The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

temple.
    Vareena stood just inside the gates, holding a covered basket—probably full of food.
    “What ails you, Marcus, Robb?” Vareena gasped, clutching her throat in alarm. b “A—g-gho-ghost!” Marcus panted. He leaned heavily against the gatehouse wall as he drew in deep draughts of air.
    “But you are the ghosts here. No one else,” she protested. She furrowed her brow in puzzlement, tilting her adorable little nose down.
    Marcus reached out to smooth tight worry lines from her face. A barrier of burning energy repulsed his hand. He clenched it into a fist instead.
    “We. Are. Not. Ghosts,” Robb stated breathlessly. “We did not die, leaving our spirits behind.”
    “You only forget your passing, Robb. You are both truly ghosts,” Vareena insisted.
    “No, we aren’t,” Marcus agreed with his friend. “That—thing—haunting the library is a real ghost. And it is royally pissed . . . um . . . I mean perturbed by our presence.”
    “If there is truly another ghost in this place, why have I not sensed his presence? Why have I not seen him in all these past twenty years? I assure you, you two are the only ghosts currently residing here.” She placed her hands upon her hips and pursed her lips as if reprimanding errant children.
    “I beg to differ, my dear.” Robb assumed his normal preaching tone, so obviously missing earlier today. “The entity we encountered in the library has most certainly staked a claim there. You admitted that you had not explored any part of the monastery other than the rooms occupied by your guests. The villagers shun the place unless required by you to make repairs, and even then they usually restrict themselves to the residential wing. Why should anyone have disturbed that thing other than your other guests who examined the building out of boredom, or seeking an exit. I can only presume they, too, were frightened away by this true ghost and did not explore further. Therefore, I must conclude that the answer to our quest for escape lies within the library.” Robb finally paused to breathe.
    “I am not going back to that library!” Marcus trembled. “It wanted to carve out my heart with that sacrificial knife. Didn’t you see how much blood it dripped, how it reeked of the grave, and carried the chill of the void between existences?” Had he truly felt all that, or had his imagination filled in the gaps from old stories passed around apprentice dormitories late at night on Saawheen Eve?
    “Yes, I did see all that and felt the same unnatural chill,” Robb said thoughtfully, tapping his teeth. He began to pace a serpentine path around Marcus and Vareena. “That is how I know it to be a true ghost.”
    “A ghost is a ghost!” Vareena protested. “I shall prove it to you. You two are the only ghosts here.” She set down her basket, pushed past the two magicians, and marched back along the colonnade toward the library. Her footsteps echoed against the flagstones.
    Marcus suddenly realized that he and Robb made no noise as they moved about the old place. Their boots with sturdy leather soles and hard wooden heels should clomp noisily with every step.
    The gloaming seemed to absorb the sounds of their passing. He wondered if they stood on the edge of the void between the planes of existence. The sense-robbing blackness of the void when one first entered could also rob a man of his sanity if he did not have a purpose, a question to ask. Only when he held that purpose or question firmly in his mind did the multicolored umbilicals of life become visible. If one had patience and courage, a man could sort through the life forces that surrounded him in the void that represented all those important to him in reality.
    Perhaps . . . If he could summon enough magic for a trip into the void, he could find a way home.
    “Robb.” He stopped his friend from following Vareena with a hand upon his shoulder. No barrier of energy repulsed his touch as it did with Vareena. “Robb, maybe we are ghosts of a sort. Our boots make no noise, we can touch each other but not her. Perhaps we are at the edge . . .”
    “True. Our condition is not normal. But we cannot pass through walls, we require food and drink—we both eliminate bodily wastes regularly. And we have no memory of injury or death. None of that indicates that we have left our bodies behind as we would in death or on a trip through the void. We have bodies. We just aren’t truly in one reality or another, but trapped