The Saint of Dragons

Gone into the night.

When Simon finally found himself able to breathe and speak in more than a whisper, he was a long, long way from the Lighthouse School for Boys. The horseman said not a word, urging his horse on through the fog. He must have gone a very long way, because Simon did not hear any sirens and he knew the principal would have called the police immediately.

“Where are you taking me?” Simon managed to say.

“Don’t worry now,” said the horseman comfortingly. “You’ll be safe.”

That was all he said and the horse galloped onward, down the coast, through muddy forests, empty fields and past lifeless piers, with the dark ocean calling after them.

Simon had no chance to yell for help. They did not go near any houses. Even if he was able to call out, Simon wasn’t sure he wanted to. Once the shock wore off a bit, he started to think this was the most exciting thing that could have happened. If this was his father after all, what exactly did he have to tell Simon?

They reached a long, empty dock. There were no buildings around, just a big sailing boat that looked as if it had been made a long time ago. The horse trotted over the wooden pier and stopped at the boat with a snort of exhaustion.

“Rest now,” said the man, and Simon thought he was speaking to the horse. “There’s a place to sleep on board,” he went on.

“You’re talking to me?” said Simon in amazement. “I can’t just … I’m not going to …”

“You know who I am,” said the man. “And I’d like to stand here all night and tell you the story of my life, but it’s not safe here. We’ve got to move on.”

He led the horse on board. Standing on the dock, Simon looked around. He could make a run for it, but he doubted he would get very far. He didn’t even know which way to go; the fog had obscured everything around them.

“Are you coming?” said the man, annoyed, and he put out his hand for Simon to take it.

“I didn’t know I had a choice,” said Simon.

“You have a choice if you want to get eaten out there,” was the reply.

Not sure what he meant by this, but knowing that indeed he meant it, Simon turned to look behind. He heard a rattling in the bushes and, fearing that it was the dangerous men from the lighthouse, he reached out and took the man’s hand. He was pulled aboard the ship and they set sail.

The thing was, Simon thought he might be able to trust this man somehow. Without knowing why, the boy was willing to go with the unknown.

It was too foggy to see the cliffs as the boat drifted away, but Simon could see the giant light beam from the Lighthouse School, slicing through the darkness. It got smaller and smaller as the night went on. Ebony Hollow was being pushed away and, with it, Simon’s old life.

Part of him was sorry to see it go. He had few friends, but the Lighthouse School was his whole world. He had no idea where he was headed.

He had a moment to think about his schoolmates, the lighthouse keeper, and to wonder just for an instant about the name of the girl at the novelty shop, but as that thought flitted away, he felt ready for whatever came his way.

The man behind Simon coughed. “Well,” he said, “if you’re not too tired, we may as well get some work done.”

He went inside the cabin.

Simon turned back, not sure he wanted to follow. But the time for regrets had passed. Simon went in.

In the tight quarters of the galley, Simon found the man hard at work, making something to eat. “First things first. I hope you like eggs,” grunted the man. “That’s all I’m cooking.”

“I’m not very hungry,” said Simon.

“You ought to eat whenever you can,” the man replied. “You never know when you won’t be able to.”

Simon was confused. Is he ever going to explain himself? He went to sit at a tiny table, not knowing what else to do. The ship lurched a bit and Simon fell, embarrassingly.

“Don’t tell me the tide knocked you over,” said the man. “The water’s calm as can be tonight.”

“I’m fine,” said Simon, and he started to realise the man might be insulting him.

“You’re small,” the man added, sizing up Simon’s frame, and he seemed touched by that. “I didn’t think you’d be small.”

Simon decided to be direct.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Then he added a threat. “My father is waiting for me back there. He isn’t going to like this. He’s a very … he’s a very wealthy businessman. Very powerful.”

“Businessman? Is that what you were hoping?” said the man disdainfully. “Would’ve expected more imagination from you. But you can stop the empty threats. Or at least use a little foul language – put a bit of punch in it, so you don’t sound like such a prep-school toughie.”

He broke eggs into a bowl. “Old Denman, your lighthouse keeper, he might’ve been hurt out there tonight, protecting you. He’s done a good job looking after you all these years – wish I could have thanked him properly. He knew the enemy might come looking sometime, with its spies out all over the world. He’s a good man, a good warrior. I hope he’s all right.”

