Dragon Mage Read online

Arshaka had four very special eggs that he would use in his bid to control first Babylon, and then a good chunk of the world.

  20

  A Dog and a Mustang

  “Neato-keeno!”

  Shilo heard the odd exclamation as she hurtled around the corner, nearly catching her robe on a wood post.

  “Neato-keeno!” repeated an Asian boy. He was at the south end of the courtyard, where she’d appeared days before. She immediately recognized him as the boy from her dream who talked about courage. He was wearing cutoffs and a white T-shirt that was smudged with dirt. He wore a catcher’s mitt on his left hand and held a softball in his right.

  The horn blatted again, and she saw a pair of guards rush toward the boy.

  “Oooops,” she heard him say.

  Her mind raced as her feet churned. She was closer to the boy than the guards, and so she grabbed him and rushed under one of the balconies in the south before they could do anything. With her free hand, she reached out and grabbed a thick pillar, slamming her eyes shut and concentrating.

  If my gift is to manipulate material, then let me manipulate this, she thought. Please, please, please let this work. If it didn’t, she and the boy would be caught, and who knew what would happen to dragonkind and mankind.

  The post was wood and flowed like butter, and as a result the balcony above collapsed. Shilo tugged on the boy’s arm and hurried around the corner just as the entire balcony came down. He fought against her, but she was strong in her desperation. She prayed there’d not been anyone standing on the balcony; she’d not had time to look.

  “Hey! Who are you? What are you doing?” The boy’s wide eyes were defiant, not frightened.

  “Trying to save you,” she said. “Shut up and run!”

  She pulled him around the next corner, darting behind a wide, two-story building and into a narrow alley. There was no one here, and so she pulled down a curtain that served as someone’s doorway, praying no one was inside. She wrapped it around the boy and pushed him to the end of the alley. It was dark here, the shadows from the buildings made long by the setting sun.

  “Who are you?” he repeated, almond eyes narrowing.

  “Shilo.” She pressed him up against the building. He wasn’t much shorter than she was, and she put him at ten or eleven. “Listen, I haven’t the time to explain everything to you. I expected someone older to show up.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “The dragon had no right to…”

  “Dragon?” The boy brightened.

  “Yes, the dragon. She had no right to pull someone so young into this.”

  “I’m not that young. I’m almost twelve.”

  Close, she’d guessed close.

  “Listen…”

  “Kim.”

  “Listen, Kim, there’s a dragon that needs help. But before we can help her, we have to get you out of here. You’re in danger, just ’cause you look different. I’m in danger for the same reason, I think. I don’t understand all of it, but you’ll just have to trust me.”

  “Okay.” He nodded. “Where are we going?”

  She didn’t know. “I’ve a friend getting us a room in an inn. We’ll hide there, I’ll explain everything, and then … oh, the dragon had no right. You’re too young.”

  “I’m almost—”

  “Twelve. I know.”

  “What about my friend?”

  “Friend?”

  “He was in the courtyard with me. Didn’t you see him?”

  She grabbed his shoulders and squeezed. “Kim, stay here. Stay hidden. Don’t talk. Don’t move. Understand?”

  “Geez, lady. Cool down. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  She couldn’t see his expression; the curtain was over his head like a hood. “Don’t … go … anywhere.” Then she sped away to the east, intending to circle the building and come into the courtyard from another direction. Hurry, she told herself. Don’t get lost, don’t draw attention … too much attention … to yourself. Cool down. Sheesh? What kind of an expression was that, cool down?

  The horn had stopped blatting, and Shilo didn’t hear a commotion coming from the courtyard by the time she’d found her way back to it. Maybe Kim’s friend had been caught already. There were plenty of guards, however. Eight of them were picking through the rubble of the collapsed balcony, and there were plenty of onlookers. Another half-dozen guards were stationed at the main streets that led west from the courtyard—the direction she’d initially tugged Kim.

  Kim. She recalled her dream more vividly now. Why was the name familiar?

