Nanya of the Butterflies

By Barbara Hambly

Sequel to the Sun Wolf and Starhawk series. In his quest for a wizard to teach him to use his powers, ex-mercenary captain Sun Wolf thinks he may have finally found one. Unfortunately, it looks like that wizard, whoever it is, has summoned a dragon to destroy an innocent town - and it’s the second dragon to afflict the town in two years. Yet the only wizard in the town itself is an untaught - and very pretty - little hedge-witch who sells perfumes and illusions, leaving Sun Wolf and his warrior partner Starhawk to hunt for the greater and more dangerous mage unaided.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Hambly
• Release date: Jun 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311329745

Barbara Hambly

Since her first published fantasy in 1982 - The Time of the Dark - Barbara Hambly has touched most of the bases in genre fiction. She has written mysteries, horror, mainstream historicals, graphic novels, sword-and-sorcery fantasy, romances, and Saturday Morning Cartoons. Born and raised in Southern California, she attended the University of California, Riverside, and spent one year at the University of Bordeaux, France. She married science fiction author George Alec Effinger, and lived part-time in New Orleans for a number of years. In her work as a novelist, she currently concentrates on horror (the Don Simon Ysidro vampire series) and historical whodunnits, the well-reviewed Benjamin January novels, though she has also written another historical whodunnit series under the name of Barbara Hamilton.Professor Hambly also teaches History part-time, paints, dances, and trains in martial arts. Follow her on Facebook, and on her blog at livejournal.com.Now a widow, she shares a house in Los Angeles with several small carnivores.

Book preview

NANYA OF THE BUTTERFLIES

by

Barbara Hambly

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Barbara Hambly

Cover art by Eric Baldwin

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Nanya of the Butterflies

About the Author

The Further Adventures

Nanya of the Butterflies

by

Barbara Hambly

The dragon came down on Ilfagen like death-storm and nightfall.

Bronze, green, and purple it flashed in the firelight; eyes like diamond jetting flame. Cattle and horses it caught up in claws like black scimitars; the burning vomit of its mouth scorched barns and houses, so that the screaming of women and children carried over the woodlands with the charred stink of smoke.

There’s something wrong…

Even in his dream, Sun Wolf felt it. Like the smell of smoke in the night, of blood in a dark room.

Chief?

Starhawk’s touch was enough to waken him and her voice enough to keep him from going for the sword that, even now – almost two years since he’d given up the life of a mercenary captain – he kept beside his bed.

It was dark in the hut that they shared, in the Lost Hills near the sources of the Tashbourne. The winds that combed screaming over these barren lands eight months of the year were still, and moonlight fell through the open windows and made a succession of white stepping-stones across the silk-smooth oak of the worn floor.

What is it?

A dragon. His first words on waking hurt, as they always did; the scarred mess left of his throat would stiffen up when he slept. A dragon has come to Ilfagen.

Automatically he pulled his eye-patch out from under the pillow, slipped it on in case the conversation progressed to the point of lighting a candle. The Hawk had seen him in far worse shape in her years as his second-in-command – and had certainly gotten used to the sight of the scarred and empty socket – but there was no need to be revolting.

Yeah, that was last year. She sat up, baby-silk hair a close-cut fluff of ivory in the moonlight. King Sidthe gave his daughter’s hand in marriage to the warrior who slew it – and I always wondered what the poor girl thought of that arrangement? I mean, what if the guy turned out to be a total podex? He was a prince or something from the royal house of Ciselfarge…

No, said the Wolf, knowing what he said was the truth. This was tonight. This was now.

"They got a second dragon?"

I don’t know, but I think this one was summoned.

*

Moggin Aerbaldus, the scholar with whom Sun Wolf and Starhawk shared the hillside hermitage, allowed, over breakfast the following morning, that he had read of mages summoning dragons, though it was uncommon. For one thing, once summoned, they are impossible either to control or dismiss—

Oh, nice. The Hawk poured out tea from the iron pot on the sheltered porch where they sat. The porch functioned as a summer kitchen: though houses in these wasted northlands had to be banked with pine-boughs every winter to keep in the warmth, once the tardy spring finally arrived everyone in the tiny village of Deepgore– the nearest settlement, half a day’s ride to the south – lived in these open rooms.

For another, the scholar went on, all the books agree that it takes great power to summon even a young dragon. They are uncanny creatures, and their strength grows with age. There is magic in them – that’s why all the grimoires list their bones, teeth, scales and blood as ingredients in spells – and so they cannot be commanded, as mages can learn to command beasts and birds.

Sun Wolf growled. The absence – in the score or so of books he had managed to assemble concerning the theory and practice of the magic which had been unlocked in his body and bones two years previously – of any spell concerning the command of birds and beasts was something of a sore point. After over a year of experimentation the household was still relying on Moggin’s cats to keep the mice away.

So there’s a wizard of major strength in or near Ilfagen.

"Who thinks