The Wizard's Treasure (The Dragon Nimbus) (22 page)

Read The Wizard's Treasure (The Dragon Nimbus) Online

Authors: Irene Radford

“But you are the ghosts here. No one else,” she protested. She furrowed her brow in puzzlement, tilting her adorable little nose down.
Marcus reached out to smooth tight worry lines from her face. A barrier of burning energy repulsed his hand. He clenched it into a fist instead.
“We. Are. Not. Ghosts,” Robb stated breathlessly. “We did not die, leaving our spirits behind.”
“You only forget your passing, Robb. You are both truly ghosts,” Vareena insisted.
“No, we aren’t,” Marcus agreed with his friend. “That—thing—haunting the library is a real ghost. And it is royally pissed . . . um . . . I mean perturbed by our presence.”
“If there is truly another ghost in this place, why have I not sensed his presence? Why have I not seen him in all these past twenty years? I assure you, you two are the only ghosts currently residing here.” She placed her hands upon her hips and pursed her lips as if reprimanding errant children.
“I beg to differ, my dear.” Robb assumed his normal preaching tone, so obviously missing earlier today. “The entity we encountered in the library has most certainly staked a claim there. You admitted that you had not explored any part of the monastery other than the rooms occupied by your guests. The villagers shun the place unless required by you to make repairs, and even then they usually restrict themselves to the residential wing. Why should anyone have disturbed that thing other than your other guests who examined the building out of boredom, or seeking an exit. I can only presume they, too, were frightened away by this true ghost and did not explore further. Therefore, I must conclude that the answer to our quest for escape lies within the library.” Robb finally paused to breathe.
“I am not going back to that library!” Marcus trembled. “It wanted to carve out my heart with that sacrificial knife. Didn’t you see how much blood it dripped, how it reeked of the grave, and carried the chill of the void between existences?” Had he truly felt all that, or had his imagination filled in the gaps from old stories passed around apprentice dormitories late at night on Saawheen Eve?
“Yes, I did see all that and felt the same unnatural chill,” Robb said thoughtfully, tapping his teeth. He began to pace a serpentine path around Marcus and Vareena. “That is how I know it to be a true ghost.”
“A ghost is a ghost!” Vareena protested. “I shall prove it to you. You two are the only ghosts here.” She set down her basket, pushed past the two magicians, and marched back along the colonnade toward the library. Her footsteps echoed against the flag-stones.
Marcus suddenly realized that he and Robb made no noise as they moved about the old place. Their boots with sturdy leather soles and hard wooden heels should clomp noisily with every step.
The gloaming seemed to absorb the sounds of their passing. He wondered if they stood on the edge of the void between the planes of existence. The sense-robbing blackness of the void when one first entered could also rob a man of his sanity if he did not have a purpose, a question to ask. Only when he held that purpose or question firmly in his mind did the multicolored umbilicals of life become visible. If one had patience and courage, a man could sort through the life forces that surrounded him in the void that represented all those important to him in reality.
Perhaps . . . If he could summon enough magic for a trip into the void, he could find a way home.
“Robb.” He stopped his friend from following Vareena with a hand upon his shoulder. No barrier of energy repulsed his touch as it did with Vareena. “Robb, maybe we are ghosts of a sort. Our boots make no noise, we can touch each other but not her. Perhaps we are at the edge . . .”
“True. Our condition is not normal. But we cannot pass through walls, we require food and drink—we both eliminate bodily wastes regularly. And we have no memory of injury or death. None of that indicates that we have left our bodies behind as we would in death or on a trip through the void. We have bodies. We just aren’t truly in one reality or another, but trapped halfway between.”
“Isn’t that what happens to a ghost? His body is in one reality and his spirit in another.”
“Our spirits and bodies remain intact. ’Tis reality around us that wavers.”
“You’ve got a point there. Let’s follow and see what Vareena conjurs up in the library.”
“An apt description, I believe.”
Together they caught up with Vareena as she pushed open the door to the library.
“I don’t remember closing the door. Did you close it, Robb?”
Robb shook his head and scrunched his face in a puzzled frown. “I believe the ghost wishes to be left alone.”
Marcus tasted the air with his magical senses. Dust, mold, stone older than time, staleness, and . . . and something sour tingling on his tongue that did not belong there.
“It’s waiting for us,” he whispered.
“Stuff and nonsense. I’d know if another ghost had come here. I’m a sensitive.” Vareena resolutely pushed the door open and stepped into the vast room. “Yoohooo! Anybody home?”
Her words echoed around the nearly empty room. Silence followed.
Marcus and Robb poked their heads around the door, Robb above, Marcus slightly stooped. Diffuse sunlight filtered through the dust in broken shafts. “The dust should have settled by now. There isn’t a breeze to stir it,” Marcus whispered.
“I know,” Robb replied.
“Look for the sparkles, for movement.”
Vareena walked around the free-standing bookshelves. Her skirts raised clouds of dust in her wake. It swirled and eddied, drifting to new locations. But none of her dust stayed in the air more than a moment or two.
The other dust—the stuff that lingered in the corner far away from her circuitous path—took on a vaguely human shape, the glint of red and metal showed the knife now tucked into his old-fashioned belt sash over yellow tunic and orange sleeveless robe. Brown trews and boots faded into the shadows, making him look almost legless. He made mocking faces at Vareena, waving his arms in a parody of drawing attention to himself.
Eventually, Vareena climbed the spiral staircase to the second-floor gallery. The gloating dust followed her only within touching distance of the cold iron structure. Then it jerked back as if burned.
“Behind you,” Marcus hissed at her.
“What?” Vareena turned on the sixth step, looking over her shoulder at them.
“The ghost. In the dust. Behind you.” Marcus held his breath, not daring to come closer, yet fearful for her well-being.
“I see nothing.” Firmly she marched up the stairs.
“She didn’t even look,” Robb protested.
“Perhaps she truly cannot see this ghost. Her sensitivities are limited, as is her magic.”
“I wonder if all of her other ghosts have been mundane,” Robb mused.
“If so, they might not have seen this ghost. If mundanes couldn’t find a way out, perhaps the solution lies in magic.” Hope brightened Marcus’ heart for the first time since coming here.
“But our magic has become quite limited by whatever force holds us here. Without a dragon to combine and enhance our powers, we may not have enough magic to break the spell.”
 
