The Saint of Dragons
The Saint of Dragons
Jason Hightman
It’s not every day you wake up and find you’re a dragonhunter but in this exciting debut novel that’s exactly what happens to Simon St. George…Simon St. George meets his long lost father after supposing him dead, only to be informed that he is a descendant of St George the Dragon Slayer and it is his duty to inherit this role himself. For there are dragons in today's society and the world should be rid of their evil once and for all! Trouble is, they are disguised as humans in positions of power….Exciting fantasy adventure with generous lashings of snarky humour.
the Saint
of Dragons
JASON HIGHTMAN
Copyright (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2004
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © Jason Hightman 2004
Jason Hightman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780007159079
EBook Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 9780007383429
Version: 2014-10-07
Dedication (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
For my mother and father
Table of Contents
Cover (#ub910f0b8-2600-5178-ac92-3ab96daaa7fd)
Title Page (#uad16c3be-db00-5940-839e-156f9f9b7bce)
Copyright (#u3d74914f-2432-574d-97c0-82b3cdafef58)
Dedication (#u0b56bebc-b58b-5abc-ab8e-a9cf67d545ca)
INTRODUCTION (#u0cfb63b4-d9b4-5b34-8572-73f62b6e0651)
CHAPTER ONE - Simon St George (#u43309cce-de13-5368-8778-6695156c6d5d)
CHAPTER TWO - The Original Dragonhunter (#u0101aa6e-1a57-5fdb-900d-5ee92be89e12)
CHAPTER THREE - The School in the Lighthouse (#u745bb7df-80c1-5e2c-b0e9-9f416f95ac8e)
CHAPTER FOUR - St George, the Elder (#ua9c61f3c-b2d8-53e8-ad7b-61c69b8d28e4)
CHAPTER FIVE - A Brief History of Dragons (#u4e94b3ea-4b73-5692-9bd6-faf5d3f2b85c)
CHAPTER SIX - The Family Business (#u47bb00f6-a409-5f5d-bb25-bcfa18eadf68)
CHAPTER SEVEN - A Manhattan Dragon (#uad694f18-d8ea-59ce-bc3d-c6df88ed9997)
CHAPTER EIGHT - The Woman who Fell in Love with a Dragon (#u42152672-80d7-5847-ab83-d41c77023b82)
CHAPTER NINE - The Battle with the White Dragon (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN - Something to Chill your Bones (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN - A Hidden Evil (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE - A Ship Made for One (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - The Mystery of the Medallion (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Sunny with a Chance of Hurricanes (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - A Serpent’s House (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Things that Go Splash in the Dark (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - We Need a Weapon (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - The Dragon of Paris (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN - Icy Ventures (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY - Secrets (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - A Crash Course in Predators (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Graveyard of Dragons (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - The Russian Dragon (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - The Fury of Fire (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - Elements of Destruction (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Two Against the World (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - The Lair of the Peking Beast (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - The Black Dragon (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - A Chinese Dragon’s Sailing Ship (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY - Separate Journeys (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - Friendship with a Dragon (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - Unwelcome Guests (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - Heroes in Need of Heroes (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - The Honour of Dragons (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - The Queen of Serpents (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE - The World Needs its Knights (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Introduction (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
You’ve been taught to believe they are dead. Figments of an ancient imagination. But one lonely schoolboy at the Lighthouse School for Boys, who has never known his family and who has never known adventure, is about to have a rude awakening.
Dragons are real.
And they have … evolved.
They exist in the world today and are every bit as evil as they ever were. It is only their appearance that has changed. Their eight-foot bodies now resemble men much more than before. With their reptilian faces hidden in a cloak and hood, you wouldn’t look twice at one crossing the street hunched over, perhaps pretending to be a homeless man pushing a grocery cart before him. But make no mistake: these Dragonmen are highly dangerous.
They still have scales for skin, slithery tongues, lizard tails, sharpened faces – and they are secretly responsible for most of the worst fires you hear about, using their wicked magic for no reason, burning buildings just for sport.
They live hidden away, in luxurious apartments in New York, London or Paris, underground in Beijing or beneath the sands of Egypt, in boats anchored in Venice or Tokyo, or in homes built inside water caves in Africa or South America. They back organised crime, military dictatorships and cruel multinational companies, or they act as lone killers, secluded and hermit-like in mountains or deserts. Their exact number is not known. No two of them are alike. But they are powerful. And it will take all the strength the human world can muster to end their reign.
It is a time of opportunity for them. All the magicians are dead, and people no longer believe in magic. Spirits are low. To make matters worse, the dragons have the ability to cloud people’s minds so that they don’t see them in their true form.
You might see a little old lady or an expensively dressed businessman, but the person standing next to you could be, in reality, a monstrous beast. At certain times, people can see through this magic. For a moment you might glimpse the flash of serpent eyes behind the steam of a coffee cup in a local café – but it’s like a mirage. The next moment, it’s gone. Their trickery is rampant.
They sometimes move among us in ordinary ways. It is impossible for the average person to know for certain where they are. But there are signs, both large and small.
The modern dragon is that person at school or in the workplace who hides his true self, who secretly speaks badly of others, who can’t be trusted, who brings misery to those around him, who delights in the failure of friends. The modern dragon is not content to be rich, but wants others to be poor. Beneath this person’s outward appearance, there is very likely serpent skin. And a vast desire to do harm.
Few people realise these dark forces surround us.
But the numbers of those who know the truth are about to grow.
CHAPTER ONE (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
Simon St George (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
It was autumn, October. It was the edge of a wicked season and Christmas was a far-off thought. The amber-crimson colours of fall and its pumpkin-spice smells surrounded Simon St George like a vast, bewitching fire. There had never been an October that felt so perfectly suited to Halloween.
There was a chill in the air that was worse than normal for this time of year and a fog hung around the Bay, and the houses in the Bay, with a cruel persistence. The trees seemed to hunch over in sadness and wish for their leaves back to keep them warm. All the pumpkins in Ebony Hollow’s fields seemed rotten, and to ache from their own rottenness. The factory smoke from over the hill swept down into town and the grey daylight seemed to give way after only a few hours to a deep, intense nightfall. No one wanted to be out much. And no one could sleep.
Simon St George had only the faintest sense of all this. The idea that something wasn’t quite right just skittered over his mind between thoughts of tomorrow’s Halloween masquerade and a girl in town whose name he did not know.
For him, Halloween was more than just fun and games. The masquerade was something everyone had to go to at his school, a tradition, and everyone had to be in costume. Simon wasn’t sure why he needed a costume; he seemed to disappear in a crowd easily enough without one.
No matter what he did, no one seemed to notice him or take him very seriously. He was an average kid, a bit smallish, which made him easy to ignore. He had an upturned pug nose and blond, wiry, slept-in hair that made him look even younger. But he often kept his head down, so you never got a really good look at him; to the other boys, if they thought of him at all, he was something of a mystery.
Simon went to an elite academy that was called the Lighthouse School for Boys, because it was just for boys and it was made from a giant old lighthouse. It was a boarding school, where children slept and ate and lived, at least for most of the year. It was perfect if your parents wanted you to be strong and independent, or if they didn’t have time for you. Simon St George had parents who didn’t have time for him. They paid for his school, but he didn’t know who they were, hadn’t seen them since he was two years old, and he didn’t like to talk about it, if it was all the same to you.
At this moment, it was hard to see the Lighthouse School. There was just its shining light, labouring to cut through the mist. On most days the Lighthouse School could be seen from almost anywhere in town, because it was on a high promontory cliff and it was huge. In this same way, the school had dominated Simon’s life. It was the only home he had ever known.
He stood at the corner of the misty street and stared at the little novelty shop on the opposite corner. He could just make out the shop window filled with strange, hand-painted masks, and the daughter of the shop owner at the counter. Simon had hardly ever said a word to her, but she kept his secret, that he liked to collect toys and marbles, because her shop was where he bought them. He was thirteen. She was maybe two years older.
Simon watched the girl adjust the masks hanging in the window. He gathered up his nerve and stepped off to cross the street.
As he did, the foghorn bellowed at the edge of the bay with a low moan. And something else happened.
Simon turned to look for traffic and saw at the next corner, crossing the street going the other way, a very tall figure, hunched over as if from a deformity or sickness. He wore a long trench coat with the collar pulled up tight around his neck, and an old hat pulled down close so none of his face could be seen. It was just a quick moment, but as Simon looked, the wind picked up and blew the man’s coat open. Although the man quickly tightened it around him, Simon could swear he saw a claw-like foot and a thick tail slapping the ground, a tail like the largest snake on Earth.
It was hard for Simon to get a good look through the fog. The man was no more than a shadowy profile. In the next second, the figure had moved on around a corner and couldn’t be seen, and the idea that some sort of creature was roaming the streets of Ebony Hollow was too ridiculous to investigate.
So Simon caught his breath and went inside the novelty shop, feeling around in his pocket for money and feeling around in his head for something to say to the girl behind the counter. He stood at the doorway and managed to catch her gaze for about a second, and that was it.
His eyes scanned a glass case that held a series of tiny knight figures made of metal, a kind Simon collected. He didn’t know why he liked them, but he did. No one else his age ever wanted these.
He bought a little black knight and a Halloween mask that matched it, and he was just starting to talk to the girl about the masquerade when he was interrupted.
With a bang the shop door opened and a group of boys from his school herded in noisily, arrogantly pushing Simon aside as they argued over costumes. The girl almost instantly forgot about him, and after trying to be heard over their voices, Simon left the boys and the shop behind. Today just wasn’t his day.
It was a relief to get out. His face was burning red from embarrassment at having the knight toy in his hand with the other kids around him. He didn’t dare glance at the girl for fear she was looking at him like he was an overgrown little boy.
The fog had become worse since he’d gone into the shop. Cars crawled along like wounded soldiers on a battlefield. The streetlamps were nearly useless, their pale light illuminating nothing except more fog.
Going home to the lighthouse alone did not seem like such a wonderful idea in this mess, Simon was thinking. The morning had taken a turn for the stranger. Simon saw a German shepherd bounding up over dustbins and working its way to the roof of a store. All over town dogs had retreated up to the rooftops, howling. He could see their forms dimly in the fog. Something had scared them beyond belief.
Then something shuddered in the air, the sound of flapping wings. A torrent of white shapes flashed by, white bats, descending to land at the town clock.
Simon eased back into the space between two buildings. Watching them. The bats seemed to stare down at him.
Before anything else could happen, the other boys clanged out of the novelty shop.
o“It’s got cold out here,” one of them said. Simon fell in behind them, hiking his jacket collar up against the weirdly icy breeze. He thought he heard the bats shuffling in the distance. He didn’t have the nerve to look back.
He was just about to ask the others if they’d seen the bats, but it was a rare thing for him to be part of a group and the boys shot him unfriendly glances before he could even speak. Feeling unwelcome, he trailed back, letting them go on without him.
They were stuck-up kids, the richest of the rich, and they tended to torture Simon with constant questions about the St George family. Simon never had any answers.
At the Lighthouse School, the children knew every branch of their entire family tree, going back to their great-grandfathers, and great-great-grandfathers, and before that. These were boys from families with histories to be proud of and futures all mapped out for them. If your dad was a doctor, you’d be a doctor; if he was a banker, that was your lot. There was a sureness to this that made the boys feel strong and at ease. There were not many of them who questioned what was laid out for them.
Simon had no past and no certain future. There was a blankness all around him. At his age, you were supposed to have some idea of what you want to do in life. Supposedly.
He finally glanced back at the strange white bats, but the town clock was nearly buried in the pearly air.
He followed the boys down a familiar sloping street, a street that sank down a hill to an old streetcar stop. The boys stomped through the gloomy day, slapping the poles, kicking down dustbins and doing anything they could to keep from thinking about how creepy the weather had become.
Simon stood apart from them, waiting in the cold for the streetcar. Even though the boys knew it was coming, when they heard it deep in the fog, approaching with a clang and a rattle, everyone jumped. It was that kind of day.
Simon started to join them at the streetcar stop, but something stopped him.
The boys. They were staring, the looks on their faces changing from curiosity to a kind of horror. For an instant, Simon thought it might be a stupid trick, but then he saw they were looking at his feet. Looking down, Simon saw beetles flooding the street in the pale light, flowing down the hill, swarming around them!
Behind him the streetcar tore out of the fog with a clang.
The first boy stepped back in surprise. All over the metal car, more beetles were swarming. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny white beetles. There were so many they were tumbling off the roof and scattering about their shoes. The boys were so stunned all they could do was stare.
“Get inside!” someone shouted. They rushed aboard the streetcar, pushing through the rain of beetles, and the door closed behind them.
They were safe. The car was warm, very warm. It was like stepping into a greenhouse on a June day. The lights inside flickered strangely. The boys noticed that lights in the nearby buildings were flickering on and off as well.
Simon was the last to board the streetcar. As he got on, he could swear he heard the roar of some tremendous animal far off in the gloom.
It was the strangest thing.
It sounded familiar.
CHAPTER TWO (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
The Original Dragonhunter (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
Days before this, in an old suburban town near Chicago, Illinois, far from the Lighthouse School for Boys, five men rode their horses down a street frosted with autumn leaves. The sight would have been a strange one had anyone bothered to look out of their window. No one did. It was a quiet part of town. Quiet folks lived there, mostly old people, and they minded their own business. It was as if a spell kept them half asleep most of the time.
But if anyone had bothered to look out, they would have seen that it wasn’t just the arrival of horses that was strange. The riders were dressed in dull, iron-coloured armour with ornate writing carved into the metal, a runic writing so old and so secret no one would have recognised it.
The man in the middle was tall and strong, though not as stocky as the others. He had the beginnings of a beard that would have been grey if he’d let it go further. His hair was black and grey, and long and greasy, and he kept it swept back, out of his way. His face was handsomely chiselled, if you could see it under the dirt and the occasional scars. He had not washed for days. He had been on the road a long time.
“This is it,” he said to the other men. “The time is now.” His voice was deep and painted with an English accent.
He looked to a taller Englishman, who nodded. The tall one gave the others a grave smile and said, “Aldric is right. Let’s not give the wretch time to think.”
The men put on their helmets. They were now covered head to toe in armour.
Each helmet was an angular box with tiny slits for the eyes, in the crusader style. They were marked with a small symbol looking like a cross mixed with the fleur-de-lis; every warrior’s symbol was a different colour.
The horses were in an awful state of agitation. They fidgeted backwards and side to side, preparing themselves for the fight ahead.
Ahead of them lay a stone wall and a wrought-iron gate, and a stone house taller than the others nearby. The place looked haunted. It had two round turrets with long windows, though the curtains were always pulled shut. Rarely did sunlight enter this home.
The trees in the yard were dead and rotting. Beetles swarmed around their exposed roots. The twisted branches were home to the skeletal remains of many birds that had died in them as soon as they landed. The house itself smelt rancid and whoever did the gardening, such as it was, constantly replanted perennials to cover the stink, but these flowers always died.
The riders moved forward and the lead man pulled at his horse so that it reared up and smashed open the gate with its huge front legs. There was no point in being silent. A surprise attack was virtually impossible. The thing at the heart of the house would have known they were coming no matter what. Its teeth would have started to ache the moment the men came within a hundred yards. It could sense them closing in.
The horses clomped across the dead yellow grass. It was getting hot now. The men were sweating in their armour. Each carried a long metal lance, which they raised into position.
The lead horseman pushed open the front door with his lance and urged his horse forward. The others followed close behind.
The house had a long entryway and then a set of stairs. Little could be seen in the dim light. The smell was almost overpowering. The thing had not moved from this place in years.
“It’s not coming out,” said one of the horsemen. He was Irish. “We’ll have to ferret him out.”
“He’s coming,” said the leader.
“Indeed I am,” said a chilling voice. It seemed to come from their right, and then their left, and even behind them, offering no clues to the beast’s whereabouts.
“Come out, worm,” said the leader. “This waiting is pointless.”
“On the contrary,” said the voice, and again it was as if the walls themselves were talking. “I can smell the fear on you. It is growing minute by minute. You never really lose that fear, do you? Just a hazard of the job, I suppose …”
The lead man, Aldric, rode his horse deeper into the house. Now the light from the doorway no longer helped him to see.
“Do I seem fearful to you?” he said to the darkness.
“Oh, do be brave,” whispered the thing, mockingly. “Do come in closer. And by all means, do rush forward valiantly.”
The lead horseman hit a trigger on his lance and an iron cylinder shot into the room. It was a kind of white flare and it lit up with more intensity than any ordinary light could ever manage. But there was nothing to be seen. The voice was coming from nowhere.
“I’m not here, brave warrior,” said the voice. “I am sending you my voice from far away and your search has been in vain. I have already fled to the caves of a South American country and you have come all this way for nothing. You will have to begin again.”
Inside their helmets, the horsemen looked crestfallen. If this was true, untold hours had been wasted tracking and hunting this disgusting beast. Starting over would not be easy. Their hearts sank.
The lead man held his nervous horse. “You are a perfect liar,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” said the voice, and from out of nowhere a rush of heat knocked into the horse, which squealed terribly – and the man was nearly knocked from his mount. A claw had torn into his arm, right through his armour. The thing would not materialise, but the men could feel its heat and could see smoky, wavy lines like that of a mirage where the creature’s invisibility magic was wearing thin.
“Oh, but our games are fun,” said the creature.
The man was thinking they were anything but fun. Through his helmet, he could see waves of smoky heat ahead of him, marking the creature’s trail. His boots jabbed at his horse and, as they rushed down the hall, his lance slashed into the space just ahead of the smoky heat marks. Whatever was there made a splunking noise, as if the lance had struck against some kind of flesh, and the wall behind it collapsed. The sound that came out of that space was horrible, like a set of furious, squealing hogs, joined together with the cry of an eagle and the roar of a lion.
To the man it was beautiful, the sound of a wretched and terrible thing dying.
The man on the horse could not believe his luck. It had never been this easy before. His enemy must be an old one. Older than he thought, and frail.
“Be careful, Aldric,” said the tall man behind him. “Let me handle this.”
The knight growled back, “No, Ormand, the thing is mine.”
But Ormand went past him, rushing on foot into the wall’s broken space.
Aldric followed behind him, trotting his horse forward into the hole in the wall. He was now in the kitchen.
He could hear the wheezing breath of the wounded creature. Still, its magic was strong enough to keep it largely invisible. That might not wear off until hours after its death. It was not easy to be sure where the dead ones were. Sometimes the smell was the only thing you had to go by.
The kitchen was filled with the stink of rotting meat. The creature liked to let the meat go bad for weeks before it ate any of it. The man could smell pungent spices and sickly odours best left undescribed.
Above the kitchen counter, ironwork held pots and pans and dozens of sharp, sharp knives and cleavers and meat forks. They rattled and scraped as if trying to get loose. Then they did get loose. Six knives flew at the tall man and another four hit the man on the horse. The blades clanged off the armour, falling to the floor.
This was the last of the thing’s magic.
The engravings on the knightly armour glowed dimly, as if fighting to regain its magical strength. Each battle wore down the strength of the steel.
It was time now for the tall man to lay his hands upon the beast and call out the spell that would destroy it. This was the tricky part. He would have to get in close to the thing. First the man on the horse slammed his lance down into the invisible reptilian skin once more.
The thing gave out a painful howl.
If you had known all the evil things that this creature had brought about in this world, you would have been happy to know its life was at an end.
The creature’s shape began to show under layers of billowing grey smoke.
“Its strength is passing away,” said the horseman.
The tall man nodded and moved closer to the smoky shape.
