The Saint of Dragons (11 page)

T
HE STORM WAS RUNNING
out of energy. The mist, rain, and fire began to vanish as if none of it had ever happened, but the destruction it had left behind was undeniable.

For several long minutes, Simon was dumbfounded, while Aldric made his way down to the street.

He grabbed the extinguished torch floating in the canal and threw it in the case. “This is why we never use this fire,” he moaned. “Too dangerous. If it weren’t for the storm, you might’ve burned this city to the ground! You never touch this. Never!”

“You’re walking,” Simon gasped, trying to see his leg wound.

Aldric looked at Alaythia. “How is she doing?”

She sat against a wall, choking out water, shaken deeply by the attack. “I almost drowned,” she said.

Aldric checked to make sure she was all right. “Gather yourself together,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I might need you. This Venetian is special, to cause a storm like that. He’s stronger than
any I’ve seen in a long time. We’ve got to go after him—and we won’t even have a weapon. The fire’s far too risky to use.”

He limped over to a little wall near the canal and examined his injured leg. He had pulled the arrow loose earlier. “You know, you’re lucky neither of you was hurt. Doesn’t anyone listen to me when I say ‘stay out of the way’? What were you doing here?”

Alaythia tried to explain. “I came back to find you. I followed you, but you didn’t hear me. I wanted to tell you I found some things out this afternoon.”

Aldric winced as he dabbed his hurt leg with a piece of torn cloth. “I’d love to hear about it, but my son decided to impale me a few times, and the pain has me a bit distracted.”

Simon felt awful. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“Twice.
Twice
you didn’t mean it,” murmured Aldric.

The boy could think of no response. He couldn’t have felt more worthless. Everything his father feared about him was coming true. He was almost more dangerous than their enemy.

Even Alaythia could not defend him.

Aldric shook his head. “It’s all right. Just take responsibility for your own failures and let’s move on.”

“The wind took my shot off course,” Simon said, his eyes stinging. He fought hard against the tears.

“Am I going to get to talk?” asked Alaythia, mercifully pulling Aldric’s attention away from Simon.

“After I clean up some of this trash,” said Aldric, wandering away.

Alaythia looked at Simon. “Where’s he going?”

They watched in curiosity as Aldric crossed to the canal and pulled at a heap of trash, some leftover clothing blown around in
the storm. Then they both realized at once it was not a heap of trash, but a man. Aldric was pulling a person out of the canal, one of the henchmen who’d attacked them.

“Open your eyes, you coward,” warned the Knight.

Aldric held him firm. The man struggled, kicking back.

“Dad, your leg,” said Simon.

“I’m all right,” said Aldric, shaking the thug by the collar. “But he won’t be, if he doesn’t tell us where the Dragon went off to.”

The thug spoke some English. “I don’t know anything!”

“How would you like a taste of steel?” said Aldric, pulling out his sword.

“I not want,” said the thug. “But I have no clue where he go to.”

Simon decided a bribe might be faster. And more peaceful. From his coat he pulled out a gem that he’d batted away from his face at the jeweler’s shop.

“How about a diamond in exchange for what you know?” said Simon, flashing a sparkling oval in the man’s face.

“Stay out of this,” barked his father.

“Don’t worry—I didn’t steal it. It fell into my pocket,” Simon explained. It was true, but it didn’t sound very good.

The thug was delighted with the gem. “The master, he gave out word, if anything go wrong, we were to finish the job for him,” he said, “and eliminate the Englishman. We were just following orders. All I know, we get paid from the mansion near the Santa Lucia church.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Alaythia interrupted. “Next to the church where all that supernatural stuff was happening, I found a huge mansion, and when I got close to it, my head started to hurt like you wouldn’t believe. And I started
remembering things, in flashes. About my apartment, about the fire. I remember you tried to warn me. I remember seeing something in the fire, an animal, a creature of some kind. I remembered all of this, and then I just got a terrible sense right here in my gut. Something’s happening in that mansion. Something evil.”

Aldric let go of the man. He plucked the diamond from Simon’s hand and plugged it into the thug’s mouth. They were starting to gather attention from onlookers. Simon and Alaythia followed Aldric in a quick getaway, but the thug stayed there, staring at his captured jewel. He was still looking at it when the police showed up and gave him the blame for the entire jewelry shop robbery.