Ariiell loosened the ties of her gown and shifted the pillows behind her back. She sighed at the relief of pressure on her swelling belly.
Outside her bedchamber her father and stepmother continued to argue over her plight. Her father’s second wife wept more than she spoke. “Think of the disgrace of bringing that monster into our family. Everyone will know ’tis not a love match. ’Tis not even a good political move.” Lady Laislac choked out the words between sobs. “Better we send her to a convent overseas for a year and foster the baby elsewhere. It’s likely to be as hideous as the father.”
Ariiell frowned. Her stepmother repeated some of the arguments Ariiell had put forth against the marriage to Mardall. Arguments she expected and hoped to lose.
“My honor is as much at stake as the girl’s. She’ll never be able to make a more advantageous marriage. Whoever we pawn her off on will know she’s not a virgin and will renounce the marriage on the wedding night.” Lord Laislac’s boots pounded the floor rushes into a distinctive path from his repetitive pacing.
Her father always won family arguments regardless of the wisdom or rightness of his position.
The best way for Ariiell to get what she wanted was to counter her father with the opposite of her goal. In four years of marriage, her stepmother had never learned that little trick. Her father’s wife deserved the unhappiness Lord Laislac dealt her every day.
“To bring that . . . that thing into the family!”
“That
thing
is blood heir to the throne,” Ariiell’s father reminded his wife.
“Precisely,” Ariiell whispered to herself. “Mardall will never take the throne. But as long as Queen Rossemikka remains barren, my child is next in line.” She smiled hugely, rubbing her tummy.
The baby kicked in response to the slight pressure. A good sign of the child’s health and vigor. Her mentor had promised the child would be normal.
“I will be the mother of the next king of Coronnan,” she whispered to herself. No sense in losing the battle with her father by stating the truth. “As soon as the marriage takes place and the child is declared legitimate, I must find a way to eliminate Darville. I’ll certainly be more successful than those idiots from the coven and the Gnuls who have bungled every attempt these last three years.”
She reached beneath the mattress for the book of poisons she had recently acquired. She wasn’t supposed to be able to read—no person other than the now outlawed magicians were allowed to learn the arcane art of reading and higher mathematics. But Ariiell had watched the family magician priest as he sounded out the letters and words on letters and reports. The priest was supposed to consign written communications to the fire as soon as he read them to the lord. A little sleight of hand had brought most of those messages into Ariiell’s possession.
Careful study had brought the words to life.
So now she plotted out ways to coat the inside of Darville’s riding gloves with a fast-acting poison. She’d need time to gather all the necessary ingredients. Time to insert herself into court life. After the wedding.
By this time next year, she intended to be regent for her infant son and the coven.
Earlier today, her guardian from the coven had tried another assassination upon the king. But this one was intended to fail. The coven needed Darville alive until Ariiell’s child was born. But they needed him frightened of dying without an heir so that he would name Ariiell’s child as next in succession. The man must have failed. He hadn’t reported back to her, and the king had not sent word to hasten the marriage.
Time for a change of tactics. In a few hours she’d summon her nameless guardian and give him a new task—the poison ingredients would work just as well on Queen Rossemikka.
 
“I think I have a problem, Jaylor. I can’t throw the spell. I can’t come to the lair in three days or even tonight.” Jack schooled his voice and his face to slip through the summons spell on a note of calm. Panic gibbered inside him, demanding he pace, he pound, he seek Katrina in any way possible. He’d even travel into the void by himself, without an anchor, in order to find her.

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