The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

licked upward to consume the wood.
    He set his pan of water before the fire, allowing it to settle. Green-and-yellow flames reflected in the water. Their gentle movement enticed Yaakke to look deeper into them. He dropped a smooth white pebble into the water.
    Pictures appeared in the watery surface, more flames, bigger, hotter—destructive rather than friendly. Jaylor and Brevelan trapped by falling beams. Yaakke blinked and cleared his eyes of smoke.
    Anxiously Yaakke fixed an image of Jaylor in his mind and sent it through the water to the monastery. He had no shard of glass to direct a summons properly since he’d lost his pack in the void. The reflective surface of the water would have to do. The vision of flames grew higher, fiercer. The Senior Magician appeared in their midst. Frantically Jaylor lifted a fallen beam from a crumpled form. Flames licked at his hands. He ignored them. The muscles of his broad back and shoulders strained, and he grunted as he moved the beam aside with brute force. Why didn’t he use his magic?
    Yaakke watched in horror as his master gathered the unconscious form of Brevelan to his breast, and then they both disappeared as another flaming beam crashed down on top of them.
    Yaakke breathed deeply, sending his mind toward the void in preparation for transport.
    “Naw!” Corby warned him from the top of a tree. Yaakke couldn’t rescue Jaylor and Brevelan if he got lost in the void again. He cast around him for another solution. Smoke drifted on the wind from the west. He tried fixing his magic on Jaylor and Brevelan. He’d never transported two people at the same time before.
    His magic darted around and around the images in the flames. There was no one to latch onto and transport to safety.
    Yaakke took off at a run, over hummocks, around boulders and through a number of icy streams, taking the straightest route toward the smoke. Uphill he ran. Above him and to the left the land rose in a series of grassy plateaus. He crested the first ridge and pressed onward.
    Familiarity tugged at his memory as landmarks flashed past. On and on he ran, until his lungs burned and his legs begged for collapse. Still he ran, stumbling, panting, crying.
    Time and distance ceased to have meaning as he pressed his body to cover more and more ground. The only reality lay in the column of smoke that appeared beyond the next hilltop. He crested the steep rise. Terraced hills came into view half a league ahead.
    The refuge of the Commune should be on the third level, set back from the ridge about two hundred arm-lengths. The smoke thickened in that direction.
    If only he hadn’t taken so much time to center his magic—if only he hadn’t gotten lost in the void—
    The smell of smoke was stronger here, sour and vile. Halfway to the third ridge, Yaakke slowed his pelting progress. He couldn’t breathe. His legs and arms felt like jelled meat broth. His newly awakened contact with the wheel of sun, moon, and stars hummed a warning.
    A pile of boulders, a hundred arm-lengths beyond, offered shadows and a view of the next ridge. He stretched and pulled himself up the rocks, seeking hand- and footholds by instinct. He barked his knuckles and scraped his shins in his haste. At last he crawled on top of the tumbled boulders. Lying flat, barely breathing, he scanned the horizon.
    Ahead, above, and below him stretched an army of jubilant soldiers. Cadres of men capered and jeered as they tossed plunder back and forth in a vicious game of keep away with slighter, less aggressive men. Lean, battle-hardened men in well-used armor. Their evil grins gaped like bottomless pits in their smoke-blackened faces. One scarred sergeant made obscene gestures with a gnarled and twisted staff—the kind of tool favored by magicians.
    The plaited grain in the wood looked suspiciously like Jaylor’s staff—broken and mended by magic at three points. Yaakke sent out another mental probe addressed to his matter. His questions dissipated and died. No mind received or responded.
    On the next ridge, smoke rose in a dense black column. The monastery was gutted, the roof collapsed, and the walls breached in a dozen places.
     
    Incompetent fools! Couldn’t those bumbling generals tell that Jaylor had whisked his Commune to safety before they entered the buildings? Not a shred of paper left in their library. None of their fabled viewing equipment shattered from the heat of the flames. NOTHING!
    They used the transport spell. I