yours,” Skeller said flatly.

  “Family is important to Lily.” Lukan had to remind himself that he had a smaller stake in keeping all his siblings together, helping each other, advising each other. Loving each other.

  Something stronger pulled him away from them. More than a yearning. A genuine need to be out in the world alone. Alone. The family would take care of themselves without him. As they had always done.

  The family was scattering, like autumn leaves fleeing before a chill wind.

  “Family should be important. I hope I can earn your trust, if not your love.”

  “You come from . . . elsewhere.”

  “Amazonia. Yes, our traditions are different. Our government is different. Our fashions are different.” He flipped his fingers through the shoulder-length light brown hair. “But my people are not at war with your people. My own family is . . . less than loving and united. I have few reasons to return. Those reasons are weaker than my reasons for staying with Lily. Except . . .”

  Lukan nodded abruptly, understanding, but not fully accepting the explanation. Now he needed more from the wandering bard who had traveled far and seen far too much.

  “The other day, you said you ran away from your mother’s funeral . . .”

  “Yes.” Skeller’s face became a blank mask, hiding his true emotions. He was too good at that.

  “I . . . I need to thank you for making me think before I ran. I’m glad now that I stayed, at least for the funeral.”

  “It seemed important. I was older than you when Mother passed. I’d been following caravans for a few years, singing my way around the continent. I thought I’d learned somethings about myself, and my family. I thought I needed to return to them and begin talking about all the reasons I needed to return. But I never thought about reasons to stay with them. Turns out I arrived mere hours before Mother stopped breathing after ten years of being an invalid. Ten years of barely having enough energy to talk to her sons, let alone hug us.”

  Something in Skeller’s too-neutral tone stabbed Lukan in the gut. “At least you got to say goodbye,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

  “I’d said goodbye to the mother who loved me ten years before. I said goodbye to a wasted husk of humanity at the end. Something in me died that day too. It’s taken me
four, almost five years to bring it back to life. Lily helped. She helped a lot.”

  “She’s like that.”

  “Take some time to talk to her on our journey. Val too. I have a feeling you all need to find closeness again. Find your childhood playmates again and cherish that.”

  “You said you had a brother . . .”

  “He . . . he’s taken refuge elsewhere, with . . . comrades who think and feel as he does.”

  Lukan remained silent. One of Mama’s tricks. Forcing the other person to fill the gap with words.

  “I’m not going to say anything else at the moment.” Skeller stood up, carefully stowing his harp in its case and slinging it onto his back. “Come, your sisters are expecting us to help them pack for the journey.”

  “We don’t need much,” Lukan said, bewildered by Lily’s need to sort and organize.

  “We don’t. But they do. Trust me. If we give in on this, they’ll be a lot happier and easier to travel with, until they discover they’ve packed too much and discard half of what they brought.”

  “Why not discard it all now . . . ?”

  “Because then they wouldn’t be happy.”

  “Women!”

  “Get used to it. We need them as much as we want to pretend we don’t.”

  CHAPTER 39

  AN HOUR AFTER clearing and grounding the protection spell, Glenndon took a deep breath and focused on his palm-sized piece of glass, floating in a bowl of fresh water barely large enough to contain it. He didn’t dare ask for more clean water than that. They had so little to spare until the cistern refilled naturally and they got the pumps working full time. He was already tired from freeing up the kitchen pump and reversing the containment spell. A drink of cold fresh water would help a lot to revive him. Later. Others had more need than he. The first cup out of the pump, he and Mikk had used to wash away the spell that had saved them. They’d thrown the magic together; they needed to end it together. The second cup of precious water he’d confiscated to open communications again.

  He knew he should contact the University first to find out who had survived and what damage they’d sustained.

  He knew it in his head.

  His heart and his gut rebelled. Some things were more important. He called into memory the unique shape and color of Jaylor’s magical signature: a blue and red braid that twisted back on itself, knotting in an uneven pattern.

  Nothing. No vibrations. No colors. Nothing but a milky swirl of nothingness.

  Biting the insides of his cheeks in abject fear, he decided to go to the source. Linda had told him to come home. Linda must know Jaylor’s fate.

  Before he’d severed communications with the outside world, he hadn’t needed a spell to find Linda. He kept the summons spell open anyway. Just in case. Resolutely he cleared his mind, breathed deeply of the fetid air inside his bedroom—the closest thing to privacy he could find even though he shared the space with Mikk, Keerkin, and Frank. Two families of merchants inhabited the outer rooms of his suite. Young mothers with two children each occupied Frank’s and Keerkin’s tiny alcoves. Every nook and cranny in the palace and the old keep was filled to overflowing with people.

  People they’d saved from the flood.

  Half in a trance, with his body firmly oriented to the magnetic pole, he stared into the glass and reached out with his mind to find his half sister.

  Her face appeared in the glass and in his inner vision.

  Linda, he said softly. He bypassed the glass and spoke directly mind-to-mind.

  You’re alive! she cried in the same intimate form. Tears streaked her face. But she smiled. No one could reach you. We feared everyone in the city lost! My parents and sisters?

  Safe, Glenndon reassured her. The flood is clearing. Many are dead. We don’t know how many yet. We don’t know if anything is left of the city other than the palace and the University.

  Glenndon, she said hesitantly.

  My Da?

