The Saint of Dragons

by Jason Hightman

  The rest of the time he trained Simon, who found his new tools heavy and hard to use. Nothing he did impressed his father. Alaythia was the only one to give Simon any encouragement, but he often felt he was in her way. She had set up a makeshift easel to make and study her Dragonscript runes, and Simon was no help in figuring them out.

  Still, Simon certainly wasn’t wishing for his old life back. He did wonder what the other kids at the Lighthouse School would say if they knew where he was. It gave him a little thrill to think they’d never know where he’d gone. He had just vanished into the foggy night. Now he would be a legend there.

  He found himself worrying a lot about what lay ahead, and the sea was no friend to him, turning vicious as the trip wore on. The ship teeter-tottered in heavy swells of water, and up ahead on the horizon, dark rain clouds were getting ready for battle. It was as if something didn’t want them to get to Venice.

  The Ship with No Name was a sailboat, but it was handled by old machines, rods and boxes and switches, which ran themselves. Simon saw how they toiled against the wind.

  As rain began to fall, Aldric worried the old machines would not be able to survive the weather. “Hand me that oil can!” he shouted to Simon.

  “Magic machines need oil?” asked Simon.

  “Of course they need oil. They’re not perfect.”

  Simon watched as Aldric squirted oil on the strange boxes and gears and levers that covered the ship. His efforts did not seem to make much difference. The metal parts continued to squeak and moan, adding their noise to the rainfall and thunder.

  “Are they going to keep working?”

  “They’d better,” called Aldric over the rain.

  “Let me help,” Alaythia interjected. “I’ve been watching how it all works. I think I’ve learned a thing or two about this old boat.”

  Aldric groaned, not even bothering to be polite. If she handled a ship as well as she handled a kitchen, they would end up at the bottom of the ocean in no time.

  She started to adjust the sails, but Aldric roughly stepped in front of her. “I don’t need you messing with the ship. Maradine made these machines, and they’re working just fine.”

  The machines creaked and squeaked. Alaythia and Simon looked at Aldric with very little confidence.

  Lightning struck the sea all around them. Simon watched in amazement as the crackling splinters of light stabbed at the water and cut it open. Then he looked up and saw the lightning weaving over the ship’s masts and metal. Saint Elmo’s fire.

  The lightning glow seemed to sweep all over the boat, right past Aldric and Simon, drifting over Alaythia, as if it were searching, looking things over.

  It was entirely possible, Simon thought, that the Dragon of Venice was using his magic to check up on them and find out what he was up against.

  Aldric told Simon to see to Valsephany, and the boy fled belowdecks. The ship rolled back and forth, and Simon was nearly hit by flying pottery and metal pans. His weak stomach was socking his ribs.

  Inside, the sound of the storm was worse than seeing it. The wood around him creaked painfully under the strain. The thunder was muffled and weird-sounding, like the laughter of persons you would not want to meet.

  Fenwick dashed from the galley and jumped onto Simon’s back, shivering with fear. Surely the fox had gone through storms before; this one must have been stronger than most. Simon reached back to pat the animal’s wet hide and continued on.

  He crawled down into the hold of the ship where his father’s horse was tethered. The horse grunted in greeting him, as if relieved.

  Suddenly, a large wave must have thrown itself against the ship, because the locked door to the dead Dragon room flew open with a smashing blow, and the huge head of the medieval Dragon slammed its way into the cargo hold. The gigantic skull slid across the deck toward Simon. He turned and dived for safety, landing near the horse. The skull slammed against the stable fence behind him as if it were biting with vicious life.

  Now all the Dragon bones and skulls tumbled from the chamber and scattered about the great Dragon’s head.

  Simon’s eyes were locked open. He tried hard not to think the thing had come to life, that something was in here with him—

  But the eyes in the Dragon’s skull were moving.

  It was too dark for Simon to get a good look, but something was rattling in there—and then he saw what it was. It was not the pupils of a Dragon’s eye, it was the quivering, fearful muscles of a generously sized rat. Another rat was behind that one, and several more behind that.

