“He feeds, but there is nothing for me!” the glowing ape screamed. “I do all his work. What would he be without me! Where is my reward?”
The Captain opened his mouth. It was far too dry. He managed to gasp out two words.
“From Nunn?”
“What are you saying?” Zachs demanded. “Nunn doesn’t give rewards? Maybe not to you, but to me, I’ve been loyal, I do everything for him. Surely, he knows what I’m worth!”
The Captain managed another grunt.
“I won’t listen to you!” Zachs shrieked. “I’ll wait for our master to return! He’ll know what to do to you, what to take from you next. And I’ll be so happy to help, oh, yes, I will!”
Zachs flared again. Then the light was gone. The Captain enjoyed the darkness.
Take from him? He wondered between painful breaths. Perhaps they had at first. But then there had been additions. A new set of arms and legs, a new vision of the world outside this stinking room. That vision was the only thing that had allowed the Captain to survive the pain. Otherwise, he surely would have lost his mind.
But now he knew a new truth, a truth that would unite his two selves, a truth that placed him high above the petty pains and concerns of a Nunn or his creatures.
The Captain relaxed, more at ease with every moment he thought of his newfound vision. He opened his arid mouth again, his ruined voice speaking two more words, the mantra that would help him survive.
“My lawn,” the Captain whispered.
Twenty-Three
Charlie’s barking snapped Nick from his reverie. He hadn’t realized the dog had followed him.
“My,” Obar remarked as he somehow stepped into their midst. The magician and the dog must have come together. “That all happened rather quickly.”
Nick wondered if it had happened quickly enough. Obar seemed to be able to accomplish almost anything with remarkable speed, yet he hadn’t been there in time to join in the confrontation with the red-furred creatures. Had the wizard waited until the danger was over before he joined them?
“What have you given me?” Nick demanded when it seemed that the wizard was only going to stand around and smile. “This sword—” He pointed accusingly at the scabbard that slapped against his jeans. “It felt like it wanted to act on its own. Like it was going to kill those red-furred animals whether I wanted it to or not.”
“And did it kill them?” the wizard asked with that same annoying smile. He snapped his fingers, and another miniature sun lit above them to take away the evening shadows. Somehow the new light made Obar’s expression even more irritating.
Nick shook his head. “When I held it back, it jumped from my hand and cut Jason!”
“Oh, dear.” The wizard frowned and immediately turned to the younger boy. “Jason?” The boy showed him the place the sword had nicked him.
“Well, it really is only a scratch,” Obar said, the cheerfulness already back in his voice. “Sometimes the best of weapons can have a will of its own. Well, you do have to be firm—you saw how I handled it?” He chuckled. “Well, I can be firm, I’m a wizard, aren’t I?”
He waved a finger at Nick. “Sometimes you might need to let the sword have its way. It generally only acts out when somebody or thing really needs to be cut.” Obar scratched at the neck under his beard. “It doesn’t do, Nick my lad, to be squeamish.”
“Squeamish?” Nick blurted out. “I try to control the sword, and you call me squeamish? What do you want from me?”
“Only what you can give,” Obar replied sharply. “Do you want to have control, or do you want to survive? Around here, I’m afraid, you usually can’t have both.”
“Raven only does as Raven wants!” the black bird interrupted.
The wizard glared at the bird. “I suppose there must be exceptions to every rule.”
“Raven’s whole life is one great exception,” the Oomgosh’s voice boomed.
“So few understand, my Oomgosh,” Raven replied.
“And Raven is truly beyond understanding!” the tree man agreed.
“I don’t think that even I have time or energy to understand.” Obar nodded in grudging agreement. “Or to continue this argument. Besides, there is that other matter to attend to, this—Mary Lou?”
His forehead creased for an instant.
“We should get to her as soon as possible. She is in some danger from her surroundings. But she is in the most jeopardy from Nunn.”
“Well, let’s go,” Jason piped up. Nick wondered if he was trying to be as cheerful as Obar.
