The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

gestured to the pair of apprentices who occupied the children.
    “Possibly. But not before the Gnostic Utilitarian cult had sniffed out the presence of his magic. The law forbidding magicians from being lords and lords from being magicians has never been revoked,” Jaylor reminded him. “Legally, Glendon can’t be your heir.”
    “Legally, Glendon is already my heir. No one on the Council has questioned that he is my illegitimate son.”
    Brevelan called the boys to their breakfast from the doorway of the cottage. She glared at the men, warning them not to bring arguments into her home.
    Both men turned to drink in the wholesome beauty they had both loved for so long. Darville looked away first, seeking Mikka.
    “If we do not find solutions to our problems, Mikka will not stay with me,” Darville mused. “My love for Brevelan is strong and special. But it cannot compare to the soul-deep love I bear my wife. I am nothing if she leaves me.”
    “I have assigned a team of magicians to the problem and summoned Zolltarn, since it was his binding spell that caused the problem,” Jaylor reminded his friend.
    “Shayla!” Brevelan called, startling both men out of their preoccupation. “Shayla’s come back.”
    Mikka appeared behind Brevelan within the hut, hair unbound, and a glow of relaxed joy on her face.
    Jaylor looked in the direction Brevelan pointed. A hint of a shadow passed between the sun and the clearing.
    “Are you sure it’s Shayla?” Jaylor called as he bolted to his wife’s side.
    “If she isn’t certain, then I am,” Darville confirmed. He stared at his left arm, eyes wide and mouth agape.
    “What?” Mikka rushed to his side. Without waiting for an answer, she freed his arm from its sling and rolled up his shirt sleeve.
    “Darville, your arm!” Brevelan gasped. The twisting black mass of the old burn faded and shrank before their eyes.
    “If my dragon flies, then she must be healed, and so must I.” The king smiled as he searched the sky for signs of the dragon.
    Suddenly the air was filled with dragons. Big and small, tipped with color and luminescent pearl. The central figure glided in lazy circles around and around the clearing. Each pass was narrower and closer to the ground.
    “Someone’s riding the blue-tip,” Jaylor announced at the same moment the others pointed to the human outline atop the nearly invisible dragon. “Suppose it’s Yaakke?”
    “No, it’s a woman. Shayla is tiring. She’s going to crash!” Brevelan shouted. She dashed forward to rescue the two little boys standing in the center of the meadow, watching the spectacle.
    Jaylor was faster. One son under each arm, he dashed for the safety of a bank of saber ferns. Sharp, jagged leaves stabbed at his ankles and dragged against his trews. But the boys were safe.
    Two heartbeats later, Shayla stretched out her claws and grabbed tufts of grass. Her legs buckled and her nose nearly hit the ground. Her distress was evident in the drooping half-furled wings.
     
    “Where are we, Shayla? Are we safe? Who are all these people?” Katrina scrambled off the male dragon’s back to check Shayla’s wing.
    The male extended his wings in preparation for flight. Katrina grabbed Corby and cradled him in one arm before the dragon took off again.
    Shayla didn’t answer. Exhaustion dragged nearly transparent eyelids over the jewel of her eye.
    “We are friends,” the blond man spoke hesitantly in a strange accent. “I know a little of your language.”
    He was tall, with a commanding presence, Katrina shrank away from him. The solid wall of Shayla’s side prevented her from retreating further.
    (Trust them.)
    Katrina gulped back some of her fear. Outlanders. Her ingrained distrust rose. Jack was an outlander and he had proved himself more a friend to SeLenicca than her own king.
    The man was blond, like a true-blood. Only his golden-brown eyes betrayed his lack of citizenship. The woman who stroked Shayla’s muzzle and crooned a healing Song had proper blue eyes, but her red hair and something about the shape of her chin made her look too much like Simeon. The other tall man, holding two small boys under his arms, looked the friendliest, but his hair and eyes were almost as dark as Jack’s.
    “Do you know a man named Jack? A dark magician.” She formed her words carefully to make sure they understood her.
    The dark man spoke a few words in a strange language full of lilting, singsong phrases.
    “Speak freely.”