The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

brought her out.”
    Powwell looked further. A young dragon—red-tipped but still silvery along his wing veins and horns—perched on an outcropping halfway up the canyon walls. He breathed steam. Outrage swirled in his multicolored eyes.
    “What does Tssonin say?” Nimbulan asked Myri.
    “He says he found Yaassima in the void alive and still anchored to this existence. She is not welcome there. The secrets of past, present, and future lives do not belong to such as she. She hasn’t the magic or the wisdom to use the information. She must die in this existence before entering the void again.” Myri’s words took on confidence as she spoke. She cocked her head slightly, listening to the telepathic commands of the dragon that only she could hear.
    “Impossible!” Moncriith spluttered. He poked a finger toward the still flaming line that encircled Nimbulan and Myri and the others. “I threw her and the witchchild into the boiling lava before the gate fully formed with the landscape of hills just above the main camp of my army.”
    “We know,” Nimbulan replied. “We watched through the partially open gate. Where is Televarn?”
    “I killed the traitor,” Yaassima croaked. “I killed him with the knife he poisoned for me.”
    “He can’t be dead!” Maia screamed clutching her head between her fists. “He’s still whispering in my mind how he’ll punish me if I don’t tell him everything that’s happening.”
    “Another mystery we cannot solve,” Nimbulan said.
    Powwell crept a little closer to Yaassima. He needed to talk to her, find out what happened to Kalen. The wall he had erected blocked him. He dismantled the spell. The wall of dragon fire remained, a clear line separating Moncriith’s people from Nimbulan’s.
    “See her burns?” Moncriith continued to rant. “They are her just punishment from the pit. No one could live through that inferno. I watched her hair and clothing ignite. I drew power from her pain.”
    The thought of Kalen suffering the agony of that fire hot enough to melt rock, while still alive, nearly made Powwell ill.
    “If Yaassima survived, where is Kalen? Tssonin, where is Kalen?” Desperate hope propelled him upward to face the dragon. “You’ve got to tell me what happened to her.”
    “Tssonin says that he only found Yaassima because she doesn’t belong in the void. If your sister remains there, then she is fated to learn something important from the life forces that shroud her from dragon senses.”
    “What does that mean? Tell me what that means.” Powwell turned on Myri. All his frustration and anger and fear pulsed in his throat. He needed to lash out at something. The dragon was an easy target. Suicide to try.
    Tssonin opened his mouth and breathed fire, renewing the wall between Moncriith and the refugees. Powwell shrank away from the evidence of the dragon’s power.
    “We don’t know what Tssonin means, Powwell. Dragon communication is usually cryptic.” Nimbulan placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
    Powwell shrugged it off. “I have to go find her.”
    (That route is dangerous. You have much to learn before you can enter the void and learn with safety.) A young blue-tipped dragon joined Tssonin on the ledge above the canyon. (Seannin,) the dragon announced his name.
    The dragon’s words rocked within Powwell’s mind. A headache pounded behind his eyes. “Then teach me what I need to know,” he demanded. “I have to find Kalen.”
    Moncriith raised a mundane bow and shot an arrow through the dragon flames that separated him from his quarry. Wood, metal, and feathers penetrated where magic couldn’t.
    Seannin breathed a new stream of green fire. The spinning shaft exploded and dropped to the Kardia in a flutter of ash.
    “We seem to be at an impasse, Moncriith,” Nimbulan said. “The dragons protect us from you. But they do not protect Yaassima. We will depart.”
    “Seannin and Tssonin, will you fly us to the capital?” Myri asked politely.
    “We may still be in time to stop the wedding,” Nimbulan said, heading toward Seannin, dragging Myri and Yaala with him.
    “It’s already too late,” Moncriith called. “King Lorriin will invade anyway. We want more from Coronnan than just a marriage treaty. He needs your arable land and farmers. SeLenicca can never be nurtured by any but the Stargods. I intend to give him what he needs—for a price—once I rule Coronnan as the Stargods dictate I must.”
    Tssonin breathed a new ring of