The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

your grief. Our grief. He is a great man. We will miss him greatly.”
    “He left a great legacy for us all. Never again will magicians waste their talents as Battlemages. He ended magic as a weapon of death and destruction and made it an instrument of peace and prosperity.” Quinnault returned to the business of continuing the legacy of the last Battlemage.

Epilogue
     
    “C ome to Papa, Amaranth,” Nimbulan coaxed his giggling daughter.
    The little girl, barely a year old, stood on unsteady legs, clutching her mother’s skirt. She eyed the distance between her parents skeptically. Then, boldly she let go of the cloth that kept her upright. She swayed, lifted one foot off the ground and sat abruptly on her diapered bottom.
    Her lower lip stuck out, and a tear threatened to overflow her wide eyes. Hints of fire-green highlighted the iris—closer to the color of her father’s eyes than her mother’s. But her light blond hair and pale skin came from Myrilandel’s heritage.
    “Up!” Amaranth demanded, holding her pudgy arms out to her father. She had learned early that Nimbulan was always willing to hold her in his arms. Her mother wasn’t as easy to persuade.
    “That’s all right, Amaranth. You’ll walk when you are ready.” Nimbulan plucked his daughter off the ground and hoisted her high in the air.
    “Maybe if she walked, she’d slow down for a day or two,” Myri chuckled. “She’s into everything as it is.” She bent to stir the stew that simmered over the central hearth of the hut in the clearing.
    Nimbulan and his family retreated to the peace and solitude of this little hut often. As often as their duties in the city allowed. One of Myri’s dragon brothers could usually be persuaded to fly them here at short notice.
    Directing the School for Magicians—University now—no longer dominated Nimbulan’s life. Others could do it better, others who still had magic at their fingertips.
    He still sat in Council with the king. But Quinnault had his new wife and a myriad of other advisers to guide him and Coronnan into a new era.
    Nimbulan enjoyed the slower pace of life in the clearing more every time they retreated here. Myri certainly flourished in the rural setting. The demands of life at court and her duties as ambassador for the dragons stressed her empathic talent to near exhaustion. She needed the sanctuary of the clearing more than Nimbulan did.
    “It’s starting to snow,” Yaala said, entering the hut with a fresh armload of wood. “Something smells good.” She bent her head to draw in the aroma before she dropped the bundle of sticks and logs.
    “Then you won’t be going back to the capital for several weeks yet,” Myri said. “Neither will we.” She grinned widely.
    “Why do you think I stalled so long.” Yaala grinned. Her teeth gleamed in the firelight. “I don’t like relying on your brother’s hospitality, Myri. Having servants wait on me hand and foot gets boring after about ten minutes. This ‘Princess in Exile’ nonsense has gone on too long. I need to be doing something, even if it’s just chopping firewood.”
    “There’s lots of that to do,” Myri replied.
    Nimbulan shifted Amaranth to the crook of his right arm, giving her a favorite toy to chew on—a wooden rattle he’d carved himself. He had the scars on his fingers from his first attempts to guide the knife without magic.
    Joy simmered in Nimbulan, like Myri’s stew. It warmed his heart and grew more savory with time. All of his little regrets about unfinished work and lost magic faded. Only the question of Rollett’s and Kalen’s fate continued to nag him.
    Myri cocked her head as if listening. “Someone is climbing the path from the village. Someone with determination.”
    “What does Shayla say?” Instinctively he looked toward the south-facing doorway. Shayla had retreated to her lair in the mountains, awaiting the birth of her next litter.
    Shayla’s voice was something else Nimbulan missed. The dragon hadn’t talked to him much, but now that he had no magic, he couldn’t hear her even when she directed her mental voice to him.
    He wrapped his free arm around Myri’s shoulder, almost hoping physical contact with her would open his mind to Shayla’s words. “Anyone we know?” he asked.
    Nimbulan set Amaranth on the floor where she promptly crawled to the pile of firewood and began investigating the new logs with all of her senses.
    “Take that out of your mouth, Ammi,” Yaala