The lighthouse keeper, working for this man? Nothing made any sense. Simon decided just to listen.

“I don’t want to scare you off, but this isn’t like playing war in the woods. You need to be sharp. Pay attention. Listen and learn every step of the way. There is a hallowed place for each one of us after death, but I don’t plan to get to mine for a very long time, so you’d better not hasten my passage. Certain people have a mission in life and there’s no changing it, halting it or reasoning with it. It’s just the way it is.”

Maybe the man was insane. He acted like it. This fancy way of talking about his work, whatever that was, and the way he grunted his words. He did not look very clean, either. His clothes were ragged and dirt-ridden. He seemed distrustful of everything. He was like a homeless man, Simon thought. His eyes did not seem crazy, though. They seemed kinder than his voice. Did he think he needed to be harsh with Simon?

“Eat.”

Simon followed his orders. Scrambled eggs. Plain, unsalted, but they tasted good. Turned out Simon was hungry. How late was it now?

“You’re going to need all your strength,” the man said again, gobbling his own meal with a wolfish hunger. “And all your skills. Do you have any skills?”

Of course he had skills, Simon thought. What skills would this man find useful?

“I can do … woodworking,” Simon tried.

“Don’t need it.”

“I can read French.”

“French?”

“I speak fluently. My teachers say I’m very good.”

“Probably not helpful. What else?”

“I don’t know. I can pretty much operate the lighthouse. I had to cook sometimes in school, so I know a little about that. And I’m good with horses.”

“Good, I suppose that’s something,” the man said. “That school had the best fencing instructors in the country – you never took fencing?” The man’s eyes shot over to Simon.

“Fencing was going to be next year. This year I took art.”

“Art.” The man sighed. “Didn’t you take anything practical? What about archery?”

“Since when is archery practical?”

The man almost smiled. “Depends on your line of work.” He looked at Simon for a long moment, taking him in. “Denman must’ve kept you away from all this sort of thing. We never thought you’d come into this.”

“Do I get to know your name?” said the boy.

“My name is Aldric St George,” he answered. “And I am your father.”

He seemed proud of the fact. But it also seemed to be a warning.

“You’ve said that before.” The boy eyed him. “I don’t suppose you have any proof.”

“Proof?” The man looked angry. “We’ve got the same eyebrows, the same nose … You hear it in your voice, you see it in the way you move – the proof is in your blood, boy! You are a St George!”

Simon tried not to react to the man’s thundering.

“And if I had any proof with me,” Aldric continued, calming, “it could prove deadly to you. Why do you think I haven’t been able to talk to you all these years?”

“I figured you didn’t want to.”

Aldric St George looked very upset for a moment. “Of course I wanted to talk to you,” he told Simon, “but it wasn’t safe. I’ve been wondering about you since the day we said goodbye.”

“You said goodbye. I was too little to talk,” Simon said plainly.

Aldric didn’t like to be corrected. “There was no other way,” he said, and then his anger came back a bit. “The Lighthouse School had the best reputation anywhere. I trusted Denman. Didn’t that school take care of you?” At this he seemed to lean forward, worried about the answer.

“I guess,” the boy admitted.

“Well, all right then,” said Aldric, relieved.

“But I would have liked it if someone had told me who my mother and father were,” Simon grumbled, not wanting to let his father off the hook so easily. “I would have liked it if I knew where they had gone. And why.”

“The ‘why’ is easy,” said Aldric. “You’ll understand all that soon enough. It’s the reason I’m here now. I need you to join me on my quest to fight the evil that dwells among us. It has been with us for centuries. It was with us when you were born. We had to send you away to protect you from it.”

“From what?”

“From the serpents. From the Draconians. Whatever name you choose to use.”

“Choose a name I can understand,” begged Simon.

“Dragons.”

There was a moment now when no one said a word. It was such a bizarre thing to say, Simon almost laughed. But his father said it with all the truth he had in him, he said it with such fear and disgust and such wildness in his eyes that it was clear he truly meant what he said.

“You were protecting me from dragons?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Aldric. “I am telling you the truth. A truth few people in this world have ever heard.”

