“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 his father off the hook so easy. “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 organized 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 gotten just about the last of them.”
“Sounds like you’ve done pretty well out there on your own,” said Simon, trying to humor him. “What do you need me for?”
“You,” said Aldric, “are about to join the family business. Dragonhunting.”
Chapter Five
A BRIEF HISTORY OF DRAGONS
“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 his 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 behind it. 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.
“Dragons have always wanted to dominate mankind. They need us, but they look at humans as if we were rats or cockroaches. They see us as pests. Vermin. There are so many of us that the Serpents have never been able to wipe all of us 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 favorite 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.
“The worst part is, they can’t help themselves. 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. He couldn’t stand it. 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 learned 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 it 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 went away 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 learned 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. Then its magic might wear 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. Smarter. 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.”
Well, that was 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 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 on all of us. That old 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 they know 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. Was the man in white one of the Dragon’s agents? This simply can’t be 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, but my brother called me away to help with a Serpent he’d found in the heartland. That was when I found out 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 except for you, the last of the bloodline.”
Simon was shocked. He had imagined he wouldn’t like his mother, whoever she was, but he always figured she was alive, out there in the world, sipping fancy wine on a big yacht and never giving him 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 almost wanted 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
THE FAMILY BUSINESS
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 li
ttle fellows, the size of terriers? Now look at them. You see? Everything evolves.”
He may not have a sense of humor, Simon thought, but Aldric’s knowledge was impressive. From all his talking the night before, 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 gotten 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 mention of it. 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 onto the plate.
Aldric looked over disdainfully. “Fenwick. I guess 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.”
The Saint of Dragons Page 4