The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

Powwell said. In a few sparse sentences he explained his observations to the others.
    Nimbulan nodded slowly with each sentence. His hand came up, palm outward. Scarface peered at the opening through squinted eyes as if testing the truth of Powwell’s statements.
    Powwell hoped, desperately, that the portal chose that circular opening in the forest of Coronnan as its next destination. Too many of the scenes he’d viewed wouldn’t support life for long.
    “Yaassima!” Myri choked. She grabbed her ears, scrunching up her face in agony. The crystal dragon pendant glowed eerily in the dim cavern. Powwell thought he heard a high-pitched whistle in the back of his head, but couldn’t be sure.
    She stumbled closer to the tunnel entrance, relaxing a little as she put some distance between herself and the pit—or did she move closer to the palace and Yaassima’s controls?
    Nimbulan grabbed for the pendant. He jerked his hand away from it as if burned.
    “Televarn threatened me with a necklace like that if I didn’t spy for him in the palace.” Maia slunk away from Myri in fear. “I didn’t want to be chained to him. It’s bad enough that he’s in my mind all of the time.”
    “Yaassima is the only one with the key to that necklace,” Kalen said matter-of-factly. “Myri can’t take it off while the Kaalipha lives. Nor can she set foot outside the palace perimeter and live.” A small secret smile crept over her face.
    Powwell looked at her, alarmed at her attitude, almost as if she wanted Myri dead, or to remain Yaassima’s captive. He didn’t like the way that smile lit her eyes with mischief, nor the fact that she kept shifting her expression from eyes wide open and innocent looking to hunched over and closed. She only did that when she was plotting something more drastic than her usual deviousness.
    “What do you know?” he whispered to his foster sister, the one anchor in his rootless life.
    She turned that false smile of hers on him, as bright as the sparks that had shot from Old Bertha.
    A blast of hot wind rose up from the churning lava.
    “It’s happening,” Scarface announced. “Amazing. The gate is opening!”
    They all looked at the arched opening as the boiling red-and-yellow lava turned to a vortex of red and green and black and white. A lot of white—like the wraith that haunted the caverns. Powwell shuddered in cold fear.
    A vast arctic plain, covered with drifting snow and frozen grasses stretched before them. The shadow of a massive ice flow at the edge of the plain formed an arch. Beyond it stretched miles and miles of frozen wasteland without a hill, shelter, or sign of people.
    “We can’t go there,” Nimbulan said.
    Myri moaned as she pressed her fingertips against her temples. Her pale skin blotched with purple flushes high on her cheekbones and deep on her throat, spreading downward onto her chest.
    “What kind of spell is this?” Nimbulan wrenched at the necklace. All color drained from his face.
    “It’s Yaassima’s magic. Myri can’t leave Hanassa as long as both she and the Kaalipha live,” Kalen repeated. “This is proof that Televarn failed . . .” She turned as if to flee the tunnel. Powwell grabbed her around the waist to stop her.
    “Yaassima doesn’t have real magic,” Yaala said from where Scarface had sat her inert body against the wall of the narrow tunnel. “Every power she mimics begins and ends with the machines. When they explode, so will the necklace.”
    “Then how does she control the necklace?” Nimbulan turned on her. Anger brought color back into his face. “We have to get if off Myri before it destroys itself and her with it.”
    “If the necklace lives, then Yaassima does, too.” Yaala seemed to crumble in on herself. “She’ll kill me this time, just like she killed my father. Then she’ll dip her hands in my blood and taste it as if it was the sweetest ambrosia. My own mother . . .” She shuddered and shook herself as if ridding herself of the hideous memory. “I might have a key to the necklace.” Yaala levered herself up from the ground.
    “The gate is closing!” Scarface said. The hot wind from the pit died with the gate.
    “Wait a few moments. It will come around again to a different location,” Powwell reassured him. “The wind comes just before the swirling colors.”
    Yaala peered closely at the clasp on the back of the chain and the crystal pendant on the front. “Can I have more light?” she asked.
    “The