“I have to go back to Amazonia,” he said, coming to a decision that had nagged him since the first letter from his father. A letter that reminded him of his duty elsewhere. “I hope not forever, but for a time.”
“I know,” Lily said, raising her eyes from her study of the staff, learning every line of the wood grain.
Skeller touched the letters in his script. “My father calls me home. He has corrupted Amazonia in partnership with Samlan. There are others who could end his tyranny, bring peace and compromise back to my homeland. But I seem to be the only one who will do it. I have to go. It is my duty.” Deliberately he released his hands from her and took a step toward the path away from this awful place of carnage.
“Skeller!” Lily reached out toward him. When he made no move to capture her hand with his own, an extreme effort, she dropped her hand to her sister’s shoulder. She leaned heavily on the bit of driftwood. No, it was her staff, highly prized among magicians. “I did it for you, Skeller. So you would not have to live with that man’s death on your hands.”
“I was prepared. I could deal with it because it was necessary.”
“Exactly,” Val said for her sister. “It was necessary. Lily did by mundane means what Samlan least expected and could not defend himself against.”
“I have no magic. I could have done the same,” Skeller said softly.
“Could you?” Lily captured his gaze with her own. All he saw was pain.
“Or would Samlan have expected a mundane attack from a bard, the son of King Lokeen?” Val continued for her sister. “He wouldn’t expect a mere woman to deal the death blow. My memories of him at the University taught me that he had little respect or use for women. He wouldn’t consider Lily capable, and so dismissed her as a threat. You, Skeller, could not get close to him.”
They all stood in silence a long moment, instinctively edging away from the incoming tide, but not toward the natural cavern that led to the castle. No, they moved toward the village, toward mundane life.
“So, you are returning to Amazonia,” Ariiell summed up the conversation. “I’m taking Valeria back to the Clearing in the mountains so that she can heal and regain strength. We’ll look after Jule and Sharl.”
Val didn’t look too happy about that. Then she sighed and nodded acceptance. “It’s what I need.”
“Where do I belong?” Graciella asked, looking up toward the forbidding walls of Castle Saria. “Not here.”
“Then return to your husband in the city, or to your mother. Or go back to the Forest University. The choice is yours, my lady,” Lily said.
Graciella looked frightened at the need to make a decision. A choice.
She hugged herself and looked at nothing.
Ariiell rolled her eyes in near disgust and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll help you sort through your choices. The University for now, I think. But only for so long. I’m having trouble holding to my own decisions.”
“Where’s Lukan?” Skeller asked, drawing his awareness to the larger group and away from his own hurt and emptiness. The time had come to travel again. His feet itched to start the journey he didn’t want to take, though he knew he must. Just like the first time he’d run away from home—wishing to stay, knowing he couldn’t. Shouldn’t.
Great Mother, he wanted to hold Lily close and kiss away their hurts. But if he did that, he’d never do what he must. Go home.
“Lukan is following Krej and Rejiia,” Ariiell said. Briefly she recounted their encounter with the infamous rogue magicians.
They all found a bit of humor in Rejiia’s reaction to a drenching. Skeller heard the chords of the rousing chorus of that tale in his head, felt it in his fingers.
“They are still a threat, Ariiell,” Lukan said, stumbling down the steep path to join them. “When Rejiia stopped running just beyond the curtain wall, I threw my knife. She’s bleeding from the upper left arm. Maybe she was already wounded and running opened it again. I don’t know. They are running again, out beyond the fields. Even if they return, they won’t find Krej’s glass. His magic is crippled without it.”
He held up a wad of silk with near-reverence. “Coronnan has a bit more time to heal before those two are ready to gather forces and launch an attack. I was promised a staff and a journey. I’m taking it.”
Lily straightened enough to pull him into a hug. “Where?” she gulped.
“I’ll deliver Da’s letter to Glenndon. Then I’ll find a staff and go in search of Master Robb and his apprentices. I’m thinking Amazonia. The scrying spell sent the pendulum swinging across the map from Lake Apor to Amazonia. We know Lord Laislac was in league with Samlan and Lokeen. That’s the connection. If Robb isn’t in Aporia, then he’s across the ocean. Do you need a traveling companion, Your Highness?” He bowed slightly toward Skeller.
Skeller could only nod acceptance. Sadness at separating from Lily choked him beyond speech. Realization of all he was leaving in Coronnan dug deeper into his gut. He wanted to double over in physical pain.
“Coronnan needs nurturing. The land needs seeds and a gentle touch. The people need healing.” Lily looked off into the distance. “I need time alone with my grief and pain.”
“You can’t leave me,” Val protested, holding her sister tighter.
“You and I will never be totally alone.” Lily returned the hug with a weak smile. “I’m only a thought away. The sea gifted me with a staff. I’ll take my own journey.” She held up the smooth stick and examined the wood grain closely, committing it to memory. It was a constant reminder for her of why she would wander the land. Alone.
Perhaps more alone than Skeller would ever be. “Someday . . . when we all have grown away from this terrible day, I will come back for you,” he whispered.
If duty and family and arranged marriages didn’t interfere.
“You were happy here, Skeller. You had the carefree life of a wandering bard,” Lily reminded him. “Hold those memories close and let them sustain you on your journey.”
“You too.” He turned and walked away while he still could.
CHAPTER 45
“INDIGO, BANK TO your left!” Glenndon called with voice and mind to the purple-tip dragon. He rode the dragon’s lower neck, carefully braced between two jutting spinal horns, gripping the dragon body with his knees. Wind whipped at his face and hair, playing joyfully with him, taunting him with reminders of the freedom of his youth. For two brief moments he breathed deeply of the fresh cleanness of the air, luxuriating in the raw sensations and his own uncensored response.
