The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

lonely, celibate life of most magicians.
    Brevelan reached for Glendon before Jaylor could settle her onto the rough cave floor. Anxiously she removed the smoky blanket and checked her baby for any signs of distress. Little Glendon looked up at his mother, eyes focusing in his narrow field of vision. A slurpy gurgle followed by a toothless smile brought a sigh of relief from the entire gathering.
    “My son wasn’t born in the void, but he was conceived there,” Jaylor murmured to himself. Stiffly he stood and faced the ragtail gathering. “We’re all safe. Did the equipment make it through?”
    “All except one shelf of books—duplicates most of them.” Slippy surveyed the array of books and observation equipment littering the floor of the cave that had once been a dragon lair.
    “It’s damp here, Jaylor. Not good for my books,” Lyman reminded him. “Not good for my old bones either. At least we’re safe from those heathen lords and their troops. For now.”
    “There’s a broad valley between here and Brevelan’s clearing,” Jaylor told them. In his mind he saw a meadow at the base of a cliff. A small waterfall tumbled down the cliff into a scattering of boulders. That same cliff Prince Darville had fallen over when Krej ensorcelled him into a wolf and left him for dead. Neither of them had known at the time that Shayla, the resident dragon, was so tied to the royal family by honor, blood, and magic that she would compel Brevelan to rescue the injured wolf from the snow-drifts. Jaylor could think of no better place to rebuild the University: to honor a now dead friendship.
    “We’ll begin building as soon as we have recovered from our journey and the weather warms enough to fell timber. By summer we’ll have a refuge for all those who flee the persecution of magic. This attack against us smells like the work of that new cult, the Gnostic Utilitarians.”
    “The Gnuls have less of a sense of morality when it comes to magicians than the coven does,” Lyman grumbled.
    “I fear the attack on our monastery was just the beginning of some very hard times to come for our people,” Jaylor said sadly. He had to contact his spy among Queen Rossemikka’s maids. Surely the girl had eavesdropped on enough conversations to know what Darville meant by sending the army to the monastery. If Darville had authorized it at all.
     
    Rejiia latched onto the boy’s magic, sucking and feeding upon it as a leech draws blood from its victims. She had watched her father do this. A little giggle escaped her. She ignored the hysterical quality of the mirth. If the mighty and arrogant Lord Krej could see her now, he wouldn’t dismiss her as worthless.
    She had every intention of murdering the loathsome boy as soon as she’d drained him of his magic and his secrets. He wasn’t hard to follow. The flaws in his magic screamed at her through the tentacle she’d attached to him. His power rose to amazing strength and then fell abruptly to nothing in unpredictable waves. He committed the ultimate folly by allowing his emotions to affect his magic.
    She took a deep breath in preparation. At the next hint of a waver in his talent, she’d drop a compulsion on him.
    He ran furiously. Legs pumping. Arms straining.
    In her mind, Rejiia followed, feeling what he felt, seeing what he saw. She couldn’t read his thoughts and his secrets yet. The power was still rising in him.
    “Give me the transport spell!” she whispered through her tentacle of magic. “The coven will reward me well. They’ll have to give me full membership if I discover the secret. I’ll surpass my dear father in power and prestige. Then when I revive him, he will have to look up to me!”
     
    “Spirits of the dead, spring forth in freedom from fleshly concerns,” the magistrate implored as he released a sack of ashes into the River Lenicc. “As these last remnants of your corporeal bodies dissolve, so shall your attachments to this life. Your possessions are dispersed. Your families are reconciled to your passing. Your next existence beckons. Release your hold on this one!”
    Dry-eyed and numb, Katrina watched as Hilza’s ashes spread across the icy water like a gray blanket. The sluggish current caught the smothering cover of ashes, swirled them into an ugly soup, and dragged them down. All that remained of sweet little Hilza sank into watery oblivion.
    A commoner’s funeral. No expensive priests, no professional mourners. Not even a proper