Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III Page 6

  “I won’t contaminate my mind or my honor by touching your ugly thoughts,” Bessel replied. He wanted to believe that his family had become hostile toward Bessel’s magic talent because they didn’t understand it. They’d never encountered a magician before, other than the Battlemages attached to the armies that periodically pillaged the mines and the village.

  “Watch your mouth, boy. I’m your da, your family.”

  “You ceased being my father the night you threw me into the teeth of a winter storm to fend for myself.” For the first time, Bessel noticed that his father’s stocky frame, formerly rotund, had wasted to tough sinew and bone. His eyes looked too bright, and an unnatural flush rode high on his cheeks and brow. His hands were swollen where he clutched the crutches.

  The once substantial stone home looked as frail and neglected as its owner. But then, Maydon had always considered his job as accountant for the mines a poor second to working the mines themselves, even though the job brought in a great deal more money—enough to build this house for the family.

  “Did you know I was captured by outlaws?” Bessel continued. Bitterness nearly choked him. “They had a magician of sorts with them who wrapped a spell around me so that I couldn’t use my magic to escape. Did you know that those outlaws used me as their toy for two weeks until I was sold at auction?” He clung to the warm memory of Nimbulan marching into the outlaw camp and outbidding all the others for the right to exploit Bessel’s talent, to enslave him, and abuse him.

  But Nimbulan hadn’t exploited anything. Instead he’d given Bessel the love and understanding to use his talent wisely. Nimbulan had become more of a father to him than Maydon had ever been.

  “Only what you deserve, Magician,” Maydon spat the title, staring at Bessel, lips pursed so tightly they lost all color.

  “Maydon, come quickly,” a woman called from inside the house. “Maydon, she needs you.”

  Bessel recognized his aunt’s voice. Baarben had lived with her brother’s family for as long as Bessel could remember. He bit back a cry of welcome for the woman who had been as much a mother to him as his own mother.

  Maydon stepped back into the house. His expression of fierce rejection of his son faded into anxiety.

  Bessel followed him, being careful not to touch his father. They hadn’t touched since the day Bessel had used his magic to free his father from a mine accident. The heavy rocks and timbers that pinned Maydon had cost him his leg. But Bessel had saved his life.

  Maydon had declared that without the leg he wasn’t certain he had a life. He’d blamed Bessel and the boy’s cursed magic talent for saving him.

  Every time Bessel remembered what outlaws had done to him, he wished he hadn’t levitated beams and rocks from his father’s leg, hadn’t made it possible for the other miners to rescue him.

  The moment Bessel passed the doorframe, a strange smell stopped him short. He should recognize it. What? The memory escaped him, slipping in and out of his mind like a dragon. One moment it was there, almost tangible, and then the light shifted and it was gone.

  He hesitated to enter the house until he understood the smell. Something told him it was dangerous.

  The sound of his aunt’s loud weeping finally drew him inward.

  The smell intensified as he neared the common room. His mother lay on a low bed beside the hearth. She shivered with intense chill in the overly warm room. Fever flushed her skin.

  Baarben threw a handful of herbs onto the open fire. Aromatic smoke rose, filling the room. Bessel identified five different herbs that should reduce fever and ease painful joints. Baarben hadn’t included the Tambootie in the mixture. It had unique curative powers to anyone with a hint of magical talent but was toxic to mundanes. Should he suggest that she add some? The family must have some magic talent for him to have inherited it.

  Maydon seemed more comfortable breathing the astringent essence of the plants. They had no effect on the dying woman by the hearth.

  “Did he come, Maydon? Did my baby come home?” Bessel’s mother whispered. She gripped her husband’s tunic with a wasted, clawlike hand.

  “I’ve come home, M’ma.” Bessel knelt beside her. He realized he didn’t even know her given name. She’d always been “M’ma” or “Mer Maydon” in his mind.

  “Bessel, my baby.” Her voice trailed off and a tiny smile touched her lips. Then a fit of coughing grabbed her until unconsciousness claimed her.

  “She’ll die happy now. You can go,” Maydon said. He stared into the flames rather than look at his son.

