Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) Read Free

for, in the shadowed part of the ice cream man’s hand, he could see the stars.
    “Believe it or not,” he called as if he was already very far away, “we’re all in this together!”
    The man in white was gone. No, he hadn’t pedaled away, or even turned. He had simply vanished.
    Mr. Furlong dropped his half-eaten ice cream bar on the street. “I’m going home!” he announced.
    Somehow, Nick thought, home wasn’t the safe place it had been a few hours before.

Around the Circle #1:
    A Visit with Nunn
    N unn didn’t trust a soul. Those without souls, however, were a different matter.
    The flash of crimson light seemed to agree.
    It was there, waiting for him, when he opened the door to this, the most inner room of the place that he had built with his magic, half castle and half maze. But then the light faded, and all went back to darkness, as it was meant to be, safe from sunlight, and from spells other than his own.
    The magician moved quickly into the lightless room. Nunn did not need to see his surroundings, at least in any ordinary way. Everything was stored quite carefully here, and anything that moved knew enough to stay out of his path. He paused at the room’s center and clapped once, then twice more. A single point of light spread before him, and an image coalesced within: an elderly man in white giving handouts to the newcomers.
    Nunn made a noise deep in his throat. “So quick,” he whispered as he turned away from the image of his brother wizard. “How do you suppose he might have gotten warning?”
    The air flashed red for an instant by his right shoulder.
    Nunn rubbed at the single, deep furrow that ran across his forehead. “What do you mean? How could he have found out about the calling before I did?”
    Another, longer flash of red lit the crowded workroom, a flash long enough to see the shape of the thing that made it, a shape that was almost human.
    “Enough!” Nunn announced, his words increasingly angry. “This is no time for amusement.”
    The red light shifted to blue and then to green, as if it might entertain itself despite the wizard. Nunn reached out quickly with the flat of his hand, slashing across the illumination.
    The green light screamed.
    The magician withdrew his hand. His fingers tingled where he had made contact.
    “Much better,” the wizard added. “It pleases me so much when you choose to verbalize.”
    The green light shifted again and gained substance, defining itself into a small creature covered by fine hair. The light faded further as the hair turned brown, so that the creature might be mistaken for a large monkey or a small chimpanzee, unless one looked at the eyes. They still glowed with the same unnatural light.
    The creature managed a ragged breath. “When you call me so abruptly,” it spoke in a thin, high, and quite unpleasant voice, “it tears me up inside.”
    “So I’ll put you back together,” Nunn remarked dismissively. “It’s not as if you could exist without me.”
    “One can dream,” the monkey-thing replied with what looked like the beginning of a smile.
    Nunn raised his hand to strike.
    “Only using my wit!” the creature cried defensively. “You remember that! You’re the one who gave it to me.”
    Nunn curled his fingers into a fist. The monkey was right. It was nothing more than what Nunn had created.
    The monkey cowered, its eyes on the wizard’s hand. Nunn half considered tearing the construct apart. It would be a satisfying bit of destruction. It would also be far too wasteful. Building it had been hard, intricate work. There were bound to be flaws. And every time he chose to tinker with this creation, he risked losing more of the energy he had bound inside the thing, until someday all that power would leak away and return to where it had come from. Nunn couldn’t allow that, especially now. The monkey might not be an ideal vessel, but it would do. The Circle had begun, and even this creature was a part of it.
    The monkey