The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

by Irene Radford

  “Can anyone understand it?” Yaala returned. “It changed and doesn’t work like it used to. Who knows when it will open again, or change again?” She fell into step beside Powwell as they headed into the large cavern with the broken generator named Old Bertha.

  Rollett followed the others, needing to stay with them lest he become lost and fall victim to the Rovers who searched for them. Escape was within his grasp only if he stayed with Yaala and Powwell.

  Hope. He felt it in his bones.

  Freedom. He tasted it in the air.

  A haunting song almost within hearing drew him into the cavern more than the presence of his comrades.

  Powwell stood in the opening of a small tunnel off the huge cavern. He braced his arms against the sides of the archway, staring into the blackness beyond. A bright flare of red from deep within the tunnel as well as the increased heat told Rollett that they neared the lava core—and the elusive dragongate. The song intensified. If only he could remember it, all of his questions would be answered.

  “That’s not the way to the dragongate,” Yaala called to Powwell. She remained next to the vast hulk of the dead generator, touching it, as a mother caressed a wayward toddler.

  Rollett gulped back a sudden surge of desire. The image of Yaala touching a child—his child—filled his imagination with longing.

  No. She wanted to stay in Hanassa and rule it. He needed to go home. But he’d come back for his men, make sure they had the option of escape.

  Yaala rested her head on the dead hulk of the machine. He wanted to reach out to her, let her grieve for the loss of the machine. Jerking himself back three steps from her, he forced his hands to his sides. He didn’t know Yaala, didn’t dare trust her with his fragile emotions. He hadn’t known a woman’s companionship during this entire long year and a half in Hanassa. The only women available were either hardened outlaws or disease-ridden prostitutes. He wouldn’t touch either, no matter how much he longed to. Now Yaala enticed him, probably because she was clean, vulnerable, and lovely.

  “This isn’t the way we came through the dragongate this last time.” Powwell’s statement dragged Rollett’s attention away from his momentary desire and back to the problem at hand.

  “We came through that tunnel.” Yaala pointed to a smaller opening adjacent to the one Powwell stared into. “I remember landing in that puddle near the broken pipe.”

  “But this is the way we left Hanassa last year.” Powwell gestured toward the tunnel he leaned into. “I didn’t recognize it before because of the partial collapse of the opening.”

  Yaala looked back and forth between the tunnel openings, confusion written all over her face.

  Rollett examined both openings minutely and saw little difference other than the position in relation to Old Bertha.

  “Look, the gate is opening!” Powwell called as he dived into the tunnel.

  “Opening?” Rollett gasped. “We can escape right now?” His heart pounded in his ears. He plunged into the passage right behind Powwell, ahead of Yaala. “Home. I need to go home.” If the opening led to home, then he could come back for his men. He could attack Piedro later, with refreshed magic and reinforcements from the Commune.

  He smelled cool dampness. The hot red flares from the lava core swirled into a myriad of colors muted by a soft, soothing blue-white and deep gray. The song that called him grew louder.

  “Not yet!” Powwell blocked his path with his staff.

  Desperate to be gone from Hanassa and the men who pursued him, Rollett whipped his own staff around to confront Powwell in a fighting stance. “Out of my way, boy!” A red haze of anger blinded him to all but the need to escape.

  “We don’t leave without my sister!” Powwell snarled.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Yaala warned in a hissing whisper. “Hanassa will hear you. Besides, that scene is resolving into . . . into, Stargods, it’s underwater! Look at that bemouth. It will eat us alive.” She backed out of the tunnel, hands crossed in front of her face, protecting herself from sprays of salt water.

  Powwell shifted his stance just enough to see the watery blue landscape behind him while also keeping Rollett from charging past. “Deep water,” he said succinctly. “We have to wait for the right scene. We have to wait for Kalen.”

  “Does this mean the dragongate isn’t broken?” Yaala edged up behind Rollett, but she didn’t try to come between the two men who remained ready to swing their staffs at each other.

  Her warmth filled Rollett’s back with comfort. He relaxed his stance a fraction. Some of the desperate need to escape dribbled out of him. He could go on a little longer. He needed to help Yaala depose Piedro so that he could rescue his men.

