The Silent Dragon: Children of The Dragon Nimbus #1 (25 page)

“Do you have everything?” She gestured to a pile of satchels and bags scattered at their feet.

He cupped her face with both of his hands. “I don’t have you following behind me, my love.” His only love.

“My adventuring days are over.” She glanced at Jule and Sharl playing with a tame gray scurry, its bushy tail curling upward and tiny front paws holding a nut the children had given it. A curious flusterhen squawked and pecked at the seeds lumped into Sharl’s apron. She was supposed to be feeding the flock, not playing with a wild pest.

“We had some interesting times when we journeyed together.” Jaylor smiled.

“Go, dearest Jaylor,” Brevelan said. “Take the girls and teach them something of civilized behavior while you are there.”

She turned away from him and gathered both girls into her arms, clinging to them as desperately as she had Jaylor. Sometime in the last few months the twins had grown taller than their mother (Valeria not quite so much as her sister, but still taller), and she had to stretch to enfold them into her embrace. “I shall miss you both,” she whispered, kissing each girl on the cheek, then holding them tight again.

Jaylor chuckled. “I wonder if the princesses will teach them manners or if our twins will show the prim little girls how to run wild and steal onions on Market Isle.”

“As you did for a young prince sorely in need of a friend?” They both laughed. Brevelan stepped away from her girls and pushed them gently toward Jaylor.

“What are they talking about?” Lillian whispered.

“I don’t know, but I think they are sharing a part of their past they don’t want us to know about.”

“Oh.” Lillian sounded disappointed. “They never kept much from us before.”

“Except that bit about King Darville being Glenndon’s father.”

“I wonder how that happened.”

“You won’t find out by whispering behind our backs,” Brevelan said. She speared them with a reprimanding gaze. Then she clasped her arms around Jaylor’s waist and gave him one last fierce squeeze. “Take care of yourself and our girls. Don’t make me come after you.”

“I’ll do my best. But I might just go looking for trouble so you
will
come after me.” He kissed her nose and stepped away, slinging a pack over one shoulder and slipping his other arm through the straps of another. “Grab your bags, girls, and hold on to me tight. One on each side.”

Valeria and Lillian stepped into the circle he’d drawn in the grass with pebbles long ago. Brevelan backed away.

Jaylor opened his mind to Valeria and Lillian, showing them an image of a dark storeroom. Barrels and boxes were stacked neatly around the sides, leaving the middle of the room open. “See the empty space, girls. Fix it in your mind. Firmly. Don’t let your thoughts wander from that spot. Lillian? See the room.”

“I can’t, Da. It’s all fuzzy.”

Valeria sighed and reached around in front of him. Lillian’s hand grabbed her so that they made a circle.
Now can you see it?

Lillian nodded.

“Good. Now hang on tight and don’t let that room move so much as a feather’s width from your vision.” Jaylor counted slowly, evenly, timing his breathing to his count. Valeria matched him. Lillian joined in, after a quick mental prod. “Here we go,” he said when their hearts and lungs and minds fell into identical rhythms, matching the pulse of the Kardia beneath their feet and the song of the wind in the tree canopy.

Darkness swirled around them. Jaylor caught a brief glimpse of the bright tangled cords of life tying them together. Then more darkness that spun around and around them in ever tightening spirals until . . .

CHAPTER 36

I
NDIGO BRUSHED HIS FACE against Glenndon’s calf, nearly knocking him over.

“What?” Glenndon froze in place as soon as he regained his balance. He wished Linda had ignored her mother’s panic and come with him. But they couldn’t leave Mikka raising an alarm and hurting so deeply over the possible loss of her daughter.

They just couldn’t. He’d have gone back to Mama in a similar situation.

The flywacket chirruped like a normal cat, not using his intelligent mental voice.

“We know that the official archives are in the East Tower. They aren’t the magical archives left behind at the Leaving. Do you know where we need to look next?”

(Down.)

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Glenndon shuddered at the thought of the weight of the river and tons of dirt and rock pressing upon the tunnel. He knew the river sought an opening, any opening, to collapse the stones on top of him . . .

Indigo chirruped again, sounding very much like laughter.
(Dig deeper.)

“That’s not much help. We’ll start with the Well.” He plodded down the steps and along the main passage.

(Down,)
Indigo repeated.

“Not tonight. We’ll look for the archives another time. We only have a few hours to explore tonight.”

(Down.)
Indigo scampered ahead of him. The light beneath his feet seemed to dim.

Glenndon continued on, following the ley lines, looking for patterns in the joining and separation of the lines, noting now-familiar landmark runes as he turned this way and that.