“I’m listening,” said Simon.

“The dragon is a creature of unspeakable evil. It is a monster. A wretched liar, an insatiable thief and a despicable killer. I say ‘is’ because this creature isn’t an animal made up out of the imagination, or from the distant past. It is real, it is alive, and it is at work in the world today. Living out there somewhere in the shadows.”

He pushed away his plate. “Fact is, up until recent times, there were great numbers of them. I’ve spent my life hunting them down, one by one.”

“You hunt down dragons,” said Simon doubtfully. “The giant scaly reptiles. With big wings and huge teeth.”

“No,” said Aldric. “They haven’t looked like that for centuries.”

“What?”

“Well, dragons haven’t stayed the same since the dawn of time,” he explained. “They’ve moved on like everything else. They’ve changed, evolved. They look like men now, mostly. They stand two or three feet taller than an average fellow, unless they’re hunched over. They walk like men do, on two feet. They have two heavy, muscular arms. Their bodies are smaller than they used to be, so they can hide under a big coat, but their skin is reptile skin and their blood is green, and warm to the touch. Their heads are man-sized and their faces reptilian. Their eyes are glassy green or yellow or pitch-black ugly.

“We don’t even call them dragons, that’s how different they are now. They’re more like Dragonmen. We call them Draconians, or Reptellans. Some people call them Serpentines, or Pyrothraxes.”

“Pyro …?” Simon tried to say it.

“Pyrothraxes. Pyro, meaning fire,” Aldric rattled on, as if all of this was everyday knowledge. “They use fire as their chief weapon, but not because they need to. These days, dragons have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of ordinary people working for them. Dragons can be found in business, in politics; most are in charge of organised crime at the top levels. They can be found in every country on Earth. Their men do their bidding now with knives and guns and bombs just like all criminals, but the dragon has a special place in his heart for fire. They simply love fire and can never get enough of it. You can never be sure what they’ll do with it. You’ll learn about that.

“Most of them are rich too. That makes it hard to find them, to catch them. But they like to walk the streets – most people have walked right past one without knowing it – and sooner or later I pick up on where they’ve been. Their magic leaves behind unwanted side effects. Wherever there are strange things going on, you can bet a dragon has been in the vicinity.”

“And you destroy them?” asked Simon.

“Every single one of them I find,” said Aldric, with a gleam in his eye. “In fact, I think I’ve found just about the last of them.”

“Sounds like you’ve done pretty well out there on your own,” said Simon, trying to humour him. “What do you need me for?”

“You,” said Aldric, “are about to join the family business. Dragonhunting.”

CHAPTER FIVE

A Brief History of Dragons

“Some things you’ll learn on the job,” said Aldric, and he took out an old curly pipe, relaxing for the first time since Simon had met him. “And some of it you need to know right away.”

Simon reclined against the wall. The ship swayed gently and pipe smoke filled the room with a pungent smell.

Aldric began. “Nobody knows when the first dragon was sighted, but it must have been a very long time ago. They began their lives right after man began to walk the earth. They were born when the first man had his first evil thought. They grew like a tiny worm in his head, and when the man died and was buried, they went into the ground and spread. From this tiny beginning, many more of them grew from tough, leathery eggs hidden deep in the earth. White, like a spider’s eggs they were, but giant. When the young dragons hatched, they crawled their way to the surface. They have caused constant trouble for humankind ever since.

“What does a dragon want? It wants nothing more than to cause people pain, fear and sadness. The dragon feeds on these things. It is attracted to human misery – it thrives on it, in much the same way that plants need sunlight and water.

“Whenever a person feels down, the dragon wants to be nearby. It crawls underground and feels with its tongue for vibrations of sadness. It sucks up the sadness right through its skin and this makes the creature stronger. In turn, a dragon through its magic can make people more unhappy. Whenever a person feels self-doubt, whenever a person thinks he or she cannot succeed, that life is not worth a penny, it’s a good bet a dragon is the reason. Nothing causes more evil in the world than self-hatred. When a person hates himself, he will do terrible things. He wants everyone to feel as bad as he does. A dragon loves to make people hate themselves.”