  “It means the gate has changed. It opens to different locations than before,” Powwell replied. “Maybe none of them are safe.”

  “This way!” A Rover-accented voice yelled from across the large cavern. “They’re hiding in that tunnel.”

  “Keep them away from the dragongate,” Piedro called back.

  Rollett turned quickly, keeping his staff at the ready. Trapped! They were trapped in the tiny tunnel, barely wide enough to wield his staff. And Powwell just stood there with a feral snarl of satisfaction on his face.

  Anger and frustration boiled up within Rollett. The only escape seemed to be the mysterious dragongate behind them. But one wrong step would put them into the lava core.

  Powwell moved up beside him, shoving Yaala against the wall and out of their way. He held up his bloody right hand in a spell gesture. The hedgehog familiar keened an ear-piercing wail and dived deep into Powwell’s pocket, his spines fully erect.

  The entire tunnel smelled of old blood and fear. Powwell’s skin grew paler yet. A blue tinge developed around his lips and the edges of his nose. He started to sweat heavily.

  Powwell drew his strength from blood magic!

  Rollett swallowed heavily, convulsively to keep his bile in his stomach where it belonged. He’d had more than enough experience with the Bloodmage Moncriith. The thought of drawing power from the blood, pain, and fear of another living being revolted him physically and emotionally.

  But he recognized that they had few other choices. If blood magic would keep Piedro and the consort at bay until they could step through the dragongate to safety, then so be it.

  Powwell began chanting under his breath.

  Always sensitive to music, Rollett listened hard to the spell.

  “What are you doing, Powwell? You’re enticing them this way!”

  Chapter 32

  Afternoon, the pit beneath the city of Hanassa

  “Send the consort to me,” Powwell called to the Rovers gathering in the large cavern. “My death will not appease Simurgh unless it is the consort herself who kills me. She must taste my blood!”

  Inside his pocket, Thorny hunched and bristled his spines as far out as he could. The sharp tips penetrated Powwell’s tunic, pricking his skin. Powwell inhaled sharply at the ache in his heart and the sensitivity of his skin. But no blood flowed from the tiny wounds.

  That’s right, Thorny, he whispered with his mind to his familiar. Just the way we rehearsed it.

  “What are you doing?” Rollett and Yaala each grabbed one of Powwell’s arms, dragging him back. Back toward the dragongate.

  Powwell smiled inwardly as he caught a glimpse of the reds and black of the desert scene forming within the portal—so very similar to the scene the other gate had taken him and Yaala to, but different. This one opened into the same time as where he stood. The other one had drifted in time, taking Powwell and Yaala to Hanassa of many aeons ago.

  Both deserts would not support human life for long. And if the dragongate held true to its previous patterns, it would cycle through many inhospitable locations before opening into someplace green—maybe Coronnan, maybe someplace else.

  At the mouth of the tunnel, a black-veiled figure emerged into the uncertain light.

  “Is that what you really want, Powwell?” t
he consort asked. Her voice grated harshly in the confines of the tunnel. Kalen’s voice, but not her voice, deeper, harsher. “Do you want your sister to be the one to consign you to your next existence in the most unpleasant way I can think of?”

  Slowly, the girl/woman removed the black lace veil. She dropped the priceless silk on the rough floor. It rippled as it fell, like cool water over a waterfall. Gravel and sand snagged the fine threads.

  Powwell looked into his sister’s gray eyes, so like his own and yet . . .

  Wiggles, Kalen’s ferret familiar remained draped across her left shoulder, unmoving. Powwell lifted one eyebrow at it.

  “You killed the ferret and stuffed it because it would not stay with Hanassa, the renegade dragon. You are not as powerful as you want others to believe. Does the wraith haunt you? Does she keep you awake at night whispering of aching emptiness at the death of Wiggles?” He took another step back, pushing Yaala and Rollett against the wall. Only he stood between the consort and the dragongate.

  Hot wind shot through the gate, caressing Powwell’s skin with the enticement of escape.