Indigo stopped and turned a full circle, nose working rapidly.

Glenndon gathered a glow ball into his palm.

A flitter of movement down a side passage, where the lines did not wander, captured his attention. Not Indigo. The flywacket had pranced ahead along the main passage, his bushy tail gathering dust and cobwebs. This other movement, here and gone in less than a heartbeat belonged to someone else. An eavesdropper? Or some other denizen of the deep?

He should have sensed a presence. But he’d been so engrossed with the ley lines that the Kardia could have quaked and shaken the wall stones loose and he’d not have noticed.

Who?
he asked Indigo.

A mental shrug akin to his own silent responses to questions.
(No smell.)

Everyone has a smell.

(Masked.)

He caught a whiff of acrid smoke, a common odor close to hearth fires that were quenched with water when they grew too hot. An odor strong enough to hide behind, but not so strong or alien as to alert Glenndon. Someone stalked him. At a distance. Or someone who knew the oversized black cat would be with him set and doused a fire deliberately to produce masking smoke. Someone who knew that Indigo’s sense of smell would alert him to the stalker.

Glenndon gazed longingly at the tangle of ley lines that merged and grew fat, lush with power at the junction just ahead, the junction that plunged downward into the bedrock beneath the river. He was close to the Well. He knew it.

His stalker must not be allowed to find it. Anyone who couldn’t find it on their own didn’t have enough talent to know what to do with the source of power.

The one who followed in secrecy could not be allowed to suspect how close they were to the Well.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Indigo?

(Games?)

Yes!

Glenndon made a show of turning in a circle, holding up his glow ball. He examined a number of cracks and crevices, the floor, the ceiling. He sent a spider scuttling to safety away from the center of its web. A mouse squeaked as it fled into a tiny hidey-hole. A tiny lumpy black snake slithered rapidly away, avoiding the puddles. After several minutes of appearing lost, Glenndon turned resolutely back the way he’d come and then darted along a wide passage with a dwindling ley line sliding along the wall at about knee level.

The rune at the beginning of this tunnel looked like a loaf of bread. He headed toward the kitchens.

Indigo scampered off in the opposite direction, mewling and chirruping as if he chased prey.

He’d never get lost down here.

Hm. What would it take to push his pursuer into wandering down a looping dead end for a very long time before stumbling on a way out?

Glenndon could discover the stalker’s identity by counting heads at court and seeing who was missing. Only his father had dismissed the court and the Council. The lords and their retainers had departed for their own lands, or residences in the city. Many were missing.

The smell of yeast and flour enticed him forward. The cooks had set the day’s bread to rise. His stomach growled in response. He still hadn’t replenished his energy reserves since working that healing spell with Linda the previous afternoon. He had the perfect excuse to slip into the storeroom and thence into the larder for some fruit and cheese. He’d even welcome some stale, day-old bread or jerked meat.

A new sound made him stop short in the act of opening the trapdoor that would allow him access to a small clear spot created by an odd stacking of storage barrels. From inside the room, no one would suspect this empty space. Had it been created by a spy?

The air thrummed with power. He tasted the aromatic spice of Tambootie. The delicate new leaves at the tops of the trees rather than the fat, oil-rich, succulent leaves lower down.

He tensed and watched as the air in the center of the room glowed and sparkled. Only one person would dare use a transport spell into the bowels of the palace.

From between two barrels he peered at the shifting light. Three forms coalesced out of the shimmer. The magical light faded quickly replaced by a glow ball in the palm of the central figure. Tall, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, with dark auburn hair and a tightly braided formal queue.

“Da!” Glenndon stood up and vaulted over the precariously balanced barrels. He hurried to hug Jaylor in relief. The sight of the twins stopped him. “Why?” he pointed at the girls, suddenly tongue-tied. He couldn’t see their faces very well in the dim light.

“We’ve come to help,” Lillian said. “Haven’t we, Val. Val?” she repeated herself when her twin failed to speak up.

The smaller of the two girls wilted. Glenndon just barely caught her before she slumped to the floor. “What did you do, Valeria? Manage the entire transport spell yourself?”

“She couldn’t do that!” Da insisted. “Shouldn’t be able to. She has no training, nor does she know the secret. The lifesaving secret.”

Glenndon knew better.

“Now what?” Darville yelled at whoever pounded on the door to his suite at this horrible hour before dawn. Not even the birds that cheeped at the first glow of sunlight on the horizon were awake yet. The only sign of life in the palace, in the city, was the smell of new bread rising.

