The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

on an enticing lilt.
    “Master Baamin and Jaylor and Brevelan are all the family I need.” Yaakke sat down again, staring resolutely into the fire.
    “I repeat,” Jaylor glared at each person in the tent in turn, “we can’t trust his motives or his lies. My magic isn’t worth the risk.”
    “Even though you are my designated heir?” Baamin quirked one eyebrow in question.
    “Heir to what—your books and robes that won’t fit me?”
    “You have more experience of rogue magic than all of us combined. Therefore, you are the logical choice to become Senior Magician. I also choose to leave the University in your capable hands. The position of adviser to the king is Darville’s choice, but since the two of you have been the best of friends since childhood. . . .”
    “I value your magic and your friendship, Jaylor.” Darville clasped his friend’s shoulder. Emotion threatened to close this throat. “But the choice is yours. We’ll find a way out of this mess one way or another. However, I prefer to see you whole . . . if you so choose.”

Chapter 22
     
    O ne breath, in three counts, out three counts. Second breath in, out. Jaylor focused his magic deep within himself. His lungs swelled the third time, deep and long. Reality faded and shimmered at the edges of his vision. A bright silver-blue ley line glowed and pulsed with magic from deep within the core of Kardia Hodos, fourth planet from the sun Helios. He shifted his feet to draw the maximum energy from the line.
    “You are the focus, the center. As the planets revolve around the sun, our star pattern will revolve around you,” Zolltarn intoned. The Rover, too, was hovering on the edge of a trance.
    They stood in the exact center of a clearing—not the clearing on Sacred Isle, just an open space beyond the Rover camp, formed when a forest giant toppled. Remnants of the ancient, top-heavy tree lingered in sawed-up long benches around the circumference of the clearing. Smaller trees ringed them in a near perfect circle. Everblues, oaks, and alders and, Jaylor suspected, a Tambootie tree or two. Superstitious farmers had ceased planting their tithes of Tambootie under Krej’s not-so-gentle persuasion. But home-loving citizens of Coronnan rarely ventured into mixed wooded areas where the trees of magic were already established.
    Jaylor’s attention wandered in a drifting pattern. Politics and the politics of magic twisted through his mind in a bright tangle. The void beckoned him into a deeper trance. Answers could be found in the void. But anytime he experimented there, a bit of the soul was left behind. Each journey through the intangible state of existence between planes of reality was harder to end. One day he would exist in both realities, but not truly in either.
    He had to resist, at least until he understood the nature of this peculiar spell. Control came with understanding.
    Erda shuffled through the clearing. She sprinkled colored sand in an intricate pattern that was evolving into eight points. She chanted the same words over and over. Words from the oldest language, forgotten and unused except in ritual. Magic swirled the star pattern in waves that increased with the depth of her song. With each of her steps, the aroma of garlic and timboor wafted to Jaylor. The scents threatened to tear his awareness away from his body and into the void.
    Jaylor’s trance heightened his senses. He recognized the form of Erda’s magic, without understanding the words, a warding song, much the same as the ones Brevelan performed. The nurturing and healing most women invoked instinctively with their quiet tunes, Brevelan and Erda had perfected to an art form. Garlic and music. Brevelan and garlic. Love and music. Her inner serenity reached out and filled his body and mind with wonder.
    She and the baby were safe, for the moment, outside the eight-pointed star. She and Darville and the princess huddled under a dripping tree, watching every move with distrust.
    Mica hid in the shadows just behind them, a part of them, yet not. Jaylor saw much more than normal while hovering on the edge of the void. Light and dark, shadow and substance ceased to hinder his Sight.
    The old woman’s wards were on two levels. The first kept any not involved in the ritual outside the star. The second level was stronger. It would keep intruders out of the clearing and unaware of the activities within. Like the now dissolved magic border. Like the cloud of secrecy the Commune