The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus) (24 page)

“Stargods preserve us!”

“Keep that in mind. I’m headed to the Krakatrice farm at dawn.” Lukan suppressed a yawn.

“Have you found Master Robb? He can help.”

“I found him. But he’s ill and weak, a prisoner closely guarded. This is up to me and Chess.” Gerta loomed over him, frowning. “And the help of a friend. Just do what you have to do to embargo anything coming from Amazonia.”

“Hard to do. Every ship brings much-needed grain and livestock.” Did Glenndon look a little gaunt?

That made Lukan’s heart stutter. “Do what you have to do. Maybe if you run every load of grain through a sifter? Slaughter the beasts and check their innards?”

Glenndon chuckled a bit. “I’ll see what I can do. In the morning. Get some sleep yourself, little brother.”

“Val and Lily? Are they well?”

“Linda says that Val is thriving,”

Interesting that he talked to the half sister he’d known less than a year and not to the half sister he’d grown up with.

“Linda knows politics and helps me through the maze of conflicting agendas,” Glenndon responded to Lukan’s unspoken surmise. “The Univeristy is helping Lily as they can. She says beware of a plague left behind by the snakes.”

Plague?
Chills ran up and down Lukan’s spine. “Plague. Master Robb has been to the farm, and he’s deathly ill.”

“Lily is working on a cure. We’ll let you know as soon as we know.” Glenndon’s image faded as sleep called him.

Lukan made his farewells and closed his fist to end the spell.

“The guards are changing and the servants are stirring. We can’t get back to your room unseen,” Gerta said bluntly.

“Fine with me. I’m happy to sleep up here. As long as I’m up. The stars will keep me company.”

With a grunt, Gerta lay down beside him, hands behind her head.

“There’s the Wanderer, due east at dawn, north at sunset. Our guide on the journey.” Lukan mumbled as he automatically named and sorted the stars.

He fell asleep before he could find two more.

T
HE SUN HAD just touched the tops of the hills. Red-gold streaks set them aglow with the promise of a new day, a new beginning, a chore that must be completed. Lukan looked his steed in the eye and wondered what mischief the beast had in mind for him. He didn’t like riding, but today, with the back of his knee bruised from the star gravel that made him limp, Lukan needed to ride. He was limping for real now.

“It’s just a docile hire-steed,” Gerta sneered. She swung into the saddle easily. She had chosen the animal with the broadest back, to support her magnificent height and weight, and the longest legs, to eat up the miles between the edge of the city and their high plateau destination. Her mount also stamped restlessly, tossing its head and twitching its mouth around the bit. He’d need a firm hand to keep him from bolting and throwing his rider.

Chess shrugged and swung his leg over the back of a quiet mare.

Another tall and strong woman held the bridle of Lukan’s mount. “Hurry up, I’ve orders to join my troop inside the castle,” she said.

“Report to your brother Frederico, Frella. He’s our liaison to Lady Maria,” Gerta said, walking her steed in a wide circle to keep him from bounding off on his own.

Lukan made note of the complex relationships among the women exiled from the castle. It didn’t make the idea of climbing atop his steed any more desirable. “It would be easier to transport you all there by magic,” he said to himself.

“But then you’d be too tired to fight the Krakatrice,” Chess reminded him. “Besides, you’ve never been there before, and the image Master Robb gave you was blurred and uncertain because of his fever. I do hope Skeller is able to get him better conditions and a healer.” The boy worried his lower lip, looking back to the castle where it loomed over the lowlands and harbor.

“We need to get going, Lukan. Mount now, before the guards at the city gates wake up and detain us with too many questions we dare not answer. We haven’t had time to replace them yet.” Gerta kicked her steed into an easy stride out of the stable yard.

Lukan checked to make sure his staff rested snugly in a loop of leather tack affixed to the saddle. Frella had assured him that guards used such an arrangement to anchor banner poles or spears during parades or while escorting a noble here and there.

With no more reasons to stall, Lukan hoisted himself ungracefully atop the steed. It sidled and stamped but did not unseat him. He was glad that Gerta had not seen his clumsy effort. Gritting his teeth, he set himself to enduring an uneven gait. “At least I’m not walking. But even with a limp that might be easier.”

The steed broke into a jouncing gallop, eager to catch up with his stall mates.

Lukan held on for dear life.

