Draw One In The Dark(80)

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Edward didn't wait long. He didn't sit down. He didn't dare sit down. There was only one chair, and it seemed to be in front of the table, with the peas on it.



Instead, he stood, uncertainly, till the door opened, and a man came in. He looked . . . Well, he looked like an average middle-aged man, of Asian origin, in Colorado. He wore T-shirt and jeans, had a sprinkling of silver in his black hair, and, in fact, looked so mundane, that Edward was sure there must be a mistake.



He opened his mouth to say so. And stopped. There was something in the man's eyes—the man's serious, dark eyes. They looked like he was doing something very difficult. Something that might be life or death.



"Mr. Ormson?" he said.



Edward Ormson nodded, and his eyes widened. Was this the human form of the dragon he had seen yesterday? He seemed so small, so . . . normal.



But in Edward's mind was the image of that last night before he'd . . . asked Tom to leave. He remembered looking out of the window of his bedroom, next to Tom's room and seeing a green and gold dragon against the sky—majestic against the sky. He remembered seeing the dragon go into Tom's bedroom. And he remembered . . . He remembered running to see it, and finding only Tom, putting on his bathrobe. He remembered the shock.



These creatures could look like normal people. Perhaps . . .



"My name is Lung," the man said, and then, as though catching something in Edward's expression, he smiled. "And no, I am not him. But you could say I . . . ah . . . know him." Lung stepped fully in the room, and seemed to about to sit down in the plastic chair, when he realized that Edward didn't have anywhere to sit.



"They left you standing?" he asked. "I'm so sorry." He opened the door and spoke sharply to someone back there, then stepped fully in. Moments later, a young man, with long lanky hair almost covering his eyes, came in and set down a chair. Another one, swiftly, ducked in the wake of the first, to remove the cloth and all the peas in it. As soon as he'd withdrawn the first one showed up again, to spread another, clean tablecloth on the table. And after that, yet another one set a tray with a teapot and two tea cups on the table.



Lung gestured toward the—blue, plastic—chair they'd brought in. "Please sit," he said. "Might as well be comfortable, as we speak."



Edward sat on the chair, and faced Lung across the table. "Tea?" Lung said, and without waiting for an answer, filled Edward's cup, then his own. "Now . . . may I ask why you were looking for . . . him? His name is not normally spoken so . . . casually."



Edward took a deep breath. "How do you know my name?" he asked.



Lung smiled, again. He picked up his cup, holding it with two hands, as if his palms were cold and had to be warmed on the hot porcelain. "He told us. He told us he brought you to town. That you were to . . . convince your son to speak."



"Ah," Edward said. "I don't know where to find my son," he said, picking up his cup and taking a hurried sip that scalded his tongue. "I haven't seen Tom in . . ."



Lung shook his head. "I don't question his judgments. It wouldn't do to do such," he said. He looked at Edward and raised his eyebrows just a little. "He says you have been . . . useful to us in the past, so you know a little of . . . his ways. And of us. Do you not?"



Edward inclined his head. More than simple acknowledgment, but less than a nod. "I have defended . . . people connected to him, before. I know about . . ." He thought about a way to put it that wouldn't seem too open or too odd. ". . . about the shape-shifting," he said at last.



Lung inclined his head in turn. "But do you know about the other . . . about his other powers?"



Edward raised his eyebrows, said nothing.



Lung smiled. "Ah, I won't bore you with ancient oriental legends."



"Given what I've seen, what I've felt; given that I was brought here by . . . the—"



"Him."



"Him, I don't think I would dismiss it all as just a legend."



"Perhaps not," Lung said. "And yet the legend is just a legend, and, I suspect, as filled with imagination and wild embellishments. What we know is somewhat different. But . . . he is not like us. That we know. Or rather, he is like us, but old, impossibly old."



"How old?"



Lung shrugged. "Thousands of years. Before . . . civilization. From the time of legends. Who knows?" He drank his tea and poured a new cup. "What we do know is this—he has powers. Perhaps because he is old, or perhaps, simply, because he was born with more powers than us. I couldn't tell you which. But whatever powers he has, it is said that he can feel things—sense them. Perhaps it's less premonition than simply having been around a lot and seeing how things tend to work out." He inclined his head and looked into his tea cup as though reading the future in its surface. "If he thought you should be here, then he has his reasons."