  He shut his mind to the need to turn and run through the opening, no matter where it took him. But he noticed Yaala and Rollett edging closer and closer to the inhospitable scene.

  “Kalen died, leaving her body behind for me. I am Hanassa. I have always been Hanassa!” the consort proclaimed. She lifted her arms, palm outward as if embracing the entire volcano.

  “Then, Hanassa, you will have to come get me. You won’t be satisfied until you have my blood on your hands and in your mouth!”

  She took four long paces closer to Powwell, not enough.

  Thorny squirmed and pressed himself closer to Powwell’s chest. A tiny drop of blood trickled down Powwell’s chest, over his heart. The sharp lance of pain, brief though it was, sent power singing through his veins, enhancing the fading energy he’d gathered from the severed heads.

  “Come and get me, Kalen. Join me in the pit of hell!” Powwell teetered on the edge of the pit. Boiling rock flared upward. The heat nearly seared his back. Sweat poured down his face and made his palms slick.

  “Powwell, stop this. I beg you,” Yaala tried to pull him away from the edge. “You’re my only friend, I can’t let you do this.”

  Powwell closed his eyes rather than look at her. He knew if he saw tears in her eyes—tears in the eyes of a woman who never cried, who had survived horrors he could only imagine—he’d throw away his carefully laid plans.

  “It’s the only way to save Kalen, Yaala. If this doesn’t work, stay with Rollett. You can trust him.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” Rollett said, stepping beside him. “I’ll help you, but I’m taking the next portal through the dragongate.”

  Powwell smiled his acknowledgment as he opened his mind a fraction to allow Rollett a brief glimpse of his plan.

  “Do you have a death wish, boy?” Rollett raised his dark eyebrows.

  “He must. He asked me to kill him,” the consort said, only three paces away. “Give me your sword, Piedro. I shall execute this intruder myself.”

  “Aren’t you going to rip out my throat with your bare hands? That’s the way a dragon kills,” Powwell taunted. “And you are a dragon in spirit, Hanassa. The purple-tipped dragon instincts still drive you. You hunger for fresh meat, cooked by your own flames.”

  Hanassa licked her lips. A drop of drool trickled from the corner of her mouth. She swallowed heavily as if tasting sweet, fresh meat. Kalen’s features twisted into something alien and ugly. Any trace of the little girl had vanished beneath Hanassa’s lusts.

  “But you’ll never have your own dragon flames again,” Powwell continued. He and Rollett eased aside just a little, offering Hanassa a tantalizing glimpse of the scene beyond the dragongate. “The real dragon nimbus won’t let you have a dragon body again. They won’t let you fly out of this hellhole that is your prison. Your only escape is to steal a human body and walk out of here. But the humans won’t let you live among them as long as you drink their blood.”

  Hanassa edged closer. Her nose worked as if scenting freedom in the desert on the other side of the dragongate.

  The hot wind died. The gate began to close.

  “You’re more a prisoner here than we are, Hanassa,” Rollett added his taunts to Powwell’s. “We can step through the dragongate anytime we wish. Can you?”

  “It’s closing!” Hanassa wailed. She dashed toward them just as the red and black of the desert swirled into a myraid other colors.

  “Not again!” Kalen screamed as her body hurtled over the edge of the pit.

  A white mist enveloped her mundane body.

  “Now!” Powwell commanded as he wrapped a magic net around his sister. “Grab her.”

  He sensed Rollett’s diminished magic reaching to ensnare the young girl before she fell into the boiling lava a thousand feet below. Tendrils of power snaked and looped together, the dark red and deep sea-blue knots of Rollett’s magic cradled one side of Kalen. Powwell’s red and sparkling black held the other in a net of energy.

  Powwell had to open his mind further so that he and Rollett could work together. Every instinct inside him shouted to keep his secrets, keep this other man from learning how much he had enjoyed gathering blood magic.

  “Help me, Powwell!” Kalen, the true Kalen, screamed. “Don’t let me die in the pit again.”

  Powwell closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He sought closer contact with Rollett’s mind. Their thoughts mingled, settled on a common need. Together they strained to haul Kalen back to the safety of the ledge.

