The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 (7 page)

“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.

J
AYLOR 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, protectively. “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.

He stopped in the doorway, needing permission to enter, though Marcus was never one to stand on ceremony, unlike his former partner Robb.

“I may have a general location for Robb, his three journeymen, and two apprentices,” Marcus said, waving Jaylor closer to his desk where he peered through a large master’s glass, a smooth slice of clear glass in a gold frame. From a distance, and without joining the other man’s spell through physical contact and a sharing of talent, he saw only a candle flame shimmering behind the glass.

But Marcus had no candle or scrying bowl before him.

“Thank the Stargods they didn’t get lost in the void during a hasty transport!” Jaylor shouted, leaning over Marcus with hands on the desk and his chin atop the younger man’s head—a position he often took when teaching apprentices, including Marcus and Robb when they were much younger.

“What do you see?” Jaylor asked more quietly. “Aside from the flame.”

“Dirt and stone, a sense of confinement. Solitude. Only a single candle for company, a new one each day, brought with a meal.”

“Prison,” Jaylor said on a sigh. “Where? Who
could
kidnap a master in the middle of a transport spell?”

“Another master,” Marcus returned. “A rogue.”

“Or an exiled and disgruntled master.”

“Neither Samlan nor any of his followers had enough skill to do that.”

“On that I agree. But if they are somewhere they can still gather dragon magic, they could, with patience, possibly join together and grab one of the journeymen without any finesse. They were all linked so that they’d arrive at the same point at the same time.” Jaylor began pacing, mulling over possibilities. He’d never thought of kidnapping a person out of transport. Never needed to. Or wanted to. Transports were dangerous enough without interference.

He’d been lost in the void once. Lost in the wonder of having no body to feel with, no eyes to see with. Only his mind perceived the dozens of bright, pulsing umbilicals of life. Each one carried the color of a person’s essence. He’d seen his own blue and red braid for the first time, a pattern echoed in the twists of his staff. Brevelan’s green, yellow, and bronze had coiled around him with love and concern. King, then-Prince, Darville’s green and gold had twined through both of them. Somehow, the love the three of them shared had reached through the void to find him and brought him back to reality.

He didn’t know if the bonds of love and friendship among Robb, his wife Maigret, Marcus, and his wife Vareena were strong enough to snatch Robb back.

“How do we find the location of his prison?” Jaylor asked, before he lost his thoughts in an endless loop of memories and despair.

“I don’t know,” Marcus replied softly. “I’ve tried everything I could think of, and this is the first glimmer of success in three months.”

A hesitant knock on the door roused them from sinking into depression. “Yes?” they both answered at the same time.

Heat flushed Jaylor’s cheeks, and he deferred to Marcus with a gesture. This was no longer his office, though technically, as Senior Magician he outranked Marcus, even here.

“Sir,” came a young voice that deepened from adolescent squeaks to an even tenor but still held the variability of youth.

Jaylor looked up to find himself staring at his second son, Lukan. Actually his first son, since Glenndon had been sired by Darville on that night long ago when Jaylor had lost himself in the void, too enthralled with an abundance of Tambootie hallucinations to know where he was.

“Da?” The boy stared back in surprise. He tossed his dark auburn hair out of his eyes with a flick of his head that reminded Jaylor of Brevelan. As usual, his three-strand queue had loosened to the near nonexistence typical of Jaylor when distracted. The burning slash across Lukan’s cheek, left by a stray spark of magic, still looked angry and raw. It would scar rather than heal clean. “I didn’t know you’d return, sir.” Lukan looked away, concentrating on Marcus, his master and tutor instead of his father, whom he hadn’t seen in weeks. “I thought about finding Master Robb while I was studying the maps of Coronnan’s coastline.”

“And?” Marcus asked.

“What if we did a scrying spell with the bowl and candle placed atop the map?”

“I’ve tried that,” Marcus said sadly. “I saw only this candle flame illuminating a dry prison cell.” He gestured to the paraphernalia on the desk.

Jaylor noticed the map for the first time. He’d been so interested in the vision within the glass he hadn’t noticed anything else.

“But you don’t have a candle and bowl of water . . .” Lukan protested.

“Not this time.” Marcus heaved a sigh. “Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Lukan. This matter concerns us all. If you think of anything else . . .”

“Have you tried a crystal pendulum?” Jaylor interjected, happy that his mind finally worked. He smiled at his son and beckoned him forward.

Lukan remained rooted to his position in the doorway, pointedly ignoring his father.

Jaylor lifted his eyebrow in question. Lukan kept his gaze level with his master.

“A crystal, hmm. Vareena suggested the same thing,” he mused. “My wife uses old hedge witch practices. I dismissed it, thinking gathered magic was stronger, more accurate.”

“Never dismiss the gentle magic of a hedge witch,” Jaylor laughed, thinking of Brevelan’s subtle powers that outlasted and worked with finer detail than many a master spell.

“Lukan, can you please fetch me a crystal and a . . . an uncut crystal and a leather thong, I think. A silver chain and jeweler’s tools might taint the primitive intention of the quest,” Marcus said while peering at the map spread out on his desk.

“Like this, sir?” Lukan pulled a piece of opaque quartz from his pocket. It dangled from a thin strip of blonde leather knotted around the center of the vague lump. “I thought that if he’s underground, maybe we’d need something raw, like it was just dug out of the ground.”

“Good thinking, boy.” Jaylor smiled at his son, almost surprised at his logic. The boy had run so wild, with little concentration on anything but his own whims that Jaylor tended to dismiss his intelligence and talent. Then too, Glenndon so outshone everyone as a person and a magician that Lukan kind of faded into the background.

“Marcus, you’re closer to Robb than I,” Jaylor said. “Perhaps you should hold the pendulum.”

Lukan snorted.

“What?” Jaylor demanded, anger heating his face and tightening his fist.

“If closeness is your criterion, then maybe you should have Robb’s wife Maigret, or one of his children hold the leather.” Lukan threw the crystal at his father, turned sharply, and near ran out of the room.

“What?” Jaylor asked, totally bewildered.

“He’s seventeen and
still
an apprentice because no one thought to promote him to journeyman until after his older brother made the same step. He’s not the miracle worker Glenndon is, so everyone presumes he has no talent or intelligence at all,” Marcus said quietly. “And you promoted his two younger sisters, barely out of the schoolroom, passing him over once again.”

“I know that! I needed the girls and their keen observation. Their journey takes them into realms where a boy, no matter how skilled or senior, would not suit.”

“Does he know that?”

“Um. I think the operative word in your castigation of me is that Lukan is seventeen. I forgot how I felt at that age when I was passed over for promotion because I couldn’t explain how I threw my spells, which is important when working in concert with others. I was too full of my success in knowing the spells worked, and worked well.”

“He feels forgotten by both his tutors and his family. Let him sulk for a while. I’ll bring him into a circle of magicians to work this old and primitive search for my friend. I had already planned to promote him tonight. And I will bring in Robb’s two sons, young though they are, they can still gather magic and join with the circle to increase the power of the spell.”

“May I join your circle?” Jaylor asked meekly. His former student had just proved to him how well-suited he was to this office.

“I don’t want to take you away from precious time with your family, sir.”

“All of you are my family. Especially you and Robb. You were always my favorite students. And I now realize that teaching my own family is not always the best idea.” His gaze strayed to the doorway, which still seemed to hold Lukan’s shadow. “I’m too close to the boy, and lacking patience when I know he must learn, but want him to be my equal from the beginning.”