The Wandering Dragon (Children of the Dragon Nimbus) by Irene Radford

of her hand. But the grain remained straight and true. She didn’t have enough magic to channel through the essential tool to twist it to her pattern of power. “I doubt I even have a pattern, let alone any power.”
    Still, she persisted, as she waited patiently for the nearest magnetic pole to tug at her. When the faint inclination to lean south finally found her, she cautiously turned her back to it and fixed her gaze north. Then she coaxed her eyes to see more than the obvious. A slight depression running north and south where the ridge sloped downward toward the Great Bay. The Caravan Road. And at the base of the ridge another road split from the main one. It ran past Lake Aporia and the home of Lord Laislac all the way into the mountains. Ariiell’s father had been deposed and imprisoned for his treason of importing Krakatrice eggs in order to wreak havoc in the land and make the king vulnerable to assassination and invasion by the King of Amazonia.
    Lily didn’t know if the king had appointed a new lord. She didn’t really care. Lady Ariiell, Laislac’s misused and abused daughter, was safe with Valeria at the University of Magicians. The Council of Provinces, its politics and alliances, held no interest for Lily. The health of the land and the people did. But she’d come too far south in her wandering. The circling winds had not reached much farther than here. This was the far edge of where the dry tornado had spread its funnel, nearly one hundred miles across.
    Just the other side of that ridge she and Skeller had hunkered down with a trade caravan. In the aftermath the winds had broken loose the secret crate of Krakatrice eggs from the bottom of Lady Ariiell’s litter. The huge amounts of magic in the air had prematurely hatched the black snakes. She shuddered and closed her eyes. But she couldn’t blot out the memory of a black mass wriggling and undulating across the land, consuming the blood and meat of any animal that had bolted from the storm or been blown away by it.
    The snakes had moved north, toward the center of magic. The village lay south of the hatching ground and had not been a part of the feeding frenzy.
    Or had it? She saw no signs of life stirring around the huts in the late afternoon sunshine.
    Like it or not, she had to know. She had to stay and help in any way she could.
    Tomorrow. Soon the sun would set and she’d not have enough light to trek cross-country without a trail or magelight to guide her steps. She could be of no help if she arrived wounded from a fall, or victim of a predator. Spotted saber cats still roamed these prairies. Tonight she’d make a rough camp with a fire and arrive at the tumbledown village early in the morning.

    A deep, throbbing hum irritated Souska’s inner ear.
Lukan!
Her journeyman called her.
    Quickly she looked around the stillroom filled with aromatic herbs and brews and potions. All of the other healer apprentices were busy with their own tasks, trying to finish before the sun fully set lest darkness and unknown qualities invaded their medicines. She crept up the long, narrow staircase against the interior wall toward the journeymen’s living quarters. Then past the bedrooms and up another stair to the apprentice dormitories. Finally the ladder to the loft attic appeared, deep in the shadows of the back corner.
    At the top, in her own private space, she poured water into a palm-sized ceramic bowl, lit the candle with a snap of her fingers, and dropped her tiny shard of glass into the bowl.
    Lukan’s face appeared almost immediately.
    Souska reached a finger to trace the curve of his cheek but he turned his face away, looking over his shoulder anxiously.
    “I have no time. Tell Mistress Maigret that Rejiia is in the city and I think she’s recruiting a new coven.”
    “What?”
    “I’m beached at Sacred Isle and I can’t work magic once I set foot out of my boat,” he hissed at her. “Memorize what I said. The Masters need to know this.”