The Silent Dragon: Children of The Dragon Nimbus #1 (20 page)

He dropped his lips to hers. Gentle. Tentative.

She savored the sensation. Warmth and excitement climbed upward from her belly until she had to close her eyes to keep dizziness at bay.

Then the light around them faded and they heard the door grind on its pivot. “Leaving now,” Glenndon said around a chuckle. “Come now, or never!” His footsteps retreated rapidly down the stairs.

Laughing, Lucjemm grabbed her hand, and they dashed to keep the door from closing, together.

CHAPTER 29

K
ING DARVILLE TOYED with aligning the parchment sheets on the black glass in front of him. He pointedly ignored the cup of beta arrack beside him. He’d fortified himself with strong liquor before coming to this meeting.

Sunlight caught and danced prisms from the magnificent stained glass window above the ceremonial table. The Coraurlia in the center of the table reflected the colors around the circular room. The crown, the table, and the window were the most precious objects in all of Kardia Hodos; the glass could only be forged by dragon fire. No other flame blazed hot enough to burn out the impurities in the sand. Every man-made attempt at making glass resulted in cloudy shards so brittle it proved useless.

Of late the dragons gave their assistance reluctantly. And then only in the presence of a trusted magician.

The men seated around the table made a point of resisting the presence of any magician in Coronnan. If any of them knew that Darville’s son and heir possessed a magnificent magical talent, they ignored it. They found the stability of a confirmed male heir preferable to confronting and examining their fears.

If they knew the truth about what Glenndon had found in the archives, they’d . . . he didn’t know how they’d react. Not well, to say the least. The children had found more than he’d expected, exactly what he needed. Did he dare use it?

He
had
to in order to bring disparate loyalties together.

“My lords,” he opened the meeting of the Council of Provinces. “I have sent Prince Glenndon and Master Lucjemm into the archives.” He nodded to the two young men who sat back from the table on stools. They faced each other over a portable table with inkwells, spare quills, and other instruments necessary to a scribe.

No need to tell the lords that the Princess Royale had accompanied them. They wouldn’t understand that she was more important to him than just a daughter. He expected she watched and listened from her spyhole behind him—with or without her ladies.

“What were they searching for?” Lord Jemmarc asked casually. He leaned back, hands relaxed on the padded arms of his chair. His family crest, worked in fine needlepoint, looked brighter and newer against the time-darkened wood of his chair. He’d inherited his title and honors from Lord Krej less than twenty years before. Rather than perpetuate Krej’s disgrace, Jemmarc had chosen a new crest, depicting mountains and waves rather than mountains and an impregnable castle.

Jemmarc seemed more relaxed than Darville had seen him since he’d dismissed his wife. Perhaps his sister’s stepdaughter had come to court to succeed Lady Lucinda. What was the girl’s name? Darville was surprised Lord Jemmarc had not yet approached his king for permission to marry her.

“I sent our scribes in search of the Council proceedings from the time of the Leaving. I wanted to know for certain what had actually transpired in these chambers on the day the magicians took themselves into exile.” Darville tapped the stack of loose pages before him.

“And what did you find?” Andrall asked, leaning forward. He kept his face bland, but the thrust of his neck and twitch at the corner of his right eye revealed his eagerness.

“These seven pages were each penned by a different magician, each assigned to a different lord as adviser and observer. They all record the same thing but break off at various points in the proceedings as arguments raged and indignation rose.” He looked around the table, catching the gaze of each man in turn. When he had the attention of one and all he turned back to the pages. “‘. . . at which point Lord Jaylor, newly appointed Senior Magician and Chancellor of the University, rose to his feet and beckoned to his comrades saying ‘Gentlemen, since we are no longer trusted here, we, like the dragons, will take ourselves elsewhere until we are invited back with assurances that our counsel is needed and wanted.’”

“What else?” Lord Laislac pressed. “I remember that day. I remember the arguments. Without the controls of dragon magic imposing honor and ethics upon magicians, any one of them could go rogue . . .”

“As my cousin Krej did with his undisclosed talent,” Darville reminded them. A cold knot settled in his belly. He’d been more a victim of Krej’s lust for power than any of these men knew. The months he’d spent in a wolf’s body still taunted him with nightmares he couldn’t escape, and the desire to return to the carefree and wild existence. “My cousin, whom you all elected regent during my father’s last illness, while I lay ill with magical backlash after Krej ensorcelled me into the body of a golden wolf . . .”

“None of us wants to go through that again,” Andrall sighed.

Darville nodded agreement, crisp and short. “The report ends there. We have no record of further proceedings, as we relied upon those twelve magicians to keep track of what we decided.”

“And now we have your son and mine to do that for us,” Jemmarc said. He puffed his chest out with pride, still relaxed, a half smile of satisfaction on his face.

“Yes, we do,” Darville agreed. “I trust them to keep accurate records. But, I know from experience that observations differ. Each man brings his own perspective to the issues.” He looked down at the pages before him, amazed at how much the wording differed from author to author. Yet they recorded much the same when it came to each firm decision or new law. The discussion, or arguments, leading up to a decision varied widely. Just the shift of a single word or punctuation placement could change the entire meaning of the statements.

