The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus) (18 page)

As soon as she’d written the letters she threw a light cloak over her, masking face as well as body, and slipped away from the castle. She knew where to find a blacksmith and a tanner.

“B
REATHE WITH THE bellows, match the rhythm,” Chess coaxed Lukan into the first mystery of the magic of blacksmithing. “Keep it steady. Steady!” The last came out louder, more urgent as the apprentice guided Lukan’s hand.

Lukan’s arm muscles froze with the bellows handle pulled halfway down.

“Don’t stop. Just ease up. You’re putting too much air in.”

“Okay, okay. Slow and steady. I got it.” Lukan forced himself to breathe with the flow of his movements, willing the air pump to infuse greater heat into the coals.

“Use all of your senses, Lukan. Smell the fire, hear the smoke rising, taste the heat.”

“Feel the sweat dripping into my eyes.”

“That too,” Chess chuckled.

“All I can hear is your girlfriend’s hammer slamming into the metal over and over again,” Lukan grumbled.

“I’m not his girlfriend,” Gerta said flatly as she dropped her hammer neatly into its place on the rack and lifted with her heavy tongs the steedshoe she worked. After a brief inspection she grunted and plunged the arch of steel into a bucket of cold water. Steam hissed as it rose around them, carrying the unique odor of the trade.

Lukan’s nose was so stuffed with heat and smoke, of burning coals, of hot metal, and he didn’t know what all else, he could no longer tell which scent belonged to which component.

“Smith?” A faint whisper at the edge of the awning arrested all movement.

Lukan whipped his head around so quickly his neck cricked.

A tiny woman, draped from head to toe in a cream-colored cloak that fluttered lightly in the breeze, stood just inside the shadow of the overhang.

“My lady,” Gerta said reverently, dipping a curtsy, right knee bent to the side with the toe touching the ground behind her left heel, that was at once the epitome of respect and grace and utterly absurd without a skirt to flare.

Chess rapped Lukan’s arm free of the bellows sharply and pushed his back so that he bent over in an unplanned bow.

“Who?” he mouthed.

Lady Maria
. As if that answered his questions.

“My lady, you honor my humble workplace,” Gerta said, retaining her dip.

Lukan’s back threatened to cramp in his unplanned and awkward pose. A hasty look around told him he really shouldn’t shift so much as an eyelash.

“Blacksmith, I have need of messengers I can trust,” Lady Maria said, taking a step closer to the forge.

“My lady, I am but a simple journeyman smith for my father. I no longer perform such services.” Gerta straightened and stiffened. She stood tall, at attention, eyes staring into the distance. Like a soldier.

“There are no messengers left in royal service that I trust,” Lady Maria replied. “I would reenlist those I’ve lost.”

“My lady, I regret . . .”

“Smith Gerta, please. This is important.”

“Aunt?” Skeller appeared on the opposite side of the awning. His harp hung loosely in his arms as he drank in the sight of the woman.

“Aunt Maria!” He rushed to enfold her in a hug, for once the harp an awkward impediment instead of an extension of his personality.

Lukan ducked in to relieve his friend of the harp.

“Toskellar!” she cried and threw herself unashamedly into his arms.

“It’s Skeller now, Aunt Maria. Just Skeller. Prince Toskellar no longer exists.”

“I know, I know, my beautiful boy.” She caressed his cheek as if memorizing the planes and angles. “I have missed you sorely.”

“And I you. Tell me how you fare?” Skeller kept his hands on her shoulders, stepping back just enough to allow him to survey her.

Then Lukan noticed that she stood crookedly, leaning heavily to the left. He wondered if she’d topple should Skeller remove the support of his touch.

“My lady,” Gerta interrupted. Her eyes swept back and forth around the streets and passersby, wary. Her hands at her sides clenched and unclenched as if itching for a weapon. “My absence on a messenger mission for you would be noted.” Her chin flicked in the direction of two heavily armed men wandering from shop to home to well, keenly observing everything.

And Geon slinking ten paces behind them.

“I have had some luck wandering the streets at will, my lady,” Lukan interjected. But he’d have to find a way to lose Geon in the maze of alleyways. “May I be of service?”

Lady Maria looked at Lukan in puzzlement.

“Aunt Maria, my friend, Journeyman Magician Lukan, and Apprentice Magician Chess,” Skeller said. “Lukan, Chess, Lady Maria, most royal sister to our late queen who was my mother,” he said solemnly.

“The magician boy?” the lady asked. “I see no staff.”

“Over there,” Lukan inclined his head toward the corner of the house where it stood, ready and waiting for his command.

She sighed and nodded.

“My letters need to go farther abroad than the city. Can you dispatch them?”

“I . . . I am only a journeyman, my lady. I do not know the spell,” he admitted. Shame heated his cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears. He should have learned that spell. He knew the principles of it. Any magician could figure
that
out. But he didn’t know the particulars. He’d skipped classes that week—he and Glenndon had gone fishing at a lake outside the village at the base of the foothills.

“Magic isn’t what you need, my lady,” Gerta interrupted. “You need to reestablish your contact with all of the female soldiers who have been removed from the guard. It is a disgrace that Lokeen has exiled the core of our history and culture from the castle. Amazonia was founded by women warriors. We need to return them to places of honor rather than hiding in fear of a mere man.” She stood two heads taller than the lady, jaw firm, spine straight, head proud.

Lukan lost his heart to her in a single breath.

“How can
I
contact them?” Lady Maria asked simply. “Lokeen has been most thorough in his purge of anyone previously associated with the queen. I am watched. The guards think I wish a new pot spider-arm specially made for my personal hearth.”

