The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

thought to himself. Why would she retreat indoors on such a fine day? Not too hot, nor too windy. The sun will shine another candle mark at least.
    The other servants nodded to him as he passed, a now-familiar presence in the palace, as was Katrina. He paused outside her door. He knocked quietly. The door swung open at his first touch.
    He knew before he looked with his eyes that the room was empty. It looked as if she had never been there.
    Gone.
    Pillows, lace, patterns, her clothes, and the little trinkets he’d given her to make the stark room a home.
    Gone.
    He searched the wardrobe, the chest at the foot of the bed, beneath the bed. She had taken the magical lace shawl they’d used to patch Shayla’s wing. Katrina had planned to use the airy lace as her wedding veil.
    Perhaps she had merely gone to the dressmaker for her wedding gown.
    But he knew she had fled.
    She’d run away rather than marry him. Run into danger from the Gnuls, and he couldn’t protect her.

Chapter 17
     
    V areena picked her way over the muddy paths that wound through the village. Rain had made the packed dirt slick and left puddles in every indentation. The summer sun had not climbed high enough to remove the shadows and evaporate the water. The haze that shrouded the monastery seemed to be spreading.
    What would happen to her village if the gloaming spread here and deprived them all of light, distorted time, and trapped them forever? She’d never break free, trade caravans would cease coming . . . They’d all become ghosts.
    She shuddered and wished she were back in bed where she could pull the blankets over her head and pretend none of this was happening.
    But the baker’s son had burned his hand and arm badly, stoking the fire beneath the huge bread oven. Cold water and lard had not eased the boy’s pain, so the family had summoned Vareena out of her warm bed.
    She’d have liked to take her time gathering the eggs herself and preparing breakfast for her brothers. Her chickens never pecked her when she reached for their treasures. She sang soothing songs to them, talked to them, treated them as important assets to the farm. They responded in kind.
    “What kept you?” snarled the baker’s wife. She thrust her hands behind her back, crossing her wrists and flapping her hands. The old ward could not keep Vareena from entering the cottage. The huge mud-and-brick oven that served the entire village heated the place almost beyond tolerance in this bright summer weather.
    A low moan coming from behind the curtain at the back of the low-ceilinged room grabbed Vareena’s attention. Rather than reply to the surly woman, so typical of the villagers, Vareena thrust her way past her. She tore aside the curtain to the dark lean-to that normally contained firewood and food stores for the family.
    The baker had set his son Jeeremy on a rough pallet here before returning to his oven. From the grimace of pain that crossed the boy’s face, Vareena guessed he had been unable to climb the ladder into the sleeping loft above the cottage’s only room.
    “What witchcraft you gonna work on my boy?” the baker’s wife demanded as she inserted herself between Vareena and her son.
    “No witchcraft,” Vareena replied, holding herself rigid rather than flinging herself out of the cottage without so much as looking at the boy. The ghosts might trap her in this hated place, but they at least appreciated her, thanked her for the small services she gave them.
    “I’ll have no witchery, Vareena. Headman’s daughter you might be, but I don’t have to tolerate your evil ways.”
    “If you do not want me to heal your son, why did you send for me?”
    “Baker made me send for you. He needs the boy up and working, not languishing here screaming his heart out. Had I my way, I’d have treated him myself and let him heal slow. Burns heal better slow.”
    Jeeremy did not seem to be screaming, merely moaning. His pain reached out and squeezed Vareena’s heart. She couldn’t abandon him because of his mother’s rude intolerance.
    “I have a salve made of barks and berries,” Vareena said quietly through her clamped teeth. “But first I must cleanse the burn of the lard you slathered on. That might have cooled it a little at first, but such a treatment offers no lasting relief.”
    “You saying I don’t know what is best for my boy?” The woman’s voice rose to near hysteria.
    “I’ll fetch some water.” Vareena ducked out of the dark and