The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

presence of His Majesty, King Simeon the First, Lord of SeLenicca, Emperor of Hanassa, and rightful Heir of Rossemeyer.”
    Katrina swallowed the lump in her throat. It wouldn’t go down. She swallowed again and almost choked on her fear.
    “I . . . I must tell my P’pa, and I must damp the fire.” Wildly she looked around. A million questions pounded at her. She couldn’t make sense of any of this.
    “Your hearth is cold, the tenants dismissed, and your father is already in custody,” the ranking soldier informed her. No flicker of emotion crossed his face, and his eyes stared straight ahead, above Katrina.
    She backed to the inner door. Flee , her feet urged. Hide , her mind overruled. Faint , her heart joined the clamor of emotions.
    A harsh hand gripped her arm. Pain shot up to her shoulder.
    “You will come now,” the soldier said.
    She hung back. His fingers dug deeper into the muscles of her upper arm. Numbness spread down to her fingers and up into her brain.
    “You will come, or you will die here and now.” Knives appeared in the right hand of each of the three soldiers. Their blank faces awoke with ugly grins.

Chapter 12
     
    ‘ Y ou must flee now, boy. Escape before the troops turn on you. Teach me the transport spell, so I can flee with you,” Rejiia whispered to Yaakke from behind.
    Yaakke halted his flight from the scene of destruction and turned to ask her what she knew about the spell, the Commune’s most closely guarded secret. Only a grimy soldier, gaping at the flames in the center of the camp stood there. A flash of black skirts, or maybe black feathers, flitted through the trees above him.
    “Teach me the spell; I will take you with me!” Jaylor’s voice demanded from the mouth of the grimy soldier.
    “No,” Yaakke formed the word without sound. The glare of the sun through the pall of clouds and smoke intensified. Pain lanced from his eyes to his mind.
    “The transport spell. Give me the spell.” This time Rejiia’s haunting voice came from the jackdaw perched in the tree above him.
    “Quickly, boy! Give me the spell.” The whispers bombarded him from all directions. Rejiia, Jaylor, Baamin, and Corby. A compulsion grew within him, insisting he whisper the secret.
    Frantically Yaakke opened every listening channel in his mind to find the source of the demanding voice. Was it Rejiia who haunted him, or a true magician using Yaakke’s suppressed attraction for the Lady of Faciar to trap him?
    Every mind in the army was firmly closed to him. Only the demanding whispers leaked through to his telepathy. They grew louder.
    Sun and the fire he had unleashed blazed before his eyes. He closed them. Still the blinding light penetrated.
    Then, suddenly, the wall between the thousand troops and his mind broke apart. A myriad of mental voices made a jumble of his thoughts and weakened his knees. His senses stretched beyond normal limits to include field mice, cats, and panicky steeds. Images of his firebomb exploding within a tent and burning all it touched with lethal intensity, including himself, replayed in his memory again and again. Mental and physical screams racked his aching body.
    Pain, blinding light, noise, demands. Always the demand. Give me the transport spell!
    Yaakke resumed his run uphill until his lungs burned. Away from the voice; he had to get away from the voice. The smoke from the monastery ruins thickened. Heat, trapped within the building stones, seared his hands when he touched them. He pressed his palms harder against a half-standing wall, ignoring the pain, seeking the lives that once dwelt within.
    More pain, more screams: his own and others. Escape. He had to escape.
    There was nothing left of his own thoughts or identity. Confusion. Noise. Pain. Bewilderment. Screams.
    “I’ve got to get out of here!” Yaakke searched blindly for an avenue of retreat from the noise, from the light, from his own guilt. Quickly, he built a picture of cool, quiet, darkness around his stretched and oversensitive nerves. Three deep breaths into a trance. Another lungful of air whisked him across the void and plunged him down, down, down, into the bowels of Kardia Hodos, the living planet.
     
    A guard on each side of Katrina held her arms tight and high, barely allowing her feet to touch the ground on the long walk up the hill toward the palace. Her knees were so weak with dread she doubted they’d hold her up.
    Along the wooden sidewalk the men marched her, following in