The Silent Dragon: Children of The Dragon Nimbus #1 (32 page)

“You are the best thing that ever happened to me, Mikka. Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

“Only a few hours ago. But you can never say it too much or too often.” She kissed his brow. “I love you too. And I fear for your health if you do not sleep.”

“Then prepare your posset, my love. I’ll welcome a few hours of rest. These maps and reports tell me nothing I don’t already know.”

“Dawn and a new spate of troubles are not far away. Come back to bed.”

He let her take his hand and haul him to his feet. He wrapped an arm around her waist and took one step away from the desk.

“You needn’t run away from me,” an oily voice said from the interior doorway. Someone who could only have entered the private chambers of the royal family by the secret tunnel system.

The slight man, or tall woman, remained shadowed, little more substantial than a silhouette. Darville couldn’t discern much from the voice. Husky, educated, malicious.

He pushed Mikka behind him and reached for his dagger. He’d replaced the useless ceremonial piece with a stout weapon balanced for stabbing, too heavy for accurate throwing. But he had a solid pewter inkwell and a sand canister. If only he could reach them . . .

Mikka slid the sander into his questing hand, anticipating his needs before he’d thought them through.

“Now, now, there’s no need for weapons here. My lovely tells me her bite won’t hurt much at all.” Lucjemm emerged from the shadows stroking a writhing black snake coiled around his neck and down his forearm. It waved its wedge-head, tongue flicking in and out, tasting the air. A red gleam brightened its eyes. A shift of light clouded the edges of Darville’s vision. He could no longer see the snake or Lucjemm clearly. But the doorway behind him, the colors in the carpet, the details of the tapestries snapped into focus.

Then Darville’s stomach sank. The beast had six leathery wings.
Krakatrice.

Behind him, Mikka gasped in fear as the snake slithered down the boy’s arm, freeing itself of his neck.

He could see now that the beast was thicker than Lucjemm’s upper arm—arms made strong with many hours of practice with broadsword and spear.

“The queen?” Lucjemm asked the snake, still petting it, seeming to relish the length of the creature. “You want the queen’s blood. The king’s is more valuable even if hers is more powerful with magic. You must satisfy yourself with the king. I promise you’ll have magic from Jaylor, or one of his daughters.”

“And I thought I could trust you. ’Twasn’t your mother who made you feed the snakes. You did it willingly. Tell me, is your mother even still alive?” Darville taunted the boy, knowing full well she lived. “Or did you feed her to your pets?”

“Leave my mother out of this!” The boy screamed. “This has nothing to do with my mother, or my father. This is between you and me, and my lovely.” He calmed instantly and petted the female Krakatrice once more, hand blurred within a strange distortion of light around him.

While the young man seemed preoccupied with soothing his loathsome pet, Darville threw the sander.

Lucjemm caught it neatly; his hand reached through the cloudiness and became clearly visible for those brief seconds. “Now that wasn’t nice, Your Grace. Not nice at all.”

The snake lurched, fangs dripping venom.

Darville dove beneath the desk, pushing Mikka ahead of him. He was fast, even with a half-befuddled head.

The snake was faster. His arm burned from elbow to wrist as star-spangled darkness pushed at his peripheral vision.

The alarm bell gonged. Once, pause, five short peals. An enemy army approached the first bridges of the city islands.

Heavy steps pounded along the main corridor. “Your Grace!” Jaylor yelled. “Darville!”

“Such an untimely interruption, Your Grace. Next time. We’ll finish this next time.” Lucjemm faded into the shadows of the interior room.

Darville heard the grind of a closing portal before Jaylor slammed his broad body into the wooden door of the office.

The alarm sounded again. Twice, pause, five short peals. The army had breached the first bridges from both sides of the mainland.

Then nothing. He sank deep into a burning blackness that ate at his arm and his soul.

CHAPTER 49

“D
ON’T YOU DARE DIE on me!” Mikka demanded.

