Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) (20 page)

The King glimpsed movement within the creature’s mouth, too. Either there was something wrong with the thing’s tongue or the worms were already at work.

“Let’s back out of here,” the gaunt man said.

The one with a beard waved his bow at the wolves. “This Sayre is all yours. May he rot in good health.”

The real men disappeared behind the trees as quickly as they had come.

The King of the Wolves howled. There was no fresh meat here. This thing was an abomination. He would have to destroy the trap; none of the pack would eat from someplace where a dead thing—or maybe not-dead thing—had waited.

“I’ve had enough of this!” the thing in the pit called.

The King looked down to see that somehow the thing the others called Sayre was pulling himself up off the stake.

“I’ll show you what happens when you cross me!” The Sayre-thing’s bony fingers reached for the top of the pit.

The King called to the others as he backed away. It was time for the pack to leave this part of the forest altogether.

N
unn fled from the mind of the leader of his furry army. The creature was in too much pain. They had failed in their assault. It was worth nothing to Nunn to save them now.

Other parts of Nunn’s consciousness still coaxed those creatures that would have a part in this later. Some were easy to motivate, like the dead man who was driven by his own fury, or those things beneath the sea that waited so impatiently for action and their promised rewards. Others needed a closer watch, especially those of the various races that he had recruited, through greed or fear, to act as spies. And then there was Zachs, his brightly illuminated assistant, who showed all the restraint of a blazing fire.

There were too many images in his mind, and all of them led to exhaustion. Nunn felt a great weariness, as if all the vigor in his form had been blown away by the island wind. Perhaps he had attempted too much too early in the campaign.

But he had so much to gain. If he could only determine why these newcomers were here, before the great dark one was ready to use them. The room was filled with glaring white. Nunn turned his head, willing his tired eyes to remain open and alert.

“She’s getting away!” cried Zachs’ singsong. The creature flashed like lightning before him, as if Zachs could no longer contain the energy pent up inside him.

“Only for a moment,” the wizard managed, stretching out the weary muscles in his arms. “She has wonderful potential. I will let her think she is free for a little while longer.”

Zachs’ light dimmed enough for the wizard to see the petulant expression upon the creature’s face. “You’re not going to give me the girl, are you?”

Nunn tried to keep the annoyance from his voice. Zachs was far too useful; he had to be treated gently. “I never said that I would.”

The light-creature wailed. “You won’t give me Mary Lou? I’m so hungry! You haven’t fed me in so long!” Light pulsed along the creature’s trunk as its voice rose and fell. “I must have another.”

The wizard stared at his minion for a long moment. “We both will need to replenish our energy.”

Nunn felt a tingling where the light-creature rubbed his head against the wizard’s sleeve.

“Nunn is so good to me,” the creature purred. “Zachs is so happy.”

Nunn stood, feeling the slightest bit light-headed. Still, the weakness was passing, for now.

“I have spent too much and gotten too little,” he said, more to himself than to his minion. He felt a lancing pain in one of his calves. He was seated for so long that the muscles must have fallen asleep. It surely wasn’t any more than that. “Perhaps I was too sure of myself.”

“Nunn will win!” Zachs cried loudly, as if any other outcome would be unthinkable. “Nunn always wins!”

“It will all come to me, sooner or later,” the wizard agreed. “I have made too many plans, forged too many alliances, and corrupted too many officials. All that is left is for me to sort through our new uncertainties—our guests, if you will.”

He shivered, and quickly placed a hand upon his chair to steady himself. “We both need new energy—new strength. I have been far too gentle with those around me of late.”

“Food at last!” the light-creature cheered. “Where do we begin? We have so much of it at hand.” He jumped to the rafters, swinging back and forth like a pigeon trapped in a bell tower. “I am famished! I can help! Who is dispensable?” Zachs beat a wild rhythm on the broad oak ceiling beam. “The Captain would be quite tasty. And he’d offer hardly any resistance at all.”

Nunn sighed. This great display of Zachs’ only seemed to make him feel still more exhausted. “No. It would be a waste of resources to kill the Captain—just yet. He has worked for me too long. He has a certain knowledge that I might need.”