  It had been their home for a long time, that skull had been, and now the storm had knocked them loose.

  The rats ran about, looking for somewhere safe from the booms and rattles.

  Fenwick pounced at the panicked rats, but they were too quick for him, scattering under the hay, pittering into dark places on the shelves.

  Simon was actually relieved. Rats were disgusting, but they were just rats. At least he knew now the Dragon was dead.

  Until the skull moved again, the whole great big thing, and Simon’s heart began shaking with new energy.

  The skull moved aside, as Aldric pushed it away to enter.

  “Are you all right down here?” he called.

  It took Simon a moment to make his voice work.

  Aldric came into the stable and sat beside him. There was nothing he could do for the ship; it would have to fight the storm on its own.

  “Where’s Alaythia?”

  Aldric shook his head. “She’s making sure her new paintings are safe, locking up that easel she made. She says she can handle it.”

  Simon frowned. “Shouldn’t you be helping her?”

  “I tried. She wouldn’t let me. Don’t get surly with me, boy.”

  Simon retreated into his heavy jacket, the hood flopping over onto his head. He pulled his knees to his chest, cowering against the wooden walls. He didn’t like this storm, and he hated being afraid with his father staring him down. Aldric offered little hope.

  “At least the devices are all working,” he reported. “But I don’t know if they’ll hold up.”

  “There’s nothing you can do?”

  “Not a thing. They all run on magic, and I don’t understand any of it. If they run down on us, there’s no one who can fix them.”

  Simon swallowed hard.

  “You’re not going to be sick, are you?” Aldric asked carefully.

  “I didn’t plan on it,” said Simon in his best low voice.

  “You know, the sounds out there shouldn’t frighten you. Why, when you were an infant I would put you in a dark room and play terrifying storm sounds for you, with growling and animal sparring thrown in for good measure, and you wouldn’t even cry.”

  Simon looked at him like he was crazy. Playing these things for an infant?

  “Your mother didn’t allow that for long,” he added.

  Simon’s interest picked up.

  “I haven’t seen a storm like this since your mother was with us,” said Aldric.

  The boy tried not to look too curious. Aldric, he had learned, didn’t like to talk much about her.

  “We were going from Norway to England,” Aldric remembered, “and it was as if nothing in heaven nor earth wanted us to get there. Your mother was as strong as could be. She had you in her arms, worried sick about you, and still she was able to help me crew the ship. You were no more than six months old, wailing and screaming. As it happened, we were pushed back, and the old boat, seeking safety, took us to the nearest shore.”

  Aldric had a look that made Simon think there was more to the story.

  “Is that…when she died?” he asked. “From the storm?”

  Aldric looked grim. “No, not exactly,” he finally said. “Your mother was taken by one of Them. One of the Dragons. The one in New York. She was lost to us in a fire. There’s some poetic justice that you got to help in taking that thing down, I suppose.” He pulled something from his coat pocket. “I hav
e a picture of her,” he said. “I imagine you’d like to see it.”

  It was a locket. Simon found it interesting that his father kept it with him. The photograph inside was old. It showed a beautiful, small-framed woman with long blond hair tied up neatly. She had on formal-looking clothes, perhaps a riding outfit, Simon guessed.

  “Your mother was perfect, you know,” said Aldric. “Perfect. Light hair, light complexion, light on her feet. A light heart. And she brought light wherever she went. An American, with their sense of ease. Her family owned a farm in England, and the horses she trained were the finest and bravest in the world. I got Valsephany from her. Your mother was sixteen then. Years after that, the horse grew sick, didn’t want to work…. Didn’t want to live, I suspect. A horse is a sensitive creature. Valsephany had seen too many of her friends die in battle, and she didn’t have the guts for it anymore. I tried everything I could think of. I ended up coming back to your mother. Seems the horse had too strong an attachment to her. He’d grown up with her. They were inseparable. So your mother had to join me. It was that simple. She healed my horse, and I got a wife in the bargain.”

