Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III

by Irene Radford

  He fought a momentary panic that he might become lost, never find his way back or forward into his next existence. Then Thorny’s emotional touch reassured him.

  On the heels of the panic came awareness of dozens of bright umbilical cords representing the life forces of all the lives he had encountered. He picked out Nimbulan’s blue easily. Though the life force had faded since the last time Powwell had viewed it with his master, the blue still dominated Powwell’s life. Myrilandel’s crystal and silver wrapped around Nimbulan’s blue, essentially binding them together into one being.

  Bessel’s braid of bright blue and red trailed away from his perceptions, a ladder to climb back into his body if he needed help.

  He searched for Kalen, expecting her life force to entwine with his own. An undefined silver cord tinged with lavender wrapped around Powwell with no trace of his sister’s orange and brown. Yaala? He looked more closely at the dull silver of his own life, seeking a hint of color. Magicians rarely saw their personal signature colors.

  A brighter crystal life danced around Powwell’s own life force, just out of reach. Only Shayla, the nearly invisible female dragon could be such a pure crystal. She influenced all the lives in Coronnan without becoming a part of any.

  Powwell relaxed, accepting Shayla as his guide and mentor during this journey.

  (What do you seek?)

  I search for my sister who is lost to me, Powwell replied to the directionless voice that filled the void as well as his mind—perhaps his mind and the void were the same thing. His thoughts threatened to drift into idle speculation. The void invited him to explore each new tangent. Thorny prodded him with a mental jab—like a spine pricking his skin. Powwell yanked himself back to his quest.

  (Is she truly lost, or do you not know where to look?) A typically cryptic dragon observation.

  Kalen was thrown into the lava core of Hanassa as the dragongate opened, but before it was fully formed. Her companion went into the void. The dragons spat that one out again. I must presume my sister drifts alone in the void as well.

  Powwell sensed alarm and wariness in the crystal life force the moment he mentioned Hanassa, the city of outlaws, and the dragongate, the magical portal that could take a traveler away from Hanassa to any number of locations.

  (If the one you seek entered the void from Hanassa, then if she finds her way out again without assistance, she must return to Hanassa. Give up your search. She will not welcome being found.)

  I have to find her. I am not complete without her. She is my only kin.

  (She may be your kin no longer. Seek others to fulfill you. Seek in your heart for the source of the emptiness you feel.)

  I can’t. I have to find Kalen. I promised her.

  (Look within yourself before you venture into the realm of the renegade dragon.)

  Powwell fell back into his body with a stomach-wrenching jolt.

  A red haze with black sparkles lingered in his vision as Bessel and Yaala solidified before him.

  Powwell shook his head to clear his eyes. Deep within the heart of the haze, a shrouded drop of orange and brown lingered and then turned deep purple that darkened into black. A heartbeat later it shrank to nothing. The haze retracted from the others, forming a mist around himself and Thorny, like an aura.

  Thorny hummed a welcome and relaxed his hunched spines.

  “Wake up, Powwell. Come back, Powwell!” Bessel slapped his face to rouse him. “Leave the void behind you, Powwell.”

  “Is my magical signature red with black sparkles?” Powwell asked. The words came out slurred. He felt almost drunk with fatigue and light-headedness. He reached out his hand toward Yaala, needing her touch to anchor him.

  “You saw your own colors?” Bessel replied. His mouth gaped open in awe.

  “Yes, at the last moment as I came back to my body. Yours are a red-and-blue braid.”

  “I’ve been told as much,” Bessel agreed. “I wish I could see them.”

  “I saw all of our colors, but I couldn’t find Kalen in the void. As I returned, I saw her orange-and-brown life force greatly diminished and shrouded in purple. A purple so dark it was almost black.”

  “Hanassa,” Yaala breathed the word in a frightened hiss.

  “Shayla told me I had to beware the renegade dragon. I have to go to Hanassa to find my sister. Did she mean I have to go to the city or to the only dragon exiled from the nimbus?”

