The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

needed all his concentration, all his experience, all of his power and more to complete the barricade.
    He breathed deeply. The essence of Tambootie in the air invaded his nostrils, changed, mutated into power. The energy of dragon magic filled every crevice inside his body and his soul.
    (Now.) Now he was ready to create a wall that would protect Coronnan and give the war-ravaged land and people a chance to build a peaceful, cohesive government—as cohesive as the magic that sang through his blood, picking up harmonies from the other men in the circle until they grew into the most beautiful music ever experienced.
    “Where?” He heard and felt his question through every sense—born and acquired—within him.
    (Here.) Myri’s voice whispered across his mind. Myri’s voice and yet different. Multiple Myris. As he was a multiple within the circle of magic.
    His mind opened to a distant vista. He saw the rolling hills that grew ever taller until they became the old mountains that separated Coronnan from SeLenicca. Streams cut ravines through the hills. The ravines became wide passages through the physical barrier. He imagined a wall, twenty feet tall, immeasurably thick and powerful, yet invisible to the casual eye, along the highest ridges.
    (No. Closer. See the armies.)
    Hundreds of men crawled along fifteen of those passages, almost to the end. Almost into Coronnan. If he set the wall along the ridge, the armies would be trapped inside Coronnan, free to raid and pillage at will.
    He shifted his imagery lower, at the eastern end of the mountains, deep into the foothills.
    The men marched closer. Half a mile away.
    (Now. You must drop the wall now.)
    He dropped the wall across the center passage, where the men were closest to their target. A satisfying thunk reverberated through the Kardia, sensed through his whole body. The vibration must have traveled along a ley line to the well beneath his feet.
    From Myri’s aerial view he surveyed the wall. It looked solid and complete. A deep breath restored his perspective. He began stretching the wall north and south. The magic thinned. The power glowing within the black glass focus dimmed.
    His connection with the Kardia, through Myri, told him the wall shrank to knee-height. The first wave of attackers stumbled, then stepped over the invisible barrier.
     
    Myri watched the magnificent wall expand lengthwise, pulling substance from itself to follow the full length of the border. In horror, she watched as it shrank in height with every stretch outward. Nimbulan pushed more and more power into the wall. It continued to shrink. He didn’t have enough power at his command to build the new barrier as high and as strong as needed.
    Coronnan would fall to invasion and renewed war. Memories of her brief time in the healer’s tent after a battle churned inside her physical stomach as well as her soaring mind.
    Wounded men had screamed in agony. Their pain became her pain as she tried to heal a few. For every one she helped, three more appeared. There was never an end to the terrible wounds inflicted by other men. The numbers of the dead mounted with each breath.
    So many men cut down in their prime that the villages had no more men to plow and hunt and sire new babies.
    Nimbulan had helped bring peace to Coronnan. The people had not had enough time to recover from three generations of civil war and consider peace a way of life. A few new lives had been conceived to replace the dead. Not enough. Never enough.
    She grieved for the bleak future that stretched thinner than the wall. Tears tracked her physical face as well as her dragon mind. The Kardia trembled beneath her, sobbing for the new assaults on it, rich farmland turned into battlefields, orchards reduced to firewood for massive armies, widows and orphans left to starve. . . .
    The Kardia trembled again and the human Myrilandel felt the quake through her feet. Ley lines filled with power trembled beneath her. She knew how to tap the web of lines that crisscrossed Kardia Hodos like the mesh of fine lace and turn them into magic. She could channel the power of the Beginning Place into Nimbulan’s spell.
    Whatever fate awaited Myri lay in this well of power.
    She relaxed her physical body while viewing it from afar, above, and beyond reality. The energy flowed upward, through her receptive muscles and bones. Fire heated the Water in her blood. Air expelled from her lungs. The Kardia in her bones and muscles joined with