The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

expanded to find more colors, more tastes, new sensations.
    Jaylor licked the spine of the leaf where he could see more drops. They exploded into his system, filling him with wisdom and knowledge.
    Life was suddenly reduced to a simple equation.
    Magic became natural and easy.
    He licked the leaf again, chewed its green and white tip, needed more.
    His mind soared upward, outward. His soul chose a different direction.
    Dimly he knew he licked and chewed a second leaf, a purple one this time, then a third solid green and a fourth mottled pink and green. They gave him the power to merge his mind and body and soul. He chose to drift separately.
     
    “Is he . . .” Brevelan gulped back her fear. “Is he dead?” Fiery green ice sped through her rapidly numbing body. Jaylor! Her mind screamed. Come back to me.
    Darville hunched over Jaylor’s slumped form. He felt for life-sign at his friend’s neck. He shook his head in puzzlement, then pushed his shaggy golden hair back out of his eyes and tried again. “I can’t tell.” He shook his head again, this time in despair.
    “Let me.” She shouldered him aside. Panic nearly choked her. Jaylor had eaten several leaves, perhaps six or seven, before she and Darville had noticed. They had pulled him away from the lethal basket of leaves, but not in time.
    “Jaylor,” she whispered.
    Still no response.
    Her mind called again in protest. Come back to me!
    A faint vibration responded to her call, not from his body but from the void, above and beyond reality.
    “Jaylor!” she demanded of the vibration.
    It hummed and threatened to drift away, uninterested in her plea.
    “Don’t you dare leave me.” She firmed her grasp on that thin thread of life.
    It drifted no farther away but did not return. When they had hidden in the bushes beside the path, Jaylor had used a thin umbilical of magic to touch her mind. Traces of that silver thread still trailed away from the faint vibration.
    She searched her own soul for the other end of the fragile magic cord. It was buried deep, behind the tiny throbbing bit that was her connection with Shayla. Her end was copper, Shayla’s was as transparent as glass. Color didn’t matter. She had to splice or weave all the magic strands together.
     
    I rode through the day and night for four days. Eight journey steeds died beneath me. I pressed them too hard with compulsions. They failed me. If only those fools hadn’t lost the Tambootie, I could have flown to Coronnan City on the winds.
    My magic is stretched too thin. My head aches. There are spots before my eyes. I had to abandon Shayla to my servants. They will transport her to the great hall by sledge. I must be in control of the Council before my agents lead the enemy army over the border. Coronnan will win the battle with them, but only if I am the one to lead our troops to victory . That is the arrangement made with Simeon of SeLenicca many moons ago.
    I didn’t have the strength to project my image onto Marnak’s body, nor through Scrawny’s glass. The Council must not act without my “presence.”
    I must have my Tambootie to keep up this pace. Coronnan needs me even if the Council of Provinces doesn’t know it yet.

Chapter 23
     
    “Y ou and your cosseted Commune have failed, Baamin.” Krej glowered at the magician who sat in the Council for the ailing king.
    “In what way, Lord?” Baamin stalled. The Twelve—the lords of the Council—sat in a round room, larger and more luxuriously furnished than the one used by the Commune. The twelve windows boasted colored glass in the pattern of each lord’s device. Their elaborately carved chairs bore the same designs. The thirteenth chair was specially carved with dragon heads curving over the top, dragon claws at the end of each arm and leg. It was empty now, reserved for the king.
    Behind each lord and slightly to the right sat his magician. For three centuries, master magicians had been posted to the twelve courts as advisers and links to the king and Commune. For those same three centuries the magicians had owed first allegiance to the Commune, the combined body of all master magicians, rather than to any one lord—or king.
    No one lord could gather power over another through his magician.
    The system had been devised by the lords.
    Now Krej was throwing doubt on the value of the Commune.
    After the nightmares of the last week or more, Baamin questioned his own value within the Commune.
    According to Jaylor, Krej had