Obar shook his head. “I can’t take all of you.”
“Raven flies alone,” the black bird agreed.
The wizard paused to glance at his companions. “And my magic doesn’t suit the Oomgosh. At least not in this particular case.”
“It is not good if my feet leave the ground,” the tree man agreed.
“Dirt is his life,” Raven added.
“I think it best that we send a delegation,” Obar continued. “Mary Lou seems to be in a delicate situation. She’s been taken by one of the local tribes, the Anno.” He raised both hands, waving away any questions that might come from Nick or Jason. “I don’t think she’s in immediate danger. The Anno will protect her, until they get tired of the novelty. Unfortunately, they also wouldn’t appreciate it if we approached them too directly.” His right hand stroked his shaggy mustache. “No, this is certainly a sensitive matter.”
“So what should we do?” Nick asked.
“I’m glad you agree,” Obar remarked. Nick wasn’t aware of agreeing to anything.
But the wizard’s hands danced before him, the motions so quick that his fingers blurred. “I think it important to have one of the—what did you call them? —neighbors, yes, neighbors present for the negotiations.”
The world shifted around Nick. He felt like he had left his stomach behind. The trees seemed to be in different places than they were before. Or maybe they were different trees.
The wizard coughed beside him. And it was only the wizard and his portable sun. Raven, Oomgosh, Jason, and Charlie were nowhere around. The wizard had brought Nick somewhere else.
“It is a bit disconcerting, isn’t it? Well, you get used to it after a while.” Obar cleared his throat. “At least, you pretend you get used to it. But we have company.”
The tiny sun darted away from them to illuminate a crowd of people farther down the trail. Mary Lou wasn’t with them, but Nick recognized two out of the six. Nick and Obar had gotten more than just the attention of the crowd, too. Four arrows were notched in four bows, all aimed straight for them. Four of the six seemed quite ready to kill them.
The other two were Todd and Bobby.
“Hey!” Todd called. “I know this guy! He’s my friend.”
“He was your friend,” one of the bowmen replied, “till he got involved with a wizard.”
“Wait a moment, now.” Obar frowned for a moment. “Thomas? We need to talk.”
“Hey?” another of the bowmen spoke up. “You know what we do with wizards. It doesn’t have a thing to do with talkin’.”
Obar walked forward, his hands folded before him. “I am no threat to you. We have had our differences in the past, a certain failure to communicate.”
“You let half of us die!” A woman’s voice spoke this time. If anything, she seemed angrier than the men.
“A sad thing, but unavoidable,” Obar continued in the same neutral voice. “If I had stepped in, Nunn would have killed us all.”
“And all for those damned dragon’s eyes!” the fourth bowman chimed in. “And what good have we seen from those things? Tell me that!”
“What good?” Obar opened his arms, spreading his palms to the sky. “The fact that Nunn has not yet gained the power to kill us all. Believe me in this, if nothing else. My brother has two of the eyes already. If he was to acquire three, especially when I had none with which to fight back, he would do whatever he wished.”
“Your b
rother?” Nick whispered at Obar’s side. “The evil wizard is your brother?”
“Oh, did I neglect to mention that?” Obar replied in a voice almost as soft. “You can’t trust someone just because they’re in your family.”
Nick thought for a second about the night his father had walked out on his mother and him. Somehow he imagined that wasn’t quite what the wizard meant.
“So you tell us!” the first of the bowmen called back to Obar. “But Maggie’s right. The only thing we’ve gotten from you and your brother is death! And for what?”
“For what?” Obar sputtered, “But I’ve shown you all that Nunn is destroying—”
“Pictures in the dust!” the bowman countered. “Conjurer’s tricks.”
“And you know exactly what is real?” A smile threatened to curl the comers of Obar’s mouth. “That is the true trick around here.”
None of the four with bows seemed to have an immediate answer for that.
“Hey.” It was Todd’s voice that broke the silence. “I know one thing, and that’s that I’m glad to see Nick again. I want us all to get back together again.” He paused, then added, “Well, most of us, at least.”
