The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

normal, he wouldn’t harm his wife and daughter. His malice was all directed toward Brevelan.
    “I’ll demand no fee for midwifing a live and healthy child, since the result displeases you.” Brevelan allowed her disgust for the man to wash over him. Maybe if he saw himself as she saw him, he could shrug off whatever compelled him. He stepped toward her. Darville bared his teeth.
    “Get out, witch.” Fear palpitated around him. “Get out and take the s’murghin’ familiar with you. No decent priest should tolerate you and your kind. You won’t be welcome back.” His arm pointed to the door, uncompromising. Darville stepped closer. His teeth dripped, the hair on his neck stood straight up.
    “No, Darville,” she commanded. The carpenter appeared a little startled at the princely name. “His blood isn’t worth your time.” She gripped the animal’s fur and tugged him backward. “If I were indeed in league with the source of evil, I would curse you, and curse this village.” She held in check the power she felt rising within her.
    “This time I’ll only leave a reminder with the men who condemn me.”
    From the doorway, the freedom and safety of the woods enticed her. Jaylor hovered there. He would hear and understand her need for the words that spilled from her lips.
    “Until you forgive me in your heart, as well as with words, until you know for truth that I wish you and yours only health and happiness, and until you can come to your wife with gratitude for the gift of the child she has given you, you will not be able to bed any woman.” The words came from someone else, somewhere else. She didn’t really wish this village ill. Still the words flowed. “And no child will be conceived in this village until all the men here feel the same.”
    The carpenter blanched and looked as though he would faint. Brevelan ignored him and marched out of his house.
    Moments later, from the shelter of the trees, beyond the sight of the village, Brevelan hugged each of her friends in turn.
    “Remind me not to make either of you angry at me,” Darville said with a chuckle.
    “That was some curse you laid, Brevelan,” Jaylor agreed as he handed Darville his clothes. Hen-bumps covered his back in the cool spring air as he bent to pull up his leather trews.
    His legs were long and well muscled, straight now but still bristling with fine golden hair. His buttocks were tight . . . Brevelan spun to face in the other direction, embarrassed by her train of thought as well as her hungry appraisal of his body.
    “I didn’t intend to curse them.” She studied the pile of packs and Mica washing a neat paw on top of them.
    “And you didn’t, Brevelan.” Jaylor’s hand was gentle and warm on her shoulder. “You held back the full blast of your anger. I felt little power behind your words.”
    She leaned her cheek against his caress, gathering comfort from him.
    “Not much anyway,” Darville muttered.
    “I’m willing to bet that every man for miles around is going to spend the better part of the next nine months trying to prove you wrong. Some will even go so far as to drag their women beyond the village so the child will not be conceived within its limits.” They all chuckled at that.
    “But there was power,” Brevelan murmured. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Darville was clothed before confiding in them both. Since last night she had been thinking of the three of them as one person, bound together by duty, quest, and love. She needed both of them to unravel the mess she had caused.
    “What do you mean?” Jaylor’s eyebrows raised.
    “As my anger grew I could feel a tingling drawing up from the ground below. It filled me to overflowing. I had to release it. The word came from the power, not from me.”
    “Stargods!” both men exclaimed.
    “Sounds like old Nimbulan chose this place for his exiled wife with reason.” Jaylor began pacing, hands out as if testing the warmth, or the power, of the ground he walked.
    “Nimbulan?”
    Briefly he explained the history of her clearing.
    “So that is why the clearing called me. It chose me as its next witchwoman.” This truth troubled her. As a child she had feared her magic, almost as much as her da had. Gradually she had come to accept it as a part of her. But if her magic came from the clearing and not herself, she could never master it, never come to peace with it.
    “Partly.” Jaylor reached out for her again. She dodged his hand. This was