  He said these words with a brightening in his expression, which faded away after a moment. “She was taken from us in a flash of light.”

  Simon’s mind went still.

  There was a clattering as Alaythia pushed past the thrown-about junk at the door. She had a shining mood, even in the storm. “I saved them,” she said, “the artwork’s all put away.”

  Simon could not think of what to say. It was as if the storm had vanished. All he could hear in his head were his own thoughts, repeating over and over of how much he hated the wretched Serpent-things. He had never known what happened to his mother.

  “You know, I think I’m going to be a big help around here,” Alaythia commented, trying to break the mood. “I haven’t told you this, but I’ve been having dreams about you. At least, I think they’re about you. It’s always the same dream. I’m in a dark place, like a cave, and it’s coming down around me, collapsing, and a voice tells me, ‘Lead them through the darkness,’ and I reach out and I pull someone’s hand out of the dark, out of danger. I always wake up before I see who it is, but I’ll bet anything it’s you two. It’s a prophecy. I’m sure of it now. It means I’m going to repay you for saving my life. The way I see it, I’m supposed to protect you.”

  Simon and Aldric gave each other skeptical looks. It was an odd statement, and neither wanted to have to rely on Alaythia to save them. Both of them let it go.

  Simon huddled down under his hood and closed his eyes, trying to imagine his mother’s voice.

  Aldric said nothing more. The three sat in silence in the rocking, reeling ship, and after many hours, the storm passed, and they continued on to Italy.

  They docked the ship in Venice.

  Where mysteries waited to be solved.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE MYSTERY OF THE MEDALLION

  SIMON LOVED VENICE. IT was a city where the streets were made of water and people rode in boats instead of cars. All the buildings were old and fantastic-looking. Arching bridges, ancient and beautiful, stretched over the liquid streets.

  In spite of all that, Simon couldn’t help feeling a general sense of dread.

  Something was very wrong here.

  It wasn’t just that Simon didn’t speak the language and didn’t know the customs. As he walked beside the canals, he heard the passing people chattering in Italian; it was a language that sort of hopped along, looking for a way to end. Everyone had an angry expression, as if accusing Simon and his companions of bargaining for something they didn’t want to pay too much for. Simon thought there was something in the air that sizzled your skin and brushed invisibly on the hair of your arms, like a spider.

  The creature responsible for all this could hide among the people. Simon found himself looking hard with a sickly suspicion at every face he saw. Clues were scarce.

  They had only Alaythia’s guess that the medallion came from here, nothing else.

  Aldric took them to the largest newsstand in the city and paid for every newspaper on the racks.

  “What are you doing?” asked Simon.

  “Looking for things no one sees,” said Aldric.

  He took them to a dark café, where he laid out all the newspapers. They began going over them, looking for anything strange or bizarre that might have happened in Venice in the past few days. Anything that might indicate a Serpent was in the area.

  They paid a man in the café to translate the headlines into English. He was a gaunt, old man with an eerie voice, though his eyes were kind and he did his best to help.

  “‘Brawl at local bar,’” he read to Simon.

  “Not significant,” said Aldric. “People are always brawling.”

  “‘Priests leave the church in droves,’” he read to Alaythia from another article. “‘Lose confidence in giving sermons.’”

  “Could be something there,” said Aldric. “When a great number of people lose faith, it usually points to a Serpent. Where was that?”

  “The church is on the west side of the city,” answered the translator, confused over exactly what Aldric was talking about.

  Aldric stared at the photograph beside the article, squinting closely at a strange blur just behind the priests. The photo had caught someone in motion, passing by the church. “Interesting,” said Aldric. “Something was there. Something that didn’t want to be seen.”

  The translator looked at him like he was insane.

  “There was another article about that area,” Simon remembered, “about dogs that are losing their fur. Most of the dogs are completely bare, it said.”

