Another Anno fell to earth, ten feet away from them. Was Jason wrong? Would these crazed creatures turn around and attack again?
He noticed this latest invader wasn’t moving. Jason walked forward warily and prodded the small thing with his spear. The Anno flipped over. There was an arrow, a full-length, human arrow, in its back.
“Hello, the camp!” came the call.
“Hello, yourself!” Obar called back up. “Please join us. We’ve got to take care of the wounded.”
Jason realized he meant the Oomgosh. The tree man hadn’t moved since he had fallen after taking that spear—that poison stick. Jason was afraid he was dead. He hoped the wizard knew better.
Others dropped from the trees as Obar rushed toward the Oomgosh. This time the newcomers were human—the four Volunteers and Mark and Todd. None of them looked hurt in the least. Why couldn’t something have happened to one of them, rather than the tree man?
No, Jason, thought, he didn’t want to wish injury or death on anybody. The Oomgosh was just so big, so strong, and so cheerful. How could this happen to someone like him?
The wizard knelt over the fallen tree man. He placed his two hands a few inches away from the wound. Was it the poison that made it look that green, or was that the color of the Oomgosh’s blood? When Jason had had to hack off the tree man’s withered arm, there had been hardly any blood at all.
The wizard’s hands glowed green, a brighter color than the damp chest below. Vapors seemed to rise from the tree man’s chest cavity, flowing into Obar’s fingers.
The wizard groaned and shuddered.
“Is he going to be all right?” Jason asked as Obar stood.
“I got to the poison quickly,” Obar replied, swaying slightly on his feet. At this moment, he looked none too healthy himself. “It’s good, too, that you removed the spear. He will need a great deal of rest to recover completely. But, with luck, he should do just that.”
“Oh, really, wizard?” Nick called. He looked different now, the way he leaned with the sword at his belt. “That’s what you said about Charlie!” The dog frisked around Nick’s feet, tail wagging and eyes glowing.
“Oh, he has recovered,” Obar said simply. “It is just that he’s a different dog than he was before. This world does that sort of thing to people sometimes. One of the dragon’s little jokes.”
“They blame it on the dragon,” Stanley said. “Wizards, hey?” A harsh cawing erupted overhead, as if Raven was laughing.
The great black bird descended from the sky, this time landing on Nick’s shoulder. Nick didn’t even move. It was like he was expecting it.
“So the Oomgosh will recover?” the bird said as he cocked his head. “The Oomgosh is like Raven. We are here forever.”
Jason liked that kind of talk. He wanted the Oomgosh to be better than some stupid poison stick. He still felt like crying.
“He’ll do fine,” Jason said instead.
The bird nodded his agreement. “Raven has chased the Anno.
Now Raven needs to bring something else.”
He took off again from Nick’s shoulder and flew up to one of the lower branches of a nearby tree. Leaves rustled for an instant as Raven’s claws grabbed at something out of sight.
An instant later, the black bird swooped back down, straight toward Mrs. Smith. He flew close above her head, dropping something from his claws.
Mrs. Smith caught the dragon’s eye as Raven settled back on Nick’s shoulder.
“People should be careful with precious stones,” the black bird announced. “One never knows who’s going to end up with them.”
Mrs. Smith stared at the stone in her hand.
“Thank you,” she began. “I don’t—” She stopped abruptly, just looking from the dragon’s eye to Raven and back to the eye. Before this, Jason had never seen Mrs. Smith when she didn’t know exactly what to say.
“The dragon wanted you to have it,” Raven answered curtly. “Sometimes even Raven defers to others.”
“Wait a moment.” Jason’s mother stepped forward. “What’s happened to Mary Lou?”
Mary Lou hadn’t come back with the others. Jason had been so worried about the Oomgosh, he had forgotten all about his sister!
“She’s gone,” Obar replied.
“Gone?” Jason’s mother demanded. “What do you mean’ gone?”
“Oh, I’m quite sure she’s still alive,” Obar added hastily. “I’m just not precisely sure—where.”
“Isn’t there some way we could find her?” Mrs. Smith interrupted before Jason’s mom could object again.
“With two eyes?” Obar asked back. “We could certainly try.” The air just beyond Obar shifted and took an almost solid form.
“You have more than two eyes to work with.” It was Mary Lou’s prince.
“Wait a minute!” Jason protested. “Weren’t you supposed to protect my sister?”
The prince shook his head. “I have to admit that things didn’t go exactly as I expected.” He looked to Obar. “You need me to come along. I have great knowledge of those other places Mary Lou might be.”
“You didn’t want us taking her before,” Mrs. Smith pointed out. “You didn’t want her to leave the Anno.”
The prince looked away from her for a second. “My mistake. I didn’t want to lose her.” He looked back up at Obar and Mrs. Smith. “Mary Lou and I are very close.”
“If he knows something,” Mary Lou’s mother insisted, “you have to take him with you!”
“Do we?” Obar answered drily. “Garo and I have some unfinished business.”
“And it should stay unfinished,” the prince replied, “until we have found Mary Lou. We can hold off on old feuds until we’re ready for the dragon.”
