The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

bringing more food into the pit. Maybe . . .
    “How do you know so much about the machines?” he asked Yaala as she led him unerringly through the labyrinth of caves and tunnels.
    “I hung around the engineers when I was a kid. When the last of them died last year, I was the only one who knew enough to take their place.”
    “Does Yaassima know that you, a prisoner, are now the—engineer?” Powwell stumbled over the unfamiliar word.
    “No.” Yaala closed her mouth firmly, refusing to elaborate.
    “Which one is Old Bertha?” he asked, just to keep words flowing above and around the sounds of the chugging machines. Each of the monstrous noisemakers had a personality and a name. Yesterday he’d worked on Liise, a small placid machine who only needed a little attention to purr along quite happily.
    “Old Bertha is the oldest and crankiest of the Kaalipha’s generators,” Yaala replied.
    The strange name for the machines rolled easily off her tongue. But she’d been in the pit for several years since her imprisonment as well as much of her childhood on a voluntary basis. Powwell couldn’t quite form the strange words without thinking.
    “What can I do to help?” he asked. “I don’t know anything about the machines.” He’d been taught to squirt an oily liquid onto various moving parts and wipe up the excess that spilled onto the casing.
    “You have a good memory, part of your magician training. I need you to remember where every part goes and what condition it’s in when I pull it out and find out why Old Bertha is wheezing and not producing enough ’tricity.”
    Another strange word, this one for the power that came out of the generators. Magic was much easier to understand.
    “You’re the only one smart enough to become the next engineer. I’ll not trust anyone from aboveground with my machines.”
    As Yaala led Powwell deeper into the cave system, closer to the pit, he examined the tangle of metallic conduits that channeled the ’tricity from the generators to an unknown “transformer” in the Kaalipha’s palace. Maybe these conduits were like a staff, and the transformer was a magician who had learned to use this strange power. He’d learned to gather dragon magic to fuel his talent after he’d used the ley lines. This might be another kind of fuel.
    The steam that powered the generators came from a lake that filled one of the lowest caverns. Pipes channeled the water above a glowing pit of lava, heating it past boiling into steam. The steam moved inside Old Bertha in some mysterious way, churning out energy that was captured by a turbine—some of the smaller satellite machines. Flexible conduits Yaala called “wires” snaked out of the turbines and disappeared into narrow lava tube tunnels.
    Maybe the ley lines were just another kind of wire for naturally generated ’tricity.
    Steam from Water becoming Air. Fire from the heart of the Kardia. All four elements were present in the ’tricity. That made it magic. He’d understand how to use it eventually, just as he’d learned to use ley lines and dragon magic. If he lived that long. If Kalen didn’t come for him soon.
    Yaala ducked beneath a low-hanging slab of black rock within the dim tunnel. The only light came from that strange color-leeching yellow glow produced by the ’tricity. Powwell ducked, too. Behind the slab the roof remained low. He had to crouch to keep from banging his head. Yaala was short enough, so she only had to bend her head. She seemed to know the way and moved adroitly around other obstacles as the tunnel narrowed.
    The noise grew louder the smaller the tunnel became. Powwell resisted the urge to cover his ears. He’d almost accepted the noise level back in the passageways. Here the sounds of Old Bertha chugging and wheezing echoed and compounded within the confines of the lava tube.
    Yeek, kush, kush. Yeek, kush, kush. The sound assaulted his senses as it had during the trek with Televarn from the clearing. Powwell opened his eyes wider, looking around him for something familiar.
    If Televarn had brought them through the pit to the palace, there must be another entrance from outside Hanassa. He turned a circle, peering at everything. Automatically he reached into his pocket to touch Thorny and see if his familiar remembered any of the smells down here.
    His pocket was empty. The little hedgehog had found a nest of insects he liked up near the living cavern. He’d left Powwell alone sometime ago while