“You should listen to this—Todd,” Obar said. “The only way we will win is if we fight Nunn together.”
“And what do we win, wizard?” asked the bow-woman the other had called Maggie. “The return of our dead comrades? Will you give us back all those months we’ve been here, just barely surviving? Or maybe a way to get home?”
Obar managed to look down on the bowmen, fifty feet farther along the trail, as he replied. “We win the power of the dragon. With that, you can gain anything.”
So that’s what they were really here to do. Why hadn’t Obar told him all of this? Not, of course, that Nick would have understood much of it.
“I do not underestimate your strength,” the wizard went on to the bowmen. “I know what you did to our third compatriot. That’s why I’ve come to you, so that we can work together.” Obar smoothed his mustache again. “There is great power here, in almost all of the newcomers. An amazing amount of power. In fact, I’ve come here not only because you are here but to help rescue a young woman who is a part of that power.” He paused mid-scratch to stare at Todd and Jason. “A young woman named Mary Lou.”
“Mary Lou?” Todd interjected in sudden excitement. “I did see her, then, up in the trees! It was hard to tell in the darkness, and there were all these little hairless things screaming and throwing things our way.”
“The Anno,” Obar agreed. “They think a lot of Mary Lou as well. But I think she’d be happier with us. Besides, we need her more than they do.”
Todd turned to the bowman called Thomas. “You have to listen to him. We have to save Mary Lou!”
Thomas frowned. “Are you sure you saw this girl in the trees?”
“Thomas!” a bald man at his side demanded. “How can you listen to him, hey?”
“Now that I know she was there, yeah,” Todd answered the question with a shake of his head.’ “I thought I was imagining things.”
“Don’t you see what the wizard’s doing?” the bald man demanded, his voice getting higher and wilder with every question. “Don’t you remember what happened when Douglas trusted them?”
Thomas looked to the bald man. “I’m sorry, Stanley. I don’t think it’s quite that cut-and-dried.” He nodded at Obar. “Maybe we will have to call a truce, then.”
“What?” Stanley shrieked in disbelief. “I’m not working with a wizard. I’m not going to let a wizard live!”
With those final words, he released his bow. Nick saw the arrow, headed straight for them.
Todd saw things shift in front of him.
“Come now,” the magician said. Except the magician had somehow moved behind them, on a completely different part of the path.
“You should know that nothing as simple as an arrow can stop someone like me,” Obar continued. “Stanley does not seem to care for me. I assure you, the dislike is mutual, but we do have to put these differences out of our minds.”
Todd felt something was missing even before he looked back up the path. “Wait a moment,” he called to the others. “Where’s Nick?”
“Nick?” Obar frowned as he looked to either side. “He should be right by me. I caught him in my dislocation spell, too. Wouldn’t do to have one of our new arrivals killed by accident, or even by a fit of pique. Nick?”
The wizard’s brow furrowed as he hesitated.
“He’s gone,” Obar announced, his voice far less sure than before.
“Gone?” Bobby piped up behind Todd. “Where could he go? Why would he leave?”
“Not of his own free will, or mine,” Obar continued. “This is Nunn’s work.” He waved a fist at the Volunteers. “Now do you see that we have to work together?”
The Volunteers stared back at the wizard without answering. As far as Todd could figure out, Stanley’s arrow shot seemed to have startled everybody, Stanley included.
“Nunn knows we are here,” Obar went on, his voice more clipped and direct than before. “Mary Lou will have to wait for a few minutes. I think we need to challenge Nunn more directly, don’t you?”
The wizard paused again. “At least we will, if we want to save Nick.” He stopped tugging at his mustache to point at the Volunteers.
“I’ll say this once more: If we don’t work together, Nunn will win.”
Twenty-Four
Jason wanted to cry.
Nick and the wizard were gone. One minute, old Obar was standing right next to them, pontificating. The next, poof. And they had taken the light with them, too. He didn’t like that much at all.