Simon, Aldric, and Alaythia hurried down a narrow alley. “The mansion is where the Beast lives,” said Aldric. “The whole operation starts from there.”

“You’re not going after that thing in your condition, are you?” worried Alaythia.

“What condition? I’ll be fine.”

Simon shook his head in disbelief. Alaythia badgered Aldric all the way back to the ship, insisting he get medical help. He ignored her, changing his tattered clothes and replenishing his weapons.

He ignored Alaythia’s offer to make an herbal remedy, instead taking out a red elixir bottle, which he called a magician’s salve. He spread the red gooey substance on his injuries, and, before Simon’s eyes, they began fading away.

“That’s amazing—what’s it made of?” asked Alaythia.

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” he answered. “It heals anything. But there isn’t much left, and I don’t fancy using it up
on wounds my own son gave me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Simon. “I keep telling you, I’m better with a sword anyway.”

As Aldric shuffled hurriedly around the cabin preparing supplies, Alaythia sat down and regarded the Dragon medallion, waiting for him to notice her.

Simon watched her grow frustrated. When Aldric finally settled down to lace up his boots, Alaythia tapped the medallion casually. “Turns out it doesn’t say much at all.”

Aldric looked at her sharply. “You can read it?”

She nodded.

“And when did this come about?”

“I nearly died back there,” replied Alaythia. “I couldn’t get any air. I came out of the water, and…things were just different. I’m not sure how. Brighter in a way, I guess. Anyway, I think I can understand the Dragon language. Parts of it, anyhow.”

Simon watched Aldric take this in. “It’s not unheard of. A near-death experience can sometimes bring about insights. Amplifications.”

She looked at the medallion. “It must have helped this time. Some of this actually makes sense to me.” She seemed to realize Aldric was itching to know what.

He practically shouted. “What does it say?”

“‘The Mark of the Serpent of Venice,’” she read. “‘Long May He Haunt the Waters.’ Something, something, and then, ‘Token of His Esteem.’”

Aldric looked less than thrilled. It was useless information. “Well, at least your understanding is growing.”

Leaving the ship, they crossed town quickly and found their
way to the Dragon’s lair.

The mansion lay across from an old church, near the canal. If there was any doubt that a Dragon was present, a careful glance at the surroundings ended that. The vines and gardens had gone out of control here, choking out sunlight by creeping over the mansion, covering even the windows. Simon looked down. All across the stone street were the brown carcasses of dead beetles.

There was no question.

The beast lived here.

“We’re not going in there without a weapon, are we?” said Simon in disbelief. “We don’t have the torches, and we don’t have his deathspell!”

“That’s why we have to go in,” said Aldric.

“But that thing’s too powerful!”

“Son, don’t you observe anything?” Aldric grumbled. “The Dragon fled from us.”

“I don’t get it. I don’t see why.”

“Why do you think? Use your head.”

“Well, I don’t know—he probably figured, why get his hands dirty with something his lackeys could do for him.”

“No,” Aldric said, disappointed. “He fled because there was a risk.
He
doesn’t know we don’t have the deathspells. He was afraid of us, don’t you see? And if we don’t go in there, he’ll know we don’t have a weapon. He’ll come after us, and he’ll wipe us all out.”

Slowly it dawned on Simon. “We’re playing a game of poker,” he said.

“By Jove, I think he’s got it,” Aldric said quietly. “We need a
look at his lair. We may find out what evil he was planning with the White Dragon.”

“But what do we do when we catch him?”

“We see how far we get on steel and courage,” Aldric said thoughtfully.

The fear in his voice bothered Simon.

Aldric broke in through a side window and led the others in. There seemed to be no one at home. The place was dark and quiet. All he could hear was the rustling of old leaves from the trees outside, in the breeze left over from the storm.

Silently they moved through a side parlor to the front entryway. The place was a ruin, haggard and falling apart, leaking water everywhere. Ivy had grown in through many a broken window, and dirt and slime slicked the floor. It was clear the place was deserted.

“We’re too late,” Aldric muttered. “The Dragon has moved on. We shouldn’t have stopped to heal my wounds.” He shot a peevish glance at Alaythia, who stared right back at him.