“They can check each other . . .” Jemmarc dismissed the statement with a small wave of his hand.

“I suggest a third person, someone not present who will read both and reconcile any differences.” Darville tilted his head a bit toward the spyhole behind him. He wondered if Linda listened alone or with her ladies.

“Who?” Andrall asked. He too leaned back, already half in agreement.

“My daughter Princess Royale Rosselinda.”

“What?” Andrall dropped forward, hands clenching the edge of the black table. The glass surface clouded from the heat of his hands, looking like grotesque distortions of his long, slender fingers.

“If the Council thinks it necessary, we can also add your grandson Mikkette to the scribes,” Darville threw out, almost as casual as Jemmarc.

“What!” eleven lords shouted in unison.

“May I remind you, Your Grace, that Mikkette’s father is mentally deficient and his mother insane, unstable, and a sorceress of great talent? She was once a secret member of the Coven from Hanassa and SeLennica,” Laislac said coldly. His daughter.

“No need to remind me,” Darville replied bitterly. “I was nearly a victim of the Coven’s convoluted and secret plans to assassinate me and place Mikkette on the throne with his mother Ariiell, your daughter, his regent. But she would not have truly ruled. The Coven would have guided her every move.”

He let the men absorb that bit of information. “If not for the intervention of Lord Jaylor and his magicians, I would be dead and Coronnan either ruled by cruel tyrants able to put down any opposition with magic, or our beloved land would be in ashes, with every other country in Kardia Hodos banded together to remove the Coven at any cost.”

“The magicians did much for us,” Lord Stennal from Ropeura, said. “I for one miss them.”

“As do I,” Darville admitted, surprised that someone else broached the subject he truly wanted to discuss.

He reached for the cup of liquor to the left of the pages in front of him. The others drank ale. He alone seemed to need the bracing effect of beta arrack, distilled from the giant red tubers from Mikka’s homeland.

Before the cup reached his lips Glenndon’s hand slapped it away. The cup clattered against the table. The liquid sizzled and bubbled against the black glass, etching it with deadly, acidic foam.

CHAPTER 30

G
LENNDON GASPED FOR AIR, fighting the bone-deep burn on his hand and arm. It ran so deep in his veins he had trouble comprehending that his hand was still part of his body.

He tried to banish the fire, but his talent failed him. This was worse than the time he’d grabbed a pot boiling over onto the hearth without padded protection.

“Glenndon, are you all right? Did the acid splash you?” King Darville’s words cut through the chaos in the Council Chamber and Glenndon’s mind. Someone to cling to. Someone he could trust.

He watched, as if from a great distance, as some lords jumped about, shouting and brandishing their fists. Others, like Lucjemm and Jemmarc, pressed themselves against the wall. Lucjemm’s eyes glazed over as if in a trance.

Sensible Andrall threw open the door and demanded guards and servants.

Fred leaped to Darville’s side, dagger and sword already unsheathed. Two quick looks about and he determined that his king still stood and appeared unharmed, so he took up a defensive stance at the doorway to make certain no one entered who didn’t belong in the Council Chamber.

On the other side of the paneling behind Darville’s demi-throne, feminine screams and the rustling of elegant dresses retreated.

But the king, the potential victim of a painful death from poison, thought only of Glenndon. His son.

His heir,
Glenndon reminded himself.
He cares only about stabilizing his kingdom with a male heir.

The tension in Darville’s fingers as he clutched at Glenndon’s shoulders, and the anxious gaze he flicked over him, from the bright red patch on Glenndon’s hand to his eyes and back to the acid burn on the back of his hand, told him there was more in the king’s concern.

A glimmer of warmth and a sense of belonging overrode the pain of the burn, the fear from the attack, and . . . and . . .

“Are you in pain?” Darville demanded.

Some.
Glenndon couldn’t manage more. A lot more than
some.
He didn’t know how to describe how the fire used his veins as a river to travel from one end of his body to the other.

He had to think, had to concentrate lest the fire take his mind. Forever.

General Marcelle and three senior officers barged into the room. They immediately shepherded out most of the shouting lords while the general examined the still-foaming acid etching into the glass. It crept toward the Coraurlia resting benignly in the center.

Glenndon pointed at the endangered crown.

Darville deftly grabbed it by one protrusion and lifted it clear of danger, while still keeping his other hand firmly on Glenndon’s upper arm.

“What happened? How did you know the cup was poisoned?” Jemmarc demanded, now that the chaos subsided.

Color,
Glenndon replied.

The lord and the general continued to look to him for an answer.

“What was wrong with the color?” Darville asked.

Glenndon looked to him with concern that the king now acknowledged mind speech between them. Darville seemed too distracted to care.

“Cup too red,” Glenndon forced himself to say out loud. The effort took his mind away from the pain. For a moment. “Gold when servant brought it.”

“Did you drink any of the liquor, Your Grace? How long did it sit beside you?” General Marcelle asked.