Darville clawed his way out of the darkness toward the light that was his Mikka. How could he ignore the woman who had stood by his side, borne his children, and loved him for half his life? She’d been his partner when he was a wolf and she a cat. She’d helped him survive many times since.

Once again he entrusted his life to her.
Stargods,
he wished he could move more than his eyelids. The words of love he wanted to say to her wouldn’t move past the numbness in his lips.

He had to content himself with looking at her beloved face. Worry deepened the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. He needed to soothe them away with hands that wouldn’t move.

“Jaylor, you have to save him,” she implored.

Ah, yes, Jaylor had interrupted Lucjemm, probably saved Mikka’s life, if not Darville’s. If only he could move . . .

A difference in the quality of darkness pushing at his vision from the sides revealed a hulk kneeling at his side.

“Help me pull him out into the light,” Jaylor said.

The darkness made sense now. Darville had dived beneath the desk to protect himself and Mikka. Mikka seemed to have escaped the lunging attack by the snake. As long as Mikka was safe . . .

“Send someone to follow that nasty young man,” Mikka ordered. “Where were the guards? How did he get in here?”

“Tunnels,” Darville said. He wasn’t sure if he’d pushed the words out or not, he could barely hear his own voice over the roaring in his ears.

“I found Fred at the foot of the stairs, nursing a bump on his head,” Jaylor said. He let his eyes cross as he sought information beyond this room. “I sent him to the kitchen for the fortified wine. He has a monster headache and fuzzy vision, but he’ll recover.” Jaylor added some instructions with a mental probe. “I sense him weaving toward your daughters’ rooms to make sure they get to safety. He knows I will take care of you.”

“We’ve got to get the poison out of him before it hits his heart,” Mikka insisted. “No time to summon a healer.”

“The boy is long gone by now. We’ll not find him until he wants to be found,” Jaylor added.

In the distance Darville heard the Temple bells. Two long gongs, a pause, then the five short taps. The enemy was stalled at the first bridge. How long before they raced ahead of the inwardly retreating populace?

Darkness closed in on him again.

“Poison in his heart?” Mikka’s voice quavered in uncertainty.

Jaylor knew the same fear every time Brevelan went into labor.

Mikka raised her hands as if to cover her face and hide from this horrible threat. A mask of calm spread over her features. She felt for Darville’s pulse and nodded in approval. “His heart still beats strong, though too rapidly. What do we need to do?”

“Bleed the poison out o’ him,” Maisy said, coming in from the main corridor. She too knelt at the king’s side.

“How . . . ?” Jaylor shifted to interpose his body between the woman and his friend’s body. The new angle gave him a better view of her aura. Her own pink and light blue dominated in soft, fluffy swirls. Black arrows, that once might have been dark purple, stabbed at her from within, trying to get out. She kept them tightly contained within her outermost layer of life energy. Not fluffy at all, an iron will controlled everything she did or said.

“Lyman invented the warding spells you placed on our cell door. He also invented ways around them,” she said with a hint of a chuckle. “Now I needs a knife. A sharp one. And a bowl to hold the blood ’less you want ’is royalness staining this fine carpet.” She fished scissors out of her apron pocket and slit Darville’s sleeve to the shoulder.

“I never liked that shirt much,” Mikka added. She might be trying to lighten the mood, but she sounded more vicious than nurturing. Jaylor imagined she was working up a good head of mad to carry her through the ordeal.

“It’s the wrong shade of yellow. Go ahead and rip it up for bandages or whatever you need.” A bit of a flippant laugh broke through at the end. Only a bit.

“Don’t look like poison’s hit his great vein yet. Lucky the snake bit in the fleshy upper forearm. Needs a bit to work through muscle to blood.”

Jaylor nodded and handed Mikka his utility knife from his belt sheath, first whispering a cleansing spell and passing the blade through a candle flame.

“Save Mikka and the girls,” Darville whispered. “Let me die if you have to. Save my family. See to the defense of the city.”

The alarm bell interrupted him. Five quick peals. The enemy was on the move again. How? Where? Jaylor needed to be out there directing the defense of the city.

