The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus) (29 page)

He opened his mouth until his jaw cracked and then got as many of his teeth into the wood as possible.

At the same instant the knife flashed along his left leg. He needed to scream. Gerta held his hands where they held the staff, pressing tightly so that he almost gagged.

The darkness came closer. He felt as if he viewed his body, his friends, and this stranger with a full magical aura of dark brown and bright blue, who might or might not be saving his life, from the top of the slate roof.

A breath of cool air revived him. He opened his eyes to a gray sky filled with lightning flashes that moved around and around. Everything seemed covered in dim mist. Was his sight dying first, before the rest of his body?

“Thank the Great Mother?” Gerta gasped staring upward.

“Thank the dragons,” Chess added.

“Couldn’t come at a better time,” the slave added. “I’ve bled out the black crud. The wound is clean now, fresh red blood. The rain will wash away any lingering poison on the surface.”

“The dragons?” Lukan whispered. He still felt strangely detached and floating, but at least he was back in his own body. He knew that for certain as fat drops of water splashed against his face and fire lanced his leg. Soothing water. Blessed water in a parched land.

“Aye,” Chess said, still looking upward with an awe-filled grin. “There’s a green dragon leading five or six others around and around this vale. The whole vale. They’re flapping up a wind and pulling the clouds and rain in from the ocean.”

Pain-maddened screeches rose from the center of the compound—human and Krakatrice. The fires in the barn and slave quarters sizzled and spat under the onslaught of water.

Lukan dared look at the dead snake stretched across the rise. As he watched, the rain turned the fire-crisped skin into scummy ashes.

“Bless you, young magician. You have saved me and my people from the wrath of those monsters.” The slave bowed his head and touched three fingers to his brow, his mouth, and his heart in solemn salute and prayer.

“Thank you for saving my life.” As much as he hurt, Lukan was almost positive he’d survive. But he wasn’t walking anywhere anytime soon. “May I have your name to remember in my prayers?”

“Juan,” he said simply. His swarthy skin beneath his ragged shirt raised flusterbumps in the new chill from a fresh gust of sodden wind. He didn’t ask for Lukan’s name. Was this a holdover from his time in slavery?

“I am Journeyman Magician Lukan. And this is Apprentice Magician Chess. The lady is Gerta.”

“You honor me with the gift of your name.”

“I request that you fulfill the mission I gave you. I can see by your aura that you have magic. Help Chess summon my brother. Then get to the port. Here’s a coin to buy passage on the first ship headed for Coronnan City. Please find a way to talk to Prince Glenndon personally. You may have only enough time in a summons to give him the barest facts. The Krakatrice’s bubble against magic may not die with them, at least not right away, and that will block your summons. I trust Glenndon to find a remedy for the troubles in Amazonia and to reward you for this service.”

That speech cost Lukan all his strength. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, the sun had shifted, dropping fast toward the horizon.

“What?” he choked out around a very dry and thick throat. Gerta dribbled a few drops of moisture onto his lips. The she held a cup to his mouth. He sucked fresh rainwater greedily.

Then he focused on Chess and Juan. “Did you summon my brother?”

“Aye. He’s starting preparations for . . . something. But he wants us to bring you there quickly. Your father, Master Jaylor, would expect nothing less from one of his spies.” Juan flashed Lukan a big grin.

“One of Da’s spies. I should have known. More reason you need to get home, and quickly. Report to Glenndon and then to Master Marcus.”

Juan nodded. “Don’t let him move. Not for another day or two,” he said, hanging his head in fatigue. “You have to keep the wound open, and don’t move around much until it is truly clear of the venom.”

“Transport,” Lukan said.

“I . . . I don’t know the spell. And I’d be afraid to use it. Last time . . .” Chess said, looking everywhere but at Lukan.

“Last time, Samlan diverted the spell and you ended up here, and Robb in prison,” Lukan confirmed. He looked hopefully to Juan. The spy shook his head.

Chess shrugged out of his pack and thrust it at Juan. “Food, better clothing. This will see you to the city and beyond. Take one of our steeds; we tethered them over there.” He pointed to the far ridge with a clump of trees and three browsing mounts.

