The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus) (25 page)

“Because he was afraid one of them would displace him.”

“Afraid?” Maria nearly choked on her snort of derision. “Your father was never afraid of anything.”

“He’s afraid of you.”

“Nonsense.”

“Why do you think he has allowed you to live? He has kept you here safe and secure and believing that you are unworthy to rule because he knows that any threat to you will bring down the wrath of every female who ever thought of becoming a warrior as well as the ordinary women who run businesses and manage families.”

“I am invisible. No one remembers me.”

“You’d be surprised. Here, I’ve fixed your boot so that you can walk more comfortably.” He held up her shoe, showing how he’d added an extra inch to the sole. Then he knelt in front of her and slipped it over her stunted foot. Gently he tightened the lacings and tied them in a neat bow.

“You wear long skirts to cover the unevenness in your legs. You work hard to disguise your limp. This will make the limp even less noticeable, put less strain on your body. You are strong, Aunt Maria. I think the time has come to show that strength and take back what is your right.”

“But I have no heir unless you marry.”

“You can give us time to find the right bride for me. You can give us time to heal from Lokeen’s tyranny.”

“Leave me. I can’t do what you ask.”

“But will you do what the women warriors sneaking back to their posts demand of you? Gerta’s friends bring one or two every half day, displacing men who blindly follow the king. I do not ask where those men disappear to.” He rose with that musical grace he’d always had, bowed respectfully, and sauntered out of her private parlor whistling a martial tune composed by the first Maria nearly a thousand years before.

“W
HY, WHY, WHY did I let the boys convince me to remain here?” Robb asked the ether through chattering teeth. Cold sweat poured off his brow and across his chest. The tiny stone cell spun every time he turned his head. His heart beat double time and so loudly he could hear little else but his pulse hammering into his head like a long iron spike. “Must be a fever,” he said aloud, just to hear his own voice and presume he wasn’t hallucinating.

Was that the grating of a key in the lock? He couldn’t be certain. Liquid filled the cavity behind his ears and refused to shift or drain, muting all of his senses except the cold and aching joints and racing heart.

“He’ll need to be carried, my lady,” a man said. It sounded like Badger, but Robb couldn’t be sure. Maybe he only dreamed the presence of three men and the tiny woman inside his cell. If he dreamed, then he must be asleep, and sleep healed. Maigret had told him that often over their years together.

“Wrap him in more blankets, like a litter. We have to get him out of this place,” Lady Maria said sternly.

“Who are you to order the moving of my prisoner?” a newcomer demanded.

“I am chatelaine,” Lady Maria said sternly.

“And I am captain of the guard. All of the prisoners are my responsibility, and I say he remains.”

“Everything and everyone within the castle walls are my responsibility,” she insisted. Good for her. She’d been so meek and accepting of other people’s decisions he’d doubted her capable of holding to a decision. Robb wondered what had given her the courage to defy the captain—the king’s right-hand man.

“Not me and my prisoners.”

“Would you care to dispute that with the Great Mother?”

The men who had come in with her all gasped.

“I will take this up with the king,” the captain said. He turned abruptly on his heel and started to leave.

“The king is in bed with Princess Rejiia. Do you care to disturb him over something so trivial as the welfare of one prisoner? The one prisoner he has ordered you to keep alive?”

Rejiia!
No. It couldn’t be. For the past fifteen years the daughter of Lord Krej of Saria and the leader of the dreaded magical Coven had been enscorcelled into her totem animal body: a black cat with one white ear.

What had restored her? Or did an imposter claim the lady’s name and rank?

“I have to . . . to . . .” Robb tried to roll over and leverage himself up. His head spun so rapidly he had to drop it back onto the pallet to find himself again. Bad idea. The pallet offered little cushioning, and now this headache throbbed through his entire body. Maybe if his eyes bled the pain would ease.

“He don’t look well, my lady,” Scurry said.

“We need a healer, Lady Maria,” Badger added.

“He’s nearly dead already,” the captain sneered. “Leave him overnight and he’ll no longer be a problem, or a source of dispute.”

“Take him to the tower now. Third story,” Lady Maria snapped. High enough for the air to be cleaner but not so high she couldn’t climb too many stairs to tend him. “And you, Captain, go into the city
now
. Do not come back until you have Levi and his apprentices. I know of no other healer who can deal with this.”

“Maigret. Send for Maigret,” Robb mumbled. If he died tonight, he wanted to see his wife one more time. He wanted to loose the bonds of life in her arms. “Maigret is the wisest healer in Coronnan,” he added. “Summon Maigret, please.”

Lily did not look well. Much of the color she’d regained drained out of her face as she surveyed the line of grim farmers standing around the edges of the fields that should be nearing harvest. Instead, they all held torches. Lily held her staff up as a symbol of her authority as well as her unity with the villagers in this painful task. Tears streaked the faces of the farmwives as they hoed the land clear of weeds and other greenery, making firebreaks on the periphery.

Dawn just touched the tops of the trees that marked the barrier between the undulating prairie and the road that skirted the Great Bay. Rapidly evaporating dew caught the light and sent it back out in an array of colors; tiny rainbows arced from plant to plant, turning the entire landscape into a delightful promise of a warm and clear day. New hope for today. And maybe tomorrow.

A perfect day for beginning the grain harvest.

A harvest that could not happen. Every plant and root was tainted with illness left behind by the hatching of the monster Krakatrice.

“I asked the dragons to bring us food enough to get through the winter,” Souska reminded them all. She didn’t add that Krystaal had given ambivalent answers. She didn’t
know
that her plea would be answered. But she had to give these people hope.

“The dragons brought us the cure. They will not abandon us now,” Lily said in a voice that projected to the far corners of the cultivated land.