  “Both,” Yaala said. “But first you have to find a way into the city. Land access was destroyed in the kardiaquake as we left the city. The dragongate has either shifted its portals or is broken.”

  “Scarface has had round-the-clock watches at all the known portals in Coronnan,” Bessel reminded him. “None of them have opened in over a year. If the dragongate still exists, you’ll have to find a new opening to get into the city.”

  “I’ll find one. Somehow. I hope Rollett is still there to help.”

  “You’d better hope Rollett is still alive. Hanassa kills outsiders,” Yaala reminded him.

  “The renegade dragon or the city?”

  “Both.”

  Chapter 4

  Dawn, after Saawheen, University of Magicians residential wing, Coronnan City

  Powwell crept out of his cell in the journeyman’s section of the University. Fortunately, only one other cell was occupied at this end. Five cells remained empty until more apprentices earned journeyman status. Bessel snored softly in the last room on the corridor, next to the staircase leading up to the masters’ suites and down to the kitchen and refectory. Behind Powwell, the fifteen apprentice cells were much more crowded, sometimes four or five young men bunking in a single cell smaller than Powwell’s room. He didn’t like leaving Bessel alone, the only journeyman in the complex, the only buffer between Scarface’s temper and the vulnerable apprentices.

  His mission would not wait, and he would not apologize to Scarface for his disobedience.

  The morning air smelled clean and damp, as if it were just awakening to new adventures. Powwell yawned briefly and stretched. Longingly he looked back at his rumpled bed. No. He’d come too far. His decisions had been made moons ago when he left his sister in Hanassa.

  Resolutely, he shouldered his pack and pulled Thorny out of his tunic pocket. The little hedgehog tried to curl into a tight ball. Normally nocturnal, dawn signaled his preferred sleep time. Powwell roused him with a thought. Reluctantly, Thorny uncurled and wiggled his nose. The scent of fresh bread baking, heightened by Thorny’s keen nose, made Powwell’s stomach growl.

  Guillia, the cook, housekeeper, and surrogate mother for the University—and also Kalen’s mother, but not Powwell’s—had probably been awake for hours preparing the hearty breakfast required by magicians who burned tremendous amounts of energy working their talents for the good of the kingdom.

  Silently, Powwell crept down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairwell, he turned left into the now enclosed corridor, then immediately left again, and stepped down three uneven stairs to the kitchen. When Nimbulan first established the University in the abandoned monastery, this room had been the kitchen where Powwell and two other apprentices gathered with Journeymen Bessel, Rollett, and Master Nimbulan. Jaanus and Gilby, the missing journeymen had been there also, along with Old Lyman the librarian. The cooking fire kept them warm in the drafty abandoned monastery during that first long winter.

  Powwell smiled in memory of the bonds of friendship and loyalty they had all formed. His mouth watered for the taste of the Tambootie flavoring his tea. The University would never lace any food or drink with the Tambootie again.

  He hated leaving Bessel and Lyman alone with Scarface. Only those two remained from the days when Nimbulan ran the University with a strict but loving paternal air. He’d made the University into a family. Scarface turned it into a stern and unforgiving institution.

  “One day you’ll learn, Scarface, that the strongest family is one that is bound together by silken cords of love. Some members may leave
, but they will return when needed. You prefer to force your fellows to follow you with iron chains of control. Once we escape, we’ll never return to you,” he muttered as he skirted the long dining tables on his way to the new kitchen, separated from the refectory by a short passage.

  Out of long habit, he paused and probed the kitchen with his magic before entering. The years of constant warfare during his youth had made him cautious. The time he had spent as a slave in Hanassa had taught him suspicion. A curious vacancy beyond the door made the hair on his nape stand up. Thorny hunched, all of his spines bristled.

  Someone had built a bubble of armor around themselves to keep a conversation very private.

  That had never stopped Powwell before. He’d survived war, slavery, Hanassa, and Scarface by learning to eavesdrop. Of course, the armor erected by two magicians using dragon magic might be harder to penetrate than one maintained by a solitary magician. He’d just have to probe deeper.

