“All I can tell from this,” said Alaythia, “is that Dragons really, truly hate human beings.”
“They hate to need us,” Aldric added. “They feed on us, and feed on our pain, but they never could stand that there are so many of us.”
“Is he planning to destroy us all? Is that what this is?” wondered Alaythia.
“I don’t know,” said Aldric, his voice unsteady. “How could he do it? The Venetian doesn’t have that kind of power. None of them ever did, it’s impossible….” He looked at the mysterious map. “We’ll have to figure it out. But this is something. A map of the world, from a Dragon’s point of view. Not a bad place to start, if you want to know how he thinks.” He shot a grim smile over to Simon. “A good find, son.”
But Simon had no time to bask in his discovery—a group of eels had begun swimming into the den, out of the mouth of a large Dragon sculpture. The sound of their hissing, slithering frenzy alerted the humans.
Hurriedly, Simon shoved the map into his travel satchel.
Alaythia pulled him up onto the desktop.
The eel guardians swam closer. Their heads poked up, hissing snake-whispers; the sound was like a thousand rainsticks.
The eels were circling.
Aldric jumped to a chair and then to the threshold, leaping over the water.
“Follow me,” he ordered Simon and Alaythia, and they did. But the eels moved after them with a chorus of splashing. Aldric pulled himself up to the light sconce in the hall, staying up out of the water. He then grabbed the next light sconce and moved along the hall like a monkey, swinging from lightpost to lightpost.
Simon had more difficulty. His arms were not as long or as muscular. Below him, the eels were jumping from the water, trying to shock him. They were electric!
The water buzzed with their current.
Simon pulled himself onward, frantic to escape.
Behind him, Alaythia was making surprising progress—but the sconces that held the lamps were starting to break from the weight of each person passing. Now the post on which Alaythia was clinging started to snap from the wall, nearly causing her to fall.
Simon grabbed her hand and helped her to the next post. The two of them were much slower than Aldric, who had almost gotten to the end of the hall.
“Move faster!” he shouted.
Simon could think of a half-dozen angry replies, but he kept them to himself. He slid along the wall, going from sconce to sconce, painfully tracing Aldric’s path. As the electric eels leapt for him, his hand flailed for the next post—until finally it caught something. It was his father’s hand. Aldric pulled him onward, across the hall, as the slimy animals snapped behind him.
Then he felt Alaythia’s arms at his back, pushing him forward, helping him onward.
“Don’t panic,” said his father’s calm voice. “Just come with me.” Simon relaxed, trusting him, and he allowed Aldric to lead him out of the horrible, wet, murky place.
They had nearly reached the dry part of the mansion. But as they crossed into the parlor, the map dropped out of Simon’s satchel. He reached back into the water for it, as Aldric yelled at him.
The eels boldly shot toward him, a frightening blur of speed and menace. Their electric skins sizzled in the water—and Simon felt a painful pulse as he dragged the map free. He felt a burning in his arm, and he blacked out for a moment.
He felt his body lifted by Aldric and pulled out of the mansion, into daylight.
The brightness around him began to make him feel warmer, and Simon opened his eyes to see they were on the street outside the Venetian’s mansion. His hands still grasped the lightmap.
“You still can’t seem to follow directions, can you?” his father said tiredly.
“We might need it,” said Simon, pulling the map closer. “It was important.”
“Important enough to risk your life?”
“Give him a moment,” said Alaythia’s soft voice, holding Simon in her arms. “Are you all right?” she asked. Simon hated being coddled like a child, but he was glad to have someone defending him.
Aldric came closer and put his hands on the boy’s face. “Why do you do this? You like to torture your father?” he said. “I need you for this job. I need you alive. From here on out, don’t do a single thing without asking me first.”
Aldric looked at him sadly. “Try to stay calm. The sting will wear off,” he said. “You’ll be fine in a moment.”
Simon rubbed his injured arm, letting go of the map, which fell into Aldric’s hands.