Strange none of the fleeing slaves had stolen them.

Juan clutched the pack to his chest and rose in one graceful movement. “Bandage the wound loosely so that it can breathe, but thick enough so the miasma from the snakes can’t penetrate. I honor the trust you place in me and will speak to Prince Glenndon or die trying.” He bowed, turned and ran toward the steeds.

Lukan cringed away from a new cacophony of screams, human and snake. He wanted to run away and leave the monsters with their monstrous human masters to their fate. He didn’t think his leg would support his weight.

“Now what do we do?”

A dragon loosed a spate of flame at a snake trying to flee.

(Trust the dragons,)
Verdii chortled. He sounded a lot like Da.

A
LONE IN ROBB’S room, with no witnesses other than her unconscious patient, Maria balanced the heavy obsidian Spearhead in her right hand. The Spearhead of Destiny. No man could handle it without having it burn his hand to the bone. If a woman of royal blood or a recognized female warrior handed it to the male champion of her choice, then he was safe to use it to defend Amazonia. Upon completion of the challenge, he must return it to the same royal woman’s hands. Neither Maria nor her older sister had felt they needed a champion and so had never entrusted it to the king. That was the only reason Lokeen had left it undisturbed in the treasury. She wondered if the next chore he assigned to Robb would be to find a way to strip the Spearhead of the spell, or curse.

Now she held it as she faced a challenge of her own. The magic embedded in the rare volcanic glass tingled against her palm, almost an invitation to use it. She could not argue with one of the most sacred artifacts in all of Mabastion. The Great Mother had blessed this stone.

The time was coming when she would need to give this to a man . . . or possibly one of the women infiltrating the Palace Guard. But not yet. First she had to cure the wizard.

“Frederico!” she called. The sergeant peered into the room cautiously, still uncertain how safe he was from contagion. “I need a bathtub full of seawater, warmed to body temperature. No colder, not much warmer. And dissolve a third of a cake of salt in the water.”

“My lady?”

“Do it. No questions. And hurry.” Over the next hour she bathed Robb with more beta arrack and dosed him again. This time she had prepared the hellebore, a very dilute mixture. The magician’s heart strained too much. Any attempt to control the rapid beat had to come slowly, gently, a little bit at a time.

Sooner that she thought possible, Bobbeh and Den wrestled a metal tub into the center of the room, followed by three androgynous figures clothed in red—followers of Helvess who nursed the injured and sick when no one else would tend them. The tub was an old design, copied over and over from the time of the first Amazon. A grown man could sit in it, back resting at a slight angle, knees drawn up. Deep enough to cover her patient up to the neck in water.

Behind the tub came Frederico marshaling a bevy of more nurses of Helvess, each carrying two full and steaming buckets of water that smelled of fish and seaweed. He handed Maria the third of a cake of salt. By the time the tub filled and the extra salt dissolved, the water had cooled to the proper temperature.

“Move him into the water, cautiously. The change in temperature may provide too much of a shock.”

Frederico stripped Robb of all of his clothing, throwing the sweat-soaked underthings, shirt and threadbare blue robe into a corner. A nurse gathered them with long-handled tongs. “These must burn, on the open shore where the winds will take the smoke and ashes out to sea.” He scurried out. Maria only suspected him to be male by the timbre of his voice.

The young female nurse turned wide and frightened eyes on her.

“Make sure you stay upwind. Do not breathe any of the smoke. May the Great Mother bless you and all of your order,” Maria said and bowed deeply.

“When we finish, all of the bathwater and the tub must be taken out to sea. I’ll have a boat standing by,” the male nurse said.

“Good idea,” Maria replied and turned her attention to her patient. Their patient. She had help from the least expected place.

And then, miracle of miracles, Faelle walked into the room, clad in red tunic and trews, the red dot of a physician painted at the center of his brow. Tall and blond, he looked like a pale, thinner version of his older brother Toskellar. And yet, he’d added a new assurance and maturing to his posture. He knew his place in the world and did not cringe away. He carried strange metal instruments from long ago for monitoring heart rate and fever and breathing. Maria clutched the goddess pendant beneath her bodice and sent prayers to any goddess who might listen. Working together, they just might save Robb after all.

