The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

the few men who still lived at the end of this most recent battle.
    Thousands more dead would haunt this field now.
    Nothing stirred within Nimbulan’s narrow field of vision. No one cried for help or solace. A peculiar mound of ashes on the rise opposite him silently taunted him with warped magic.
    Ashes that had once been Keegan.
    “I called you ‘son.’ ” His words dissipated with the mist as a chill wind blew up from the river, half a league away.
    The only response was a twisting groan of eternal pain that lay trapped in the ashes.
    “I’ll never have a son of my body. You could have filled that aching hole in my life, Keegan.”
    He’d have to liberate the ghost. A father’s duty. No one else was left. Trapped, unable to pass on to the void between the planes of existence, the boy’s spirit begged him for release.
    Nimbulan leaned heavily upon his staff, feeling twice his forty-nine years, as exhaustion drowned him.
    Many men had died on both sides of the fray. Many more suffered wounds so severe they shouldn’t live. For the first time in almost three decades as a Battlemage, Nimbulan wondered if the victory won by Warlord Kammeryl d’Astrismos was worth the cost.
    Keegan was dead. “You should have been my successor, boy. Not my enemy. What lured you to hire on as a Battlemage before your training was complete?”
    Placing one foot wearily in front of the other, Nimbulan trudged across the field toward the opposite rise. He had to avert his eyes from the carnage around him. Recognition of a corpse or wounded friend might deter him from his mission. Many of the soldiers had died an honorable death at the hands of an enemy. Many more had died from the volleys of magic lobbed back and forth across the battlefield by the magicians. He was as guilty as Keegan for their deaths. The lords may have called the men to battle, but the magicians working behind them determined who won and who lost; who lived and who died.
    Nimbulan stumbled and nearly fell over a dead man. Blood and mud obscured a uniform or identifying crest.
    “Keegan and I did this to you.” He shifted the outflung arms of the corpse into a more natural position. “Go in peace. Find your next existence and happiness,” he murmured the death prayer, too numb to do more.
    He supported Lord Kammeryl d’Astrismos, the one lord who might unify Coronnan. Time and again the rival lords proved that peace could only be achieved at the tremendous cost of war. He tried wrapping a cloak of justification around his emotions and failed miserably.
    He trudged up the hillock to where Keegan had stood. “The Stargods would never forgive me if I made you suffer the hell of your own spell backlashed against you, son,” Nimbulan sighed as he planted his tall staff beside the mound of ashes. “I would never forgive myself.”
    Tongues of unholy red flame licked outward from the still smoldering ashes. Sparks tried to reignite a life from the residue. Each time the essence of Keegan found an anchor, his final spell doused it.
    Echoes of torment lingered in the air.
    Nimbulan stretched out his hand, palm toward the pile of ashes, fingers curved as if capturing the essence of Keegan as he tried escaping his unholy prison.
    He had no strength to summon magic from the depths of Kardia Hodos to work this one last spell. Nimbulan’s bond with the four elements, Kardia, Air, Fire, and Water which together with the cardinal directions formed the gaia, had shriveled with the death and destruction wrought this day and night.
    The spirit in the ashes writhed again. An irritating burn crawled all over Nimbulan’s sensitized nerves. He resisted the urge to douse them both with water.
    “ ’Twouldn’t soothe either of us.”
    “Come, Lan, sup and rest before you discharge this final duty.” A new voice intruded upon the magician’s weary thoughts. “Perhaps if I grind a few Tambootie leaves into your meal, you will feel better.”
    “I’ve used enough of the weed today, Ackerly,” Nimbulan replied to his assistant. “I need food and rest, not drugs. When this spell is finished, I’ll be able to rest.”
    “At least wait a while before you weave this spell. The boy’s spirit deserves to linger in torment for a time. Perhaps he will be less impatient for power in his next existence if he suffers in a hell of his own making.”
    “ ’Tis a hell of my making! I’ll not wish that fate on any man.” And I loved you, Keegan.
    “Had he waited ’til his