The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

by Irene Radford

“Then I agree to the exchange. Cure Jaylor and release your prisoners for a seat on the Commune.”

  “No!” Darville and Jaylor protested in unison.

  “It’s not worth the chance, Baamin. We know what kind of thieving scoundrel this Rover is.” Jaylor gritted his teeth. “The last time we met he was employed by Krej to steal or shatter my staff so I would have no focus for the spell to free Shayla. He is desperate to rebuild his clan. Krej could have offered him a monstrous bribe to undercut Darville’s authority. We can’t trust either of them.”

  “Perhaps we would benefit from having him close at hand, where he can be watched,” Brevelan offered. “Think, Jaylor, you could have your magic back, in full. Certainly you and Baamin and Yaakke could counter any wrongdoing.”

  “Ah, Yaakke!” Zolltarn sighed. “I will add half my wealth to this bargain for the boy.”

  “I’m not ‘Boy,’ anymore, Zolltarn. I’m an apprentice at the University. I make my own decisions.” Yaakke stood to face the Rover.

  “A child was stolen from us many years ago. You could assume his place at my side, as my apprentice and heir. But the price of that knowledge is to join my clan.” Zolltarn’s voice took on an enticing lilt.

  “Master Baamin and Jaylor and Brevelan are all the family I need.” Yaakke sat down again, staring resolutely into the fire.

  “I repeat,” Jaylor glared at each person in the tent in turn, “we can’t trust his motives or his lies. My magic isn’t worth the risk.”

  “Even though you are my designated heir?” Baamin quirked one eyebrow in question.

  “Heir to what—your books and robes that won’t fit me?”

  “You have more experience of rogue magic than all of us combined. Therefore, you are the logical choice to become Senior Magician. I also choose to leave the University in your capable hands. The position of adviser to the king is Darville’s choice, but since the two of you have been the best of friends since childhood. . . .”

  “I value your magic and your friendship, Jaylor.” Darville clasped his friend’s shoulder. Emotion threatened to close this throat. “But the choice is yours. We’ll find a way out of this mess one way or another. However, I prefer to see you whole . . . if you so choose.”

  Chapter 22

  One breath, in three counts, out three counts. Second breath in, out. Jaylor focused his magic deep within himself. His lungs swelled the third time, deep and long. Reality faded and shimmered at the edges of his vision. A bright silver-blue ley line glowed and pulsed with magic from deep within the core of Kardia Hodos, fourth planet from the sun Helios. He shifted his feet to draw the maximum energy from the line.

  “You are the focus, the center. As the planets revolve around the sun, our star pattern will revolve around you,” Zolltarn intoned. The Rover, too, was hovering on the edge of a trance.

  They stood in the exact center of a clearing—not the clearing on Sacred Isle, just an open space beyond the Rover camp, formed when a forest giant toppled. Remnants of the ancient, top-heavy tree lingered in sawed-up long benches around the circumference of the clearing. Smaller trees ringed them in a near perfect circle. Everblues, oaks, and alders and, Jaylor suspected, a Tambootie tree or two. Superstitious farmers had ceased planting their tithes of Tambootie under Krej’s not-so-gentle persuasion. But home-loving citizens of Coronnan rarely ventured into mixed wooded areas where the trees of magic were already established.

  Jaylor’s attention wandered in a drifting pattern. Politics and the politics of magic twisted through his mind in a bright tangle. The void beckoned him into a deeper trance. Answers could be found in the void. But anytime he experimented there, a bit of the soul was left behind. Each journey through the intangible state of existence between planes of reality was harder to end. One day he would exist in both realities, but not truly in either.

  He had to resist, at least until he understood the nature of this peculiar spell. Control came with understanding.

  Erda shuffled through the clearing. She sprinkled colored sand in an intricate pattern that was evolving into eight points. She chanted the same words over and over. Words from the oldest language, forgotten and unused except in ritual. Magic swirled the star pattern in waves that increased with the depth of her song. With each of her steps, the aroma of garlic and timboor wafted to Jaylor. The scents threatened to tear his awareness away from his body and into the void.

