The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

planet beneath them. The power altered its internal resonance to match Jack’s unique life song. It flowed through him as if he were another conduit, just like the planet.
    He reached out with his senses, seeking his destiny. The image of a woman with hair graced by moonlight flitted past his mind’s eye. A woman bent over a worktable with a single four-strand plait of hair down her back. He recognized the girl he had seen once before in a vision and many times in his dreams. Now he saw her grown to womanhood. Sad beauty touched her features and his heart.
    Their lives were somehow linked. How? Why?
    The vision faded. The future was an element he could glimpse but not know.
    A shimmering crystal of power winked at him. (Now you are ready!)
    All of Jack’s past, good memories as well as bad, returned to him. He winked back to the core of crystalline power tinged with blue around the edges and continued his journey.
    Enhanced by the land, he pulled more power from the moon and the sun, growing beyond them to the stars and distant galaxies. He saw more planets circling their suns, felt more lives that would never touch his own in real time and space. He joined and became a part of all life and rejoiced in the fullness of being.
    Gradually the crackle of a small campfire, the cool wind and his stiff back touched his awareness. He sank back into his body, refreshed and renewed.
    Lanciar’s return was less graceful. His body jerked and slumped. He twisted his neck stiffly and stared numbly at Jack, mouth agape, eyes wide. “No wonder you were able to sense the rockfall before anyone else. If that is a sample of who you are, no wonder The Simeon sent me looking for you.”
    “That’s . . . I never . . .” How could Jack explain that this was the first time he had expanded himself so far and so fully? “I saw the dragons. I know how to find them,” he said instead.
    “I didn’t notice a dragon. I saw only a shimmering haze around everything and lines of blue crisscrossing beneath us.” Lanciar stared at the remnants of the fire, still stunned by his awesome experience.
    “Beneath us?” Jack glared at Lanciar with magic-sharpened senses. “There is no power in SeLenicca. Every magician knows that.” So he hadn’t looked for it. Suspicion grew in Jack. The power dimmed within him in response to the negative emotion. He didn’t care. There was enough left in his body’s reserves.
    “You saw it, too!” Lanciar protested. “Not all over like in the rest of the planet. Pockets of power, raw power that hasn’t been honed and fine-tuned by contact with magicians.”
    “We can’t be in SeLenicca if there are ley lines. Where have you led us? We’ve twisted and changed direction often enough we could be in Hanassa for all I know.” Jack controlled the urge to throw a truth spell over his companion. He wanted to know the depth of Lanciar’s betrayal first.
    “I swear to you, by the vision we both shared, that we are in SeLenicca. All you have to do is march to the other side of this pass and question the inhabitants of the village. They speak SeLenese. The men cut their beards square. The women braid their hair in four-strand plaits. This is SeLenicca!” Lanciar’s aura flared with blue truth. He believed what he said.
    “Then something very strange is happening in your land.” Jack swallowed deeply while he organized his thoughts. “Nimbulan burned out all of the power in SeLenicca when he established the border three centuries ago. For three hundred years, none of the ley lines had begun to recover. Why would they now?”
     
    “I hate this,” Darville whispered to himself.
    “Think of it as cauterizing a wound,” Mikka whispered back at him. “If we do not cleanse the problem now, the poison will spread until all of Coronnan is diseased and crippled!”
    “So fierce, my queen?” Darville kissed her hand, then placed it atop his forearm in preparation for their formal entrance into the lesser audience chamber.
    “I enjoy trials and executions no more than you, beloved. Remember we seek justice not vengeance.”
    He was grateful for the gentle pressure of her fingers against his own. She gave him the courage to mask his anger. Justice. He had to remember that.
    Margit, Mikka’s maid, had detected an herbal combination in this morning’s porridge. A healthy woman who wasn’t pregnant wouldn’t notice anything more than a strange taste to the cereal. Mikka would have miscarried, possibly