The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

working on it.” Flashes of images began to penetrate Jack’s mind. Tall trees, rising terrain as they neared the mountain barrier between SeLenicca and Coronnan. A scatter of small buildings at the base of a hill. More trees and then—atop the hill a jumble of stones with many pack steeds and sledges milling among the stones. A great deal of black with purple-and-red trim adorned the saddles, packs and rounded huts atop the sledges. He knew who owned them.
    He sat up straighter, pushing Amaranth to focus more closely on the stones.
    Not jumbled haphazardly. Worked stone stacked carefully and mortared into thick walls. A steedshoe-shaped building—squared off at the corners—with an exterior wall connecting the two outthrusting wings and forming a wide courtyard.
    And there, quietly nickering to one of the smaller beasts harnessed to a sledge, stood Margit’s white pack steed.
    “Found him!” Jack stood up, dragging Katrina with him. “Only a mile or two off, that way.” He pointed west and slightly south where they could see the beginning of the rising ground and the dense forest around the hill. The line of everblues blocked their view of the building.
    Margit threw dried meat and journey bread at Jack from her pack as she leaped astride her mount. “Eat as we ride. You need to replenish energies lost while working magic. We need that steed and its supplies. If we delay, it may wander farther.”
    More slowly, Katrina stuck her foot into a stirrup. Jack pushed her into the saddle. Then, closing his eyes and forcing Rosie to the back of his consciousness, he clambered up behind her.
    The cat within him roiled and wanted to spit. He fought it. His need to remain close to Katrina overcame the cat’s hissing fear. More like a need to have its own way than a real fear.
    Jack almost laughed out loud at this insight. “I’ll match you stubborn for stubborn, cat,” he said to himself.
    Katrina looked over her shoulder at him in question.
    “I think I found a solution to my problem,” he whispered into Katrina’s ear as he wound his arms around her waist. “Our steed found a bunch of Rover steeds. I believe they belong to my grandfather. The original spell that bound the queen to her cat was danced by Rovers. We’ll have my grandfather’s people reverse it for me and put the cat into Amaranth’s body where it belongs.”
    “Rovers.” Katrina gulped and stiffened in his arms. She did not urge her mount forward.
    Neeles Brunix, the man who had owned her for three years; used and abused her for his own gain, had flaunted his half-Rover connections, the same blood mix as Jack.

Chapter 32
     
    “T here’s a village,” Margit whooped. “We’ll purchase supplies and a new pack steed here. No sense going off on a wild lumbird chase after the other one.” She set her heels into the sides of her mount.
    Katrina did likewise.
    Jack bounced uncomfortably on the spine of the animal, clinging to Katrina for dear life. The cat spirit rose sharply to the front of his senses. His back arched, the hair on his nape and along his backbone stood up. A curious itch in his bottom felt as if a tail twitched in agitation. He swallowed the angry hiss that climbed from his gut to his throat like a too-long-suppressed cough. Rosie really did not like this steed.
    “I am stronger than you,” he hissed at the cat.
    “What?” Katrina spared him a look over her shoulder while she gripped the reins firmly with her right hand, fully in control of her mount. She rested her bandaged left hand in her lap.
    “Nothing, love. Take this path angling off to the south.” He relived the course Amaranth had flown in pursuit of the errant steed. Even now the flywacket perched atop a high stone tower, trying to make sense of the images that wandered in and out of his vision. Jack couldn’t make sense of them either. He hoped the confusion came from Amaranth’s youth and lack of experience and not what he feared.
    “But Margit . . .”
    “Margit will follow. Her mission is to take care of you. She won’t let us stray too far without her.”
    “Her true mission is to find Marcus. She can do that a lot easier without me. And now that you have come to see me safely into SeLenicca she will go off on her own, no matter what Jaylor orders.”
    “And leave you without a chaperone? Not likely. She knows her best chance of finding Marcus and Robb is to stick with me. Just guide this monstrous beast up that path to the top of the hill. I