The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

a magician receptive to weaving or receiving spells.
    “What is it, Kalen?”
    The girl remained silent. A streak of dark fur sprang from a crack in the wall and slithered up the girl’s leg, clinging to the fabric of her skirt until it reached her shoulder where it wrapped around her neck.
    “Kalen!” Myri shook her daughter’s shoulder. She had to break the trance. “Wiggles is back. Wake up and listen to your familiar.”
    The ferret might very well carry a message of danger. Both Kalen and Myri were vulnerable to magic here in this city filled with Bloodmages, Rovers, and other malcontent magicians. The trance could blind Kalen to magical manipulation.
    “Nimbulan is dead,” Kalen whispered through stiff lips. Her hand crept up automatically to caress Wiggles. The ferret chirped ecstatically.
    “What?” Shock rooted Myri in place. All thought deserted her. “I won’t believe it.” Kalen didn’t know about the magical link between Myri and Nimbulan. No one could see it but themselves.
    Kalen lied.
    “Believe it. Wiggles brought me a vision. I saw Nimbulan in a great battle on the bay. Drowning. Waves and waves of water. Water pushing him down and down. No air. No strength. Blackness.” Kalen barely roused from her trance.
    “He can’t be dead. I’d know it,” Myri protested. Kalen and the eavesdropping Yaassima would expect her to say that.
    How had Wiggles observed a battle on the Great Bay when he’d last been seen in the clearing, several days’ ride south of any access to that body of water? He had no reason to go north to Nimbulan—whom he’d never met. Myri presumed the ferret had either sought Kalen out or come with her and then gotten lost in the city and the maze of tunnels that made up the palace.
    Myri clutched her chest, trying to calm the frantic pulse. But her panic came from the knowledge that Kalen lied and Wiggles was her partner in deceit. She had no reason to grieve yet over the loss of her husband.
    The silver tendril pulsed a normal heart rhythm. It grew stronger and thicker beneath her fingers, as if . . . as if Nimbulan had suddenly come closer.
    Perhaps Kalen had been misled by her sneaky ferret—could the animal have been tampered with? Not likely. The bonds between a witchwoman and her familiar were strong and convoluted, but exclusive.
    She opened her mouth to ask the girl for details, to find the source of the deceptive message.
    The half curl of satisfaction on the right side of Kalen’s mouth told Myri more than she wanted to know. Even if she knew the information to be a lie, Kalen wanted Nimbulan dead and Myri lost in grief for him. Why?
     
    Powwell swallowed his fears. Televarn had stepped from somewhere else into the tunnels. This was the same route they had taken from the clearing, through the pit and into the lower levels of the palace.
    Yaala said it was a hallucination, induced by the heat and dehydration. Powwell knew what he had seen. Knew what he had experienced during the kidnap and his first few moments of awareness.
    Thorny confirmed his impression as he waddled up to Powwell and begged to be picked up. As Powwell cradled the little hedgehog in his palm, his familiar replayed scents through Powwell’s memory. This tunnel branching off from Old Bertha’s cavern smelled different than any other tunnel in the pit.
    If Televarn could come and go from this hellhole, then Powwell could, too.
    He tucked Thorny into his tunic pocket, letting his familiar’s nose work with him. With one hand on the wall and the other extended, palm outward, as a sensor, he crept forward. At each step he stopped and extended his senses as far as he could, looking for something different about this particular tunnel. Thorny had poor eyesight but keen smell. All he could tell Powwell was that this place was different and he didn’t like it.
    Powwell rotated his left hand, much as Nimbulan did when seeking information or weaving the magic of the Kardia. His palm was sweating, as it had almost continuously since he’d been thrown down here. Nothing else infiltrated his searching senses.
    One more step brought him within sight of the heaving lava at the core of the volcano. The churning mass seemed quieter, grayer, less liquid today.
    A hot wind blasted his face. Power tingled along the fine hairs of his arms.
    Suddenly the view lurched and shifted into a circling vortex of vivid red, green, yellow, and black.
    Powwell’s head spun. His stomach bounced. He slammed his