The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

question.
    “I don’t know where we are. Somewhere in SeLenicca, but so much of this land has been logged off and then eroded, all the landmarks look the same.”
    “Do you sense the dragon anywhere near?” Jack knew the lair had to be in the hills, at the bottom of a cliff with a wide waterfall. That kind of landscape didn’t occur in the rolling plains and river valleys of SeLenicca proper.
    “Sensing people with talent is easier. South, I think,” Lanciar grumbled. He sank deeper into the folds of his blanket. There was no cover anywhere to shelter them from the punishing wind.
    Lanciar’s mind remained mostly closed to Jack. The secrets behind his mental armor still troubled Jack. Respect was there, but trust was a long time in coming.
    “We should have stayed at the mine.” Fraank edged closer to Lanciar seeking warmth or a windbreak. He didn’t look well. His years in the mine had taken their toll.
    “You sense power in people of talent,” Jack turned his attention back to Lanciar. “Dragons emit a kind of power. Look for power in the air, in the ground, in the living rocks of these mountains.”
    “Look yourself. You’re the magician,” Lanciar snarled.
    “I cannot gather dragon magic,” Jack admitted reluctantly.
    “Then why bother seeking the dragon? You should have run back to Coronnan where you belong. Or let me take you to King Simeon. Maybe he’ll take you to the precious dragon.”
    “Shayla is the only hope for saving Coronnan from Simeon. I must find a way to rebuild the Commune and erect the magic border again,” Jack affirmed. For the memory of his friends, Jaylor and Brevelan, and his beloved mentor, Baamin. “That is my quest. I must complete it in order to complete myself.”
    Though once he’d done that, he’d be an exiled rogue magician or a nameless drudge again. Because he couldn’t gather dragon magic.
    “Come, we must find shelter before the sun sets. I believe I see a cave up there,” Jack pointed to a dark spot in the hills that guarded the pass. “And enough scrub to build a fire.”
    “ ’Tis early yet. We can traverse the pass before nightfall. There is bound to be shelter on the other side,” Lanciar argued. “Villages used to guard the western end of passes. Not all of them were deserted when the timber industry died.”
    “I have much to teach you tonight, Officer Lanciar.” Before they reached the bedraggled village Corby saw on the other side. “Tonight, by the light of a campfire, you will learn to center yourself and align your body to the pole. Thus anchored, your spirit will be free to search for magic in all its forms. Tonight you will find the dragon.”
     
    One thousand pins and counting. Katrina stared at her mother’s lace shawl stretched out on an inclined work board. The cream-colored wood pulp paper beneath the lace was marked off in a precise grid to help her determine the proper angle of pin placement. The intricate lace did not conform to any predetermined angle.
    Katrina’s head swam with geometrical equations, trying to discover the design. T’chon lace was worked on precise forty-five degree angles. Net-ground laces flowed at a wider angle. This piece defied geometry. She knew that science as well as her mother, or any lacemaker before her. She hadn’t been taught to read but she knew mathematics.
    She stretched her back and rose from her straight chair in the corner of Neeles Brunix’s office. The owner was off on some errand, so she had the ground floor room to herself. She shuddered in memory of the night he’d taken her maidenhood. Her skin crawled whenever she thought of his hands on her face, breast, between her legs . . .
    She deliberately pushed aside her revulsion. Dwelling on Brunix wouldn’t draw a pattern from the shawl. Without his watchful eye pinning her to her chair, Katrina took the opportunity to walk around her new workstation and stare at the obstinate piece of lace from a different angle.
    Spring sunshine filtered in through the two high windows covered with a mosaic of mica flakes. Fresh white paint enhanced that light and relieved the strain on her eyes. A stray beam broke through the heavy windows setting the lustrous silk of the shawl aglow in three dimensions. An entire garden of abstract flowers jumped to life before Katrina’s eyes.
    She tried to remember the weeks M’ma had spent designing the shawl. Tattia had tried to keep her work a secret, but during those days, the entire family had