“Linda!” Darville tried to sit up.

Jaylor held him down while Mikka and Maisy wrestled his arm still. “Lucjemm wants Linda. She’s his path to the throne. With her at his side he has a claim to legitimacy . . .”

“Then we will find a way to stop him,” Jaylor reassured his friend. “First you must overcome this little setback. I will see to your daughter.”

“Little setback? Seems to be more than that,” Maisy said on a sniff. “Leave this to us, Lord Jaylor. We’ll set the king back on the path to healing. You go do what you have to do. Find Fred, if that perverted brat of mine hasn’t killed him. Knew I should o’ kept the boy rather than give him to his father to raise. But I loved the Lady Lucinda mightily and thought she’d raise my boy right. The dragons said you needed me more than the babe at that moment, and since I thought him mind-blind . . . well, I think I was premature in that assessment. Them snakes wouldn’t attach to him if he had no magic at all. Only I didn’t count on Jemmarc putting my lady aside with threats of stoning and burning. Now you go, Lord Jaylor. Get your girls and the princesses to safety.”

Jaylor shifted from his crouch. His twin daughters were with the younger princesses. He had to warn them.

Surely the servants and ladies-in-waiting were rousing Josie and Manda. They’d round up the twins as well. That was their job.

Mikka put her fingers to Darville’s pulse again, still worried and fearful. The lines in her face deepened with worry.

Jaylor took a deep breath to ground his talent, keep it from skittering off, looking to his daughters. The king’s golden aura pulsed erratically. They hadn’t a lot of time to get the poison out of him.

“The alarm bells will have alerted the household,” Jaylor had to take a deep breath to keep from bolting to his children and transporting them back to the clearing and safety. “A guard will be here momentarily to check on you, Your Grace. I’ll alert him to Lucjemm on the prowl.”

“This’ll hurt a bit,” Old Maisy said. “An’ you’ll go weak. Jaylor, get him a bit of that fortified wine.”

“He’s had quite enough already,” Mikka said dryly.

“Doubt he’ll be able to swallow it yet, seein’ as he can barely talk,” Maisy continued as if the queen hadn’t said a word. “He’ll need it in a minute though. Gotta get his blood flowing good and proper once the poison’s drained out. So fetch it, boy. And make sure it’s the wine and not that fermented beet juice he prefers. That’ll rob him of all the good bleeding does.”

“No one has called me ‘boy’ in quite a long time,” Jaylor said through an unnatural calm. “And if I remember correctly, you and I are close to the same age. You were one of the first female journeymen I assigned to a noble household.”

“And I were a good ten years older ‘n you at the time.”

“Which means we are contemporaries.” He let his magic sniff for the wine. Found a decanter and a fresh goblet in a cupboard in the pantry behind a servant’s alcove. He let his magic swirl around and inside both, checking for tampering. Then he transported both to the desktop within easy reach.

While they talked inanities, Mikka ripped the knife along Darville’s arm from near elbow to wrist, neatly avoiding any of the major veins or arteries.

Darville inhaled sharply and bit his lip, drawing blood to keep from screaming.

“Ah, now, that bite’s going to hurt more and take longer to heal than the snake’s.” Maisy clucked in disapproval.

Jaylor put both hands behind Darville’s neck, absorbing as much of the pain as he could. Flames seemed to climb from palm to shoulder. The blood pouring out of Darville burned both of their skins, wherever it touched.

He forced himself to take calm, measured breaths to counter Darville’s ragged panting, which matched the alarm bells in pitch and urgency. Second set of bridges breached.

“Breathe, my darling,” Mikka instructed her husband in her best queenly voice that demanded full attention upon her. “Count the breaths. In one, two, three. Out with it on three. Breathe.
Breathe, S’murghit.
I will not allow you to die. Do you hear me, King Darville? You do not have permission to die!”

Darville obeyed. Jaylor obeyed. Maisy obeyed. And finally Mikka obeyed her own orders. She kept up the breathing count, demanding, unrelenting. One, two, three.

