The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

Then you can open the door with magic, and we’ll sneak out and steal some food. We’ll come back and relock the door. Druulin will never know the difference.” Ackerly shifted uncomfortably.
    “We’ll also steal some medicine. We can’t let those wounds fester.” Nimbulan wiped his running nose and eyes on his sleeve. The dungeon was colder and wetter than he remembered from the last time he’d been punished. He wished he knew some healing spells. Ackerly really needed help.
    He’d never known Druulin to lose control of his temper so badly before.
    “Maybe we could run away together when we get out?” Nimbulan asked. Hope of escape from Druulin’s tyranny filled him with a quivering warmth.
    “Where would we go? No other magician will take us on since our parents gave us to Druulin. Even masters of other trades won’t take us on until Druulin releases us. And he won’t let you go ever, Lan. You’re too good a magician. He needs you to correct his mistakes,” Ackerly replied between sobs.
    “Then I’ll have to take care of you. You could settle nearby—but not so close Druulin would find you,” Nimbulan offered. The hope in his belly turned into a cold fearful lump. Neither of them would ever get away from Druulin. The old man intimidated all the mundanes for miles around. They’d betray Ackerly’s presence.
    “What will I do? Magic is the only thing I know and that not very well,” Ackerly asked.
    “You know lots more, Acker,” Nimbulan soothed his friend. “You think ahead and plan much better than any of us.”
    “But I can’t do the great magic. That’s what makes a Battlemage,” Ackerly protested. “That’s why Druulin got so mad when I failed the tests. He needs stronger apprentices to make up for his failings. He’s getting too old to do it on his own.”
    “Apprentices and journeymen helping the Master Magician is what makes a Battlemage. Not one man alone,” Nimbulan mused. “When I’m a full Battlemage, I’ll make you my chief assistant, Acker. We’ll be a team. Just like always. Remember the time Boojlin and Caasser ganged up on us and pelted us with rotten eggs all the way from the kitchen to the cellar? You were the one who thought up the idea of the bucket of water atop the door. When they opened the door, the bucket fell right on top of them. They both nearly drowned . . .” The two boys smothered their giggles at the memory of the two older bullies spluttering and choking as repeated cascades of ice cold water caught them unaware.
    Druulin had discovered the mess and made all four of them clean it up, and do without breakfast the next morning for wasting supplies and magic.
    “We’d never have escaped Boojlin and Caasser if you hadn’t thought of the water bucket,” Nimbulan whispered through his giggles.
    “But you were the one who had the magic to hold the water up there without a bucket, and keep it coming,” Ackerly reminded him.
    “See, that’s what I mean. We’re a team. We’ll always be a team. Now help me figure out this locking spell.”
    Thirty-six years later, Ackerly was still Nimbulan’s chief assistant, and they never beat their apprentices or made them go hungry. So why had Keegan run away? Why had the boy felt he had to prove himself a better Battlemage than Nimbulan before he was fully trained?
    Guilt piled on top of Nimbulan’s grief.
     
    “Why, boy? Why’d you have to push me to kill you?” Nimbulan shuddered in the cold mist that drifted over the now silent battlefield. The first rays of dawn almost pierced the gloom of fading witchlight. Clumps of sparkling moisture shimmered and wavered in the golden light, like the ghosts of the dead men who littered this unlucky wheat field. Would the victims of this battle haunt the site for generations to come?
    Nearly twenty years ago, two other armies had fought on this same field. Indiscriminate and uncontrolled magic had killed them all. Troops, lords, magicians, and camp followers, all reduced to ashes in a moment of screaming agony. The stump he stood upon now, an ancient elm tree so large three men holding hands couldn’t span its girth, had been toppled and blasted to ash by that same magic. A stroke of luck had sent Nimbulan and Ackerly elsewhere that same day. But not today.
    Druulin, Boojlin, and Caasser had been among the thousands who had died that day, eighteen years ago.
    Today Nimbulan had been forced to murder his most promising apprentice with magic in order to save