“It should be mine,” said the horseman. “I should be the one to end this.”
But the tall man frowned back at him. “A child could do this one, Aldric.”
The other horsemen, alert in the doorway, relaxed.
Until the wheezing voice of the unnatural beast came scraping through the house. “I’m not …” said the voice, “finished …”
A light began to glow in the smoky shape in the centre of the kitchen. This was the heart of the creature.
Aldric pulled at his reins to halt his frightened horse.
Ormand moved in fearlessly over the light. “It’s over,” he said. “Your deceit is at an end.” And he put his hand on the glowing space, whispering with a touch of awe, “The heart of a dragon. The heart of evil …”
“Careful,” said the horseman in the glowlight. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“His life force, I’d wager,” said the tall warrior, “draining out of him.”
With that, the tall knight began to recite words that would have sounded bizarre to anyone except those gathered in the house. They were words that brought death to these creatures. Words of great magic. The light beneath his naked hand burned, but the tall warrior did not flinch.
The horseman who watched above him did not know anything was wrong. But his horse was thrown into terror. With a squealing neigh, the horse pranced backwards but could not get through the hole he’d come in.
“Whoa!” shouted Aldric, but any control over his horse was gone. In panic, it launched forward and jumped over the downed beast.
As man and horse leapt over the glowlight, it suddenly burned more intensely.
The light grew hotter and fiercer, and the nearly invisible dragon rose up with its last strength and began a fierce rush towards his attacker. The creature was old, wounded and could not see well, but it was full of wild rage and energy, and it blew Ormand backwards, carrying him towards the other horsemen in a giant growing wave of flame. The tall man flew backwards helplessly.
Meanwhile, Aldric threw his wild horse on its side as the heat rushed over and past him, sprawling outward. It was a fire like no other. The only way to describe the explosion is to say that it screamed.
The rumble of that explosion was heard for miles. Mirrors cracked. Pictures fell from the walls. Dogs yelped and hid themselves away under furniture. In all the homes around the blast for sixteen miles, milk curdled into a disgusting cream.
At the centre of the blast, much of the house was left in rubble.
The lead horseman was the only one left.
The fire had risen high and spared him.
He woke up and nudged his horse. It was knocked out. Leaving it behind for the moment, the man got up and walked towards the destroyed front of the house.
What he saw outside shocked him.
The fire from the dying creature had lasted only a second, but it had demolished the huge stones that made up the front of the house, it had burned away the yellowed flowers in the garden, it had knocked down the iron fence. It had even burned foliage down the street.
In the scorched trees above him, his fellow horsemen were spread out, draped in the ugly branches. Their armour had been burned to black and still smouldered, sending smoke into the air. Their lances were twisted corkscrew-like, or splayed in two, and hung loosely in the bony trees. The horses were gone; they had no armour, so they had vanished instantly in the blast. The man took some comfort in knowing they had felt no pain.
It was the only comfort the man had left to him. The other knights were dead. His friends, the closest people to him in the world, were gone for ever. They had been through so much together. It would not be easy without them.
The man stepped through a trail of red ash to find the skull of the terrible beast. As its spirit died, he heard its insufferable voice.
“Ssshame the boy won’t carry on your work,” taunted the voice. Aldric was stunned and leaned closer. “Oh, we know about the boy … Sweet little child … not long for this world …”
And then it was dead.
At first, Aldric’s mind rejected what he’d heard. How could anyone know about his boy?
But he felt fear rising inside him, a growing sense that the serpent’s words were true.
Angrily, he lifted the skull. It broke apart in his hand, turning to crimson ash.
There was a sound behind him. The snort of an animal. He turned in alarm – only to find his horse in the smashed doorway.
The next moment, Aldric was riding away from the scene with all possible speed. Police would be coming soon, and emergency services. He couldn’t wait around answering questions.
How did the thing know he had a child?
The thought tore at him. Fighting emotion, he galloped through the quiet town in a rush, down an alley filled with old cars, avoiding the wailing sirens on the streets. Autumn leaves floated past him.
His mind was racing even faster than the horse.
The creature had outwitted them. Playing at being weaker than it was, it had fooled them into taking their time and it had let loose all of its powers as it died. The spell had indeed killed it; but the beast had a dangerous death-rattle. They should have let it weaken first, before getting closer. Always full of tricks, the things were. I must learn from this, the man thought. I must strike harder, move faster. I must bury my feelings. I must fight with all that’s in me. And have nothing left over.
It knew, he thought. The creature knew. Its spies had found his child. The thing had said, “We know about the boy.” We.
He tried not to think any more.
But in his heart, he knew three things to be true.
He was the last knight on Earth.
His son was in danger.
And he had one more dragon to face.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_a25035a9-2f69-5180-a243-cc8ad2c2a3e1)
The School in the Lighthouse (#ulink_a25035a9-2f69-5180-a243-cc8ad2c2a3e1)
For Simon, the incident of the beetles swarming the streets had been a dream-like event and none of the other boys seemed to feel right talking about it either. Life slipped back to normal. No one ever listened to Simon much, anyway; his voice never seemed loud enough to get attention.
He was known for only one thing. It had long been a rumour that Simon was poor and that he was allowed to stay at school for free, out of charity to orphans. The rumour hurt him deeply, but everyone had come to believe it.
He had always been treated like a pauper. With no parents to pick him up on weekends or holidays, Simon had come under the care of the lighthouse keeper and his wife. The lighthouse keeper naturally ended up giving Simon all kinds of chores, so the boy came to be known as something of a junior janitor. To the rich snobs at the Lighthouse School, Simon seemed like a servant, a second-class citizen.
He didn’t even sleep in the regular rooms with everyone else. Simon lived in the lighthouse. He stayed in the little two-storey building next to the beacon lamp with the old lighthouse keeper and his wife. That’s the way it had always been.
It was another reason Simon didn’t grow close to the other boys: he lived apart from them.
His room in the lighthouse was plain and simple, often quite cold and drafty. The only thing notable about it was a fireplace, which he was never supposed to use without permission.
The other children were down the hill in dormitories that had once been used by Revolutionary War soldiers. So even the buildings had a past which Simon was left out of.
Simon did get some use out of the fireplace when he could get away with it. He loved the way the flames shivered and swayed, making little sculptures, how they created flickering shadow plays on the wall.
Recently, he had been caught several times and punished with cooking duty. He had started taking more chances in the things he did lately, that was certain. The principal had given him a stern talking-to. Old Denman the lighthouse keeper, who was Scottish, had tried to explain to Simon that fire was a terrible thing, the most awful, sickening thing imaginable to a wood and brick place like the school.
“You know how we feel about you, boy,” Denman had said, his wife looking on. “We’ve watched you since you were a little child. We’ve never tried to step in and replace your true parents. We’ve never looked at caring for you as anything but a job, to be done well and without complaint. And we’ve done it. But you listen to me: fire is nothing to play with. Don’t you ever harm this old lighthouse … it’s your sanctuary.”
These were more words than the lighthouse keeper had ever said to Simon at one time in his entire life. They didn’t talk much. They worked together tending the lighthouse and had the shared sense of accomplishment that came with it, but the old man was not a father figure. His wife was not motherly. Both of them had seemed old and tired since as far back as Simon could remember.
They were tired of Simon’s questions about his family.
Maybe the rumours were true: maybe he was a poor kid, an orphan, allowed to stay at school for free. Wouldn’t someone have told him if his parents were dead? Or was the school sparing him from the truth? For Simon, it was a depressing possibility. All he knew of his family came from the few things Denman had told him, that they were good people, that they cared about him, that they wanted the best for him. They felt he was better off here than living with them, for reasons Simon didn’t understand.
No one else at school knew much, either. The day after the beetles, at Halloween, Simon had sneaked into the school office to take a look at his file while everyone was out decorating for the masquerade. The file had nothing interesting in it, but the principal and his secretary passed through and Simon heard them talking while he hid.
“He claimed he was Simon St George’s father,” said the secretary, and at this Simon perked up to listen, “but you should have seen him. He was a wreck. His hair hadn’t been washed for Lord knows how long, he had dirt and grime all over his face, he was wearing the shabbiest second-hand clothes you ever saw, and he had these wild eyes like a madman!”
“What did you tell him?” the principal asked.
“Well, I sent him away, of course,” she said. “I think he was a homeless man who had rifled through some of our garbage and found Simon’s name. Probably wanted to snake out some of the boy’s money. Of course, the money’s all set up in a trust fund and no one can get to it. His parents set that up years ago so they wouldn’t ever have to mess with him.”
“Scam artist,” muttered the principal. “He chose the wrong boy on that one. If Simon St George’s father ever shows up, I’ll have a cardiac arrest.”
Then they left and, hiding in the darkness, Simon tried not to feel bad. What they had said was true, after all. But it spooked him to know that someone was asking for him.
There was little doubt that the man was an imposter. In all his years at the Lighthouse School for Boys, Simon had never heard from his parents. Not once. They clearly did not want to hear from him. He didn’t even have an address to send them a Christmas card.
There was simply no reason for his father to appear out of nowhere after all this time.
At least that’s what he thought.
Later that afternoon he was cleaning the lighthouse windows, hanging from a rope tied to his waist. Below him was a cliff that dropped off to the sharp rocks of the shore. It was one of the dirty jobs he did from time to time for the lighthouse keeper.
Boys had walked by earlier and he heard them making fun of him. Even his friends, such as they were, avoided him when he was working. He was completely alone.
Simon was scrubbing the grimy film off the windows and thinking how badly they needed it. They had not been cleaned for months. He was listening to the wind whistle round the giant circle of the lighthouse when suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed his leg. He screamed and looked down in horror.
Standing on the narrow cliffside was a bright-eyed man who was in sorry need of a bath and a shave. The wind was blowing hard enough to carry him off the cliff, but still he stood there.
“I need to talk to you,” he whispered loudly.
Simon couldn’t believe it.
“They don’t believe I’m your father,” he whispered again.
“I don’t believe you’re my father,” said Simon, and he kicked loose from the man’s hand. The man had to catch his balance to keep from falling off the cliff.
“Just don’t scream,” said the man. “I only want a chance to tell you who you are.”
“You’re out of your mind,” said Simon, clinging to the rope.
“Don’t you see a family resemblance?” the man called.
Simon turned back, his heart drumming. The man looked crazy.
“I can answer so many questions for you,” the man said, and Simon could see he was desperate to talk. He seemed tired and in a hurry at the same time. “You could be in danger. Listen to me. I care what happens to you.”
“Then you are definitely not my father,” Simon called back, and he clambered up the rope and escaped to the lighthouse deck. When he looked back down, the man was gone.
Simon didn’t tell anyone about him. He didn’t want the man thrown in jail; the poor guy probably just needed a few bucks. And he surely didn’t want anyone thinking that was his father.
But what if he was telling the truth? He wondered if it was possible. Why had he looked so run-down – didn’t he have plenty of money? And why couldn’t he prove his identity to the principal?
The questions nagged at Simon all day.
The answers came during the Halloween masquerade. The lighthouse had been surrounded with jack-o’-lanterns and orange lights had been put up all over school. The library had been transformed with ribbons and banners and decorations, and there was music, but nobody danced. Girls from the nearby private school congregated around one punch bowl, and the boys stayed at the other. All of them were nervous, even though they were disguised in their costumes.
Once Simon looked out the window and thought he saw the man staring back at him … but when he looked closer, it was just the reflection of his own black knight mask.
Simon noticed that the girl from the novelty shop had come to the gathering, but before he could approach her, other boys moved in and he heard them making fun of him. At first he thought they couldn’t see him under his mask. Then he realised they were joking about his costume. Someone said he was the shortest knight in history. The girl didn’t laugh, but Simon slipped outside to escape them all anyway.
He was going to head to the lighthouse or the stables, where he often went to be alone, when he heard voices. He peeked around the building and could see a man dressed all in pale white, along with other men, servants perhaps, talking to the principal. Simon leaned forward, hearing only pieces of the conversation.
” … Simon St George here?” he heard the man in white say.
“Is he in some kind of trouble?” asked the principal, but the man answered that his father was inquiring about him.
His father? Simon tried to hear more. Then he glanced down and saw several rats. They had been scurrying beside the building and were now stopped, staring at him. Very large white rats with red eyes.
Simon froze where he was, afraid of getting bitten, afraid he might scream and give himself away.
“I’m very sorry to bother you at this late hour,” he heard the man in white say. “My plane arrived late and I just desperately wanted to speak with the boy.”
Simon winced as a rat began to crawl on to his foot. He was going to scream after all, but something the man said stopped him: “Has the boy been doing well?”
He strained to hear the reply: that Mr St George had nothing to worry about, the boy was doing fine, acceptable work, but he was curious as to why the family had never come to see him in person.
At this the man in white sounded sorry, as if it hurt to explain. “If he ever asks about that, you just tell him his father would like to see him very much, but work has taken him far from home and, you know, as time has gone on, it’s become harder for his father to simply show up out of nowhere. It’s difficult, as I’m sure you realise. His father thinks it might be better to stay away than to stir up a lot of angry feelings, especially if the boy is doing all right without him.”
Simon leaned out to look at the man’s face, but he couldn’t see clearly, not in the dim light. All he could see was a coat, a hat, nothing more.
“I can tell you,” said the principal, “the boy is doing well; you can be sure of it.”
“Well, that’s good,” the man said. “Because I have concerns for him.”
“Concerns?” the principal asked.
“There is always a certain kind of rabble who are drawn to a boy from a family of means,” said the man. “Rotten, disreputable people. I just want to make sure you turn away anyone … unsavoury … if someone should come round, looking in on the boy. You know, I suppose I should probably talk to him myself. Is Simon around?”
“Yes, of course. He’ll be thrilled. He’s here somewhere,” the principal said. “Might take me a moment to find him.”
“Well, now, wait a moment. I don’t want to interrupt all this if he’s having a good time,” said the man in white. “I can’t imagine a worse way to meet him, come to think of it. I didn’t know you were having a party here. I’ll tell you what. I’ll be back tomorrow and maybe I can get away with the boy for a while.”
He smiled at the principal, shook hands and headed for an old white Rolls-Royce.
For a moment, Simon just stared. He had never heard a word from his father and now two people wanted the job in the same day? The well-dressed man certainly fit the part in Simon’s mind, but he had no time to weigh the matter – the rats at his feet were squealing murderously.
Simon stepped away from them, backing up into the field where dozens of masqueraders were now leaving for the library to hear ghost stories. The younger students were all carrying jack-o’-lanterns and a little boy handed one to Simon.
Simon stared blankly at the pumpkin, as above him the sky clouded over in a sudden desire to make a storm.
Panicked that he had missed his chance to see his father in person, Simon scrambled through the throngs of boys with their pumpkins, hurrying to catch the man in white.
Simon ran across the field, but the ground was slick with mud and he nearly fell.
As he hurried to catch the man, he did not notice the lizards – several of them – that had slithered out of the undergrowth to get to him, just missing. He did not see the bats that had gathered above him, swarming in a tangle of moonlit motion. The boy was focused completely on catching his father.
Simon ran down the lane from the building, but he could not see the landscape well, even with help from the lighthouse and the stern glow of the moon. There was no sign of his father. No sign of anything; the car had vanished. The awful emptiness of the night slammed into him with the power of the ocean wind.
Whoever he was, the man was gone.
Simon stood there, watching the boys continuing to pass over the field, and with a confused sort of feeling he joined them. He couldn’t think. He just started moving with them.
They began to walk across the dark field with only their jack-o’-lanterns, a few flashlights and the lighthouse itself lighting their way. The lighthouse beam would sweep across the field, and then it would spin round and light the ocean, so the field would go dark.
Flash. Flash. Light. Dark. For most of the boys, it was a weird and perfect end to a Halloween night.
Light. Dark. Light. Dark. The boys could hear the ocean rushing back and forth against the rocks. Simon thought he could hear something else too. Thunder. Not the usual kind of thunder from a rainstorm, but something somehow less real. Then he realised it was not thunder he was hearing at all. It was a horse’s hooves.
Walking at the end of the long group of boys, he stopped to listen. “Do you hear that?” he said to the boy in front of him. The boy turned, and then all the boys turned.
“What is it?” said the next boy.
“It’s a horse,” said Simon, “somewhere out there.”
Everyone turned round, searching the foggy night. They could hear the thunder of the horse’s hooves getting closer and closer.
The lighthouse spread its beam across the cloudy field. Suddenly a shape launched out of the fog. A man on a great horse. In a second he had swooped up Simon into his arms and thrown him atop the horse.
The boys screamed and ran. Lanterns were dropped. Before anyone knew it, the horseman had rumbled off into the fog. The librarian called out to Simon, but no answer came. As the lighthouse beam swept past the boys again, the light showed them nothing but the whiteness of the fog. The beam did not fall on the horseman, nor on Simon St George.
Both of them had vanished.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_9bf572a4-42ec-5404-972a-b3ba78400619)
St George, the Elder (#ulink_9bf572a4-42ec-5404-972a-b3ba78400619)
Simon could not yell. He was in a panic, with no air in his lungs. The horseman’s face was nearly all covered in a long black scarf and his great black trench coat was fanning out from the wind, like giant black wings.
Simon clung to his back, afraid of falling. In that quick moment, he felt a strange flash of fear that the horseman was the hideous creature he had seen crossing the street – a creature with a long snaky tail. But now the horseman’s scarf fell down from his face and Simon could see it was the shabby man who claimed to be his father.
For some reason, this made Simon feel better.
Suddenly, he heard sounds up ahead. Shouting. In the greyness near the cliff, he could see three men rushing at the horse. The horseman drew a long sword, heading for the first man, who may have held a gun. It was hard to tell.
But then, behind the three men, came another, out of the fog, who slashed at the attackers with a long wooden staff. The staff slammed into the first two men, throwing them to the ground. Then the man with the staff attacked the gunman, knocking loose his weapon.
It was the old lighthouse keeper, there, in the thick of the battle, brandishing his long walking cane! The old man was holding back the three attackers! Simon gaped in surprise as the horse galloped past the fight.
“Go!” the old man shouted.
The horse galloped into the safety of the fog shroud.
Gone into the night.
When Simon finally found himself able to breathe and speak in more than a whisper, he was a long, long way from the Lighthouse School for Boys. The horseman said not a word, urging his horse on through the fog. He must have gone a very long way, because Simon did not hear any sirens and he knew the principal would have called the police immediately.
“Where are you taking me?” Simon managed to say.
“Don’t worry now,” said the horseman comfortingly. “You’ll be safe.”
That was all he said and the horse galloped onward, down the coast, through muddy forests, empty fields and past lifeless piers, with the dark ocean calling after them.
Simon had no chance to yell for help. They did not go near any houses. Even if he was able to call out, Simon wasn’t sure he wanted to. Once the shock wore off a bit, he started to think this was the most exciting thing that could have happened. If this was his father after all, what exactly did he have to tell Simon?
They reached a long, empty dock. There were no buildings around, just a big sailing boat that looked as if it had been made a long time ago. The horse trotted over the wooden pier and stopped at the boat with a snort of exhaustion.
“Rest now,” said the man, and Simon thought he was speaking to the horse. “There’s a place to sleep on board,” he went on.
“You’re talking to me?” said Simon in amazement. “I can’t just … I’m not going to …”
“You know who I am,” said the man. “And I’d like to stand here all night and tell you the story of my life, but it’s not safe here. We’ve got to move on.”
He led the horse on board. Standing on the dock, Simon looked around. He could make a run for it, but he doubted he would get very far. He didn’t even know which way to go; the fog had obscured everything around them.
