The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

leaned back in the chair, cradling his injured arm against his body.
    “A Commune that is now outlawed by your Council.”
    “All the more reason for you to stay. You have the strength of will and body to fight the Council. Our government is an intricate balance among twelve lords and the monarch, with the magicians as neutral advisers. That balance has been destroyed. Dragon magic allows magicians to join and amplify their powers by orders of magnitude to overcome any solitary rogue magician who won’t obey the ethics of the Commune or laws of the land. Those restrictions have been shattered by the absence of dragons. Only you can hold the Commmune together and advise me until the balance is restored. Send someone else. I need you here, Jaylor, even if your counsel is given in secret.”
    “Who else could I send? My class of journeymen never returned from their quests. The Master Magicians agreed to my elevation to Senior because they are all too old or unfamiliar with solitary magic to guide the Commune. There is no one else. I have to go.” Jaylor tapped his staff against the floor with each word for emphasis.
    “Excuse my presumption, sir,” Yaakke interrupted. He forced politeness into his words to mask his excitement. “You have an apprentice, sir. You could give me this quest, now, like you said a few weeks ago. ’Tis my quest when I’m ready . . . when I’ve proved I’m reliable.”
    “Reliable and trained,” Jaylor countered. “And of an age to undergo the trial by Tambootie smoke.”
    Yaakke refused to be disappointed. Somehow he had to make Jaylor see that he was meant to take this quest. Tonight. Before he left for his appointment with a dragon. Maybe if he told them about the smuggler now . . .
    “Excuse me, Your Grace.” Fred slipped into the room unannounced through a mere crack in the doorway.
    Darville sat up straight and alert. “Yes?” Only a dire emergency would bring the king’s bodyguard into his private quarters unsummoned.
    “There’s a ruckus in the dungeons, sir. Someone has stolen Lord Krej.”

Chapter 5
     
    C hild’s play. The telltales Jaylor left around Krej’s dungeon cell evaporated too easily. I wasted precious minutes looking for additional traps that weren’t there. I watched him set the spells and knew some of their secrets. When I ran out of time, I took a chance and levitated the statue that is now Krej through my escape route.
    Would that the spell enchanting Krej dissolved as readily. At least a member of the coven now has possession of his entrapped spirit. He will be kept safe by the one person who can guard him best while we research the nature of the spell.
     
    “Every one of Jaylor’s spells has been released.” Yaakke announced as he examined the outside of Krej’s now empty dungeon cell. “Whoever sprang the magic traps either did it before the coronation or while the witchbane was spreading around the Grand Court,” he continued as he sniffed with his magic senses.
    “Shayla is hurt so that I won’t heal, there’s been an assassination attempt, and now someone has liberated my enemy!” Darville paced the dungeon corridor, anger simmering just below the surface of his kingly posture. “This coronation day is not turning out particularly joyous.”
    Yaakke looked around for anything Jaylor’s sharp eyes might have missed. He’d placed several balls of the shadowless witchlight in and around the cell to make sure no clue remained hidden. Krej’s cell was empty; there was no straw on the stone floor, no bedding on the cot. Not even a chamber pot or bucket in the corner. Ensorcelled into a tin statue, Krej wouldn’t have needed any of those bleak comforts.
    Krej had been alive when his own spell to capture Darville into a sculpture had been backlashed by the Coraurlia, trapping the rogue magician in his own evil.
    Had the magic reached Darville as intended, the king would have assumed the figure of a golden wolf—the image dictated by his aura. The tin weasel reflected Krej’s personality.
    “Who did this, Yaakke?” Jaylor asked. He searched for minute traces of evidence with his master’s glass, a rare piece of magnifying glass, as large as a man’s hand, framed in gold. Jaylor could use the precious instrument to direct spells, as well as enlarge cramped print and seek clues.
    “Don’t know.” Yaakke breathed deeply and allowed his eyes to cross in the first stage of a trance. “Something’s wrong. The little bits of