The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

glow of purple. “Just like Amaranth, my colors are silver and purple. I’ve seen my own aura color!”
    A rare achievement among magicians. Only those tested and found worthy by the dragons were granted that privilege. He searched the glowing umbilicals for traces of his friends.
    (Come look. See the future and the past.) The colored cords of life called to him.
    He resisted the temptation. He’d been lost here once before. The last time he’d indulged in glimpses he’d seen things he wasn’t meant to know.
    (But you saw Katrina. You recognized her in your heart,) the dragon reminded him.
    “What good will that do me? We’ve shared an adventure and both escaped. Now we must go our separate ways. Magicians aren’t meant to share their lives with a mate. Our path—my path—must be solitary.” Some of his happiness at finding his magical signature faded.
    (Look again.)
    A tangle of colors wrapped around Jack and a new vista opened before his eyes. The clearing. But not the clearing he had known. The house was bigger. Two boys wrestled and played in the meadow. Brevelan Sang as she stirred a hearty stew of yampion and legumes. Jaylor came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her gravid body.
    Love and caring filled the clearing.
    “But they’re dead!” Jack would have cried if he knew where his body existed.
    (Are they?)
    “The monastery was burned out. A soldier played with Jaylor’s staff.”
    (Many magicians passed into a new plane of existence from that monastery, over many centuries. Their staves were hung on the chapel wall in memory of their work. Magicians with the transport spell needn’t be trapped by their enemies. The Commune escaped intact, Yaakke.)
    Hope blossomed inside Jack.
    “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
    (Would you have persevered to the end of your quest if you thought another magician could do it for you? Besides, you didn’t ask. You assumed.)
    Jack had to think about that a minute. Would he have endured the hardships of the trek from the mine to lair, the betrayal of Lanciar, the disasters in Queen’s City?
    “I think I might have, dragon. I may not have been as willing to die for the quest if I knew I had friends waiting for me. But I would have continued to the end.”
    (Then you have truly grown into the rank of Master Magician.)
    “Why are we lingering here? I need to warn my friends that Rejiia has the transport spell and directions to the clearing.” Friends. What a wonderful word. His heart swelled within his chest. He needed to see his old friends, walk on familiar ground, speak his own language.
    (We wait so that the daughter of Krej cannot follow our trail through the void.)
    “How long?”
    (Time is not measured in the void by the passage of the sun. Time flows forward and back and sideways in the void.)
    Sideways?
    (Between dimensions.)
    “Great. So how long? I want my body back.”
    (You don’t want answers?)
    “I don’t know what the questions are anymore.” He’d escaped alive—so far. He hadn’t planned to live beyond the magic duel with Rejiia and Simeon. Shayla had returned to Coronnan, Katrina was safe, and Simeon’s tyranny had ended. Jack . . . Yaakke’s quest was complete.
    (You have accomplished much. For your self-respect and peace of mind, you had to do it alone. Dragons are not allowed to interfere in these matters. But you are not complete yet, Yaakke. You have earned a name. Yet you still know only a portion of your heritage. I am allowed to tell you the rest now that you have succeeded in your quest.)
    “I’m half Rover. No matter who my father is, I can’t overcome the prejudice against Zolltarn and his clan. They are thieves and malcontents, amoral nomads. Isn’t that bad enough? Why should I want to know more?”
    (What if Baamin was your father?)
    “Baamin? My old master! Impossible.”
    (Why is it impossible?)
    “Because it is. The old sot never . . . I mean he couldn’t . . . he wouldn’t. . .”
    (Perhaps he did. Kestra was ordered to seduce a powerful magician. Who more powerful than Baamin on the night before his installation as the Senior Magician of the Commune?)
    “But he would have told me!”
    (Not if he didn’t know.)
    Sadness and joy threatened to split Jack in two. He and Baamin had been close. The old man had befriended and trusted Jack when no one else thought him smart enough to deserve a name. Of all the men he had known, Baamin was the one he would have chosen as a father.
    But he had not