“Are you coming?” said the man, annoyed, and he put out his hand for Simon to take it.
“I didn’t know I had a choice,” said Simon.
“You have a choice if you want to get eaten out there,” was the reply.
Not sure what he meant by this, but knowing that indeed he meant it, Simon turned to look behind. He heard a rattling in the bushes and, fearing that it was the dangerous men from the lighthouse, he reached out and took the man’s hand. He was pulled aboard the ship and they set sail.
The thing was, Simon thought he might be able to trust this man somehow. Without knowing why, the boy was willing to go with the unknown.
It was too foggy to see the cliffs as the boat drifted away, but Simon could see the giant light beam from the Lighthouse School, slicing through the darkness. It got smaller and smaller as the night went on. Ebony Hollow was being pushed away and, with it, Simon’s old life.
Part of him was sorry to see it go. He had few friends, but the Lighthouse School was his whole world. He had no idea where he was headed.
He had a moment to think about his schoolmates, the lighthouse keeper, and to wonder just for an instant about the name of the girl at the novelty shop, but as that thought flitted away, he felt ready for whatever came his way.
The man behind Simon coughed. “Well,” he said, “if you’re not too tired, we may as well get some work done.”
He went inside the cabin.
Simon turned back, not sure he wanted to follow. But the time for regrets had passed. Simon went in.
In the tight quarters of the galley, Simon found the man hard at work, making something to eat. “First things first. I hope you like eggs,” grunted the man. “That’s all I’m cooking.”
“I’m not very hungry,” said Simon.
“You ought to eat whenever you can,” the man replied. “You never know when you won’t be able to.”
Simon was confused. Is he ever going to explain himself? He went to sit at a tiny table, not knowing what else to do. The ship lurched a bit and Simon fell, embarrassingly.
“Don’t tell me the tide knocked you over,” said the man. “The water’s calm as can be tonight.”
“I’m fine,” said Simon, and he started to realise the man might be insulting him.
“You’re small,” the man added, sizing up Simon’s frame, and he seemed touched by that. “I didn’t think you’d be small.”
Simon decided to be direct.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Then he added a threat. “My father is waiting for me back there. He isn’t going to like this. He’s a very … he’s a very wealthy businessman. Very powerful.”
“Businessman? Is that what you were hoping?” said the man disdainfully. “Would’ve expected more imagination from you. But you can stop the empty threats. Or at least use a little foul language – put a bit of punch in it, so you don’t sound like such a prep-school toughie.”
He broke eggs into a bowl. “Old Denman, your lighthouse keeper, he might’ve been hurt out there tonight, protecting you. He’s done a good job looking after you all these years – wish I could have thanked him properly. He knew the enemy might come looking sometime, with its spies out all over the world. He’s a good man, a good warrior. I hope he’s all right.”
The lighthouse keeper, working for this man? Nothing made any sense. Simon decided just to listen.
“I don’t want to scare you off, but this isn’t like playing war in the woods. You need to be sharp. Pay attention. Listen and learn every step of the way. There is a hallowed place for each one of us after death, but I don’t plan to get to mine for a very long time, so you’d better not hasten my passage. Certain people have a mission in life and there’s no changing it, halting it or reasoning with it. It’s just the way it is.”
Maybe the man was insane. He acted like it. This fancy way of talking about his work, whatever that was, and the way he grunted his words. He did not look very clean, either. His clothes were ragged and dirt-ridden. He seemed distrustful of everything. He was like a homeless man, Simon thought. His eyes did not seem crazy, though. They seemed kinder than his voice. Did he think he needed to be harsh with Simon?
“Eat.”
Simon followed his orders. Scrambled eggs. Plain, unsalted, but they tasted good. Turned out Simon was hungry. How late was it now?
“You’re going to need all your strength,” the man said again, gobbling his own meal with a wolfish hunger. “And all your skills. Do you have any skills?”
Of course he had skills, Simon thought. What skills would this man find useful?
“I can do … woodworking,” Simon tried.
“Don’t need it.”
“I can read French.”
“French?”
“I speak fluently. My teachers say I’m very good.”
“Probably not helpful. What else?”
“I don’t know. I can pretty much operate the lighthouse. I had to cook sometimes in school, so I know a little about that. And I’m good with horses.”
“Good, I suppose that’s something,” the man said. “That school had the best fencing instructors in the country – you never took fencing?” The man’s eyes shot over to Simon.
“Fencing was going to be next year. This year I took art.”
“Art.” The man sighed. “Didn’t you take anything practical? What about archery?”
“Since when is archery practical?”
The man almost smiled. “Depends on your line of work.” He looked at Simon for a long moment, taking him in. “Denman must’ve kept you away from all this sort of thing. We never thought you’d come into this.”
“Do I get to know your name?” said the boy.
“My name is Aldric St George,” he answered. “And I am your father.”
He seemed proud of the fact. But it also seemed to be a warning.
“You’ve said that before.” The boy eyed him. “I don’t suppose you have any proof.”
“Proof?” The man looked angry. “We’ve got the same eyebrows, the same nose … You hear it in your voice, you see it in the way you move – the proof is in your blood, boy! You are a St George!”
Simon tried not to react to the man’s thundering.
“And if I had any proof with me,” Aldric continued, calming, “it could prove deadly to you. Why do you think I haven’t been able to talk to you all these years?”
“I figured you didn’t want to.”
Aldric St George looked very upset for a moment. “Of course I wanted to talk to you,” he told Simon, “but it wasn’t safe. I’ve been wondering about you since the day we said goodbye.”
“You said goodbye. I was too little to talk,” Simon said plainly.
Aldric didn’t like to be corrected. “There was no other way,” he said, and then his anger came back a bit. “The Lighthouse School had the best reputation anywhere. I trusted Denman. Didn’t that school take care of you?” At this he seemed to lean forward, worried about the answer.
“I guess,” the boy admitted.
“Well, all right then,” said Aldric, relieved.
“But I would have liked it if someone had told me who my mother and father were,” Simon grumbled, not wanting to let his father off the hook so easily. “I would have liked it if I knew where they had gone. And why.”
“The ‘why’ is easy,” said Aldric. “You’ll understand all that soon enough. It’s the reason I’m here now. I need you to join me on my quest to fight the evil that dwells among us. It has been with us for centuries. It was with us when you were born. We had to send you away to protect you from it.”
“From what?”
“From the serpents. From the Draconians. Whatever name you choose to use.”
“Choose a name I can understand,” begged Simon.
“Dragons.”
There was a moment now when no one said a word. It was such a bizarre thing to say, Simon almost laughed. But his father said it with all the truth he had in him, he said it with such fear and disgust and such wildness in his eyes that it was clear he truly meant what he said.
“You were protecting me from dragons?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Aldric. “I am telling you the truth. A truth few people in this world have ever heard.”
“I’m listening,” said Simon.
“The dragon is a creature of unspeakable evil. It is a monster. A wretched liar, an insatiable thief and a despicable killer. I say ‘is’ because this creature isn’t an animal made up out of the imagination, or from the distant past. It is real, it is alive, and it is at work in the world today. Living out there somewhere in the shadows.”
He pushed away his plate. “Fact is, up until recent times, there were great numbers of them. I’ve spent my life hunting them down, one by one.”
“You hunt down dragons,” said Simon doubtfully. “The giant scaly reptiles. With big wings and huge teeth.”
“No,” said Aldric. “They haven’t looked like that for centuries.”
“What?”
“Well, dragons haven’t stayed the same since the dawn of time,” he explained. “They’ve moved on like everything else. They’ve changed, evolved. They look like men now, mostly. They stand two or three feet taller than an average fellow, unless they’re hunched over. They walk like men do, on two feet. They have two heavy, muscular arms. Their bodies are smaller than they used to be, so they can hide under a big coat, but their skin is reptile skin and their blood is green, and warm to the touch. Their heads are man-sized and their faces reptilian. Their eyes are glassy green or yellow or pitch-black ugly.
“We don’t even call them dragons, that’s how different they are now. They’re more like Dragonmen. We call them Draconians, or Reptellans. Some people call them Serpentines, or Pyrothraxes.”
“Pyro …?” Simon tried to say it.
“Pyrothraxes. Pyro, meaning fire,” Aldric rattled on, as if all of this was everyday knowledge. “They use fire as their chief weapon, but not because they need to. These days, dragons have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of ordinary people working for them. Dragons can be found in business, in politics; most are in charge of organised crime at the top levels. They can be found in every country on Earth. Their men do their bidding now with knives and guns and bombs just like all criminals, but the dragon has a special place in his heart for fire. They simply love fire and can never get enough of it. You can never be sure what they’ll do with it. You’ll learn about that.
“Most of them are rich too. That makes it hard to find them, to catch them. But they like to walk the streets – most people have walked right past one without knowing it – and sooner or later I pick up on where they’ve been. Their magic leaves behind unwanted side effects. Wherever there are strange things going on, you can bet a dragon has been in the vicinity.”
“And you destroy them?” asked Simon.
“Every single one of them I find,” said Aldric, with a gleam in his eye. “In fact, I think I’ve found just about the last of them.”
“Sounds like you’ve done pretty well out there on your own,” said Simon, trying to humour him. “What do you need me for?”
“You,” said Aldric, “are about to join the family business. Dragonhunting.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_4a7b2878-d983-5621-886a-65bfea649daa)
A Brief History of Dragons (#ulink_4a7b2878-d983-5621-886a-65bfea649daa)
“Some things you’ll learn on the job,” said Aldric, and he took out an old curly pipe, relaxing for the first time since Simon had met him. “And some of it you need to know right away.”
Simon reclined against the wall. The ship swayed gently and pipe smoke filled the room with a pungent smell.
Aldric began. “Nobody knows when the first dragon was sighted, but it must have been a very long time ago. They began their lives right after man began to walk the earth. They were born when the first man had his first evil thought. They grew like a tiny worm in his head, and when the man died and was buried, they went into the ground and spread. From this tiny beginning, many more of them grew from tough, leathery eggs hidden deep in the earth. White, like a spider’s eggs they were, but giant. When the young dragons hatched, they crawled their way to the surface. They have caused constant trouble for humankind ever since.
“What does a dragon want? It wants nothing more than to cause people pain, fear and sadness. The dragon feeds on these things. It is attracted to human misery – it thrives on it, in much the same way that plants need sunlight and water.
“Whenever a person feels down, the dragon wants to be nearby. It crawls underground and feels with its tongue for vibrations of sadness. It sucks up the sadness right through its skin and this makes the creature stronger. In turn, a dragon through its magic can make people more unhappy. Whenever a person feels self-doubt, whenever a person thinks he or she cannot succeed, that life is not worth a penny, it’s a good bet a dragon is the reason. Nothing causes more evil in the world than self-hatred. When a person hates himself, he will do terrible things. He wants everyone to feel as bad as he does. A dragon loves to make people hate themselves.”
And does a dragon make people go mad? wondered Simon, still looking at Aldric with distrust. The man went on raving, and when Simon tried to interrupt, he only raised his voice.
“Dragons have always wanted to dominate mankind. They need us, but they see us as pests. Vermin. There are so many of us that the serpents have never been able to wipe us all out. But they try. They try to thin our numbers. They try to get us to wipe ourselves out by tricking us into hating each other. There were only two thousand dragons at the height of their power and they could never get rid of the millions and billions of people in the world.
“You see, Pyrothraxes see themselves as better than humans, superior in intelligence. Stronger. They cannot stand humans because, to them, humans are weak.
“Add to that the fact that humans hate fire. Pyrothraxes love fire. Their favourite place is inside the heart of a good blazing fire. They play with fire, they eat fire, they sleep in fire. Most of the time when you hear about a building going up in smoke, it was a Pyrothrax having some fun.”
Aldric lit a match, to show Simon the power of a simple flame. He put it into Simon’s hand, nearly burning him, as he continued.
“Ow!” said Simon.
“And that is but a small taste of a dragon’s power. The worst part is, they are addicted to fire. They have to have it, and more and more of it every time. If the Pyrothrax had no fire, he would go mad. And, since humans are the enemy of fire, dragons are the enemy of humans.
“For a long time, there were warriors who would fight dragons alongside certain magicians who had learnt about serpent trickery. Each warrior had a magician to help him. In ancient Egypt, magicians banished the most terrible beast, the Serpent Queen, into a never-ending slumber and sent her away into a shadow realm, never to be seen again. Dragons have never forgiven the humans for doing this.
“Over the millennia, dragons were hunted down until there weren’t many left, and very few females to continue the species. So the serpents retreated from man, into hiding. Slowly they changed themselves. They made themselves smaller and outwardly more like us, so they could live in cities and towns and not be noticed. They learnt a kind of magic that would make people see what the serpents wanted them to see.
“Today, because of this magic, a man could look a dragon right in the eye and not see it for what it really is. The dragon can make itself look like another ordinary human being, unless it’s an old dragon, or a weak one whose magic is wearing thin. But you and I are special, Simon. We can see right through that magic.
“In the past few years, the serpents have grown very strong. They have turned the tables on us. They have hunted down all of the magicians, every last one. There are no magicians left. And there are only two knights left. Me … and you, Simon.”
“Me? I’m not a knight.” Simon recoiled.
“You will be,” said his father. “It’s your duty. You see, in the Middle Ages, the knights did battle with dragons and destroyed most of them. A very great knight named Saint George killed a very nasty dragon in the Arab desert, and from that day forward his sons and their sons, and the entire family for centuries and centuries, went after the dragons to protect the world. We are his descendants, Simon. And the job must go on.
“It was the tradition of the Order of Dragonhunters to bring their sons into the battle when they reached the age of fifteen. When a boy reached fifteen, he was ready to become a knight. But I have need of you now.”
What about what I need? Simon thought to himself. What if I don’t want to do this?
“I’ve no one to turn to,” Aldric added. “My fellow knights have all passed on. Even my brother Ormand has been killed.”
“Your brother?”
“The bravest of us all. He was older than me. Cleverer. Trustworthy. Good-natured – everyone loved him. I made strategy and he held the knights together. They were from families that long ago pledged to defend the Dragonhunters. I don’t know if they would have followed me alone, had they lived. But they are all gone now. And I have work left to do.”
“You want me to fight dragons with you?” asked Simon, bewildered.
“I don’t have any choice. You have to come with me, there’s nowhere safe for you to go. Don’t worry, boy, I’ll be with you all the time now. The challenge is real, but we’re up to it. And there’s good news. There’s only one Dragonman left to find.”
That was the good news? Simon couldn’t believe this. It was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. And since when could he count on his father for anything? If this was his father.
Simon did his best not to upset the man, father or not. “I think,” he said, coughing from the awful pipe smoke, “you’d better take me back to school now.”
Aldric looked displeased. “That place is not safe for you. You couldn’t stay there if you wanted to. The Pyrothrax is looking for you. It has spies all over the world. It knows that I am the last knight, and if they get rid of me, and you, there will be no one left to stop it. We can identify the creature – do you think it would allow that? It owes a great debt in blood to the St George family. It would love to find you and get its revenge. That lighthouse keeper is getting older – you think he could protect you? Don’t you see? The wretched thing knows where you are. All these years I’ve kept you secret, but now it knows you exist.”
Simon’s mind flashed back to the strange man in the trench coat crossing the street, the man who seemed to have a tail. But that was just a shadow, surely. Or was the man in white one of the dragon’s agents? This simply can’t he happening, he thought.
Aldric interrupted his musings. “I’m sorry all of this is rushed, but I’m on to something. I think I know where the dragon is. I was closing in on him weeks ago, until my brother called me away to help with a serpent he’d found in the heartland. That was when I realised you were in danger. We’ve got to get back on the hunt. You are the only one in the world I have left. Your mother passed away years ago and there is no more family; you are the last of the bloodline.”
Simon was shocked. He had decided he wouldn’t like his mother, whoever she was, but he always imagined she was alive, out there in the world, sipping fancy wine on a big yacht and never giving her son a thought. It shattered something in him to know that he would never meet her.
“We have very little time,” continued Aldric. “If the Pyrothrax knows we’re on his trail, he’ll move on and we’ll miss our chance.”
Simon was now convinced the man was off his rocker. But then Aldric added something: “I don’t expect you to swallow this story without any proof. I’m going to show you what I’m talking about.”
Simon’s head hurt from so much information. It must have shown on his face. “In the morning,” Aldric said. “In the morning I will show you proof that the creature is real and things will be much clearer.”
Smoke burned in Simon’s eyes and he thought he was going to faint.
“Now get some sleep,” he heard his father say, but he was already slipping into dreamland, worn out. He wanted to hear the rest of the story, but his brain had shut off. It had had enough.
The real shock was that morning would prove to be even more amazing.
Come morning, he would indeed be joining the family business …
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_5ef114e4-bc78-56c2-bf6f-0d68a0033d08)
The Family Business (#ulink_5ef114e4-bc78-56c2-bf6f-0d68a0033d08)
Simon felt a large tongue licking his face. He was being eaten.
In shock, he opened his eyes and rolled on the floor. He scrambled to his feet, ready for battle. But the creature he was looking at was not a dragon. It was a horse.
Aldric must have moved Simon into the hold of the little ship while the boy was sleeping. He had put him down to sleep in the hay. Not very comfortable, thought Simon. Not very nice.
Nevertheless, he had slept without waking once, even with the tilting and swaying of the ship. He must have been totally drained.
He backed away from the horse and looked around. The hold had a tidy and sizable space for the animal, and along the wall there were some chickens in pens.
“Good, you’re awake,” said a voice from above. Simon looked up at the hatch that led to the galley. His father threw down a bunch of apples. “You can feed the horse.”
Simon looked up at him, but all he could see was his shape, lit by the bright sunlight flooding into the hold. Simon picked up the apples. He’d been awake two seconds and already he was doing chores.
“Give her some oats. You’ll find them in the wood bins on the port wall,” Aldric added, disappearing somewhere up above deck.
Simon threw some oats into the horse’s stall and held an apple out for it to eat. The horse chomped the apple eagerly. Simon was hungry himself. He took one of the other apples, sinking his teeth in for a big bite.
“DON’T EAT VALSEPHANY’S APPLES,” came a warning from upstairs. “SHE’S EARNED EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM.”
Guiltily, Simon swallowed. But he was still hungry and it made him a little angry.
“Does anybody care I’m hungry enough to eat Valsephany?” he said loudly.
His father came back down with a look of fierce annoyance on his face. “Eat Valsephany?” he repeated. “Eat Valsephany?”
“It’s an expression,” said Simon mildly. “You know. In America, we say, ‘hungry enough to eat a horse’.”
Aldric plucked the apple away from Simon and went to his horse. It gave a thankful neighing and fed from his hand.
“Valsephany is the greatest animal a man could ever have,” Aldric said. “Very few steeds on this Earth could withstand what she has withstood. Not many would be able to look a dragon in the eye and hold its course. Most horses would bolt away. Or their legs would buckle and they’d fall to the ground in fear. It has taken ages to prepare Valsephany for battle. She’s priceless.”
The horse seemed to understand, raising its head with a whinny of pride. Simon made a mental note. Never joke about the horse.
“I didn’t know she meant so much to you,” said Simon.
“We’ve grown up together,” said Aldric, putting his face against Valsephany’s. “We were trained for battle together by your grandfather, Veritus St George. Fascinating creatures. Did you know that thousands of years ago, horses were wee, small little fellows, the size of terriers? Now look at them. You see? Everything evolves.”
