The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 (9 page)

Mikk slid his hand down until the metal made him straighten his wrist and forearm into one long line.

“Good, good. Now three fingers around the grip, thumb and pointing finger up under the crosspiece.”

Mikk put all of his strength into his fingers.

“No, no. Not so fierce. Control your blade with the thumb and first finger. The other three just balance.”

“But I’ll drop it,” Mikk protested.

“Less likely. A soft grip gives you control. A fierce grip takes away your control. This is a light blade. You can do tricky things with it you can’t do with a broadsword.”

“Light?” Mikk’s arm trembled from the weight of it.

“Yes, Light. We’ll build you up so that this one feels like a feather. Then we’ll move you into heavy weapons that you have to hold with two hands. No finesse with those, just brute force.”

“Like yours?” Mikk asked in admiration.

“Spent a lifetime doing this. My broadsword is like an extension of my hand. Doubt we’ll get you that far. But I’ll train you so that you don’t embarrass me in the arena, or out on maneuvers. Might even save your life if we have to go into battle.”

Mikk wanted to sneer at that statement. He didn’t think he’d ever be as comfortable with a sword as he was with a book. “I’ll do my best, sir. For you.”

The general smiled. “That’s the first lesson. Now,
en garde
. Keep your elbow tight and your feet spread.”

Mikk obeyed without words, more eager to endure this private lesson and learn something now that he had a glimmer of the elusive control over his blade.

Thank you, sir,
he thought. The general smiled back with evil mischief in his eye.

“W
E’RE STOPPING, MY
lady,” Val said quietly.

Ariiell twisted in her doze, turning her head away from the harsh voices and snorting animal sounds coming from her right.

Val leaned over and parted the heavy curtains a bit. Cool evening air slipped between her fingers, lightening the damp heat within the litter. “My lady,” she said a little louder. “We are stopping for the evening. We’ll have fresh water and a meal shortly.”

“Nnnnooo,” Ariiell mumbled, flicking her head right and left in agitation. “Stop. Now. You’re hurting me.” She thrashed her legs and arms, fighting dream restraints. “Let me go. Please, please stop. You’re killing me!”

Instinctively, Val pressed back against the pile of pillows behind her, putting as much distance as possible between her and the evil memories that plagued Ariiell.

You are my charge. I can’t let you suffer this way
,
she reminded herself. She sat straighter, folding her legs and tucking her feet close. “My lady, you must awaken from this dream.” She pushed a mental probe into Ariiell’s mind.

Chaos pushed her out again. Making contact with Lillian had never been this difficult, even when Valeria had been trapped within the body of a flywacket, a large black cat with iridescently feathered wings.

Val reached forward tentatively with gentle fingers on a thrashing ankle and concentrated on a slender thread of magic, worming her way around and under the churning miasma of emotional and physical pain. Overwhelming grief, guilt, and regret looping back upon itself and intensifying with each whorl and swish of memory nearly swallowed her whole.

She remembered eavesdropping on the Circle of Master Magicians as they worked one of their spells in the courtyard of the Forest University. To avoid detection, she’d had to bury her consciousness in the soil, like a worm pushing its way along, oblivious to anything except to keep moving and eating. Like that little worm, she pushed aside this tiny tendril, bent around that deeply rooted rock. Black, clinging vines, covered in piercing thorns, twined around and around a huge knot of ugliness.

Ah! That was the core of the problem; she’d have to work on breaking it up later. Only when it had become small bites, easily digested, would it dissipate and allow Ariiell to live with her memories without lapsing into insanity.

Around the next bend, hiding in the shadow of dreams, Val found what she sought. Slowly but surely she opened The Forget and spread it over the hard rock, like a soothing blanket.

A new idea brightened her mind. The Forget slipped often, exposing raw and ugly memories. What if . . . Slowly carefully, Val slipped one of her own memories beneath The Forget; a pleasant memory. One of Val’s best. For a brief time while wearing the flywacket body she had flown. Flown like a dragon across the skies. Light and air holding her up and dazzling her mind.