Much worse, though, they had left Jason behind.
It wasn’t totally dark here in the clearing. He blinked up at all the stars. There were thousands of them up there, bathing everything with a soft glow. Actually, he could still see pretty well.
“Just like a wizard!” Raven said with even more disdain than usual. “Where did they go?” The words escaped from Jason’s throat before he could stop them.
“I don’t think wizards want us to know,” the Oomgosh answered. “It adds to their mystery. And he has taken young Nick!”
“That is a greater disappointment,” the Raven said. “Nick had the most excellent of perching shoulders.”
Jason’s heart beat loudly in his chest. Nick was his connection to what he knew, the world they had left behind on Chestnut Circle. Somehow, with Nick around, Jason could imagine he’d see his parents and sister again, and maybe, with a bit of a walk, sleep in his own bedroom again.
Without Nick here, Jason felt lost and alone. And scared— very, very scared. What had he done to deserve this?
He hadn’t done anything. He never did anything. Maybe that was the point.
He was always the quiet one. If he kept out of the way, everything would be fine. At least that’s the way Jason always felt around his family. His parents and sisters got along perfectly well without him. Problems started when he came in the room. Oh, sure, sometimes they’d be fighting before he got there, but that only made things worse. “Go away, Jason. This isn’t for you.” Or “You’d never understand.” Nobody wanted him around for anything. Sometimes he felt that maybe it would be better if he just disappeared.
He looked up at the Raven perched on the large man’s shoulder, a man who seemed to bear more resemblance to the dark forest around him than to the people Jason had left behind. This, Jason realized, was the sort of place you disappeared to.
“So we should start, Jason.” The Oomgosh lifted his great feet, first one, then the other, slowly from the dirt. “Some can vanish and reappear, some can fly, but only the best creatures walk.” Charlie barked as the tree man shook himself.
“Raven walks whenever he wants,” the bird cawed. “Which is not very often.”
Actually, Jason thought, you couldn’t really be alone when you were with characters like Raven and this tree
guy.
“Now there are three of us,” the Oomgosh continued. “We will find your neighbors in our own way.”
The black bird bobbed its head. “Raven will fly on ahead. Raven’s eye sees all.”
“And I can direct him,” the green man said as he smiled at Jason. “For the forest tells me everything that happens on this island.”
“The forest?” Jason asked, amazed. “You can talk to every tree?”
“In their way, every tree speaks to me,” the Oomgosh affirmed.
“The messages will be passed from root to root, until they reach me. I know where Nunn has kept all your fellows.” He pointed ahead of him into the forest. “We can be there in a day.”
“Even with the slow gait of the Oomgosh!” Raven made a low call that sounded like a chuckle. “Another advantage of living on an island!”
The Oomgosh frowned. “Undue haste has been the downfall of many.”
“Raven is the exception.” The bird fluffed his feathers.
“Raven is always the exception,” the Oomgosh agreed. He waved his gnarled fingers toward the trail. “Come, Jason. Together we will perform heroic and no doubt impossible tasks.”
“I will return as soon as I have found them!” the bird called. “Raven will know everything!”
The dog barked as Raven took to the air.
“Come on, Charlie,” Jason said as he leaned down to pat the dog’s head. “I guess I’d better take care of you, too. We’re all in this together.”
“Indeed we are, Jason,” the Oomgosh replied as he took his first step to follow the bird. “Indeed we are.”
The wizard’s light was gone.
“Obar?” Nick called. There was no answer. Apparently, the wizard was gone as well. “Todd?” he tried. There was no response to that, either.
Evening had been turning to night as the wizard had created his magic light. Now, with the magic gone, the darkness closed around him. The magician had left him alone, deep in the woods.
He heard the rustle of leaves. Was something out there? Nick felt at his belt and found the handle of the sword. There was another sound, a low rumbling, like the grumbling bark of an animal on the prowl.
Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) Page 19
