The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

ears.
    “Have you hospitality for a stranger lost and alone?” Nimbulan recited the formal words accepted throughout Coronnan. The customs of hospitality were ancient and ingrained in the culture.
    “Hospitality!” the guard laughed. “No one seeks hospitality here. Who are you, and what do you truly want?” The guard held up the wand, as if he expected it to shoot a debilitating spell from the empty end.
    Nimbulan backed up a step, being very careful not to fall off the edge. He kept his hands open at his sides when he really wanted to grab his staff and shoot a counterspell. He’d disguised the staff as a waterskin and lashed it to his pack, knowing it would identify him as a magician. He just had to be careful when he moved, not to knock the long tool against anything that would betray the disguise.
    Rollett had accepted the same delusion for his own staff. He looked up as the guard motioned them closer, still holding out the wand. The journeyman magician remained where he was, out of sight from the other guards because of the curve of the plateau. Nimbulan took two steps closer.
    The guard slapped the rock again, much harder, with the wand. The high-pitched ringing tortured Nimbulan’s ear-drums louder this time. He resisted the urge to cower behind his hands.
    “Only magicians cannot tolerate the wand,” the guard said when the ringing ceased abruptly. “You are not welcome here. Leave immediately or face the wrath of Yaassima, Kaalipha of Hanassa and Dragon of the Mountains.”

Chapter 16
     
    “I need your help on Old Bertha,” Yaala said to Powwell. Her husky voice was packed with authority. All of the men milling around the central living cavern stopped what they were doing to listen to her, including the guards. Some—the younger and healthier prisoners—glared at her in resentment. The guards showed fear. Most of the others obeyed without question, without thought, incapable of making decisions anymore.
    Powwell mopped his brow with the kerchief she’d given him last night. He still felt strange wearing it on his head, Rover style, so he stuffed it back into his pocket. His shirt and trews were soaked with his own sweat. He had no way of knowing how long he’d been down here. A day? Two? He’d survived three work shifts of cleaning and lubricating the giant machines that filled various rooms of the cave system.
    Through each waking moment, the vision of the dead man falling and falling into the pit haunted him. While he slept, he dreamed he was the falling man, the heat eating away at his soul long before the fires consumed his body.
    He awoke from those dreams shaking with fear. The sense of gaining release and freedom by jumping into the fires frightened him more than pain and thirst and despair.
    And overlaid atop those dreams was the sense of being watched by the white wraith that drifted around the caverns, never closer than the periphery of his senses.
    Come for me soon, Kalen. I don’t know how long I can keep my life and sanity down here.
    In the time since the guards had kicked him into the pit, he’d eaten six small meals of thin gruel. The covered pot of food was lowered down a narrow chute only marginally wider than the pot. When the denizens of the pit had eaten—after much squabbling on the part of the healthier citizens—they reattached the rope to the pot, and it was hoisted back up by unseen hands. Yaala’s presence kept the stronger prisoners from gobbling all the gruel, leaving the weaker ones to starve.
    Everyone down here acknowledged Yaala as their leader, as above they acknowledged Yaassima as their Kaalipha.
    Even with Yaala’s supervision, no one got enough to eat. When they weren’t working, the men and women congregated in the living cavern, watching the chute for any sign of more food dropping down, kicking and fighting to be first to delve into the pot.
    An older man related a tale of many years ago when loaves of bread appeared in the chute every day for a week. He thought a relative of one of the prisoners might work in the kitchen. But the bread stopped coming as abruptly as it started, never to be seen again.
    Powwell’s mouth watered at the thought of bread—even stale unleavened bread.
    The lack of food only hastened the time until he, too, was consigned to the fires at the heart of the Kardia. Since the guards seemed to walk in fear of Yaala, and the accidents Powwell was certain she could arrange for them, maybe they could be coerced into