  “She should have a true healer! Why didn’t you send to Lord Balthazaan?” Every lord had a magician adviser, a magician healer, and a magician priest assigned to his province. Even if Balthazaan and Humpback were out of the province, the healer and priest should be available.

  “There are too many people dying of this strange disease.” Aunt Baarben touched Bessel’s sleeve in sympathy. “Even the lord’s family and household suffer. It takes the old, the young, and pregnant women first. But no one is immune.”

  “I haven’t the healing talent, but I’ll see what I can do.” Bessel touched his mother’s face with exploratory fingers. He wasn’t a strong magician. Without illegally tapping a ley line, what could he do other than give his mother a little strength? Even when he’d gathered a full portion of dragon magic, he had trouble joining with the other magicians to increase the power of the joint spell by orders of magnitude. Lately he’d had trouble gathering any dragon magic at all, almost as if there wasn’t enough left to go around.

  He’d give M’ma all of his strength if he could. That had to be enough until he could summon a healer. She couldn’t die. Not yet. Not until he’d made peace with her, made certain she knew that he blamed only his father for his estrangement.

  “You’ll keep your filthy magic away from her!” Maydon roared, slapping Bessel’s hand away. “Let her die in peace and pass to her next existence without interference.”

  Bessel stared at his left hand a moment, the one his father had slapped away. A dominant left hand had marked him as a potential magician from earliest childhood. Deliberately he closed the offending hand into a fist and drove it into Maydon’s jaw.

  Maydon reared back. His crutches fell to the slate floor. He flailed clumsily as his body joined the crutches.

  “Fewer than half of all left-handers are magicians and less than half of all magicians are left-handed. You condemned me as a magician before you had any true evidence,” Bessel said quietly. “And I will help my mother if I can.”

  “Bessel, your father is a cripple. He can’t defend himself. He can’t work the mines anymore. You should have compassion.” Baarben rushed to help her brother stand.

  “He’s so crippled he made a small fortune keeping the accounts for the mines after the accident. He’s so crippled he fathered five more children on my mother, each one diminishing her strength a little more, making her vulnerable to this hideous disease. Look at her! She’s pregnant again. That’s why she hasn’t the strength to fight it.” Bessel returned his attention to what little he knew about healing.

  If only he had some Tambootie leaves in his pouch . . . He’d heard rumors that Queen Maarie Kaathliin’s father needed the Tambootie to cure a plague in his homeland.

  Was this the same plague? The disease caused by machines? He hoped not, but he recalled a grove of Tambootie that grew nearby. He’d stolen some of the leaves as a child and experimented with them until his father had exiled him from the family. Once he eased the fever and strengthened his mother a little, he’d fetch the leaves of the tree of magic.

  If he tapped a ley line, he could effect some repairs to her body to buy him more time.

  No. The Commune had valid reasons for outlawing rogue magic.

  He inhaled deeply on three counts, held it three counts, and exhaled on the same rhythm. His body relaxed. He repeated the exercise, and his mind drifted away from the confines of bone and flesh. A third deep breath brought him with
in reach of the void between the planes of existence.

  (There are lessons to be learned in the void. Do not enter unless you are prepared to expose the truth,) a voice whispered into the back of his mind.

  As he hesitated to join with the allure of the void, a ley line filled with magical energy pulsed beneath the ground near the center of the village.

  He reached out to tap the line, let it flood him with strength.

  Revulsion replaced the magical energy. NO! He couldn’t use ley lines and he couldn’t access the void. Powwell had had to leave the protection of the Commune in order to use rogue magic in his search for Kalen. Bessel couldn’t risk his membership in the Commune.

  Dragon magic had limitations, especially when a magician worked alone. But when the Commune worked in concert, their magnified spells could overpower any solitary magician. They could impose rules and regulations, ethics and honor, on all magicians. Rogue magicians had perpetuated civil war in Coronnan for three generations, all in their quest for power, until Nimbulan had discovered dragon magic and created a lasting peace with King Quinnault’s help.

  Bessel risked the wrath of the Commune and the dragons if he violated their most sacred law. He had to help his mother using only legal magic, no matter how limited.