  I am so sorry. We could not save him. His heart burst with the effort of breaking the storm.

  Something stabbed Glenndon’s heart. The explosion of light and popping air pressure just before the storm surge; his staff trying to merge with the eye of the storm . . . He knew there was more to that phenomenon than the creator of the storm releasing it to do its worst.

  He realized that some part of him shied away from the truth. Da was always one to take the burden, to protect others from working beyond their ability. Each time he came back a little weaker. This time he’d tasked himself too much.

  Say something, Glenndon.

  Can’t.

  You just did.

  He took a moment to teach his lungs to breathe again and his heart to pump. His world seemed dimmer, less vibrant. He nearly lost his anchor to the Kardia and the magnetic pole, set adrift in time and place.

  Mama?

  Oh, Glenndon, I am so sorry. The shock sent her into labor too early. She hemorrhaged, and we lost her too. This time Linda choked on unshed cheers.

  The world came to a halt around Glenndon. He felt as if . . . as if he were alone in the void without the comfort of life umbilicals or dragon voices teaching him something important.

  Nothing.

  Glenndon, speak to me! Linda cried. Glenndon, you’re going transparent like a dragon with golden tips. Don’t you dare fade to nothing. Don’t you dare!

  (Be comforted,) Shayla said.

  Glenndon had never heard the dragon matriarch sound so gentle and nurturing. The humor had left her mental voice; it was sad, but not prostrate with grief. As Glenndon was. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think straight. Did his heart and lungs work? Did he even blink?

  His eyelids moved. Once. Twice. A third time brought forth tears, and he didn’t bother blinking them away.

  (Good. You are returning to life. Death is not yet your home. You have much to do before you can embrace the next stage of existence.)

  Did Mama and Da embrace death? He couldn’t imagine it. They both had so much to live for. They both attacked life with such enthusiasm. He saw them together at the end of the day, sitting opposite each other before the hearth, she with some mending, or knitting, or other small task. He with a text or some small piece of carpentry. A child asleep in each of their laps. Da would lift his head from whatever he was doing and smile. At the same moment Mama would look him squarely in the eye and return that smile. Then they’d tuck the little ones into their cribs and wander into their private bedroom holding hands. Not a word passing between them.

  He sighed. I hope they are together. I can’t imagine them apart.

  That earned him a dragon chuckle. (They wouldn’t have it any other way. And neither would we.)

  Did you foresee this, Shayla? Did you know from your dragon-dreams that they must die together even as they lived together?

  (No. But they do not surprise me.)

  Glenndon let go of the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, easier in his mind. I will miss them.

  (You have luck that you have a second set of parents. Your father and his wife love you, and need you. Now return to your chores. All of Coronnan needs your strength, your inventiveness, your courage, and your love.)

  Love. Will I find love as Mama and Da did?

  (That is beyond my knowledge at this time.)

  You gave Mama a dragon-dream when she first met my Da. You showed her happy and loving with six children and a loving husband. That made his breath catch a moment. Six children in the dragon-dream. The seventh had killed her. The birth order of the children came differently from the dream. But not the number. Can you do the same for me? Give me a hint of my future?

  (Later. When events sort themselves out. Trust yourself, my golden prince. Trust your father. Beware of small boats and rogue waves.) The dragon withdrew from his mind, as gently as she had entered it.

  “Glenndon!” Linda’s voice came through the summons spell and into his mind, loud and demanding.

  “I am returned to myself,
little sister. I . . . I just need to grieve a moment.”

  “You looked like a dragon,” she said, hiding her fear with a delicate snort of disgust. Linda would never do anything with less than royal subtlety and politeness.

  “I needed to talk to them. Shayla is most comforting. What of my family? Did Val and Lily get home in time?” He had no doubt that Val knew the transport spell. She was too good at observing and mimicking from the shadows. “What’s to become of the little ones?”

  “Maigret and I have taken Jule and Sharl into her household. Maigret is missing Robb mightily. Filling their quarters to overflowing with lost ones seems to help. Lily and Val came home in time. Lukan was there as well. Your parents passed on surrounded by friends and family.” For some reason she had withdrawn her mind from his and spoke only through the spell.

  He gave a sigh of relief at her news. His other family here in the city demanded so much of his time and attention he doubted he could have left them without a great deal of guilt.

  “Glenndon, Valeria and Ariiell say that I must warn you that Lord Laislaic is in league with the king of Amazonia—Lokeen by name. They planned for Ariiell to marry the king. Laislac was to receive a box of Krakatrice eggs to use as a weapon to bring Father down and become king himself. The eggs were hidden in a case of wine carried beneath Ariiell’s litter. The crate broke during the storm and the eggs hatched . . .” She shuddered slightly in fear. He’d rescued her from a tangle of Krakatrice, and Lucjemm’s obsessive need to own and control her, last spring. Then she drew a long restorative breath.

  Glenndon braced himself, almost knowing what was to come. “The magic in the storm winds released the snakes from the eggs.”

  Linda nodded. “They feast on the carcasses of animals killed by the winds. Master . . . Lord Marcus has sent five masters and their journeymen and apprentices to deal with them. They carry bespelled obsidian blades. They know they have to use ley line magic to end that menace.”

  One problem Glenndon didn’t have to deal with. Yet. Thankfully water was the bane of Krakatrice. They couldn’t come near the capital and survive.