The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

moment Krej ensorcelled Shayla into a glass sculpture. When Jaylor had released Shayla from her prison, she had left Coronnan because Krej was still a power to be reckoned with on the Council of Provinces. The Commune hadn’t been able to restore the border since. Rovers could come and go without Kestra’s child to break down the magical barrier.
    (Rovers keep their own close. No one within the tribe is abandoned, exiled, or orphaned.) The dragon answered.
    “So how did I end up in the poorhouse as a toddler—maybe as old as three or five? Why wasn’t Kestra rescued?”
    (Zolltarn was told that his daughter died after the attack. He mourned her but didn’t have the heart to seek further news. Yet rumors of the child persisted. Zolltarn seeks to keep Rover magic within his Rover tribe.)
    “Those years in Hanassa must have been hell for my mother.”
    (Kestra escaped through trickery. She fled with you into the teeth of a wicked storm. Merchants found her frozen to death on the road. You were still alive, sheltered by her dead body. They took you to Coronnan City, to the poorhouse, where you were cared for until you were big enough to work in the University kitchens. The merchants guessed you to be about a year old, based upon your size and inability—or unwillingness—to communicate. In truth, you were nearly four.)
    Now Jack couldn’t banish the memories of cold and fear, of loneliness and bewilderment that his mother wouldn’t wake up and feed him. Grief clogged his eyes and his throat. “She did love me!” he asserted. “She must have loved me to give up her life protecting me.” Anyone could love a baby. Who cared for Jack as a boy and a man? Now that Brevelan and Jaylor were gone, he had no one except for Fraank’s reluctant companionship and a cranky jackdaw who acted as a familiar only when the bird chose.
    Shadows flickered across the dragon’s eyes. Jack closed his own sight away from the shifting points of light lest he be enticed into another dragon-dream. The vision of his mother had shaken him more than he thought possible. For a few brief seconds he’d experienced a moment of kinship with her, a rarity in his lonely life.
    He’d been abandoned again when Baamin died. The old man had given up on life too easily. Had Kestra given up rather than face the memories of rape and despair?
    “I guess I’d better find Zolltarn when I’ve finished the healing spell.” He resigned himself to facing the wily Rover.
    (The Rovers will keep you with them, bind you to their cause, but you will never be fully a member of the tribe.) The dragon appeared suddenly alert. His wings spread slightly, almost protectively over Jack. (You have not been raised to their ways. The geas they will impose on you to keep you close will resemble the magic poison in Shayla that keeps her prisoner in this valley. A beautiful prison with ample food and space to breed, but she is chained here by pain and coercion, like a slave.) The blue-tipped horns above the dragon’s eye ridges seemed to glow in the darkness. Unnatural blue sparks flared from each of his spines and wing veins.
    “I have known slavery,” Jack mused. “I will never succumb to that evil again. Nor will I allow another to. At dawn I will do my best to heal Shayla no matter the cost.”
    (You may need more strength and wisdom than you are able to give.)
    “I’d rather die trying to help Shayla than be a slave again,” Jack resolved. “Shayla’s health and well-being affect more people that I ever will. Who will miss me if I give my all to this spell?”
    (The time has come for you to descend to the lair. Eat and drink well, for you will need all of your strength, and mine as well to throw the necessary magic.)
    “I can’t gather dragon magic,” Jack replied sadly. That inability had caused him to be rejected and shunned at the University. Because he couldn’t gather the ethereal component of magic he had been considered retarded, denied any rights, even the right to a name. He saw that, too, as a form of slavery.
    The nameless dragon lifted one eye ridge in silent query. For a moment he looked just like the cranky jackdaw when he lifted those odd white feathers above his eyes, or like Old Baamin cocking a bushy eyebrow at an errant apprentice. Jack dismissed the image as he took the first steps down the almost visible staircase.
    Jack paused, one foot extended toward the first step down. “Why didn’t Shayla or one of the other males give