The Lazy Dragon and Bumblespells Wizard (19 page)

The dr'gon halted when it was eye level with Cl'rnce. He was relieved to see the signature green inner and outer rings in the large purple eyes. This little guy was a River Dr'gon, but not one he'd ever met before. It was a male by the scarlet plume under its chin, and young by the double pink feathers at the base of the plume, just a dr'gonelle, a baby. So how did a too-young dr'gon without a wizard have wings that worked? It was a male Merlin Clan River Dr'gon, younger than Cl'rnce. Why was he here? Was he a contender for the Primus too?

“Who are you?” Cl'rnce asked, trying on a friendly grin.

The dr'gon cocked its head to one side but said nothing. It spit a small flame that did not reach Cl'rnce, then flew a beat closer. It was all Cl'rnce could do not to backpedal away. He needed to get to Great and Mighty. He had no time for this dr'gon. He had to find Nasty Sir George and Great and Mighty.

“It's rude not to introduce yourself,” Cl'rnce said, not feeling like even trying to be friendly, but this little guy was sticking too close. “I'm on a mission. I have to ….” He
stopped to decide if he should tell the newcomer about his errand and the Whisper Stone and the Primacy. Maybe he'd skip that, ask the little guy what he knew about the Primacy later. “I have to save a small wizard from a dr'gon-slaying knight.”

The little dr'gon stared but said nothing.

“Are you deaf?” Cl'rnce asked.

The little dr'gon moved his head, as if he understood Cl'rnce's words, but he still remained silent.

“Okay. Not a big talker. I get that. Around my sister, I'm quiet as a mouse.” Cl'rnce made mouse ears by putting his front claws over his own ears. Then he put a paw over his own mouth and shook his head. The little dr'gon watched him intently but made not one sound.

He'd never heard of a mute and deaf dr'gon, but maybe this young River Dr'gon wasn't able to speak. So Cl'rnce decided to act out what he needed. First, he tried to pantomime a knight riding a horse, whipping its hind quarters, and trotting in midair. Then he acted out Sir George attacking with a sword. The little dr'gon watched silently, hovering up and down, following Cl'rnce as he acted out his story. Cl'rnce was pretty proud that he'd managed to stay airborne while he worked hard to communicate with the little dr'gon. “I have to find Nasty Sir George. He's kidnapped my friend,” Cl'rnce finally said.

The little dr'gon raised his eyebrows, then shrugged
his shoulders.

Raspberries let go of Cl'rnce and flew to the little dr'gon. He cawed and clucked, sounding an awful lot like the noises Nasty Sir George made as he clunked around in his broken-down armor.

The little dr'gon's eyes grew wide and then became slits. Cl'rnce got ready to defend Great and Mighty's flea-bitten bird, but the little dr'gon flew past Cl'rnce and Raspberries, straight at the mountain. He looked back and jerked his chin as if urging them to follow. Cl'rnce sped behind him. Something about this little guy made Cl'rnce feel braver and stronger.

Just as they reached the side of the mountain, the little dr'gon dove down to a darker-than-dark spot on the mountainside and disappeared. Cl'rnce followed him, flying into a cave as shadowy as the inside of a lump of anthracite coal.

At first the mountain tunnel was wide, so Cl'rnce followed easily, flying behind the little dr'gon. Slowing the beat of his wings to not pass the youngster, Cl'rnce kept an eye on the soft glow of the wisp of flame seeping out of the little dr'gon's muzzle. It reminded Cl'rnce of a baby drooling. Cl'rnce wondered where this little guy came from, and why he didn't speak. And why Cl'rnce didn't know any other male of the Merlin Clan existed.

The little guy was clearly a River Dr'gon and should have understood everything Cl'rnce said, but Cl'rnce was pretty sure he didn't. It was lucky the little dr'gon had figured out what Cl'rnce was trying to communicate with his clever pantomimes, or Raspberries' caws.

The whole mystery of where this dr'gon came from irked Cl'rnce. What if the little dr'gon was working with Nasty Sir George? Could Sir George really be part of some kind of plot to take over the Primacy? Cl'rnce slowed even more. He wanted to rescue Great and Mighty, but he couldn't, if he let himself get captured,
tricked, or killed. The little dr'gon had to tell Cl'rnce what he knew.

Since Cl'rnce couldn't figure out how to get him to talk, Cl'rnce decided he'd follow for now, but stay on super alert and super paranoid like his sister Hazel. No matter what might be going on, the self-assured way the little dr'gon flew made it seem like the he knew how to find Great and Mighty.