Maria hugged her nephew tightly, too grateful for his return to speak around her tears. He rested his cheek briefly on the top of her head, then turned to the business at hand. A patient in need of his skills.

Eyes closed, Robb thrashed weakly as the nurses lowered him into the water. The moment the salty water sloshed over the original wound he roused and screamed in pain.

Bobbeh and Den hesitated.

“Immerse him fully,” Maria commanded. The nurses obeyed, keeping hands on Robb’s shoulders and knees to keep him from bolting, even as the fearful guards backed away.

The noxious odor of burning sulfur, rotten fruit, and a diseased skunk rose up from the water to engulf them all.

Maria needed to run away to save herself.

(You know what you have to do
.
)

She had a duty to Robb, to Amazonia, to herself to follow through. She tied a kerchief over her face, much as the desert dwellers used gauze veils to protect themselves from flying sand. All of the nurses had already done so.

Holding her breath, she scooped out a bucket full of water. It stained the bucket dark rusty red. A nurse took it from her and handed it to another waiting on the landing, ready for transport to the boat. Faelle added a fresh bucket of clean seawater and let it mix fully with the old. She wondered if the poison would eat through the metal of the bucket. Or ever come clean.

All of the followers of Helvess wore several layers of tight gloves, another protection she had not considered necessary. Until now.

Robb thrashed some more as Faelle tested his pulse with the strange devices. Maria had to lean against the wall by the window in empathic pain.

Toskellar appeared at her elbow. “The guards should . . .”

“They need to stay ready but out of the way unless called by the nurses. Strong men wearing those gloves must hold Robb in the water. The poison will make him fight against the leeching process,” she said, forcing herself to stand upright again.

“Then let me stay and help. I’m the one who summoned the healers.”

“I won’t take a chance on the poison touching you, Toskellar.”

“I’ll make sure my brother is careful,” Faelle said. “As we all must be. We don’t want to take a chance on you getting sick, Aunt Maria. We . . . I need you too much.”

Reluctantly, she nodded and returned to perch on a stool by the window where she could observe all.

Robb groaned and thrashed. His face blanched until his skin stretched across his cheekbones, almost transparent.

“Great Mother, help me. Help him,” she prayed.

Again and again Faelle and his helpers drew off tainted water, replacing it with clean. Hours seemed to pass. And then, finally, with ten bucketsful awaiting transport to the open ocean, the next one came through almost clear. And the next cleaner still.

Robb’s breathing grew fainter, more rapid. She watched his pulse throb visibly at his neck. Labored. They were running out of time. Another dose of the hellebore. Faelle seemed to read her mind as he reached for the vial of her dangerous brew.

Another three buckets and all trace of rusty black disappeared.

She drew one long steady inhalation, let it go completely, and drew in more air. Then at Faelle’s nod she poured double-distilled beta arrack into the tub.

Robb screamed and jerked violently.

She flinched. “Hush now,” she whispered to him, even though she knew he had slipped too far into his fever coma to hear her. “The worst is over.”

The nurses lifted Robb free of the tub and wrapped him in clean towels. She poured more liquor over the original chafing, now merely pink with all traces of the red streaks faded to little more than a memory, all the while murmuring soothing phrases. All of them meaningless.

“There is nothing more we can do other than watch and wait. We leave now,” Faelle said softly. He clasped his hands in front of him and bowed to Maria. Then he clasped his brother in a tight hug before he backed away and disappeared.

“Thank you,” she said jerkily. Exhaustion flooded through her after the release of tension. Still she sat by Robb’s bed. “A loose wrapping of thick towels, I think. If there is more poison, it needs a path to leave the body. Tight binding will only keep it in.” That required no thought. She knew how to wrap and tie a bandage. She’d done it often enough with her nephews when they were little and rambunctious.

Toskellar fetched fresh, dry linens himself, for both the bed and the patient.

