Dragons of the Watch (36 page)

Tak stamped his feet. “Maa! Maa! Maa!”

“Here now,” Bealomondore’s raised voice brought sudden order to the chaos. He pointed to two boys. “You and you take off the harness.” He pointed to two girls. “You go to Tak’s head and talk soothingly to him. Tell him you’re sorry for scaring him and that everything is going to be all right.”

The rest of the children pouted.

“Don’t worry, you’ll all have to help turn the wagon, and there will be more opportunities to help from now on. You’re no longer a bunch of scalawags. Miss Ellie has decided you are family. And each member of a family does important jobs.”

The about-face of the cart came off without any big problems. Tak was rehitched with the help of two different boys, then many hands made light work of hefting Porky into the bed of the wagon. They trooped to the back door. The children skipped and darted in and out of the stacks of furniture on either side of the path. The dragons flew above them, swooping and doing aerobatics. The children giggled and squealed their appreciation of the show. Ellie walked beside the cart with a hand on Porky.

Bealomondore led the way but made them all wait while he consulted with Det.

“This is going to be a perilous journey,” he announced soberly.

The children’s eyes grew big.

Ellie knew what he was going to say, and it made her mad enough to spit. Yawn couldn’t just leave them alone.

“Yawn has set up ambushes along the way,” Bealomondore said in a deep and serious tone. “We can avoid them with Det’s help.”

“Let’s ambush the ambushes,” said Cinder, with no fear but a lot of excitement.

A chorus of enthusiastic agreement came from the cluster of children.

Ellie saw and felt Bealomondore’s waning patience. His face clouded, and the irritation that passed to her signaled a possible explosion. She decided to intervene.

“We will avoid them as much as possible,” said Ellie. “It is not our intention to match their ferocity. We will behave as civilized people. They can be barbarians if they choose.”

“What do civilized people do?” asked Cinder.

She could feel Bealomondore’s sudden shift in attitude. Her tumanhofer hero fought to keep from laughing. Ellie ignored him.

“Civilized people mind their manners,” she answered the boy.

Cinder shook his head in disgust. “I think barbaring would be more fun.”

Old One in the library could probably hear Bealomondore’s guffaw. Ellie closed her eyes and counted.

Bealomondore stood at the door of the furniture emporium. He could feel the impatience of the children behind him, urging him to move. But the situation outside the old building stirred up caution. Det said the renegade children had collected rocks and left them in strategic places along the route to the library. He contemplated waiting until nightfall, but Ellie’s objection registered in his mind.

“Oh, please, Bealomondore. I want Porky settled. The children are hungry. Isn’t there some way we can make it?”

Yes, we can make it, but it won’t be a straight path. Are you ready?

“Yes.”

One minute, and we’ll be out of here
.

He mindspoke to the minor dragons. They flew into the air, and he watched as they bombarded the boys bent on mischief, who were crowding the flat roof of a shoe shop across the street. The dragons dived and grasped the boys’ hair, giving a yank before letting go and flying upward. They spat at any child who threw a rock. Their colorful saliva stung, and they rarely missed.

“This way,” Bealomondore said as he gestured toward the alley. “Stay together and don’t dawdle.”

The clatter and bang of the wagon wheels on the rough descent from sidewalk to street alerted the children above. Bealomondore saw them dart away from the edge of the roof.

He guided his entourage down the alley. Det returned to report another corner armed with rock-throwing six-year-old thugs. Bealomondore turned away from the library to avoid the attack. Det took off and soon reported that the marauding urohms were perplexed. They had lost the wagon and its escorts when they didn’t approach the library along any of the obvious routes.

“Good,” said Bealomondore.

“What’s good?” asked Cinder.

“Yawn and his gang don’t know where we are.”

“How do you know what he knows and what he doesn’t?”

“Det told me.”

“The dragon?” Cinder opened his eyes wide and stared at the dragon now riding on the front rim of the cart. “Tiptop parnot snot! I never knew they could talk.” He squinted his eyes and examined Bealomondore’s profile.

“Why are you staring at me?” asked the tumanhofer.

“Do you understand that noise they make? Do you speak that twitty kind of talk?”

“They understand each other with the language they use out loud. I understand what they are thinking, words and pictures. It takes some getting used to, but if you have the gift, you can learn to fashion the information together to make sense.”

Amee flew around the corner, a black and white blur of scales and wings. She passed overhead without stopping.

“What’d it say?” demanded Cinder. “What’d it say?”

“She said to go through the theater. Yawn has no one guarding that area.” Bealomondore approached the street and paused to look over the immediate vicinity. “Det?”

The dragon took off and circled above the intersection. He came back, and Bealomondore signaled for his followers to move forward.

Cinder seemed to be jumping rather than walking. His excitement burst out in small leaps. “He said no one was here, right? He looked and didn’t see anyone, so you knew we could move, right?”

“Right, but you’d better be quiet, or Yawn’s gang will hear you.”

Bealomondore opened one of the front doors of the theater. Cinder held the other while Tak and the children and Ellie entered. They stopped in the lobby and waited until they were all gathered.

Soo-tie squirmed through the knot of people to get to Bealomondore. “I know the way. I play in here a lot. There’s a back door behind the stage.” She pointed. “On that side.”

