The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

without question. Brevelan was next.
    A heavy hand came down on her shoulder. She looked up with frightened eyes, like a startled doe. Her face was very pale in the torch light. The guard fingered a tendril of hair that had escaped the thick coil. His words dropped to a whisper.
    Darville saw the heat rise in her face. He kept his eyes on the guard while his free hand sought the dagger at his belt.
    Killing the guard would only draw more attention to himself. He slid the long knife back into its sheath. He had to control his emotions.
    Even as he berated himself he watched Brevelan’s eyes turn cold. She raked the man’s body with her gaze and it was obvious he came up lacking. This time the guard’s face turned red. He dropped his hand and allowed her to pass.
    Once again Darville breathed deeply in relief. Just a few more people and he, too, would be into the castle.
    The guard stopped another woman. She seemed more receptive to his proposition. They lingered in the doorway blocking the passage of the other peasant helpers.
    “Hey! What’s the hold up?” Darville heard himself shout in the rough estimation of a peasant accent. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s get this s’murghin’ inspection over with. Lord Krej don’t like his dinner bein’ late!”
    “Yeah. Don’t want the lord angry with us for your dallying!” Another man called.
    “Stop pesterin’ our women and get on wi’ yer job.”
    “Stop yer yammerin’.” The guard cursed the mob surrounding him. Embarrassed he passed them all through with only a brief glance at their faces.
    Sometimes the best way to avoid detection was to call attention to oneself.
    The kitchen was hot. An entire side of beef roasted in the giant fireplace on the central wall. Darville sniffed deeply of the belly-warming aroma. Game birds turned on smaller spits at side hearths. Long tables down the center of the huge room were crowded with men and women chopping vegetables, sifting flour into cavernous bowls, and doing all the other noisy, busy work necessary to preparing a banquet. Small boys darted about fetching supplies while smaller girls swept up discarded peelings and other residue.
    Heat and savory smells washed over the prince. The noise of a hundred people filled his head. It was like coming home. The kitchen in his own palace was much the same. As a small, lonely boy he had sought refuge there when his parents and tutors were too busy to entertain him.
    There was always at least one cook or drudge willing to let him taste and experiment.
    Before the nostalgia could blind him, he sought his companions in the throng. Jaylor was already edging toward the staircase leading to the upper floors. Brevelan had just deposited her cabbages near the scrub sink. As she straightened, her face lost all color. Her eyes began to roll upward in faint. He was beside her before the others noticed her odd behavior.
    Meat. The smell alone would make her ill. The sight of it roasting, plus the churning emotions and frantic activity of all these people, had caused her to seek refuge in unconsciousness.
    He grasped her around the waist just as her knees buckled. “Not here, love.” Again he used the rough syntax of the people around him.
    A woman with a huge chopping knife glared at him.
    “Like as not it’s her first child, eh?” The woman opened her mouth in a near toothless grin. He tried to smile back at her. “Well, get her out of here. We don’t need another body underfoot,” the woman commanded.
    Darville didn’t argue. The woman was too occupied with her turnips to notice he led the wilted Brevelan toward the interior of the castle rather than back outside into the fresh night air.
     
    “The main hall is there.” Brevelan pointed to the archway to their left. “That is where the banquet will take place.” She peeked through the draperies masking the servants’ staircase from the huge central room.
    Pain throbbed behind her eyes, the pain of Jaylor’s coming ordeal and the press of too many people. She gulped back the flood of emotions. If only there were a tiny tune somewhere in her soul that she could summon to counteract the rising panic within her.
    But there were no tunes left in her. Grief for Jaylor overwhelmed all else.
    Jaylor seemed calm since reaching a decision that freed his emotions from fear. The wild mood swings he had suffered since he’d failed to transform Shayla the first time were gone. But, she sensed, he was shutting her out of his