The Silent Dragon: Children of The Dragon Nimbus #1 (6 page)

Fred proffered the letter with another deep bow. “My lady, King Darville sends his greetings and his apologies that he could not come on this errand himself.”

Da’s eyes opened wide when he spotted the shimmer of magic sparkling gold, brown, and dark red in a swirling aura about the missive.

Who?
Glenndon asked.

The queen.

That surprised Glenndon. By law, none of the royal family could throw magic of any kind—even before the Leaving. If the Council of Provinces found out about this little spell to prevent anyone opening or reading the letter, other than the one to whom it was addressed, they could, by law, arrest the queen and burn her at the stake.

Glenndon didn’t want to think of the chaos and war that would follow. Queen Rossemikka’s brother, Rossemanuel, King of Rossemeyer—all the royals of Rossemeyer carried the prenomyn Rosse—might very well gather his huge army of mercenaries and invade Coronnan for the insult.

“No!” Mama screamed. “Never. I will never agree to this.” Her hands shook and her face grew deathly pale. The fine lines around her eyes furrowed deeper. The gray strands in her sunset hair shone stark white.

Glenndon barely caught her before she crumpled to the ground in a dead faint.

The letter fluttered to the ground. The last line shone stark and menacingly bright. “I fear an assassin in my household.”

An assassin targeting the queen? Or worse, the king?

CHAPTER 8

G
LENNDON EASED HIS MOTHER to the beaten-dirt floor and twisted himself to kneel behind her. His blond queue dangled over his shoulder to tickle her nose. He thrust it back over his shoulder in frustration. Mama crumpled the letter in her hand and thrust it at him.

Black sigils danced and swam before Glenndon’s vision without meaning. He wrestled the letter from his mother’s hands and glared at it. He crossed his eyes and let the meaning of the words flow into his mind rather than fight to read it.

“Send my son Glenndon to court to assume his duties as heir to the Dragon Crown.” And then the signature at the bottom. “Darville, King of Coronnan by the Grace of the Dragons.” The threat at the bottom of the missive was written in a smaller hand, less formal, cloaked in a different spell, less noticeable.

Mama?
He propped her higher while still cradling her head in his lap.

“Jaylor, he mustn’t go,” Mama said. Her voice shook as badly as her hand. “The city will destroy him.”

Glenndon groaned some awful sound,
Mama, how can this be?

“Jaylor, promise me that you will not send my boy away!”

“Sweetheart, I can promise nothing until I read the letter.” Jaylor knelt beside her, shoving Glenndon aside, oblivious to everyone but his wife. Gently he took the sheet of parchment from Glenndon’s hands. One look and he frowned in contempt. “I thought I taught Mikka to encode her letters more effectively.”

The queen could code letters magically? Glenndon’s thoughts whirled in wonder. Who knew? The urgency behind the words became clearer for her to risk discovery of magic. Illegal magic.

Da made the magic sparkle disappear from the page with a pass of his hand. Then he read the words. He shook his head in disbelief and sat back on his heels abruptly. His thoughts remained guarded and closed to Glenndon.

“Send my son Glenndon to court . . . heir to the Dragon Crown,” Da whispered. He did not lower his eyes to the warning of assassination.

“He cannot go.” Brevelan struggled to sit up.

Glenndon had to help her.

“Promise me you will not send my boy away, Jaylor.”

“I . . . I always knew this day would come,” Da said. Color drained from his face. He suddenly looked older, less vigorous.

What does this mean?

“It means, Glenndon, that our past has caught up with us,” Da said. He dashed moisture away from his eyes.

And my mother?
Panic boiled in Glenndon’s middle. How could this be? His place in the world, everything he held dear and familiar shifted and would not settle into a pattern.

He’d never had a true place in the world. A blond outsider in the clearing, a silent magician at the University. This must be why.

He had to brace himself as he lost his lock on the southern magnetic pole. His sense of up and down, right and left, center and outward disappeared with it. Only the packed-dirt floor beneath him seemed real.

“I am your mother, dear boy. That much of your life is real.” Mama twisted and hugged him.

He rested his head on her breast, breathing in her unique smell of spices and baking tubers and the sweet flowers she mixed with her soap.

Safe. As long as she held him he felt safe and grounded.

