The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus) (22 page)

Geon remained stolid and silent in his corner.

“She’s drinking in the smell of fear and gaining power from it.” Lukan kept his head down and his gaze averted. He’d heard tales about snakes. He’d trained to hunt the Krakatrice before Robb disappeared. If she had aligned herself with the monsters, then her gaze would be hypnotic, ensnaring the unwary. Paralyzing them.

“If Lokeen started with baby Krakatrice, their bubble of protection would be small, growing with them. Three moons ago they wouldn’t interfere with magic. Today they block it completely,” Lukan continued thinking half-aloud. “The bubble only goes ten, maybe twenty feet up, depending on the number and their size. I’m betting the fourth floor and above are outside the bubble.”

“I have found a royal bride to succeed my late wife as your queen. She is young and healthy and will give us daughters to continue the line,” Lokeen continued.

“Young and healthy, my foot,” Lukan snorted, continuing to whisper. “She’s only a few years younger than my mother. They were half sisters. Lord Krej was Mama’s father, but her mother was a peasant girl, not worth marrying.” He looked frankly at Skeller, the prince who’d just been thrust aside from the succession. “My sister Lily is nearly as royal as Rejiia and you love her already.”

Skeller’s head whipped around to stare at Lukan. “Why didn’t you tell me this last spring when there was still a chance that Lily and I could make a life together?”

“The subject never came up.” Lukan flashed him a grin. “We don’t talk about Grandfather Krej as anything but the enemy; we don’t want to acknowledge him, or Rejiia, as relatives.”

“I thought Lady Ariiell in her raging insanity would make a bad queen for my father. Even after she crawled out of her guilt and grief and pain, she’s too stubborn and independent. Rejiia is worse,” Skeller spat.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“I wish I knew.”

R
OBB SHIVERED IN the cold night air. He wasn’t certain whether he’d slept. He hadn’t been this tired since his apprentice days, right after the Leaving: the day that the twelve Master Magicians had walked out the Council of Provinces and moved with all their possessions to the mountains, depriving Coronnan of magic and advice and clerical skills. With the entire country angry and suspicious of magic and magicians (thanks in large part to Lord Krej’s manipulation of the royal family and council through magic), Master Jaylor had ordered all-day and all-night watches. More than once Robb and his best friend Marcus had gone two nights and three days without sleep.

But they had been young, then, healthy, well fed, and resilient.

He’d aged more than fifteen years since then and suffered moons of privation in this filthy dungeon. He’d need a lot longer than half of one night’s good sleep in a comfortable bed, and more meals of fresh bread and salty broth to recover his strength.

All that he knew at this moment was that he needed food and sleep. And an extra blanket. The last he dared not hope for. The first would come because Lokeen still needed him alive. The second he hoped for after the next meal.

Had he dreamed the woman in house livery who had given him his meal? The bowl rattled next to his pallet every time he rolled over. Therefore, someone had brought him sustenance. He hoped her message that friends would come for him at midnight had been real as well.

His eyes drifted closed then snapped open as a night breeze worked through the tiny window and reawakened the flusterbumps on his arms, legs, and back.

Was that a scraping at the bars and rockwork around the window? He opened his eyes only to slam them shut again in the too bright light at the opening. After the stygian darkness of the dungeon, any light near blinded him.

“Master Robb,” a voice filtered through his brain. “Master Robb, wake up.”

“If you aren’t here to rescue me, then go away and let me sleep.”

Something blocked the light for a moment. Then a whisper of wool brushed his nose. He sneezed. Violently. The top of his head felt ready to drop off.

And he shivered again, deeply, from his skin into his bones and back out again.

The wool weighed heavy on his chest, and he realized that whoever crouched at the window had dropped him a blanket. A wonderfully warm and soft blanket. Well, it scratched his face, but it was softer than the straw he lay upon. Quickly he spread the blanket over his entire length. A modicum of relief crept outward from his body core. “Bless you, young man.”

“It’s me, Master Robb, Chess.”

“Chess?” Surprise and delight warmed him even more. “You’re alive?”

“And well, sir. I hid and ran as you instructed. I don’t know what happened to the others.”

