Read The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II for Free Online

dried nuts and berries from her pack to restore the energy she’d spent. Her stomach wouldn’t tolerate the taste of meat in this bloody environment. She craved the nutrients in meat, though. If only she had some cheese.
    Behind her, Amaranth prowled the shadows, seeking those who needed Myri the most.
    His plaintive mew called her to the center of the tent.
    Already two of the healers and a red-robed magician—she guessed he was a priest from the color he wore—stood over an unconscious man with his right arm dangling from a sliver of bone and tendril of white ligament. Magic hovered in the air around the healers who worked to save a life. Still the soldier’s lifeblood pumped out of him.
    Heedless of the censure that might come from the priest, Myri obeyed the persistent demands of her talent.
    A Song of sweet healing sprang to her lips as a bundle of special herbs and moss came to her hand from her pack. She shouldered aside the older of the gray healers who stood helplessly at the patient’s head.
    Breathe in, hold, breathe out, hold. Her head cleared and magic simmered within her. A second deep breath and hold. Power tingled in her fingertips, focused and ready to fulfill its promise of healing.
    “Hold his arm in place,” she whispered to the female healer. She nodded, too tired and numb to do anything but obey.
    “Magic isn’t enough for a wound this severe,” the elder of the two male healers countermanded. “The only way to save the arm is to stitch the blood vessels and the layers of muscle. But ’twill take too much time. We must amputate and cauterize to stop the bleeding.”
    “Please, let me try,” Myri begged even as she made a poultice of her herbs in a bucket of clean water at the patient’s feet.
    “Ye’ll not save him. I sense his spirit passing into the void already,” the priest grabbed her hands in his own. Gnarled, scarred hands, meticulously clean, even under the neatly trimmed fingernails. A crescent scar that could have come from human teeth stood out from the knife-straight markings at the base of his right thumb.
    “I can’t allow you to interfere with the man’s passing into his next existence.” His voice was soft, caring. An unwary person could fall under the spell of that voice.
    But Myri was wary. She noted the patches and threadbare spots where his elbows stuck through the faded red robe. She looked up into the priest’s face, knowing she would encounter hate and fear in his black eyes. She’d seen that robe before. She had inflicted that scar on his thumb when he’d tried to interfere with her first serious healing—before she knew enough to fear him.
    “Moncriith,” she whispered. Not a priest. A Bloodmage who fueled his powers with blood and pain while he preached against demons only he could see. If he were here, then his followers wouldn’t be far away. How many hundreds awaited his orders to burn those who interfered with the Bloodmage’s wishes?
    “Witchwoman Myrilandel.” He jerked his hands away from her.
    “Let me save this man. Please.” She pressed her hands tighter against the severed arm, willing the blood vessels to mend and join before Moncriith could stop her. His campaign against witchwomen as the tools of demons was well known in every village where she and Magretha had sought sanctuary. Hundreds of women wandered Coronnan, homeless and maligned because Moncriith had labeled them witchwomen—whether they had magical talent or not.
    “Because of you, a man walks soulless through life,” Moncriith intoned. He lifted his hands in an appeal to the Stargods as he raised his voice to carry throughout the hospital tent. “Five years ago, you interfered with a man’s destined passage into his next existence with your demon-spawn spells.”
    Off to the side, a soldier touched head, heart, and both shoulders, the Stargods’ ward against evil. Then he crossed his wrists and fluttered his hands in a more ancient sign. Amaranth butted his head