As Alaythia saw to the boy, Aldric stared at the map in stunned silence.
“There’s something here,” he whispered.
“Maybe you could take some interest in this situation,” pleaded Alaythia, as Simon moaned from the pain. She looked at his arm. “These are serious burns.”
Aldric didn’t take his eyes off the lightmap. “They’ll heal up,” he said distractedly.
Simon glared at his father.
“What is so important over there?” asked Alaythia.
“You tell me,” Aldric said, holding out the map. “What is this land drawn in here? It’s not a place I’ve ever seen on a map….”
She glanced at the runes. “I don’t know, those marks are strange—they’re not like the other symbols.”
Aldric kept tapping the map, changing its light-runes. “Odd little thing. It responds to touch.” New markings were forming at his fingertips, at a place on the map near the western part of Russia.
“Wait, give it back. I can understand parts of that,” Alaythia said, looking over. “Oh, look at this, it’s like an encyclopedia.” She took the map from him. “It’s in an older form of writing or something, most of it’s even harder to read than before. But this stuff here…it’s some kind of notation about this strip of land. It says it is a place of Great Darkness.”
Simon noticed a little white mouse crawling from the mansion’s grounds onto his leg. The boy shuffled back, startled. He bumped into Alaythia, whose hands moved on the little map. New runes appeared, lit up brightly.
“Simon, watch what you’re doing,” said Aldric. “What’ve you got there?”
Simon held up the tiny fellow. “A mouse. I think.”
“Stop being a child and pay attention to this.”
Alaythia was caught up in reading the strange new words forming on the map. “I figured out what this place on the map is. It’s a place called the Coast of the Dead.”
Aldric look startled.
Simon patted the white mouse gently, whispering to it, “If you can survive in a place like that, I think you deserve to be saved.” He smiled at the rodent.
Aldric and Alaythia were too busy studying the map to notice. “What else does it say?” Aldric asked.
“There are all kinds of marks here I don’t understand, a history of the place,” said Alaythia. “It says vault of treasures. Place of treasures, place of lies. Land of death and darkest darkness. It says it is where nightfall begins, or something like that, where a great Dragon died, and where Fioth St. George died fighting him…I can’t figure out when…”
Simon looked to Aldric with curiosity.
“Fioth is an ancestor from medieval times,” explained Aldric.
Alaythia kept reading, “‘where he was rumored to be killed by a vengeful Dragon and buried in the snow with his armor, his weapons, and the Books of Saint George.’”
Aldric’s eyes flashed with wonder. “Book of Saint George, you mean.”
“No,” she said. “Books. More than one. That part it says quite plainly.”
Aldric was stunned. He sat back, thinking. “We were missing the books….”
Simon moaned from pain, and Alaythia turned back to him, checking his arm burns. “Is it any better?” she asked. He nodded, embarrassed that he needed her. Pulling away a bit, he lifted the mouse into his shirt pocket.
Aldric was still contemplating the Dragonmap. Alaythia began to feel the eerieness of the mansion gard
en around them, and she turned to him with a shudder. “Can we just leave this place? I mean, what’s the plan from here? Or do you even have a plan?”
As it turns out, he did.
After a pause, Aldric finally turned to them, his dazed expression still firmly in place.
“We go after those books,” he said. “After the deathspell.” He looked both worried and resigned. “We’re going to the Coast of the Dead.”
Chapter Seventeen
WE NEED A WEAPON
“FIRE ETERNAL.” BACK AT the ship, Aldric kept muttering the words, shedding his armor and putting away weapons. Don’t you see what’s happening here? Whatever the Venetian is planning, we have to stop it.”
Simon tugged at his hair, confused. “But we’re not tracking him down.”
Aldric smiled. “Not yet. Not without a weapon.”
He plucked the Dragonmap from Simon and handed it to Alaythia, who was hopelessly trying to fix a lamp that had dimmed, its magic old.