Jaylor noted that the act of drawing in air and pushing it out again became a little easier for both him and his friend. They all followed Mikka’s count. Then Darville took a deeper breath to let his lungs find their own rhythm.

“Isn’t that enough blood?” Jaylor asked. “It looks like an awful lot.” A lightness around the top of his skull made him feel as if that was his own blood he watched pouring out of Darville’s arm. Still he maintained his sympathetic contact, sharing the pain, easing it where he could.

“Gotta get it all. Can’t leave any poison in him or ’twill fester and grow and take over. Gotta get it all,” Maisy replied.

For once she cut off her constant babble, cocking her head to listen to the bells. The enemy paused at the second bridge. Hopefully the populace had collapsed it before the army reached it. The river branch between islands was wide there with a swift current. Not easily swum, especially when encumbered with arms and armor.

Stargods, Glenndon was out there. Dawn approached. He should have his staff by now and be starting back to the palace, drained of magic, lacking food and water. He wouldn’t have enough strength to do much but let his boat drift with the currents to the first island with a bridge, then walk back . . .

Glenndon hadn’t been raised in the city. The codes rung by the bells meant nothing to him . . .

He had to go fetch his boy.

Darville’s son and heir.

Jaylor’s boy,
S’murghit!

The alarm remained silent. No further progress by the enemy. Yet.

Lassitude spread from Darville to Jaylor. He just wanted to sleep. He was so very tired. Even his heart and lungs needed a break from the constant effort to keep moving . . .

“Not yet, you don’t!” Mikka forced them both back into consciousness with a shake of Darville’s shoulder and a stab of awareness into his mind. Jaylor shared her probe.

Darville and Jaylor opened their eyes, too afraid to disobey.

“That’s it. Stay awake and breathe. That’s all I ask of you is to keep breathing,” Mikka coaxed.

“That’s all for now,” Maisy said. She sat back on her heels and surveyed the mess she’d made of Darville’s arm.

“I need to . . . find Glenndon, make sure the girls are safe, root out Lucjemm from his hiding place . . .” Jaylor stammered. He slipped his hands from beneath Darville’s neck and shook off his empathic sharing—something he’d learned from Brevelan but had to work at. It left him more drained than it would her.

“I’ll get some clean cloth to bandage and bind,” Mikka said, rocking up to her knees.

“I needs to stitch the edges together. Good thing I always carry my mending kit with me. Never know when a princess is gonna rip a hem or a lady needs a seam repaired on a too tight bodice. Oh, and Lord Jaylor, bring some’at big enough for a sling. He’s not gonna want to hold up his arm on his own much. Needs a real healer he does. Guess that’ll have to wait ’til those alarm bells don’t have nothin’ to ring alarms about no more.”

“I know where the healers hid some of their potions and ointments before the Leaving,” Jaylor said.

Mikka scooted into the bedroom. Jaylor forgot to listen to the old woman for nuggets of truth and wisdom in the spate of words like the tumble of a river full of snowmelt and spring rain. Darville winced every time she pricked his arm with fine, even stitches. She clucked every time he twitched away from the needle.

Jaylor forced himself to remember that the bells alerted the family. The girls would be safe. Glenndon was eighteen and a journeyman magician. Jaylor’s priority at the moment was to get the king back on his feet and moved to safety.

Where was it safe in Coronnan City if Lucjemm moved at will among the tunnels and corridors?

Mikka came back, ripping white linen into even strips as she walked, starting each tear with a bite into the cloth.

Maisy knotted and snipped her thread. Then she laid a length of cloth along the knife wound and pressed hard against it.

Darville screamed again. But Mikka held his gaze with her own. “You’ll be fine. A little weak for a few days, but undaunted,” she reassured him. “We have to remember to make you drink. Lots of water but no liquor. Barely even wine.”

The alarm bells started up again, sharp and urgent. Three long, three short. “Stargods! They’ve found a way past the second bridge!” Jaylor jumped to his feet, assessing what weapons he had on him, what he needed to gather from Glenndon’s room.