The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

the stone wall. “All right you miserable beasts. Up. Everybody up.” Harelip stood outlined in the doorway, begging someone to challenge him so he could mete out punishment with is whip.
    Why don’t we just jump him? Jack thought. Thirty men could strangle him before he raised the bloody whip.
    “Not ready,” the jackdaw cawed. “Ye’re not ready.”
    Jack slid his gaze toward the door. The stupid bird hadn’t really talked to him, had it?
    Still affecting a daze of incomprehension, Jack stood mutely beside his hammock while a second guard unlocked his chain from the post. Fraank stood beside him, patiently waiting to be partnered with him.
    “You two been gettin’ chummy, I hear. Can’t have that.” The guard with grime embedded around his neck like a necklace yanked on Jack’s chain to lead him several paces down the line to a new partner.
    They chained him to the scrawny newcomer with the patchy beard. Jack almost opened his mouth to protest. A warning glance from Fraank kept him quiet and docile. Harelip was watching for an opportunity to uncoil his whip.
    Patchy-beard wrung his hands in anxiety, then scratched his face in a habitual manner. A few strands of mud-colored hair fell to the floor.
    Out in the yard, the day crew marched through their regular routine. A trip to the privy—an open trench in one corner of the fenced compound. Then a bowl of thin gruel slurped from wooden bowls without benefit of a spoon. The food was enough to keep the men alive and working, but not energetic enough to plot or risk escape.
    The jackdaw fluttered to the top of a fence post and watched the pot of gruel for an opportunity to steal some. The white tufts of feathers above its eyes twitched.
    “Look. Look,” the jackdaw mimicked words.
    A guard laughed at the bird and held out his arm for it to perch on. The jackdaw ignored him and continued to instruct Jack to “Look, look.”
    Certainty that the bird was speaking to him alone, drew Jack’s gaze to the high wooden fence. Eight feet high at least. Smooth planks that would defy a man to climb. What was he supposed to look at?
    “Through my eyes. Through my eyes.” The jackdaw cocked his head and looked directly at Jack.
    A wave of revulsion almost brought the gruel back up from Jack’s stomach. Invading another creature’s mind had to be the worst form of violation.
    The jackdaw shook himself. Dust flew from his wings.
    “Filthy bird!” Someone picked up a loose stone and flung it at him.
    “Craaawk!” it squawked and jumped into flight. Two flaps of his wings and he perched on top of Jack’s head. “Look,” it repeated.
    Jack remained absolutely still, as if he didn’t know a black bird was tugging at his hair with a sharp beak.
    “Always knew that Muaynwor was a scarecrow,” Harelip guffawed, flapping his arms like grotesque wings. Jack looked right through his antics as if they didn’t exist. He hoped the men wouldn’t start throwing stones at him as well as the bird.
    Without knowing how or why, his thoughts blended with the bird. The color spectrum shifted and he saw colors he’d never seen before. Colors that revealed temperatures. Men became layers of overlapping reds and yellows. Buildings revealed neutral grays.
    His perspective shifted upward and then flew with the bird over the fence. He knew a moment of dizziness and spinning colors. Then the terrain below came into focus.
    Trackless mountains still covered in snow, that revealed iciness in shades of blue, spread out to the horizon in every direction. Snow blocked the valleys between peaks and ridges. A few scraggly everblue trees appeared pink and yellow as sap began to flow and bring them out of winter dormancy.
    Together, he and the jackdaw skimmed over black rivers and pale blue lakes still choked with darker blue ice. Ice that cracked and thinned as the rising red and orange sun touched it.
    “Not yet. Not yet,” the jackdaw reminded him. They soared upward, along another pass where the melted snow had filled the nearby river to overflowing. At the western end of the pass, a trader caravan camped. Their train of surefooted mules was loaded with supplies for the prison mine.
    Escape needed to wait until Jack could load one of those mules with enough supplies to last him several weeks. By the time the caravan arrived, the worst of the storms would have passed. He’d be able to walk away from the mine and survive.
    Jack’s consciousness plunged back into his own body with an