  Breathe in, one, two, three. Hold, one, two, three. Breathe out, one, two, three. This time he concentrated on remaining in contact with the flow of dragon energies within his body. Power tingled in his fingertips. He ran his hand down the length of his mother’s wasted body, keeping a thin cushion of energy between his hand and her skin. The heat of her fever, the disintegration and bleeding within her lungs, the irregular rhythm of her heart pulsed at his sensitized hand.

  He felt the rupturing of blood vessels deep within her body. His mind saw her internal organs collapsing.

  No part of her body was free of the disease.

  “Oh, M’ma,” he wailed. “I can’t help you.” If he’d come earlier. If he could tap a ley line to give him the magical energy to repair some of her vital organs . . . But he could not do it. He would not bring rogue magic back into Coronnan—even to help his mother.

  Chapter 5

  Early spring, the road below Myrilandel’s clearing that runs across the pass from Coronnan into Rossemeyer, southeastern corner of Coronnan

  Yaala clutched Powwell’s hand in eager anticipation. His palm was as hot and moist as her own.

  The long winter of waiting for the pass to clear had ended. Spring had burst forth in this remote mountain pass a few days ago. The time had come to take the next long step in reclaiming her heritage.

  At last she was going home to Hanassa, the only place she belonged. She daydreamed of clearing the city of mercenaries, outlaws, thieves, and murderers, making it a haven for the innocent refugees of war and poverty rather than a lawless haven for those who caused war and poverty. With the help of the machines hidden deep within the lava tube tunnels of the old volcano crater, she could turn Hanassa into a prosperous industrial city with honest work for all. She’d make the people of Hanassa her family.

  Quinnault and Katie had taught her that such ideals could exist. It was more than her mother, the late and unlamented Kaalipha of Hanassa, had taught her in her entire life.

  “Wait for it,” Powwell hissed. “Feel the hot wind? It’s opening. I found a new portal for the dragongate!”

  “Amazing,” Yaala replied. She stared unblinking, mouth slightly agape, at the shimmer of distortion within an arch-shaped shadow.

  “We can get into Hanassa now. All these moons of searching are over.” Powwell breathed on a deep sigh. “Kalen won’t have to wait for rescue any longer.”

  He hugged Yaala hard. His eagerness to risk his life to rescue his half sister irritated Yaala. She’d never loved or been loved by anyone with such intensity.

  “I can restart my machines and take control of Hanassa,” she said, thinking of the only things that mattered to her—other than her friendship with Powwell. “We’ve had to wait so long, I didn’t think this moment would ever come.” She refused to believe Powwell’s tale of the terrible dragon dream Shayla had given him last autumn. Yaala’s machines used volcanic heat to create steam rather than burning fossil fuels. Her machines did not provide the pollution the disease spores fed upon. She was the engineer. She should know.

  Why should she trust a dragon anyway? Shayla and Hanassa the Renegade had been born into the same nimbus, might very well have been part of the same litter. The nimbus had exiled Hanassa—the only dragon in their long history to require such punishment. The once purple dragon had taken human form and founded a city for other renegades. Depredations perpetrated by Hanassa and his followers had plagued the rest of Kardia Hodos for centuries.

  She would end their tyranny of terror once and for all.

  Yaala pulled her spine away from the outcropping of rock. The jagged stones fit her bizarre spinal structure as if carved for her. In all of her twenty-one years she’d never been able to rest her back against any surface. Her spinal bumps, residual traits of her dragon heritage, had defined her erect posture and set her apart from other humans. Her mother, Yaassima, had treated the minor deformity as a badge of honor. But then, the late Kaalipha of Hanassa had wanted to be more dragon than human.

  In the end, both dragons and humans had rejected her.

  Yaala didn’t want to die like her mother, lost and alone, reviled by one and all. She clung to Powwell’s arm as they watched the magical portal take form.

  “After the kardiaquakes and partial openings I found these past five moons, I was afraid we’d never be able to use the dragongate to get back into Hanassa.” Powwell turned his rare grin on her. His entire face lit with joy. All those hours spent with maps and pins and calculations finally come to fruit.”