“Wa . . . water,” Robb choked. The first coherent thing he’d said since returning from the farm.

“And water you shall have. Just a bit at first.” She dribbled a few drops from a spoon between his cracked lips. He sucked it up and swallowed without help. Another few drops went down just as easily. She followed that up with a bit more of the medicine she’d concocted. He nearly spat out the bitterness but she gave him more water.

“You’ll mend now, dear magician. I need you well and hale. Amazonia needs you vigorous and decisive if we are to end Lokeen’s tyranny before Rejiia steals the city out from under us.”

“What do we do with it?” Souska asked Lily as they stared at the cup of hideous black goo they’d drained out of the headman’s foot. They’d capped the cup with clay then placed it inside a metal pot with a lid. Still they had to stand back a minimum of ten paces from where it rested next to the midden to avoid the stench of rotten magic.

“Master Marcus and Mistress Maigret would want a CloseSeer to examine it, study it, find an antidote,” Lily replied, cocking her head to one side, as if she could see better from a sideways angle. Her gaze shifted from the pot to the hilltop and back again. A faint smile, something akin to satisfaction, crossed her face. “We have sent Death chasing other prey today.”

“Do you know someone with the CloseSeer talent?” Souska tried viewing the small pot from the same angle. She thought, possibly, she could see a black aura around the cup, but that could be just a shadow.

Lily shrugged. “I don’t even know if such a talent exists. But if we have FarSeers to warn us of danger coming from afar, why not CloseSeers to warn us of dangers too small to see?”

“If such a talent exists, then Master Marcus must know of it. Perhaps we should send it to him,” Souska offered.

“Can you do that?”

“No.”

“Neither can I. But we can’t just dump it. It will spread and poison the land or the water or even the air if we burn it. I think we need another pot and lid around it.”

“We need help,” Souska admitted. Except that neither of them was very good at the summons spell. “Why are you on journey, Lily? You don’t have the skills to be a full magician.”

“Da had a chore for me to do.” She clamped her mouth shut and firmed her jaw.

“You must have completed the chore or you wouldn’t be out here by yourself. You should have gone back to the University to learn more.”

“My twin is at the University. Part of my chore was to learn to cope on my own without her.”

Souska didn’t know how to answer that. She’d heard about the twins. Lillian had strength and a nurturing nature. Valeria had a great magical talent, akin to her awesome brother Glenndon, but was physically frail and kept her emotions tied close to her heart, not letting anyone know what she thought. Together, Val performed magic, and Lily gave her the strength to do it. Lily found the people who needed help and gave them love. Val gave them the help and then retreated into herself. Separate, they were both diminished.

There was more to this story. Souska didn’t expect to hear it now. Maybe not ever.

“So what do we do with the poison?”

“Can you contact Lukan and have him relay the message to Mistress Maigret? Then she can summon us. We can both answer a summons better than we can send.”

Souska thought longingly about talking to Lukan again, seeing his face in her scrying bowl, hearing his voice talk her through whatever magical problem she couldn’t figure out on her own.

A journey is about learning
, he’d told her before he left.

“I think we have to try to summon Mistress Maigret,” she said on a deep sigh. “It’s not the easy way, but it’s the proper way.”

“I know,” Lily agreed. “I need to start the call. I have to know if I can really do it now or if it was Death lending me talent and strength.”

“What does that mean?” Souska backed away a bit, gaze rooted to the flowing white spot on Lily’s forehead.
Death had touched her, but left her living
. Why? What did it mean?

Five minutes later Maigret’s drawn face, eyes heavy and red rimmed, appeared in the glass inside the bowl of water with a candle flame lighting the whole. “Your communications skills have improved, Lily,” she said in a flat voice. “But you must try to light the candle with magic. It improves the quality of the images.”

“Yes, Mistress. I hadn’t the time or the energy to expend,” Souska apologized for them both. They’d only accomplished this much by holding hands and drawing strength from each other. She didn’t like the signs of distress on her mentor’s face. The flat voice seemed the only way she could speak without breaking into tears. Or hysterics.