Eventually the steed grew tired of tormenting his rider and settled into a steady gait. At that point Lukan began to enjoy the freedom of traversing long distances on something else’s leg power. The scenery told him a lot about how Amazonia had developed. A relatively lush but narrow lowland beside the sea. As they climbed, the farmland grew more productive from both irrigation and the way the first mountains trapped the rain. But this was high summer. Few storms crashed into the land. It looked to him like the entire western edge of the continent had suffered from a lack of storms. Was this a normal cycle of a dry year?

Long ago Coronnan had adopted the practice of storing grain against drought years. They came quite regularly in seven- and eleven-year cycles. They were due either next year or the year after. From what he’d heard on his journey across Coronnan with Skeller, King Darville might have to dip into those stores
this
year to make up for the low harvest after the mage-driven storm. Certainly he would if he had to cease accepting all grain shipments from Amazonia. Not that Amazonia looked as if it could spare those shipments.

If King Darville used up the stored grain, would he have enough left for the next drought?

“Gerta, do you have droughts on a routine basis?” he called ahead of him. She rode her steed easily, as if from long practice.

She slowed her mount on the narrow trail, as if she needed to divert her attention from controlling the headstrong beast to matters of weather and crop management. “I don’t know.”

“Someone in town said the people had to revert to dryland ways this year, as if they knew how to cope with drought but hadn’t expected it.”

She shrugged. Such things were not her concern.

“One of the first things I learned when my Da trained me to hunt stray Krakatrice was that they instinctively dam rivers and streams, diverting water away from their territory. Water is their enemy as much as enchanted obsidian spearheads. If left to their own devices, the snakes will eventually change the climate from lush farmland to desert.” He swept his arm wide to indicate the stunted vines and cabbages on the south side of the trail.

“History tells us that when the Stargods first came to Coronnan the Big Continent was nearly all desert, except for a very narrow strip along the coastline,” Chess said, eyes brightening because he remembered something important and could contribute more to the journey than just an extra pair of hands. “It took nearly a thousand years after the defeat of the Krakatrice to recover the land.”

“Are you saying that the monster snakes are more of a threat to Amazonia, to all of Mabastion, than just the king’s hideous need to watch them
kill
people?” Gerta pulled hard on the reins, forcing her steed to stop in midtrail. The beast stamped, snorted, and half reared in protest.

“Yes. That is why the magicians and dragons of Coronnan went hunting as soon as the eggs and snakes began to appear,” Lukan affirmed.

“Does the king know this?” Chess asked.

“I heard . . . we had a . . . situation in Coronnan City early this year when a man thought a Krakatrice was his pet. It had taken over his mind and free will until he obeyed only the snake’s need for blood, and more blood. Eventually he led a rebellion in order to give his ‘pet’ magical and royal blood to allow her to grow bigger and stronger. Meanwhile, her consorts started damming the rivers. The mighty River Coronnan, more than a mile wide in places, slowed to a trickle.”

“The king has lost his mind,” Gerta said quietly, obviously aghast at the situation. Then she shivered all over, blinked her eyes rapidly and firmed her chin in determination. “We have got to end this. Now.” She kicked her steed into a fast trot and headed uphill toward the plateau and the snakes.

Maria curled up in the padded chair in her private parlor that her sister had had made for her many years ago, when the young queen was still vibrant and listened. Before she fell under Lokeen’s spell, before she’d succumbed to two difficult pregnancies and dangerous deliveries that produced only disappointing male children.

The privacy of her parlor remained sacrosanct among the servants. Even Rejiia’s man Geon would not get past the kitchen staff to listen at her door.

“You look comfortable,” Toskellar said. He tapped at the sole of her boot with an oversized hammer—the only one he could find—and tiny little nails. “That doesn’t happen often. I remember you telling me and Faelle stories about the glorious past of Amazonia from that chair. We felt loved, and like we belonged somewhere, when you did that.” He kept his eyes lowered to the repair of her boot.

“I do love you and your brother. Despite his choice to join the cult of Helvess. But he is a talented healer and found the people who gave him the training he deserves.”

“We know how much you love us. More than our father ever did. Or our mother could.”

“If you knew you were loved, why did you run away, Toskellar?”

“I go by Skeller now,” he said.

“Please answer my question, nephew.”

“I ran away because I was young and I didn’t know how to counter my father’s gradual but determined undermining of our laws, our trade alliances. Our traditions.”

“But you are back now. Why?”

