The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

no need for the healer’s touch.
    “Where is my husband? I must see Jaylor, now.” She tried to put a compulsion on the woman and met a . . . a blank wall. That was the only way to describe it. Usually when she reached out with her empathic powers, she could feel the winding paths of a person’s emotions and guide those emotions to inner healing. Their thoughts became evident with the course of their feelings.
    Erda had the same kind of armor Jaylor had. Only Jaylor’s armor couldn’t resist her loving mental touch anymore.
    “Baby come. Soon.” Erda shifted enough to throw a handful of herbs on the small brazier. She began a low chant, rocking her body back and forth in rhythm with her internal music. The aromatic smoke drifted through the tent, making Brevelan’s head spin.
    Timboor! How could she maintain control in the presence of that addictive drug?
    “Must you pollute the air?” Rosie asked from the other side of the hot fire. They were all damp from the rain and the river crossing. But the princess seemed inclined to huddle closer to the warmth than either Brevelan or Erda found comfortable. “May I wash my hands and face?”
    “Fetch the water from the river yourself, if you must. You know that. Everyone in this camp fends for themselves,” Erda spat back at the girl. “No one is servant to another, told me yourself.”
    Then Rosie looked up from the fire. Brevelan felt the fear and bewilderment in the princess. There was an emptiness there, too. An emptiness that prevented her from understanding what was happening, why she had been kidnapped and was now a prisoner.
    “By Simurgh the all-powerful, what have they done to you, child? You are not the Mikka I taught so many seasons ago.” Erda shifted her attention from Brevelan and the baby to the princess. She crossed her wrists and fluttered her hands three times. “Bold the monster has grown in her quest for power. Stopped must she be.”
    Alerted by Erda’s tone, Brevelan peered closer at Rosie, narrowing her eyes and vision. Awareness of the girl’s true nature crept in slowly. “ Stargods. We have to find Mica.”
    “Keep your magic in,” Erda ordered. “Baby too curious. He come soon. Too soon.”
    “I will bear my child in my own home, at the proper time, with my own healer, and with my husband at my side,” Brevelan insisted to Erda, though she never took her eyes off of Rosie.
    “No healer have you. Just yourself. No man can help when baby becomes stubborn.”
    “Why do you care?” Brevelan wanted to get up and pace the confines of the tent. She was restless with unanswered questions and the unnatural lack of freedom. Her eyes kept going back to Rosie. The need to help the princess rose in her. If she could only touch her mind . . . if only she could coax Mica out of hiding.
    “Baby is strong. Great Magician he be. We have few children. Baby will replace the one we lost.”
    “Not bloody likely!” Brevelan spat. “This is my baby. I’ll not give it up to the likes of you!”
    All of her attention arrowed in on the threat Erda posed to the baby.
    “Keep you, too, if we must, to have the baby.”
    “You want to keep me prisoner, too,” Rosie stated before Brevelan could protest. “You were pushing me to choose your tribe over being kidnapped by that foreigner. Why?” Some of the confusion cleared from her eyes. Some, not all.
    “Zolltarn has his reasons. He will do much the plans of The Simeon to destroy. Mate with you himself, instead of the sorcerer king.”
    “I don’t want to mate with anyone.”
    “You think that now. A few hours, a few days at most, you wait. Accept you will, any man who comes near you.”
    “Never!”
    Erda laughed. An evil, knowing cackle that swelled and filled the tight confines of the tent.
     
    “My price, Master Baamin, for the prince and his princess, unharmed, is a seat on the Commune of Magicians.” Zolltarn dropped his demands upon his audience with studied casualness. His fingers touched the tiny metal dragon that now adorned his ear.
    “No, Baamin. You can’t allow a Rover access to our government, our armies, all of our secrets!” Outrage screamed from every pore of Darville’s body. He rose to his feet in one swift movement so that he could stand taller than the seated Zolltarn. The Rover merely glanced up at him, then returned his gaze to the Senior Magician, seated on a chair on the other side of the fire.
    “I could sweeten the pot by curing Jaylor of the warp in