“The first thing we have to do is get the deathspell,” Aldric explained. “The map says the last time the lost Book of Saint George was seen, it was on the Coast of the Dead in Russia. We have to start there.”
“I know, I know. You’re looking for the Venetian’s deathspell,” replied Alaythia. “But how can you be sure the lost Book of Saint George has his deathspell in it?”
Aldric frowned. “It’s a start.”
“It’s kind of a stretch, though, isn’t it?” Simon asked gingerly. “I mean, we’re going to hunt down a book that hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years?”
Aldric looked at them both, clearly feeling everyone was against him. “We need whatever hope we can get. We need that deathspell. We need a weapon. The fire is too dangerous, too unpredictable. The next time we use it, the inferno could be even worse. We can’t follow the Venetian until we have something to fight him with.”
Alaythia touched her forehead, where some cuts she had gotten during their escape stood out on her skin. Aldric dug out the red elixir, the magician’s salve, and smoothed it over her injuries. “Let me use this, it works on anything,” he said. “We need you in good condition. Hold still for a moment.”
“It’s nothing. What about Simon’s arm?” said Alaythia.
Simon held it up. The electric burns were already fading. Alaythia stared. He didn’t need the red elixir. He didn’t need any medicine.
“I don’t understand,” said Simon.
“It’s Saint George blood,” said Aldric simply. “It heals itself. At least, most of the time it does. Depends how deep the wound goes. It can’t work miracles. We’re stronger than most. Faster. Harder to break,” he went on.
“What are you saying—I have this, too? Have I always been this way?” wondered Simon.
“Simon,” said Aldric in disbelief. “You’ve just healed yourself from electric shock, you fell out of a building in a storm and walked away from it without a broken bone…. What do you think?”
Simon’s memory flashed back to dozens of falls from trees over the years, where he’d gotten up with nothing more than a dull ache. His bruises always healed within hours.
Aldric pulled some books off an old shelf. “We have certain qualities. Why do you think the Dragon fears us?”
“I thought you scared him off mainly on legend,” Simon said.
“That, too. But it’s our speed, our strength, our agility, that he fears. His magic is weaker against us than common people.”
“I’m invincible,” said Simon in amazement.
“Oh, don’t get too full of yourself, young man. You can still be hurt. You can still be eliminated.” Aldric’s gaze went dark. “What’s more, you’ll be eliminated a lot faster if you keep disobeying me.”
Simon blushed. “I’m trying to help.”
“There’ll be a time for that, when you understand the work. Until then, stay out of the way.”
“Don’t be such a billy goat,” Alaythia chided him. “He’s doing fine.”
Aldric ignored her, heading for the desk, nearly stumbling on Fenwick. “Throw this useless animal overboard and get the horse ready for the cold.”
Alaythia moved to pick up the fox.
“Not you,” said Aldric. “Him.” He indicated Simon. Then he handed Alaythia the books he’d collected. “You’ve got your hands full. You’ve got to figure out what we’re up against on the Coast of the Dead. Use our books, along with the map. I don’t want any surprises.”
He clattered up the stairs, grumbling, “I’ve got to take a look around. That Thing may be watching us. It could move on us at any time.”
He left Simon and Alaythia, looking worried. Simon’s little white mouse crawled from his pocket and darted across the room, away from Fenwick.
“I almost think he likes the challenge of all this,” Simon said.
Alaythia smiled sympathetically. “The Coast of the Dead. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?”
Simon tried to smile back. “Someone in a good mood named that place.”
“And all we have to do is find that place and get the deathspell, before the Venetian burns some great city to the ground and begins an all-new reign of terror.”
Simon nodded. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach.
An entire city was counting on them.
Not far away, the first rumblings of a great catastrophe were just starting to be felt.
The St. Georges did not know it, but they had more than the Venetian to deal with.
The city of Paris was under the spell of its very own wicked Serpent.