Then she eased back out of Ariiell’s mind the way she’d come. Before she’d completely withdrawn, the lady opened her eyes and looked around. “We’ve stopped for the night. I smell fresh water. Have we reached Lake Apor already? Can you get that irritating box out from under me?”

“There is nothing between you and the bottom of the litter but a down mattress and pillows.”

“Oh. I must have dreamed about creatures of magic breaking free of their eggs. I think I’m supposed to do something with them. Have we reached Lake Apor?”

Eggs?
Had General Marcelle said something about eggs? She hadn’t paid close enough attention. But she’d searched the entire caravan and smelled nothing wrong. She would have to push into Lady Ariiell’s dream later.

“Not yet, my lady.” Val swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth left over from Ariiell’s memories. “We’ll be on the road another two weeks at least before we reach your father’s lands.” She rolled and pushed through the heavy drapes that had hidden them from prying eyes all day. She spotted a tall, lean, uniformed guard lifting a waterskin from the lake four yards away. The treated leather dripped, the drops sparkling like fine jewels in the westering sunlight.

Valeria dashed toward the soldier wearing the royal colors of green and gold. “Please, sir, may I have a drink?” she pleaded, looking up at him shyly from beneath her lowered lashes.

“Aye, lady. ’Tis been a long and dusty road.” He handed her the cool leather by its carry rope.

Val grabbed it with both hands and drank greedily, all the while scanning the long chain of sledges and people in search of the other gaily draped litter for sign of her twin. The moment she spotted the bright colors Lord Jemmarc claimed as his own and for his lady, she thrust the skin back at the soldier with barely a thank you.

Desperately, she needed to talk to Lily, share her experience and gather some ideas for a cleansing ritual. A shedding ritual. Either that, or take a magical hammer and chisel to that ugly writhing knot in Ariiell’s mind.

“This would be better outside,” Lukan said quietly to Jaylor as they joined Marcus, three other master magicians and Robb’s two sons, Stevie, aged five, and Robby, aged seven, in a circle around Marcus’ desk. Marcus unrolled a large and detailed map of Coronnan, anchoring the four corners with specially chosen rocks. A tiny beeswax candle, smaller than Jalyor’s little finger and with a virgin linen wick, sat in a tiny clay cup, anchored by a drip of more melted beeswax over the section of the Southern Mountains that Forest University called home. Another clay cup containing fresh spring water sat atop a blue splotch on the map that represented Lake Apor, near the Western Mountains.

“Arranged to your liking?” Jaylor asked his son.

“Needs to be outside,” the boy muttered again, looking over his shoulder toward the window. Marcus had partially closed the shutters, giving the crowded room privacy with only a little fresh air—and not enough of a breeze to disturb their tools or the spell.

“It’s late and raining. The ink on the map would run and confuse the spell,” Marcus murmured gently.

“We know where everything on the map is. The magic will too.” Lukan set his chin in a combative mood. His usual of late.

“Hush, time to breathe deeply and center yourself. Left hand on my shoulder. Right on . . .” Jaylor clenched his fingers around his staff, momentarily forgetting that Lukan did not yet have a staff to anchor and channel his magic.

“I know.” Lukan ground his teeth together.

Jaylor wanted to tell his son that after tonight he would have a staff. But that was Marcus’ privilege.

Maigret, the potions mistress and Robb’s wife, ushered her two young sons to stand between Jaylor and Marcus. The boys couldn’t reach hands as high as the shoulders of the tall men flanking them. They had to settle for grabbing hold of an elbow or hand. The little ones joined their free hands and held the leather strip supporting the crystal pendulum.

“Now breathe deep, just like we practice every morning,” Maigret said softly to her sons, from outside the circle. A woman could not gather dragon magic and thus her presence inside would disrupt the flow of power.

Jaylor didn’t think he’d ever heard a gentle word from the headstrong, determined adventuress he’d sent as a spy to the palace when Darville and Mikka had first married. But then he’d never thought she would willingly cease journeying and settle in one place long enough to learn to love and nurture children.