Gradually he realigned his senses upon her. She was the center of his world.

But his conversation with Indigo kept intruding on his sense of well-being. Could any magician ever be safe from the loss of dragons? Dragon magic allowed many magicians to join their powers and overcome any solitary. They could impose honesty and ethics; they could guarantee ordinary people that magicians had their best interests at heart.

He wished he’d made his father understand the urgency of the quest to help dragons thrive again before this turmoil erupted.

Were they safe from the strangeness that invaded their home the moment this Fred person arrived?

Sudden anger shot from his gut to his throat. With an inarticulate roar he launched himself upon Fred, ready to claw out the man’s eyes, to shed his blood, to make it all go away.

“Glenndon!” Da’s voice did not stop him.

Da throwing a magical barrier between them did.

Glenndon bounced back, landing on his butt beside the hearth, jarring his spine. Lights flashed before his eyes.

“Apologize to Fred, Glenndon,” Da demanded. “He is only the messenger. He is not to blame for this. If anyone is, ’tis I.”

The small windowless room seemed to close in on Glenndon. Too many people in here. Not enough air or room for all of them.

Without thinking further he shot forward and upward, catching his stride by the second step. He burst free of the dark confines of the house. Another dozen steps and he broke through the protective barrier around the clearing.

“Glenndon!” Da called after him.

His head pounded with fierce pain at each jarring step.

“Come back here. Now. We have to talk about this,” his father demanded.

Not his father.

The only father he’d ever known.

Glenndon guided his feet upward without thinking. Up the mountain. Away from home. Toward . . . toward the dragons. The dragons, who were fewer each year. The dragons, who were starving for lack of something vital in the Tambootie.

The dragons were his true family. He belonged with them in their lair, fighting to help them survive and thrive, not in the clearing. And definitely not in Coronnan City at the court of the king.

His breath came in sharp, shallow pants. A stitch gnawed at his side.

Still he ran. Upward, along familiar paths known only to him and a few gray scurries. He pushed his body to the limit and beyond. Still he ran. Not thinking. Reacting blindly to the need to get away.

To escape.

At last, a root tripped him. He landed face first in soft moss, the top of his head barely a hand’s breadth away from a jagged rock. He shuddered at his narrow escape from having his head split like a flusterhen egg.

For many long moments he lay there panting, hearing only his heart thudding in his ears.

Slowly he became aware of the rush of water over a cascade of rocks. He knew this place. Instinctively he’d sought the glen where he’d idled away many long hours when he needed to be alone, away from people and the pressure to speak. The glen where Indigo came to speak to him.

When his breathing returned to normal and the pinch in his side eased, he sat up and unlaced his boots. Chill air stabbed at his bare feet. The spring equinox was still a few days away.

So he wouldn’t have to think about . . . about his mother and the king. His father. The king.

His parents sending him away. A great deal of urgency bled from the final cryptic note of fear of an assassin and the magic that encrypted it.

The warm water caressed his feet and relaxed his entire being. In a few moments he’d stripped off his clothes and sunk into the balm of the small plunge pool.

Resting his head against the bank, queue half in the water, he let his mind wander, open, receptive to any stray dragon thoughts. Within moments he heard the rush of wings as one of the beasts fought air and altitude to land in the creek above the fall.

Glenndon here,
he informed the dragon before he looked to see which one splashed water enthusiastically.

(Indigo here,)
came the reply.

Glenndon smiled. No matter what turmoil clouded his mind, Indigo remained true and loyal. Closer to him than his brother Lukan. His
half-
brother
.

He turned to look at his friend.
Welcome.

Slanted sunlight bounced off the crystalline fur of the dragon, directing his gaze elsewhere, anywhere but at the beast. And yet he couldn’t look away. Fascination kept his eyes probing for the spirit behind the reflection. Only the extremely dark blue of his wing veins and tips remained visible. Because his tips were darker than most dragons, Indigo was easier to spot from a distance. In some lights he looked almost purple, the deep rich color of the mountains in winter twilight.

Indigo’s size had never intimidated Glenndon. He’d known the dragon when he was still a clumsy baby no larger than a lady’s pony.

They’d grown up together.

(You are welcome as well, my friend. Your mind is troubled.)

