The Saint of Dragons

“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

A Manhattan Dragon

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

The Woman who Fell in Love with a Dragon

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.”