The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus) (26 page)

F
URIOUSLY LILY TOSSED pot after pot aside looking for the right one. It had to be ceramic. It had to be bigger around than her piece of glass, and deep enough to hold reflective water. She sorted as she examined and cast aside each one. “The dragons are never wrong,” she insisted. “Both Mama and Da said . . . They said to trust the dragons.” She choked on a sob. Her parents were dead. Her twin at home forging new friendships and alliances without her. She wandered in self-imposed exile. Skeller, the man she loved, had taken himself across the sea to a foreign land.

She had no one to help her with this crucial decision. She had only herself. And Death.

“If we do not burn the fields and salt the land, then we can’t kill the miasma. It will come again and again. It will take everyone here. We are too few. Too weak. Too . . . Alone.”

She dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Alone.

Her fingers brushed the cold spot on her forehead. The touch of Death.

Before she could think through her actions and change her mind, she bolted out of the hut, around the field Souska had saved, and up the hill toward . . .

Empty. No mist. No hovering presence. Nothing. Death no longer haunted this village. She’d moved on.

“You took no more of the patients I begged you to leave behind,” she whispered to herself. And in the speaking she knew that she had become a conduit between life and death. Death would take only those patients of Lily’s that she begged to be granted release from pain and illness. If Lily touched a patient and begged for life, then the patient would live, so long as Lily gave proper treatment.

The village was safe now.

Had Death taken the miasma with her?

Maybe . . . just maybe Souska had the right of it. Maybe . . . maybe Lily should start making her own decisions and stop relying on the dragons.

Trust the dragons
. She almost heard her mother and her father, voices blended into one.

“Trust them, but rely upon myself. That’s why you forced Val and me to follow separate journeys. We had to learn to rely upon ourselves, not each other. And not the dragons.”

She let her gaze linger on all the grave cairns in the local cemetery. There were as many new ones as all the old ones combined. But she hadn’t sung the funeral hymns in three days.

“The time has come to follow Death to the next village.”

(Perhaps. Perhaps not
.
)

“What is that supposed to mean?” she shouted to the four winds.

Nothing. No whisper of a presence in the back of her mind, either of Death or the dragons.

The cold spot on her forehead suddenly warmed.

Bored. I am bored. King Lokeen has very old-fashioned ideas about what is proper for a princess and what is proper in bed. No imagination. Less stamina.

But if this is my only path to power, then I will tolerate him. But only long enough for him to say his wedding vows and crown me queen. He’ll make vows to rule Amazonia in my name. He probably won’t live long enough to issue a single decree.

I shan’t be bored when I feed him to his own snakes. My guard captain and I shall watch and enjoy each other while the old king screams himself to death.

In the meantime, I need to learn the ways of this castle, who will serve me, who will not. Geon has learned much, but he spends his free time in the library now. Always with his long nose in a book. One cannot learn magic from books! He replies most calmly that he learns other things, like history, culture, law, and how to read what a person is thinking by “tells” in their posture and eye blinks.

Bah. I learned all that at my father’s knee. And more. Except for the intricacies of the law. That could be useful information in the days to come.

Now I personally must learn, and not from any book, who is most loyal to the hideous dwarf. Those must find employment elsewhere or die. I cannot have a household of divided loyalties.

My father tried that and look at him now. He’s an old man who sits by the fire and daydreams about past greatness now lost. I will not lose my greatness or my power. Not now, not ever.

Lukan lay flat among the withering grasses on the slight ridge surrounding the farm. He could see all activity in the open compound, but he doubted anyone moving from house, to barn, to slave dormitory, to snake house could see him. Even if they bothered to look slightly up and directly toward him. None of them did. Few thought to look up for intruders. They all seemed weighed down, diminished, shuffling as if walking upright required too much energy.

He’d feel safer if he had a place to climb up, away from the ground. But there weren’t any higher hills on this wide and dry plateau. And he hadn’t spotted a free-flying dragon all day. Not even a light chuckle in the back of his mind. Trees were scarce, spindly, and too far away.

“Fifteen guards by my count,” Gerta said. She stretched out beside him, watching the movements with keenly trained eyes.

“Fifty or sixty slaves, all adults, I see no children,” Lukan returned, barely moving his lips. He liked working with Gerta. She didn’t flirt, didn’t dissemble, and didn’t defer to him. She knew what had to be done and who was best qualified to do it. No nonsense. Just raw strength. Unusual.

Attractive.

Well, maybe not unusual in Amazonia where women used to rule and fight. In Coronnan he expected women to defer to their men. He’d seen it often enough. Except for Maigret. She stood up to Robb, fought with him, conferred with him, made plans with him. And loved with him.

He hated to think that failure here at the farm might keep his mentor apart from his beloved wife any longer.

“There isn’t much water in those creeks,” Chess mused. He stretched out on his belly a little way off, surveying from a slightly different perspective. “Not enough water to stop the snakes if they really wanted to get away.”