“Not even forage for the animals,” the man next to Souska grumbled.

“We can take them farther afield. Away from anything the snakes may have touched,” Souska said, trying desperately to soothe him and herself.

“Might as well move the whole village,” an old woman said. “Chickens and goats will walk off all their meat going from here to safe grazing.” She mumbled something more that sounded like curses.

“That may be helpful,” Lily agreed, chewing her lower lip. “Once we’ve built new houses on the next ridge, we can burn these too, get totally away from any residual miasma.”

“What will be left to build with? Turf?” Stanil, the village headman, asked.

Souska couldn’t be sure of his name. Names and position and relationship held less importance to her than how each reacted to her treatment of the illness. She thought that he’d begun recovering on his own—or possibly had an immunity to the disease—and had helped Lily tend the desperately ill and dying before Souska arrived. He’d been the only one strong enough to dig graves.

Bitter anger rose in Souska, flaming her cheeks and drying her tears. It was not right that these people should lose everything, their lives, their land, their very future.

Burning she could understand. Her gran had told of a time long ago when blight hit the rye and they had to burn the crop. But must they then sow the land with salt? That would render it sterile for many years to come. Nothing would grow. Not even fireweed that would at least offer forage for the animals.

Crying heavily, Lily lowered her staff, the grain in the length of wood not twisted or knotted at all from the little bit of magic she might have pushed through the primary tool of a magician. One by one the men stationed around the edges followed her example and lowered their torches. They did not touch flame to the plants. Not yet. Delay as long as possible and retain some small hope of reprieve.

“Wait!” Souska yelled. She gripped Lily’s arm with fierce fingers digging into the muscle.

“What?” Lily asked, dazed and confused. She looked like once she’d set her mind to torching the fields, she could think of nothing else.

The others with torches straightened, relief written all over their faces and in their posture. They understood the necessity, but clearly did not want to burn the fields.

“I have to taste the dirt. I have to know that this is the right thing to do.”

“You don’t trust the dragons? Krystaal said most firmly that we must cleanse the land with fire and salt to erase all trace of the Krakatrice.”

“I trust the Kardia to know what it needs to bring it back into balance.” Souska fixed a determined gaze on the other healer. Then, without waiting for permission she knelt on the verge and loosened a handful of dirt with trembling fingers. She hesitated. Sickness had come from the land. She’d be the next victim.

One breath and hold; release and hold. Repeat. She focused inward, clearing her mind of all but the need to separate and examine each component of the dirt. She knew what should be there. It was her responsibility to determine what should not be there and find what was missing or in too much abundance to balance it.

Her gran had never trusted the dragons. “They knows what they knows. They needs what they needs. But they don’t always know what we know. Or what we need,” the old woman had said when Souska was five and they’d caught a rare glimpse of a blue-tipped wing and horns soaring across the sky.

“What the dragons need is not necessarily what we need,” she said quietly to bolster her courage.

“My da always told us to trust the dragons,” Lily insisted. But she held her staff away from the grain, not touching anything flammable.

“Your da knew magic. For that you must trust the dragons, creatures of magic. My gran knew the land. I trust her wisdom in this matter.” Souska touched three grains of dirt to her tongue.

Gritty sand and smooth clay. Damp. Mold. Something acrid. A hint of the barley growing now. A whiff of the beans that had grown here last year. The sickness was there, but faint, nearly overwhelmed by the damp and the . . . and the . . . salt. She licked a bit more dirt off her fingertip. “Salt. Loads and loads of salt!”

“Of course, we are supposed to sow salt into the Kardia once we’ve burned . . .” Lily said. She sounded uncertain.

“No. The dirt is already laden with salt. Much too much salt.” More curious than concerned, Souska entered the field, where the grains grew thickest. She tasted the dirt again. Just a couple of grains. The gritty taste of loam dominated, more damp and mold, less of the acrid sickness (it seemed to be evaporating), all of it filtered through her senses. Then the overwhelming sharpness of too much salt. Her tongue wanted to shrink and curl in upon itself. More salt here than at the edge.

Rising from her crouch she faced Lily and the village elder. “I don’t think we should burn everything.”

A sigh of relief worked all around the edge of the fields.

“There’s barely any sickness left in the ground. But there is too much salt. So much salt that little will grow here next season. This whole area needs to lay fallow with a season of fireweed, letting the animals browse that, and then two seasons of legumes.”

“But the dragons . . .” Lily protested.

“The dragons got it backward.” Souska stood firm. “The snakes try to kill the land with lack of moisture and salt. The salt is so thick it burns anything that tries to grow. That is how they create a desert out of lush farmland. They kill the land even as they remove the water. Where they live, they leave behind salt and more salt.”

“Can we safely eat the grain?” the elder asked. He held his torch down, like he wanted to grind it into the dirt to extinguish the flames.

Souska raked a few kernels into her palm and examined them closely, turning them over and over again with a questing finger. They looked whole, ripe, and unblemished. A little small, and not as many as should be on each stalk, but then this was the second planting, after the storm winds stripped a lot of new growth from the first planting. Resolutely she brought her hand to her mouth and sucked up three kernels. Nutty, sweet, raw, and salty. No trace of the malaise that had felled nearly the entire village. Maybe soaking would rid them of some of the salt. Maybe they’d just have to learn to cook without adding any more salt. “They taste clean,” she said on a long exhale.

“I’m scrying for Maigret,” Lily said. “This decision is beyond my journeyman skills and your apprentice prejudices.” She marched back to the hut she shared with Souska. “No one goes against the orders of the dragons!” When she ducked beneath the low lintel she threw Souska’s pack back out.

“I will defy the dragons if they are wrong,” Souska whispered. “That’s why I’ll never make a good magician.”