“They are dead,” Robb said flatly. “Samlan recruited them—upon pain of death if they rebelled—and they died anyway. He left them to die in the storm he’d used them to conjure. When I get out of here, the first thing I will do is kill him.”

“He’s dead, sir,” said a slightly older voice, richer in timbre as if trained to speak or sing publicly.

“Are you certain?” Maybe he could just tell Lokeen that his pet magician had died and not have to scry into the past again.

But he sincerely hoped he would never see Lokeen again.

“I watched the light of life fade from his eyes as . . . as my knife slid into his heart,” the rich voice said. He nearly choked on the last words. Not a trained warrior used to death in battle, then.

Robb heard some scrapes and scuffles among the crouchers at his window.

“After I ran from the castle I found refuge with a blacksmith nearby,” Chess continued. “I watched and listened as best I could, hoping to hear about you. I’ve brought Lukan with me.”

“Thank the Stargods. How fast can you get me out of here? Lokeen has a farm dedicated to raising Krakatrice. We have to burn them out, salt the land, and bring hard, drenching rain to kill them. We have to stop the king’s madness, thinking he can rule the world through the terror of the snakes.”

“I know the snakes grant an illusion of power to the ones they bond with,” Lukan said. He sounded older, more self-assured than when Robb had left him at the University. “But it is only an illusion. The snakes are in control. Especially if it is a matriarch forming the bond.”

“I saw no matriarch at the farm. Just lots of eggs and juvenile males. I think Lokeen’s followers steal them from wild nests. Dormant and kept near freezing, but not quite,” Robb added. Small hope that the absence of a matriarch would lessen the king’s insanity.

“The farm,” a woman said on a whispered exhale. He thought it might be the same woman who had brought him food and helped him eat the first few crucial bites.

“What do you know, Gerta?” That perpetually angry voice could only belong to Lukan.

“Whispers of fear. Slavery, drudgery, working to death, having your family executed if you do not obey.” Her voice shook. A woman as tall and strong as she, who wore a soldier’s uniform as a second skin, needed grave news to crack her demeanor.

“You have to get me out of here so we can destroy the farm. Only then can we begin to bring down the king’s tyranny.” Robb forced himself to stand so that he was closer to eye level with the window. The top of his head brushed the bottom sill. He made sure he brought the blanket with him and draped it around his shoulders.

“No, sir, we can’t break you free,” the richly trained voice said.

“This place is killing me!” Robb screamed, no longer caring if anyone else heard him. No longer caring for anything but the possibility of getting away from Lokeen, the monster snakes, and this dungeon.

“Sir, think carefully, logically, please.” Could that really be Lukan speaking? He’d never been careful or logical in his life.

“If we break you out now, your absence will be noted,” the woman said. “We’d never get out of the city, let alone as far as the farm.”

“She’s right, sir,” Chess added hesitantly. “Can you persevere a bit longer?”

Robb sank back onto his pallet, more weary in his mind and body than he had been when dumped here this afternoon. “I can die in peace if I know that you have destroyed the farm.”

“That won’t be necessary. I think I can convince the king to move you back to the tower.” That was the older, unknown young man. “Lady Maria will see that you are cared for. She likes you. She needs you.”

“That . . . that would be helpful,” Robb sighed.

“How do we find the farm, sir?” the woman asked.

“I could take you there.”

“No, sir. We have to go without you this time. But we will be back. As soon as we can. And when we return we will get you out of here and I’ll transport you back to Coronnan as fast as possible.” Lukan sounded so sure of himself, Robb didn’t doubt him.

“How do we find the farm?” the woman asked again.

Robb told her of the road that followed the river toward the east.

“That road forks three times. Which do we take?”

“Stay beside the river until you reach the plateau. Then turn right, away from the river. Follow the track even though it narrows to nearly nothing. In the next vale you’ll find the farm. The road widens, straightens, and is free of ruts and potholes from there.”

“Three days,” the woman confirmed.

“We were only gone two!” Robb insisted, disappointment cramping his gut.

“You only stayed there one night, sir. We might need longer to torch the place and conjure a storm,” Lukan said. He didn’t sound reassuring. “I want to make sure the slaves get free before we destroy everything.”

