The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

beauty, and her love, all his life.
    She had abandoned her infant son! He tried to keep his anger dominant and failed. She was so beautiful.
    (Her father is Zolltarn. He named her Kestra for the kahmsin eaglet he spotted at the moment of her birth.)
    “Kestra.” Memories began to tickle Jack’s mind. He knew that name. Somewhere he’d heard of a missing Kestra and her mythical child. Was he the lost child the Rovers searched for through all the lands?
    The scene changed before Jack’s eyes. The road twisted and dipped into the deep shadow of trees. His ghostly senses allowed him to see the shapes of hidden men within the darkness. Men who killed for pleasure and for the few small treasures carried by travelers.
    Bandits were rare in Coronnan. Travelers, the natural prey of the lawless, were almost as rare. After the Great Wars of Disruption, villagers retained their suspicion of strangers and fears of marauding armies. Merchants passed from city to city, stronghold to village, in large caravans. Other citizens remained home, where they belonged.
    Where had these desperate men come from?
    (Hanassa,) the dragon answered him. (These outlaws know the magic border is already crumbling in this remote sector. The Commune is not yet aware of how far or fast their magic decays.
    (Nestled in the mountains is the deep caldera of an extinct volcano. Lava tube tunnels and secret pathways lead into this hidden city. Exiled magicians, outlaws, and mercenaries live there and watch all three kingdoms for signs of weakness. Outsiders are not allowed in or out of the stronghold alive.)
    The name of the forbidden city struck dread in Jack’s heart. Legends of the harsh life there and the cruelties of its inhabitants were the stuff of nightmares.
    His nightmares.
    Sometime in the past he’d been there.
    The bandits raised a thin rope across the road. The Rover steed stumbled to his knees, twisting and bucking wildly to recover his balance. Kestra fell to the ground, rolling, instinctively protecting her belly.
    Unable to aid the woman his heart reached out to, Jack watched helplessly as the bandits pulled Kestra’s man from the steed and slit his throat. His pockets and saddlebags were emptied before he was fully dead. Three men wrestled the girl to the ground and mounted her again and again, barely waiting for a comrade to finish before the next took his turn.
    Kestra lay there, barely moving, not fighting lest her struggles lead to her death. Tears streamed down her face.
    Disgust boiled in Jack’s stomach as pain choked his throat and brought unwanted tears to his eyes. Despair made the air, his life and his body too heavy to manage.
    “Which of the bastards is my father?”
    Even as he spoke the words, the bandits carried Kestra off into the woods and across the already crumbling border, leaving her Rover guardian and the magnificent steed gutted in the middle of the road.
    (None of them. She was pregnant before she left Coronnan City.)
    Jack looked back at the dragon/man. Hope lifted his chin and his spirits.
    “Who? The dead Rover there?”
    (No. She was ordered to lay with a great magician. The child was to give the tribe the magical power to open the border for the Rovers. They still seek that child.)
    “Zolltarn is my grandfather. My grandfather still lives! What about my father. Who is my father?” Jack tried to grab the dragon/man’s shoulders and shake the information out of him. His hands slipped through air rather than touching solid flesh.
    An aura of sadness clung to the old man. His eyes closed heavily. His long white mustaches dropped into this limp beard. (You have much to learn before you can know your father. When the time is right, you will be able to look within your heart for the answers you seek.)

Chapter 24
     
    J ack awoke to the predawn twitter of birds. The air around him smelled damp and chill. But he was warm and dry, his head pillowed on the foreleg of a dragon. A wide blue-tipped wing covered him better than any woven blanket.
    He opened one eye to find the probing depths of a dragon eye staring at him.
    (You slept well?)
    “Yes, yes, I did,” Jack replied, surprised to find his body free of stiffness and chill and his mind refreshed by deep, dreamless sleep.
    A thousand questions assaulted his mind as he huddled next to the dragon for warmth. “Why do Zolltarn and the Rovers still seek the missing child of Kestra?” he asked the dragon. The magic border had totally disintegrated the