The Saint of Dragons (12 page)

“F
IRE
E
TERNAL
.” B
ACK 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.

T
HE
D
RAGON OF
P
ARIS
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 interesting 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.

It was a sound that made your skin crawl, and you could hear it every day if you listened closely at his apartment door during a depressing news telecast.

One thing that made his laughter disappear was the appearance of children. The Parisian Dragon hated children. He’d make them wet their pants when they walked by him. He’d make their balloons float away. He’d make their parents yell at them, so the children would cry. It made him feel good inside.

In his human disguise, he went by the name of Jacques Tyrannique, and he looked to all the world like a thin young man, with lady-hunting eyes and long, greasy, blond hair that went down to his shoulders and was swept back from his lightly bearded face.

The Parisian Dragon loved wine. His fire was so tainted with
wine that when he burned buildings, the smoke would cause people to feel drunk.

His favorite thing to burn was schools.

He had expensive tastes, and made his money from threatening French businesses with arson if they didn’t pay him, and by selling stolen art—when he could part with it. In the past, he had sold art to the White Dragon of Manhattan, though he spat on the pictures before sending them. He had never sold art to the Dragon of Venice. The Venice Dragon made money from art, but never took time to
enjoy
it. He was a pig, thought the Parisian.

Now the Venice Dragon had pulled him into a conflict he did not want to face.

He had never been called on to fight before. In medieval times, away from home, he had almost been discovered by a group of Knights, but he created the Inquisition, and that took their attention away from him. That was the closest he ever came to a struggle.

Life was good in Paris. If you are a hater of love, there is plenty to hate. But with the Knight tracking the Venetian, the city would no longer be safe for him, and he thought perhaps he had stayed here too long anyway. He needed a change of scenery. It made sense all around. Trouble was brewing.

He was impatient to find the Venice Dragon, somewhere out there, getting closer.

He had many questions for him.

Whatever the Venice Dragon was up to, the Parisian Dragon knew it was big. The world was changing—he could feel it, right under his feet. Every form of life was feeling it; it was working its way up the food chain. The humans would sense it soon.

At this moment, from his apartment above the café, he was staring out at the Eiffel Tower, twinkling with lights. Before he left, he just wanted to see the old town one last time. Roam around. Smell the air. Feel the insects writhing under him.

He had this strong sense that he should take advantage of every fleeting moment in life—not because he was going to die, but because everything on Earth would soon be very, very different.

T
HE
S
HIP WITH
N
O
Name rode the sea toward the Coast of the Dead. The day was gray and silver, and the seabirds in the storm clouds trailed the boat mile after mile, watching. Simon stood on deck, staring up at the seabirds, his mouse crawling nervously on his shoulder, on his neck, as Aldric leaned on a crate nearby, studying an old book. They had been talking.

“I’m not sure I really understand,” said Simon. “Just having two Dragons in the same
place
is dangerous?”

“Let’s hope there’s no reason to worry about it. When two Dragons meet, it is very deadly. Their magic runs wild, Simon. Nothing can control it. It’s as if God himself wanted them isolated and alone.” He looked at Simon. “We’re lucky we got the White Dragon. If the Venetian was joining with him, as they encountered one another, their own magic would turn against them. One Dragon causes ripples in nature; bring two Dragons together, and it rips nature apart. The task of catching this one is not going
to be simple. My fear is, that this ‘Fire Eternal,’ whatever that means, is only the beginning. The Venetian’s plan could lead to terrors never before known in the world.”

A shiver went down Simon’s spine.

Alaythia came up on deck, map in hand, looking defeated. “I give up,” she told Aldric. “I’ve told you everything I understand about this little map-thing, and my head hurts from trying to read the Dragon language. I think I need another near-death experience. You’ll have to try to kill me off or something.”

Aldric gave her a pale smile. “We’ll do our best.”

She didn’t care for the joke. “I don’t know what’s waiting for us on the Coast of the Dead. It’s as if you’re just supposed to know, like it was a legend….”

Aldric looked out to sea. “It
is
a legend. I never thought it was real until now.” Simon listened, feeling unsteady. “There are many stories of people going to the Coast of the Dead. There are no stories of people coming back.” He could see the fear in his father’s eyes. “Everything that’s come down to us…is legend. And what scares me is, to every legend, there is some truth.”

“The Coast was the home of Dragonhunters long ago. It is where many Magicians of the old order were murdered. This was their treasury, the fortress that held all their secrets. A Dragon known as Daggerblood found the stronghold, killed the Knights, and from that moment, the land was cursed, hexed by our Magicians with their dying breath. Even the Dragon perished, his own fire turned on him.” His next words gripped Simon the most. “It is a place both men and Dragons fear. Both have tried to steal its treasures, but nothing that enters there can live.” He looked to the sea, worriedly. “It is a riot of uncontrolled magic, they say,
that kills anything that comes near it. It is the greatest wasteland of dead Serpents there ever was, you understand. They came there, they died there, like flies in a web—but their bones still possess a dead magic. You put all of this in one place…makes for a bloody nightmare.”

Simon and Alaythia stared at him, by now deeply frightened.

“There has to be another way,” said Simon. “Why are we going there?”

“Because the legend is wrong,” said Aldric. “Or there wouldn’t be a legend.”

He was unsure of himself, Simon could tell. They could be certain of nothing, except that their destination was feared by all living things that knew of it.

Simon tried to imagine a place with dragon magic completely out of control, and shuddered to realize he would soon see it for himself.

“The Coast of the Dead…”

Somewhere far from this quest for the Lost Spells, high in the sky, on a large and luxurious airplane, the most dangerous of Dragons, the one they called the Venetian, was enjoying life to the fullest. He was eating caviar, loving it as the delicious salty fish eggs squished apart in his teeth and turned to liquid.

It was hard to tell he was pleased. His breathing was sickly. Oxygen made him ill. It forced him to drink water like a fish.

In addition to that, his injuries from the Dragonhunter had been quite severe. He held his chest in pain every now and then. Even breathing hurt. He would make the Knight pay. He would give the Knight three wounds for each one he’d dealt out. Then
he would destroy the pest, one way or another, when the time was right.

He wished he’d taken a private jet, but he wasn’t sure what the Dragonhunter knew about him, and he couldn’t arouse attention.

Nevertheless, his wheezing was getting him plenty of notice. The Venetian didn’t know that. His large first-class seat could barely hold his body. He figured the other flyers staring were just marveling at his tallness and muscularity.

He did some staring of his own. The woman attendant serving him pricey wine was wearing the most wonderful little gold watch.

“Where did you get ssssuch a beautiful trinket?” he asked hoarsely in his Italian accent.

“It was a gift from my gramma. Are you feeling all right?” said the woman, alarmed by his breathing.

“Oh,
cara mia
, flying issssn’t my thing,” he answered. “I prefer the water.”

“Next time, perhaps a ship might be a better idea.”

“Yessss,” rasped the Venetian, staring at her watch, “but I was in a terrible hurry.”

Indeed he was. The plan he had hatched with the White Dragon was roaring ahead. He could see the world coming apart like a rock crushed in a mining press. He would make it all happen. It was as if the curtains were rising on a grand opera.

The airline woman smiled politely and moved away, checking her watch to see how much longer she’d have to listen to the awful breathing of the giant Venetian passenger.

By the time he arrived at his destination, he’d had the gold
watch in his clammy hands, then in his salty mouth, and soon he’d slurped it down into his stomach, already brimming with gold and silver and rubies and diamonds. His body was filled with gems. They became a part of him. He glittered on the inside.

The airline woman, by the way, had gone missing.