The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

toward her valiant ally. Escape by the gate if you can. Ask for Rollett. He’ll let you through.
    She ran with her companions through the twisting interior tunnels. Her senses insisted the way was familiar, but she’d never been in this portion of the palace before. Or had she?
    No time to wonder. She had to find Powwell. She had to get out of Hanassa. Now. Before the guards organized themselves and closed the gates.
    Down. Down into the heart of the volcano. The heat increased.
    Nimbulan was sweating, too. Amaranth fretted, kicking at her blankets.
    Darkness pressed against Myri’s eyes. Nimbulan lit the end of his staff with soothing green witchlight.
    Kalen seemed to know the way. In this matter, Myri trusted her. Kalen loved Powwell as she loved nothing else in this life.
    The tunnels took on an unholy red glow. Myri stumbled and caught her balance against the rock wall. Heat seeped through her clothes from the living stones.
    Pressure on her back told her of a dozen or more men who followed her. Desperation pushed them to stop her flight before Yaassima’s rage turned on them.
    Myri ran faster. Down. Hotter. Her mouth went dry. The baby slept, whimpering with discomfort.
    At last, light appeared at the end of the tunnel. Red light, pulsing and flaring brighter, then dimming a fraction. Myri felt like she was staring at the sun after the darkness of the tunnels.
    “That’s the beginning of the pit,” Kalen said. She pointed to a massive gate of crossed iron bars straight ahead. Footsteps and shouts echoed against the tunnel walls behind them. Many men, heavily booted. Their anger twisted inside Myri.
    “They mean to kill us,” she gasped.
    They stumbled forward. Nimbulan and Scarface fumbled with the lock. Finally a blast of magic from Nimbulan’s staff broke the latch.
    “Rollett was right. Disrupt the magnetic fields and everything falls apart,” Nimbulan said with a wry smile.
    They all ran forward. Nimbulan closed and latched the gate behind them with more magic. Myri hoped the spell would hold against whatever bespelled keys Yaassima’s men had.
    Another dozen steps forward and around a bend in the tunnel, a broad cavern opened. They all stopped short.
    Dozens of people, clad in filthy rags, turned to stare at them. Some held bizarre metal tools. Others dipped water from a sulfurous smelling stream. A few lounged against rough pallets made of more rags, staring listlessly at an empty pot that sat in a niche with a rope attached to the handle.
    Six black-clad guards sat in a far corner of the cavern, playing a game of dice. They looked briefly toward the newcomers and returned to their game.
    In the background a loud chugging noise beat against Myri’s physical senses. Pain lanced from her ears across her eyes. She felt Nimbulan and Scarface wince, too. Amaranth whimpered, too exhausted from the heat to cry loudly.
    Maia seemed to accept the heat and noise as natural. Had she been here before? How and when? No one had been known to escape from the pit and live.
    Hopeless resignation weighed heavily upon Myri. The people who had been consigned to the pit trudged through their days waiting for death to release them from the heat and the drudgery. The guards didn’t care about anything except the end of their shift. They feared something down here almost as much or more than they feared Yaassima.
    Myri stretched her senses, counting the lives she encountered. Hundreds of despairing personalities blurred together. Her talent couldn’t sort them.
    “I can’t sense Powwell,” Kalen cried. “I can’t find him anywhere in the pit!”

Chapter 28
     
    T he shouts and clanging of men beating their weapons against the gate echoed down the tunnel. Nimbulan only hoped the lock would hold against them.
    “Powwell!” Kalen darted off into a side tunnel, calling anxiously.
    Myri set off in a different direction, stretching her senses as far as she could.
    “We can’t afford the time to aimlessly search.” Nimbulan pulled her back. “We have to do this right or we’ll never get out of here. Kalen, Myri, come back. We’ll do this with a plan!”
    “I fully intend to get out of here, if for no other reason than to make you pay for deserting the children and me, love,” Myri replied. A half grin mocked the severity of her words.
    Kalen returned grumpily, frowning at Myri’s gesture of affection.
    Nimbulan had no doubt he’d hear about his intense sense of duty for the rest of his life. In that