Glenndon flashed a replay of the day’s events from one mind to another, without editing. He had nothing to hide from Indigo.

(Two fathers. You should be excited. The more fathers the bigger and stronger the litter.)
An aura of sadness clouded his eyes.
(Shayla will not mate again until we find what is missing and thrive again.)

But I don’t know the king. I would have to move to the city.

(Your brother would jump at the chance to see the city.)

I’ve never wanted to see the city. I like living close to the dragons.

(I think I should like to see the city. ’Twould be different. Exciting.)

You sound like Lukan,
Glenndon snorted.

(If you never go anywhere else, how do you know that this is home? If you don’t fit in anywhere else, how do you know where you belong? If you never try something new, how do you know that you have found your life’s work?)

In a flurry of wings and a flash of light reflecting off his fur, Indigo took to the air and disappeared.
(I hear there is a secret archives beneath the palace,)
he whispered back to Glenndon from a distance.

“Glenndon? Where are you?” his sister Lillian called.

“M’ma says you must come home now,” Valeria, her twin, added. Dark shadows circled her eyes. Her skin was so thin he thought he could see her veins pulse purple beneath the surface.

His sisters thrashed about in the underbrush, calling him and making enough noise to scare away an entire nimbus of dragons.

You left me with something to think about, Indigo. But I still do not like any of this.

CHAPTER 9

T
HE TIME HAS COME. Father is ready to cast aside his lady wife. His eye wanders and lights upon a distant relative, young, fertile. Docile.

Barely a year older than myself, this new girl should be my wife, but I seek someone greater, more beautiful. More powerful. Even my lovely begins to see the wisdom of bringing royal blood into the family.

My lovely has grown enough now to sniff magic in Princess Rosselinda’s blood. An even bigger incentive to overlook my father’s latest light of love. I’ll have her first, just to make sure she knows who truly rules this family.

I fear that my princess will not pass the test my lovely sets for her. Before we can mate, my lovely must feed of her blood. I do not think my princess will allow this. Is my princess more important than my lovely? Ultimately yes. Princess Rosselinda is the key to controlling Coronnan and ending the evil of magic. My princess is more . . .

Time enough to worry about that later. My lovely has set up an aura around the herbal sachets my father’s wife scatters among our clothing. Father will find the one that burns his skin at first touch. We will inform him that only magic can do that.

He is ready to accuse his wife of magic so he can get rid of her. He burns for his new love. But first he must exile his wife.

I have waited nearly three years for this day. I glory in my power and the power of my lovely. My lovely knows all. She is a fountain of wisdom.

But my princess . . .

“Good morning, M’ma.” Princess Rosselinda curtsied deeply to her mother and the five ladies who attended the queen. Two weeks had passed since she’d overheard that awful discussion in the Council Chamber. Two weeks and no one had mentioned anything.

Lucjemm had kept his distance as well, never mentioning how she’d abandoned him in the market. When P’pa allowed her into the practice arena, Lucjemm pointedly found other bouting partners.

She hoped they’d all forgotten those events. She and her ladies almost had. They’d found other diversion to giggle over, like the courtier who split his too-tight trews right up the seat when he bowed to the queen. Or the greater scandal of Lord Jemmarc formally putting aside his wife for witchcraft so he could marry a younger, prettier, and more fertile lady. Only the dragons knew where Lady Lucinda had gone with but one maid and one bodyguard as escort. At least Jemmarc hadn’t brought her to trial and burning for her crime. If he had, he might have had to return her extensive dowry to her family.

Linda didn’t want to think about that. Ever.

Rumor had it that he had no evidence of witchcraft. But he did have a new candidate for his wife. If he remarried, would he set aside Lucjemm as his heir as well?

If he did that, she couldn’t use the boy to keep her half-brother, her
bastard
half-brother, away. She’d have to find another suitor. Um . . .

No one came to mind.
No one.
Perhaps she should ask Uncle Andrall to investigate likely young men of noble birth on the Big Continent.

M’ma’s ladies shifted position so that they ranged around the queen in a protective semicircle. Linda dismissed the ladies from her focus. She could never keep the ladies straight anyway. They rotated every few months and they all looked, dressed, and talked alike, as if to vary one tiny morsel from court-dictated fashions might weaken the kingdom and leave it vulnerable to invasion. Except Lady Anya, Miri’s mother. She was always at M’ma’s side, a friend and confidante as well as assistant.

