The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

journeyman in the complex, the only buffer between Scarface’s temper and the vulnerable apprentices.
    His mission would not wait, and he would not apologize to Scarface for his disobedience.
    The morning air smelled clean and damp, as if it were just awakening to new adventures. Powwell yawned briefly and stretched. Longingly he looked back at his rumpled bed. No. He’d come too far. His decisions had been made moons ago when he left his sister in Hanassa.
    Resolutely, he shouldered his pack and pulled Thorny out of his tunic pocket. The little hedgehog tried to curl into a tight ball. Normally nocturnal, dawn signaled his preferred sleep time. Powwell roused him with a thought. Reluctantly, Thorny uncurled and wiggled his nose. The scent of fresh bread baking, heightened by Thorny’s keen nose, made Powwell’s stomach growl.
    Guillia, the cook, housekeeper, and surrogate mother for the University—and also Kalen’s mother, but not Powwell’s—had probably been awake for hours preparing the hearty breakfast required by magicians who burned tremendous amounts of energy working their talents for the good of the kingdom.
    Silently, Powwell crept down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairwell, he turned left into the now enclosed corridor, then immediately left again, and stepped down three uneven stairs to the kitchen. When Nimbulan first established the University in the abandoned monastery, this room had been the kitchen where Powwell and two other apprentices gathered with Journeymen Bessel, Rollett, and Master Nimbulan. Jaanus and Gilby, the missing journeymen had been there also, along with Old Lyman the librarian. The cooking fire kept them warm in the drafty abandoned monastery during that first long winter.
    Powwell smiled in memory of the bonds of friendship and loyalty they had all formed. His mouth watered for the taste of the Tambootie flavoring his tea. The University would never lace any food or drink with the Tambootie again.
    He hated leaving Bessel and Lyman alone with Scarface. Only those two remained from the days when Nimbulan ran the University with a strict but loving paternal air. He’d made the University into a family. Scarface turned it into a stern and unforgiving institution.
    “One day you’ll learn, Scarface, that the strongest family is one that is bound together by silken cords of love. Some members may leave, but they will return when needed. You prefer to force your fellows to follow you with iron chains of control. Once we escape, we’ll never return to you,” he muttered as he skirted the long dining tables on his way to the new kitchen, separated from the refectory by a short passage.
    Out of long habit, he paused and probed the kitchen with his magic before entering. The years of constant warfare during his youth had made him cautious. The time he had spent as a slave in Hanassa had taught him suspicion. A curious vacancy beyond the door made the hair on his nape stand up. Thorny hunched, all of his spines bristled.
    Someone had built a bubble of armor around themselves to keep a conversation very private.
    That had never stopped Powwell before. He’d survived war, slavery, Hanassa, and Scarface by learning to eavesdrop. Of course, the armor erected by two magicians using dragon magic might be harder to penetrate than one maintained by a solitary magician. He’d just have to probe deeper.
    Powwell opened the door to the kitchen, making sure his magic silenced the hinges and prevented a cool draft from announcing an intruder. He breathed in the welcoming scent of fresh bread, bacon, and dried fruit stewing in wine and spices. Quickly he silenced his growling stomach.
    He searched the room, brightened by cooking fires, for any distortions of light. There, to the left of the hearth in the chimney nook, shadows gathered more deeply than they should. Only a light shell of armor surrounded the magicians since the only other person in the room was Guillia who was presumed to have no magic other than her instinct for providing wonderful meals for empty stomachs precisely when needed.
    A quick probe of red-and-black light, showing Powwell’s unique signature very nicely now that he knew how to see his own colors, and he ducked back into the passageway, leaving the door ajar a tiny crack.
    “Bessel was right to refuse the quest! Scarface needs him to help with all the new apprentices he brings in by the sledgeload,” Red Beetle hissed.
    Powwell heard the click as the