“I’ve seen enough, learned enough, been hurt enough to know that I have to do something before he ruins Amazonia and the rest of Mabastion.”

“We have no heir to my sister’s crown,” Maria repeated the litany that had kept her from running away herself. “The only way to remove your father from the throne is for you to marry a suitable princess and rule in her name. I have sent five letters to our neighboring city-states begging for a . . .”

“I will not have the princess Lokeen arranged for me to marry.”

“He is your father. You should call him what he is.”

“Then I call him Tyrant.”

Finally Toskellar raised his face to her, resolute as she had never seen him before. He had indeed matured these last five years.

“What is wrong with the Princess Bettina?” Maria broke the staring match by turning her face away as well as changing the subject.

“Before Lokeen married my mother, we had no crime worthy of execution. Exile to the desert was the worst sentence for criminals. We had little crime at all. Oh, we had the occasional assassination, small, sporadic wars, but nothing long lasting and we always,
always
returned to peace with our neighbors as well as among ourselves. Now the king publicly executes criminals. What is their crime? They incurred the king’s displeasure.”

Maria swallowed deeply. “I . . . knew this, but I did not want to know. I pretended . . .”

“You pretended it didn’t matter. But it does matter. And now his bloodlust, his insanity, has spread to our neighbors. Princess Bettina among them. She not only countenances public execution. She avidly watches.”

“Is there anyone else you would find suitable?”

“The woman I love.” He turned away from her again, letting the hammer dangle idly from his right hand. “She is a natural empath. She won’t even eat meat because she shares in the death of the animal that gave its life to feed others.”

“If you love her so deeply, why did you leave her?”

“I made an excuse so she wouldn’t know how I pushed her away when I should have embraced her and helped her weather the emotional storm of . . . of . . . doing what I did not have the stomach . . . the courage to do. She killed the man who conjured the storm that nearly destroyed Coronnan. She used my knife because she knew I could not do it.”

He paused a long time, looking into the distance, his throat working as if he choked back tears. “I felt the man’s death. Lily and I had developed a bond. A strong bond born of companionship—friendship—and then love. Her empathy forced her to share in the man’s death, and I . . . I felt it too. We both died a little bit in those moments, when his eyes glazed and his spirit passed beyond.” He gulped and firmed his jaw. “We both needed time apart to heal. Every day I stay here and see what he and my father have done to Amazonia, I heal. I no longer regret the man’s death. I’d do it again even if it cost me my own life.”

“Who did she kill?” Maria covered her face with her hands, knowing.

“We knew him as ‘Sir.’”

“The magician who came and went on his own schedule for nearly ten years. The man who advised your father . . .”

“The man who introduced the king to the Krakatrice. The man who exported Krakatrice eggs to Coronnan to destroy that kingdom for whatever reason he thought valid. Samlan, a master magician and teacher at the University of Magicians in Coronnan until he defied their ruling council and was exiled.”

“He took up permanent residence here in the castle last spring.”

“Until midsummer when he conjured the storm with his other exiled masters and apprentices. He diverted Master Robb’s transport spell here so that he couldn’t help destroy the Krakatrice in Coronnan. Then he coerced Robb’s journeymen and apprentices to help him. But he is dead now. They are all dead. My Lily killed him, and I deserted her so that we could both learn to accept that sometimes such a death is necessary. That gentlest, most nurturing woman in all of Kardia Hodos was braver and stronger than I.” He gulped convulsively.

Maria watched his throat apple convulse as he choked back strong emotions.

“I would marry her in an instant if I knew how to get her back. The princesses you parade before me would pale in contrast to her. I would go into such a marriage reluctantly, and only if I knew for certain Lily would never have me.”

“If you will not marry, we are lost.”

“We have you, Aunt Maria.”

“No. I cannot. I am . . .” She waved vaguely at her twisted hip. It ached suddenly, despite the carefully placed pillows and padding.

“Long ago our queens led warriors into battle. They commanded armies of men and women. But they ruled with the loving and nurturing perspective of a mother. Not all of our queens have been warriors,” he said.

“But they were all mothers of daughters.”

“Not all of them. Remember the history you taught me, Aunt Maria. The first Maria never married. She never bore children. In fact, she loved another woman; I believe her name was Helvess. And then there was Joanna III, she married and bore one son who died young of a wasting sickness. In both cases a natural heir rose from the ranks of women warriors.”

“Your father disbanded the troops of women warriors.”