  Jaylor’s trance heightened his senses. He recognized the form of Erda’s magic, without understanding the words, a warding song, much the same as the ones Brevelan performed. The nurturing and healing most women invoked instinctively with their quiet tunes, Brevelan and Erda had perfected to an art form. Garlic and music. Brevelan and garlic. Love and music. Her inner serenity reached out and filled his body and mind with wonder.

  She and the baby were safe, for the moment, outside the eight-pointed star. She and Darville and the princess huddled under a dripping tree, watching every move with distrust.

  Mica hid in the shadows just behind them, a part of them, yet not. Jaylor saw much more than normal while hovering on the edge of the void. Light and dark, shadow and substance ceased to hinder his Sight.

  The old woman’s wards were on two levels. The first kept any not involved in the ritual outside the star. The second level was stronger. It would keep intruders out of the clearing and unaware of the activities within. Like the now dissolved magic border. Like the cloud of secrecy the Commune hid behind. . . .

  Jaylor yanked his thoughts back to the star. He needed concentration to gain control of the spell and insure its proper completion. He needed knowledge as well.

  Baamin and Yaakke had been drafted to fill two of the eight points of this ritual. Zolltarn and five of his met completed the pattern. Nine men—eight points and a focus—would bind Jaylor and his magic into a consistent whole.

  The old woman shuffled out of her pattern to the ring of trees. “This is a spell of binding.” Arms outstretched, she encompassed each of the nine men in her intonation. “All beings are one. All magic is one. The warped magic will be drawn out of this man’s body, unraveled, and twisted back right, then the magic will be wrapped around and around his soul, until they are one and the same, complete again, whole again, right again. Only men can touch this magic. Only men will walk the star.” Erda continued. Her eyes glazed over as if she, too, were in a trance.

  “All creation carries magic. The dance is the water, ever moving—ever the same.” The eight men began to weave their pattern around Jaylor.

  “The candles—fire.” Each man carried a candle. As they approached Jaylor within the pattern of the dance, their tapers shot to life; ignited by the magic that permeated the star.

  “Incense symbolizes air.” Erda threw a handful of aromatic herbs into the air. The candles ignited the flakes. Smoke filled the clearing, blurring vision.

  “We ourselves are the kardia, created from dust by the great spirit; bound to the land during our lives, returning to dust at the end of our time.” Erda clapped her hands four times, once for each element, and stepped out of the first circle. “Together, bound into one soul, kardia, air, fire, and water is the Gaia. One life, one soul, one mind, one magic!”

  As the old woman’s words faded into the evening mist, the men increased their tempo from a studied walk to a brisk glide along the lines of colored sand, widdershins along the path of the moon. Jaylor turned so that each of the eight came into his line of vision. He turned on the path of the sun. Turning, turning, faster, ever faster. He matched the pace of his ritual star. The careful steps became a trot, a hop, a dance. Whirling faster, ever faster. The rhythm invaded his being, the steps mimicked the great wheel of stars about the galaxy.

  A strand of red and blue magic reached out to Baamin, another to Yaakke. Their thoughts became his thoughts. Yet another strand touched Zolltarn. The Rover’s convoluted plans became clear.

  In turn, each of the eight men drew a strand of magic out of Jaylor.

  T
he braids of blue and red power twining out of Jaylor’s soul, were split and warped, just like his staff, exactly like his magic. With each circuit of the star, the strands straightened, unraveled.

  Jaylor watched the threads of his magic as he spun around and around, faster, higher, ever higher. Up and up, always spinning, barely tethered to the ground by the unraveling strands of magic.

  Above the clearing, above the hovering clouds, above it all until . . . until . . .

  He burst free of Coronnan’s gravity and into the void where a nimbus of dragons awaited him.

  Jaylor grabbed hold of the wing spine of the big blue-tipped male dragon. Bigger than Shayla by half.

  (I am Seaninn,) the dragon greeted him with proper dragon etiquette.

  (I, Jaylor, greet thee, Seaninn.)

