The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

replace magicians and give power to every mundane. Besides, Coronnan doesn’t have any machines to create pollution, so the plague can’t thrive.”
    Powwell glared at her, then returned his attention to running his fingers through the sand. “Maybe these sands will tell me something. They’ve been here a long time. A memory of time distortion might be embedded in them.” He took three deep, slow breaths, triggering a magical trance. The sand continued to drift through his fingers.
    His eyes rolled up and his face took on the blank look of a deep trance. “Fire. Fire burning deep within the Kardia. Fire spreading upward. Fire melting rock. Icy air shattering. Fire. Ice. Time. Time . . .” he chanted in a voice much deeper than his own.
    His words sent chills down her spine, despite the heat. “We have to find Rollett and send him back to help Scarface. Don’t lose track of Kalen. You came to rescue your sister and Rollett,” she interrupted his meditation. Concern for his childhood idol and his half sister should snap him out of the trance.
    Powwell didn’t reply. He shuddered as he pushed himself back into awareness. He jerked his hand away from the sand as if it burned his skin.
    “Rollett can take care of himself. Kalen is much more vulnerable, so young, so untrained. . . .”
    His priorities had always centered on Kalen. And yet . . .
    Didn’t he feel ’tricity shooting through his veins like she did when they touched, even casually?
    “Well, we aren’t going anywhere until the dragongate opens again.” Yaala grimaced as the Kardia shifted beneath her feet again. If they didn’t get out of here soon, the volcano might erupt, with them in the middle of the explosion.
    “The gate can’t open again until the ash clears and the sun creates an arch-shaped shadow for the gate to form in,” Powwell reminded her. “The arch is crucial.”
    “That could take a lifetime or three,” she replied.

Chapter 6
     
    Ancient plateau of Hanassa, time unknown
     
    P owwell paused before hefting another rock to scan the arid landscape around the plateau. Off in the distance a winged ceature drifted on a rising air current. A dragon?
    Help me! he called, trying desperately to contact the being with his mind.
    His head remained empty of outside thoughts. Either it wasn’t a dragon, or the dragons in this place didn’t recognize the need to maintain contact with humans.
    The sands, when he sifted them through his fingers, had told him only of fierce eruptions and cyclonic winds over a long period of time. Yaala had interrupted him before he’d had time to sort through the images to see if this had once been Hanassa, or would be at some time in the future. His gut told him the dragongate had returned him to Hanassa, but the portal had destroyed his planetary orientation—or maybe the time shift had. He had no idea where the magnetic poles lay, which was closest, what phase of the moon they entered or which season.
    He returned to his self-appointed task and dropped a heavy piece of black rock onto the red sandstone where he thought the dragongate had been. He added a second and third rock to the growing pile that came close to matching the pile two long strides to his left. Maybe, if he could get the piles high enough, he could get something akin to an arch shape for the dragongate to form in.
    He couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought the portal had to open and close on the exact same coordinates each time. But then again, maybe it only needed to be in the same vicinity.
    If the natural shadows wouldn’t form an arch, he’d make one. No matter how long it took. The passage of the sun told him that he and Yaala had only been in this landscape less than one day. His magic senses insisted they had spent a week or more here. Magnetic poles tugged at him from all directions.
    To verify his time sense, he’d set up a kind of sundial around the piles of rocks. The sun moved far too slowly.
    He and Yaala were trapped here in this alien landscape without food or water beyond their meager journey rations or protection from the merciless sun.
    If only he’d had more time to study the dragongate back in his days of slavery in Hanassa. If only he’d kept a tighter hold on Kalen to keep her from running after Wiggles, her ferret familiar, as he and Yaala and the others had escaped Hanassa through the dragonate over a year ago. If only . . .
    Guilt and “if onlys” didn’t change the fact that he’d made a