He may not have a sense of humour, Simon thought, but Aldric’s knowledge was impressive. He got the feeling Aldric knew a little bit about a great many subjects, but probably not a whole lot in depth about anything. He wondered if his father had ever had the benefit of the education he had received at the Lighthouse School.
“A horse is a perfect companion. When you get your steed, you’ll understand,” said Aldric.
A horse? For Simon? His heart leapt at the thought. But before Simon could be sure that’s what he meant, his father brought up something more pressing.
“If you’re hungry,” said Aldric, “there’s a plate of food over there on that old box. I was eating it while I watched you sleep.”
Simon looked at him with curiosity.
“I came down once in the night. I had to be sure you wouldn’t try to jump overboard,” his father said to the unasked question. “I need you for battle.”
Simon frowned. Oh, it was distrust, not concern, he thought. He reached for the plate, which was piled with meat, fried potatoes and onion.
Suddenly, a large red fox darted from the shadows and stuck its snout on to the plate.
Aldric looked over disdainfully. “Fenwick. I suppose I should have introduced you. Did I mention a horse was the greatest of all the animals?”
Simon stared at the fox, which seemed to be glowering unhappily.
“An old English fox is probably the worst,” muttered Aldric, shooing the animal back.
“He’s hungry,” Simon said, and held out some food which the fox took quickly.
“Oh, poor thing,” Aldric mocked him. “He’ll eat when he’s earned it. This stable is a mess, Fenwick. I have to tell you, Simon, he spends most of his time fishing alongside the boat, and he stinks at it. As a matter of fact, he just plain stinks.”
Fenwick gave what seemed to be a scowl. Then, to Simon’s surprise, the fox scurried its furry red body into the stable and began cleaning up, pulling tools back into their spots, using its nose to push boxes into place. Fenwick, apparently, had been expertly trained.
“I’m sure this wasn’t exactly your idea of a wonderful Halloween,” said Aldric. He looked at the black knight mask in the hay. Somehow it had made it through the ride, in Simon’s satchel. “Interesting choice. It wouldn’t offer you much protection, though. Our armour is strong as titanium – it’s overlaid with an alchemical resin created by my magician friend Maradine, who died long ago. There’s still enough of it left for your armour, if I can adjust it for your size, but I doubt you’ll need any of it on this trip.”
“Why is that?” asked Simon, munching on a hard piece of black meat. He was thinking a suit of armour would be a very remarkable thing to own.
“This dragon we’re after, he’s an urban dragon. We’ll have to disguise ourselves. The armour is what gives you away. The strong magic in it makes the dragon’s teeth ache. He knows when you’re coming. So we end up with a choice. Protect ourselves and lose the element of surprise, or go in with a tremendous shock, but with no armour to protect us.”
“This is unreal,” mumbled Simon. Shining armour, urban dragons. He realised he was actually starting to believe this insanity.
“I assure you,” said his father solemnly, “the White Dragon is very real.”
“White Dragon,” Simon repeated. “Is that what you call it?”
“Yes. He’s the last of the bunch. That’s his brother you’re eating,” said Aldric, casually.
Simon had been chewing on the tough, greenish-black meat for some time. Now he felt sick.
“I’m eating it?”
“Yes, with some pepper.”
“I’m eating dragon meat?” repeated Simon.
“Well, why not?” Aldric asked him. “Dragonmen eat humans every chance they get. They do it for pure pleasure, just to spite us. We are a delicacy to them. They cover us with a hot milky syrup.”
The dragon meat tasted like very old beef. Between the motion of the ship and the bad meat, Simon thought he might throw up.
“I’m not feeling well,” he groaned.
“I thought you wanted proof,” Aldric replied.
“This isn’t exactly proof,” said Simon. “This could be old deer meat, or dead alligator. It just doesn’t taste good. What are you trying to do to me?”
“Simply keeping you from hunger. It took time to clean that off my sword and cook it up right,” said Aldric. “This one was known as the Vermin Dragon because he had a fancy for eating garlic-covered rats, and he ended up tasting rather good, if you ask me.”
Simon looked at his father with utter disbelief. “Well, you sure have thought a lot about this.”
The older St George looked irritated. “In a few hours,” he said, “we need to be ready for combat. I had hoped my word would be enough for you.” Simon didn’t know what to say. “But I did promise I’d show you the truth.”
He motioned Simon to follow. “I didn’t want to frighten you, but if you insist, so be it.” He walked to the back of the hold and opened a series of locks on a heavy metal door. “In you go,” he told his son.
Simon wasn’t sure he wanted proof any more.
The room ahead was dark as a shark’s belly and it gave off a musty smell from being closed up for a long, long time.
Fenwick, the little fox, had found business at the back of the ship, cowering fearfully.
Simon stalled, looking at Aldric: “Shouldn’t you be running the ship?”
“It runs itself.”
“Runs itself?” said Simon. “You have that kind of machinery on board? You don’t even have electricity.”
“The ship runs on magic,” grumbled his father, “using devices made by my late friend Maradine, and they know the way. Now, stop stalling.”
“I’m not stalling. I just had some questions.”
“It isn’t pretty in there, but you need to see it,” said Aldric.
Simon swallowed hard.
“You asked to see it,” said Aldric.
“I know.”
“Then go!”
Simon entered the dark room. The ship swayed to one side and it spooked him even more. Aldric entered behind him and clicked on some dim brass lights. The first thing Simon saw was a giant set of teeth. He almost jumped back from the shock. They were set in a skull the size of a small car. It was like the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex, but it had long, goat-like horns jutting upward from the head. The eyeholes alone were big enough for Simon to walk through. The boy stayed at the door, clearly disturbed.
“Oh, come on, don’t be afraid,” said Aldric in disgust. “You can see it’s dead. Dead as Friday’s mutton. For heaven’s sake, you’re going to have to show some guts. We’re going after the real thing in a few hours.”
“But it’s so big,” said Simon. “I didn’t know it was so big.”
“That’s an old dragon,” said Aldric. “It’s six hundred years old. Haven’t you been listening? Dragons today are man-sized. They don’t look anything like this.”
The bones around the mouth and nose of the skeleton were black. The fire it spewed out must have burned the bone over time.
“What do the Dragonmen look like?” asked Simon.
“Like this,” said Aldric, and he thrust another skull into Simon’s face.
Simon almost screamed, but he held it in. The skull in Aldric’s hand was indeed smaller. It was quite a bit larger than a human skull, though, and shaped like a little replica of the giant fossil nearby.
“This is the skull of the Dragon of Seville,” said Aldric. “The first dragon I took on, when I was about your age. He was an ugly Pyrothrax. Had six rows of teeth. See? Like a shark.” Simon ran his fingers over the old teeth. Still sharp. “Father and I went in together. It was the first time I’d been out of England. Easiest serpent I ever killed.” His voice took on a melancholy tone. “The next one would put an end to Dad.” He took the skull back and set it on a shelf with at least a dozen more such skulls.
Simon’s eyes were drawn to several steel cases with glass doors on them. Inside the cases were lighted torches. Some of the torches burned green, some blue.
“Serpentfire can burn for a very long time if the magic is strong,” said Aldric. “It’s hard to handle, that kind of fire, it seems to have a mind of its own, but it can be a good tool if you have nothing else. You never, ever want to use it unless you need it. I keep it around in case of dire circumstances. I hate to admit anything Serpentine can be useful.” Absentmindedly he picked up a dragon’s claw from a pile of them on the table and used it to scratch his neck.
The room had a smell like old leather. On several cabinets and hung on the walls were layers of dragon hide. Simon reached out and touched the closest. It felt leathery and tough and scaly, like a snake, in parts.
“Serpent skin resists fire,” said Aldric, “unless the fire is from another dragon. Another good reason to keep serpentfire around. It used to be that the best way to kill a dragon was to introduce it to another dragon.”
“Really? They don’t like each other?”
“Oh, they despise each other. They despise everything, really. They’re just gluttons for hatred,” Aldric revealed. “It all goes back to the Queen of Serpents. Once she vanished, they turned against each other, all blaming the other for what had happened.”
“That was thousands of years ago,” recalled Simon.
“Yes, but they’ve never got over it,” was the answer. “They have long memories.”
“They?”
“It. I keep forgetting, there’s only one of the terrors left,” smiled Aldric. “We’re soon to be out of a job, aren’t we? Maybe we’ll go into the fishing business. Or, who knows, maybe this last one has a treasure we can make off with. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
He took the dragon hide from Simon. “It’s nasty material, this is, but you can drive a silver sword or a silver arrow through it if you move fast. You need the right weapons.”
With that, he clicked on another light, and on the far side of the room Simon could now see an entire wall filled with suits of armour and dragon-fighting equipment. There were swords of every kind, crossbows, shields, bows and arrows – everything made of silver.
It was an amazing sight. The boy’s jaw dropped.
He felt something brush against his leg and looked down to see Fenwick carefully moving in next to him.
“Get out of here, you fish-mongrel,” Aldric yelled at the fox, to no effect. “He seems to like you.”
But Simon’s eyes were on the weaponry.
“The favourite weapon of the Dragonhunter,” explained Aldric, “is the silver crossbow.” He went over to the wall and handed one to Simon. It was heavy, like holding a bowling ball.
“This one is yours.”
Simon stared at it in disbelief. “This is how you slay dragons?” he asked.
“No, this is how you harm dragons. Silver can hurt a dragon, but their skin regenerates over time. There is only one way for us to eliminate a dragon – to destroy it completely. And that is with a deathspell.”
“A what?”
“Long ago magicians discovered that every dragon has a spell that will bring it to an end,” Aldric related, “and every spell is written into the Book of Saint George. I know all the words to the spells; I’ve committed them to memory and so shall you, for the last of the creatures. Each dragon has a weakness. A soft piece of flesh in the middle of its chest, right over its heart. Its weakest part. You lay your hand on its heart, press against this skin and call out the deathspell. And the dragon will … expire.”
“What happens then?”
“They all go down differently,” said Aldric. “You’ll see it for yourself.”
Simon could hardly believe it. He was really going to hunt a dragon. He looked at his silver crossbow and noticed for the first time that it was covered in spell-writing. Runes. An enchanted protection of some kind.
Then he noticed a small piece of glass fitted over the middle of the weapon, and inside that glass was a small, burning light, a silver oval that was beating like a heart. The crossbow had a heart!
“It’s alive,” said Simon.
“Of course it’s alive,” said Aldric, “everything enchanted is alive. It will try to help you as best it can.”
The boy scratched his head, unnerved.
Fenwick sniffed at the crossbow. He seemed worried.
“Will you show me how to use it?” Simon asked.
There was a glint of pride in Aldric’s eye when he nodded.
“Our first and last hunt.”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_fd7d58da-666b-5c46-b1e8-cc6ae7dfa9a6)
A Manhattan Dragon (#ulink_fd7d58da-666b-5c46-b1e8-cc6ae7dfa9a6)
The White Dragon was, indeed, purely white. His leathery skin was white with tiny cream speckles, with small white plates that stuck up on his back like the plates of a miniature stegosaurus. His long fingers were tipped with white claws. His teeth were white. His amber-white eyes had protective, translucent white eyelids. Even when he closed his eyes, he saw whiteness.
The White Dragon lived in a luxury building in New York City that overlooked Central Park. Everything in his very large apartment was white: the floors, the walls, the ceiling, the curtains. The furniture, including the chairs, the tables, the sofa, the bookcases (and the books in them), as well as the telephone, the television, all of the furnishings everywhere, all were shades of white. The kitchen and all of its tools were white. The bedroom and the bed and the nightstands were all white. So was the bathroom.
Nothing was ever written down in the home of the White Dragon. The White Dragon liked blank white paper.
Nothing was ever dirty. The White Dragon made sure anything dirty was thrown out unless it could be made clean and white.
Nothing was ever eaten that was not white. The White Dragon ate white cream soup or white clam chowder, stone-white crackers, white bread, white vanilla ice cream, white mashed potatoes. White meat. His favourite: white goats, swallowed whole. If the dragon was eating a human being, he used his magic to grind it up until the person was a white powder that could be sprinkled easily over nice, white food.
He took great pride in his appearance. He spent most of his time in a massive white bathtub filled with white bubbles. The one reason he enjoyed going out into the world was to return home and wash it all away with white soap.
The white creature had grown rich from criminal activity, mostly from the art world. His human partners spent all day stealing money from people through art forgeries, and forcing other people to steal money from still more people. The White Dragon gave the orders, then all he had to do was sit back and receive reports of how much money he had made that day.
The rest of his day was spent contemplating whiteness.
All about the place were small white boxes with small white cloths inside that the creature could use to clean up tiny bits of dirt or dust that might somehow have fallen on to his pristine skin.
He spent hours polishing his teeth. He even scrubbed his eyes with soap, no matter what the pain. He had read somewhere that harmful dust can collect in the corner of the eyes and go unnoticed. It did not go unnoticed in the home of the White Dragon.
The creature stood seven feet tall and could hide easily under heavy clothing and a long trench coat. He walked on two feet. His head was fairly small, and though his neck was a bit longer than a human’s, it could retract.
The dragon had a white tail, long, full and strong. He kept his tail curled up against his back so it could be hidden under a coat. His white wings could also be kept hidden, but he rarely flew. That required too much energy and dirt particles would fly into his eyes.
When at home, naturally, the creature hid nothing. He stretched out his long tail and his baggy old body and lay around in his pricey little kingdom, listening to the radio tuned to no particular station. White noise, of course. The ultimate lounge lizard.
The only matter that troubled the dragon was that he liked to sleep in flames. He would spew fire into the massive fireplace and sleep inside, with fire all around him. This was delightful to him. In the morning, however, there would be all that mess to clean up. Fire makes things black.
To keep things clean, a small army of workers was employed at all times. They did not know for whom they worked. They only knew that the fireplace must be kept perfectly clean at all costs, every single day. Only white ash was allowed to remain.
Even the creature’s fire was white. It was magic fire. The old serpent liked to make the fire grow like a white vine, like ivy, in long strings that would crawl on the wall and branch out in thin, glowing strands. He thought fire was lovely. He could make it come out of his mouth or his eyes or his hands or his fingers, but after that, it might do whatever it wanted. Dragonfire is an unpredictable thing. After a few seconds in the air, it can actually come to life. From time to time, the dragon would unleash a fire just to have someone to talk to. The living fire would laugh with him and speak of terrible things. It sometimes took the shape of a blobby man with no real face, and it would walk around the room, scorching everything. The dragon hated the messes it made.
The creature had other ways of making messes. He had developed an interest in art. His new joy was painting pictures.
They were pictures of the colour white.
If his paint should ever drip off the canvas, it only added to the white in the room.
The painting he was currently working on was a pride and joy. Like the others, it used various shades of white to create a subtle white abstract effect. Blobs of colours from white to off-white, to egg white, to cream, to vanilla, to ivory, to almost-a-colour, to tannish white, to greyish white, all fell together on a big canvas. A white canvas. It was wonderful. The creature was certain he was on the verge of something brilliant. Art is white. Anything else distracts from the art.
The creature cheated at his art as he cheated at everything in life. No one else in the world would be much interested in a painting of shades of white. So as he worked, the White Dragon touched the art with magic. Anyone who looked at a White Dragon painting saw exactly what he wanted dimly reflected under the white paint, and everyone saw something different. The artwork was just enchanted enough to capture your heart, without a drop of extra enchantment left behind.
Each one was worth a small fortune.
The dragon smiled at its work. Captivating, even to him. The only thing more marvellous was the work of that delicate woman across town, at the modern art gallery.
You see, the dragon had one other interest. A lovely lady, an art collector. To him, she was as beautiful as the art that surrounded her.
The White Dragon had made himself somewhat well-known with his own paintings, and the woman had placed many of his art pieces in the gallery where she worked. She was a painter herself, so the two had much to talk about.
The pity was that no one else saw the quality of her paintings. The woman had displayed them in her office discreetly, and the dragon passing through the gallery one day had taken note of them. Her paintings were scratchings of green colours laid out over odd symbols, runes that were brushed in with shades of gold. Most people thought her works were quite strange. Not the dragon. He loved them. He made a habit of calling her to tell her how much he loved them.
The two had only spoken on the telephone. He had seen her only from afar.
He decided it was time to introduce himself formally. But he was low on energy. He had used his magic quite a lot recently and needed to rest.
The White Dragon had been to a town called Ebony Hollow, looking for a boy named Simon St George. An amazing discovery: the Dragonhunter had a son. The White Dragon’s dying brother had sent him word through one of his spies. An unusual act of cooperation, but they were brothers, after all. It’s a shame the spies weren’t up to the task of destroying the knight, but that was a pleasure the dragon wanted for himself anyway. Always hunting each other, they were. The game went round and round.
The St George family was a curse to dragons. St Georges were faster, smarter and stronger than other humans. They could see through Serpentine magic.
The true power of the child was not known. But it did not matter, thought the dragon; the boy would no doubt amount to nothing. His dragon spies remained on the job. They’d find him.
Or, better yet, he thought, maybe he will come right to me.
Across the city of New York, this was precisely what was going to happen.
Simon St George was preparing for battle.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_fed30ba3-78b6-5cb1-88f5-38887f49f3d3)
The Woman who Fell in Love with a Dragon (#ulink_fed30ba3-78b6-5cb1-88f5-38887f49f3d3)
The boy and his father had docked the Ship with No Name in New York Harbour and made their way quickly – Simon would say too quickly – through the streets by taxicab to a perch in a giant tree in Central Park. Aldric scaled it quickly, but Simon struggled with the climb. No one could see them because they were so high up, and the tree was deep inside the park, thickly covered in autumn colours.
Aldric St George had set the area up nicely for their needs long before his trip to the Lighthouse School. Stuck away here and there among the branches were little gunny sacks of food and water, small flashlights, a clock, some books, and below at the trunk, two comfortable easy chairs that Aldric had salvaged from a skip off Park Avenue and which would serve now as a place to sleep, something Simon found depressing. Lodged in the tree were two old brass telescopes, positioned to see in every direction around the park.
“What are we looking for?” Simon wondered.
“The signs. He’s been here, you can tell. Lurking.”
“How do you know?”
Aldric’s eyes passed over the people below. “You can see it in people’s faces. Everything weighs heavily on them. Their hearts beat slower. The fire that drives them through life is burning low. Look at them, Simon. Nothing reaches past their sadness – not the landscape, not the movement of the city, not the souls around them … They’ve lost something and they don’t know what it is. Some haven’t noticed what’s missing inside, but they know enough to suspect that the city has stolen something from them. You can feel their anger. These people don’t want to be alive any more. The gloom is falling down around them like rain.”
Simon looked. He saw ordinary people, doing ordinary things.
Aldric pointed down. “The cab driver at the corner, yelling at the woman crossing. The old woman in the grey coat. The priest. Don’t you feel it?”
Quiet filled the tree as Simon tried to sense what his father described. The city was just a city. Finally he had to admit, “All I see are a bunch of ticked-off New Yorkers. I thought that was supposed to be pretty normal here.”
His father frowned. “These are the signs of a dragon presence. Be alert to them. Now then, over there, on the eighteenth floor of that building, is the home of a woman named Alaythia Moore,” said Aldric, with a touch of sadness Simon didn’t quite understand. “She lives there alone and rarely has visitors. She works for a modern art gallery. She is an art curator and an artist in her own right, I understand, though I’ve never seen any of her work. She’s too shy and private to show off her own paintings.”