The little guy disappeared around a bend. Cl'rnce backstroked and hovered when he got to the turn. He dropped to the cave floor and slowly craned his head around the corner to see what was down the tunnel. “ARGH!” he started to scream when purple eyes shone into his.

But a quick small paw slapped over his muzzle before Cl'rnce could get the whole scream out. The little dr'gon shook his head as if to tell Cl'rnce to be quiet. When Cl'rnce nodded and managed to make his slamming heart slow to a reasonable beat, the little dr'gon grinned and jerked his head over his shoulder.

Then the dr'gon pantomimed sneaking very quietly along the tunnel. Cl'rnce nodded and imitated taking a slow, careful step. The little guy nodded once and turned to creep down the passage. Cl'rnce wasn't sure why they were moving this way. This tunnel was no darker now than it had been when they first raced in, and he certainly didn't hear anything. The little dr'gon
must know something. How did he know it? What was it? Was it more than where Great and Mighty was?

Cl'rnce bumped into the little guy when he stopped suddenly. Without turning to Cl'rnce, the little dr'gon pointed to his ears and leaned forward. “You hear something?” Cl'rnce whispered. The little dr'gon didn't respond and didn't move. His paw remained cupped to his ear, as if listening.

Cl'rnce held his breath and tried to listen. The quiet was so intense that all he could make out was the thump of his own heartbeats. Funny he hadn't noticed that before. He listened a little harder and made out a quicker, softer beat he was sure was the little dr'gon's heart.
Cool,
Cl'rnce thought. But then a fainter sound joined their hearts. Two slower beats, too slow to be dr'gon. They might be human; they might be Great and Mighty and Nasty Sir George.

“I hear them!” Cl'rnce was astounded. When the little dr'gon didn't respond to his whisper, Cl'rnce tapped him on the shoulder and waited for him to turn. When he did, Cl'rnce tapped his own ear, then tapped over his heart. Then he pointed to the little dr'gon's chest and tapped again over his own heart.

The little dr'gon nodded but jerked his head back at the tunnel and cupped his ear again, as if trying to tell Cl'rnce about the other heartbeats. Cl'rnce nodded furiously and held up two digits. The little guy smiled
and held up three.

“Three?” Cl'rnce listened again concentrating as hard as he could, but aside from himself and the little dr'gon, he only heard two more, human. “Nope.” He shook his head.

The little dr'gon nodded harder and held up three claws. A chill slid down Cl'rnce's back. No matter how he held his breath and tried, he only heard the two others, the humans. What else could be in the Dr'gon Council's sacred Ghost Mountain? This little dr'gon was wrong. He probably heard echoes. He was too young and didn't know what an echo was.

Cl'rnce shrugged. He was sure the little guy was wrong, but this was not the time to argue. They needed to track down Nasty Sir George and rescue Great and Mighty. Didn't they? “Or might this be a trap? Nasty Sir George set it to get me in here. But I was headed to this mountain anyway. Why would he lead me where I wanted to go?”

The little dr'gon ignored Cl'rnce's whispered chatter and went back to slowly edging down the tunnel.

Cl'rnce needed to think this out. He had to know why Nasty Sir George would come here. The killer knight had zoomed into the mountain. He knew his way around. Humans weren't even supposed to know Ghost Mountain existed. Or at least they weren't supposed to know about the entrances and the Dr'gon Council
Chambers deep inside. Or know about the treasures of the Dr'gon Nations that were stored there.

“That's it!” Cl'rnce hissed. “He's after the Dr'gon treasures, and he's taken Great and Mighty so I'll have to trade the location to free her. And then he's going to kill me. And her. And you.”

The little dr'gon didn't turn back but just kept crawling forward. Cl'rnce followed, letting his imagination go wild. Although he liked the kidnapping and trade for treasure best, Cl'rnce's vivid imagination came up with a thousand other conspiracies to explain why the nasty knight had hunted Cl'rnce and now lured him into the mountain. Half his fantasies included the little dr'gon being a rogue who worked for the rotten knight. But Cl'rnce kept coming back to the knight saying something about working alone.

Cl'rnce grabbed the little dr'gon's shoulder and pulled him to a stop. The little guy turned around, his muzzle scrunched in irritation.

