The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

knitted. The bleeding had stopped.
    “ ’Tis a miracle from the Stargods,” the healer whispered.
    “Or a trick of Simurgh, king of all demons,” Moncriith countered.
    Myri took a deep breath, trying desperately to stay alert. If she lost consciousness and fell into a full trance, as her magic demanded, Moncriith would have her removed and condemned. He’d done it before. Only Magretha’s good reputation in the village had saved her. But Magretha had died nearly two years ago.
    Power flowed out of her. Her shaking joints became too heavy to support her body. She sagged to the floor, still holding the wounded arm in place. She tried to remove herself and her talent from the healing. Like a living being the spell enveloped her and fed from her strength.
    “Look at the blackness in her aura!” Moncriith beseeched those around her. “Demons possess her. She taints us all with demons. Better to die blessed than live possessed!”
    “I know nothing of demons,” Myri whispered through numb lips as the void took her.
     
    Nimbulan listened to the wind whipping around his pavilion. Saturated canvas walls bulged inward and sighed slackly with each blow. The candle flames of a dozen lanterns placed around the tent bowed almost flat within mica shields and then wavered upright again in rhythm with the howling of the skies.
    Lord Kammeryl d’Astrismos and Lord Quinnault de Tanos argued almost as intensely inside. They paced and sat and shouted at each other while Nimbulan watched and ate his meal in near silence.
    Nimbulan hunched his shoulders against the chill wind that crept along the carpeted tent floor. His woolen dressing gown, quilted with layers of silk, wasn’t adequate to warm him after the hours of magic battle. The first of the autumn storms had held off just long enough for Kammeryl and his enemy to finish the battle. Now the armies could hole up, rest, and resupply during the winter.
    The brazier at Nimbulan’s feet helped ward off the chill a little. Four hours of sleep and half a meal had barely restored his strength. But the two lords had awakened him to give them counsel almost as soon as his complaining stomach had roused him from deepest sleep. He left Rollett, Jaanus, and Gilby, his senior apprentices asleep in the back portion of the pavilion. They needed rest more than he did. He didn’t know where Maalin and Bessel were. Maybe they slept in Ackerly’s tent, adjacent to the large pavilion.
    He fished another stringy piece of beef from the salty broth as he watched the warlord and the Peacemaker. The boys needed to eat, too. But they needed sleep more . . . unlike his years as Druulin’s apprentice and journeyman when there was never enough food to fuel growing bodies.
    “You must seek peace now, Lord Kammeryl. The weather has turned against you,” Quinnault de Tanos said quietly. He sipped lightly at a mug of spiced wine.
    Nimbulan looked for clues to Quinnault’s mood and thoughts from the shift of his eyes and the bunching of muscles in his shoulders. His aura, his mind, and his face remained carefully schooled. Even the Peacemaker’s grip on the cup handle remained steady and relaxed.
    “Why should I sue for peace?” Kammeryl roared in his midrange of shouts. The hearty leader had a variety of bellowing tones and no soft ones. His aura showed a balance of colors as he paced the circumference of Nimbulan’s tent. “ ’Tis not me who started this feud with the Baron of Hanic. His grandfather kidnapped and raped my grandmother fifty years ago. I’ll not have Hanic bastards set themselves up as rivals to my crown, when I am king. I’ll be ready to pursue the fight at the first break in the storm.”
    “Fifty years is a long time. Wounds of honor should heal when the participants die a natural death.” De Tanos raised one eyebrow and cocked his head. For a moment, the shadows from the dancing firelight cast a different image on Quinnault’s bone structure. Something large and elongated, not quite human.
    A whiff of Tambootie lingered in the air. The sweet smell of Tambootie flowers in spring rather than the sharply musky odor of the oily leaves and aromatic bark.
    An eerie chill passed over Nimbulan. He resisted the urge to cross himself in the ward against evil—against the unwarranted smell of Tambootie out of season or the bizarre shadows he didn’t know. Instead, he turned his left palm upward, opening it to any stray power. An itch, unlike any known magic, irritated his