  (I am Gliiam.) A young green-tip darted in front of them to lead the soaring dance. Everywhere Jaylor looked, there were dragons, hundreds of them. All of them had the luminescent pearl-colored fur that defied the eye to linger on it. Pearl with blue, green, red, yellow, and a rare purple running along the wing tips, ridges, and spines.

  They were all males. Shayla, the sole remaining female in the nimbus was all colors/no colors. She had not come to greet him. Nor had she honored him when he had freed her from Krej’s glass prison.

  Some of the joy of his soaring freedom diminished. He had lessons to learn up here in the void. He’d best get to it and return to his body before the dragons tempted him to leave mortality forever.

  A single copper strand of magic reached up through the tangle of blue and red. Even within the order of a ritual, Brevelan would not risk losing him.

  He smiled.

  Brevelan.

  The last time he had soared with dragons, Brevelan’s fragile tendril of magic had held him to reality, brought him home, saved him from the overdose of Tambootie.

  Jaylor sent her a thought of reassurance. They had no need of magic tethers. As long as she waited for him, he would always return.

  He took one last lingering look through the dispersing clouds at the clearing where eight men wove magic patterns with their footsteps around a strangely empty figure. His friends stood to one side watching. A small cat crept from the shadow of a prince into the lap of a princess. Even from the tremendous height of dragon flight, Jaylor heard her purring song joining in with the ritual of binding. The cat faded. The princess grew, enhanced, became complete.

  The dragons lifted their wings in unison, then with a powerful downsurge, they all flew forward. Jaylor clung tight to Seaninn.

  Time darted forward and back, forward and stalled in nonlinear form. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow had no form or continuity. Time joined the four elements of the Gaia. All was one.

  The fierce wind took his breath away and refreshed his troubled mind and body. Coronnan spun below them in a myriad of greens and browns of the fields, zigzags of blue rivers and lakes, the whole crisscrossed with the bluey-silver lines of magic. The ley lines pulsed with power. Their color didn’t seem as bright as the other time he had viewed them from this perspective. But he didn’t have massive amounts of the Tambootie coursing through his system now to sensitize his vision.

  The dragons swooped over a thick forest. A few scraggly Tambootie trees tempted them. All of the trees of magic needed cropping. Their distinctive flat tops were overgrown. Jaylor peered deeper at the trees. The roots were withering without the proper pruning dragons gave them.

  A few bites from the huge maws of the male dragons, taken in flight, stabilized some of the trees. The largest ones were too far gone. Pruning sent them into shock. He watched the roots shrivel and die. The underground channels those roots had carved filled with copper. The ley lines running beneath those roots drained back into the core of the planet, to be replaced with gold or silver.

  Jaylor searched the country with his FarSight. Everywhere that the Tambootie grew, the trees were dying, and with them the magic power.

  Council and populace rejoiced. They had no need of magic. Precious metals brought them wealth and exotic trade.

  Jaylor urged his dragon upward. He saw Hanassa to the south, the refuge for outlawed magicians, Rovers, and other undesirables. Claimed by all, controlled by none, this haven sat within a huge caldera protected by high granite walls. Tunnels through the ancient mountain gave secret access to the hiding place. He blinked and knew those secrets.

  The dragons flew northwest, back to Coronnan. From the capital islands nestled into the massive river, Jaylor sent his dragon escort west, up the Coronnan River. Where the river narrowed and climbed toward its mountain source, the ley lines ceased. So did all trace of the large Tambootie trees that fed dragons. This was the natural border with SeLenicca.

  His dragon escort flew over that kingdom quickly and reluctantly. They told him the air was bad here. Great gouges marred once beautiful rolling hills, upland meadows and alpine lakes. Vast patches of land had been stripped of growth and minerals, leaving hills to crumble and rivers to overrun their banks. Beneath the surface ran black channels, burned-out power.

  But those channels had not filled with valuable metals to be mined and exploited. These channels had been drained by a single blast of magic, so huge and volatile, they would forever remain empty.

  The air disturbed Jaylor. Something shimmered, just beyond his perception, drawing his senses, but eluding them at the same time. He deliberately turned his FarSight back to Coronnan, back to the circle of men who were rebraiding his magic along the path of Helios.

