The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

weight and breadth.
    With one last jolt of strength she slammed her elbow backward into her captor’s well-muscled belly.
    “Oomph.” Air whooshed from his lungs into her ear. He didn’t relax his grasp of her hands or her body.
    “Moncriith, let her go,” Basket Woman commanded. “I’ve offered her hospitality, and I’ll not have you bringing curses upon this village for abusing her rights as our invited guest.”
    “She has no rights. This woman isn’t human. Not like us. She was born of demons and stole this body from a human child. She’s a changeling seeking to steal your souls and claim your bodies for her own vile purposes. Yesterday she worked her evil magic on a brave soldier, leaving his soul trapped in the void between the planes of existence while she cured his body. Perhaps he was one of the men missing from this village. One of the men who will follow her rather than return home.”
    “How . . . how do you know this, Moncriith?” Basket Woman wavered. Moncriith could have offered no more damning evidence than the threat to deprive this village of yet more men.
    “I have been blessed by the Stargods with a vision of this woman in her true form. I wear the red robes of a priest. Dare you doubt me?”
    “I am not a demon. I swear to you, I’m not,” Myri pleaded with the woman.
    “Meerawck!” Amaranth swooped from the sky, claws extended, teeth bared, aiming directly for Moncriith’s eyes.
    “Ayii!” Moncriith screamed. He thrust Myri away, raising his arms to protect his vulnerable face and neck from the flywacket.
    “Stargods preserve us!” Bucket Woman crossed her wrists and flapped them. Then she touched her forehead, chest, and each shoulder in the more accepted blessing. “I renounce this evil with my mind, my heart, and the strength of my shoulders.”
    “Demons. Demons from the sky!” Basket Woman buried her face in her apron and fled.
    Amaranth swooped and tore at Moncriith’s hair with his claws. The Bloodmage beat at the winged cat with his hands. He tried to duck his head within his robes. Amaranth reached again to claw at the man’s scalp.
    Myri dashed behind the woodpile, out of sight of her persecutor. Her bruised toes complained with each step. She ignored them, running along a trail that guided her east and south, toward the mountains. East toward something that called her. The wind swirled up and pushed her in that direction. She spread her arms, letting the air catch her cloak like a sail, speeding her on her way.
    But Moncriith was headed east, too, in search of demon lairs. She fought the wind, turning west and north toward the village where Magretha had raised her. The cold bite of circling air thrust her harder toward the east.
    (East.) Voices filled her mind, crowding out every other thought. (East. Home. Safety.)
    Myri gave in to the driving force of the wind. Before she had traveled a league, a grove of oak trees south of the trail beckoned her. Oak with protective mistletoe hanging heavy in the upper branches. A hiding place. She could watch the pathways for Moncriith, let him go ahead of her. Safer to follow unseen than flee ahead.
    (Yes. Hide now.)
    Silently she stepped off the established path, blurring her passage with magic as she went. Amaranth would find her. Moncriith wouldn’t. She prayed to the Stargods and the guiding voices that Moncriith wouldn’t find her.
     
    Nimbulan coughed and spluttered through muddy water, crawling up a soggy embankment. He dragged his staff along with his heavy body, as much a part of him as his arms and legs. Each breath took a concentrated effort and ended in another cough. He expelled more water from his laboring lungs and collapsed, face-down in more mud.
    Some force he couldn’t understand propelled him onto solid ground. Water ran from his hair, his clothes, from the sky. . . . Everything was as wet as the river. Why didn’t he just give up and let himself drown?
    “The first lesson you give to your apprentices had better be how to swim,” Quinnault de Tanos said. “I’ll not have my people risking their necks rescuing every landhugger who throws himself into the river. Thank goodness you wore a tunic and trews and not those long robes you magicians favor. I’d never have gotten you out of the river with the weight of all that sodden wool dragging you down.”
    “I didn’t throw myself into the river. The river threw itself all over me,” Nimbulan said between hacking coughs.
    Quinnault grabbed