They found a set of stairs, down to the lower levels. The dim lights revealed that these halls were filled with water. The mansion had sunk into the canal over the years, and no one had done anything about it.

“This Dragon gets his power from water,” Aldric told them. “That’s why he was wheezing and sickly when we saw him on land. He breathes water.”

“He didn’t seem so sickly to me,” whispered Simon.

Alaythia tried to see into the dark watery hall. “How do we know it isn’t still here?” she whispered. “Waiting for us in the water?”

“We don’t,” said Aldric. He waded into the water at the base of the stairs. It came to his waist. “Come on,” he urged. “We may find something of interest.”

“Nothing I would want to see,” whispered Simon, but no one heard him.

Aldric walked through the water in the hall. Slowly, Simon and Alaythia followed him into the mess. Dragon runes covered the peeling wallpaper. Alaythia was looking at them very strangely. She was about to say something, when the water seemed to touch her in a most unpleasant way. It got colder and rippled over her leg. It occurred to her it wasn’t the water so much as it was something
in
the water. She sucked in her breath with fear. “I felt something,” she gasped.

Simon felt it, too. Little waves underneath the surface, on his leg. Ripples that tickled cold and riveled past the skin. A little surprise was squirming underneath the water, or perhaps several surprises.

“Don’t be afraid,” Aldric said, “they’re just eels.”

He kept moving forward, so Simon and Alaythia had to nearly run in the water to keep up. No one wanted to be left in the dark with these things.

Simon felt ill. Alaythia’s eyelids trembled. The light from the wall lamps shone upon the black water. Now Simon could see swarms of eels swirling around his legs. There were so many it was like walking through seaweed!

Alaythia and Simon moved in close behind Aldric. The eels were layers and layers deep, squirming into the light. The humans had riled them up. Now the water was splishing and puckering with noise as the eels quivered for position. They were green, black, and
even white, and they were not in the least bit afraid of people.

“They’re watching us,” Aldric said, splashing onward through the water. “They’re watching us for
him
. The Venice Dragon. Whatever they see, he sees.”

Simon looked down into the eyes of several eels in the water near him. He shuddered, feeling as if the snake-fish were crawling right up his spine. Their eyes glittered with whiteness, with knowledge. They
were
watching.

“But if he can see through their eyes,” wondered Simon, “can he give them orders?”

Aldric half turned to him. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe they’re guarding the place.”

Simon’s remark sent a new chill through everyone. They were surrounded by eels. If they wanted to attack, they would be in a very good position.

“We’ll move faster,” said Aldric.

He did not need to say it again. Simon and Alaythia ran as best they could through the swamped hallway, behind Aldric. The eels tickled their feet and legs, and Simon was sure he felt the tongues of several licking above his ankles.

Aldric led Simon and Alaythia toward a doorway. Several eels poked their heads from the water, watching as they reached the end of the hall.

“Look,” said Alaythia. She pointed up ahead through the doors, to a flooded study with expensive antiques, old desks, and bookcases half buried in water. The room was water-drenched, like the others, but there were no eels here. They seemed afraid, or perhaps too respectful, to enter.

“It’s his den,” said Aldric. “We may learn something here.”

A
LDRIC WENT IN
,
SPLASHING
through the water. The eels were still, though it would be easy for them to slither over the threshold and follow. Simon waded into the cold liquid of the den, glad to be getting farther away from the slithery spies in the hall. He noticed a greenish-black slime dripping from the walls and ceiling. It was soon splattering their faces and their clothes, splashing into the water.

“Dragonmuck,” complained Aldric. “Common with water Dragons.”

Some of the dripping ooze hit with a heavy sound. Simon could tell that some other objects were falling with it. In the low, flickering light, he began to see that the walls of the den were lined with jewels and precious metals of every kind. Pearls and diamonds were everywhere. Gobs of gold watches and rings and necklaces, piled and glued madly in place, were so heavy they were plunking down from the ceiling.

The Venetian seemed to have a thing for gems and trinkets.
Simon wondered if these items had been taken from victims.

Aldric caught some of the gems as they fell, and pocketed them.

“You’re just going to take those?” asked Simon, incredulous.