Bealomondore nodded. He’d explored this building several times during the months before Ellie came. He went to Tak’s head and led the goat and cart through the doors into the theater proper. The rest of the crowd followed.

He saw Ellie start at the sight of the cavernous room. The rows and rows of huge seats looked like markings on a scalloped seashell. Large glass windows allowed light to come in through the slanted roof above. He knew that a catwalk led to the windows, and these could be covered during a performance.

In this light, enough of the great hall could be seen to admire its glamour, but the shadows along the edges caused a trickle of wariness. The children hushed and tiptoed down the slanted, carpeted aisle. They probably imagined spooky creatures, more ominous than their rough playmates.

He looked ahead and grimaced. He’d forgotten that the only way to the back was to either climb the steps on either side of the orchestra
pit or to enter narrow doors at each side and climb even more constrictive stairways.

He halted his companions as the floor leveled off at the front row of seats. “I need a couple of boys to come with me to carry wide boards.”

Three jumped to be his helpers.

He nodded at Ellie. “We’ll be right back. There are boards backstage we can use for a ramp.”

She acknowledged his plan with a dip of her head and climbed into a huge theater seat. The other children followed suit. Even before Bealomondore and his three volunteers left, the children had discovered that jumping back and forth between the rows was much more entertaining than sitting.

Bealomondore felt Ellie’s indecision about whether to make them sit quietly or let them play. She relaxed when he mindspoke to her that the children probably could not be heard from outside.

He and the boys found several sturdy boards long enough to make the ramp. Ellie led the nervous goat, speaking softly. Bealomondore pushed from behind, steadying the cart and keeping the wheels from coming between the boards and pushing them apart. He gave a number of boys the job of keeping the boards from shifting, and he had to remind them often to keep their fingers from getting smashed. The other children laughed as Tak clambered up the wooden incline, and they danced up the boards once he was onstage.

Bealomondore and the boys brought the boards with them to get down the steps from the rear entrance to the theater. Maree swooped into the alley and landed on Tak’s back. His bright blue scales caught the beam of light slanting into the broad passageway from above. Tak’s fur glistened. When a beautiful sight caught his eye, Bealomondore’s
artist instincts always surfaced. He sighed. He would never again be that fop that barged into Byrdschopen, looking for the great Verrin Schope to be his mentor.

For now, he enjoyed the contrast of the clean colors against the drab background of old bricks while he listened to Maree’s report. The male dragon had been closely observing Yawn’s allies until they began to disappear.

Maree’s last statement made Bealomondore frown. “What do you mean by disappear?”

“What did he say?” asked Cinder.

“That the children go into buildings and don’t come out. Our friends fly into the buildings and can’t find them.”

Cinder shrugged. “They’re using the subter.”

“What’s a subter?”

Cinder rolled his eyes. “It has a longer name, but I don’t know it. Something like ‘subter-ran-he-in.’ We don’t usually go down there because it’s scary.”

Several of the children nodded their heads in agreement.

“More scary than the theater,” said Red Curls. “More dark places. More spooky noises.”

Grim pushed to the front. “And sometimes when you’re down there, you can’t find any doors unlocked so you can get out.” His eyes expressed remembered panic. “That’s the scariest thing of all. That never happens in the theater.”

Confusion pushed Bealomondore’s ordered thoughts aside. For a moment the sensation baffled him. He smiled after a moment of shock. The confusion was not his, but Ellie’s. This was something he’d have to get used to as they went on in life together. The intrusion of disorder had been disconcerting.

He turned to face his followers. “While Yawn’s forces are down in the subter, we shall make progress to the library. Come now. Be brave and quick.”

He headed toward the inner city, taking the shortest route to their safe haven. After several blocks of no interference, the children relaxed and added skips to their hurried pace. They turned the last corner and saw the library at the end of a long stretch of avenue. The large, white, columned building sat at the end of the street they were on, where it teed at a cross street. Everyone quickened their strides.

Bealomondore studied the windows of the stores they passed. Surely there would be one more attempt to stop them. He caught sight of movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned his head, he saw nothing suspicious.

With his mind, he called to the dragons of the watch to close in on this area. Almost immediately, Kriss reported children on the only flat roof available to the ambushers. Airon reported evidence of a trap a block away.

“Hurry!” Bealomondore commanded.

He and his troops trotted.

Det sounded an alarm from above.

Bealomondore shouted, “Run!”

A barrage of rocks showered them from the flat roof. A swarm of children poured out from the alleys. Yawn’s thugs had wooden shipping crates over their heads. The wide slats in the sides allowed them to see.

The flying dragons could no longer pull hair nor spit in the faces of the army of six-year-olds. He hated to admit it, but the leader of the horde was quite clever.

Bealomondore separated himself from his band, his sword already in his hand. “Run!” he called again.

Bealomondore stayed behind, swinging his weapon with the determination to protect Ellie, her goat, and her children.

Ellie’s head whipped back and forth as she tried to keep an eye on what was happening to Bealomondore behind her and the children in front of her. Whimpering, the children dashed for the safety of the library. Some cried out as they were hit by the stones hurled from above.