Free The Broken Dragon: Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 by Irene Radford Page A

didn’t stumble.
    She squeezed his shoulders and stood straight on her own. As straight as she was wont to these days, anyway, a little hunched over her belly, protectively. “How long can you stay home this time?” she asked, finally looking up at him.
    “’Til dawn at least.” He kissed her lightly, thought better of it and kissed her again, deeply, passionately, thoroughly. “Then again, perhaps I ought to leave Glenndon alone for a few days to see how he copes on his own.”
    The glass disc in his tunic pocket began vibrating. Both he and his wife sighed. “The responsibilities of being Senior Magician, Chancellor of the University, and councillor to the king. Someone always needs my attention.”
    “And your wife is always last to get it.” Brevelan moved away from him toward her cabin. Always her cabin, never theirs, as it was before they met.
    He swallowed the chill of her leaving and removed the palm-sized glass from his tunic. Without a scrying bowl and candle flame he saw only a swirl of red and yellow curlicues. He wet his fingertip on his tongue and tapped it against the glass three times. “I’m coming, Marcus. I’m coming.” He set his footsteps on the half-mile path to the Forest University buildings.
    Life was easier in the old days when there was only one University in the capital. But in those days magicians didn’t keep wives, never acknowledged their children, and were a lot lonelier. Somehow his connection to his fellow magicians while in a magical circle, their talents building and compounding into far more than the sum of their individual parts, that complete unity of mind and purpose, paled in comparison to holding a newborn babe in his arms and knowing that out of his life had come another, and another. Or the joy of loving Brevelan, totally and completely, even when she was pissed at him.
    The scent of fresh, raw yampion tubers being peeled and sliced enticed him back toward the cabin. Hours yet before the sweet, rich pie finished baking. He plowed on through the forest to his responsibilities, knowing a hot meal, a warm hearth, and a loving family awaited him at the end of the day.
    “What demands my attention so urgently,” he demanded of Marcus the moment he cleared the doorway into the master magician’s office. He’d given over his place here at the Forest University when he reopened the old University in the capital several months ago. Still, the changes his former apprentice had made shocked him. Different books lining the shelves, a smaller and more upright chair than his own—which now graced his office in Coronnan City—a long smooth wooden pen and bronze inkwell instead of Jaylor’s pile of quills and silver inkwell, all made him feel as if he had walked into a stranger’s private parlor.
    He stopped in the doorway, needing permission to enter, though Marcus was never one to stand on ceremony, unlike his former partner Robb.
    “I may have a general location for Robb, his three journeymen, and two apprentices,” Marcus said, waving Jaylor closer to his desk where he peered through a large master’s glass, a smooth slice of clear glass in a gold frame. From a distance, and without joining the other man’s spell through physical contact and a sharing of talent, he saw only a candle flame shimmering behind the glass.
    But Marcus had no candle or scrying bowl before him.
    “Thank the Stargods they didn’t get lost in the void during a hasty transport!” Jaylor shouted, leaning over Marcus with hands on the desk and his chin atop the younger man’s head—a position he often took when teaching apprentices, including Marcus and Robb when they were much younger.
    “What do you see?” Jaylor asked more quietly. “Aside from the flame.”
    “Dirt and stone, a sense of confinement. Solitude. Only a single candle for company, a new one each day, brought with a meal.”
    “Prison,” Jaylor said on a sigh. “Where? Who
could
kidnap a master in the middle of a