The Silent Dragon: Children of The Dragon Nimbus #1 (7 page)

How could M’ma be so calm about accepting P’pa’s son into her household? How could her father insult M’ma by bringing the boy here?

Down the long broad corridor she ran. Deep into the oldest and least trafficked part of the keep she ran. Around this corner, under that archway. She ran until a stitch grabbed her side. She kept running until her breath came in great racking sobs that might have been tears.

“Princess Royale Rosselinda Mirilandel Kathleen de Draconis, stop right there,” King Darville shouted from a shadowed alcove to her left.

“How?” she gasped. She didn’t have enough breath to say more.

“I’ve been taking shortcuts to hidden rooms in the palace a lot longer than you.” He tried to look stern, but a tiny smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

Linda allowed herself to set her balance and deepen her breathing.

He tilted his head as if listening. Linda had seen him do that from to time.

She wished she knew who spoke to him with magic in secret.

“Yes, I agree,” he whispered.

“Agree to what?” she demanded.

“Linda, please break your fast with the rest of the court in the Great Hall. Then meet me by the mounting blocks.” P’pa turned away, blending into the shadows, ready to disappear again.

“Yes, Your Grace.” She curtsied without looking at him.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

“That is for Your Grace to inform me when he deems the time right.” She parroted her governess’ phrase.

“You want to know everything, right now. You do not believe in secrets. That is why you listen so closely to Council meetings. I have let you remain hidden so that you could learn something of politics. Now I wonder if I should have kept you more sheltered.”

“What point in teaching me to be a king when I will never be more than the wife to one?” She set her chin in defiance.

“Because I had hoped . . . Linda, we will ride out to Battle Mound southeast of the city.”

A two-hour ride, half of it negotiating the islands of the river delta and the connecting bridges that made up Coronnan City. Battle Mound, the site of the last great battle between barons and their battlemages, the last conflict before Nimbulan created the covenant with the dragons and made magic communal and governable.

“Why? Do we go alone? Or will half the court follow?”

“You will tell no one of this excursion. No one. Especially not your ladies or your sisters. We take no servants or bodyguards. Only the groom who fetches our steeds will know of our departure.”

Curiosity sent her mind spinning, dissolving her anger. A trip outside the city with P’pa. Just the two of them. Not even Fred, P’pa’s bodyguard who was always within spitting distance, except these last two weeks when he’d gone home to attend a dying grandmother or something. Special. Unusual.

“The entire city will know of this venture before we set out. They always do.”

P’pa almost laughed. “Undoubtedly. They always do. A contingent of soldiers and lords will follow—hopefully discreetly. And they will witness a miracle. And so shall you, my daughter. So shall you.”

CHAPTER 10

L
INDA DUG HER HEELS into the flanks of her favorite fleet steed, a big, opinionated, chestnut mare. The beast bunched her muscles and lengthened her stride. Together they flew across the open meadows to the east and south of the river delta islands that comprised Coronnan City.

The wind of their passage blew Linda’s cloak hood back and tangled her hair. She laughed out loud and pressed the steed to gallop faster.

“Ease up, Linda!” her father called. His big black stallion moved alongside, matching stride for stride. He looked over his shoulder often, like he was afraid of pursuit.

“I want to run free,” she called back to him.

“You will slow down before you fall off. Never override your steed. I thought I taught you that when you were five.” He edged ahead by half a nose, forcing his steed closer to hers until he grabbed her reins and turned them in a slowing circle.

Linda’s steed fought the restriction. Her father tweaked the reins back and down, until they had made two complete circles, P’pa on the inside, and stopped.

Even then he did not release the reins.

“But Belle likes to run wild,” Linda protested. She knew better than to try to wrest the reins away from her father. She had to fight to keep her lower lip from sticking out in a pout. Pouts made her look ugly. And childish.

“She’s had a run. Now we move at a safer pace.” P’pa looked upward, tilting his head as if listening.

Listening to what?

“Why are we coming all the way out here?” Linda asked.

“You will see in a few moments.”

“I don’t like secrets.”

“I know that. The time has come to reveal my biggest secret.” He chuckled like he did when he made an amusing word play. Then he released Belle and kicked his own mount into a sedate trot.

“A bigger secret than your
bastard
son?”

“Yes. A more important secret.”

She examined his words one by one and all together while she matched his pace. She couldn’t find anything funny hidden in there.

“Have you heard of Amazon oil?” he asked without prelude.

“Um,” she searched her memory. The product sounded familiar, exotic, but not unknown to her. “I have heard of it, but I can’t remember where. Why?”

“It is a byproduct of a fruit that grows only on the big continent northeast of Coronnan.”

“Across the Great Bay?”

“Beyond the Bay. Remember your geography lessons, Little Lindy. Do I have to send you back to the schoolroom?”

“No, P’pa. I can picture it on the maps now.” So this was what the outing was about, drilling her on her lessons. Oh, well, best parrot off a bunch of facts to satisfy him. Then they could get on with the adventure he’d promised. “The interior of the continent is largely unexplored, at least by those known to us here in Coronnan. We trade with the coastal city-states. Each has its own ambassador to our court. They have large resources of grain, fruit, and herd beasts.”

“And?” he prodded her.

“The Stargods defeated a herd of winged snakelike creatures that were destroying the land by turning it into one vast desert. What were they called?”

“Krakatrice,” the king said absentmindedly.

“Krakatrice. Right. But once the Stargods defeated the Krakatrice and eliminated them from the land, they destroyed the artificial dams and restored the riverbeds. The land is fruitful once more.”

“And?”

“Amazon oil!” She remembered in a flash of blinding light. Or was that something in the sky reflecting the light of the sun?