“You’ll have to stay here at the castle, Bard,” the woman said. “You have to do what you can to protect Master Robb and prevent the king from ruining Amazonia any further.”

“Three days to observe and rally forces,” Lukan added.

Maria suppressed a yawn despite the sprightly music Toskellar plucked from his harp while sitting beside her at the base of the dais. Her nephew worked his jaw as if he too longed for his bed. But Lokeen had commanded dancing, and dancing the court would do. Even Frederico had been enlisted to shuffle his feet beside gaily dressed ladies who tried to imitate Rejiia. He did not look enticed or interested, or anything but embarrassed.

But the lady’s servant, Geon, lurked in the shadows, watching everything, noting every conversation. Maria almost sympathized with him. His scarred face and missing eye put him among the deformed, like herself. People looked the other way rather than acknowledge ugliness intruding into their pretty world of music and dancing and drinking too much wine and beta arrack.

At this moment the black-haired witch pranced with the captain of the guard, revealing an immodest amount of leg as she lifted her skirts to kick and twirl and shake her enticing bottom. The king couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Disgusting.

She had to end this farce of a betrothal before it led to marriage. Toskellar’s fingers slowed on the strings of his harp—the same instrument he’d loved and maintained since his early teens.

“Play something akin to a dirge,” she whispered to him. She knew his talent, knew how he controlled crowds with his music.

He grinned at her, though his eyes drooped with fatigue. With a quick flick of his fingers he adjusted the tuning of his harp. His next chord came out a low and guttural moan that lingered and droned while individual notes dragged themselves free of the strings. Her heart grew heavy and her eyes moistened. She remembered the day of her sister’s death and wept genuine tears of grief and fear. Fear of what Lokeen would do to Amazonia without the restraining influence of his queen. Well, not much restraint. He did what he wanted in her name, only maintaining the illusion of being her consort. If he broke too many traditions, alienated too many rich merchants while Yolanda lived, the people could depose him in her name.

The moment she died, he no longer had to bow to any tradition or custom.

One by one the simpering courtiers dropped out of the dance, rubbing their eyes and feet stumbling, as if they had not enough energy left to step above the rush-strewn floor.

Rejiia and her captain carried on for a few steps more. Then abruptly the witch stamped her foot and swung all of her attention on the bard.

“You displease me!” she wailed. “When I am queen, I will have your head.”

Geon moved out of the shadows toward his lady.

“But you are not queen yet,” Maria said boldly. More boldly than she thought she dared. “You know that you threaten the king’s son with your displeasure. A true king would send you to the dungeon with his pet snakes for such an affront.”

“Aunt Maria?” Toskellar stopped playing and stilled the strings with the flat of his hand.

Instantly the courtiers blinked and shook their heads, the music no longer dictating their emotions. Frederico drifted off to Maria’s right, more keenly interested in the crowd now that he was free of them.

“Enough!” Lokeen shouted, rising from his throne to loom over the grumbling courtiers and his intended bride. “I will have no animosity within the family. Come, my dear son, my darling Rejiia, kiss and make up. ’Tis time we retired for the night.” He held his arms out to both Rejiia and Toskellar, palms up in a magnanimous gesture of good will.

Unheard of. What kind of spell had the witch placed on the surly, selfish, inconsiderate bully?

Toskellar made a great deal of fuss over stowing his harp safely. As he turned back to face the room, he pitched his voice so that only Maria could hear. “The magician is ill. If you value his health and his life, move him to the tower. Tonight. Take him his glass. His staff too, if you can manage it. They will help him regain enough strength to fight off the miasma that plagues him.”

Then he smiled brightly and hugged the witch, seemingly falling under her spell, as Lokeen clearly was already, and thoroughly.

But this manipulative bard was not the same man her nephew had been when he ran away to follow the caravan roads while still a teenager. This was a man, fully grown into his personal strength. He’d always wielded music as a weapon to control others through their emotions. Had he now mastered more mundane weapons like sword and ax?

Was he now the warrior who could receive the Spearhead of Destiny to save all of Amazonia?