The Dragon King Read Free Page A

can’t feel it anymore!”
    Artie took her hand. She was right! Their peculiar connection was gone, or at least in Artie’s case, altered. Because he could feel someone —just not Kay. Artie frowned, searching his feelings, and then it hit him. Kay had been replaced by Dred. Artie could feel his breath and his arms and legs as they moved. This new sensation was not as intense as it had been with Kay, but it was there. Whether Dred had similar sensations, Artie couldn’t tell.
    “Don’t worry, Sis. Maybe once we go home it’ll come back.”
    Kay straightened. “I hope so.”
    “Everything okay, lads?” Thumb asked.
    “Uh, yeah, Tom. Just having a brother-sister moment,” Artie said.
    “We’re fine, Tommy. Thanks,” Kay said without a trace of her trademark sarcasm.
    “Peachy, lads.”
    Just then Dred clapped Artie on the back. “So—is there more to Avalon than this beach?”
    “Certainly, lad,” Thumb answered. “Castle Tintagel. I used to visit it in the olden days. . . .” He trailed off, lost in memories.
    “Is it close?” Shallot asked.
    “Avalon is not large, lady fairy,” Thumb answered. “It won’t be hard to find.”
    “Good,” Artie announced. “Numinae, will you carry Lance?”
    “Yes, sire.”
    “And Sami—can you grab Kynder?”
    “Of course. You know a little thing like crushing weight can’t stop me.”
    “I sure do.” Artie looked over his friends—his knights!— and said, “The rest of us should check the beach for our things. When we’re done, we’ll head inland and find this Tintagel.”
    “Sounds like a plan, lad,” Thumb said. “I’ll go check over—”
    But Numinae slid a finger over Thumb’s lips and cut him off. The forest lord cocked an ear toward the mist as the others froze, their hands tightening around the hilts of their weapons. The only noise any of them could hear was that of the waves lapping at the unseen shoreline.
    “Ready, friends,” Numinae warned in a fierce whisper. “Something approaches.”

2
HOW THE PARTY WAS NOT SUPER IMPRESSED WITH CASTLE TINTAGEL
    Numinae, all seven-plus feet of him, stepped toward the noise. “What is it, Noomy?” Kay whispered.
    Numinae didn’t answer. His right hand began to glow with a spell.
    Then the knights made out a faint, high-pitched squeak. Artie pointed Excalibur at the sound and peered into the mist. “Clear!” Artie ordered quietly.
    An invisible jolt of energy leaped from the sword’s blood channels, wending around Numinae like a will-o’-the-wisp, and parted the mist.
    After a few moments the mist revealed a grizzled old man, with a huge round nose like a turnip, dressed in a light cotton shirt and a heavy leather vest. Or it was half a man, anyway. He had a head and shoulders and arms and a chest and a stomach, giving him all the essential parts of a person, but he had no legs. His abdomen was strapped into a contraption that consisted of a single brass wheel, about two feet in diameter, covered with a black rubber tire. He propelled himself with a pair of weathered wooden sticks that attached to his wrists at right angles, leaving his hands free. In his right hand was a flare-muzzled musket like a pirate’s.
    “Who’s that?” the man demanded, the black metal of the gun shaking like a leaf in a gale.
    His eyes were open but they were as white as golf balls.
    He was blind.
    “I am Numinae, lord of Sylvan.”
    The man stopped. “No, you are not. You cannot be here. It is not permitted.”
    “I am not alone.”
    The man’s blank eyes darted in their sockets as if he could see. “Who brings you here?”
    Artie stepped forward. “Me.”
    The man turned his ear toward Artie. “You sound a boy!” he exclaimed nervously. The man’s gun hand shook more. Numinae held up his spell, ready to let loose.
    Artie said, “So was the first Arthur, when he found out who he was.”
    The wheel squeaked as the legless man backed up a little. “Marvel! So you are —”
    “Yes. I’m King Arthur