  Powwell opened the door to the kitchen, making sure his magic silenced the hinges and prevented a cool draft from announcing an intruder. He breathed in the welcoming scent of fresh bread, bacon, and dried fruit stewing in wine and spices. Quickly he silenced his growling stomach.

  He searched the room, brightened by cooking fires, for any distortions of light. There, to the left of the hearth in the chimney nook, shadows gathered more deeply than they should. Only a light shell of armor surrounded the magicians since the only other person in the room was Guillia who was presumed to have no magic other than her instinct for providing wonderful meals for empty stomachs precisely when needed.

  A quick probe of red-and-black light, showing Powwell’s unique signature very nicely now that he knew how to see his own colors, and he ducked back into the passageway, leaving the door ajar a tiny crack.

  “Bessel was right to refuse the quest! Scarface needs him to help with all the new apprentices he brings in by the sledgeload,” Red Beetle hissed.

  Powwell heard the click as the middle-aged man snapped his fingers while he talked. He made a sound very like the red beetle he was named for.

  Briefly, Powwell wondered if he kept one of the stinky insects in his pocket as a familiar. Wouldn’t that set Scarface on his ear if he did! He’d have to outlaw one of his staunchest supporters.

  “Bessel is so insecure about being outcast he’ll fall under Scarface’s total control in no time,” Red Beetle finished.

  “And I say we cannot take a chance on having any outsiders in the University and Commune. We must purge our membership.” A small thud followed Humpback’s words. Powwell could almost see the stoop-shouldered magician who advised lord Balthazaan ramming his staff up and down with each word. His awkward posture made him rely on his basic tool of magic as a walking stick as well as a channel for his spells.

  “We don’t have to worry about Powwell any longer. His magic is stronger than Bessel’s and he’s more independent.” Red Beetle said.

  “Too creative with his spells by half. Powwell always has to be different.” Humpback pounded his staff against the flagstones.

  “Well, Scarface formally dismissed him. He has to be out of Coronnan in three days or face trial and imprisonment, possibly execution. ’Tis a good law, no magic or magicians without Commune sanction,” Red Beetle replied.

  So, the removal from the University of everyone who had studied or worked with Nimbulan was an actual conspiracy rather than merely Scarface lashing out at what he could never totally control. Powwell had suspected as much moons ago.

  “Once we have total control over all the members of the Commune, the rest of Coronnan will fall into our hands. The ineffective king and Council of Provinces will be obsolete. We will have order governed by dragon magic at last,” Humpback said decisively.

  Total control of the kingdom? The Commune wasn’t supposed to work that way. They provided neutral advisers to the king and lords.

  What could Powwell do to stop them?

  Nothing.

  Good thing he was headed to Hanassa as soon as he found an entrance into the closed city deep in an ancient volcanic caldera. If Rollett still lived, Powwell could send him home to help Nimbulan, Lyman, and Bessel fight this conspiracy, too.

  Should he warn Bessel?

  If Bessel didn’t know about the conspiracy now, he would not listen to Powwell’s warning.

  “Sorry, Bessel, I can’t stick around to help you. But you’ll land on your feet. You always do, though you might not think so. I’ll send Rollett back to help,” he whispered to his absent friend, “because I’ve got to find Kalen and this is the only way to do it.”

  He listened a few more moments as the magicians planned how they would advise their lords to coincide with Scarface’s policies. That wasn’t supposed to be the way the system worked. The magician advisers should be neutral observers. Politics should not taint the Commune and the University. But they did.

  Then the two master magicians left the kitchen, without glancing at Powwell. They each munched on thick slabs of bread slathered with brambleberry jam.

  When he could no longer hear their steps on the flagstone passageway, Powwell slipped into the kitchen.

  “I’ve packed a journey bag for you,” Guillia said without preamble. “You’ll find my girl.”

  “I’m going to try,” Powwell replied, raising his eyebrows at the woman’s perception. He hefted the pack on the worktable, almost as big and heavy as the one he already carried with his books and clothes and tools. How had she known he’d need rations for a long trek on his own.

