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 armor 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 armor, 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 armor 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 armor 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 armor to protect us.”
“This is unreal,” mumbled Simon. Shining armor, urban Dragons. He realized 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,” groaned Simon.
“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?”
“Just keeping you from hunger. It took time to clean that off my sword and cook it up right,” said Aldric. “This one was called 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 him 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 of 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, quit 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, goatlike 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, just to keep his father from the satisfaction. 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, others yellow.
“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 Dragonhide. 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 gotten over it” was the answer. “They’ve got a long memory—they’re like the Irish that way.”
“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 th
is last one has a treasure we can make off with. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
He took the Dragonhide 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 armor and Dragonfighting 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 favorite 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 him 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
A MANHATTAN DRAGON
THE WHITE DRAGON WAS, indeed, purely white. Its leathery skin was white with tiny cream speckles, and it had small white plates on its back that stuck up in the air like the plates of a miniature stegosaurus. Its long fingers were tipped with white claws. Its teeth were white. Its amber-white eyes had a protective translucent white eyelid. Even when it closed its eyes, it saw whiteness.
It lived in a luxury building in New York City that overlooked Central Park. Everything in its very large apartment was white: the floors, the walls, the ceiling, the drapes. 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 favorite: 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.
It took great pride in its appearance. It spent most of its time in a massive white bathtub filled with white bubbles. The one reason it 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. Its 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 it had to do was sit back and receive reports of how much money it had made that day.
The rest of its 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 onto his pristine skin.
It spent hours polishing its teeth. It even scrubbed its eyes with soap, no matter what the pain. It 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 eight feet tall, and could hide easily under heavy clothing and a long trench coat. It walked on two feet. Its head was fairly small, and though its neck was a bit longer than a human’s, it could retract.
The Dragon had a white tail, long, full, and strong. It kept its tail curled up against its back so it could be hidden under a coat. Its white wings could also be kept hidden, but it rarely flew. That required too much energy, and dirt particles would fly into his eyes.
When at home, naturally, the creature hid nothing. It stretched out its long tail and its baggy old body and lay around in its 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 it liked to sleep in flames. He would spew fire into the massive fireplace, and sleep inside of it, 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 rotten 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. It had developed an interest in art. Its new joy was painting pictures.
They were pictures of the color 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 colors from white to off white, to egg white, to cream, to vanilla, to ivory, to almost-a-color, to tannish white to grayish white, all fell together on a big canvas. A white canvas. It was wonderful. The creature was ce
rtain 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 marvelous 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 colors 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 Saint of Dragons Page 5