“Wait,” Cl'rnce whispered. “This is mixed up. Why would Nasty Sir George try to kill me, then turn around and lead me here to get me to show him to the Dr'gon treasure? That doesn't make sense. It's backward.”

The little dr'gon stared at Cl'rnce as if trying to figure out why Cl'rnce was pacing back and forth, hissing his whispers louder and louder. Finally, the little guy floated, without unfurling his wings, until he was even
with Cl'rnce's face. He drew back an arm. Cl'rnce tried to dodge the blow that was coming.

But the little dr'gon was fast, and his paw smacked between Cl'rnce's eyes and stayed there, almost like it was glued. In two, almost three days of strange happenings, maybe the weirdest now happened.

Cl'rnce didn't hear the little guy speak, but he saw a picture hanging in the air between him and the dr'gonelle. Great and Mighty was tied up and laid on a big flat rock. Nasty Sir George stood beside the rock with his hand out to a dark, squatty shadow a few feet away.

“Give me my reward,” the rusty knight said.

The shadow figure stayed in the corner of the cave. It spoke with a scratchy voice Cl'rnce had never heard before. “Reward? You bring me trouble, and you expect a reward?”

“I've played your game and brought what you demanded.” Nasty Sir George rattled his extended hand.

“The dr'gon is still alive. What did I tell you about that?” The shadow figure moved around the walls but got no closer to Great and Mighty, Nasty Sir George, or the fire in the brazier beside the rock the limp want-to-be wizard lay on.

“That shadow guy hired Nasty Sir George to kill me. I knew it wasn't Hazel,” Cl'rnce whispered, careful not to dislodge the little dr'gon's paw. “What is it doing with Great and Mighty? Where are they? Are they close?
Can we get to them?”

The little dr'gon still didn't speak, but the picture before Cl'rnce changed to a vision of where they currently stood in the tunnel, then zoomed straight ahead along the passage until it arrived in a cavern with Nasty Sir George, Great and Mighty, and the shadow figure.

“You don't talk, but you do understand. So they're down this tunnel, not that far. We need to get in there. I'll take care of that miserable knight and his skulking boss. This mountain is the Dr'gon Nation's holy ground. Nothing can defeat me here!” He waited for the little dr'gon to do something that might give him away as part of the knight's plot.

As if he knew Cl'rnce's suspicions, the little dr'gon dropped his paw, a discouraged look on his face. He rolled his eyes, then slapped Cl'rnce behind the horn, and stuck his paw back onto Cl'rnce's forehead again.

The picture changed. A knife glittering with killing ice hung in the air over Great and Mighty. Nasty Sir George backed away from the knife, the rock, and the shadow figure. “You promised me payment. That's all I ask.” He gulped, sounding scared.

The knife seemed to grow bigger and drop lower over Great and Mighty's chest. It dipped until its point rested on her worn robe. Nasty Sir George breathed deeply, like he was less scared since the sword-sized knife was meant for Great and Mighty. He clunkily backed farther away
from the rock and the shadow figure. But no sooner did he stumble back three paces, than the knife turned and flew at Nasty Sir George.

Dodging it, the knight tripped over his feet and fell to the rocky floor. Once again, his luck ran out, and he was trapped on his back, rocking once again like an upended turtle. “Just let me go!” he whined.

Cl'rnce pushed the little dr'gon's paw away and headed down the tunnel. “It'll be Great and Mighty next. No way.”

The tunnel became too narrow to stretch his wings and fly, so he ran for all he was worth. Pounding down the rock halls as hard as he could, sure the cavern was just ahead like it had looked in the vision from the little dr'gon, he ran and ran, but the shadowy tunnel never got lighter from that brazier fire in the open cavern. He kept running. The tunnel didn't turn or offer more than one way to run, it just kept rolling on in front of him. Finally he ran through rock walls and out of the mountain.

Too shocked to unfurl his wings, he dropped like a boulder. Stunned to be suddenly falling, all Cl'rnce could do was stare down at the moon-silvered trees he was falling into. Before he could blink, there was an explosion of light, and the little dr'gon was beside him, pulling on Cl'rnce's wings to unfurl them and force Cl'rnce to save himself.

Shocked by the little dr'gon's strength, Cl'rnce felt
his wings spread out. He barely managed to glide to the earth just before he crashed. He looked up at Ghost Mountain. His eyes were runny wet, definitely only because of the wind that had blown into them. “How did I run through the mountain? I saw where she was. Why can't I get to her?”