“That I can make for you. And I know how to find a few of my troop. I am too well known; my absence would be noted. There are others working the caravans and ships who come and go at will. Give me your letters and I will see that they are dispatched by trustworthy messengers,” Gerta said.

The lady nodded and fished three quarter-fold parchment sheets from the interior of her light linen cloak. She placed them into Gerta’s outstretched hand with a snap.

“How have we been reduced to this travesty?” Skeller asked shaking his head. “Forsaking our laws, our most honored traditions, for the greed of one man.”

“It all happened slowly, Highness,” Chess offered. “Very slowly.”

“My sister is as much to blame as any,” Lady Maria sighed. “She hated making decisions lest she disappoint someone. She gave over all but the most formal of ceremonial duties to her husband. We got so used to turning to him for a decision, accepting his decrees as stemming from her, that we hardly noticed when she died and he should have stepped aside from the throne.”

“And I ran away rather than face my responsibilities to marry a suitable princess.” Skeller hung his head.

“You escaped certain death at the hands of a monster,” Maria reminded him. “And now you are back, you must do your duty.”

“I have no love for . . .”

“Love is not part of the equation. It never has been and never will be in royal families.”

Lukan had to gulp. He knew there was little chance that Skeller might find happiness with his sister Lily—and not just because of the trauma of murdering Samlan. Eight years separated them, as well as rank and nobility. Lily would never be happy living in a city beyond the first few days of curious exploration. Now he knew for certain that his beloved sister would never have a chance with the man she loved.

And his brother Glenndon, childhood companion in mischief, confidant, and . . . and friend, faced a similar fate. As heir to the dragon crown of Coronnan he was destined to marry for alliance and treaty, not for love.

Sadness swept over Lukan, and he was very glad that he was just a lowly magician journeyman without royal duty and honor.

Lily watched Souska as she carefully measured the hellebore and crumbled it into the mixture of mushrooms and algae. Together they counted the dried leaves: one, two, three, four, five. Each ingredient drifted into the mixture bubbling sluggishly in a ceramic pot over a low fire in their hut.

“No more than five. Ever,” Souska warned. “A little less if you are treating a person of small stature or one who is very old.”

“How do you know if it’s the right amount?” Lily asked her, committing every motion to memory. A number rhyme came to mind, something Mama used to teach her to make potions. The tune made it easier to remember details. Skeller would use the same method.

“You have to trust your experience and the lore handed down from grandmother to granddaughter through many generations,” Souska replied.

Lily sat back on her heels. From this perspective, she saw one mushroom cap that hadn’t broken into powder completely. She ground it a bit more with her pestle.

“Can you mix it too fine?” Lily persisted with her questions. “Does overgrinding push the essential components out of the plant and into the mortar?” The last words sounded breathy and hesitant.

Souska ran the back of her fingers along Lily’s cheek and brow. “Your pulse is rapid and a low-grade fever persists. I think you need the first dose.”

“No, no, I’m fine.”

“No, you aren’t. Your skin is clammy, your hair lank. And your breathing is ragged. You are only days out of your sickbed, and you used up every scrap of strength you had initiating a summons to Maigret. A sloppy summons that had no secrecy built into it.”

Lily had the grace to blush. But it didn’t warm the spot on her forehead. Death had said that she could not call her. Yet. “I will recover. There are others worse off. They need this precious brew before I do.”

“You need it to keep going. I am here to help. You needn’t do it all.”

“For that I thank you. I’m surprised Mistress Maigret allowed you to stay.”

Souska sniffed the concoction and did not answer.

Lily followed suit, concentrating on the separate scents of each ingredient, as Mama had taught her. She had to understand the heart and soul of each plant. This would be easier, better, if she’d gathered the components herself, whispering a prayer of thanks to their voluntary separation from their growing medium. She had to work hard to banish the odor of her own sweat, the last meal she had cooked in the tiny thatched hut assigned to her, and the stale ashes in the fire pit. Gradually, she isolated the mustiness of the mushroom, the faint scent of rot in the algae, the sweetness of the hellebore flowers. All there. All in the right proportion. Time to add it to the infusion of willow bark tea.

She poured the boiling hot tea into the mortar. The brew sizzled and bubbled as the medicine absorbed the liquid and the mortar cleansed itself of residual bits, dumping them into the tea.

A swish with a wooden spoon and it was ready to decant.

Souska pushed the first cup into Lily’s hands. “Drink it. All of it.”

“But . . .”

“First rule of the Healer’s guild: Never try to treat another with the same ailment as yourself. You and the villagers get well and then we deal with curing the land. I’m going to the headman’s hut to start dispensing this to the ailing.” Decisively she unfolded her legs and rose, lingering until Lily drank as ordered.

“Now I know why Maigret ordered you to stay and help,” Lily said as she blew a cooling breath across her tea.

“No, you don’t. She ordered me to come because I’m the least valuable apprentice.”

“But you’ve learned so much . . . you know how to handle the hellebore.”

“Anyone could have given you a written recipe and left.” Souska shrugged. “Your brother taught me much over the summer. But it’s not enough. Never enough to make up for . . .” she drifted into silence hanging her head in shame.

“Lukan is good about that. He’ll make a fine teacher someday.”

“As will you, if you survive. Now drink. It’s best when hot.” Souska took the bowl of medicine and walked resolutely toward the largest hut in the village. It stood square and solid in the center of the half circle of dwellings. “It’s not that I’m not grateful to the University for taking me in when no one else wanted me. But . . . but now they don’t want me either.”

A new chill invaded Lily, as if Death’s cold mist had wandered by. She peeked out the doorway toward the hilltop. Death still lingered there. Not here.