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Jason Hightman
It’s not every day you wake up and find you’re a dragonhunter but in this exciting debut novel that’s exactly what happens to Simon St. George…Simon St. George meets his long lost father after supposing him dead, only to be informed that he is a descendant of St George the Dragon Slayer and it is his duty to inherit this role himself. For there are dragons in today's society and the world should be rid of their evil once and for all! Trouble is, they are disguised as humans in positions of power….Exciting fantasy adventure with generous lashings of snarky humour.
the Saint
of Dragons
JASON HIGHTMAN
Copyright (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2004
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © Jason Hightman 2004
Jason Hightman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007159079
EBook Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 9780007383429
Version: 2014-10-07
Dedication (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
For my mother and father
Table of Contents
Cover (#ub910f0b8-2600-5178-ac92-3ab96daaa7fd)
Title Page (#uad16c3be-db00-5940-839e-156f9f9b7bce)
Copyright (#u3d74914f-2432-574d-97c0-82b3cdafef58)
Dedication (#u0b56bebc-b58b-5abc-ab8e-a9cf67d545ca)
INTRODUCTION (#u0cfb63b4-d9b4-5b34-8572-73f62b6e0651)
CHAPTER ONE - Simon St George (#u43309cce-de13-5368-8778-6695156c6d5d)
CHAPTER TWO - The Original Dragonhunter (#u0101aa6e-1a57-5fdb-900d-5ee92be89e12)
CHAPTER THREE - The School in the Lighthouse (#u745bb7df-80c1-5e2c-b0e9-9f416f95ac8e)
CHAPTER FOUR - St George, the Elder (#ua9c61f3c-b2d8-53e8-ad7b-61c69b8d28e4)
CHAPTER FIVE - A Brief History of Dragons (#u4e94b3ea-4b73-5692-9bd6-faf5d3f2b85c)
CHAPTER SIX - The Family Business (#u47bb00f6-a409-5f5d-bb25-bcfa18eadf68)
CHAPTER SEVEN - A Manhattan Dragon (#uad694f18-d8ea-59ce-bc3d-c6df88ed9997)
CHAPTER EIGHT - The Woman who Fell in Love with a Dragon (#u42152672-80d7-5847-ab83-d41c77023b82)
CHAPTER NINE - The Battle with the White Dragon (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN - Something to Chill your Bones (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN - A Hidden Evil (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE - A Ship Made for One (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - The Mystery of the Medallion (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Sunny with a Chance of Hurricanes (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - A Serpent’s House (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Things that Go Splash in the Dark (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - We Need a Weapon (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - The Dragon of Paris (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN - Icy Ventures (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY - Secrets (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - A Crash Course in Predators (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Graveyard of Dragons (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - The Russian Dragon (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - The Fury of Fire (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - Elements of Destruction (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Two Against the World (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - The Lair of the Peking Beast (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - The Black Dragon (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - A Chinese Dragon’s Sailing Ship (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY - Separate Journeys (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - Friendship with a Dragon (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - Unwelcome Guests (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - Heroes in Need of Heroes (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - The Honour of Dragons (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - The Queen of Serpents (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE - The World Needs its Knights (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Introduction (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
You’ve been taught to believe they are dead. Figments of an ancient imagination. But one lonely schoolboy at the Lighthouse School for Boys, who has never known his family and who has never known adventure, is about to have a rude awakening.
Dragons are real.
And they have … evolved.
They exist in the world today and are every bit as evil as they ever were. It is only their appearance that has changed. Their eight-foot bodies now resemble men much more than before. With their reptilian faces hidden in a cloak and hood, you wouldn’t look twice at one crossing the street hunched over, perhaps pretending to be a homeless man pushing a grocery cart before him. But make no mistake: these Dragonmen are highly dangerous.
They still have scales for skin, slithery tongues, lizard tails, sharpened faces – and they are secretly responsible for most of the worst fires you hear about, using their wicked magic for no reason, burning buildings just for sport.
They live hidden away, in luxurious apartments in New York, London or Paris, underground in Beijing or beneath the sands of Egypt, in boats anchored in Venice or Tokyo, or in homes built inside water caves in Africa or South America. They back organised crime, military dictatorships and cruel multinational companies, or they act as lone killers, secluded and hermit-like in mountains or deserts. Their exact number is not known. No two of them are alike. But they are powerful. And it will take all the strength the human world can muster to end their reign.
It is a time of opportunity for them. All the magicians are dead, and people no longer believe in magic. Spirits are low. To make matters worse, the dragons have the ability to cloud people’s minds so that they don’t see them in their true form.
You might see a little old lady or an expensively dressed businessman, but the person standing next to you could be, in reality, a monstrous beast. At certain times, people can see through this magic. For a moment you might glimpse the flash of serpent eyes behind the steam of a coffee cup in a local café – but it’s like a mirage. The next moment, it’s gone. Their trickery is rampant.
They sometimes move among us in ordinary ways. It is impossible for the average person to know for certain where they are. But there are signs, both large and small.
The modern dragon is that person at school or in the workplace who hides his true self, who secretly speaks badly of others, who can’t be trusted, who brings misery to those around him, who delights in the failure of friends. The modern dragon is not content to be rich, but wants others to be poor. Beneath this person’s outward appearance, there is very likely serpent skin. And a vast desire to do harm.
Few people realise these dark forces surround us.
But the numbers of those who know the truth are about to grow.
CHAPTER ONE (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
Simon St George (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
It was autumn, October. It was the edge of a wicked season and Christmas was a far-off thought. The amber-crimson colours of fall and its pumpkin-spice smells surrounded Simon St George like a vast, bewitching fire. There had never been an October that felt so perfectly suited to Halloween.
There was a chill in the air that was worse than normal for this time of year and a fog hung around the Bay, and the houses in the Bay, with a cruel persistence. The trees seemed to hunch over in sadness and wish for their leaves back to keep them warm. All the pumpkins in Ebony Hollow’s fields seemed rotten, and to ache from their own rottenness. The factory smoke from over the hill swept down into town and the grey daylight seemed to give way after only a few hours to a deep, intense nightfall. No one wanted to be out much. And no one could sleep.
Simon St George had only the faintest sense of all this. The idea that something wasn’t quite right just skittered over his mind between thoughts of tomorrow’s Halloween masquerade and a girl in town whose name he did not know.
For him, Halloween was more than just fun and games. The masquerade was something everyone had to go to at his school, a tradition, and everyone had to be in costume. Simon wasn’t sure why he needed a costume; he seemed to disappear in a crowd easily enough without one.
No matter what he did, no one seemed to notice him or take him very seriously. He was an average kid, a bit smallish, which made him easy to ignore. He had an upturned pug nose and blond, wiry, slept-in hair that made him look even younger. But he often kept his head down, so you never got a really good look at him; to the other boys, if they thought of him at all, he was something of a mystery.
Simon went to an elite academy that was called the Lighthouse School for Boys, because it was just for boys and it was made from a giant old lighthouse. It was a boarding school, where children slept and ate and lived, at least for most of the year. It was perfect if your parents wanted you to be strong and independent, or if they didn’t have time for you. Simon St George had parents who didn’t have time for him. They paid for his school, but he didn’t know who they were, hadn’t seen them since he was two years old, and he didn’t like to talk about it, if it was all the same to you.
At this moment, it was hard to see the Lighthouse School. There was just its shining light, labouring to cut through the mist. On most days the Lighthouse School could be seen from almost anywhere in town, because it was on a high promontory cliff and it was huge. In this same way, the school had dominated Simon’s life. It was the only home he had ever known.
He stood at the corner of the misty street and stared at the little novelty shop on the opposite corner. He could just make out the shop window filled with strange, hand-painted masks, and the daughter of the shop owner at the counter. Simon had hardly ever said a word to her, but she kept his secret, that he liked to collect toys and marbles, because her shop was where he bought them. He was thirteen. She was maybe two years older.
Simon watched the girl adjust the masks hanging in the window. He gathered up his nerve and stepped off to cross the street.
As he did, the foghorn bellowed at the edge of the bay with a low moan. And something else happened.
Simon turned to look for traffic and saw at the next corner, crossing the street going the other way, a very tall figure, hunched over as if from a deformity or sickness. He wore a long trench coat with the collar pulled up tight around his neck, and an old hat pulled down close so none of his face could be seen. It was just a quick moment, but as Simon looked, the wind picked up and blew the man’s coat open. Although the man quickly tightened it around him, Simon could swear he saw a claw-like foot and a thick tail slapping the ground, a tail like the largest snake on Earth.
It was hard for Simon to get a good look through the fog. The man was no more than a shadowy profile. In the next second, the figure had moved on around a corner and couldn’t be seen, and the idea that some sort of creature was roaming the streets of Ebony Hollow was too ridiculous to investigate.
So Simon caught his breath and went inside the novelty shop, feeling around in his pocket for money and feeling around in his head for something to say to the girl behind the counter. He stood at the doorway and managed to catch her gaze for about a second, and that was it.
His eyes scanned a glass case that held a series of tiny knight figures made of metal, a kind Simon collected. He didn’t know why he liked them, but he did. No one else his age ever wanted these.
He bought a little black knight and a Halloween mask that matched it, and he was just starting to talk to the girl about the masquerade when he was interrupted.
With a bang the shop door opened and a group of boys from his school herded in noisily, arrogantly pushing Simon aside as they argued over costumes. The girl almost instantly forgot about him, and after trying to be heard over their voices, Simon left the boys and the shop behind. Today just wasn’t his day.
It was a relief to get out. His face was burning red from embarrassment at having the knight toy in his hand with the other kids around him. He didn’t dare glance at the girl for fear she was looking at him like he was an overgrown little boy.
The fog had become worse since he’d gone into the shop. Cars crawled along like wounded soldiers on a battlefield. The streetlamps were nearly useless, their pale light illuminating nothing except more fog.
Going home to the lighthouse alone did not seem like such a wonderful idea in this mess, Simon was thinking. The morning had taken a turn for the stranger. Simon saw a German shepherd bounding up over dustbins and working its way to the roof of a store. All over town dogs had retreated up to the rooftops, howling. He could see their forms dimly in the fog. Something had scared them beyond belief.
Then something shuddered in the air, the sound of flapping wings. A torrent of white shapes flashed by, white bats, descending to land at the town clock.
Simon eased back into the space between two buildings. Watching them. The bats seemed to stare down at him.
Before anything else could happen, the other boys clanged out of the novelty shop.
o“It’s got cold out here,” one of them said. Simon fell in behind them, hiking his jacket collar up against the weirdly icy breeze. He thought he heard the bats shuffling in the distance. He didn’t have the nerve to look back.
He was just about to ask the others if they’d seen the bats, but it was a rare thing for him to be part of a group and the boys shot him unfriendly glances before he could even speak. Feeling unwelcome, he trailed back, letting them go on without him.
They were stuck-up kids, the richest of the rich, and they tended to torture Simon with constant questions about the St George family. Simon never had any answers.
At the Lighthouse School, the children knew every branch of their entire family tree, going back to their great-grandfathers, and great-great-grandfathers, and before that. These were boys from families with histories to be proud of and futures all mapped out for them. If your dad was a doctor, you’d be a doctor; if he was a banker, that was your lot. There was a sureness to this that made the boys feel strong and at ease. There were not many of them who questioned what was laid out for them.
Simon had no past and no certain future. There was a blankness all around him. At his age, you were supposed to have some idea of what you want to do in life. Supposedly.
He finally glanced back at the strange white bats, but the town clock was nearly buried in the pearly air.
He followed the boys down a familiar sloping street, a street that sank down a hill to an old streetcar stop. The boys stomped through the gloomy day, slapping the poles, kicking down dustbins and doing anything they could to keep from thinking about how creepy the weather had become.
Simon stood apart from them, waiting in the cold for the streetcar. Even though the boys knew it was coming, when they heard it deep in the fog, approaching with a clang and a rattle, everyone jumped. It was that kind of day.
Simon started to join them at the streetcar stop, but something stopped him.
The boys. They were staring, the looks on their faces changing from curiosity to a kind of horror. For an instant, Simon thought it might be a stupid trick, but then he saw they were looking at his feet. Looking down, Simon saw beetles flooding the street in the pale light, flowing down the hill, swarming around them!
Behind him the streetcar tore out of the fog with a clang.
The first boy stepped back in surprise. All over the metal car, more beetles were swarming. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny white beetles. There were so many they were tumbling off the roof and scattering about their shoes. The boys were so stunned all they could do was stare.
“Get inside!” someone shouted. They rushed aboard the streetcar, pushing through the rain of beetles, and the door closed behind them.
They were safe. The car was warm, very warm. It was like stepping into a greenhouse on a June day. The lights inside flickered strangely. The boys noticed that lights in the nearby buildings were flickering on and off as well.
Simon was the last to board the streetcar. As he got on, he could swear he heard the roar of some tremendous animal far off in the gloom.
It was the strangest thing.
It sounded familiar.
CHAPTER TWO (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
The Original Dragonhunter (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
Days before this, in an old suburban town near Chicago, Illinois, far from the Lighthouse School for Boys, five men rode their horses down a street frosted with autumn leaves. The sight would have been a strange one had anyone bothered to look out of their window. No one did. It was a quiet part of town. Quiet folks lived there, mostly old people, and they minded their own business. It was as if a spell kept them half asleep most of the time.
But if anyone had bothered to look out, they would have seen that it wasn’t just the arrival of horses that was strange. The riders were dressed in dull, iron-coloured armour with ornate writing carved into the metal, a runic writing so old and so secret no one would have recognised it.
The man in the middle was tall and strong, though not as stocky as the others. He had the beginnings of a beard that would have been grey if he’d let it go further. His hair was black and grey, and long and greasy, and he kept it swept back, out of his way. His face was handsomely chiselled, if you could see it under the dirt and the occasional scars. He had not washed for days. He had been on the road a long time.
“This is it,” he said to the other men. “The time is now.” His voice was deep and painted with an English accent.
He looked to a taller Englishman, who nodded. The tall one gave the others a grave smile and said, “Aldric is right. Let’s not give the wretch time to think.”
The men put on their helmets. They were now covered head to toe in armour.
Each helmet was an angular box with tiny slits for the eyes, in the crusader style. They were marked with a small symbol looking like a cross mixed with the fleur-de-lis; every warrior’s symbol was a different colour.
The horses were in an awful state of agitation. They fidgeted backwards and side to side, preparing themselves for the fight ahead.
Ahead of them lay a stone wall and a wrought-iron gate, and a stone house taller than the others nearby. The place looked haunted. It had two round turrets with long windows, though the curtains were always pulled shut. Rarely did sunlight enter this home.
The trees in the yard were dead and rotting. Beetles swarmed around their exposed roots. The twisted branches were home to the skeletal remains of many birds that had died in them as soon as they landed. The house itself smelt rancid and whoever did the gardening, such as it was, constantly replanted perennials to cover the stink, but these flowers always died.
The riders moved forward and the lead man pulled at his horse so that it reared up and smashed open the gate with its huge front legs. There was no point in being silent. A surprise attack was virtually impossible. The thing at the heart of the house would have known they were coming no matter what. Its teeth would have started to ache the moment the men came within a hundred yards. It could sense them closing in.
The horses clomped across the dead yellow grass. It was getting hot now. The men were sweating in their armour. Each carried a long metal lance, which they raised into position.
The lead horseman pushed open the front door with his lance and urged his horse forward. The others followed close behind.
The house had a long entryway and then a set of stairs. Little could be seen in the dim light. The smell was almost overpowering. The thing had not moved from this place in years.
“It’s not coming out,” said one of the horsemen. He was Irish. “We’ll have to ferret him out.”
“He’s coming,” said the leader.
“Indeed I am,” said a chilling voice. It seemed to come from their right, and then their left, and even behind them, offering no clues to the beast’s whereabouts.
“Come out, worm,” said the leader. “This waiting is pointless.”
“On the contrary,” said the voice, and again it was as if the walls themselves were talking. “I can smell the fear on you. It is growing minute by minute. You never really lose that fear, do you? Just a hazard of the job, I suppose …”
The lead man, Aldric, rode his horse deeper into the house. Now the light from the doorway no longer helped him to see.
“Do I seem fearful to you?” he said to the darkness.
“Oh, do be brave,” whispered the thing, mockingly. “Do come in closer. And by all means, do rush forward valiantly.”
The lead horseman hit a trigger on his lance and an iron cylinder shot into the room. It was a kind of white flare and it lit up with more intensity than any ordinary light could ever manage. But there was nothing to be seen. The voice was coming from nowhere.
“I’m not here, brave warrior,” said the voice. “I am sending you my voice from far away and your search has been in vain. I have already fled to the caves of a South American country and you have come all this way for nothing. You will have to begin again.”
Inside their helmets, the horsemen looked crestfallen. If this was true, untold hours had been wasted tracking and hunting this disgusting beast. Starting over would not be easy. Their hearts sank.
The lead man held his nervous horse. “You are a perfect liar,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” said the voice, and from out of nowhere a rush of heat knocked into the horse, which squealed terribly – and the man was nearly knocked from his mount. A claw had torn into his arm, right through his armour. The thing would not materialise, but the men could feel its heat and could see smoky, wavy lines like that of a mirage where the creature’s invisibility magic was wearing thin.
“Oh, but our games are fun,” said the creature.
The man was thinking they were anything but fun. Through his helmet, he could see waves of smoky heat ahead of him, marking the creature’s trail. His boots jabbed at his horse and, as they rushed down the hall, his lance slashed into the space just ahead of the smoky heat marks. Whatever was there made a splunking noise, as if the lance had struck against some kind of flesh, and the wall behind it collapsed. The sound that came out of that space was horrible, like a set of furious, squealing hogs, joined together with the cry of an eagle and the roar of a lion.
To the man it was beautiful, the sound of a wretched and terrible thing dying.
The man on the horse could not believe his luck. It had never been this easy before. His enemy must be an old one. Older than he thought, and frail.
“Be careful, Aldric,” said the tall man behind him. “Let me handle this.”
The knight growled back, “No, Ormand, the thing is mine.”
But Ormand went past him, rushing on foot into the wall’s broken space.
Aldric followed behind him, trotting his horse forward into the hole in the wall. He was now in the kitchen.
He could hear the wheezing breath of the wounded creature. Still, its magic was strong enough to keep it largely invisible. That might not wear off until hours after its death. It was not easy to be sure where the dead ones were. Sometimes the smell was the only thing you had to go by.
The kitchen was filled with the stink of rotting meat. The creature liked to let the meat go bad for weeks before it ate any of it. The man could smell pungent spices and sickly odours best left undescribed.
Above the kitchen counter, ironwork held pots and pans and dozens of sharp, sharp knives and cleavers and meat forks. They rattled and scraped as if trying to get loose. Then they did get loose. Six knives flew at the tall man and another four hit the man on the horse. The blades clanged off the armour, falling to the floor.
This was the last of the thing’s magic.
The engravings on the knightly armour glowed dimly, as if fighting to regain its magical strength. Each battle wore down the strength of the steel.
It was time now for the tall man to lay his hands upon the beast and call out the spell that would destroy it. This was the tricky part. He would have to get in close to the thing. First the man on the horse slammed his lance down into the invisible reptilian skin once more.
The thing gave out a painful howl.
If you had known all the evil things that this creature had brought about in this world, you would have been happy to know its life was at an end.
The creature’s shape began to show under layers of billowing grey smoke.
“Its strength is passing away,” said the horseman.
The tall man nodded and moved closer to the smoky shape.
“It should be mine,” said the horseman. “I should be the one to end this.”
But the tall man frowned back at him. “A child could do this one, Aldric.”
The other horsemen, alert in the doorway, relaxed.