  “There are three kinds of courage,” the boy had said in that dream. “Courage in the blood.” A face appeared in the air above him, becoming red with anger. “Courage in the veins.” The face turned blue and lost some of its ire. “And courage in the spirit.” The face did not change color this time, but its eyes sparkled intensely, and the boy’s voice became stronger. “I have the three kinds of courage, the virtues of a hero. You’ll have to find them, too.”

  The boy had knelt and combed the sand around his feet with his fingers, drawing a curled foot with long claws.

  “Empty is the clear path to Heaven, crowded the dark road to Hades. When the mantis hunts the locust he forgets the shrike hunts him. Take care what hunts you, Shilo.”

  She shivered again, as she had in her dream.

  “My dragon was the First Minister and General in Chief to Emperor Liu Pei.” The boy gestured and a sword appeared in his hands. “The Slumbering Dragon mine was called. Yours can never sleep, Shilo, at least not unless you help. And yet if you value your life and want to hold on to your father’s memories—if you don’t want to risk everything you know, you must never heed her call.”

  Kim … that was the name of her father’s friend. Meemaw had talked about him. Kim … “Omigod!” Shilo said. Her knees gave out and she fell. Hiding in the shadows, by a northwest wall in the courtyard, she spotted a boy in a T-shirt and jeans. “Omigod. Omigod. Omigod.”

  Clinging to the sides of buildings and the walls, fingers brushing the ceramic images of lions and bulls, Shilo trotted around to the other side of the courtyard, trying to make it over to him. She was panicked, her breath coming fast, as she worried that the guards might see him before she could get there. That they hadn’t noticed him already was a miracle, but then they had the collapsed balcony to contend with. That they hadn’t noticed her was another wonder, but then she looked like a local.

  “Please don’t let my skin run.”

  His blue jeans were patched at the knees, his dark high-top tennis shoes had untied, frayed laces, and his gray T-shirt had a design on it. Focusing on it, she made out the details as she got closer. It was a car, draped in an American flag, or painted to look like a flag, and beneath it were the words in cherry red: Mustang Mach 1.

  “Oh, please don’t let this be happening. By all that’s holy, don’t let this be real.” She recognized the T-shirt from an old photograph.

  It took her a few minutes to reach the boy, and a moment more to grab his arm and pull him down a side street.

  “Hey!”

  “Shut up. Just shut up.” Immediately she regretted the words. God, I just talked terrible to my father!

  “Hey!” He shouted it this time, as if trying to attract someone’s attention. “What are you—”

  “I’m trying to save you,” she said, her voice soft but stern. “Don’t make this difficult. If you call for what amounts to the cops around here, we’re both screwed.”

  That calmed him a little. “Save me, huh? So where are we goin’?”

  “You’ve got a friend named Kim?”

  “Yeah. He’s here! I thought I saw him. Wild. The puzzle brought us both here? At the same time? What about Ras and—”

  “Just you and Kim.” She didn’t think the dragon would bring more than two.

  “Wild. At least this place is warmer than—”

  “Shush.” She noticed two men and a girl watching them, and she turned south down an alle
y. It was so dark here from the shadows of the buildings that she had a hard time seeing.

  “You’re not going to mug me or somethin’, are you, lady?”

  “I … said … I … am … trying … to … save … you.”

  There was a corner where a building jutted out, and she pressed her back against it, drawing him close, still disbelieving this. She sucked lungfuls of hot air in, nearly gagging on the scent of garbage that lay near her feet.

  Oh, God, please don’t let this be happening. Let this be some horrible dream. Oh, please.

  Oh, please. Oh—

  “So where’s Kim?”

  At least he whispered this time.

  She glanced to the end of the alley, looking north and hoping the two men and the girl were not there. Nothing. A glance to the south. People walked by on the street, but they didn’t look in the alley. A guard hurried past, carrying a catcher’s mitt. Arrrgh! When she’d grabbed Kim it must have fallen off, and she didn’t think to pick it up. What would an archaeologist make of that? What would whoever is in charge of the guards think of it? What if they took it to the rich man who knew about Georgia?