“How do you think I got you into that school of yours?” answered Aldric, catching another windfall. “Spoils of war.”

The Knight waded across the bilgy water to the old desk. Simon squeezed in to get a look at the desktop. All of it looked really rather ordinary. “Give me room to work, Simon,” Aldric rumbled. “We want to be quick.” Useless again, Simon backed away, picking up a little map scroll to keep his hands busy.

Alaythia was studying the papers pinned up nearby, the maps and charts that filled the wall. They were written in Dragonscript.

Aldric asked her what they meant.

“Well, I’m not sure,” said Alaythia, peering at the water-speckled pages. “It’s not as if I can just look at this and tell you—it says ‘monthly business report of the…’” She gasped. “…‘Italy operations.’”

She looked up at Aldric, dazzled at herself. “I can read this. I can really read this.”

Aldric stared back at her with less surprise. “It may come faster now. There are traces of old energy in you, Dragon magic—I’ve seen it before. When your blood pumps harder, you feel it more intensely…. It’s kind of like snake venom.”

“Don’t mention snakes. Or eels. Or anything else that’s creepy and crawly.”

Simon barely noticed the discovery. He had roamed to a corner where weird relics were kept: swords and daggers engraved with runes, and iron sculptures that showed humans
being eaten by Dragons. Nasty stuff.

Aldric was becoming annoyed with Alaythia’s quietness.

She was examining the Dragon’s wall of documents with increasing interest. “Fascinating,” she said to herself, “absolutely fascinating.”

“What?”

“It’s very curious.”

“What is? What does it say?” Aldric ordered, leaning closer, trying to understand the language.

“Well,” said Alaythia thoughtfully, enjoying her new importance, “it seems to be a list of things that the Water Dragon controls in Venice, a list of criminal activity and how much money it all brings in. He hides his wealth in the jewel and pearl trade—that’s his main business. And, of course, stolen Italian art relics.”

“Art relics,” repeated Aldric. “That’s how he crossed paths with the White Dragon, I’d imagine.” He glanced at the wall of paperwork. “I’d say this is what they were working on together. But what
is
it?”

Alaythia looked over the pages on the wall. The symbols were wet, and the ink ran down the wall eerily like blood. “I can’t say for sure, but they were planning something very unpleasant for all of us,” said Alaythia. “It’s obvious he’s insane; rambling like this, the wall is like a diary. I can’t understand all of it, but it says something about secret operations, activities in motion, going on all over the world. It says orders are being given. Preparations are being made. It means something like that, anyway. And if you look down here at the bottom, there’s a symbol…”

“I know that symbol,” said Aldric ominously. “It’s their symbol for death.”

“No,” said Alaythia. “It’s their symbol for
mass
death.”

You could have heard a pin drop. Simon was afraid to hear what she had to say.

“It means Tremendous Death. Actually, it’s something worse—he’s put together the word for massive death and the word for massive fire. It says ‘Fire Eternal.’”

“Fire Eternal,” Aldric whispered. “What does that mean?”

She put her finger on the symbol, unsure.

“It means a lot of people are going to die,” said Alaythia. “Millions of people.”

Aldric froze, his eyes locked on hers for a long moment.

“God help us. The Venetian is going to wipe out a city.” He looked suddenly overwhelmed. “Or worse…”

He tore the watery banner from the wall and looked at it more closely, as if he could read it himself. He seemed pale, tiring, as if the weight of the paper were enormous. “We don’t know when. And we don’t know how.”

Worry flooded the room. Their expressions filled with dread.

Then Simon wasn’t listening anymore. He was staring at the map scroll in his hand. In the dark room, it was clear: Parts of the map were
glowing.

“Simon?”

Without saying a word, Simon waded across the room to his father and unfurled the map for him to see. Rune-letters all over the continents were aglow, apparently agitated by Simon playing with the map.

Aldric and Alaythia moved together to look at it. It was an
incredible discovery: an old, yellowed map of the earth, covered in unusual lines and irregular grids. Though the words were unfamiliar, Alaythia could tell the markings for the countries were all insults of one kind or another. It was as if Dragons saw the entire human population on earth as a giant collection of insects, or as a disease, a scourge that had gone out of control. A plague.

“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 garden 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.”