The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

her new home, and how.
    Rosie nudged her consciousness. First a bath, then breakfast. The bellpull to summon a maid was within reach of the bed.
    Mikka rolled to the side so she could reach the bellpull. As her back raised up from the sheets, a sharp stinging pierced between her shoulder blades. She jerked around to look toward the window. The pain in her back sharpened and deepened. Her eyes lost focus.
    A shrouded figure appeared from the balcony, outside the window.
    Numbness flowed from her back, across her arms and down to her legs. Then the black tide of unfeeling raced to her eyes and mind. Just before she lost all control, the image of Janataea swam before her vision.
    Rosie reached up and snarled through the drugs, claws unsheathed, and lashed at her nemesis. Long cuts appeared beneath Mikka’s fingernails. Blackness overtook her.
    Janataea laughed.
     
    “Never will there be Rovers in the Commune!” screamed an elderly magician in a master’s cloak, so old and faded it looked almost as gray as the man’s hair and skin.
    Jaylor ducked the candlestick the old man “threw” at his head with more magic power than his frail body should have been able to wield.
    “You said the same about using rogue powers, Lyman.” Jaylor settled back in the wide chair in Baamin’s office. “Now we all are rogues. You seem to have adapted to solitary magic better than most.” He smiled. He couldn’t allow his temper to overtake his good sense the first time he presided over the Commune.
    “But a Rover, Jaylor?” Scrawny asked. By age and seniority, Maarklin, known as Scrawny among his peers, should have been Baamin’s heir. “Zolltarn and his tribe aren’t even in Coronnan legally. How can we seat him in the Commune?”
    “Would you rather have him running around the country, unchecked, unmonitored?”
    “We’d rather he went back to Hanassa, or wherever it is he comes from,” Lyman grumbled. “Rovers are great tricksters. We aren’t even sure he can throw true magic.”
    “His magic is based on a different theory, but it is very powerful, gentlemen. Very powerful, indeed. Last night he worked a spell worthy of any master.”
    “And what spell is that? We detected no massive energy surges anywhere near the capital.” Scrawny got up to pace beside the window. His gauntness must come from his ceaseless movement. Jaylor had never seen Scrawny sit still. Not for a moment. And lately, he was always by a window.
    “The Rovers performed a ritual to bind me and my magic back together properly.” Jaylor transported a cup of wine to his hand from the cellars with a blink of an eye. “Oh, excuse me, did anyone else wish for a cup?” He glanced around the crowded room with pretended innocence. “Two days ago, I couldn’t do this.” The cup vanished as quickly as it had arrived. “I’d have had two cups, one vinegar, one fresh fruit juice.”
    “I hadn’t realized how powerful a spell you had thrown last spring, Jaylor,” Fraandlor looked intently at Jaylor. In the old days, magicians never used their birth names. Instead they adopted, or were given a name that reflected their personality when they entered the University. Fraandlor was called Slippy, for his resemblance to the bay eels, slippery and poisonous if handled improperly. His temper was recorded as being vicious when roused. On all other occasions he was noted for his gentle healing touch and soft polite voice.
    Baamin was known as “Toad Knees.” He had ended the practice of adopted names for new apprentices.
    It was on the tip of Jaylor’s tongue to blurt out that his transformation of Shayla, from glass sculpture to living dragon, hadn’t warped his magic—Krej had. But he’d made a solemn vow not to tell anyone, especially these magicians, that Krej had found an antidote to the witchbane.
    “Zolltarn is a magician, of master strength. He has knowledge he is willing to share—as any master in the University is oath-bound to do. A seat on the Commune is his reward for healing me and increasing our understanding of new magic. Are we agreed?”
    “No.” The old man turned his face away from his fellow magicians.
    Jaylor watched Slippy closely. He’d been assigned to traitorous Lord Krej since that lord had assumed governorship of Faciar. Not once in all those years had Slippy reported any of Krej’s mysterious activities that were really a cover for his rogue magic. Had the magician absorbed the philosophy of his host?
    “What