Linda flashed her skirts at the ladies, showing a gossamer trim on her petticoat, purchased on a defiant whim after she’d abandoned Lucjemm. Beside her, Miri and Chastet practiced the same flick revealing similar, but not as grand lace on their petticoats. A game they’d cooked up together. Now that Linda had reached the mature age of fourteen and been assigned ladies of her own, she’d discovered the joy in setting her own fashion with colored ribbons and touches of lace from SeLennica.

The ladies went into a huddle, discussing whether the princess should be allowed to dictate fashion to the rest of the court. From the way they plucked at the plain pleats on their bodices, Linda guessed they’d dash to the fabric stalls on Market Island the moment they finished their duties today.

Lace had been out of fashion for a few years now—probably because it cost so much. And she thought there’d been a war with SeLennica. She hadn’t paid that much attention to her modern history lessons. Ancient legends and dragon lore were much more interesting. Now there was a treaty with SeLennica, but the lack of demand had dropped the prices of lace—a point of economics P’pa had taught her.

“Princess Rosselinda.” M’ma dipped her head the precise depth dictated by formal protocol.

Uh-oh. Formality before breakfast meant something awful. Had M’ma missed her pair of riding gloves that Linda had borrowed?

M’ma didn’t ride anymore. And Linda didn’t want to see the fine leather go to waste . . .

“Is P’pa all right?” she asked breathlessly. She advanced to kneel before her mother, crumpling her heavily brocaded skirts in both hands. Best way to deflect a reprimand was change the subject as fast as possible.

“You father fares well, my dear,” M’ma chuckled. “He paces like an angry spotted saber cat, but he fares well.”

“What angers him?” Linda asked warily. Had he found out that ’twas she who had stripped rosebuds from their stems after the men in the arena had so obviously let her win her bouts? Lucjemm was the only one honest enough to make her work for her victories. And yesterday he’d disappeared the moment she had arrived in the arena.

On that thought her father appeared from the inner room. He prowled from window to chair to doorway, hands locked behind his back, head thrust forward, shoulders reaching for his ears. With his golden hair lightened with touches of gray, still tightly bound in a four-strand queue from its morning dressing, he resembled the predatory cat M’ma had likened him to.

No, not precisely a spotted saber cat. More like a caged golden wolf.

For some reason known only to her parents, she wasn’t allowed to mention that resemblance. Clear evidence to Linda that she had landed close to a truth. A dangerous truth.

A truth told in cautionary legends of a prince enticed away from his duties by evil sorcerers and changed into a wolf so that he’d be killed on a random hunt. But he was saved by the dragons and a mysterious red-haired woman. The prince of legend was named Darville, and plainly resembled the current king; and like all tales, it supposedly took place long ago, before times anyone living had witnessed.

Could the tale be true, a part of her father’s history, and could the mysterious red-haired woman be the mother of P’pa’s bastard son?

A bell rang in the great hall directly below the queen’s quarters.

Linda raised her eyebrows in question when her parents did not respond to the summons to break their fast.

The ladies looked to Queen Rossemikka expectantly. Almost anxiously. Were they so eager to be first on Market Isle and conforming to the newest court fashion?

The queen dismissed the women with a wave. “Yours too, Linda,” she whispered.

Linda nodded her head toward Miri and Chastet. They curtsied and backed out of the room, eyebrows raised in question.

“Later,” Linda mouthed. They had no secrets. Well, not many.

When they had cleared the room, M’ma indicated that Linda should sit beside her.

“What is wrong?” Linda blurted out.

“A true diplomat dances around a problem with courtesies and niceties,” King Darville reprimanded her. Very much the king and not just her beloved father.

“I’m not at a foreign court. You are my family, and I know something is wrong, terribly wrong.” She lifted her chin stubbornly. She’d been told she resembled her father when she did that.

Her parents exchanged a pained glance. Some silent communication passed between them. Finally her father looked away first and heaved a sigh.

