The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

king.
    Kinnsell couldn’t help but overhear the man’s thoughts. He smiled to himself. Not often did these locals let their natural shields slip. But when they did, he learned a lot.
    Best he not let them know his own psi powers were strong and growing stronger.
    Something about this planet . . .
    “Very well. I will remove the woman from the University tomorrow after I have reconnoitered. Then I will show your craftsmen how to make a spinning wheel to handle all of the wool your new sheep will produce next spring.”
    “A Wheel!” the lord touched his head, heart, and each shoulder in the approved cross of the Stargods.
    At least Kinnsell’s ancestors had gotten something right in teaching these yokels the gesture of protection and prayer.
    Then the lord crossed his wrists, left over right and flapped his hands in another ward against evil.
    “The Stargods have forbidden the Wheel as well as reading and higher mathematics for all but magicians. Those two things are the keys to all evil.” The lord backed away from Kinnsell, repeating the flapping gesture. When ten meters separated them, he turned and ran into the thick trees as fast as his fat legs and long robe allowed.
    “Damn!” Kinnsell slammed his fist into the trunk of a tree. “Now I have to start all over again. Unless. . . .”

    Ancient plateau of Hanassa, time unknown
     
    Powwell ran into the dragongate. He banged his forehead against a wall of resistance. Hard. Stars burst behind his eyes. The alluring song of the gate rang in his ears with discordant notes, repulsing him rather than drawing him in.
    Yaala had entered the vortex of time and distance while facing him. Her passage must have triggered something, blocking this angle.
    He darted around the shadows and approached the swirling distortion from the other side. His eyes tried to follow the shifting landscape within the gate. He lost his focus, and his head swam. The kardia shifted beneath his feet once more, and he fell headlong into the pulsing spiral of blood red, fire green, and midnight black.
    Thorny hunched within Powwell’s pocket. The hedgehog’s spines jabbed through Powwell’s shirt. Thorny’s blast of emotional upset followed the sharp pricks. First a plunge from the familiar landscape into the horrible desert. No water. Too much light. Uncertainty. Fear. Now this horrible pulsing energy again.
    Thorny was not happy.
    Powwell wasn’t happy either. He had to find Yaala. Everything else in his life lost importance. He had to stay with Yaala.
    Only this opening of the dragongate could lead him to Yaala or Kalen. He didn’t know how to find Kalen without Yaala. He couldn’t think beyond staying beside Yaala.
    He prayed to the Stargods and whatever other forces might hear him that she hadn’t triggered the gate too soon and ended up in the void without an anchor.
    The colors grew more intense, stabbing into his eyes. Powwell clenched them shut. The pain lessened a little. He concentrated on refinding his planetary orientation, hoping to understand how the dragongate worked. Or where it was taking him.
    Energy pulsed around him. He tumbled with it, losing all sense of up and down, right and left. Time and distance became meaningless. He had no idea where or when he traveled, only that he traversed a great distance.
    Numbness filled his mind.
    The dragongate held him seemingly forever.
    Was that a moment of sleep?
    He became aware of his body. No longer tumbling. Energy flowing around and with him, heat and light soothed the aches in his joints. And then . . .
    And then there was green. Lots and lots of green. He lay in it. Breathed its moisture. Luxuriated in the comfort of being home.
    Home! Yes he was home, in Coronnan. The South Pole tugged at his feet, watery sunshine broke through the cloud cover. Sunset was still hours away.
    But where was Yaala?
    He looked around carefully, moving as little as possible. The rocky overhang looked the same as when they’d left it. Hours ago? Days ago?
    No, the season hadn’t changed by more than a few hours. Early spring. The dark of the moon tonight. Not quite noon now. The rain shower dissipated quite rapidly as sunshine broke through the clouds. The rain had just begun when they entered the dragongate for the first time at dawn.
    So where was Yaala?
    Strident voices pierced his ears. Angry men off to his left.
    They probably walked the road that ran from Myrilandel’s village over the pass into the Southern Mountains. It passed