The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

into the thatch of Magretha’s sturdy home. Rain hadn’t fallen in nigh on three moons. The dry straw and aged timbers erupted in flames and smoke so fast, the inhabitants hadn’t a hope of escape.
    Magretha and Moncriith’s father should have died, locked in each other’s arms at the height of their unbridled lust. But Myrilandel, no more than six at the time, had dragged Magretha from the flames, leaving Moncriith’s father to die.
    The stench of burning flesh had sickened Moncriith and brought home to his grieving mind the enormity of his crime. He’d run away to the nearest monastery, pledging the rest of his miserable life to repentance and service to the Stargods. At the gateway of the temple he’d pledged never to use again the magic that Magretha had awakened and shown him how to use.
    All priests of the Stargods must first be magicians. So Moncriith had turned to blood magic rather than draw power from the ley lines embedded in the Kardia. Most often, he used his own blood, relishing the pain and the power that pain brought him. He should have been the most powerful Battlemage of all time, continuously drawing strength from the blood and death of a battle.
    The elders of the temple had banished him on the night of his ordination as a priest. They would not sully their hallowed halls with blood.
    But they harbored demons. Only demons could make the elders turn against Moncriith and his vision of the infestation of evil into all traditional magic.
    The vision drove him to scour Coronnan free of the pestilence of the demons who used human bodies to house their spirits. Myrilandel led the demons now that Magretha had died—finally purged of her possession by holy fire.
    How else had a child so small rescued Magretha? Why else had she rescued the treacherous witch and not Moncriith’s father?
     
    “Master Nimbulan!” Powwell flung himself forward, hugging the magician’s knees. He wanted to wrap his arms around the older man’s waist and hug him tight, but the woman was in the way. “We’ve found you at last. Kalen said you were alive. I didn’t believe her. But she convinced me. We ran away from Master Ackerly and her father. We ran away to bring you back. They searched for us but we hid. Then Sieur Moncriith found us and fed us and kept us warm. He wanted to find you, too, but we ran away again. He wants to hurt you.”
    “Powwell? Slow down. One thing at a time.” Nimbulan eased them into the clearing, toward the little hut at the center. “How did you find me? I’ve been gone for moons.”
    “It was Kalen all the time. She knew where to look. She knew we’d find you in the east. You have to come back to the school with us. You have to make it all better.”
    Only when the heat from the central hearth in the hut engulfed Powwell did he realize how cold and wet he was. How tired he was of sleeping rough and eating rougher. How dangerous Moncriith and his preachings were. But if he was cold and tired and ready for the comfort of a real bed and hot food, Kalen must need it more.
    Dark circles beneath her eyes made her look like her face was always dirty. She didn’t smile or laugh anymore, and she certainly didn’t play magic tricks on him the way she had back at the school.
    Powwell released Nimbulan and assumed a straighter, more mature posture. He wrapped an arm around Kalen’s shivering shoulders. He had to take care of her. No one else would.
    “Come, tell me your adventures, Powwell. And you, too, Kalen. Then we’ll decide what to do with you. Your parents and Ackerly must be frantic about you.”
    “How did you know to come east?” the woman asked from the doorway. Kalen hovered there twisting her hands in her skirt as if frightened of everything.
    Kalen looked up at the woman. Determination firmed her chin and cleared her eyes of all traces of her tiredness. “ They told me.”
    “They?” Nimbulan asked, exchanging a worried glance with the woman.
    “The voices in my head. They told me to come east and find you.”
    (Your family is complete. Come to us. Follow the path only Myrilandel can see.)
    A large black cat stalked into the hut, fluffing his wings for all to see.
    Powwell’s jaw dropped. A flywacket! A real, live, flywacket! Nimbulan had found a creature that lived only in legends.
    ( I am Amaranth, Myrilandel’s familiar,) the flywacket announced directly into Powwell’s mind.
    “I . . . I’m Powwell. This is Kalen,” he stammered an introduction since it