The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

done more than announce that the Covenant was broken if anything had happened to his wife.
    His wife. She should be at his side, not exiled, not missing.
    Nimbulan forced his mind back to the problem of poison and Rovers, looking deep into the mystery of sunlight sparkling against the clear water. He dropped the agate into the bowl close to the golden cup. Ripples moved outward from the stone, spreading the sunlight up and out.
    He whispered a spell in the most ancient language of all Coronnan. The words of the dead language fell clumsily from his tongue.
    The water clouded, dark mists boiled up from the bottom where the agate lay touching the base of the cup. He blinked away the ominous portent symbolized by the clouds, willing the mist to part and reveal the image of the one who had poured poison into the wine and sent it unbidden to the king.
    Lightning crackled across the surface of the water. The clouds roiled and grew as black as the void between the planes of existence. More lighting flashed before his eyes. He dared not blink away the brightness lest he lose whatever brief glimpse might be granted. Streamers of color coiled and tangled in a giant knot in the air above the water.
    The assembled men in the Great Hall gasped with awe.
    Another blinding flash of light, bearing all colors of the spectrum, cleared the surface of the water.
    Nimbulan peered eagerly for sight of the one he sought.
    A face rose up from the depths of the bowl. The beloved face of Myrilandel. Her white-blond hair streamed out behind her, unbound and uncovered. Her long face with its straight nose and high cheekbones reflected the generations of aristocratic breeding overlaid with a feminine softness. Her eyes searched right and left with an anxiety that filled Nimbulan’s gut with fear. Behind her, desert-colored buildings rose in a tall circle, trapping her within their midst.
    NO! Myri couldn’t be responsible for this assassination attempt. He wouldn’t believe it.

Chapter 4
     
    N imbulan placed his gold-framed glass between his eyes and the water, moving it back and forth for better focus. He had to see the truth. Myri could not poison Quinnault. She valued family too highly, and the king was her only blood kin.
    He had to believe that his lack of concentration had brought him the image he had sought in a previous spell rather than truth in this one.
    The image faded until only Myri’s pale eyes remained, pleading with him for . . . A scratch in the bottom of the bowl jumped into view, magnified many times its size by the glass.
    Nimbulan stood up from his crouched position. His knees didn’t want to unfold. They creaked and groaned for every one of his fifty years.
    Myri had made him feel like a teenager again. Her youth and beauty sparked his vitality as well as his intellect. Every day without her weighed heavily on his soul and his heart. And now he didn’t even have the magical silver cord that had bound them together.
    He’d allowed that bond to suffice for too long. And now he couldn’t find her at all.
    “I saw the face of a Rover woman,” Lyman, the eldest of all the Commune of Magicians, said. “Very pretty in a dark, exotic way. A man could get lost in those deep, dark eyes . . .” His voice trailed off, very much like the understeward’s had. Then, abruptly, he roused himself with a visible shake. “She had a mole to the right of her mouth—positioned perfectly to entice a man to kiss her. I watched as she poured a very cold liquid into the cup and whispered words over it. I could not hear the words, but I recognized the lilting pattern of them. She spoke in an old language. A language that is almost forgotten within the Three Kingdoms. As she said the words, the liquid in the cup foamed and nearly boiled over the rim, yet I knew it to be a cold boil. Unnaturally cold.”
    “I saw her, too!” Gilby and Rollett agreed. As senior journeymen magicians, they often worked in concert with Nimbulan and Lyman. Nimbulan trusted them. Rollett’s quick eye for detail was unfailing. Gilby was particularly adept at delving into symbolism for patterns that reflected truth.
    “The image faded very quickly. As quickly as the poison in the cup.” Lyman looked at the clear water in the bowl as if he could pull more images from it.
    “Maia. The woman is Maia,” Nimbulan said. But Maia had never had an original thought. None of her clan did. Every thought, every action was manipulated by Televarn. Nimbulan had