Greg Ross—with surprise Artie realized that this was the first time since Saturday he had thought about Greg. Somehow not being noticed by Greg’s crowd did not matter any more. What did Greg Ross mean to someone who had been trusted by Kai, who had gone in battle, who had—Once more Artie relived the exciting parts of his dream. Greg Ross dwindled pretty small when he thought about him now. It was much more important to see Sig tomorrow.

There was only one big boy at the bus stop the next morning—Kim Stevens. Sighting him, disappointed, Artie slowed to a stop and looked the other way. Kim was reading again, a book close to his nose. He was always reading. Maybe that’s why he had to wear glasses, he read so much. And he did not look up or say anything as Artie took a stand to watch down the street for Sig.

But when Sig swung into view he had Ras with him. Artie hesitated. Though he wanted to talk to Sig, he knew that both Sig and Ras had been in that house fussing around with the puzzle. So, drawing on his courage, Artie stepped deliberately out in their path.

“Hi,” he said, but that greeting did not come out as confidently as he meant it to; rather, it was more as if he were afraid they were not going to answer him.

Sig stared at him for a moment and Ras scowled. Artie was ready to call it quits, only his desperate need to know brought out a rush of words. “Please, you guys, about those dragons—” He had not meant to go at it just like that, the words seemed to say themselves.

Now they were looking at him as if they did want to hear what he had to say.

“What dragons?” Ras demanded.

“The silver one—the blue one—”

Sig grabbed Artie by the arm. “What have you been doing? Snooping around?”

“Wait!” Ras set a shoulder between Sig and Artie. He was watching Artie intently.

“Which one did you make?” he asked in a low voice, hardly above a whisper.

Artie answered promptly with the truth. “The red one, Pendragon.”

“Pendragon?” repeated Sig. He lessened the roughness of his hold on Artie, but he looked more to Ras as he asked, “You know Pendragon?”

“Pendragon? No, never heard of that before. But then I never heard of Fafnir or the lau before either. All right, Artie, so you put together the red dragon, this Pendragon. Then what happened? Give, man!”

Artie told in a bubble of words which got things rather mixed up so that his listeners kept interrupting him with questions he answered impatiently. But he told in detail of the burial of the High King, the throwing of his sword into the river.

“Did—did you dream about him, too?” he ended.