The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

easy to storm out of the palace in a group.”
    “I’m not ready for that.” She waved him to silence as two men carried a third to the ledge three tunnels to the left. Silently, they heaved the inert body into the boiling mass below them. The body fell a long, long way, diminishing in size to a pinpoint before it touched the boiling rock. Instantly the internal fires of Kardia Hodos consumed the body.
    Powwell’s heart leaped into his throat as he imagined how the flames would burn away his own flesh and dissolve his bones. He knew the man must have been dead before being consigned to the pit. His fears kept seeing himself down there—alive, forever dammed to be eaten alive by the fires.
    No one said a word for one hundred heartbeats. Then Yaala raised her voice in a curious ululation, high-pitched, wordless, sad, and triumphant at the same time. Around the pit, the other watchers took up the strange sound until they drowned out the constant roar of the boiling lava and the yeek, kush, kush behind them. Powwell’s throat worked convulsively. He had to add his own cries to Yaala’s.
    A curious sense of relief and completion came to him as soon as he let loose the ancient mourning cry. He continued the wail almost eagerly.
    At last, Yaala held a single high-pitched note for several heartbeats.
    Abruptly, all the inhabitants of the pit fell silent. The absence of sound hovered for a moment, then the roars of the pit rushed back, louder than ever.
    As one, the people of the pit turned and walked back into the tunnels.
    “For now, that is the only escape from the pit,” Yaala said.
     
    Myri pressed her back against the cave wall near the ground level exit of Yaassima’s palace. Smooth rock formed most of the corridors, almost perfectly circular tunnels with packed dirt on the floor. Black dirt, black walls, bleak and lifeless. Outside, the crater was filled with redder dirt and rocks—equally bleak but filled with life-giving sunlight and fresh air.
    Irregular shadows draped the curving passageway in darker shades of black and gray. Beneath the torches, mounted into iron brackets at regular intervals, the shadows crawled away into a bilious gray green—real fire, burning green as it should. The Kaalipha didn’t waste her bizarre magic on light panels in the passageways and rooms where she seldom appeared. She saved her tricks for the times she could make a great show of her power.
    A black-clad guard rounded the curve from the direction of the main doorway into the palace. Myri recognized him as one of the men who usually patrolled the interior corridors closest to Yaassima’s suite. He whistled a jaunty tune. A satisfied smile relaxed the lines around his eyes that usually betrayed his acute wariness. As he walked, he tossed his belt knife in the air, watched it spin, and caught it again by the hilt. Then he grasped the tip with the other hand and repeated the trick.
    All the elite personal guards of the Kaalipha practiced this movement whenever their hands were idle. Few in Hanassa doubted their expertise with the weapons. Those few usually ended up dead.
    The guard didn’t look right or left as he passed Myri, still whistling, still tossing his knife as if it were a harmless child’s toy.
    When he moved out of her line of sight, Myri headed toward the main door as silently as she could, letting her soft indoor shoes whisper across the packed dirt-and-stone floor. Kalen was off exploring the kitchens and possible servants’ entrances. Myri needed to know the routine of traffic in and out of the main entrance. She had to find a way out of the palace once they rescued Powwell.
    Recovering from Amaranth’s birth, Erda’s drugs, and staying out of Yaassima’s way had kept her close to the royal suite for the past three weeks. Without the mind-clogging potions she had found a gap in Yaassima’s watch-fulness in the suite. But here . . . ?
    Myri kept to the shadows beneath the torches. All of the brackets marched along one side of this passageway rather than alternating sides to eliminate shadows. This was a security lapse she didn’t expect of Yaassima.
    She touched the dark kerchief hiding her hair. In her old leaf-green gown over a simple shift, she hoped to pass as another servant. Any glimpse of her white-blond hair, so similar to Yaassima’s, or the jewel-toned silks Yaassima had given her to wear, would identify her to the regular inhabitants of the palace. She needed anonymity to scout an