The Dragondain by Richard Due Read Free Book Online

your help.”
    Nimlinn tipped her head ever so slightly. “You may call me Nimlinn, little Dain cub.”
    Jasper spun the moons, aiming the pointer at Dain, and snapped the fob shut. His last thoughts on Barreth were about his parents, and how he could never explain being so late. But he had to know what Lily knew, because the more he learned about the Moon Realm, the less he liked the idea of handing the moon coin over to his father.

Chapter Three
    Children of Dain

    T umbling in the darkness, Jasper fought to regain his sense of balance, but the harder he struggled, the more he lost control. Eventually he landed, crumpled in a heap on what was surely a very thin rug covering a very hard floor. Painfully, he rolled upright into a sitting position, his eyesight blurred. Vague shapes danced before him, and he could hear sounds. The first he identified was that of a sword being drawn.
    A voice shouted something in a foreign tongue. The moon coin pulsed, and in his head, Jasper heard: “Hold fast!” The trembling voice sounded young and scared.
    Jasper threw up his arms protectively. Through the fuzziness, he could just make out the shape of someone pointing what must be a sword at him.
    “Are you Lily?” said the nervous voice.
    Several children giggled from somewhere behind. Jasper kept his hands up in the air, far away from the grip of his sword, and turned to face the sound of the giggling children. His vision was clearing, enough that he could make out three little girls sitting upright in a bed.
    “That’s not a Lily!” the one in the middle laughed. “That’s a boy , silly!” And then all three laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
    Jasper turned back to the boy holding the sword. He looked about ten or eleven. His sandy blond locks kept falling into his eyes as he nervously seesawed his weight from one foot to the other, the tip of his blade uncomfortably close to Jasper’s nose.
    “I’m her brother,” said Jasper, as calmly as he could muster. The words came out a bit strangled, as the muscles in his throat fought to make different sounds than he’d intended.
    “Whose?” said the boy, brandishing his weapon.
    “Lily’s!” Jasper gasped.
    “Oh, right,” he said, lowering his sword point. “Look, don’t go anywhere. All right? Just stay there. I’ll be right back.” Sheathing his sword, he scurried from the small room.
    Jasper turned back to the girls and watched them leap down from the bed with a creepy catlike agility. They took a few timid steps in his direction. The leader wore a look of awe on her face, holding her open hand before her, as though reaching out for the moon coin. The others clung to her, one at each shoulder. They couldn’t have been much older than three.
    “They’ve come,” the little one in the middle said, forming a fist with all her fingers save one. “The unbound are among us.” Her voice sounded nothing like any three-year-old’s Jasper had ever heard.
    Jasper covered the pendant with his hand, his eyes scanning the room wildly, hoping he wasn’t alone with them. But he was.
    “‘Unbound?’” he finally managed to spit out.
    The little girl closed her eyes, brow furrowing in deep contemplation—a foreign look on a face so young. The other two, still firmly clinging to her shoulders, mirrored her intent expression.
    “Is it the one who lives?” whispered the one clinging to her right shoulder.
    “Or the one who dies?” whispered the other.
    Jasper felt the hair rise on his neck and arms.
    “Excuse me?” he stammered. “What did you say?”
    The little girl’s open hand began to quiver, as though she were expending some great unseen force. Her chin twitched, and her tight golden curls jiggled.
    Suddenly, the girl clinging to her left opened her eyes and straightened up, staring off with an oddly focused look, like she was tracking something with her eyes.
    “Meeri,” she said, “Teague is coming back. Darce and Mama are with