The Dragondain Read Online Free

bedtime tales were . . . not . . . just . . . stories.
    He looked up from his scrutiny of the coin, suddenly aware that Nimlinn, posed like a slit-eyed sphinx, had been studying him .
    “Your Majesty,” said Jasper somberly, “do you know where my uncle is?”
    But she just continued to stare at him, making him feel more uncomfortable. Not knowing what to do with his hands, he nervously stuffed them into his pockets. He pulled out a LUNA Bar, tore off the wrapper, and began eating. What else had Lily put into motion? Jasper tried to pull back the memory of what his sister had said after waking him, but nothing more would resolve. Annoyed, he thrust the half-eaten bar back into his pocket.
    “Your Majesty, where is your Dainrider? And why are you the only saddled Rinn?”
    Nimlinn’s tail twitched suddenly, and one of the wyflings, his arms full of supplies, had to leap quickly to avoid it, letting out a little yelp.
    “I have no Dain rider,” said Nimlinn, slowly and with great menace.
    “I don’t understand. Did you lose him?”
    “Lose him? I have lost no one. Your sister, Lily, is the only one ever to grace my back.”
    Jasper thought this very odd. It certainly didn’t jibe with Uncle Ebb’s descriptions of the Rinn and their cool-headed Dainriders; in Ebb’s tales, they were like one being when they rode together. “But without a Dainrider, how do you make good decisions in battle—”
    Nimlinn’s claws shot out of their sheaths and dug effortlessly into the soft earth. Her head twisted slightly to one side and a strange, deep sound came from her throat. Slowly, she mastered herself, and her claws retracted.
    “It is time for us to go,” she said. “Climb aboard. Snerliff, make sure he is properly strapped into the saddle, and see that the two of you are well situated.”
    The wyflings helped Jasper into the saddle, and Jasper held out a hand to each of them in turn. The pads of their paws were soft and warm, and the tufts of fur between their fingers tickled. Once they were all ready, Nimlinn sprang up and settled into a galloping gait, plowing through or weaving around the dark pools of water, easily bounding over the smaller ones.
    Several times Nimlinn leapt into what appeared to Jasper to be total darkness, as the encroaching canopy of trees above them blocked out so much of the moonlight. But Jasper remembered the bedtime tales about the Rinn. He knew that with even scant moonlight, a Rinn could see as if it were daytime. Even in complete darkness, there was much a Rinn could discern from the way air currents swirled about its whiskers and fur.
    They entered a wide glade where the light was strong enough for Jasper to see that they had arrived at the edge of a towering forest and that Nimlinn was steering them to what looked like a black tunnel leading into it.
    Within the tunnel, the darkness became absolute, yet Nimlinn increased her pace. The wind blew strongly through Jasper’s hair, and he found that to keep his eyes from drying out, he had to narrow them to slits.
    “Your Majesty—” he shouted.
    “You do not need to scream in order to be heard.”
    “I’d like to know what’s going on. What did Lily do while she was here?”
    For a long time, they moved through the night air with only the sound of the wind in Jasper’s ears.
    “Your Majesty! Where is Rinnjinn?”
    Nimlinn made a growling noise that Jasper took for exasperation.
    More time passed.
    At last Nimlinn’s voice boomed out in the darkness. “You will need to know . . . a few things, I suppose.”
    She explained to Jasper the powers of the saddle, including its ability to grant sleep. She gave a brief account of the morning of the crossover and Rengtiscura’s attack. Jasper cringed when he heard about Lily’s mistakenly setting the coin to an unknown moon, and he felt Nimlinn’s disappointment as she described the meeting with Aleron that came just too late. She mentioned nothing about Roan’s darkness or The Tomb