The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

name?—and his father for nigh on twenty years. Neither man had accomplished much in that time.
    No lord had.
    (Lord Quinnault de Tanos dares to dream of peace when the others are too shortsighted to think farther ahead than the next battle.)
    Or the next lover, Nimbulan added, remembering Kammeryl d’Astrismos and his string of younger and younger bedmates. A wave of revulsion flooded his consciousness.
    (Does your reaction to that man tell you the value of your loyalty to him?)
    Too heavy a question. The tangle of bright life forces danced around him with sparkles of joy, of life, love, and laughter.
    Laughter. He’d miss laughter if his next existence proved as full of war and responsibility as the last one.
    (Your latest life doesn’t have to end. You can fill it with love and laughter, with family and friends. You don’t have to be grim and sad all of the time, if you place your loyalty correctly this time. If your loyalty belongs to peace and not to one man who will betray you, you will know Life to its fullest. Peace. Love peace. Love life. Love the one who draws you back to Coronnan. . . .)
    A sinking sensation. Tendrils of pain. Cold. Hands and feet that trembled with weakness and chills. A hard bier pressing against his aching back.
    “I’m alive. I have a body,” Nimbulan whispered through stiff and parched lips. “I’m thirsty and hungry.” Sound echoed in his ears. The kind of sound that bounced against stone walls.
    He tried to open his eyes. He thought they were open. Blackness still surrounded him. A different blackness from the sense-robbing void. Sense-cleansing as well. All traces of a Tambootie hangover had disappeared.
    The sound of dripping water, steady and rhythmic, awakened his other senses. Mold and something rotten assaulted his nose.
    Feebly he snapped his fingers on his right hand, too tired to lift it more than a finger-length above his chest. A tiny flicker of witchlight sat on the end of his index finger. Not much. Enough. He lay on a stone slab in a stone niche—open blackness to his right, solid, damp stone to his left, above and below.
    The witchlight vanished, leaving false flashes before his eyes. He’d seen enough. Only the walls of a crypt were lined with open niches the perfect size of a man’s body.
    He pressed his feet hard against the end of his bier trying to straighten his cramped knees. This burial chamber had been intended for a shorter man.
    Men were shorter in centuries gone by.
    An old crypt. A very damp and untended one. Where would Ackerly and the boys bury him but beneath the chapel in the old monastery? They must have believed him dead. Perhaps he had been dead for a time. During the time he’d wandered the void with the pretty crystal umbilicals.
    For a moment he wanted nothing more than to be a part of the intricate dance of life-that-was-not-Life.
    Some force beyond his ken had given him back his life. The destiny planned for him by the Stargods had not yet been fulfilled.
    And yet the void was so beautiful, so peaceful. . . .
    “Snap out of it!” he admonished himself. The Stargods had returned him to his body for a reason.
    Carefully, he turned his head to the open side and flicked another ball of witchlight ahead of him. Crumbling skeletons filled a few of the other niches. Most people avoided these older crypts because of the sight of so many generations of the dead. No one would think to bring flowers to his tomb and rescue him.
    He had to find his own way out. Only one niche lay between him and the stone floor. He drew up his stiff knees as far as the ceiling of his tomb allowed and inched closer to the edge. He tried to swing one long leg out, only to discover both legs bound together by a shroud. The same shroud, hastily and scantily wound about his body kept his hands crossed on his chest. He could wiggle his fingers but not move very far. Whoever prepared him for burial used just enough winding cloths to keep him in place, and no more.
    He couldn’t break the hold the few cloths had on his limbs. Very well, he’d have to roll out of the niche all at once and hope he didn’t break any bones during his fall.
    As he squirmed and wriggled free of his tomb, the shroud tore and loosened across his chest. He’d been bound in a threadbare old sheet rather than sturdy new linen. He worked his right arm free and felt for the edge. His hand measured the distance and found a small ledge to grasp and ease his fall. Ready to swing his legs out,