“You know that we love you and would never do anything to hurt you,” he said quietly. His dominant left hand reached toward her. Then he dropped it abruptly and clasped both hands behind his back again. He stiffened his spine and looked down at her from his regal height.

“However,” Linda prompted. There was always a “however.” She sighed. “Something about the decision of the Council to find me a husband against your wishes, Your Grace?” If he was going to play the king, then she must act the Princess Royale.

“However, the Council of Provinces demands a male heir to the throne . . .” he paused for a gulping breath that almost controlled the high color of anger on his cheeks. “They would pressure you to bear children while you are barely more than a child . . .”

Linda bristled. She was a woman now. Her body had made the transition two years ago. Since she showed all signs of living through the worst of the change in body and emotions, M’ma had helped her put up her hair, ordered new gowns with lower hems, and appointed her two closest friends from the schoolroom to be her ladies-in-waiting.

“They . . .” her father continued, ignoring her offence. “Rather than throw you into a loveless marriage with a foreign prince, with foreign interests, we have opted to send for my son.”

Linda forgot to breathe. “The boy you have not admitted to fathering!” She bit her cheeks before she shouted ugly words at him. How dare he betray M’ma? That red-haired woman was an evil seductress, as evil as the sorcerers who transformed P’pa into his totem animal: a great golden wolf.

She dredged up the rest of the conversation she wasn’t supposed to have heard. “The people will not accept a bastard.”

“Linda!” her mother reprimanded. “Where did you learn that word?” She looked paler than usual. For as long as Linda could remember, her mother had been ill. Only recently had she realized that five miscarriages in as many years after three pregnancies in five years had weakened her. Drained her vitality.

Now she understood the whispers among the ladies that another pregnancy would kill her.

Five potential heirs dead before birthing.

“I am as smart and as well educated as any man in the kingdom,” Linda asserted. She resisted the urge to stamp her foot. “Why will they not accept me as your heir?”

“I have trained you and your two sisters to follow in my footsteps,” her father said. “I had hoped that by this time the Council of Provinces would have relaxed their insistence upon a male heir. Their only compromise is to offer a joint crown to you and a husband. You are too young to marry. I have no choice but to bring my
bastard
son to court.”

“But if he is illegitimate, and baseborn, then he can’t rule,” Linda shouted. Panic rose hot and vile in her throat. She needed to spit the acid of her jealousy and bewilderment back at her parents.

Her mother’s gentle hand kept her sitting when she wanted to pace and prowl as relentlessly as her father.

“There are ways to correct the boy’s illegitimacy. His mother has some royal blood in her heritage. Her grandmother was my father’s cousin.”

“Ways of making him legitimate include putting aside my mother, your
queen,
and marrying the mother of your
bastard?
”

“That is not an option. That has never been an option,” her father said vehemently.

“Then why?”

“I had not yet met your mother. I did not yet know how deep and abiding my love for her would be. Brevelan and Jaylor were my best friends. My only friends when Lord Krej tried to usurp the throne. We thought Jaylor had died. Brevelan and I turned to each other in our grief. Our love for each other and for him stretched out to the realm of dragons and brought Jaylor back from the brink of death. Out of that night came a beautiful baby boy.”

Linda gasped in dismay at the names. She knew them as well as those of her sisters. The Senior Magician and his witch-wife were both revered and reviled. Lord Krej’s name and that of his daughter Rejiia were held up as examples of the dangers of allowing a monarch to possess magic. Lord Krej was the evil sorcerer who transformed Darville into a wolf.

“The people will never accept your
magician
bastard as their king,” she retorted. What else could she say? How else could she defend herself and her position at court?

“Probably not, but we have to give them the chance,” M’ma said quietly. “We have to stall and give you time to finish growing up. We expect word any time now of Glenndon’s imminent arrival.”

Wild anger flashed through Linda’s blood. It flushed her face and made her fingers tingle. Her heart beat too fast and her thoughts swirled. She grew hot then cold. And still that tingle that demanded she
do
something. Something bold and . . . destructive.

She took a deep calming breath, and then another, and another. The tingle withdrew.

“If you . . . The moment he arrives I will no longer consider myself a member of this family. Bring him here and you throw me away!” She surged up and ran, picking up her skirts to an indecent level.

She had to get away. She had to run far and fast to escape her own fear and anger and confusion.