  Aldric nodded. “Sounds like a Pyrothrax to me. You and I will start in that part of town at jewel and art shops, any place that might know about the medallions. Alaythia can go snooping about the church. Be careful. We’ll meet back here.”

  Alaythia went off down the street alone, wearing a long blue cloak and hood that gave her an old-fashioned look. The cloak blew about her in the wind, her long hair lashing wildly. Simon watched her go with a pang of worry. Aldric said she could take care of herself, but it seemed to Simon that she had already gotten lost.

  Aldric was in search of a jeweler’s shop in the suspicious part of the city, looking for someone who might have seen the Dragon medallion, perhaps even the maker. Unfortunately, the first shop they went to gave them no help. The owner could not even tell them where else they might look, and he seemed somewhat spooked. Such a curious token they had found.

  Later, as they were crossing a bridge, Simon began to notice a terrible stench coming from the water. The smell got stronger the closer they got to the western part of the city.

  “That’s the smell of a Dragon,” said Aldric. “An overfed Dragon, left alone for too long.”

  “What are we going to do when we find him? We don’t even know his deathspell.”

  Aldric nodded with a worried look. “We aren’t going to do anything,” he said, lifting a long black case he’d been carrying. “A weapon like this, I handle alone.”

  He was trying to look sure of himself, Simon thought. But nothing had ever worked to eliminate a Dragon except the ancient deathspells. Now they had no such magic to use.

  Miserable, hunched-over, hairless dogs passed by, searching for hiding places, their eyes tainted white. The dogs looked pitiful and ashamed, their ribs sticking out of thin skins.

  The water in the canal next to Simon had turned an odd greenish color, though he barely noticed it. His mind was fixed on how to eliminate a Dragon with no spells and no books. What if this Dragon has powers we have never seen before? He did not notice that people were staring at huge numbers of oddly colored fish that had gathered in the canal. The water was a thick, ugly green, but still you could see the sea life down there, swimming in patterns, creating giant figure-eights and circles within circles. The fish were upset at something. Something was driving them a bit mad
, you could see it at once.

  If you looked. Simon didn’t, distracted by the noise of the people up ahead. It didn’t matter that he didn’t speak Italian; he could tell they were arguing. Aldric was looking across the street where beautiful women were crying, huddled alone in corners of the cracked-brick buildings. Sadness and depression had taken hold here strongly.

  The next jeweler’s shop was owned by a large man in a bad mood, like everyone else. He had a face like a huge plum that had sat in the sun too long but wasn’t yet a prune. Purplish splotches were spread over his face. Over the years, he had tried many lotions and treatments to get rid of them, but nothing worked. He stared suspiciously at Aldric and Simon from a protective, bulletproof glass booth that enclosed him completely.

  Aldric produced the medallion from his pocket. “Have you ever seen this?” he asked the jeweler, and the jeweler opened a slot in the big booth.

  “I can’t tell if you don’t give it to me,” he said glumly. “My eyes aren’t that good since I moved to Venice.”

  Aldric reluctantly passed it to him. The jeweler squinted, and looked more prunish. Then he looked up nervously.

  “This is very fine work.”

  “Did you make it?”

  “This is the only shop that could have made it. That’s how fine a work it is.”

  Aldric had played a hunch; now he controlled his excitement. “Who did you sell it to? Can you help us find him?”

  “He wished to keep this a private matter,” said the jeweler, rubbing a spot on his face.

  “Well, that’s to be expected,” said Aldric. “What’ll it cost me to learn his whereabouts?”

  “You think anything is for sale?” grunted the jeweler.

  “Let’s put it this way,” said Aldric, in such a way that Simon could tell his anger was about to show itself, “it had better be for sale.”

  The jeweler stared back, judging him. He was starting to sweat.

  “You know, don’t you?” said the jeweler, and his eyes flicked sideways, at an eel in a nearby aquarium. A strange pet, thought Simon.