“Well,” Obar replied, “if you feel that way about it—” He looked to Mrs. Smith. “What do you think?”
“I think we should find Mary Lou before something else happens.”
“Let us do it, then,” Obar agreed. He seemed very relieved someone else had taken the responsibility.
“If you will allow me to show you the way?” the prince said with a smile.
All three of them popped out of the clearing as Jason stared at that smile. He didn’t like that smile at all.
What the heck did his sister see in this prince, anyway?
The King of the Wolves growled.
The wizard had lied. He said he would give the King great power. He never said he would trap the King in a place with great stone walls, a place where the King couldn’t move and stalk and kill.
But the wizard had used such words, filled with such promise of power. The pack would follow a king forever who had power like that. A king like that could kill anything at any time, even those foolish humans who turned him away, made him the laughingstock of the pack.
A king had to have power like that.
But what had the wizard done? He had taken the King away from his pack, into this strange dark place. And he had given the King nothing but his glowing green touch, a touch that had taken all the wolf’s energy and made it feel both hot and cold, as if winter and summer were happening all at once. And then that wizard had left the King here, without another word.
The King stopped pacing. He felt another one of those pains, deep inside. That was something else the wizard hadn’t told him about.
Something was growing, deep inside the King of the Wolves.
Fifty-Five
“Where are we?” Constance Smith asked. This place was full of colors, shimmering one after another, as if they had stepped into the middle of a rainbow.
“One of the other places,” the man called Garo said. In this place, he looked quite solid. “The dragon exists in many different dimensions and times. Some say the creature might exist everywhere. In the place where we just came from—the real world, I suppose—the dragon only reveals itself when it is about to destroy. But the dragon always exists somewhere. In one of these places, the dragon rests and waits.”
>
“Is that what we just left?” Mrs. Smith asked. “The real world?” Until a couple of days ago, she would have thought that island the strangest place she had ever seen. Now she was in a whole other world of colors rolling across a great plain, yet a world still dotted with fields and rivers and trees like the countryside at home.
“The more you know about the dragon,” Obar murmured, “the less you will use that word—real.”
“And this is where we’ll find Mary Lou?”
“Only the dragon could have taken her with that kind of power,” Garo said.
This was all very well and good, but Mrs. Smith realized that she was totally out of her depth here. How could she hope to find the dragon if everything around her was beyond her comprehension?
“What are we looking for?” she asked Obar.
The older magician mulled his answer a moment before speaking. “A certain vibration, a faint odor of burning, even a certain quality of fire. Evidence that the dragon is somewhere near.”
“Mary Lou was taken by the dragon,” Garo continued, stating it even more directly than before. “And we must get her back.” He looked to Mrs. Smith, for once without his sardonic smile.
“My life depends on it,” he added. The smile flickered back. “Not that Obar would care much about that.”
“Oh, yes,” Obar replied suddenly, looking as if he had been caught in the parlor being too friendly to the maid. “Well, you know, that was a long time ago. We were different people then.”
“Some more different than others,” Garo agreed.
“What are you two talking about?” Constance demanded.
“Oh, well,” Obar sputtered. “That time my brother and I killed him. Or at least tried to.”
The older wizard sighed, waving his hands about in the air as if they might do his explaining for him. “You see,” his voice finally chimed in, “it was a matter of self-preservation. Or so we told ourselves at the time. Garo was a much faster study than either of us. If left alive, he would have eclipsed us in no time. He would have become the great wizard, and we would have died. So you see, naturally, well—” His voice stumbled to a halt as he looked imploringly to Constance.
“You know, Mrs. Smith, you are better even than Garo.”
“Really?” Constance was taken aback by this honesty. “So will you have to kill me, too?”
“For a while, I thought that,” Obar admitted. “But I don’t think that selfish behavior is going to help us defeat the dragon.” He glanced about, as if the colors floating by held the answers. “I suppose, in some way, my attitude has changed ever since my brother has started trying to kill me.”
“That sort of thing can be a revelation,” the younger wizard agreed.
“Yes,” Obar added, “I think in some way, we will all work together, although I doubt any of us realize the exact nature of the job.”
“We will work together,” Garo agreed solemnly. “This time we will probably live or die together. But we’re wasting time. There is nothing here.” He waved for the others to follow. “Come with me. I know certain darker places.”
Nunn opened his eyes.
Two of them were human. The other two came from the dragon.
He had barely made it back to his fortress before he collapsed. It was probably for the best. Otherwise, his rage would surely have destroyed something—or someone—he might have a use for later. There was so much to do, so quickly. He could not let his anger get the better of him. He had to cherish every resource.
He smashed his fist down on the table before him.
First, Mary Lou had escaped. Then she had stolen the eye, popped it from his forehead, with so much pain—he would show her pain—
He had to be careful, to calm his anger, or he would let his rage toward the girl overwhelm his larger plans. If he only followed his original plan, and collected all the eyes, she would be lost in dragon fire with all the others, wiped from the face of this world like the inconsequential dust mote she was.