  “Kim’s not far from here. We’ve got to sneak through a few alleys to find him. You’re not exactly dressed for this place, so we’ll have to be careful.”

  “What place?”

  “Babylon.”

  “Babylon. Wow. What’s the circa?”

  “Huh?”

  “The date. What year is it?” Still he whispered, his voice so soft she had a hard time hearing him.

  “I don’t know. About twenty-five hundred years ago, I guess. Nebuchadnezzar’s the king.”

  “Cool. Very cool. So you’re not from around here either, huh? I can tell by your accent. Where you from? You get here with a puzzle, too? What’s your name?”

  “Shilo.” She regretted answering that immediately.

  “Shilo? Wild, a great name. Parents must like Neil Diamond a lot, huh? Or dogs?”

  “Dogs?” Shilo clamped her teeth tight.

  “Don’t you know nothin’ about music, lady? Neil Diamond wrote a song with that name. It was about a favorite dog he had when he was a kid. Song came out in ’sixty-eight, but it didn’t hit the charts until almost two years ago.”

  “Two years?”

  “Nineteen seventy, you doofus. Made it into Billboard’s top one hundred. Anyway, great name. Mine’s—”

  “Sigmund.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “She has magic.” This came from Nidintulugal. He’d appeared behind them, moving so silently neither had heard him approach. “Put this on.” He passed Sigmund a robe, the one Shilo had appropriated when she was in the city, and the one she gestured to.

  “Phew!” The boy wrinkled his nose, but hesitated only a moment before putting it on.

  “Why can’t I have that other one?” He pointed to the one draped on Nidintulugal’s shoulder.

  “It is longer,” Shilo said. “Your friend, Kim, he’s taller than you. He gets the longer robe.”

  Sigmund was shorter than Shilo by about a head, and so he gathered the robe up at the waist and tucked it into the waistband of his blue jeans so it wouldn’t drag. Then he pulled the hood up and wrinkled his nose at the smell again.

  Nidintulugal retrieved a handful of nuts from his pocket and gave them to Shilo. She closed her eyes and felt the smoothness and the roughness of them, and envisioned them melting.

  “So who are you?” Sigmund asked.

  “Nidintulugal.”

  “Definitely not a song title,” Sigmund said. “You sound like a native, Niddy.”

  Nidintulugal frowned at the nickname and rolled up Sigmund’s sleeves. Shilo started rubbing the dye on his arms and hands, then his face, carefully smearing it around his eyes and mouth.

  “Your robe is too high,” she whispered. “They can’t see your tennis shoes. Everyone wears sandals here.”

  “My … oh.” He was about to tug the robe down a little, but Nidintulugal stopped him and did it for him.

  “You do not want to smear your skin.” Nidintulugal stared at him. “I only brought enough nuts for two.”

  “For Kim, huh?” Sigmund said. “Gotta find him.” He started to move, but Nidintulugal shoved him back against the wall. “Hey, watch it, Niddy!”

  “Nidintulugal,” Shilo corrected. “This is serious, okay, Sigmund? There are people looking for me, and probably for Nidintulugal, and you and your friend Kim will stick out like proverbial sore thumbs. And so they’ll be looking for you, too. Maybe they saw both of you in the courtyard and are looking already.”

  “Why? What’d we do to anybody?”

  Nidintulugal shook his head.

  “You don’t know, Niddy?”

  “We’re not sure,” Shilo said, again dropping her voice to a whisper. “Maybe ’cause I’m different. There’s a guy, a rich one, who knows I’m from Georgia.”

  Sigmund smiled. “I’m from Georgia, too. Kennesaw.”

  “I know,” Shilo whispered. “Stay here.” She padded to the south end of the alley, watching people pass by on the street. Behind her, she heard Sigmund—her father—jabbering to Nidintulugal.

  How could Ulbanu have done this to her?

  She leaned against the corner of the building at the end, a residence, she guessed, for someone who was a little well-to-do. How could the dragon have reached through time and across the miles and grabbed her father … when he was eleven or twelve? Her father! Maybe the dragon could touch her father because he’d touched the puzzle, the conduit as Ulbanu had called it. Maybe that’s why the dragon grabbed Kim, too.