  “She’s alive. I can sense that.” Guillia removed a large pan full of crisp bacon from the hearthstone.

  “Do you have magic after all, Guillia?” Powwell asked, snitching a rasher of bacon. It burned his fingers, and he juggled the hot meat back and forth between his palms until it had cooled enough to eat.

  “Just a mother’s instinct.” She scooped the remaining bacon onto a serving platter with a long-handled fork.

  Powwell stole another handful.

  “If Yaala asks, tell her I’ll meet her in the clearing by spring. Tell her . . .”

  “I know what to tell her, lad. Now, best you be off before they,” she jerked her head in the direction Red Beetle and Humpback had walked, “come back and find you still here.”

  “Did you hear them talking, Guillia?” Powwell asked as he kissed her cheek in thanks.

  “ ’Course I did. Their paltry armor wouldn’t keep out a mouse let alone a woman who needs to know what transpires in this University. They don’t like women, so they pretend I’m not here. Though they’ll scream loud enough if I’m two heartbeats late with their meals. Now scoot. Just find my girl and make sure she’s safe.”

  “I’ll do that, Guillia. For you. For both of us, I’ll find Kalen and I’ll find Rollett. Then we’ll come back and take care of Scarface.”

  “Just find Kalen. I don’t want my little girl left alone without family or friends.”

  “No one deserves to be without family. I just hope Bessel is as lucky as I am to find both when he’s forced to leave here.”

  “I’ll watch over him while he’s here, lad. Though I suspect he’ll leave, too, ’afore long. All the boys here are like sons to me. As long as Scarface lets me stay, I’ll watch over all of them.”

  Early spring, a mining village in Balthasaan, South of Coronnan City

  Bessel trudged up the hill toward the mining village and his parents’ home. He didn’t want to be here. But Scarface had insisted he come. The message from home requesting his presence had been urgent.

  Bessel stared hard at his father standing in the open doorway of the family home. Old memories of pain and loneliness clouded his awareness of here and now.

  Spring sunshine warmed his back but he might as well be facing the winter blizzard that had shrouded the village the last time he saw it. The snow had masked the black dust that permeated everything for miles around. But it hadn’t hidden the blackness in his father’s heart.
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  Bessel would never think of him as his father again.

  “So you’ve come back,” Maydon said tersely. The squarely built man Bessel had once called “Da” blocked the doorway. His stance did not invite Bessel within, despite the urgency of his message.

  Maydon balanced his weight on one leg and crutches. He’d lost the left leg from the knee down years ago. Now he looked as if he’d rather use the crutches for weapons than walking aids.

  “I was told to come back.” Bessel looked toward the path he had just followed to the house, wishing he could reverse directions. New growth of flowers and grasses poked through the pervasive dust. Soon they, too, would be coated in the awful stuff.

  Bessel wanted to cough just thinking about the dust.

  “And you always obey orders, I suppose,” Maydon sneered.

  “You ordered me away from your home eight years ago. I obeyed you then. Now I obey the Senior Magician of the Commune of Magicians. He ordered me to visit my mother on her deathbed.” Bessel’s oath of loyalty and obedience meant a great deal to him.

  He’d skirted disobedience in helping Powwell access the void last winter. No one had heard from Powwell since then, five full moons. Now Bessel followed orders without question rather than risk exile from the fellowship of the magicians.

  He couldn’t walk away from the home and family the Commune represented as Powwell had.

  “Why did you request that the Commune release me from my important studies for this visit?” Bessel asked Maydon after a long moment of hostile silence.

  “Book learning never served anyone but greedy magicians. Besides, she asked for you.”

  “Then I’d best go inside and see her.”

  Neither man moved.

  “Aren’t you going to use your s’murghin’ magic to force me to back up?” the one-legged man challenged his son, never letting his contempt lessen in his voice or posture.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Surprise loosened Maydon’s fierce grip on his crutches a little.