The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

dragon spoke with Old Master Baamin’s voice, reciting the first rule of Communal ethics. “Magic is for health, for growth, for the benefit of Coronnan and all who live within our boundaries. Magic can never be used to destroy lest we destroy ourselves in the process.”
    “What does right have to do with this? They killed my friends!” Yaakke screamed into the wind. The magic fireball burned for release within his gut.
    “Do it, boy. Do it and I’ll take you to my bed. A bed where I never allowed Marnak to exercise his privileges.” Rejiia’s aura pulsed with sexual vibrancy.
    He needed no reward, only vengeance. The magic came into his hand. He shaped it with anger and addressed it to the image of skinny, sniveling Marnak the Younger, Krej’s puppet, whose loyalty landed wherever was most convenient to Marnak.
    With a mighty thrust of his shoulders, back, and arm he lobbed the magical firebomb into the air in the direction of the field tents behind the massed soldiers.
    The magic sought the symbols on a standard raised above one particular tent. Through the air it flew, heedless of wind or missiles thrown to divert it, with Yaakke’s mind close on its heels. Faster and faster the bomb flew. Yaakke became the magic fire as it fed on his mind. They gathered speed and intensity from the cries of fear and horror growing within the army; horror that invaded Yaakke. He tried to jerk his mind away from the bomb but found himself trapped within it.
    The bomb slammed into the standard with crackling intensity. Magical blue light glowed from the flagpole and raced down, down into the tent. It consumed wood and fabric as it sped toward its target, greedy for more interesting fuel. Marnak, wearing light field armor, lounged against the tent pole. He rejoiced with his coconspirators, a cup of pilfered wine in one hand, precious altar linens edged in SeLenese lace in the other.
    His smile turned to shock and then to agony as the firebomb leaped from tent pole to head, to hand, and body. Flames burst upward, followed by screams.
    Indiscriminate screams gathered harshly on Yaakke’s conscience and slammed him back into his body, but he still sensed all that happened within range of the bomb he had exploded in Marnak’s face. The smell of burning flesh and cloth, of hot metal and pain beyond imagining, violated his senses. Rampant emotions from a thousand sources filled his mind, contorting his perceptions. He became the instrument of destruction and, in turn, was its victim.
    Hate. Fear. Greed. Desperate prayers. Revenge. Mindless flight.
    Every soldier, officer, and lord broadcast his feelings directly into Yaakke’s being. No magical armor could block the intimate sharing.
    The onslaught of foreign emotions tore at Yaakke’s sanity. Who was he ? Which thoughts were his own? Whose body did his mind inhabit? What did he feel? Painful wounds stabbed and burned into his heart.
    Suddenly the riotous noise of a thousand men swelled within Yaakke’s ears. The wind increased to a howl and seemed to stab his skin with the force of arrows. His blood pounded and roared within his body.
    He had to get away. Away from the noise. Away from Rejiia. Away from himself.
     
    Jaylor coughed the smoke from his lungs. Desperately, he heaved the fallen beam away from Brevelan where she had fallen when the roof collapsed. With blackened hands, he clutched his wife tightly against his chest and transported them out of the inferno that had been the monastery library.
    The shocking cold of the void roused them both from the stupor induced by roiling smoke and blistering heat. Reality slowly formed around them. Still kneeling in the position he’d been in when he transported out, Jaylor coughed again and blinked his gritty eyes. He clung to the sensation of holding his beloved in his arms while he concentrated on maintaining his balance.
    “Where’s the baby?” Brevelan whispered, then coughed.
    Other coughs and grumbles penetrated Jaylor’s awareness. He counted bodies, eyes still too blurred to distinguish faces.
    Forty-three. “Where’s the baby?” he asked louder.
    “Glendon?” Brevelan asked again.
    “Right here.” Elder Librarian Lyman stepped forward with a grimy bundle cradled in his arms. “Took to the void like he was born there. Little tyke never uttered a squeak.” He clucked and shifted the baby against his shoulder, rubbing his back and cooing nonsense as if he’d always cared for infants instead of living the