He smiled, looking out beyond the small windowless room that served as his workspace. “I think it is time to test the visitors. I am sure we will find a few of them who are expendable.”

Zachs giggled from the rafters.

Nunn sat back down upon his stool. “I will need to rest for a moment. Then we will determine which of our guests will survive.”

Zachs returned to the floor to dance and laugh in delight. Nunn closed his eyes at last. For a moment. Only for a moment.

Then he would let the dragon’s eyes fill him again.

H
ad it all been a dream? The forest, the soldiers, the cabin in the woods, their slick but sinister leader—and how about Sayre? Evan Mills remembered how the old man died, the way he tried to keep his intestines from spilling on the ground, the way the body jerked when the Captain had shot Sayre in the head. That was much more graphic than Mills’ usual dream.

But if it wasn’t a dream, what was he doing back at school? He was at the blackboard, writing out the beginning of the lesson on sines and cosines. He could smell the mix of chalk dust and floor wax; hear the shuffle of bodies in the classroom behind him, Homeroom 409. His room for twelve years, scribbling lessons on the board.

There was always something very reassuring about trigonometry.

But he had no idea why he was here.

He hadn’t spent any time in the classroom in the last three years, since his promotion to vice-principal. Well, he had made a couple of emergency substitutions. Could that be what this was? He couldn’t remember being given this assignment. He couldn’t even remember getting up this morning.

He finished his notes on the board and turned to face the class.

Carl Jackson was passing a note to Joan Blake. That Jackson always was a troublemaker. But Joan was a sweet girl. If he could call her a girl. Joan was almost his age. In fact, the whole class was much older than usual.

Somebody snickered in the back of the room. Leo Furlong, that was who it was, always waiting for the teacher to screw up. This new classroom had shaken Mills more than he liked to admit. He had to start his lesson, get control of the class.

“Class,” he began, his voice sounding oddly hollow in the classroom, “today we will continue to study the determination of angles in trigonometry. Sounds pretty long-winded, but we’ve got a couple of tools to help us.” He pointed with his chalk to the spot where he’d written the words on the blackboard. “Sines and Cosines.”

“Long-winded?” Jackson piped up from his seat. “That’s our teacher, Mr. Mills the blowhard!”

Most of the class laughed. Harold and Leo and Rose and Margaret all thought it was hilarious. Even Rebecca grinned. Only Joan didn’t smile. Mills was losing control. Leo threw a spitball at Margaret Furlong.

Margaret and Leo were husband and wife.

“Blowhard! Blowhard!” Jackson called in a singsong. “Blow it out your rear, Millsy!”

Evan had dealt with worse discipline problems than this. He was over at the side of the student’s desk in an instant.

“Do we have a problem, Mr. Jackson?” he asked in a very even tone. “Hey,” Jackson sneered up at him, “I don’t have any problem that couldn’t be solved by me walking right out of here.”

Maybe this was going to be even more of a problem than Mills had thought. “Would you like to say that to the vice-principal?”

Evan Mills was one of the vice-principals.

“Hey, I’ll say it to anybody!” Jackson pushed his chair back from his desk. “I never had any use for school. There’s no way for you to keep me here.” He stood, balling his hands into fists. “I’m too old to be kept caged in like this.” He took a step toward Mills, but the teacher stood his ground. He wasn’t going to let any punk get the better of him. He stared straight at Jackson, teacher and student locked eye-to-eye.

“We’re all too old!” a woman’s voice cut in.

Mills blinked, startled from his stubbornness. Jackson took a step away as Mills turned to look at Constance Smith. He hadn’t seen her before. The sun that poured through the classroom window showed how little grey hair she had left on her head.

“Can’t you see what’s happening here?” she demanded. “Don’t you remember where we are? This has to be some sort of trick!”

“A trick?” Mills murmured. “Incoming!” Jackson screamed.

A hand grabbed Mills’ fatigues and pulled him roughly to the jungle floor. Something whistled overhead. The ground lurched below him as the forest exploded with a deafening roar. His helmet was pelted with rocks and mud and pieces of wood.

“Jeez, Millsy,” Jackson shouted over his ringing ears. “What are you thinking about? You’ve been in Nam long enough to know when to get out of the way of their little presents.”