“Almost half an hour,” Linda answered, squeezing through the back door. “I watched the servants set up the room before the lords arrived. And I did not see him touch the cup. He was preoccupied with the records.”

“Long enough for the acid to slowly burn through the gold,” Darville mused.

Glenndon pulled his arm away from the king’s grip to suck on the burn. Linda stopped him, holding his wrist. “Acid,” she said. “It will burn you from the inside out as well as the outside in.”

Her grip seemed to contain the fiery pain to his hand, keep his weakening knees from folding. He sniffed the red splotch. At the same time he nodded to Linda, bending over the table to sniff the now diminishing acid.

“Records?” Glenndon asked. He turned hastily to see if any of the parchment pages were in the path of the acid. Somehow he knew the records were more important than just written words. Darville had not reported everything he had read in them.

When Glenndon and Lucjemm had pulled them out of the archives, a sneezing Lucjemm had been more interested in dragging them both out of the room (while holding Linda’s hand quite possessively) to get away from the dust than in reading what they’d found.

“Glenndon, can you tell anything about the cup, who brought it, who may have touched it, the nature of the poison?” Darville asked. He placed his hand on Glenndon’s shoulder again. His concern and anxiety leaked through his need for touch.

Glenndon reverted to his usual shrug. Fighting the blackness that crept around the edges of his vision, he bent over the table and brought his inner sight forward.

Instantly a black aura appeared around the edge of the golden cup. Not true gold, he decided as bits of gilt flaked away from a base metal inside the bowl. He pointed to the deterioration and looked to the king with his questions.

“It should be all gold,” Darville confirmed. “Very expensive and reserved for the family. Gold should be less vulnerable to the acid . . .”

Glenndon caught a memory from his father: a tin weasel with flaking gilt paint, the form Lord Krej had reverted to when his rogue spell backlashed from the Coraurlia.

“No accident then,” General Marcelle said.

“You expected acid dropped into
my
drink to be an accident?” Darville scoffed.

“Miner’s acid,” Glenndon ground out through clenched teeth. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold out against the pain.

Both Linda and her father gasped at that.

“Fast acting on tin.” Jemmarc paused to gulp. “But much slower on gold. This took planning to substitute the cup for a real one ahead of time. The cups are easily had on Market Isle, cheap replicas of the royal dinnerware. I suspect someone distracted the servants bringing a tray of cups here.” He pointed to the silver cups placed in front of each chair. “And substituted the already-prepared poison cup for the real one.”

“Whoever did this expected me to drink soon after I entered the room with the Coraurlia—it only protects me from magical attack—and not wait until I’d presented the primary business of the day,” Darville added.

Glenndon began humming in the back of his throat, an agitated and angry tune. He needed to speak his warning and knew he couldn’t utter anything so complicated without the assistance of music. The music also helped keep him conscious.

“I smell fear,” he sang to the tune of a funeral hymn he’d heard in the village, clearer than he could have spoken. “Fear doubled by doubt. Trebled by a wish to please. Fear directed by another’s anger.”

“A director and the directed,” General Marcelle surmised. He seemed to have the clearest head.

“A woman’s fear. Her hand moving at the behest of another.”

“Despicable, to use a frail woman such,” Jemmarc spat. “Lucjemm.” He looked around for his son, only to find the young man had joined the exodus elsewhere. “S’murghit, where is the boy? I need him to seek out the servants and question them.”

“We’ll see to it,” Marcelle growled. He gestured to one of his officers to follow through. Another officer lifted the dissolving cup with the point of his dagger and exited with it.

“Now, young man,” Marcelle rounded on Glenndon, “what else do you ‘smell’ in this room?”

Glenndon backed up, seeking a retreat.

“You needn’t fear me, boy. Unlike some I could name,” he glared out the door toward the jumbled mass of lordly tunics huddled together. “But I could use
all
of your talents in this.”

“Later,” King Darville intervened. “He’s too pale. His eyes are glazing over. Linda, take your brother to your mother. Have her, and her alone, treat that burn,” the king barked.

Glenndon shook his head. “No bother.”

“Yes, bother. I need you well and alert. At the moment I don’t trust anyone but my immediate family. The queen knows healing herbs and who she trusts to pick them.” He glared at Glenndon, saying more with his eyes than his words.

But Glenndon could interpret the true meaning. He needed to discover who would do such a despicable thing. And why. And then Glenndon needed to put a stop to that person’s actions.

To save his father.

My plan worked. Exactly as I imagined it. But Glenndon is smarter than I believed. He hides his magic well, cloaks his talent in logic and silence. He knows more than he lets others know.

I can work with that. I can give him false information and let him draw incorrect conclusions. He trusts me.

And while he leads his father and General Marcelle astray, I will be free to direct my minions to lay my traps. Before the summer has passed, Coronnan will be looking for a new king. One who has never been tainted by magic. Someone they trust.

Me.

My lovely calls to me. She watched the day’s proceedings through my eyes. She tells me in my sleep what I must do. Now I do it with glee, and determination to succeed.