He sat in a large, padded chair by the hearth, hair unbound, sleep shirt and robe rumpled, sleepless with worry. What was he going to do about a divided and angry Council? A Council he’d dismissed.

He looked into the empty goblet that dangled from his fingers. No, he dared not drink more. Especially now that dawn approached. He needed to be awake and aware, not dulled and sluggish.

Mikka stirred in the big bed, moaning slightly at the disturbance but not coming fully awake. She needed rest. More than she was willing to give herself.

The pounding renewed itself with increased vigor.

Darville stalked to the door. If the pounding hadn’t awakened Mikka, his own footsteps wouldn’t. He opened the door a crack to peer into the long corridor reserved for royal family quarters.

“Father,” Glenndon whispered, trying hard to keep his wide smile from splitting his face.

“This had better be good news,” Darville growled.

“Come,” Glenndon said and beckoned him to follow toward his own room. His smile never faltered.

Darville stepped into the corridor, closing the door silently behind him. “What?” he whispered to his son. Mikka might sleep through a kardiaquake. The servants and retainers in the wing wouldn’t.

Glenndon just urged him forward with an imperious wave of the hand he could have learned only from Linda.

An enormous black cat brushed its face against Darville’s leg. He nearly jumped with fright. He hadn’t seen a cat in the palace since . . . Ambassador Jack had banished the cat spirit from Mikka’s body fifteen years ago. The cat chirruped and nearly attached itself to Glenndon’s heels, tail high and fluffy, ears twitching with normal awareness but no alarm.

Then with great ceremony Glenndon opened his own door and bowed as nicely as any practiced courtier, for Darville to precede him.

“You’ve been working hard on your technique,” Darville complimented him, not relaxing his wariness.

“Linda,” Glenndon replied.

The cat agreed with him with a purr and more face rubbing. Absently Glenndon reached down and scratched between its fuzzy ears. It had tufts growing out of them and more whiskers than any cat had a right to.

Darville resisted the urge to add his own caress. Somehow it seemed like betrayal of Mikka to accept the cat.

“You needn’t fear Indigo, Your Grace, he’s actually a flywacket,” Jaylor said from the center of the room.

The cat ran to him as if greeting a long absent friend. Jaylor obliged him with scratches under the chin.

But the two little girls, who should have been delighted by the presence of the animal, did not respond. They huddled together in one of the big chars by the hearth, arms about each other, foreheads touching, gazes locked together as tightly as their red-blonde curls tangled into one mop of hair.

“Jaylor,” Darville greeted his old friend with relief and an outstretched arm. They grabbed elbows and slapped upper arms in affectionate, masculine greeting. “You came.”

The heavy weight of kingship sloughed off his shoulders. A little.

“You summoned. I obeyed.” Jaylor released him, turning his attention back to the little girls. Glenndon knelt before them, stroking their hair and mumbling soothing words.

Darville cocked his head in their direction in silent question.

“I need their observation skills.”

“But . . . ?”

“Valeria has never been strong.”

“What do you need?”

“We need a healer,” Glenndon said, rising from his crouch.

“She has always recovered after a hearty meal and a night’s rest,” Jaylor said hesitantly.

“The hearty meal I can provide,” Darville said. He turned to the bell pull to summon a servant.

Glenndon shook his head before he grasped the decorative rope. “She needs more than food this time. Her body is shutting down. As it did when . . . before. Before . . .” He looked to Jaylor for permission to complete his sentence.

Jaylor shook his head.

“What are you keeping from your king?”

“Magician’s business.”

“Magician’s business should be my business,” Darville affirmed.

“Not this time. You are my oldest friend. My one true friend. But in this matter, it is best you do not carry this information at all.”

“Do you fear my indiscretion?” Anger and hurt twisted in Darville’s gut.

“No, dear friend. Never that. I fear rogue magicians hired by your Council to read your mind and bring you down.”

“My Council?” Darville laughed, without humor. “Magic and magicians frighten them more than Simurgh himself!”

“What of Simurgh’s black offspring?”

Something in the set of Jaylor’s shoulders scared Darville. “Not sure I ever heard any legends about
our
dragons allowing the bloodthirsty demon to live long enough to spawn.”

“In the last year Baamin and I have fought six Krakatrice. Marcus and Robb an equal number—each. None of them were the matriarchal black snakes with six wings, thank the Stargods. Only juvenile males. My spies tell me they are returning to the Big Continent and someone is smuggling their eggs into Coronnan City.”

“Are they as immediate a problem as your very ill daughter, or five of my lords gathering armies outside the city?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“If the lords are going to attack each other or join forces to attack you.”