  Mica leaped from the wing of a middle-sized dragon with dark red wingtips onto Seaninn’s back. She greeted Jaylor with a nudge of her head to his chin. Her body was barely a shadow and unreal.

  Jaylor cuddled the little cat a moment. She radiated warmth and he was suddenly aware of the cold wind on his face and back. His awareness returned to his companions and to reality. The void began to fade around him.

  Thought to thought, Mica urged him back to the ritual. Brevelan needed him.

  Brevelan.

  He felt the cramp in his belly at the same moment it touched her womb. The baby was coming. Early. Eager. Ready.

  Brevelan needed him. She needed shelter and a midwife more.

  Where? Where would she find those things among strangers in a Rover camp?

  Seaninn gave him a thought and a spell. So simple. The answers were all so simple up here on dragonback. The dragons showed him how to lift his wife, cradling her vulnerable body, to the suite in the University. Darville and Rosie went with her. He might as well send Baamin and Yaakke to safety, too.

  But they were bound up in the ritual star. A moment’s more concentration and they were all deposited in the courtyard of the University. At the last moment he scooped Erda, the old healer into his massive spell.

  His dragon swooped low and he slid back down the ropes of magic into the center of the intact star. He left a pathway for Mica to follow.

  Chapter 23

  Yaakke blinked his eyes. The courtyard stopped spinning around him. What had happened?

  Chaotic thoughts buzzed through his head with blinding speed and disorientation. He blinked again, trying to sort through the assault of unarmored minds to find his own among them.

  The massive stones of the University buildings came into focus. Yaakke stared at the cornerstone of the dormitory wing, forcing himself to read the ancient inscription. Only then could he center himself and armor his mind against the invasive minds of the other men.

  A moment ago he had been walking his way through the ritual star in a clearing on the mainland. Now he was back at the University.

  He knew he hadn’t lifted up the entire star and transported them. Baamin didn’t know how, and Zolltarn, even if he knew the trick of the spell, wouldn’t bring them all here, to the middle of the capital. So Jaylor must have his magic back intact.

  Jaylor? Where did he get to?

  Yaakke searched the faces of the dazed men around him. Zolltarn and his five Rover magicians
were in place, stumbling, mumbling, making the archaic flapping gesture against evil. Old Baamin was in place, just standing there, rigid and bewildered. But no Jaylor. That heap of damp clothing in the center couldn’t be Jaylor! Could it?

  The heap stirred and moaned, then lifted its head. Yes, that was Jaylor, and by the looks of him, he was exhausted, but triumphant. The spell must have worked.

  Yaakee’s eyes darted back to Baamin. The old man didn’t look well. Worse than Jaylor had looked last spring. Face waxy and pale. A peculiar gray color, peculiar even in this uncertain light.

  Yaakke broke free of the magic that chained him to a specific position within the star and darted across the lines of colored sand to the side of his mentor, heedlessly scuffing the design.

  “Master Baamin? Be you all right?” He slipped into the peasant syntax of his childhood as he slid a strong shoulder beneath the old magician’s arm. Baamin’s full weight landed on Yaakke. “Master!”

  “My heart . . .” Baamin clutched at his chest with a spasming fist.

  Rossemikka awoke in gradual stages. First she was aware of her feet, shod in uncomfortable shoes, resting on a cold stone floor. The rest of her body appeared to be seated in a stiff chair. Her feet and hands were damp and chilled. She needed to be petted within a warm lap.

  The flicker of firelight caught her attention. In slow, wrenching jerks, she twisted her rigid neck to her right. She saw the outline of a large fireplace and mantle. A man stooped to feed the fire.

  Something about the length of his back and the breadth of his shoulders stirred a memory. Her own back ached in sympathy with the curve in the man’s spine. Every muscle and bone in her body ached as well, for different reasons. The movements of her neck sent tingles of dizziness whirling around her head. Her hands felt clammy.

  Instinctively, she raised them to her mouth to lave them with a raspy tongue. A jolt of reality stopped her movement as her hand came into view.