The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

healer or the Council until I order it.”
    “Let me look. Maybe I can ease the discomfort a little.” Jaylor rolled up Darville’s sleeve, being careful not to brush the black wound with the fabric. He focused his sight beyond sight onto the twisted black wound. A vibrant tingling and disorientation swamped his senses. In the distance, a soft echo of one of Brevelan’s healing Songs teased his hearing.
    The difference between this Song and the one brewing in the royal bedchamber bothered him. Deeper, less certain. What was happening?
    “What are you doing?” Darville stared at the burn that snaked up his arm, almost from wrist to elbow. “I feel weird, something akin to when you used to transform me back and forth between man and wolf.” The king rested his head on the back of the chair.
    Jaylor’s eyes lost focus. He closed them and shook his head clear of the dizziness. He looked again at Darville’s wound. The blackness lifted several finger-lengths above the level of his arm. It shifted and writhed within some kind of barrier. Slender rootlets stretched out toward the living tissue it fed on. Some broke off and dissolved in the air. One, thicker and stronger than the others, almost touched the arm before quickly withdrawing into the black mass.
    “What’s happening?” Darville stared at the raw muscle on his arm where the wound had resided for three years.
    “I don’t know. Don’t move.” Jaylor pushed at the blackness with his finger. An envelope of magic pushed back.
    A scream knifed through his mind and his ears. The blackness dropped back onto Darville’s arm.
    “Mikka!” The king was halfway to the door before he doubled over in pain.
    “Not Mikka.” Jaylor supported his friend back to the chair.
    Brevelan appeared in the doorway. Her eyes asked her questions.
    Jaylor shrugged his answer.
    “Mikka?” Darville looked up from his deep contemplation of the wound that had become a part of him.
    Brevelan shook her head. “I can’t save the baby. If we’re lucky, she’ll recover.” Her jaw clenched and released.
    Jaylor watched her effort to control her emotions. Death always robbed her of vitality. He worried that the death of Mikka’s child might affect the unborn twins.
    “You’re healing, Darville! Thank the Stargods for some good news.” Brevelan rushed to his side and grabbed his arm.
    The king winced and jerked his arm back.
    “Not completely,” he said through gritted teeth.
    “But it is better,” Brevelan said. “The wound is smaller, the edges ragged as if scabs had begun to peel away. Is this tender?” Brevelan touched some pink and healthy skin right next to the blackness.
    Hope blossomed in Jaylor’s chest. If Darville’s wound healed, what was happening to Shayla?
    Darville fidgeted as if he needed to continue his wolflike prowl. He kept looking toward the inner room, toward Mikka.
    “Stand still, Darville,” Brevelan commanded in the same voice she used on her young sons—the same voice she had used to order Darville about when he was enchanted into the body of a golden wolf.
    “That still hurts, Brevelan.” The king grinned weakly in acknowledgment of her authority.
    Jaylor peered over his wife’s shoulder to examine the evidence of healing. His extended senses caught a scent of rotten magic beneath a clean aroma of growth. So different from the whiff of magic-gone-awry coming from the bedroom.
    “The strangest sensation came over me.” Darville flexed his arm once more and resumed his pacing.
    Jaylor propped up the door with his back, his staff at hand, ready to focus any spell he might need to throw in a hurry if anyone else responded to the unnatural scream.
    “Then my arm stopped aching,” Darville continued. “That was really weird, suddenly losing the pain after all these years. I almost missed it. It’s become so much a part of me. . . .” The king’s gaze drifted toward his bedroom and his wife. Then he frowned in worry.
    “Evidence suggests you got caught up in a magic spell directed at someone else. I wonder who? And where?” Jaylor moved to a small writing table and pulled out his glass. “Shayla is linked to that wound. I need to know if my journeymen found her.”
    Darville stared at the injured limb again. “Shouldn’t you be with Mikka?” He looked from Brevelan to the inner room once more. Then he stepped decisively through the doorway.
    “The wound is smaller, Darville. Not all of it returned to you. Whatever dissolved