The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

entered the room in the guise of a harpy, the evil messenger of Simurgh.”
    “Stargods and dragons help us all,” Jaylor sighed. “I do hope they haven’t reverted to human sacrifice.”

Chapter 29
     
    R osie clutched her thread cradle tight against her chest so that it wouldn’t tangle. Softly, with a cat’s stalking instinct, she tiptoed to the door of her windowless tower prison. The sparseness of the chamber reminded her of the days of her imprisonment at the hands of her uncle.
    This incarceration, however, was much more dangerous, much more frightening than the last time. Her uncle was cruel and vindictive. But Janataea and her half brother were evil. So very, very evil.
    Visions of Janataea and Krej shape-changed into giant harpies brought nausea into Rosie’s throat. The ordeal of flight must have lasted many hours, many leagues. Her sense of time and distance were badly warped by the drugs shot into her by Janataea. All she remembered of the flight from the palace were the vicious vulture claws that encircled her shoulders, penetrating her thin shift and skin. Hanging, suspended in the thin, cold air, blood dripping down her body, she had lost all sense of up or down, right or left. Vertigo claimed her senses until, mercifully, her mind had closed.
    The drug in her system had lasted just long enough to blot out the pain of the talon wounds in her back and shoulders during the flight. When she awoke, every movement of her arms and back sent sharp pains all through her body.
    Now she was locked into a small room with stale air and minimal light. She wanted to sleep, but she hurt too much to rest. The strong and sensible person in the back of her mind seemed gone. No comfort there. No warmth anywhere. She needed reassurance and love. If only something, anything, in her prison smelled familiar, she could hope for an end of this nightmare.
    Right now she would even welcome Darville.
    Rosie held her breath and listened to the angry voices in the outer room. The words were incomprehensible through the thick panels of the door. But the tones were unmistakable. Janataea and Lord Krej were disagreeing again. Good. The longer they shouted at each other, the longer they left her alone. She could nurse and lick her wounds in private.
    Hold your breath, Rosie. Don’t let them hear you, the voice of the other person inside her head directed. Open your ears. Listen like a cat in the wild. Rosie pressed her ear to the wooden door. No help. The words were in a language she couldn’t comprehend.
    Help me understand, Rosie pleaded with the other person.
    Mikka’s frightened consciousness surged to the front, just enough to add intelligence and learning to the sensitivity of a cat. She dared not come further to the surface. When Janataea—in her own form—had pushed Rosie into this small prison, she had spoken as if she didn’t know that both Mikka and Rosie were in the same body. Mikka wanted her presence, her intelligence, to remain hidden. That secret might make the difference in effecting an escape.
    “What do you mean, you’re impotent?” Janataea screeched. The accent was strange, but the vocabulary was one of the ancient tongues, from before the foundation of the three kingdoms.
    Mikka, but not Rosie, had learned to read the nearly forgotten language as part of her classical education. But no one knew the exact pronunciation anymore. Or did they?
    She’d heard the Rovers speak some of these words, and guessed a dialect had been adopted by the solitary magicians and exiles of Hanassa—a place where the wandering Rovers were welcome. Who were Krej and Janataea, that they used this archaic tongue so easily?
    “Too much of the Tambootie does that to you. Maman warned me about the backlash of fatigue from Tambootie-augmented magic. Shape-change exhausts magic. Your princess might have been a cat during the flight, but she retained the full mass of a tall woman. Carrying her here took all of my reserves. I couldn’t have done it without the Tambootie. But now I must recover,” Krej apologized, meeker than Mikka had ever heard the self-righteous lord.
    “Nonsense. A big man like you, in your prime. You’re afraid of her cat’s claws,” Janataea sneered.
    As well they should both be afraid. Rosie hoped her old governess would be scarred for life.
    Mikka wondered if the wounds to her back and shoulders would heal cleanly. Both she and Rosie shuddered with the pain of the still seeping marks of harpy