Mills frowned. He had never been in Vietnam. It had been Korea, when he was in the army. But he was in the hospital corps, stationed in Germany. There had been rumors of a transfer, once or twice, but the orders to ship out never came.

“No casualties, Sergeant!” Harold Dafoe stood close behind them. His uniform seemed three sizes too big for him. He stood at attention, but his eyes darted back and forth as if he wanted to watch every inch of the jungle.

“We’ve got our orders!” Jackson shouted. The ringing in Mills’ ears had subsided enough for him to hear distant machine-gun fire. He slapped Mills on the shoulder. “You’re going to take the point!”

“Nobody’s going to take anything,” a woman’s voice interrupted. Constance Smith stood beside them. She looked strange dressed in army fatigues. “Can’t you remember?”

She paused, as if she couldn’t remember herself.

“Remember that we should all be on our best behavior,” she continued. Somehow she had managed to change from her uniform into a pink dress with a lacy front and sleeves. And who had given Mills a cup of tea?

“After all,” Constance continued politely, “I think it was very generous of my mother to allow us to have this party, one with both boys and girls. Thank you so much, Mother!”

“Oh, good,” another of the girls whispered a moment later. It was Joan Blake. Evan thought Joan was pretty. He smiled at her when he could in school, but he could never think of much to say. “She’s gone. Now we can have some fun!”

“Fun?” Constance frowned. “What kind of fun?” She shook her head sharply, as if trying to get rid of some bad thoughts. “I don’t think my mother would allow dancing.”

“I’m not talking about dancing.” Joan giggled.

“Dancing?” Margaret made the word into a groan. “I’m not dancing with Leo!”

Joan’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m talking about kissing games!”

“Wait a moment,” Constance said sharply. “It seemed so much like my childhood.” She shook her head again. “Don’t you see—” Her voice was cut off by a great wind.

Mills felt himself pushed away from the others by the gale. “Fight it!” Constance called. “This is no more real than the school, or the jungle, or my tea party!”

Things were flying through the storm: great black birds, whose slowly flapping wings seemed to cut through the gale. Their calls were very much like human screams. Their beaks, when they opened them, were lined with razor teeth. They were flying straight toward Mills.

Maybe the wind could carry him faster than those birds could fly.

A hand grabbed his. It startled him even more than the sight of the birds. He had thought he was all alone.

“Listen to me.” He looked over at the face of Constance Smith. “This is the work of Nunn. I think he wants us to fight, to panic, maybe somehow betray ourselves. Somehow I can see this is all wrong. We are still in the clearing, behind the table. Let us all join hands. Maybe there is some way I can get us to safety.” Mills blinked. He could see the others now, quite close, as if Mrs. Smith’s words had broken the spell. He reached for Carl Jackson.

“I’m not taking your hand!” Jackson screamed, as if still shouting over the storm. He grabbed his wife, Rebecca, by the shoulder. “I have all the help I need right here!”

“I’ll take your hand,” Rose Dafoe announced firmly. She smiled. Her hair, no longer windblown by the storm, was once again perfectly in place. Mills felt her strong grip on his fingers.

“Harold?” Rose added, more an order than a question. Her husband took her hand in turn.

“Why are they doing this to us?” he cried in a voice near hysteria. “What have we done to them?”

“Calm down, Harold,” Margaret Furlong said as she took his hand. “The wind is going away. Leo? Take my hand, too.”

“Snakes!” Jackson screamed, pointing at the ground before him. “Dozens of snakes!”

Mills couldn’t see any snakes, or any great black birds anymore. The windswept, featureless plain that they stood on did not seem so vast as before. He could see dark, still shapes in the distance, but, unlike the howling wind and the fanged birds, these shapes held no menace. Mills guessed they were the trees at the edge of the clearing.

“Why is this happening?” Jackson howled. “We don’t want to hurt you! Maybe we can make a deal!”

“I don’t see any snakes,” Harold Dafoe said in a much more reasonable voice. He smiled a bit sheepishly. “Thank you, Constance, whatever you did.”

“Rebecca!” Joan Blake called from where she held onto Mrs. Smith’s other hand. “Come join the circle now! It’s the only way to fight it!”

“I’m not—” Carl Jackson began. “I’m nobody’s—”