The Wizard's Treasure (The Dragon Nimbus) (39 page)

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

Authors: Irene Radford

“Then magic is legal again in Coronnan?” Marcus asked. His dream of a home and family at the University shifted slightly from a cottage in the woods to a suite of rooms in the massive stone building in the capital.
“Not exactly,” Jack and Zolltarn replied at the same time.
“Marcus!” a new voice announced herself from the gateway. Margit raced across the crowded courtyard, bouncing off of one ghostly Rover after another, heedless of the angry voices and offended travelers. “So this is where you’ve been hiding. This is where you came just to get away from me!” She raised her fist and slammed it into his jaw.
The anger behind her blow pushed her through the energy barrier and knocked Marcus flat on his bum.
 
Iron! They fight me with iron. I have no defense against that base metal. So cold. And yet it burns. Not like my gold that warms to the touch and invites me to caress it. The young whelps must have watched when I could not follow our keeper up the iron staircase.
The iron cannot push me into my next existence. I want no other than what I have. I have the gold and that is all I need. I do not even need my children—proud of them as I am—as long as I have the gold. But iron will give me terrible pain that will not go away. Ever.
I must make them flee. None of the others who have visited me have given me so much trouble. The others were company of sorts. I was content to let them fondle a piece or two of gold. They could not leave with it. And so I retrieved it upon their deaths. Quiet deaths mostly, with a peaceful passage into their next existence. They can only last one hundred days or less living under my curse. And I still had the gold.
But these magicians tax me greatly. They have the gift to undo three hundred years of protecting my gold. I shall whisper the secret into their dreams. ’Tis their greed that keeps them here. Tonight, I shall whisper into their dreams. All of them. By morning they will either flee or kill each other. One way or another, I shall be free of them all.
 
Ariiell eyed the side trail with suspicion. Why would Rejiia send her up there? This must be the wrong road.
But they’d passed no others. She had watched diligently for signs of the place Rejiia needed her to go. With just a touch of TrueSight she discerned the signs of many steeds passing this way recently. Steeds and sledges.
No respectable trading caravan would travel up this narrow and nearly overgrown path. They would seek the village up ahead.
She sniffed the trail with her mundane nose, made more sensitive by magic and pregnancy. This was a talent Rejiia and the coven did not know about. She could identify individuals by smell from one hundred paces, she could tell what Cook prepared for dinner before the dishes began cooking. And she knew that the passing steeds pulling the sledges had left a great deal of dung on the path.
She would not traverse this trail. No matter what Rejiia ordered. She would not go there!
“I’ll not follow orders blindly anymore. I carry the heir. I shall make all my own decisions.” She kicked her placid mare into a sprightly trot, leaving the noisome trail behind.
“Why did you tarry there, daughter?” Lord Laislac asked as she rode alongside him.
“I thought it might lead someplace interesting.” She dismissed the topic.
Lord Andrall immediately looked back over his shoulder at the trail and up the hill. As his gaze came to the crest, his eyes widened. “I do not like well-traversed trails branching off to old ruins. They speak of outlaw hideouts.”
“An abandoned monastery.” Laislac kept his voice light, but his eyes remained fixed on the same spot as Lord Andrall’s. “The locals proclaim it haunted and do not go near. Outlaws heed them.”
Ariiell squinted and called up her FarSight. Nothing but a pile of old stones shrouded in mist.
“Tales of haunting are often spread by outlaws and bandits to keep the locals away. I’m going to investigate.” Andrall yanked his reins so his steed would make the tight turn onto the trail. Mardall steered his own mount to follow his father.
“Milord, you cannot go there alone!” Lady Lynnetta protested, hand to her throat.
“Half of the men with me, weapons at the ready. The rest stay close to the ladies,” he called to the troop of retainers behind them.
“Not without me,” Laislac muttered.
“No, P’pa,” Ariiell protested. Amazing, just when she decided not to obey Rejiia’s orders, her father proceeded to force her to follow them. “You cannot leave us with such meager protection.” She waved to indicate her stepmother and Lady Lynnetta. Then she placed her hand on the bulge of her belly in silent reminder of the importance of the child she carried.
“No one will disturb you on the main road. Go up to the village if you are frightened.” Laislac pushed his steed onto the side trail.
Lord Andrall looked as if he would protest the safety of the road and village. Then he firmed his jaw and turned in the wake of his great-brother. The men at arms followed. The retainers and servants milled about, uncertain of which way to go.
Ariiell rolled her eyes up in exasperation. “I’m not going to be left behind.” She joined the trek up the hillside. Behind her the others followed her lead.
“This had better be good, Rejiia.”
In the back of her head she heard a malicious chuckle.
CHAPTER 34
 