“What is it and what does it do?” her father prodded.

“It’s the residue from pressing the Amazon fruit into a pulp mixed with dried meat for journey rations. The oil sinks to the bottom of the vat—it’s quite heavy—and is used to keep metal free of rust.” She turned a big smile on her father, happy to have dredged those facts out of the bottom of her brain. “We use it to tend our sword blades.”

“Yes. Correct. But what happens if you mix Amazon oil with miner’s acid?”

“Um. Something not good. Wouldn’t the acid eat through the oil to damage the metal?” She chewed her lower lip.

King Darville nodded sadly.

“But it would take a while,” she mused. “Amazon oil is resilient.” Was that the right word?

“Yes it is, Linda.” He must approve of her assumptions if he used her familial name. “After a while, a few days, or a really long and vigorous battle, or practice session, the acid would weaken the steel until it broke without warning.”

“Is this about you breaking your sword two weeks ago?” she gasped.

“Yes.”

“Who would do such a thing? It wouldn’t have been an accident. Miner’s acid is not readily available.”

“It is in the Provinces that have mines,” he said flatly.

“Oh.”

“Think about it while we finish our ride. I need you to know who might have damaged my sword either as a warning, or an attempt upon my life.”

Linda swallowed heavily. All of a sudden the day did not seem so bright and warm. She saw in her mind the lords whose land abutted the western range of mountains that separated Coronnan from SeLennica. Geoine, Lord of Sambol, Bennallt, Lord of the Port City of Baria, Miri’s father and Lady Anya’s husband. No she wouldn’t believe
either
could be involved in an assassination plot. Better to believe the acid and the assassin came from Hanassa, the ungovernable hidden city of rogue magicians, outlaws, Rovers, and disgruntled exiles. They looked to no lord. Any one of them could be hired or bribed to perform any dastardly deed.

“Glenndon?” Valeria shifted her gaze from her toes to her brother’s face and back again. He caught the glisten of tears at the corners of her eyes. “Why do you have to leave?”

I wish I knew for sure.
He had trouble meeting her gaze as well.

“Is this because you can’t talk?” She looked tired today. But she was always tired.

He shrugged.
Where is Lillian? You two are never apart.

“She . . . she is combing Mama’s hair.”

He lifted an eyebrow in question.
This must be important to you.

“It is. I need to know why you have to leave us. What will I do without you? You are the only one able to force Lillian to keep our secret.”

He knew that when she fought her body for energy she found it easier to speak than to project telepathically. Glenndon was the opposite.

What have you and Lillian been doing that has worn you down so much you can barely stand?

“Don’t change the subject, Glenndon.” She plunked her bottom onto the rock beside his favorite bathing pool while he skipped stones across the quiet water.

One, two, three jumps. He used only his muscle strength and skill. If he pushed the flat stone with magic, it would skip a dozen or more times.

Answer my question. What have you done to tire yourself so much?
He was the only one who ever tried to figure out what ailed his sister. She’d be sixteen this summer and only recently showed signs of maturing. Lillian had passed into womanhood two years ago.

“Not much,” Valeria replied.

He glared at her, pulling the information from her faster than she could block his penetration of her mind. He saw their usual lessons in magic, reading, writing, more magic to read beneath the printed words and to write in such a way that ordinary words took on different meanings when viewed by magic. Valeria had also scried for contact with Queen Rossemikka. But the queen had either been absent from her suite, or occupied by a visitor who must never know she possessed magic.

Glenndon lingered on that memory. She made the effort to yank it back behind a mental wall of privacy.

“You fear that someone will betray the queen,” she said flatly. “But surely there is someone else who can protect her. Maigret perhaps? Didn’t she used to spy for Da as a lady-in-waiting?”

Long ago. She’s too old and settled at the University now. She and Master Robb have two children.

“Why does it have to be you?” she wailed.

Because the king and queen asked for me, not Maigret, or Da, or anyone else. Me. Just me.

“There’s more you aren’t telling me.”

His silence told her more than his thoughts ever would.

Mama is ready for us.
Glenndon dropped his latest stone and marched back through the forest toward the clearing, ripping fuzzycurls off the tops of the saber ferns as he passed.

Valeria followed after him. He let her drink in some of his energy to refuel all that she had spent that day. Too much. She’d done too much without help. She’d be ill tonight and all day tomorrow if she didn’t take what he offered to keep her on her feet.

And he wouldn’t be with her to help her through the night when she was so tired she forgot to breathe.

How would she survive without those little bursts of strength and grounding to the Kardia beneath her feet?

I have found my weapon. I found it in the most unlikely of places, Market Isle. Who knew the vendors had such extensive and illegal contacts with their counterparts across the sea. Princess Rosselinda led me right to the man who can bring in an unlimited supply of weapons, consorts. “The more fathers, the bigger and stronger the clutch.” That’s what my lovely tells me.

It is the opposite for humans. The more mothers, the bigger and stronger my army. If I promise each soldier three wives, they will produce three times the children who will follow me without question.

What an interesting concept. I shall have the princess as my primary consort, but two others . . . Father’s latest light of love is a good start on my own clutch of children.

In the meantime my princess has shown me the path to destroying her father. He is the last advocate for keeping magic and magicians in Coronnan. I shall give this egg to my father, allow the hatchling to enthrall him so that he obeys my lovely and raises the army we need to follow through with the king’s demise.

With him gone, the dragons will lose their reason for staying in Coronnan. They will scatter, become easy targets to the hunters within my army when separated. Each dragon will feed a village for a winter. If I give them food in the coming drought they will love me and never reject me.

I knew my patience would be rewarded. And now I have my weapon. A little more planning, a little more recruitment, and then I shall pull together all of the little pieces of my plan.