Her sons mimicked her, matching each inhalation to each other. The masters and Lukan had more training and control—they had to find the boys’ natural rhythm and make it their own.

Jaylor closed his eyes and listened with his mind as well as his ears. Consciously, he increased the pace of his breathing to match the youngest among them. His heartbeat followed and felt like it raced.

“Not natural!” his body tried to tell him. He shut down the impulse. Heat rose into his face. A headache threatened to pound behind his eyes with the effort to follow rather than lead in this critical part of the spell.

The other masters seemed to have as much trouble as he. Only Lukan, a natural mimic who could copy anything but initiate little, fell into the rhythm easily.

At last, after much longer than usual, they all settled into the pattern, odd though it was. Jaylor’s left hand tingled where it rested atop a child’s head. The energy stretched across his arms and shoulders into his staff and beneath Lukan’s touch on the other side.

The magic grew.

In the back of his mind he saw colors shooting up from the top of each staff, colors that matched the signature of each magician in the circle. The strands blended and twined with each other, spreading outward and upward. He caught the barest whiff of aromatic tree bark. The Tambootie. Marcus burned a single leaf in the candle flame to aid Lukan and the two youngsters in joining.

With a nearly audible snap, the varied colors met and closed a dome above them, completely enveloping them and their spell.

Only then did Jaylor fully open his eyes. The candle burned brighter, flame, wick, and wax each separate unto themselves and yet combined to complete their functions. The water did not quite meet the edges of the bowl, a separate element from its container. So too did the men, their staffs, and their magic sharpen in detail rather than blur together as they should.

Alarm began to spread through Jaylor.

He tamped it down while widening his senses. He noted the boys’ auras blending and encompassing the pendulum as it swung in wide circles, seeking.

Like to like, Jaylor projected to every individual mind. The bonds of friendship and camaraderie stretched far. The bond of blood between the boys and their father defined the search, narrowing the circle of the crystal.

The pendulum’s path stretched into an oblong, narrowing until it swung back and forth between the lake and the sea, pausing at each end but settling nowhere.

Marcus opened his eyes and stared at the map.

Jaylor felt a dip in the magical energy. The dome lowered and cracked.

Lukan gasped, gargling dry choking sounds from the back of his throat. He yanked his hand away for contact with his father’s shoulder to clutch his temples. He dropped to his knees keening in pain. “Get out of my head!” he screamed over and over. “I’m not dreaming. You have no right to my thoughts.”

Jaylor broke his contact, reaching for his son.

Magical energy released too soon without grounding whipped and snapped about, lashing faces and hands, any exposed skin, leaving all present burned and bloody.

“L
UKAN!” JAYLOR SCREAMED
with mind and voice, through his own blinding pain between his temples and behind his eyes. He groped forward and dodged the lashing magic that burned as it passed and shredded his formal blue robe, even though it did not touch his skin. Yet.

Lukan! Where are you?
He ducked and crawled toward where his son had collapsed. He wasn’t there! How could he have moved away from his spot in the circle in only two heartbeats?

He heard Maigret wailing and calling her boys to her side. She’d been outside the circle. Perhaps . . .

“Maigret, ground the magic. Do it now, before it kills us all!” he yelled over the cacophony of men crying out in pain and the whir and slash as the magic tendrils turned into vicious whips.

He sensed her twisting her fingers, weaving the magic strands into a pattern, giving it purpose. Every time she managed to bring three whips together, one would fray and break free.

She tried again while sheltering her two sons in her lap. They cried and clung to her, too frightened to help in the game she’d invented for them.

A chuckle of amused triumph tried to sound in the back of Jaylor’s mind. He almost recognized it. Another slash of migraine blindness threw the voice out of his head.