  The dragon had no right!

  That she was here from the future was evidence that traveling through time was possible. So if she could be here, her father and his friend—at younger ages—could be here, too. But her father! A great part of her was furious that Ulbanu would do this. Shilo was having a hard enough time dealing with his death as it was.

  Now she had to deal with his life … before he moved to Wisconsin, before he grew up, before he moved back to Georgia and met her mother. Before she was born and named after Neil Diamond’s dog.

  But a small part of her—a part she couldn’t deny—was terribly happy to see young Sigmund. At least in Babylon her father wasn’t dead.

  Tears threatened at the corners of her eyes.

  “No more crying,” she hissed. “No more crying ever.” She sucked in a deep breath and straightened her back. “Find the eggs, save the eggs, and get out of this Hades.” She motioned to Nidintulugal and Sigmund.

  The boy—her father—still chattered to the priest.

  “Niddy, I’ve time-traveled before. When the puzzle took me to the far north, I got to help with this huge forge. I just appeared there, but in nice warm clothes that looked pretty much like what everyone else was wearing. Too bad that didn’t happen this trip. I wouldn’t have to wear this smelly thing. Anyway, this dragon came … actually, this was just a couple of days ago … and—”

  “Shush. Walk casual,” she whispered to Sigmund as she returned. “Follow me. Walk like you live here, like you know where you’re going. Don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself.”

  “Same advice my maw gave me when we went to Atlanta last year,” he whispered back.

  Then she stepped to the end of the alley again, then out into the street, and turned to the east, turning south minutes later when she reached the courtyard. Guards were still helping people clean up the bricks and wood from the balcony, but they were almost finished with the work. She didn’t see anyone injured, nor any sign of blood, so she figured no one had been standing on it when she made it collapse.

  “Whew,” she said as she lengthened her stride and heard Sigmund’s and Nidintulugal’s footsteps behind her.

  “What are we doing here?” Sigmund asked the priest.

  Shilo was amazed that he could communicate in the native tongue. It was magic, she knew, magic that came easier to a bo
y three or four years younger than she. And was there magic in her because she’d inherited it from her father? Like one inherits physical features and propensities for some diseases?

  “I don’t need to be thinking about stuff like this.” She turned east again, remembering the alley she’d shuffled Kim down. “I need to get us all together and to that inn.” Nidintulugal had gotten them all a room, hadn’t he? “Kim. Where did I put him?” The sun had set quickly, and the alley was darker than when she’d been here several minutes before.

  “Niddy, are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

  “Later.” Nidintulugal’s voice took on a hardness Shilo had not heard before. “When we are away from here and safe, across from the Gardens, boy.”

  “Sigmund.”

  “Sigmund, then.”

  “What gardens?”

  “Later.” The severe tone ended Sigmund’s questions.

  “I can’t find him, the boy Kim.” Shilo whirled to face them, her eyes locked on Nidintulugal’s, as she didn’t want to look at her father right now. “I left him here—right here—wrapped in a blanket.” She pointed to the very spot where she’d told him to stand. “I told him not to move.”

  Shilo swore it felt like her stomach had risen into her throat. She could hardly breathe. “I told him not to move,” she mouthed. Her eyes were wide with worry.

  Nidintulugal stepped past Sigmund and Shilo. At the edge of a building, a run-down place that looked empty, he bent and picked up a blanket.

  “Did you wrap him in this, Shilo?”

  She turned and stared at the cloth in his hand. She swallowed and nodded.

  21

  Diipanii

  The old one rarely stood or walked, let alone left his den. But this was a momentous day, and so he did all of those things.

  Today was Akitu, the festival of the House Where the Goddess Temporarily Dwells in Babylon, one of the longer-named festivals in the city. If the Old One’s memory served, this day was Ishtar’s. Goddess of Goddesses, Shepherdess of the Lands, Righteous Judge, Forgiver of Sins … could she forgive his?

  He shuffled along the street alone, ignoring the stares of children who had not yet scurried inside for the evening meal.