The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

spell.
    “What are you doing, Powwell? You’re enticing them this way!”

Chapter 32
     
    Afternoon, the pit beneath the city of Hanassa
     
    “S end the consort to me,” Powwell called to the Rovers gathering in the large cavern. “My death will not appease Simurgh unless it is the consort herself who kills me. She must taste my blood!”
    Inside his pocket, Thorny hunched and bristled his spines as far out as he could. The sharp tips penetrated Powwell’s tunic, pricking his skin. Powwell inhaled sharply at the ache in his heart and the sensitivity of his skin. But no blood flowed from the tiny wounds.
    That’s right, Thorny, he whispered with his mind to his familiar. Just the way we rehearsed it.
    “What are you doing?” Rollett and Yaala each grabbed one of Powwell’s arms, dragging him back. Back toward the dragongate.
    Powwell smiled inwardly as he caught a glimpse of the reds and black of the desert scene forming within the portal—so very similar to the scene the other gate had taken him and Yaala to, but different. This one opened into the same time as where he stood. The other one had drifted in time, taking Powwell and Yaala to Hanassa of many aeons ago.
    Both deserts would not support human life for long. And if the dragongate held true to its previous patterns, it would cycle through many inhospitable locations before opening into someplace green—maybe Coronnan, maybe someplace else.
    At the mouth of the tunnel, a black-veiled figure emerged into the uncertain light.
    “Is that what you really want, Powwell?” the consort asked. Her voice grated harshly in the confines of the tunnel. Kalen’s voice, but not her voice, deeper, harsher. “Do you want your sister to be the one to consign you to your next existence in the most unpleasant way I can think of?”
    Slowly, the girl/woman removed the black lace veil. She dropped the priceless silk on the rough floor. It rippled as it fell, like cool water over a waterfall. Gravel and sand snagged the fine threads.
    Powwell looked into his sister’s gray eyes, so like his own and yet . . .
    Wiggles, Kalen’s ferret familiar remained draped across her left shoulder, unmoving. Powwell lifted one eyebrow at it.
    “You killed the ferret and stuffed it because it would not stay with Hanassa, the renegade dragon. You are not as powerful as you want others to believe. Does the wraith haunt you? Does she keep you awake at night whispering of aching emptiness at the death of Wiggles?” He took another step back, pushing Yaala and Rollett against the wall. Only he stood between the consort and the dragongate.
    Hot wind shot through the gate, caressing Powwell’s skin with the enticement of escape.
    He shut his mind to the need to turn and run through the opening, no matter where it took him. But he noticed Yaala and Rollett edging closer and closer to the inhospitable scene.
    “Kalen died, leaving her body behind for me. I am Hanassa. I have always been Hanassa!” the consort proclaimed. She lifted her arms, palm outward as if embracing the entire volcano.
    “Then, Hanassa, you will have to come get me. You won’t be satisfied until you have my blood on your hands and in your mouth!”
    She took four long paces closer to Powwell, not enough.
    Thorny squirmed and pressed himself closer to Powwell’s chest. A tiny drop of blood trickled down Powwell’s chest, over his heart. The sharp lance of pain, brief though it was, sent power singing through his veins, enhancing the fading energy he’d gathered from the severed heads.
    “Come and get me, Kalen. Join me in the pit of hell!” Powwell teetered on the edge of the pit. Boiling rock flared upward. The heat nearly seared his back. Sweat poured down his face and made his palms slick.
    “Powwell, stop this. I beg you,” Yaala tried to pull him away from the edge. “You’re my only friend, I can’t let you do this.”
    Powwell closed his eyes rather than look at her. He knew if he saw tears in her eyes—tears in the eyes of a woman who never cried, who had survived horrors he could only imagine—he’d throw away his carefully laid plans.
    “It’s the only way to save Kalen, Yaala. If this doesn’t work, stay with Rollett. You can trust him.”
    “Thanks, but no thanks,” Rollett said, stepping beside him. “I’ll help you, but I’m taking the next portal through the dragongate.”
    Powwell smiled his acknowledgment as he opened his mind a fraction to allow Rollett a brief glimpse of