The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

touching it, as soon as we leave the room. It is tainted with magic and poison. I sense blood in the ink—the work of a Bloodmage!” Ackerly bowed his head and closed his eyes until the gasps and murmurs of the apprentices died away. “I should have been here to guide the spells. I could have intercepted the message and kept Nimbulan from going into the void so soon after the first spell. If he’d waited, the poison in that parchment might not have affected him so strongly.”
    Powwell sobbed openly. Zane and Haakkon sniffed.
    Suddenly their love for Nimbulan irritated Ackerly. They don’t love me! But he was the one who made sure they were fed and had blankets and firewood to keep out the winter chills. He was the one who did all the work around here.
    He suppressed his anger. After Nimbulan was safely buried, he could show these ungrateful boys where their loyalty should lie.
    His thoughts kept returning to the possibilities for the future, now that Nimbulan and his ideals no longer hindered him.
    “We must dress him in his ceremonial robes for burial. Delay will serve no purpose. There is a crypt beneath the chapel. I can think of no more fitting place for him to take his final rest. We will bury him at sunset.” Abruptly, he turned on his heel and exited the room before he broke out in shouts of glee.
    Free, I’m free at last! He’d just slip Nimbulan’s formal robes over his everyday clothes. That way he wouldn’t have to pay the village women to wash and prepare the body. A little delusion spell would make the boys think he’d wrapped the body tightly in expensive shroud cloths, but he’d only use strips from an old sheet. No use spending any more money on the dead than necessary. They certainly weren’t in a position to appreciate it.
    Only briefly did he wonder at the warmth and suppleness of the body that had supposedly been dead for some five hours.
     
    A tangle of bright umbilical cords knotted and dragged Nimbulan across the void so fast he couldn’t comprehend the colors or his destination. He sensed, more than saw, a purpose or design in the symbolic life forces. All seemed to be shimmering crystal tinged with a primary hue. Except the center one. The one driving the others flashed all colors of the spectrum so fast it appeared to be no color at all.
    A thought struggled to be born in his consciousness, for he had no body or brain left to house such things. These strange life forces must be guiding him to his next existence. An existence free of his addiction to Tambootie. The drug was necessary to enhance the inborn talent of magic. Too bad it also hastened his next existence. An existence he couldn’t yet imagine, but wanted to reach. Now. Without delay, before he regretted leaving Coronnan and his work unfinished.
    (The time is not yet ripe for you to leave your destiny behind.) The bright life forces wrapped tighter around him, propelling him deeper into the void, or out of it. He couldn’t tell which without a body to sense direction.
    Once before that voice had sent him out of the void. Who? What?
    His questions and concerns dissipated. The effort to remember was too much. Better to drift with the bright life forces. Red and blue, green and yellow. Red for Keegan. Blue for himself. Yellow for Ackerly. Green for the combined auras of his apprentices. Iridescent crystal all color/ no color reminded him of Myrilandel with her pale blond hair and skin so thin her blood veins shone through it, pulsing purple shadows like bruises. . . .
    (Go back, Nimbulan.)
    Why?
    (Impudence in a human will not be tolerated!)
    Was that a chuckle behind the demanding voice? Nimbulan fought the lethargy of the sense-robbing void. Laughter. Humor. Irony. These were the qualities of Life. Qualities he missed greatly, had known too little of these last years. So many of his friends and acquaintances had died. We should have explored the world with laughter rather than fight each other to the death, he mentally addressed the spirits of all his fallen comrades.
    He appreciated the quirk of fate that he found laughter in the infinite darkness but not in his corporeal life. He laughed with the voices who loved Life and wanted to make the most of it.
    What was his life? All he’d known for many years was a driving need to find new magic, better magic to protect his lord. The only lord capable of holding together the volatile factions of Coronnan and ending the wars.
    He’d supported that lord—what was his