Then his hands found the trembling form of his son. Lukan still knelt with his hands pressing against his temples, eyes buried in the crooks of his crossed arms. “Not my fault. Not my fault,” he whimpered pitifully. “He invades my dreams and now my spells. Not my fault. I can’t keep him out. I’m not trained. I don’t have a staff.
Get out of my head!
”

Jaylor sat and pulled the boy close, letting Lukan bury his face against his father’s chest as he did when a child. Child no longer. Jaylor rocked back and forth, back and forth, with his face pressed tight against his son’s dark auburn hair, so like his own. His son. His own true son and he didn’t know how to help him. How to help himself when every movement tore at his eyes and his sanity.

(Focus,)
a friendly feminine voice whispered from far away.
(Focus on the Kardia, the land that nurtures you. Let the land take you. Feel the land within your heart.)

Jaylor breathed deeply, the first lesson of a magician; learn to breathe.
Focus your breath and heartbeat until they become one. Feel the pulse and rhythm of Kardia Hodos, the world, his home. The path of the heart. Merge with it. Blend with it. Let the magnetic pole to the south orient your senses and give you direction
.

He followed the litany of his youth. Whispered the words as he obeyed the rules of the lesson. Slowly, carefully he found his sense of self buried in the land beneath the wooden floor of the wooden building of the Forest University he had helped build with his own hands.

The wild magic around him slowed, straightened, lashed with less energy.

(Draw the magic into you and drag it deep, deep into the heart of Karidia Hodos where it belongs. Forge a path for it to find its way home.)

“Home,” he said aloud, still rocking his son. “Go home.” He nearly cried out as the untamed energy shot through his heart, down through his body, down, down, down into the depths of the world. Each time he thought he’d sent the last of it on its way home, another long strand jerked away from Maigret’s careful weaving and burned a hole in Jaylor’s heart, his gut, or his brain while it sought to follow its fellows back to the Kardia.

The pain was too much. He screamed and released Lukan so he could try and hold his head together with the strength of his hands.

(Focus!)

Shayla, matriarch of the dragons and longtime friend, turned that one word into a scathing condemnation of his pitiful attempts to accept her nurturing. Jaylor had never heard a curse from that gentle dragon voice. Didn’t know if Shayla could curse. That one word came too close for him to dare defy her.

He opened his mind one more time, found the last four whipping strands of blue and red. His colors. With a deep breath he commanded them to braid together, just like his queue when it went wild, taming it into order. Magic resisted. He pushed. Blackness covered his eyes. He welcomed the cessation of blinding light that stabbed his mind from all directions, inward and outward.

At the first sign of obedience from the magic he fumbled for his staff, always nearby, even when he dropped it. Someone pushed the wooden tool into his hands.

(Focus!)

“Come!” he commanded with mind and magic and voice. The blue and red braid twined around the staff, accepting a like pattern as part of itself.

With a mighty effort he slammed the butt end of the staff against the floor, dislodging the raw magic and sending it shooting straight into the Kardia below.

“Lord Jaylor, you did it,” Marcus gasped.

“And that is why he is Senior Magician,” Maigret affirmed.

“Not much longer,” Jaylor sighed. “I think I’m quite blind.” He passed a hand in front of his face and saw nothing. No shapes, no outlines, only streaks of colored light, akin to the lashing magic. Or the umbilicals of life pulsing through the void between here and there, now and then.

“Stargods, it’s all my fault!” Lukan screamed. Running footsteps followed by the slamming of a door signaled he had run away from responsibility once again.

“My own son ran away from me!”

People are so naked in their dreams. All of their hopes and fears reveal themselves to the careful watcher. That little nap Jaylor took this afternoon may have rested his body, but his mind remains in turmoil. He barely noticed as I latched a piece of my mind to his. In fact he welcomed the tiny bit of calm that surrounds my presence.

He and I are one now. What he knows, I know.

I could not allow him to find my prisoner. When the crystal changed its circle to a straight line between the two points of interest, I had to break the circle. I am not yet ready to release Robb. My prisoner is strong in mind and body. He commands the respect and obedience of his journeymen. If I cannot break the master, I must separate him from his juniors. His belief in their betrayal is the strongest weapon I have.

