The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

a more primitive, more intimate dance. Her feet stamped out the music as she circled the camp, once, twice, a third time.
    Jaylor’s teeth throbbed, his blood sang with her steps. Each spin lifted her skirts higher, revealing more and more of the length of her lovely legs, drawing his eyes and imagination into the secrets of her body. Her movements grew faster with the increasing tempo of the music. She circled and spun widdershins around the fire in a parody of a planet around the sun.
    All thought of magic and defense drained from Jaylor. He could only think—feel the dance. When a slender, feminine hand reached for his, he needed to extend his arm, to touch her in order to complete the pattern of sun and moon and stars. He became the music, swirling, pounding, undulating. One more note, one more beat in the rhythm of time.

Chapter 5
     
    “Y ou put too much timboor in his stew, Maman!” Jaylor heard Maija’s strident complaint through the fog that numbed his tongue and made jelly of his limbs.
    Timboor. The fruit of Tambootie was a dangerous drug avoided by all, even a master magician. It could calm a hysterical child, ease a racing heart, or put one to sleep—forever.
    As part of his training Jaylor had had to spend a night and a day in a closed room with only a Tambootie wood fire for heat and light. It was a rite of passage as well as a test of his abilities to control his magic under the drugging effect of the smoke.
    There had been only one door in that cold stone room. It, too, was stone and securely bolted from the other side.
    He’d left that stone room dizzy, sick, hallucinating. In his delirium, his heart had beat irregularly for weeks afterward, while his newly awakened loins ached for release.
    One obscure text in the University library claimed that in the right dosage, timboor gave a man the stamina of a wild steed in rut. Or at least enough to satisfy a small harem.
    This band of Rovers must be very desperate for his seed if they’d dosed him with timboor.
    As he puzzled over the implications of his predicament, Jaylor found a spell deep in his memory. If he could just lift his leaden hand to form the proper gesture with the murmured words of the traditional spell. Hair’s widths at a time, he moved his hand into view. It was so heavy he needed the other hand just to lift it. But that hand was heavier still.
    In the end, it was easier to roll onto his side and leave the weary hand resting on the pounded dirt beneath him.
    He placed an image in his mind of his hand following the prescribed gesture.
    “He’s not dead,” the voice of Maija’s companion announced. “See, he rouses.”
    Jaylor froze in mid-thought.
    “Rouses. Not rises.” Maija spat. “He’s useless!”
    “Useless now, perhaps.” The older woman cajoled. “Later, while he’s still docile, he’ll be more than ready to give you his seed, again and yet again.” Her chuckle was rich with lusty possibilities. “He’ll give us the child who will insure us a homeland at last. No magician’s border will stop such a child. Fifteen years we’ve searched for a magician whose strength could overpower the Commune. Fifteen years since your sister was lost and her babe with her.”
    The women turned their backs on him once more.
    He had a few moments, Jaylor mused. No more. He had to hurry the spell.
    Smoke from the fires pierced his nostrils with unusual pungency. He could hear the pacing of one of the men outside the tent as if he were standing beside his head instead of yards away, outside this tent. If he thought about it, he could identify the man by his smell. Jaylor sorted through the odors—the rich spiciness of the stew, the dank-ness of wrinkled clothes, and bruised grass—to find the unique smell of the youngster with the malicious smile and broken teeth. Jaylor recalled the features of the last man to sheathe his blade after Maija had approached Jaylor. A man whose own lust for the young beauty was strong, even without timboor.
    A second man joined the first, his footsteps loud on the moist grass. The passage of wind as he swatted at an insect sounded like the raging thunderstorm at the solstice that had flooded an already drenched Coronnan. His senses were magnified; why couldn’t he move? He had to escape before Maija joined him on this crude pallet. If he waited much longer, his quest and his magic would end forever.
    Slowly he manipulated his hand, mouthing the spell.
    Feeling rushed with painful tingles