The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

find an end to this dilemma.” Mikka lifted her face to look at him. She traced the line of his jaw with her eyes and a long fingernail, as if memorizing every inch of him. “It’s not so bad being a cat.” The corners of her mouth lifted in an almost smile. “No responsibilities. No one notices when you enter and leave a room. People talk in front of you, as if you couldn’t hear or understand them.”
    “Don’t try to make it better, Mikka. I will find a way out for you, and quickly, because I don’t think I can bear to live without you.”
    “I knew this past night would happen the moment Brevelan dragged that icy, sodden blanket through the door of her home with the bedraggled, scruffy excuse for a wolf collapsed upon it. I knew even then, when you were a wolf and I still a cat, that we belonged together, forever.”
    They hugged again, clinging to the last moments of the darkness. “But until then, I shall be your spy. The Council does not like you and your new authoritative ways. I shall listen to their plans and report back to you.”
    “How, Mikka? How can you tell me what is happening?” Darville looked closely at her beautiful face, her wide, intelligent hazel eyes, her pug nose and even teeth. He kissed each feature.
    But even now he was noticing a change. Her round eyes were beginning to slit into a vertical pupil.
    “With magic. Brevelan will kni-ooww.”
    Darville closed his eyes so he couldn’t see her shift back into her familiar cat form. Her lovely hair would shorten from a beguiling curtain to a concealing coat. Her ears would lengthen and point. Whiskers would sprout from her face.
    He couldn’t watch.
    And he couldn’t be caught here, in the bed of the princess, before the date for the wedding had been set. Last night he had almost hoped he would be caught, so he could force the marriage on a compromised Rosie.
    Now he needed to stall the wedding, even more than Rosie wanted him to. He just could not, would not, marry Rosie. Mikka would be his only bride.
    When the woman in his arms transformed into a small bundle of fur, and the cat at the end of the bed grew into a woman, Darville slid through the bed hangings nearest the wardrobe.
    “Meww?” Mica pricked her ears. Small sounds of someone moving through the outer chamber reached them.
    Silently, he gathered his discarded clothing and lantern. Mica hopped down beside him. She urged him into the wardrobe with a shove of her damp nose against his bare calf. He paused long enough to scratch behind her ear, then slipped into the massive piece of furniture.
    “Princess Rossemikka, time to get up,” Janataea cooed.
    The heavy cabinet door closed on Darville’s naked rump just as he heard the outer door open and the governess enter the room.
     
    Yaakke blinked his eyes in astonishment. When he had searched for a place to set himself down, he had sniffed for the greatest concentration of magic. He’d tried time and again to visualize the old familiar scullery and transport himself there, but never succeeded in moving himself more than a few inches above the ground. So, instead of seeking a specific place, he just sniffed for magic around the capital and sent himself there.
    “There” should have been the University. Where else should one find magic, other than the training ground for all respectable magicians.
    But no. “There” proved to be the central clearing of the Sacred Grove on Sacred Isle.
    The apprentice magician drew in a deep lungful of air to replenish himself after the transport. Great racking coughs sent him to his knees.
    Tambootie smoke, thick and sour, hung like a healer’s pall of herb smoke ignited over the bed of a plague victim.
    Someone had worked a great deal of magic here mere hours ago, on the night of the dark of the moon.
    Yaakke shivered in the dawn chill. He couldn’t think of any spells that were stronger at the dark of the moon rather than at the full. Unless Lord Krej had joined some evil friends here. He wasn’t convinced that the witchbane did any good at all in neutralizing that man’s magic.
    The sun rose off to Yaakke’s left, sending streaks of light through the early morning mist. Droplets of moisture glistened and danced about the grove like a myriad of fairies. Yaakke refrained from crossing himself or flapping his crossed wrists in the ancient gesture of warding.
    What danger to him were the wee motes of light? He, Yaakke, the kitchen boy who was judged too stupid to even have a