The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

whispered, as he lay one end of the staff across her heart, linking them together. He took one deep breath, held it for the required three counts, and released it.
    Instantly, Brevelan felt the calm separation from reality induced by the first stage of his trance. Another deep breath and blue and red lines began to pulse around him, along the staff and through her body.
    “Don’t risk it, Jaylor,” she pleaded, uncertain if her voice was loud enough to be heard.
    A third deep breath and the magic Jaylor projected braided and folded back along the staff. Brevelan’s own breathing deepened, slowed. The confines of the hut disappeared. They were floating in the void between the planes of existence. Blue and red mists supported them in a sea of colored lifelines. Time warped and became meaningless. The awful pain and weakness were left behind, part of another body, another life.
    “Look for crystal.” Were those her words or their thoughts? When Jaylor’s spirit had been lost in a Tambootie overdose, she had tethered him to reality with a strand of copper life from her own heart.
    “There are too many colors, all braided together!” Fear made Jaylor’s voice acid sharp in the swirls of magic. The sounds echoed, becoming dull and hollow with each succeeding reverberation. They filled her head, yet left a vacancy.
    Brevelan couldn’t see her husband through the clouds of her mind. She needed to reach out and touch him, reassure him before his fear of failure broke the spell.
    The magical nature of the void revealed the patterns of Jaylor’s life, but not his physical body. One layer of his aura, a blue halo around his heart, was incomplete.
    The next contraction racked a body. Her body, and yet not hers. She felt no pain, yet was acutely aware of it and unable to continue her telepathic communication with Jaylor. This wasn’t working. Exposed to magic, as they were, the labor intensified. Shayla was too close.
    “Colors define and describe,” Brevelan gasped.
    “Copper for you,” Jaylor panted, as if out of breath or short of blood. “Red and blue for me. Red and green for your father. Who is gold?”
    “Gold?” A golden wolf danced across her mind’s eye. A golden prince who was lover and best friend. A child with golden hair stood beside her, eldest of six, in a dragon-dream.
    “Darville,” she sighed. Or perhaps the child. “Follow him to Shayla.”
    Jaylor picked his way through the pulsing stands of life. At last he touched crystal entwined with gold and copper, but not blue and red.
    The body he left behind doubled over, a fist clenched over his heart. The staff fell from his nerveless left hand.
    The void took on form and solidity. Brevelan fell back into the bed with a whoosh and a new wave of pain.
    “I am so sorry, my dearest love. I’ve failed you again.” Jaylor hung his head in guilt and regret. His fingers clenched and opened against his chest as the pain eased with the passing of the magic. “We need help.”
     
    “Why, Baamin?” Darville asked. “Why did the princess exhibit such terror in the presence of my cat? Her fear of Mica seemed to provoke the attack.” Darville stroked and soothed Mica where she lay limply across his chest and shoulder. She nuzzled his jaw in weak appreciation of his love and attention. He sensed that her awkward landing on the hard stone floor was still troubling her.
    Darville’s stomach rumbled and cramped. How much longer could Shayla’s labor last? He needed the soothing contact with Mica to keep his stomach under control as much as she needed him.
    With each pain rode an awareness of another entity also in pain. He prayed that she was safe, protected by the male dragons. Was he, Darville, safe if anything happened to Shayla during this vulnerable time?
    He couldn’t forget that his father, as consecrated king, had been so closely tied to the dragons that Shayla’s ensorcellment had killed him.
    “Stop pacing. I can’t think while you prowl this room like a caged wolf,” Baamin grumbled from his chair beside the king’s massive desk. It was a comfortable armchair, soft and firm in the right places. A low stool cradled the old man’s feet in front of him.
    He kicked at it aimlessly.
    Darville squinted at Baamin. The old man’s green and yellow robe hung on him in pathetic wrinkles, his body almost shrinking before the prince’s eyes. He’d been old for as long as Darville could remember. Now he seemed more ancient than anyone had a