The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

monastery. He had wandered in two years ago, seeking a night’s shelter after becoming separated from a trading caravan that was headed for the pass into SeLenicca. After that first night he had not been able to leave. He did not remember dying.
    She only knew that he brightened her lonely days, made her feel useful and important. And now he offered her freedom.
    At a price. His death.
    The wind howled around her father’s cottage. Vareena shivered and drew her shawl closer about her. She should have gone to the ancient monastery hours ago. Farrell needed her. He felt the cold so acutely. She would take him her extra blanket though he usually refused the little comforts she offered. She should have gone to him before noon, as she usually did. But the storm had come upon them quickly and she had been hard pressed to get the villagers, sheep, and plow steeds under shelter. Already the creek threatened to flood.
    The ghost needed her. She sensed him passing into his next existence, finally. He’d lingered between this world and the void for two years, neither here nor there. Neither alive nor dead. A nameless man—he’d admitted that Farrell was but the name of his boyhood hero, a man he wished to emulate—lost to his loved ones. Only Vareena cared for him. Cared about him.
    No one, not even a ghost deserved to die alone. Over the years she’d sat beside five other ghosts as they finally gave up this existence. None of them had lasted more than two years. She’d been only seven when she sat the death watch with her first ghost. Her mother had died suddenly and left Vareena the odd destiny to care for the ghosts who periodically appeared in the abandoned monastery, a calling inherited by the women of her family for nearly three hundred years. They were the only ones who could see the ghosts and knew what they needed and how to provide for them.
    Suddenly Vareena stood up. “I’m going back up there,” she announced to her father and five brothers. Something tugged at her senses. She couldn’t sit here listening to the wind any longer.
    “Stay, Vareena. The storm,” Ceddell, her father, objected. He whittled a toy sheepdog for his four-year-old grandson.
    “Let this one go, Eena,” Yeenos, the second oldest brother said, looking her directly in the eye. “Your ghost is just a drain on our supplies. No work, no food. That’s the rule, for everyone but your s’murghin’ ghosts!”
    “He’s lost between here and the void. I can’t allow his soul to depart unguided,” Vareena stated.
    “Maybe there isn’t really a ghost at all. You’re the only one who can see them. Maybe you’re feeding a bunch of outlaws. Why should we take necessary supplies away from our families to feed a bunch of criminals and repair their building? We could use some of those finely dressed stones ourselves,” Yeenos continued, his voice rising with his passion. “I say we tear down that cursed building.” His fist clenched as if he needed to pound something, or someone.
    Vareena backed away from his temper. He’d never hit her before, but a number of men in the village had crooked noses and missing teeth from violent connections with his fists.
    “I’ll go with you, Eena.” Uustass, the eldest of the brood, stood up to join her. “Stargods know, we’ve never been able to keep you from your duty. Might as well do our best to take care of you when you get a calling.”
    “Stay, Uustass.” She waved him back to his stool and the leather he braided for new steed harnesses. “You’ll only catch a chill and be miserable for weeks. Bad enough I’ll have to take soup and poultices to half the village in the morning. I don’t need to tend you as well. Stay with your children and tell them stories so the storm doesn’t frighten them.”
    Uustass had lost his wife in childbed last winter. He always seemed lost now unless Vareena gave him something specific to do.
    “Take him, or you stay,” her da commanded. “Lost your mam to a storm. Not lose you.” His voice carried the weight of years of experience leading the village, judging misdeeds, and deciding the crop rotation and beast fertility.
    No one disobeyed him when he used that tone as if he begrudged each word.
    Vareena was tempted.
    “Very well. Uustass, take the cloak I oiled yesterday. There’s soup in the pot and bread in the hearth oven for supper. Serve yourselves when you get hungry. I don’t think this will take long.” She fetched her own garment