 
 
 
“
W
here’d he go?” Margit stared at the space “where Marcus had just been. She shook her hand to free it of the curious burn on top of the bruising from connecting so firmly with his jaw. “The bastard must have used the transport spell to disappear on me again.
S’murghin
’ coward couldn’t tell me to my face he expects me to sit quietly at home bearing his brats and babysitting his apprentices! What makes him think I want that kind of life? What makes him think . . .”
“I’m right here, Margit, right where you dumped me on the ground.” Marcus’ voice came to her from a great distance.
“Where?” She looked around for the source of his voice. Only Jack and Katrina with the blasted flywacket and another man and woman and a lot of steeds and sledges stood in the courtyard. “Where?” she repeated.
“Right here!” the once-beloved voice sounded angry now. “You could have told me your dreams. Instead you let me ramble on about my hopes for the future and you never said a word. You could have told me you don’t really love me. You only wanted to use me as a means to wander the world.”
The thickening fog distorted the air into a vague manlike shape, like looking at a dragon, but . . . but dragons had more solidity.
“You never said anything to me about settling down. All you did was retell your adventures on the road. I thought you wanted to keep traveling, take me with you on your journeys.” Margit gulped back a sob, trying to rekindle the anger that had propelled her. “Jack, what’s going on?” She looked to the one magician who might figure out this puzzle.
“Your anger must have heightened your senses for you to see him in the first place,” Jack sighed. “Engage your TrueSight, Margit. Then look slightly to the side of the distortion. Do you see him?”
“I’m not sure. He looks sort of like a scrying image gone awry, almost there but not quite.”
“I’m here, Margit. And our betrothal is off. I’ve found another. Vareena.” His voice caressed the name. The figure that might be Marcus reached out as if to embrace the short woman standing off to the side. But he didn’t touch her.
Vareena heaved a weary sigh and stepped away from him. She’d be pretty if she weren’t so old. Nearly thirty. Past being a spinster. Margit classified her as a maiden aunt, destined to care for her brother’s families, if she had any.
‘Robb, tell him that I do not love him,” Vareena said wearily. “I cannot love him.” She sounded more exasperated than aggrieved.
“I can’t tell him anything, Vareena.” Another ghostly voice that sounded like Robb but not quite, from somewhere near the largest of the sledges.
Margit looked closely. Definitely another man shape within the light distortion. And beside him another and another. The flutters and fluctuations in her perceptions made her dizzy.
She closed her eyes to regain her balance. When she opened them again, the wavering light remained.
“What’s going on, Jack?” She looked at his solid body rather than at all of the almost-people who milled around the courtyard. Katrina looked as bewildered as she. Only Vareena and the other man who did not seem a part of the entire proceedings acted as if all was normal.
“I was just about to find out when you interjected with your rather—um—forceful opinion,” Jack replied. The corners of his mouth twitched even though he kept them in a stern frown.
Just then a caterwauling rose all around them, like a thousand cat fights all at once. Chills ran through Margit, but she didn’t sneeze.
“Now what?”
“They’re all fighting over the gold,” Marcus said. He sounded as if a great weight pressed against him.
Margit’s heart almost moved in empathy with him.
But the hurt was too great.
How could he have just presumed she wanted a home and children? Kardia Hodos was a big planet, and she intended to see all of it.
No, he hadn’t heard. He hadn’t listened. He never listened to anything but what he wanted to hear because he presumed his luck would make everyone agree with him.
“Your luck just ran out, Marcus,” she muttered as Jack and two blobs of watery light moved toward the loudest of the disagreements.
And then she heard something that chilled her even more than the screeching fights and arguments by unseen ghosts: the distinctive hiss of long metal blades sliding out of wooden scabbards.
She whirled around to find a new party of a dozen steeds ridden by nobles and men at arms.
 
“Whatever happens, do not touch the gold,” Robb whispered to Jack. He slammed his weight into two Rover men who grabbed each other by their shirts, clutching fingers far too close to the vulnerable throats of their opponent.
“Zolltarn!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Zolltarn, control your people!”
Jack bounced off two women, one heavily pregnant. They separated, mouths agape, panting for breath as they stared at the man who had the audacity to interfere. The burning energy that must separate the women from the normal world kept Jack from touching them directly, but his impact against the barrier should have been unpleasant enough to force them apart.

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