Until the wheezing voice of the unnatural beast came scraping through the house. “I’m not …” said the voice, “finished …”
A light began to glow in the smoky shape in the centre of the kitchen. This was the heart of the creature.
Aldric pulled at his reins to halt his frightened horse.
Ormand moved in fearlessly over the light. “It’s over,” he said. “Your deceit is at an end.” And he put his hand on the glowing space, whispering with a touch of awe, “The heart of a dragon. The heart of evil …”
“Careful,” said the horseman in the glowlight. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“His life force, I’d wager,” said the tall warrior, “draining out of him.”
With that, the tall knight began to recite words that would have sounded bizarre to anyone except those gathered in the house. They were words that brought death to these creatures. Words of great magic. The light beneath his naked hand burned, but the tall warrior did not flinch.
The horseman who watched above him did not know anything was wrong. But his horse was thrown into terror. With a squealing neigh, the horse pranced backwards but could not get through the hole he’d come in.
“Whoa!” shouted Aldric, but any control over his horse was gone. In panic, it launched forward and jumped over the downed beast.
As man and horse leapt over the glowlight, it suddenly burned more intensely.
The light grew hotter and fiercer, and the nearly invisible dragon rose up with its last strength and began a fierce rush towards his attacker. The creature was old, wounded and could not see well, but it was full of wild rage and energy, and it blew Ormand backwards, carrying him towards the other horsemen in a giant growing wave of flame. The tall man flew backwards helplessly.
Meanwhile, Aldric threw his wild horse on its side as the heat rushed over and past him, sprawling outward. It was a fire like no other. The only way to describe the explosion is to say that it screamed.
The rumble of that explosion was heard for miles. Mirrors cracked. Pictures fell from the walls. Dogs yelped and hid themselves away under furniture. In all the homes around the blast for sixteen miles, milk curdled into a disgusting cream.
At the centre of the blast, much of the house was left in rubble.
The lead horseman was the only one left.
The fire had risen high and spared him.
He woke up and nudged his horse. It was knocked out. Leaving it behind for the moment, the man got up and walked towards the destroyed front of the house.
What he saw outside shocked him.
The fire from the dying creature had lasted only a second, but it had demolished the huge stones that made up the front of the house, it had burned away the yellowed flowers in the garden, it had knocked down the iron fence. It had even burned foliage down the street.
In the scorched trees above him, his fellow horsemen were spread out, draped in the ugly branches. Their armour had been burned to black and still smouldered, sending smoke into the air. Their lances were twisted corkscrew-like, or splayed in two, and hung loosely in the bony trees. The horses were gone; they had no armour, so they had vanished instantly in the blast. The man took some comfort in knowing they had felt no pain.
It was the only comfort the man had left to him. The other knights were dead. His friends, the closest people to him in the world, were gone for ever. They had been through so much together. It would not be easy without them.
The man stepped through a trail of red ash to find the skull of the terrible beast. As its spirit died, he heard its insufferable voice.
“Ssshame the boy won’t carry on your work,” taunted the voice. Aldric was stunned and leaned closer. “Oh, we know about the boy … Sweet little child … not long for this world …”
And then it was dead.
At first, Aldric’s mind rejected what he’d heard. How could anyone know about his boy?
But he felt fear rising inside him, a growing sense that the serpent’s words were true.
Angrily, he lifted the skull. It broke apart in his hand, turning to crimson ash.
There was a sound behind him. The snort of an animal. He turned in alarm – only to find his horse in the smashed doorway.
The next moment, Aldric was riding away from the scene with all possible speed. Police would be coming soon, and emergency services. He couldn’t wait around answering questions.
How did the thing know he had a child?
The thought tore at him. Fighting emotion, he galloped through the quiet town in a rush, down an alley filled with old cars, avoiding the wailing sirens on the streets. Autumn leaves floated past him.
His mind was racing even faster than the horse.
The creature had outwitted them. Playing at being weaker than it was, it had fooled them into taking their time and it had let loose all of its powers as it died. The spell had indeed killed it; but the beast had a dangerous death-rattle. They should have let it weaken first, before getting closer. Always full of tricks, the things were. I must learn from this, the man thought. I must strike harder, move faster. I must bury my feelings. I must fight with all that’s in me. And have nothing left over.
It knew, he thought. The creature knew. Its spies had found his child. The thing had said, “We know about the boy.” We.
He tried not to think any more.
But in his heart, he knew three things to be true.
He was the last knight on Earth.
His son was in danger.
And he had one more dragon to face.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_a25035a9-2f69-5180-a243-cc8ad2c2a3e1)
The School in the Lighthouse (#ulink_a25035a9-2f69-5180-a243-cc8ad2c2a3e1)
For Simon, the incident of the beetles swarming the streets had been a dream-like event and none of the other boys seemed to feel right talking about it either. Life slipped back to normal. No one ever listened to Simon much, anyway; his voice never seemed loud enough to get attention.
He was known for only one thing. It had long been a rumour that Simon was poor and that he was allowed to stay at school for free, out of charity to orphans. The rumour hurt him deeply, but everyone had come to believe it.
He had always been treated like a pauper. With no parents to pick him up on weekends or holidays, Simon had come under the care of the lighthouse keeper and his wife. The lighthouse keeper naturally ended up giving Simon all kinds of chores, so the boy came to be known as something of a junior janitor. To the rich snobs at the Lighthouse School, Simon seemed like a servant, a second-class citizen.
He didn’t even sleep in the regular rooms with everyone else. Simon lived in the lighthouse. He stayed in the little two-storey building next to the beacon lamp with the old lighthouse keeper and his wife. That’s the way it had always been.
It was another reason Simon didn’t grow close to the other boys: he lived apart from them.
His room in the lighthouse was plain and simple, often quite cold and drafty. The only thing notable about it was a fireplace, which he was never supposed to use without permission.
The other children were down the hill in dormitories that had once been used by Revolutionary War soldiers. So even the buildings had a past which Simon was left out of.
Simon did get some use out of the fireplace when he could get away with it. He loved the way the flames shivered and swayed, making little sculptures, how they created flickering shadow plays on the wall.
Recently, he had been caught several times and punished with cooking duty. He had started taking more chances in the things he did lately, that was certain. The principal had given him a stern talking-to. Old Denman the lighthouse keeper, who was Scottish, had tried to explain to Simon that fire was a terrible thing, the most awful, sickening thing imaginable to a wood and brick place like the school.
“You know how we feel about you, boy,” Denman had said, his wife looking on. “We’ve watched you since you were a little child. We’ve never tried to step in and replace your true parents. We’ve never looked at caring for you as anything but a job, to be done well and without complaint. And we’ve done it. But you listen to me: fire is nothing to play with. Don’t you ever harm this old lighthouse … it’s your sanctuary.”
These were more words than the lighthouse keeper had ever said to Simon at one time in his entire life. They didn’t talk much. They worked together tending the lighthouse and had the shared sense of accomplishment that came with it, but the old man was not a father figure. His wife was not motherly. Both of them had seemed old and tired since as far back as Simon could remember.
They were tired of Simon’s questions about his family.
Maybe the rumours were true: maybe he was a poor kid, an orphan, allowed to stay at school for free. Wouldn’t someone have told him if his parents were dead? Or was the school sparing him from the truth? For Simon, it was a depressing possibility. All he knew of his family came from the few things Denman had told him, that they were good people, that they cared about him, that they wanted the best for him. They felt he was better off here than living with them, for reasons Simon didn’t understand.
No one else at school knew much, either. The day after the beetles, at Halloween, Simon had sneaked into the school office to take a look at his file while everyone was out decorating for the masquerade. The file had nothing interesting in it, but the principal and his secretary passed through and Simon heard them talking while he hid.
“He claimed he was Simon St George’s father,” said the secretary, and at this Simon perked up to listen, “but you should have seen him. He was a wreck. His hair hadn’t been washed for Lord knows how long, he had dirt and grime all over his face, he was wearing the shabbiest second-hand clothes you ever saw, and he had these wild eyes like a madman!”
“What did you tell him?” the principal asked.
“Well, I sent him away, of course,” she said. “I think he was a homeless man who had rifled through some of our garbage and found Simon’s name. Probably wanted to snake out some of the boy’s money. Of course, the money’s all set up in a trust fund and no one can get to it. His parents set that up years ago so they wouldn’t ever have to mess with him.”
“Scam artist,” muttered the principal. “He chose the wrong boy on that one. If Simon St George’s father ever shows up, I’ll have a cardiac arrest.”
Then they left and, hiding in the darkness, Simon tried not to feel bad. What they had said was true, after all. But it spooked him to know that someone was asking for him.
There was little doubt that the man was an imposter. In all his years at the Lighthouse School for Boys, Simon had never heard from his parents. Not once. They clearly did not want to hear from him. He didn’t even have an address to send them a Christmas card.
There was simply no reason for his father to appear out of nowhere after all this time.
At least that’s what he thought.
Later that afternoon he was cleaning the lighthouse windows, hanging from a rope tied to his waist. Below him was a cliff that dropped off to the sharp rocks of the shore. It was one of the dirty jobs he did from time to time for the lighthouse keeper.
Boys had walked by earlier and he heard them making fun of him. Even his friends, such as they were, avoided him when he was working. He was completely alone.
Simon was scrubbing the grimy film off the windows and thinking how badly they needed it. They had not been cleaned for months. He was listening to the wind whistle round the giant circle of the lighthouse when suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed his leg. He screamed and looked down in horror.
Standing on the narrow cliffside was a bright-eyed man who was in sorry need of a bath and a shave. The wind was blowing hard enough to carry him off the cliff, but still he stood there.
“I need to talk to you,” he whispered loudly.
Simon couldn’t believe it.
“They don’t believe I’m your father,” he whispered again.
“I don’t believe you’re my father,” said Simon, and he kicked loose from the man’s hand. The man had to catch his balance to keep from falling off the cliff.
“Just don’t scream,” said the man. “I only want a chance to tell you who you are.”
“You’re out of your mind,” said Simon, clinging to the rope.
“Don’t you see a family resemblance?” the man called.
Simon turned back, his heart drumming. The man looked crazy.
“I can answer so many questions for you,” the man said, and Simon could see he was desperate to talk. He seemed tired and in a hurry at the same time. “You could be in danger. Listen to me. I care what happens to you.”
“Then you are definitely not my father,” Simon called back, and he clambered up the rope and escaped to the lighthouse deck. When he looked back down, the man was gone.
Simon didn’t tell anyone about him. He didn’t want the man thrown in jail; the poor guy probably just needed a few bucks. And he surely didn’t want anyone thinking that was his father.
But what if he was telling the truth? He wondered if it was possible. Why had he looked so run-down – didn’t he have plenty of money? And why couldn’t he prove his identity to the principal?
The questions nagged at Simon all day.
The answers came during the Halloween masquerade. The lighthouse had been surrounded with jack-o’-lanterns and orange lights had been put up all over school. The library had been transformed with ribbons and banners and decorations, and there was music, but nobody danced. Girls from the nearby private school congregated around one punch bowl, and the boys stayed at the other. All of them were nervous, even though they were disguised in their costumes.
Once Simon looked out the window and thought he saw the man staring back at him … but when he looked closer, it was just the reflection of his own black knight mask.
Simon noticed that the girl from the novelty shop had come to the gathering, but before he could approach her, other boys moved in and he heard them making fun of him. At first he thought they couldn’t see him under his mask. Then he realised they were joking about his costume. Someone said he was the shortest knight in history. The girl didn’t laugh, but Simon slipped outside to escape them all anyway.
He was going to head to the lighthouse or the stables, where he often went to be alone, when he heard voices. He peeked around the building and could see a man dressed all in pale white, along with other men, servants perhaps, talking to the principal. Simon leaned forward, hearing only pieces of the conversation.
” … Simon St George here?” he heard the man in white say.
“Is he in some kind of trouble?” asked the principal, but the man answered that his father was inquiring about him.
His father? Simon tried to hear more. Then he glanced down and saw several rats. They had been scurrying beside the building and were now stopped, staring at him. Very large white rats with red eyes.
Simon froze where he was, afraid of getting bitten, afraid he might scream and give himself away.
“I’m very sorry to bother you at this late hour,” he heard the man in white say. “My plane arrived late and I just desperately wanted to speak with the boy.”
Simon winced as a rat began to crawl on to his foot. He was going to scream after all, but something the man said stopped him: “Has the boy been doing well?”
He strained to hear the reply: that Mr St George had nothing to worry about, the boy was doing fine, acceptable work, but he was curious as to why the family had never come to see him in person.
At this the man in white sounded sorry, as if it hurt to explain. “If he ever asks about that, you just tell him his father would like to see him very much, but work has taken him far from home and, you know, as time has gone on, it’s become harder for his father to simply show up out of nowhere. It’s difficult, as I’m sure you realise. His father thinks it might be better to stay away than to stir up a lot of angry feelings, especially if the boy is doing all right without him.”
Simon leaned out to look at the man’s face, but he couldn’t see clearly, not in the dim light. All he could see was a coat, a hat, nothing more.
“I can tell you,” said the principal, “the boy is doing well; you can be sure of it.”
“Well, that’s good,” the man said. “Because I have concerns for him.”
“Concerns?” the principal asked.
“There is always a certain kind of rabble who are drawn to a boy from a family of means,” said the man. “Rotten, disreputable people. I just want to make sure you turn away anyone … unsavoury … if someone should come round, looking in on the boy. You know, I suppose I should probably talk to him myself. Is Simon around?”
“Yes, of course. He’ll be thrilled. He’s here somewhere,” the principal said. “Might take me a moment to find him.”
“Well, now, wait a moment. I don’t want to interrupt all this if he’s having a good time,” said the man in white. “I can’t imagine a worse way to meet him, come to think of it. I didn’t know you were having a party here. I’ll tell you what. I’ll be back tomorrow and maybe I can get away with the boy for a while.”
He smiled at the principal, shook hands and headed for an old white Rolls-Royce.
For a moment, Simon just stared. He had never heard a word from his father and now two people wanted the job in the same day? The well-dressed man certainly fit the part in Simon’s mind, but he had no time to weigh the matter – the rats at his feet were squealing murderously.
Simon stepped away from them, backing up into the field where dozens of masqueraders were now leaving for the library to hear ghost stories. The younger students were all carrying jack-o’-lanterns and a little boy handed one to Simon.
Simon stared blankly at the pumpkin, as above him the sky clouded over in a sudden desire to make a storm.
Panicked that he had missed his chance to see his father in person, Simon scrambled through the throngs of boys with their pumpkins, hurrying to catch the man in white.
Simon ran across the field, but the ground was slick with mud and he nearly fell.
As he hurried to catch the man, he did not notice the lizards – several of them – that had slithered out of the undergrowth to get to him, just missing. He did not see the bats that had gathered above him, swarming in a tangle of moonlit motion. The boy was focused completely on catching his father.
Simon ran down the lane from the building, but he could not see the landscape well, even with help from the lighthouse and the stern glow of the moon. There was no sign of his father. No sign of anything; the car had vanished. The awful emptiness of the night slammed into him with the power of the ocean wind.
Whoever he was, the man was gone.
Simon stood there, watching the boys continuing to pass over the field, and with a confused sort of feeling he joined them. He couldn’t think. He just started moving with them.
They began to walk across the dark field with only their jack-o’-lanterns, a few flashlights and the lighthouse itself lighting their way. The lighthouse beam would sweep across the field, and then it would spin round and light the ocean, so the field would go dark.
Flash. Flash. Light. Dark. For most of the boys, it was a weird and perfect end to a Halloween night.
Light. Dark. Light. Dark. The boys could hear the ocean rushing back and forth against the rocks. Simon thought he could hear something else too. Thunder. Not the usual kind of thunder from a rainstorm, but something somehow less real. Then he realised it was not thunder he was hearing at all. It was a horse’s hooves.
Walking at the end of the long group of boys, he stopped to listen. “Do you hear that?” he said to the boy in front of him. The boy turned, and then all the boys turned.
“What is it?” said the next boy.
“It’s a horse,” said Simon, “somewhere out there.”
Everyone turned round, searching the foggy night. They could hear the thunder of the horse’s hooves getting closer and closer.
The lighthouse spread its beam across the cloudy field. Suddenly a shape launched out of the fog. A man on a great horse. In a second he had swooped up Simon into his arms and thrown him atop the horse.
The boys screamed and ran. Lanterns were dropped. Before anyone knew it, the horseman had rumbled off into the fog. The librarian called out to Simon, but no answer came. As the lighthouse beam swept past the boys again, the light showed them nothing but the whiteness of the fog. The beam did not fall on the horseman, nor on Simon St George.
Both of them had vanished.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_9bf572a4-42ec-5404-972a-b3ba78400619)
St George, the Elder (#ulink_9bf572a4-42ec-5404-972a-b3ba78400619)
Simon could not yell. He was in a panic, with no air in his lungs. The horseman’s face was nearly all covered in a long black scarf and his great black trench coat was fanning out from the wind, like giant black wings.
Simon clung to his back, afraid of falling. In that quick moment, he felt a strange flash of fear that the horseman was the hideous creature he had seen crossing the street – a creature with a long snaky tail. But now the horseman’s scarf fell down from his face and Simon could see it was the shabby man who claimed to be his father.
For some reason, this made Simon feel better.
Suddenly, he heard sounds up ahead. Shouting. In the greyness near the cliff, he could see three men rushing at the horse. The horseman drew a long sword, heading for the first man, who may have held a gun. It was hard to tell.
But then, behind the three men, came another, out of the fog, who slashed at the attackers with a long wooden staff. The staff slammed into the first two men, throwing them to the ground. Then the man with the staff attacked the gunman, knocking loose his weapon.
It was the old lighthouse keeper, there, in the thick of the battle, brandishing his long walking cane! The old man was holding back the three attackers! Simon gaped in surprise as the horse galloped past the fight.
“Go!” the old man shouted.
The horse galloped into the safety of the fog shroud.
Gone into the night.
When Simon finally found himself able to breathe and speak in more than a whisper, he was a long, long way from the Lighthouse School for Boys. The horseman said not a word, urging his horse on through the fog. He must have gone a very long way, because Simon did not hear any sirens and he knew the principal would have called the police immediately.
“Where are you taking me?” Simon managed to say.
“Don’t worry now,” said the horseman comfortingly. “You’ll be safe.”
That was all he said and the horse galloped onward, down the coast, through muddy forests, empty fields and past lifeless piers, with the dark ocean calling after them.
Simon had no chance to yell for help. They did not go near any houses. Even if he was able to call out, Simon wasn’t sure he wanted to. Once the shock wore off a bit, he started to think this was the most exciting thing that could have happened. If this was his father after all, what exactly did he have to tell Simon?
They reached a long, empty dock. There were no buildings around, just a big sailing boat that looked as if it had been made a long time ago. The horse trotted over the wooden pier and stopped at the boat with a snort of exhaustion.
“Rest now,” said the man, and Simon thought he was speaking to the horse. “There’s a place to sleep on board,” he went on.
“You’re talking to me?” said Simon in amazement. “I can’t just … I’m not going to …”
“You know who I am,” said the man. “And I’d like to stand here all night and tell you the story of my life, but it’s not safe here. We’ve got to move on.”
He led the horse on board. Standing on the dock, Simon looked around. He could make a run for it, but he doubted he would get very far. He didn’t even know which way to go; the fog had obscured everything around them.
“Are you coming?” said the man, annoyed, and he put out his hand for Simon to take it.
“I didn’t know I had a choice,” said Simon.
“You have a choice if you want to get eaten out there,” was the reply.