But I have absorbed the wild magic at the same time as Jaylor. I have endured the same pain as he. I knelt in the center of my own circle wailing in pain, trying to pluck the searing lightning from my eyes. I came close to embarrassing myself before my followers.

Mind links have their dangers. If I sever my connection I may regain my sight quicker than he.

But then I lose a great advantage.

What to do? I have never been indecisive before. I have always known my path.

What to do?

I can endure this pain no longer. I give it all back to Jaylor.

But I found the boy. I dismissed his dreams as too easy to read. He is too transparent and harbors few secrets. Worthless. I had no hold over him. But he is vulnerable because he is so young and so very angry with the world. I can manipulate him through his anger
.

Lukan climbed. The fastest path away from Da’s temper was to move upward, faster than his father could follow.

First he ran. Blindly. A tree root tripped him just beyond the University steps. He flailed to stay upright, moving forward with each awkward step. When his head and feet knew up from down, right from left, he ran on until his knees connected with a boulder as high as his waist. Pain jolted from the bruised joints down to his feet and up his spine. His head wanted to disconnect as shadows within shadows spiraled around him. He flew forward with a gush of air exiting his body. Smooth granite scraped his palms.

He wanted nothing more than to crumple to the ground and let the cool drizzle wash away his hurts, inside and out.

“Lukan!” Da called from inside the building.

Clumsily, Lukan braced himself on the boulder and pushed upright.

“Lukan, come back here,” Da commanded on one of his trademarked roars.

Lukan hastened around the solid rock, his feet finding the well-worn path uphill. Sixteen long strides and he sensed an opening among the trees. An apprentice meditation circle. Straight across the small clearing he found another path and continued. Thirty strides and he heard the chuckle of the creek above the first fall. Then one hundred strides until he found his tree.
His
tree. The stunted everblue with sturdy limbs that stretched close to the ground. He could crawl up against the trunk and remain as hidden as if in a cave.

He’d done that often enough when hiding from Glenndon in childish games. But Glenndon always found him.

So he climbed, finding handholds and foot grips by memory. The rough bark oozed soothing sap over the scrapes on his palms. “Thank you, my friend,” he whispered with mind and voice. Tree responded with a ruffle of long needle tufts and a sense of enfolding Lukan within his shadows.

Lukan’s tree might not be as tall as his fellows but his limbs were stout and solid ten feet up before they spindled into a fluffy top. Clinging to the trunk he edged around until he settled his butt into a convenient fork that always fit his body as he grew and allowed him to lean back to rest his head against a soft splotch of moss.

He heaved a sigh and listened to the wind. The gentle breeze carried only its own gossip, not the turmoil he knew must roil through the University at this moment.

“What’s happening to me?” he asked both the tree and the wind.

They answered by releasing the sharp scent of the sap and . . . and something more. Something exotic that had picked up the weight of salt water, grain-filled plains, and a spice that tantalized and burned his nose at the same time.

“Foreign,” he guessed. “Something from far away.” That wasn’t quite right. “
Someone
far away.”

Wind and tree quieted in agreement.

“Someone invades my dreams, trying to learn what I know. But I don’t know anything. I’m just an apprentice and no one trusts me.”

He thought back to the scrying spell that had gone all wrong. Such a simple spell. A basic spell with crude tools.

Simple tools
, the tree reminded him.

“Simple?” That was the key. Nothing complicated. A simple path from mind to magic to answer. Anyone with half a mind and cunning could step onto that path, probably in his own shadow and watch all. And then . . . and then just as the answer seemed obvious that shadow person from his dreams had twisted the path, hidden the answer, and wreaked havoc with the spell.

“Not my fault!” he cried to the wind. “But I will be blamed. Just as I am always blamed. Even when I am innocent. Though I’m usually not. But this time I am.”

Satisfied that there was nothing he could have done to prevent the chaos, he wrapped himself in the warmth radiating from the tree’s sun-warmed bark and slept.

Slept for the first time in weeks without troubling dreams with strange whispers and images awakening him every hour.