  At last Powwell held Kalen in his arms and opened his eyes. His sister. The only family he had left. The child/ woman who completed his every thought and made sense of his ragged emotions.

  She turned to him, opening wide gray eyes to him in gratitude.

  Don’t let it get control of me, she pleaded. Her mental voice blended sweetly with his thoughts, filling a void that had existed since he’d been forced to leave her behind in this very tunnel over a year ago.

  “Thank you,” she said in Hanassa’s harsh voice several tones deeper than Kalen’s. The white mist separated from her body once more. The wraith sobbed her disappointment.

  Powwell’s heart nearly broke in grief.

  A self-satisfied smirk replaced the gratitude in Hanassa’s expression. “I read your mind, Powwell.” She caressed his face with long, talonlike nails that raked his skin but did not draw blood. “I knew what you planned the moment you shared your thoughts with Rollett. I let Kalen have her body for a few moments, so you would rescue her. Then I took it back. Now you are truly my prisoner, and I shall execute you properly.”

  Chapter 33

  Afternoon, a stand of the Tambootie trees, south of First Bridge, on the mainland near Coronnan City

  Katie breathed deeply of the redolent smoke from the Tambootie wood fire. The queen, Nimbulan, and Myri stood in a circle around a small campfire deep in the woods south and west of the city. Their escort stood well back from this stand of Tambootie trees, backs turned to avoid breathing any of the smoke.

  Across the fire from her, Nimbulan swayed under the hallucinogens in the wood sap. Flame released those chemicals in uneven doses. They had no way of controlling how much each of them breathed in. But they needed Tambootie in their systems to combat the plague virus they might have inhaled. Katie didn’t have time to distill proper and controlled doses and then return to the shuttle before Kinnsell departed with it.

  Nimbulan’s face grew paler as Myri’s flushed with heat and distorted perceptions. Quinnault seemingly remained impervious to the hallucinogens in the smoke. He’d endured this before, when progressing from apprentice to journeyman in his priestly studies. Or maybe he simply knew how to flow with changes. Katie stopped fighting the splotches of improbable colors that filled her vision. She allowed the smoke to infiltrate her every pore and corpuscle.

  The world spun around her. She lost contact w
ith her feet. Her arms rose level with her shoulders. She turned her palms up to embrace the sky. She could almost reach out and touch the clouds. Dense air seemed to enclose her in a vortex of color, lifting her higher above the others.

  Visions of soaring above the clouds of Coronnan layered over her real-time sight of this mundane clearing and the ritual campfire. Cool air wafted beneath her arms/wings. Warm thermal currents guided her feet/tail. Sparkling crystal outlined all within sight.

  Upward she soared, higher and higher toward the bright sun and the blackness of space beyond. The miracle of flight enticed her farther and farther away from her companions, and yet she did not fear the loneliness of where she traveled.

  Suddenly absolute darkness enfolded her. All sensation of flight vanished. Sensory input ceased. Her body disappeared. All she had left was her mind and . . . and the dragons.

  A dozen dragon thoughts invaded her mind, whispering secrets of past, present, and future. The meaning of her existence—of all of humanity—seemed just beyond the next confidence.

  She listened carefully, certain she would understand soon. Thoughts of her aborted attempt to contact her brothers, her loyalty to her husband and friends, her duty to keep Coronnan and all of Kardia Hodos free of the taint of technology vanished. She had only her mind and the dragons.

  (What questions do you bring to the void between the planes of existence?) a voice asked her. It seemed to reverberate and compound into a dozen voices, yet it spoke with the authority of one.

  I need—I need to banish all traces of the plague from this world.

  (Then you demand the death of one you hold dear.)

  Memories of Katie’s father arguing before the imperial legislature; Kinnsell ordering the servants; Daddy reprimanding her for some childhood infraction, filled her with a sad bitterness.

  I have not loved my father in a long time.

  (He is your father.)

  His sperm sired me. But he never stayed home long enough to be a father. My mother raised us alone until Kinnsell put her aside for his pregnant mistress. Then my brothers became more father to me than Kinnsell ever was.