Not sure what he meant by this, but knowing that indeed he meant it, Simon turned to look behind. He heard a rattling in the bushes and, fearing that it was the dangerous men from the lighthouse, he reached out and took the man’s hand. He was pulled aboard the ship and they set sail.
The thing was, Simon thought he might be able to trust this man somehow. Without knowing why, the boy was willing to go with the unknown.
It was too foggy to see the cliffs as the boat drifted away, but Simon could see the giant light beam from the Lighthouse School, slicing through the darkness. It got smaller and smaller as the night went on. Ebony Hollow was being pushed away and, with it, Simon’s old life.
Part of him was sorry to see it go. He had few friends, but the Lighthouse School was his whole world. He had no idea where he was headed.
He had a moment to think about his schoolmates, the lighthouse keeper, and to wonder just for an instant about the name of the girl at the novelty shop, but as that thought flitted away, he felt ready for whatever came his way.
The man behind Simon coughed. “Well,” he said, “if you’re not too tired, we may as well get some work done.”
He went inside the cabin.
Simon turned back, not sure he wanted to follow. But the time for regrets had passed. Simon went in.
In the tight quarters of the galley, Simon found the man hard at work, making something to eat. “First things first. I hope you like eggs,” grunted the man. “That’s all I’m cooking.”
“I’m not very hungry,” said Simon.
“You ought to eat whenever you can,” the man replied. “You never know when you won’t be able to.”
Simon was confused. Is he ever going to explain himself? He went to sit at a tiny table, not knowing what else to do. The ship lurched a bit and Simon fell, embarrassingly.
“Don’t tell me the tide knocked you over,” said the man. “The water’s calm as can be tonight.”
“I’m fine,” said Simon, and he started to realise the man might be insulting him.
“You’re small,” the man added, sizing up Simon’s frame, and he seemed touched by that. “I didn’t think you’d be small.”
Simon decided to be direct.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Then he added a threat. “My father is waiting for me back there. He isn’t going to like this. He’s a very … he’s a very wealthy businessman. Very powerful.”
“Businessman? Is that what you were hoping?” said the man disdainfully. “Would’ve expected more imagination from you. But you can stop the empty threats. Or at least use a little foul language – put a bit of punch in it, so you don’t sound like such a prep-school toughie.”
He broke eggs into a bowl. “Old Denman, your lighthouse keeper, he might’ve been hurt out there tonight, protecting you. He’s done a good job looking after you all these years – wish I could have thanked him properly. He knew the enemy might come looking sometime, with its spies out all over the world. He’s a good man, a good warrior. I hope he’s all right.”
The lighthouse keeper, working for this man? Nothing made any sense. Simon decided just to listen.
“I don’t want to scare you off, but this isn’t like playing war in the woods. You need to be sharp. Pay attention. Listen and learn every step of the way. There is a hallowed place for each one of us after death, but I don’t plan to get to mine for a very long time, so you’d better not hasten my passage. Certain people have a mission in life and there’s no changing it, halting it or reasoning with it. It’s just the way it is.”
Maybe the man was insane. He acted like it. This fancy way of talking about his work, whatever that was, and the way he grunted his words. He did not look very clean, either. His clothes were ragged and dirt-ridden. He seemed distrustful of everything. He was like a homeless man, Simon thought. His eyes did not seem crazy, though. They seemed kinder than his voice. Did he think he needed to be harsh with Simon?
“Eat.”
Simon followed his orders. Scrambled eggs. Plain, unsalted, but they tasted good. Turned out Simon was hungry. How late was it now?
“You’re going to need all your strength,” the man said again, gobbling his own meal with a wolfish hunger. “And all your skills. Do you have any skills?”
Of course he had skills, Simon thought. What skills would this man find useful?
“I can do … woodworking,” Simon tried.
“Don’t need it.”
“I can read French.”
“French?”
“I speak fluently. My teachers say I’m very good.”
“Probably not helpful. What else?”
“I don’t know. I can pretty much operate the lighthouse. I had to cook sometimes in school, so I know a little about that. And I’m good with horses.”
“Good, I suppose that’s something,” the man said. “That school had the best fencing instructors in the country – you never took fencing?” The man’s eyes shot over to Simon.
“Fencing was going to be next year. This year I took art.”
“Art.” The man sighed. “Didn’t you take anything practical? What about archery?”
“Since when is archery practical?”
The man almost smiled. “Depends on your line of work.” He looked at Simon for a long moment, taking him in. “Denman must’ve kept you away from all this sort of thing. We never thought you’d come into this.”
“Do I get to know your name?” said the boy.
“My name is Aldric St George,” he answered. “And I am your father.”
He seemed proud of the fact. But it also seemed to be a warning.
“You’ve said that before.” The boy eyed him. “I don’t suppose you have any proof.”
“Proof?” The man looked angry. “We’ve got the same eyebrows, the same nose … You hear it in your voice, you see it in the way you move – the proof is in your blood, boy! You are a St George!”
Simon tried not to react to the man’s thundering.
“And if I had any proof with me,” Aldric continued, calming, “it could prove deadly to you. Why do you think I haven’t been able to talk to you all these years?”
“I figured you didn’t want to.”
Aldric St George looked very upset for a moment. “Of course I wanted to talk to you,” he told Simon, “but it wasn’t safe. I’ve been wondering about you since the day we said goodbye.”
“You said goodbye. I was too little to talk,” Simon said plainly.
Aldric didn’t like to be corrected. “There was no other way,” he said, and then his anger came back a bit. “The Lighthouse School had the best reputation anywhere. I trusted Denman. Didn’t that school take care of you?” At this he seemed to lean forward, worried about the answer.
“I guess,” the boy admitted.
“Well, all right then,” said Aldric, relieved.
“But I would have liked it if someone had told me who my mother and father were,” Simon grumbled, not wanting to let his father off the hook so easily. “I would have liked it if I knew where they had gone. And why.”
“The ‘why’ is easy,” said Aldric. “You’ll understand all that soon enough. It’s the reason I’m here now. I need you to join me on my quest to fight the evil that dwells among us. It has been with us for centuries. It was with us when you were born. We had to send you away to protect you from it.”
“From what?”
“From the serpents. From the Draconians. Whatever name you choose to use.”
“Choose a name I can understand,” begged Simon.
“Dragons.”
There was a moment now when no one said a word. It was such a bizarre thing to say, Simon almost laughed. But his father said it with all the truth he had in him, he said it with such fear and disgust and such wildness in his eyes that it was clear he truly meant what he said.
“You were protecting me from dragons?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Aldric. “I am telling you the truth. A truth few people in this world have ever heard.”
“I’m listening,” said Simon.
“The dragon is a creature of unspeakable evil. It is a monster. A wretched liar, an insatiable thief and a despicable killer. I say ‘is’ because this creature isn’t an animal made up out of the imagination, or from the distant past. It is real, it is alive, and it is at work in the world today. Living out there somewhere in the shadows.”
He pushed away his plate. “Fact is, up until recent times, there were great numbers of them. I’ve spent my life hunting them down, one by one.”
“You hunt down dragons,” said Simon doubtfully. “The giant scaly reptiles. With big wings and huge teeth.”
“No,” said Aldric. “They haven’t looked like that for centuries.”
“What?”
“Well, dragons haven’t stayed the same since the dawn of time,” he explained. “They’ve moved on like everything else. They’ve changed, evolved. They look like men now, mostly. They stand two or three feet taller than an average fellow, unless they’re hunched over. They walk like men do, on two feet. They have two heavy, muscular arms. Their bodies are smaller than they used to be, so they can hide under a big coat, but their skin is reptile skin and their blood is green, and warm to the touch. Their heads are man-sized and their faces reptilian. Their eyes are glassy green or yellow or pitch-black ugly.
“We don’t even call them dragons, that’s how different they are now. They’re more like Dragonmen. We call them Draconians, or Reptellans. Some people call them Serpentines, or Pyrothraxes.”
“Pyro …?” Simon tried to say it.
“Pyrothraxes. Pyro, meaning fire,” Aldric rattled on, as if all of this was everyday knowledge. “They use fire as their chief weapon, but not because they need to. These days, dragons have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of ordinary people working for them. Dragons can be found in business, in politics; most are in charge of organised crime at the top levels. They can be found in every country on Earth. Their men do their bidding now with knives and guns and bombs just like all criminals, but the dragon has a special place in his heart for fire. They simply love fire and can never get enough of it. You can never be sure what they’ll do with it. You’ll learn about that.
“Most of them are rich too. That makes it hard to find them, to catch them. But they like to walk the streets – most people have walked right past one without knowing it – and sooner or later I pick up on where they’ve been. Their magic leaves behind unwanted side effects. Wherever there are strange things going on, you can bet a dragon has been in the vicinity.”
“And you destroy them?” asked Simon.
“Every single one of them I find,” said Aldric, with a gleam in his eye. “In fact, I think I’ve found just about the last of them.”
“Sounds like you’ve done pretty well out there on your own,” said Simon, trying to humour him. “What do you need me for?”
“You,” said Aldric, “are about to join the family business. Dragonhunting.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_4a7b2878-d983-5621-886a-65bfea649daa)
A Brief History of Dragons (#ulink_4a7b2878-d983-5621-886a-65bfea649daa)
“Some things you’ll learn on the job,” said Aldric, and he took out an old curly pipe, relaxing for the first time since Simon had met him. “And some of it you need to know right away.”
Simon reclined against the wall. The ship swayed gently and pipe smoke filled the room with a pungent smell.
Aldric began. “Nobody knows when the first dragon was sighted, but it must have been a very long time ago. They began their lives right after man began to walk the earth. They were born when the first man had his first evil thought. They grew like a tiny worm in his head, and when the man died and was buried, they went into the ground and spread. From this tiny beginning, many more of them grew from tough, leathery eggs hidden deep in the earth. White, like a spider’s eggs they were, but giant. When the young dragons hatched, they crawled their way to the surface. They have caused constant trouble for humankind ever since.
“What does a dragon want? It wants nothing more than to cause people pain, fear and sadness. The dragon feeds on these things. It is attracted to human misery – it thrives on it, in much the same way that plants need sunlight and water.
“Whenever a person feels down, the dragon wants to be nearby. It crawls underground and feels with its tongue for vibrations of sadness. It sucks up the sadness right through its skin and this makes the creature stronger. In turn, a dragon through its magic can make people more unhappy. Whenever a person feels self-doubt, whenever a person thinks he or she cannot succeed, that life is not worth a penny, it’s a good bet a dragon is the reason. Nothing causes more evil in the world than self-hatred. When a person hates himself, he will do terrible things. He wants everyone to feel as bad as he does. A dragon loves to make people hate themselves.”
And does a dragon make people go mad? wondered Simon, still looking at Aldric with distrust. The man went on raving, and when Simon tried to interrupt, he only raised his voice.
“Dragons have always wanted to dominate mankind. They need us, but they see us as pests. Vermin. There are so many of us that the serpents have never been able to wipe us all out. But they try. They try to thin our numbers. They try to get us to wipe ourselves out by tricking us into hating each other. There were only two thousand dragons at the height of their power and they could never get rid of the millions and billions of people in the world.
“You see, Pyrothraxes see themselves as better than humans, superior in intelligence. Stronger. They cannot stand humans because, to them, humans are weak.
“Add to that the fact that humans hate fire. Pyrothraxes love fire. Their favourite place is inside the heart of a good blazing fire. They play with fire, they eat fire, they sleep in fire. Most of the time when you hear about a building going up in smoke, it was a Pyrothrax having some fun.”
Aldric lit a match, to show Simon the power of a simple flame. He put it into Simon’s hand, nearly burning him, as he continued.
“Ow!” said Simon.
“And that is but a small taste of a dragon’s power. The worst part is, they are addicted to fire. They have to have it, and more and more of it every time. If the Pyrothrax had no fire, he would go mad. And, since humans are the enemy of fire, dragons are the enemy of humans.
“For a long time, there were warriors who would fight dragons alongside certain magicians who had learnt about serpent trickery. Each warrior had a magician to help him. In ancient Egypt, magicians banished the most terrible beast, the Serpent Queen, into a never-ending slumber and sent her away into a shadow realm, never to be seen again. Dragons have never forgiven the humans for doing this.
“Over the millennia, dragons were hunted down until there weren’t many left, and very few females to continue the species. So the serpents retreated from man, into hiding. Slowly they changed themselves. They made themselves smaller and outwardly more like us, so they could live in cities and towns and not be noticed. They learnt a kind of magic that would make people see what the serpents wanted them to see.
“Today, because of this magic, a man could look a dragon right in the eye and not see it for what it really is. The dragon can make itself look like another ordinary human being, unless it’s an old dragon, or a weak one whose magic is wearing thin. But you and I are special, Simon. We can see right through that magic.
“In the past few years, the serpents have grown very strong. They have turned the tables on us. They have hunted down all of the magicians, every last one. There are no magicians left. And there are only two knights left. Me … and you, Simon.”
“Me? I’m not a knight.” Simon recoiled.
“You will be,” said his father. “It’s your duty. You see, in the Middle Ages, the knights did battle with dragons and destroyed most of them. A very great knight named Saint George killed a very nasty dragon in the Arab desert, and from that day forward his sons and their sons, and the entire family for centuries and centuries, went after the dragons to protect the world. We are his descendants, Simon. And the job must go on.
“It was the tradition of the Order of Dragonhunters to bring their sons into the battle when they reached the age of fifteen. When a boy reached fifteen, he was ready to become a knight. But I have need of you now.”
What about what I need? Simon thought to himself. What if I don’t want to do this?
“I’ve no one to turn to,” Aldric added. “My fellow knights have all passed on. Even my brother Ormand has been killed.”
“Your brother?”
“The bravest of us all. He was older than me. Cleverer. Trustworthy. Good-natured – everyone loved him. I made strategy and he held the knights together. They were from families that long ago pledged to defend the Dragonhunters. I don’t know if they would have followed me alone, had they lived. But they are all gone now. And I have work left to do.”
“You want me to fight dragons with you?” asked Simon, bewildered.
“I don’t have any choice. You have to come with me, there’s nowhere safe for you to go. Don’t worry, boy, I’ll be with you all the time now. The challenge is real, but we’re up to it. And there’s good news. There’s only one Dragonman left to find.”
That was the good news? Simon couldn’t believe this. It was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. And since when could he count on his father for anything? If this was his father.
Simon did his best not to upset the man, father or not. “I think,” he said, coughing from the awful pipe smoke, “you’d better take me back to school now.”
Aldric looked displeased. “That place is not safe for you. You couldn’t stay there if you wanted to. The Pyrothrax is looking for you. It has spies all over the world. It knows that I am the last knight, and if they get rid of me, and you, there will be no one left to stop it. We can identify the creature – do you think it would allow that? It owes a great debt in blood to the St George family. It would love to find you and get its revenge. That lighthouse keeper is getting older – you think he could protect you? Don’t you see? The wretched thing knows where you are. All these years I’ve kept you secret, but now it knows you exist.”
Simon’s mind flashed back to the strange man in the trench coat crossing the street, the man who seemed to have a tail. But that was just a shadow, surely. Or was the man in white one of the dragon’s agents? This simply can’t he happening, he thought.
Aldric interrupted his musings. “I’m sorry all of this is rushed, but I’m on to something. I think I know where the dragon is. I was closing in on him weeks ago, until my brother called me away to help with a serpent he’d found in the heartland. That was when I realised you were in danger. We’ve got to get back on the hunt. You are the only one in the world I have left. Your mother passed away years ago and there is no more family; you are the last of the bloodline.”
Simon was shocked. He had decided he wouldn’t like his mother, whoever she was, but he always imagined she was alive, out there in the world, sipping fancy wine on a big yacht and never giving her son a thought. It shattered something in him to know that he would never meet her.
“We have very little time,” continued Aldric. “If the Pyrothrax knows we’re on his trail, he’ll move on and we’ll miss our chance.”
Simon was now convinced the man was off his rocker. But then Aldric added something: “I don’t expect you to swallow this story without any proof. I’m going to show you what I’m talking about.”
Simon’s head hurt from so much information. It must have shown on his face. “In the morning,” Aldric said. “In the morning I will show you proof that the creature is real and things will be much clearer.”
Smoke burned in Simon’s eyes and he thought he was going to faint.
“Now get some sleep,” he heard his father say, but he was already slipping into dreamland, worn out. He wanted to hear the rest of the story, but his brain had shut off. It had had enough.
The real shock was that morning would prove to be even more amazing.
Come morning, he would indeed be joining the family business …
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_5ef114e4-bc78-56c2-bf6f-0d68a0033d08)
The Family Business (#ulink_5ef114e4-bc78-56c2-bf6f-0d68a0033d08)
Simon felt a large tongue licking his face. He was being eaten.
In shock, he opened his eyes and rolled on the floor. He scrambled to his feet, ready for battle. But the creature he was looking at was not a dragon. It was a horse.
Aldric must have moved Simon into the hold of the little ship while the boy was sleeping. He had put him down to sleep in the hay. Not very comfortable, thought Simon. Not very nice.
Nevertheless, he had slept without waking once, even with the tilting and swaying of the ship. He must have been totally drained.
He backed away from the horse and looked around. The hold had a tidy and sizable space for the animal, and along the wall there were some chickens in pens.
“Good, you’re awake,” said a voice from above. Simon looked up at the hatch that led to the galley. His father threw down a bunch of apples. “You can feed the horse.”
Simon looked up at him, but all he could see was his shape, lit by the bright sunlight flooding into the hold. Simon picked up the apples. He’d been awake two seconds and already he was doing chores.
“Give her some oats. You’ll find them in the wood bins on the port wall,” Aldric added, disappearing somewhere up above deck.
Simon threw some oats into the horse’s stall and held an apple out for it to eat. The horse chomped the apple eagerly. Simon was hungry himself. He took one of the other apples, sinking his teeth in for a big bite.
“DON’T EAT VALSEPHANY’S APPLES,” came a warning from upstairs. “SHE’S EARNED EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM.”
Guiltily, Simon swallowed. But he was still hungry and it made him a little angry.
“Does anybody care I’m hungry enough to eat Valsephany?” he said loudly.
His father came back down with a look of fierce annoyance on his face. “Eat Valsephany?” he repeated. “Eat Valsephany?”
“It’s an expression,” said Simon mildly. “You know. In America, we say, ‘hungry enough to eat a horse’.”
Aldric plucked the apple away from Simon and went to his horse. It gave a thankful neighing and fed from his hand.
“Valsephany is the greatest animal a man could ever have,” Aldric said. “Very few steeds on this Earth could withstand what she has withstood. Not many would be able to look a dragon in the eye and hold its course. Most horses would bolt away. Or their legs would buckle and they’d fall to the ground in fear. It has taken ages to prepare Valsephany for battle. She’s priceless.”
The horse seemed to understand, raising its head with a whinny of pride. Simon made a mental note. Never joke about the horse.
“I didn’t know she meant so much to you,” said Simon.
“We’ve grown up together,” said Aldric, putting his face against Valsephany’s. “We were trained for battle together by your grandfather, Veritus St George. Fascinating creatures. Did you know that thousands of years ago, horses were wee, small little fellows, the size of terriers? Now look at them. You see? Everything evolves.”
He may not have a sense of humour, Simon thought, but Aldric’s knowledge was impressive. He got the feeling Aldric knew a little bit about a great many subjects, but probably not a whole lot in depth about anything. He wondered if his father had ever had the benefit of the education he had received at the Lighthouse School.
“A horse is a perfect companion. When you get your steed, you’ll understand,” said Aldric.