Lukan had a sense of waiting. Waiting for what?

His mind harkened back to the growing bubble of magic around the castle snakes.
Stargods, I hope there isn’t a female here that is giving them strength and guidance.

“What about the pond on the far side, where the livestock are kept?” Lukan asked, jerking his mind away from the possibility of a matriarch. Fire and water. He needed both, lots of both to kill the monsters. Fire he could conjure. Chess could control it better than he.

For water? They both needed help.

What he really needed was a storm. A huge storm that would dump rain, a lot of rain, over the entire plateau. Thoroughly wet, deep mud would be better. Mud would burn the snakes’ bellies all the way to their spines.

“The pond looks like it is drying up,” Chess said. “The banks are shrinking. Whatever it is that the snakes do to turn a land into a desert, it’s working here.”

“So what’s the plan?” Gerta asked, looking to Lukan for answers he didn’t have.

“If we throw firebombs onto the roof of the farmhouse, that will drive all the guards outside . . .” he said, more thinking out loud than knowing what they should do.

“The slave quarters look more flammable,” Gerta added.

“Guards are the enemy. Slaves are potential allies,” Lukan insisted. “We do our best to keep them from harm. Lokeen has harmed them enough already. Look at them! Walking skeletons, dispirited, almost ready to give up. Saving them is as important as killing the snakes.”

“Fine,” Gerta held up her hands in mock surrender. “I was just noting conditions. Did you notice that the roof of the snake barn is slate? It won’t burn.”

“But the walls are dry wood. Very dry wood. A few tiny gaps between the planks. If we set fire to that building, then the only route of escape the snakes have is through the door to the courtyard.”

“Where they’ll start a feeding frenzy on the slaves,” Chess said flatly.

“S’murghit!
I wish I was up,” he muttered.

“Sleeping on the roof of the castle tower wasn’t high enough for you?” Gerta asked.

“You were up there with me, studying the stars, looking for dragon shadows,” he reminded her. Though he wished they’d done more
together
up there away from prying eyes and keen ears. “Right now I need to be able to see the entire farm from a better perspective. And there isn’t a high hill or a dragonback to help.”

“Then we need to circle around and look from different angles,” Gerta said, rising to her knees and scooting backward below the ridgeline before standing.

“We need to see if there is a back entrance to the slave quarters.” Lukan said. He craned his neck to look, but it was at the wrong angle.

“Unlikely,” Gerta said. “Back entrance invites escape.”

“Let’s go see,” Chess said. He flashed his teeth in a grimace that might have been grim humor. “If I can open the back door, or rip some of the siding off, we give the slaves an avenue of escape.” He too scooted backward and joined Gerta in stretching stiff muscles.

“Then we fire the farmhouse first, and the snake barn second.”

“Where are you going to get enough water to kill the snakes?” Gerta pointed out the one flaw in the plan.

Lukan scanned the sky. Not a cloud in sight. Nor a dragon on the wing.

“In the really old legends, dragons are supposed to control weather,” Chess offered hopefully.

“Let’s hunt up a ley line while we scout the back,” Lukan said. “I think you and I are going to have to do this the hard way.”

Maria dipped a clean rag into a basin of cool water, wrung it free of drips and placed it on Robb’s brow. His fever continued to burn so high his skin felt as dry and crackling as ancient parchment. He tossed restlessly, calling out in agony for the woman Maigret. Who was she that her name was the only one on his lips?

She guessed the woman was a healer, but more than that to Robb. A lover?

She wiped away a tear in her own grief. More likely Maigret was spouse to this strong and proud man. He demonstrated fierce loyalties. He’d only give his love to the woman he married. He would never merely keep a lover, or love outside his marriage bond.

For that she respected him. For that she regretted having dared dream that he could care for her misshapen form. She’d been cast out of the line of succession because of her twisted limp and shrunken body. She’d been relegated to being housekeeper for her sister, and then her sister’s husband. She hoped to remain as housekeep to her nephew’s spouse. Even as she dreamed of exchanged affection with Robb, she knew he couldn’t give her more.

But he had suggested he could bring a magical healer to her. He offered a chance at straightening her leg so she could grow stronger, walk without a limp. For that she must save his life. He wouldn’t have offered her that tiny bit of hope if he didn’t care for her a little bit. He’d never love her, not like he did this Maigret. But he could care for her as a friend.

She hadn’t hoped for much more. Not really. Only wistful dreams that scattered in sunlight like dew rising to the hot sun.

“My lady, the healers will not come,” her under-chatelaine said from the doorway. She scrutinized the wooden planks in the flooring most thoroughly.

“What do you mean, they won’t come. One of them at least must respond to royal orders from the castle.” Maria trembled and grew cold on the inside. This was unprecedented betrayal from the heart of the city. Dared she petition the followers of Helvess?