  Yaala returned the smile. “I’m going home. I’ll be able to fire up Old Bertha and get the ’tricity flowing again. I know I can.”

  “You don’t want to do that, Yaala. Remember the dragon dream,” Powwell warned.

  Yaala ignored him. They’d argued about her machines endlessly since he’d come to her in Myrilandel’s clearing where she had waited for him. She would restart whatever machines she could repair.

  The air shimmered within the arch-shaped shadow created by a rocky overhang and a spreading oak tree heavy with mistletoe. Hot air, born of a volcano, blasted forth from the center of the shadow, replacing the last remnants of winter chill on this bright day. Colors swirled within the darkness of the shadow. Red, green, blue, black, yellow. More red and even more black.

  Between one eye blink and the next, the colors within the shadow solidified into the image of red sandstone cliffs surrounding a murky lake, waters black with a strange substance floating on its surface. In the distance, a volcano belched hot ash in a tall column that reached for the sky.

  “It’s not Hanassa!” Yaala yelled, hauling Powwell back from stepping through the imagery into the unknown landscape. “We can’t go there, Powwell.”

  “Of course it’s Hanassa. The gate always returns to Hanassa and nowhere else. See the path leading up the cliff to the plateau. It’s Hanassa. I have to rescue Kalen. We’re going now!” The fifteen-year-old journeyman magician grabbed her arm and yanked her forward until she stumbled through the blast of swirling colors toward the alien scene.

  “But the path is outside of Hanassa. The dragongate is supposed to take us into the heart of the mountain!” Her words evaporated in the rush of hot wind.

  A vortex of spiraling energy caught Yaala. Up and down, right and left, now and then, distorted, blended, became one and shifted. Disorientation lurched in her stomach, then numbed the back of her neck. She needed to curl into a fetal ball but couldn’t find her feet.

  More hot air hit her in the face. She blinked away the fine grit of volcanic ash that blurred her eyes. She sat on the hot red sand beside the strange black lake.

  “This isn’t Hanassa. We have to go back.” Yaala scrambled for the rapidly fa
ding gateway. Her knees sank into loose sand. She couldn’t rise or crawl fast enough. The cool green and brown of a forested road in Coronnan on the other side of the dragongate swirled into a kaleidoscope of colors. The air stilled and around her the temperature rose.

  The smell of sulfur intensified; the smell of Hanassa. But this wasn’t the city of outlaws her mother had ruled with a bloody fist.

  Sweat broke out on Yaala’s brow and back, almost as if she was still in the pit beneath the hidden city of outlaws.

  Her generators and transformers were in the pit. She had to return to them, get them working again in order to claim her heritage.

  “Where are we, Powwell?” she breathed the words, careful not to inhale any of the dust that permeated the air. Her fair scalp beneath her pale hair puckered and she knew she risked sunburn and dehydration even with the heavy ash haze.

  “I—I’m not sure where we are.” The young magician turned a full circle. He chewed his lower lip and ran a hand through his thick mass of curly dark hair in indecision. His gray eyes took on a cloudy look, mimicking the sky. A flutter of movement within his tunic pocket indicated his hedgehog familiar didn’t like this place any better than Yaala did.

  She hoped Thorny pricked Powwell deeply with his sharp spines.

  “Why did we use that portal? I told you something was wrong.” Yaala was also scanning the red-and-black horizon for anything resembling a familiar landscape. A dark speck soared in the distance, near the belching volcano. A dragon? Her dominant spinal bumps prickled, like a dog’s ruff standing on end when faced with unknown dangers.

  She could see nothing but miles and miles of wind-sculpted sand dunes and baby mountains reaching all the way to the distant horizon where the very active volcano belched again in a shower of spark and more black ash. The dragon disappeared within the dark cloud. Yaala ducked instinctively, even though the hot wind blew the dangerous fumes away from them.

  “The dragongate is only supposed to work one way on this end,” Powwell mused. “From Hanassa, you can go ’most anywhere if you wait for the right opening. But all of the destinations lead back to Hanassa and nowhere else. We should be in the tunnel overlooking the lava core.”