The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

altar. A large tapestry showing the three Stargod brothers descending to Kardia Hodos upon a silver flame covered the area immediately behind the slab of blue marble. The cold flames in the woven picture looked amazingly like an antique space shuttle. The murmur of quiet voices filtered through the beautiful needlework. Kinnsell looked closer and realized the tapestry separated the main worship area from another room.
    The feminine voice became tearful. The masculine voice whispered soothing comfort.
    Kinnsell and Maia listened closer.
    “Scarface threw me out! I’m not to return to his island again. Not even to visit my husband,” the woman wailed.
    “He must have had a reason. Have you been remiss in your duties as cook?” The priest kept his voice neutral.
    “I provide amply for my boys at the University. I feed the Masters even better, but does he appreciate my efforts, my talents? No. He says that women distract his magicians from their true calling. He says that women represent the old magic and that all traces of it must be eradicated. He told me to be gone before dawn.”
    “That is a serious change from what I was taught in my early training as a magician, before I opted for the priesthood.”
    Kinnsell remembered that all the priests and healers in this world must first be magicians. Their first loyalty would always be to the Commune. The woman Guillia might have made a mistake taking her problem to a priest.
    “I am not to return to the island again, not even to retrieve my belongings or kiss my husband good-bye. I have lived there three years. It is my home! And my mundane children must leave, too. Nimbulan promised them an education. They can’t learn to read and cipher anywhere but at the University. What is to become of us? We have no place to go!”
    “Guillia, only magicians may learn to read. That is the law of the Stargods. Scarface is correct in removing your sons from the school. But surely your husband will support you? He can buy you and the children a house on another island. He can live there and work at the University.”
    “You don’t know Stuuvart very well.” The woman snorted in disgust. “He’s more interested in counting his crates and barrels in the storeroom than in the welfare of his family.”
    Kinnsell had heard enough. The Senior Magician sought to consolidate his power by evicting all the women from the University, in the name of removing all traces of the old magic—whatever that was. He’d condemned a journeyman magician for using that old magic in an effort to save a drowning man. What would be his next step in controlling everything in this miserable country?
    The library. The storehouse of all knowledge accumulated since the Stargods had left the family book collection here seven hundred years ago. Over half of it was locked away already. How long before its existence—even protected by iron bars and telekinetic locks—proved too dangerous and Scarface destroyed the wonderful treasure trove of books?
    Kinnsell had to go back and save all of those wonderful books. His books! But he had to get Maia away from here in order to win the support of the lords. How much time did he have?

    Near dawn the morning after the dark of the moon, the pit beneath the city of Hanassa
     
    “The spirit of Hanassa used my mother’s body!” Yaala exclaimed. That explained why Yaassima had executed her consort for no reason and exiled her own daughter—her only child and heir. Hanassa controlled the city and thirsted only for blood and more blood. Hanassa didn’t need an heir, he would simply invade the next convenient body.
    Did the spirit displaced by Hanassa become the next wraith that haunted the pit?
    Relief made Yaala’s knees tremble and her head light. She need not fear falling into the pattern of her mother’s ruthlessness because the Yaassima she knew hadn’t been her mother.
    “But the wraith was here in the pit before Yaassima died, Yaala,” Powwell argued.
    “The wraith we knew was my mother’s spirit. And now it is someone else’s.” Yaala glared at Powwell as if begging him not to shatter her brief moment of looking toward her future with something akin to confidence and hope.
    “Who is the wraith now? We have to know who, so we can deal with Hanassa in that person’s body,” Rollett reminded them. “Neither the wraith nor Piedro is going to allow us to just walk out of Hanassa.”
    Powwell’s face looked bland and empty. Thorny retreated deep