A wail of despair pierced his brief reverie. He repeated the silent signal to go left with his body and his heels, as General Marcelle had taught him to do with a steed.
Indigo dipped his left wing and curved gracefully into a new direction. Glenndon didn’t know if he responded to the verbal or the tactile command.
(What do you sense?) Indigo asked, raising his snout to sniff the air two hundred feet above the maze of river branches and islands peeking out from the murky waters.
Someone alive and pleading for rescue.
(Not a magical mind,) Indigo excused his own lack of sensitivity to normal humans.
“That’s why we work together. We make a good team.” Glenndon patted the soft fur of the dragon’s neck. Hardly any silver left in the fine hairs. His friend matured by the day. But he hadn’t grown to full dragon size. He wondered if Indigo would ever achieve the mass of older dragons, or if being a very special, rare, and asexual purple-tip meant he was also destined to be a runt.
No matter. Today, his reduced bulk made him an excellent partner in negotiating the remnants of Coronnan City for signs of life.
Or dead bodies that needed to be removed.
Indigo had already lifted a dozen corpses, with reverence and delicacy, and delivered them to the mass grave at Battle Mound, an hour’s steed ride outside the city.
“Can you see that long roof, slightly to your left?”
Indigo flashed an
image of the dark apex and slanting sides with three chimneys that seemed to float in the river but did not move downstream.
“Must be a Temple or meeting house,” Glenndon mused, wishing he’d taken the time to memorize the city before the flood, when he didn’t really need to know every building on every island.
(Something moves beside the center chimney.)
“Yes, indeed. Can you hover?”
A moment of reflection. (Easier to grip the chimney top as if landing.)
“Try not to damage the bricks and mortar.” Glenndon knew how much work went into repairing a chimney. He’d done it for his mother. Twice. If she’d just banished the mice and bats and other critters that clawed at the mortar and loosened the stones . . . Or if Lukan had chosen a different hiding place.
He’d never get to fix something for his mother again . . . And Lukan?
He bit his lip and concentrated on the three figures cowering against the roof, hiding in the shadow of Indigo’s wings.
(Better to save a life than worry about a replaceable chimney.) The dragon circled the building three times in a tight downward spiral.
Waves of fear flooded Glenndon’s mind and tightened his chest. “Empathy. Their fear of the dragon, not mine,” he reminded himself. Blanking his mind, he uncoiled a rope ladder from the spinal horns behind him and threw it toward the tallest of the family sheltering on the roof.
The woman, holding a babe in her arms while a toddler clung to her skirts, ignored the lifeline. She looked up toward Glenndon, too terrified to move.
“Indigo will not hurt you,” he reassured the woman. Her hair lay in a tangled mat down her back, an indeterminate color, matching the mud smeared on one cheek. Fatigue and hunger wove deep shadows on her gaunt face and haunted eyes.
“The little ones . . .”
“Indigo does not eat people.”
(They taste bad.) Indigo injected some dragon humor.
Good thing the refugees couldn’t hear him.
“On my honor as a prince and heir to King Darville, we have come to rescue you. I promise no harm will come to you.” Glenndon wondered if he’d have to climb down and carry the woman and her children aboard.
(I cannot balance here much longer,) Indigo warned him.
Biting her lip, the woman urged the toddler to climb the ladder. The little boy scrambled up easily. He hadn’t learned to fear dragons yet.
The woman held up the baby to Glenndon. He cradled it gently against his chest with one arm while reaching his other to assist her in the awkward climb.
“Keep moving,” he encouraged her. “If you stop, the ladder will twist and throw you off.”
Mutely she nodded and continued up, more slowly than Glenndon liked. Indigo fluttered his wings, striving for balance. The woman cried out in fear.
Glenndon hauled her the rest of the way up with one arm. His muscles trembled and strained. The shoulder seam of his once-elegant tunic ripped. He kept pulling until at last she straddled the dragon back, skirt hiked up above her knees, exposing her filthy legs and shoeless feet.
Embarrassed, she fiddled to push her skirt down.
“Don’t worry. My mama never wore shoes either, except in deep winter if she had to go outside. I think I was four before I had a pair of my own.” He handed the baby back to her, concerned that it seemed too still and pale.
Next stop would be the University and a healer.
Indigo thrust his wings down once and released his grip on the chimney. Six bricks bounced down the sloping roof into the river.
Squealing with glee, the little boy gripped Glenndon’s tunic and peered all around at the wonder of flying after days of being trapped by the flood.
“You’re sure this dragon isn’t hungry?” the woman asked.
(I’m always hungry.)
Glenndon gave the dragon a light tap as a reminder that dragon humor wasn’t always funny to humans.
“Indigo is our friend. He is dedicated to helping people and Coronnan today.”
(And always.)
So am I, my friend. Thus is our duty.
Coronnan heals, but slowly. The dragons enter into the chore with strength. The people face their grim future with courage. The king and queen are in the midst of it all, winning back the hearts and loyalty of their people after years of distancing themselves from them.
Things have changed greatly since I last looked hard at people and politics. My dream of restoring myself to my own body is complete. But it is a hollow victory, won by chance and not by my own skill and determination.
I merely grabbed the magic flung wildly about and held on. Another magician’s carelessness did the rest. Though I did manipulate things a bit, sheltering behind my companion and letting him take the brunt of conflicting magics. He is old beyond old now. I am not.
I will accept my restored body for what it is. While chaos lies just beneath the surface, ready to attack Coronnan, I shall watch and wait and pounce when I am ready.
But I won’t allow too much peace and order to return, to banish my dearest friend, Chaos.
The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 Page 34