On one street corner, the air had turned cold as an Alaskan mountain, while the other corner remained swelteringly hot. Perfume in expensive stores had begun to stink of rot and decay. Perfect wine had turned into a foul and bitter drink that burned the tongue. Freshly baked bread suddenly crawled with maggots.
This quarrel with reality occurred around the clock. Paris at night was an active place. Some walkers noticed that as night fell, they felt quite uncomfortable when their feet hit the pavement. Men felt nothing but a slight tingling in their legs, while women could be heard hissing with pain wherever they went, as if the sidewalk were a stove, burning their feet. The Parisian Dragon was a lover of ladies, and its magic had a special influence on them.
All over town, lights flickered like those in a fun house.
The city had lost its joy. Once alive with parties and laughter, the City of Lights was now a shadow of itself. People glared at each other and barked insults with a special viciousness.
It was a mood nurtured by a Dragon.
Chapter Eighteen
THE DRAGON OF PARIS
THE DRAGON OF PARIS took great interest in reading about the destruction in Venice. The newspapers were clearly wrong, blaming unusual weather conditions, but reporters did the best they could with meager imaginations. The dragon knew the real cause.
The St. George Dragonkiller must have been quite a sight.
The Parisian Dragon hated the idea of such a confrontation. It was an unpleasant brush with death for a creature used to an immensely long and basically unthreatened lifetime.
There was a good chance the Knight knew where he was now if he’d gotten any information out of Venice. A fight would probably be unavoidable. It took all of the Parisian’s power to cloak his hideout and keep his beetles from swarming.
The Venice Dragon had caused this new danger. He was radical, frightening, even to the Parisian Dragon. There was a good chance that the Serpent of Venice was completely insane. He wanted so much, so fast, it made everyone uncomfortable.
The Venetian had a great love for war and fighting; the Parisian did not.
Fighting required energy. The Parisian might have been vicious at times, but more than anything else, he was known for laziness.
At present, the Parisian Dragon was awaking to the smells of late-night bread baking in the café under his apartment. He loved the scent, but he had already gorged on his own midnight meal. He was a most in
teresting kind of Serpentine. Like the White Dragon, the Dragon of Paris loved art, but not in the same way. He liked to consume it.
Each and every Wednesday, he received a delivery from a group of men who stole art for him from the finest galleries and museums in Europe. The Parisian Dragon would then spend the afternoon slowly eating the paint, the canvas, the frame, and the art into oblivion. Some of the great painted treasures of our world had disappeared into the mouth of the Parisian.
The rest of the week, the thin, blue, yellow-speckled Pyrothrax would drink down gallons of paint. Paint—color—that was his passion. And things a Dragon has a passion for frequently end up in its jaws.
The Parisian had spindly arms with a thin overlay of hair, like a tarantula. Most of the time he wore an elegant robe, created by a top fashion designer. Several of these had been purchased for him and were hung in his closet. Nearly all of them were covered in splotches of paint.
Where the White Dragon had prized cleanliness, the Parisian Dragon was happiest in a filth of color. Its face and its neck, while naturally yellow-speckled, were often coated with red and green paint splotches, as were its teeth.
When the Parisian ate, he ate vividly. His thin little arms would lift a paint can up high and dump the contents directly into his mouth. The inside of his stomach looked like a work by Jackson Pollock. Nothing was more delicious to him than a great artistic effort. When his teeth burrowed through a Rembrandt, the painting tickled him. The more expensive and rare and beautiful the art, the better it felt on his insides.
The Parisian Dragon loved to laugh. He found delight in many things, but they were things that would cause most people to cry. His laughter sounded nothing like laughter, in fact. It was more like a wheezing, clicking, scraping noise. It sounded like the words “here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty,” said very quickly in a hoarse tone of voice.
Eeer, ticky-ticky-ticky-ticky. Eeer, ticky-ticky-ticky-ticky.
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