The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

by it. “You aren’t a very good liar, Slave Kaantille. Don’t bother trying to fool me. A truth spell will force proper answers from you. Painfully if necessary. Bring her,” he ordered the guards as he sauntered out of the apartment, a sneer of contempt on his face, the lace held delicately away from his body.
    Katrina screeched and struggled against her captors. They ended her thrashing by simply lifting her by the elbows and carrying her between them out the door. Never once did the palace guard look behind them at the scrap of lace betraying the secret wall safe.

Chapter 33
     
    J ack’s ribs exploded in pain. He slumped against the manacles that chained him to the wall of the dungeon. His resistance to imprisonment evaporated with white hot agony.
    Hope died.
    A gap-toothed jailer smiled, fondling an iron bar as long as Jack’s outstretched arm. “Want more?” the man in black leather grinned at Jack. “Just keep up yer hollerin’ and ye can have all the tickles Old Mabel here can give.”
    Old Mabel? The cretin actually had a name for his crude weapon. The coven must love this man. The Commune believed that Lord Krej and his sister had learned to use pain—in others or themselves—to create magical energy.
    Jack wasn’t desperate enough, yet, to dive that deeply into black magic. Blood magic. Simurgh’s magic.
    Blackness encroached upon his vision. The tip of the iron bar caressed his side, cold against the spreading fire of crushed ribs and laboring lungs.
    “Don’t pass out on us now, boy,” the jailer coaxed with an almost seductive voice. “King Simeon and his lady have questions to ask ye. Ye be polite now and stay awake. Otherwise Old Mabel will need to wake ye up again.” With a parting chuckle, the jailer exited.
    Jack invited the darkness of his unlit cell to soothe the blinding ache behind his eyes.
    Little creatures scurried in the straw at his feet. He jerked back awake. The blood on his face and side had attracted rats. If he fell asleep, the disease-ridden rodents might take it as an invitation to feast on his still living flesh.
    “ Stargods! What did I do to deserve this?” he moaned.
    “You chose to interfere with my dragon,” a quiet voice answered from the doorway.
    For a moment Jack thought he was hallucinating. The newcomer appeared to be Lord Krej returned to life. His red hair was a little duller with the passage of three years. His square-cut beard hid the shape of his chin. But the bay-blue eyes that peered at Jack with lusting evil were the same. Even his red and green aura was the same.
    The magic permeating his body smelled different. Still filled with Tambootie, but overlaid with something else. Something Jack couldn’t identify.
    “Who broke the backlash spell, Krej?” Jack asked, his curiosity overcoming his pain, for a moment.
    “KREJ!” the man yelled. “How dare you call me Krej? That insignificant son of a weak and petty Coronnite. I am King Simeon of SeLenicca and Hanassa, true heir to Rossemeyer and soon to be conqueror of Coronnan. Do you understand me, boy?”
    “If you aren’t Krej, then you’re his twin brother,” Jack accused. So this was Simeon the Sorcerer, King of SeLenicca. Simeon the Insane, judging by his reaction.
    “Nonsense, utter nonsense.” A new voice, calm and feminine and familiar, moved into Jack’s field of vision.
    “Rejiia,” Jack whispered. Pale skin, smooth as ivory, black hair pulled into a sleek knot at her nape. Long and graceful body clothed in elegant black. There was a new sensuousness to her walk, maturity in her ample bosom and a seductive pout to her full, red lips. If anything she was lovelier than ever.
    And taller. Rejiia at fifteen had been nearly as tall as her father, Krej. At twenty she topped the red-haired man beside her by a finger-width or two.
    She deposited a lump of metal by the doorway. Jack squinted his aching eyes to focus on the talisman she had levitated to this cell. A tin weasel sculpture with flaking gilt paint. Krej.
    “ Lady Rejiia to you, boy,” she lifted her arrogant little chin in contempt. Her nose wrinkled at the same time as she caught a whiff of the odors of the dungeon. She caressed the head of the statue before moving into the cell.
    “Adding incest to your sins, Lady Rejiia?” Jack quipped, tired of their need to add insult to injury with the appellation “boy.” Suddenly he was beyond pain, and fear. All that was left of him was a glimmer of hysterical humor