It was not enough for Nunn.
He would feel as if he had been taken. Bested by a teenage girl.
Almost like he was still human.
Of course, he would have his victory. But he needed to make her suffer before that. He needed to humiliate her, to strip her of her pride and power and make her realize she owed her whole existence to Nunn. He had done that to those much more powerful than Mary Lou. It would be little trouble to add her to his list.
“Nunn.”
He looked around. Had someone else invaded his study? “Nunn. Answer us.”
He suddenly felt cold, and barely suppressed a moan. The voice came from inside.
“What is this?” he demanded. He remembered Mills. Somehow that damned newcomer had wreaked havoc with his subconscious. But only for a few moments. Nunn had wiped Mills from his head.
“We need some answers from you first.”
Nunn’s fists closed over his eyes. He would not be dictated to by voices.
“What are you doing in my head?” he demanded.
“We are your past,” the voice added with a maddening calm. “You can never escape from us. We are the first person you took, and the last, the wizard Rox and Leo Furlong, and all those hundreds in between. You have left us silent for too long. We are clamoring to be heard.”
Truly, Nunn thought, he must be going mad.
“You don’t think you lost that jewel on your own?” the voice chided. “How could that dragon’s eye break free of your spell?”
Nunn felt the rage build up within him again. “What? How dare—I will purge you from me forever!”
“If you destroy us,” the voice responded with everlasting calm, “you destroy yourself.”
This was perhaps the strangest thing that had happened even to him. Yet it made a certain sense, or as much sense as anything made in this magic realm. How could he purge something that was a part of his mind? Nunn was afraid, this time, that the voice was right.
Not that he was defeated.
He simply had to figure out some way to separate himself from these voices, so that he could destroy them.
In the meantime, he would send his new guard to seek out the other eyes, with a little help perhaps from his sorcerous allies. Not that they would ever touch the stones. Oh, no. Only Nunn ever touched the stones.
But first Nunn had to take Mary Lou, from wherever she had gone.
His true eyes, the eyes of the dragon, would show him everything.
“Perhaps,” he said to the voices in his head, “we can work out something.”
“We will not wait forever,” the voice reminded him.
Fair enough, Nunn thought. You’ll only have to wait long enough to die.
The first thing Mary Lou was aware of was a deep rumble. Something that she both heard and felt, something that seemed as real as anything she had ever experienced.
At first, the rumble frightened her. There was no light here, and no real sound, only that constant vibration. After a while, though, she found it oddly reassuring, as if that deep noise was something she could always depend on.
Mostly, the rumble made her remember.
She remembered how much she was afraid of upsetting her mother, and how many times she would hide in her room or stay after school, so she could have a life of her own. She remembered how, as Jason grew, her mother and father would do extra things for him—the typewriter, the special summer camp: “Men need to get ahead, dear.” And she remembered how, after her sister had left to have her baby, no one in their family could talk about her, as if she had never existed.
Mary Lou remembered: How the prince had wanted to use her, not for herself, but for something for him. In the end, it didn’t matter if she lived or died. And how all the great wizards of this place had fought over her, not for herself, but for how she might help each of them.
It was the same here as it had been at home. In the end, it only mattered what she did for others. Or so she had always been taught.
/>
Not anymore, she thought. The rumbling grew.
This rumbling, she realized, came from the dragon. The creature must have brought her to this place.
Would it kill her? She felt the vibration, waiting for some sign.
Mary Lou knew that no one saw the dragon and lived.
But the dragon was only nearby. With luck she wouldn’t see it; with fortune she would only have this one brief brush with power, as if one edge of the creature’s mind grazed against her thoughts. Her brand-new thoughts.
The rumbling was in her head. The dragon thought with her. Not anymore, she thought.
She felt the answer rise up in her, full of anger and pride; parts of her she’d never known were there until now.
No one will think for me again! No one! And her answer was written in fire.
Fifty-Six
Jason woke with a start. It was the middle of the night. The second night he had been in this place. Two days and two nights. It felt more like months or years.
The Oomgosh slept at the edge of the clearing, beneath his beloved trees. Jason crept over to be nearby. The tree man’s regular breathing was reassuring, like the sound of waves breaking on a summer shore, or a gentle breeze whistling through a field.
“Jason?” the Oomgosh whispered in his deep voice. “Is that you?” Oh, heck. He shouldn’t have come.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispered back. “The wizard says you need your rest.” The Oomgosh chuckled.
“What do wizards know? There will always be an Oomgosh.” He sat up with a grunt and regarded Jason for a moment in the darkness. “But you sound worried.”
“You were hurt!” Jason protested.
“Hurts come and go. I think it’s time for a story.”
“But—” Jason began. He really didn’t mean to disturb the tree man like this. The Oomgosh should be thinking about himself.
“Nonsense,” the Oomgosh replied, as if he had already heard any objection anyone could make. “A good story will help us both get back to sleep. Let me tell you about the time the Oomgosh first came face-to-face with cold and winter.”
Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) Page 37
