Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) (11 page)

Nick felt Raven’s wing brush his ear. Would the bird remain on his shoulder forever?

“Raven may go wherever he pleases,” the bird intoned.

“Whether it pleases others or not,” the Oomgosh added. “I will rest my toes in the soil. I await your return.”

Nick decided it was time to get a little clarification here. “So you’ll stay on my shoulder?”

“You will need a guide,” Raven replied. “Obar’s castle is much like Obar.”

Yes, Nick thought, Raven would indeed remain on his shoulder forever.

Todd stood at the top of the steps, flexing his shoulders and cracking his knuckles, waiting for the rest of them to catch up. As Bobby and Jason joined him, he waved down at Nick.

“What’s the matter, Nicky-poo? Scared of the dark?”

Nick stared, as startled as if someone had sucker-punched him. That was the old Todd for you, quick with a jab, Mr. High School Wise Guy. Bobby snickered at Todd’s crack. Jason looked surprised and uncomfortable.

Nick suddenly wanted to jump up there and wipe the smirk off Todd’s face. He never let Todd bully him into anything back on Chestnut Circle; he wasn’t going to let Todd get away with anything now, either. He’d tell that guy just where he could shove it. If Todd could move fast, Nick could move faster.

Nick took two steps toward the doorway, and then stopped. The darkness behind Todd looked total, as if it sucked the light from the surrounding air.

Todd glanced back at the doorway himself. “Hey,” he added when he turned back toward Nick, “I don’t think any of us are going to live forever.” His expression had changed, too; his smile looked the slightest bit tentative. Like, maybe he didn’t have all the answers, after all.

“It’s time to go,” the bird said close by Nick’s ear, its voice surprisingly soft. A moment later, the creature added, “Only Raven lives forever.”

Todd turned and strode into the darkness. Bobby was right on his heels, Jason a few paces after the others. Each, in turn, was swallowed by the doorway’s lack of light.

Nick swore and hurried to follow.

Charlie barked and took up the rear. Raven squawked in alarm. “No dog should—” the bird began.

Nick found the anger building in him again. “Charlie’s the only thing I have left from home,” he snapped. “I’m not leaving him behind.”

“If you insist.” The bird turned his head away. “Raven is more than a match for any dog.”

“Sometimes,” called the Oomgosh from where he stood in the sun, “Raven may even be more than a match for Raven.”

Nick climbed the steps and walked into the pool of darkness.

“May good—” the Oomgosh began. His voice cut off abruptly. Nick realized that all the other forest sounds had ceased as well.

Charlie growled. Raven muttered something about wizard tricks.

Somehow Nick kept on moving. He stepped through into light that seemed as bright as that he had just left outside. He was in a large room with the others, a room bordered by grey stone walls, with no doors that Nick could see, only a pair of small windows on opposite sides, neither of them large enough to provide this kind of light.

Above him, quite close to the stone ceiling, was what looked like a miniature sun.

“Ah,” Obar’s voice said abruptly. “I see we’re all together at last.”

Obar had managed to walk in their midst during that second Nick had stared at the ceiling. He was the same old man who had passed out the ice cream, although now, rather than a suit of white, he wore a rumpled outfit of brown, clothes that seemed more fitting to a housepainter or plumber than to a wizard.

“I apologize for any disorientation,” Obar offered as he smiled and pointed up at the tiny sun. “You’ve just passed through a protection and transportation spell. In these times, certain precautions are necessary.” He glanced down at the neighbors. “But everything seems to be working now, doesn’t it?”

A transportation spell? Nick took three quick steps to one of the small windows. They were easily a hundred feet above the manicured lawn; but it was still the same lawn. Nick could see the Oomgosh, standing still as a tree far below. He turned back to the neighbors as Obar continued to talk.

“I’m afraid that I have not prepared you as well as I might.” Obar still smiled, but Nick noticed the strain in the wrinkles around his eyes. “I’m afraid I’m a bit distracted. It is an unavoidable side product of those spells I must deal with.” He made a noise that started as a laugh but ended as a cough. The wizard covered his mouth for a moment until the spasm had passed. “Excuse me. It does not do anyone much good to look at these things too directly.”

