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

manners after all.
    Maria liked this new order—a renewed order of respect for her. Something she hadn’t seen since her sister, the queen, had danced through life happy and healthy. Before the birth of her first son which had nearly killed her. The second son had made her an invalid.
    She found Lokeen pacing the circular confines of the room. Robb sat on a high stool before the window that overlooked the harbor and the ocean beyond, opposite the courtyard that looked only upon the dungeon cells where Lokeen kept his pet Krakatrice, eyes closed, breathing deeply, and conserving his strength for the work to come.
    He’d eaten well, bathed, and shaved. A very handsome man had emerged from the layers of grime and beard. Maria’s heart beat a little faster.
    She tamped down on her longing and cleared her head. She needed to observe the spell closely, learn how it was done, so that perhaps she could perform it herself in the future. Surely, if Coronnan had so many magicians that they filled a University with practitioners, then the myth that only people born with a special talent could work magic was just a myth. What people needed was not talent but training.
    “We have brought you a bowl of clear water, an oil candle, a flight feather from a sea bird that we left living, a gold coin from Coronnan, and your glass,” she announced as she placed the silk-enshrouded glass on the table along with the other symbolic materials.
    Robb exhaled deeply and nodded. But he did not move from his place.
    “Get to it, man!” Lokeen shouted.
    Robb took another deep breath, held it on a long count and exhaled it again before turning to face his captor. A strange glaze covered his eyes as if he looked far away beyond the limits of the walls, further than the ocean horizon, and deep within himself at the same time.
    “I am ready.” His voice echoed deeply, as if it came from another body, one that was not here. Up in the skies perhaps. Or deep on the ocean bottom.
    She backed up, awed and frightened by this alien man. Her hands instinctively clutched the goddess pendant beneath her clothes. She thought she had gotten to know Robb a bit, thought they were becoming friends. But this . . . this was not the Robb she expected.
    This man controlled vast powers she could not fathom.
    Robb glided off his stool, graceful, barely grounded against the wide wooden planks of the floor. He stood at the table and began rearranging his assembled tools without looking at them. Then he waited, expectantly.
    Young Frederico rushed to shove the stool behind the mage. Robb sat, again without looking, as if he knew precisely where everything in the room should be.
    A snap of his fingers produced a tiny flamelet on his left pointing finger. He dropped his hand toward the candle, and the ember jumped to the wick where it flared high and eager to burn the waiting oil-soaked linen braid. His right hand did not fumble as he brought the tip of the feather to the flame. It scorched only, sending a column of smoke outward, without pattern or direction. The gold coin touched the smoldering feather, and the smoke organized itself into a circle. When Robb gently placed the coin and the feather into the bowl of water, the smoke spiraled downward, following them, only to be trapped by the glass as he floated it in the water atop them all.
    Maria watched every move with her jaw hanging open. How? How could he do this? How many years had he studied just to bring flame out of nothing? The symbolism she understood. The means she could not, not without much more close observation.
    She barely noticed as he passed the sealed letter through the flame without burning and dropped it atop the glass with the written destination facing downward.
    “Seek, seek the one whose face appears on the coin. Fly free and swift, straight as I send you,” he murmured, eyes finally focusing on the letter.
    Smoke and flame flared up from the bowl, engulfing the letter in a tight twist of gold