A horse? For Simon? His heart leapt at the thought. But before Simon could be sure that’s what he meant, his father brought up something more pressing.
“If you’re hungry,” said Aldric, “there’s a plate of food over there on that old box. I was eating it while I watched you sleep.”
Simon looked at him with curiosity.
“I came down once in the night. I had to be sure you wouldn’t try to jump overboard,” his father said to the unasked question. “I need you for battle.”
Simon frowned. Oh, it was distrust, not concern, he thought. He reached for the plate, which was piled with meat, fried potatoes and onion.
Suddenly, a large red fox darted from the shadows and stuck its snout on to the plate.
Aldric looked over disdainfully. “Fenwick. I suppose I should have introduced you. Did I mention a horse was the greatest of all the animals?”
Simon stared at the fox, which seemed to be glowering unhappily.
“An old English fox is probably the worst,” muttered Aldric, shooing the animal back.
“He’s hungry,” Simon said, and held out some food which the fox took quickly.
“Oh, poor thing,” Aldric mocked him. “He’ll eat when he’s earned it. This stable is a mess, Fenwick. I have to tell you, Simon, he spends most of his time fishing alongside the boat, and he stinks at it. As a matter of fact, he just plain stinks.”
Fenwick gave what seemed to be a scowl. Then, to Simon’s surprise, the fox scurried its furry red body into the stable and began cleaning up, pulling tools back into their spots, using its nose to push boxes into place. Fenwick, apparently, had been expertly trained.
“I’m sure this wasn’t exactly your idea of a wonderful Halloween,” said Aldric. He looked at the black knight mask in the hay. Somehow it had made it through the ride, in Simon’s satchel. “Interesting choice. It wouldn’t offer you much protection, though. Our armour is strong as titanium – it’s overlaid with an alchemical resin created by my magician friend Maradine, who died long ago. There’s still enough of it left for your armour, if I can adjust it for your size, but I doubt you’ll need any of it on this trip.”
“Why is that?” asked Simon, munching on a hard piece of black meat. He was thinking a suit of armour would be a very remarkable thing to own.
“This dragon we’re after, he’s an urban dragon. We’ll have to disguise ourselves. The armour is what gives you away. The strong magic in it makes the dragon’s teeth ache. He knows when you’re coming. So we end up with a choice. Protect ourselves and lose the element of surprise, or go in with a tremendous shock, but with no armour to protect us.”
“This is unreal,” mumbled Simon. Shining armour, urban dragons. He realised he was actually starting to believe this insanity.
“I assure you,” said his father solemnly, “the White Dragon is very real.”
“White Dragon,” Simon repeated. “Is that what you call it?”
“Yes. He’s the last of the bunch. That’s his brother you’re eating,” said Aldric, casually.
Simon had been chewing on the tough, greenish-black meat for some time. Now he felt sick.
“I’m eating it?”
“Yes, with some pepper.”
“I’m eating dragon meat?” repeated Simon.
“Well, why not?” Aldric asked him. “Dragonmen eat humans every chance they get. They do it for pure pleasure, just to spite us. We are a delicacy to them. They cover us with a hot milky syrup.”
The dragon meat tasted like very old beef. Between the motion of the ship and the bad meat, Simon thought he might throw up.
“I’m not feeling well,” he groaned.
“I thought you wanted proof,” Aldric replied.
“This isn’t exactly proof,” said Simon. “This could be old deer meat, or dead alligator. It just doesn’t taste good. What are you trying to do to me?”
“Simply keeping you from hunger. It took time to clean that off my sword and cook it up right,” said Aldric. “This one was known as the Vermin Dragon because he had a fancy for eating garlic-covered rats, and he ended up tasting rather good, if you ask me.”
Simon looked at his father with utter disbelief. “Well, you sure have thought a lot about this.”
The older St George looked irritated. “In a few hours,” he said, “we need to be ready for combat. I had hoped my word would be enough for you.” Simon didn’t know what to say. “But I did promise I’d show you the truth.”
He motioned Simon to follow. “I didn’t want to frighten you, but if you insist, so be it.” He walked to the back of the hold and opened a series of locks on a heavy metal door. “In you go,” he told his son.
Simon wasn’t sure he wanted proof any more.
The room ahead was dark as a shark’s belly and it gave off a musty smell from being closed up for a long, long time.
Fenwick, the little fox, had found business at the back of the ship, cowering fearfully.
Simon stalled, looking at Aldric: “Shouldn’t you be running the ship?”
“It runs itself.”
“Runs itself?” said Simon. “You have that kind of machinery on board? You don’t even have electricity.”
“The ship runs on magic,” grumbled his father, “using devices made by my late friend Maradine, and they know the way. Now, stop stalling.”
“I’m not stalling. I just had some questions.”
“It isn’t pretty in there, but you need to see it,” said Aldric.
Simon swallowed hard.
“You asked to see it,” said Aldric.
“I know.”
“Then go!”
Simon entered the dark room. The ship swayed to one side and it spooked him even more. Aldric entered behind him and clicked on some dim brass lights. The first thing Simon saw was a giant set of teeth. He almost jumped back from the shock. They were set in a skull the size of a small car. It was like the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex, but it had long, goat-like horns jutting upward from the head. The eyeholes alone were big enough for Simon to walk through. The boy stayed at the door, clearly disturbed.
“Oh, come on, don’t be afraid,” said Aldric in disgust. “You can see it’s dead. Dead as Friday’s mutton. For heaven’s sake, you’re going to have to show some guts. We’re going after the real thing in a few hours.”
“But it’s so big,” said Simon. “I didn’t know it was so big.”
“That’s an old dragon,” said Aldric. “It’s six hundred years old. Haven’t you been listening? Dragons today are man-sized. They don’t look anything like this.”
The bones around the mouth and nose of the skeleton were black. The fire it spewed out must have burned the bone over time.
“What do the Dragonmen look like?” asked Simon.
“Like this,” said Aldric, and he thrust another skull into Simon’s face.
Simon almost screamed, but he held it in. The skull in Aldric’s hand was indeed smaller. It was quite a bit larger than a human skull, though, and shaped like a little replica of the giant fossil nearby.
“This is the skull of the Dragon of Seville,” said Aldric. “The first dragon I took on, when I was about your age. He was an ugly Pyrothrax. Had six rows of teeth. See? Like a shark.” Simon ran his fingers over the old teeth. Still sharp. “Father and I went in together. It was the first time I’d been out of England. Easiest serpent I ever killed.” His voice took on a melancholy tone. “The next one would put an end to Dad.” He took the skull back and set it on a shelf with at least a dozen more such skulls.
Simon’s eyes were drawn to several steel cases with glass doors on them. Inside the cases were lighted torches. Some of the torches burned green, some blue.
“Serpentfire can burn for a very long time if the magic is strong,” said Aldric. “It’s hard to handle, that kind of fire, it seems to have a mind of its own, but it can be a good tool if you have nothing else. You never, ever want to use it unless you need it. I keep it around in case of dire circumstances. I hate to admit anything Serpentine can be useful.” Absentmindedly he picked up a dragon’s claw from a pile of them on the table and used it to scratch his neck.
The room had a smell like old leather. On several cabinets and hung on the walls were layers of dragon hide. Simon reached out and touched the closest. It felt leathery and tough and scaly, like a snake, in parts.
“Serpent skin resists fire,” said Aldric, “unless the fire is from another dragon. Another good reason to keep serpentfire around. It used to be that the best way to kill a dragon was to introduce it to another dragon.”
“Really? They don’t like each other?”
“Oh, they despise each other. They despise everything, really. They’re just gluttons for hatred,” Aldric revealed. “It all goes back to the Queen of Serpents. Once she vanished, they turned against each other, all blaming the other for what had happened.”
“That was thousands of years ago,” recalled Simon.
“Yes, but they’ve never got over it,” was the answer. “They have long memories.”
“They?”
“It. I keep forgetting, there’s only one of the terrors left,” smiled Aldric. “We’re soon to be out of a job, aren’t we? Maybe we’ll go into the fishing business. Or, who knows, maybe this last one has a treasure we can make off with. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
He took the dragon hide from Simon. “It’s nasty material, this is, but you can drive a silver sword or a silver arrow through it if you move fast. You need the right weapons.”
With that, he clicked on another light, and on the far side of the room Simon could now see an entire wall filled with suits of armour and dragon-fighting equipment. There were swords of every kind, crossbows, shields, bows and arrows – everything made of silver.
It was an amazing sight. The boy’s jaw dropped.
He felt something brush against his leg and looked down to see Fenwick carefully moving in next to him.
“Get out of here, you fish-mongrel,” Aldric yelled at the fox, to no effect. “He seems to like you.”
But Simon’s eyes were on the weaponry.
“The favourite weapon of the Dragonhunter,” explained Aldric, “is the silver crossbow.” He went over to the wall and handed one to Simon. It was heavy, like holding a bowling ball.
“This one is yours.”
Simon stared at it in disbelief. “This is how you slay dragons?” he asked.
“No, this is how you harm dragons. Silver can hurt a dragon, but their skin regenerates over time. There is only one way for us to eliminate a dragon – to destroy it completely. And that is with a deathspell.”
“A what?”
“Long ago magicians discovered that every dragon has a spell that will bring it to an end,” Aldric related, “and every spell is written into the Book of Saint George. I know all the words to the spells; I’ve committed them to memory and so shall you, for the last of the creatures. Each dragon has a weakness. A soft piece of flesh in the middle of its chest, right over its heart. Its weakest part. You lay your hand on its heart, press against this skin and call out the deathspell. And the dragon will … expire.”
“What happens then?”
“They all go down differently,” said Aldric. “You’ll see it for yourself.”
Simon could hardly believe it. He was really going to hunt a dragon. He looked at his silver crossbow and noticed for the first time that it was covered in spell-writing. Runes. An enchanted protection of some kind.
Then he noticed a small piece of glass fitted over the middle of the weapon, and inside that glass was a small, burning light, a silver oval that was beating like a heart. The crossbow had a heart!
“It’s alive,” said Simon.
“Of course it’s alive,” said Aldric, “everything enchanted is alive. It will try to help you as best it can.”
The boy scratched his head, unnerved.
Fenwick sniffed at the crossbow. He seemed worried.
“Will you show me how to use it?” Simon asked.
There was a glint of pride in Aldric’s eye when he nodded.
“Our first and last hunt.”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_fd7d58da-666b-5c46-b1e8-cc6ae7dfa9a6)
A Manhattan Dragon (#ulink_fd7d58da-666b-5c46-b1e8-cc6ae7dfa9a6)
The White Dragon was, indeed, purely white. His leathery skin was white with tiny cream speckles, with small white plates that stuck up on his back like the plates of a miniature stegosaurus. His long fingers were tipped with white claws. His teeth were white. His amber-white eyes had protective, translucent white eyelids. Even when he closed his eyes, he saw whiteness.
The White Dragon lived in a luxury building in New York City that overlooked Central Park. Everything in his very large apartment was white: the floors, the walls, the ceiling, the curtains. The furniture, including the chairs, the tables, the sofa, the bookcases (and the books in them), as well as the telephone, the television, all of the furnishings everywhere, all were shades of white. The kitchen and all of its tools were white. The bedroom and the bed and the nightstands were all white. So was the bathroom.
Nothing was ever written down in the home of the White Dragon. The White Dragon liked blank white paper.
Nothing was ever dirty. The White Dragon made sure anything dirty was thrown out unless it could be made clean and white.
Nothing was ever eaten that was not white. The White Dragon ate white cream soup or white clam chowder, stone-white crackers, white bread, white vanilla ice cream, white mashed potatoes. White meat. His favourite: white goats, swallowed whole. If the dragon was eating a human being, he used his magic to grind it up until the person was a white powder that could be sprinkled easily over nice, white food.
He took great pride in his appearance. He spent most of his time in a massive white bathtub filled with white bubbles. The one reason he enjoyed going out into the world was to return home and wash it all away with white soap.
The white creature had grown rich from criminal activity, mostly from the art world. His human partners spent all day stealing money from people through art forgeries, and forcing other people to steal money from still more people. The White Dragon gave the orders, then all he had to do was sit back and receive reports of how much money he had made that day.
The rest of his day was spent contemplating whiteness.
All about the place were small white boxes with small white cloths inside that the creature could use to clean up tiny bits of dirt or dust that might somehow have fallen on to his pristine skin.
He spent hours polishing his teeth. He even scrubbed his eyes with soap, no matter what the pain. He had read somewhere that harmful dust can collect in the corner of the eyes and go unnoticed. It did not go unnoticed in the home of the White Dragon.
The creature stood seven feet tall and could hide easily under heavy clothing and a long trench coat. He walked on two feet. His head was fairly small, and though his neck was a bit longer than a human’s, it could retract.
The dragon had a white tail, long, full and strong. He kept his tail curled up against his back so it could be hidden under a coat. His white wings could also be kept hidden, but he rarely flew. That required too much energy and dirt particles would fly into his eyes.
When at home, naturally, the creature hid nothing. He stretched out his long tail and his baggy old body and lay around in his pricey little kingdom, listening to the radio tuned to no particular station. White noise, of course. The ultimate lounge lizard.
The only matter that troubled the dragon was that he liked to sleep in flames. He would spew fire into the massive fireplace and sleep inside, with fire all around him. This was delightful to him. In the morning, however, there would be all that mess to clean up. Fire makes things black.
To keep things clean, a small army of workers was employed at all times. They did not know for whom they worked. They only knew that the fireplace must be kept perfectly clean at all costs, every single day. Only white ash was allowed to remain.
Even the creature’s fire was white. It was magic fire. The old serpent liked to make the fire grow like a white vine, like ivy, in long strings that would crawl on the wall and branch out in thin, glowing strands. He thought fire was lovely. He could make it come out of his mouth or his eyes or his hands or his fingers, but after that, it might do whatever it wanted. Dragonfire is an unpredictable thing. After a few seconds in the air, it can actually come to life. From time to time, the dragon would unleash a fire just to have someone to talk to. The living fire would laugh with him and speak of terrible things. It sometimes took the shape of a blobby man with no real face, and it would walk around the room, scorching everything. The dragon hated the messes it made.
The creature had other ways of making messes. He had developed an interest in art. His new joy was painting pictures.
They were pictures of the colour white.
If his paint should ever drip off the canvas, it only added to the white in the room.
The painting he was currently working on was a pride and joy. Like the others, it used various shades of white to create a subtle white abstract effect. Blobs of colours from white to off-white, to egg white, to cream, to vanilla, to ivory, to almost-a-colour, to tannish white, to greyish white, all fell together on a big canvas. A white canvas. It was wonderful. The creature was certain he was on the verge of something brilliant. Art is white. Anything else distracts from the art.
The creature cheated at his art as he cheated at everything in life. No one else in the world would be much interested in a painting of shades of white. So as he worked, the White Dragon touched the art with magic. Anyone who looked at a White Dragon painting saw exactly what he wanted dimly reflected under the white paint, and everyone saw something different. The artwork was just enchanted enough to capture your heart, without a drop of extra enchantment left behind.
Each one was worth a small fortune.
The dragon smiled at its work. Captivating, even to him. The only thing more marvellous was the work of that delicate woman across town, at the modern art gallery.
You see, the dragon had one other interest. A lovely lady, an art collector. To him, she was as beautiful as the art that surrounded her.
The White Dragon had made himself somewhat well-known with his own paintings, and the woman had placed many of his art pieces in the gallery where she worked. She was a painter herself, so the two had much to talk about.
The pity was that no one else saw the quality of her paintings. The woman had displayed them in her office discreetly, and the dragon passing through the gallery one day had taken note of them. Her paintings were scratchings of green colours laid out over odd symbols, runes that were brushed in with shades of gold. Most people thought her works were quite strange. Not the dragon. He loved them. He made a habit of calling her to tell her how much he loved them.
The two had only spoken on the telephone. He had seen her only from afar.
He decided it was time to introduce himself formally. But he was low on energy. He had used his magic quite a lot recently and needed to rest.
The White Dragon had been to a town called Ebony Hollow, looking for a boy named Simon St George. An amazing discovery: the Dragonhunter had a son. The White Dragon’s dying brother had sent him word through one of his spies. An unusual act of cooperation, but they were brothers, after all. It’s a shame the spies weren’t up to the task of destroying the knight, but that was a pleasure the dragon wanted for himself anyway. Always hunting each other, they were. The game went round and round.
The St George family was a curse to dragons. St Georges were faster, smarter and stronger than other humans. They could see through Serpentine magic.
The true power of the child was not known. But it did not matter, thought the dragon; the boy would no doubt amount to nothing. His dragon spies remained on the job. They’d find him.
Or, better yet, he thought, maybe he will come right to me.
Across the city of New York, this was precisely what was going to happen.
Simon St George was preparing for battle.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_fed30ba3-78b6-5cb1-88f5-38887f49f3d3)
The Woman who Fell in Love with a Dragon (#ulink_fed30ba3-78b6-5cb1-88f5-38887f49f3d3)
The boy and his father had docked the Ship with No Name in New York Harbour and made their way quickly – Simon would say too quickly – through the streets by taxicab to a perch in a giant tree in Central Park. Aldric scaled it quickly, but Simon struggled with the climb. No one could see them because they were so high up, and the tree was deep inside the park, thickly covered in autumn colours.
Aldric St George had set the area up nicely for their needs long before his trip to the Lighthouse School. Stuck away here and there among the branches were little gunny sacks of food and water, small flashlights, a clock, some books, and below at the trunk, two comfortable easy chairs that Aldric had salvaged from a skip off Park Avenue and which would serve now as a place to sleep, something Simon found depressing. Lodged in the tree were two old brass telescopes, positioned to see in every direction around the park.
“What are we looking for?” Simon wondered.
“The signs. He’s been here, you can tell. Lurking.”
“How do you know?”
Aldric’s eyes passed over the people below. “You can see it in people’s faces. Everything weighs heavily on them. Their hearts beat slower. The fire that drives them through life is burning low. Look at them, Simon. Nothing reaches past their sadness – not the landscape, not the movement of the city, not the souls around them … They’ve lost something and they don’t know what it is. Some haven’t noticed what’s missing inside, but they know enough to suspect that the city has stolen something from them. You can feel their anger. These people don’t want to be alive any more. The gloom is falling down around them like rain.”
Simon looked. He saw ordinary people, doing ordinary things.
Aldric pointed down. “The cab driver at the corner, yelling at the woman crossing. The old woman in the grey coat. The priest. Don’t you feel it?”
Quiet filled the tree as Simon tried to sense what his father described. The city was just a city. Finally he had to admit, “All I see are a bunch of ticked-off New Yorkers. I thought that was supposed to be pretty normal here.”
His father frowned. “These are the signs of a dragon presence. Be alert to them. Now then, over there, on the eighteenth floor of that building, is the home of a woman named Alaythia Moore,” said Aldric, with a touch of sadness Simon didn’t quite understand. “She lives there alone and rarely has visitors. She works for a modern art gallery. She is an art curator and an artist in her own right, I understand, though I’ve never seen any of her work. She’s too shy and private to show off her own paintings.”
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Jason Hightman
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Детская фантастика
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: It’s not every day you wake up and find you’re a dragonhunter but in this exciting debut novel that’s exactly what happens to Simon St. George…Simon St. George meets his long lost father after supposing him dead, only to be informed that he is a descendant of St George the Dragon Slayer and it is his duty to inherit this role himself. For there are dragons in today′s society and the world should be rid of their evil once and for all! Trouble is, they are disguised as humans in positions of power….Exciting fantasy adventure with generous lashings of snarky humour.