Obar sighed as he sat on a stool that Nick hadn’t seen before. “Let me attempt to explain your situation—well, our situation. You see, we have been waiting for you for quite some time. We have a most delicate situation here, and you are necessary to—well, whatever is about to happen.” The wizard stopped and frowned, as if uncertain of what he might say next.

Todd was the first among them to speak. “So you sent for us, then?” Obar waved his hands as if to rapidly dispel any such notion. “Oh, dear, no. I don’t have that sort of power. Even Nunn doesn’t claim that kind of control. No. I’m afraid you were chosen by the dragon.”

Even Nick felt compelled to speak at that. “The dragon?”

“A real dragon?” Bobby said immediately after Nick. “What’s the dragon?” was Todd’s question.

Obar sighed. “What is not the dragon?” He smiled at the expressions of the neighbors. “I do not try to be confusing. Well, perhaps sometimes I do, but that is another matter.” Obar opened his arms wide. “The dragon hides, somewhere inside this world, or maybe somewhere above it. Even the greatest sorcery cannot find him. And even though the creature sleeps, we are—still—all controlled by the dragon. The dragon, you see, has brought us here for its own reasons.”

He paused again; his eyes focused someplace far away from the tower room. “But we can fight it! The dragon is power. If we are to save ourselves, we will have to attempt to harness the power.” He shook his head. “Eventually, we will no doubt all be destroyed by it.”

He looked up at the neighbors. “We are not the first at this. Others have tried. Until now, every one has been destroyed.”

“Wait a minute,” Todd protested. “You’re telling us we’re going to have to do something that’s going to get us killed?” Obar chewed at a ragged fingernail. “Well, hopefully not. There is always hope, isn’t there?”

Charlie growled again.

“Hey,” Bobby broke in with a forced laugh. “Even the dog doesn’t like it.”

But Nick saw his dog staring out in the middle of the room.

“It’s the magic, no doubt,” Obar remarked. “The dog must sense it. It erupts with greater frequency, you know, as the dragon prepares to awake.”

Nick followed the dog’s gaze. There was a spot in the middle of the far wall that seemed hazy, where the sharp lines between stones blurred one atop another.

“You can use the magic sometimes,” Obar continued as he stroked his shaggy mustache. His tone seemed more distracted with every word. “Or it can use you.”

Magic. Nick saw a point of light growing on the wall, or maybe just in front of it, a point so bright it looked like the real sun had bored its way through from the outside world.

He turned back to Obar. Was this light the old man’s doing? But the magician had closed his eyes, as if remembering.

“What if we don’t want to use your magic?” Todd demanded. “What if we don’t want to have anything to do with this?”

“Oh, you will,” Obar replied with a quiet confidence, his voice now barely more than a whisper. “The magic is intoxicating.” He chuckled softly. “And, of course, quite habit-forming.”

Charlie started to bark.

The light burst forth like some tiny firework, except this was a firework with form, for the spreading light grew arms and legs and a head. The thing had lost its intense brightness now, but twinkled with countless points of light, like a creature made of stars. But it wasn’t human; not quite. To Nick it looked more like an ape.

“What?” Obar called in confusion as his eyes snapped open. “This isn’t—”

“Here?” Raven screamed on Nick’s shoulder. “He dares?” Charlie rushed the creature.

One of the creature’s arms flashed forward, the still-moving light catching the dog as he leapt. Charlie was thrown back across the room, yelping in surprise.

The creature of light moved quickly toward the neighbors.

“Hey!” Todd struck out at the thing as the creature enveloped him. Bobby screamed and lost his footing, falling backward toward the floor. The light swallowed him while he was still in midair.

“Raven will not let this be!” the bird called angrily.

Nick felt an instant of intense pain as the bird’s claws dug into his shoulder. The air nearby was filled with a great flapping of wings, mixed with the shouted words of Obar.

Raven cawed and flew straight for the thing.

Obar rushed after the bird. He stared at the light, both hands making rapid gestures as a hundred indecipherable words flew from his lips. There was an intensity about the wizard now that had been lacking before as he focused only on magic.

The light-creature stopped. Its hands flew up in front of what should have been its face.

Raven dived toward it as Obar made a noise so high and strange that it barely seemed human.

The creature screamed.

Raven struck the creature beak-first as the light broke apart like a glass shattering into tiny shards. One by one, the fragments of light flared and vanished.

The creature of light was gone as suddenly as it had arrived. But it seemed to have taken Todd and Bobby with it.

“Once again, Raven has saved the day,” the bird announced as it attempted to resettle on Nick’s shoulder.

“Raven had very little to do with it,” Obar replied, trying to shake his brown costume more suitably back onto his shoulders. His efforts did little more than rearrange the wrinkles. “Nunn was simply not ready for my counterattack.”

“But where’s Todd?” Nick insisted, shaking off the bird. Raven squawked, either at Nick’s unwillingness to be a resting place or at Obar’s insistence that a wizard’s magic had saved the day.

“And Bobby?” Nick continued. “And what’s happened to Charlie?”

The dog lay against the far wall of the room. Charlie still breathed in heavy, rapid gasps. He whimpered softly, his eyes closed.

“Your dog I can cure,” Obar remarked as he strode over to the fallen animal. “After ridding ourselves of Nunn’s magic, patching up this canine will be the easiest and most delightful of tasks.”

“But what about Bobby and Todd?” Jason insisted.

Obar blinked as if he had forgotten all about the two others. “Oh, yes. I imagine they’ve been shifted somewhere by Nunn. Perhaps not where Nunn wanted them. We did get to that creature well before he was done. It’s always very satisfying when you can foil something nasty like that, don’t you think?”

He knelt down by Charlie. Nick realized there was blood on the floor below the dog’s forepaws. Please. He wanted Charlie to be all right. He hoped that this time the magician knew what he was talking about.

“Then you’re just going to leave Bobby and Todd out there?” Jason demanded.

Obar placed a finger to the spot where his nose met his brow, and paused a moment in thought. “We will find them as soon as the effects of the spell dissipate.”

Obar glanced up from the dog to give his remaining guests his very best smile. “Until then, we can but pray that they protect themselves.”

Nick did not find the wizard’s smile at all reassuring.

M
ary Lou was talking about the neighbors.

Afterward, she couldn’t remember how she had gotten started. Well, she began by describing her parents and her brother, but that wasn’t exactly what she meant. (And how about her sister? Somehow, because Susan wasn’t there, she no longer seemed worth talking about.) She talked about how her parents were happier when she didn’t bother them, and how they always paid so much attention to her brother, Jason, and his science projects. And that led to descriptions of Jason’s friend Bobby, with his weird, braying laugh, and the two other teenage boys in the neighborhood, the cute (but shy) Nick and the handsome (but conceited!) Todd. She began to talk about Nick’s mother, and the assistant principal, Mr. Mills, and how they seemed to be spending more and more time together, when another voice interrupted.

Mary Lou opened her eyes. When had she closed them? For an instant, she felt as if she had lost not only her voice but her breath as well, as if a tiny piece of ice had lodged in her lungs.

“That’s quite enough, my dear,” a third voice added.

She blinked and saw a smiling Nunn in front of her. Mary Lou found herself getting really upset. Why should she have wanted to say anything to him?

“Do you have any sense of them?” Nunn asked. His smile was gone; his brow wrinkled with a hundred creases.

Mary Lou didn’t understand him. Was he still speaking to her?

A halo formed around the magician’s head. Nunn’s face relaxed as the light rose to form first a separate skull and then a body beneath.

“Oh, I will find them quite easily,” the child voice replied as it hovered above the wizard. “Mary Lou is so helpful. We must find a way to thank her.”

“Oh,” Nunn agreed, “I think she will have a most important role in what’s to come. Especially if she continues to cooperate. But why don’t you bring her friends to her now?”

“Then they will all be together?” The creature slowly became more solid as it hovered above the magician’s head, so that its face now featured vague shadows for a mouth, a nose, and the sockets of the eyes. It glanced down at the still-unconscious Captain. “Well, almost all.”

“I think the Captain will call back the other one without any further aid,” Nunn answered with a chuckle.

The Captain nodded again, and smiled, as if he was glad to be part of the fun. He still didn’t open his eyes.

“I’ll bring them all together,” the creature said in a voice that was almost singing. “Then, once we’ve made our choices, I can have some real enjoyment.”