And does a dragon make people go mad? wondered Simon, still looking at Aldric with distrust. The man went on raving, and when Simon tried to interrupt, he only raised his voice.

“Dragons have always wanted to dominate mankind. They need us, but they see us as pests. Vermin. There are so many of us that the serpents have never been able to wipe us all out. But they try. They try to thin our numbers. They try to get us to wipe ourselves out by tricking us into hating each other. There were only two thousand dragons at the height of their power and they could never get rid of the millions and billions of people in the world.

“You see, Pyrothraxes see themselves as better than humans, superior in intelligence. Stronger. They cannot stand humans because, to them, humans are weak.

“Add to that the fact that humans hate fire. Pyrothraxes love fire. Their favourite place is inside the heart of a good blazing fire. They play with fire, they eat fire, they sleep in fire. Most of the time when you hear about a building going up in smoke, it was a Pyrothrax having some fun.”

Aldric lit a match, to show Simon the power of a simple flame. He put it into Simon’s hand, nearly burning him, as he continued.

“Ow!” said Simon.

“And that is but a small taste of a dragon’s power. The worst part is, they are addicted to fire. They have to have it, and more and more of it every time. If the Pyrothrax had no fire, he would go mad. And, since humans are the enemy of fire, dragons are the enemy of humans.

“For a long time, there were warriors who would fight dragons alongside certain magicians who had learnt about serpent trickery. Each warrior had a magician to help him. In ancient Egypt, magicians banished the most terrible beast, the Serpent Queen, into a never-ending slumber and sent her away into a shadow realm, never to be seen again. Dragons have never forgiven the humans for doing this.

“Over the millennia, dragons were hunted down until there weren’t many left, and very few females to continue the species. So the serpents retreated from man, into hiding. Slowly they changed themselves. They made themselves smaller and outwardly more like us, so they could live in cities and towns and not be noticed. They learnt a kind of magic that would make people see what the serpents wanted them to see.

“Today, because of this magic, a man could look a dragon right in the eye and not see it for what it really is. The dragon can make itself look like another ordinary human being, unless it’s an old dragon, or a weak one whose magic is wearing thin. But you and I are special, Simon. We can see right through that magic.

“In the past few years, the serpents have grown very strong. They have turned the tables on us. They have hunted down all of the magicians, every last one. There are no magicians left. And there are only two knights left. Me … and you, Simon.”

“Me? I’m not a knight.” Simon recoiled.

“You will be,” said his father. “It’s your duty. You see, in the Middle Ages, the knights did battle with dragons and destroyed most of them. A very great knight named Saint George killed a very nasty dragon in the Arab desert, and from that day forward his sons and their sons, and the entire family for centuries and centuries, went after the dragons to protect the world. We are his descendants, Simon. And the job must go on.

“It was the tradition of the Order of Dragonhunters to bring their sons into the battle when they reached the age of fifteen. When a boy reached fifteen, he was ready to become a knight. But I have need of you now.”

What about what I need? Simon thought to himself. What if I don’t want to do this?

“I’ve no one to turn to,” Aldric added. “My fellow knights have all passed on. Even my brother Ormand has been killed.”

“Your brother?”

“The bravest of us all. He was older than me. Cleverer. Trustworthy. Good-natured – everyone loved him. I made strategy and he held the knights together. They were from families that long ago pledged to defend the Dragonhunters. I don’t know if they would have followed me alone, had they lived. But they are all gone now. And I have work left to do.”

“You want me to fight dragons with you?” asked Simon, bewildered.

“I don’t have any choice. You have to come with me, there’s nowhere safe for you to go. Don’t worry, boy, I’ll be with you all the time now. The challenge is real, but we’re up to it. And there’s good news. There’s only one Dragonman left to find.”

That was the good news? Simon couldn’t believe this. It was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. And since when could he count on his father for anything? If this was his father.

Simon did his best not to upset the man, father or not. “I think,” he said, coughing from the awful pipe smoke, “you’d better take me back to school now.”

Aldric looked displeased. “That place is not safe for you. You couldn’t stay there if you wanted to. The Pyrothrax is looking for you. It has spies all over the world. It knows that I am the last knight, and if they get rid of me, and you, there will be no one left to stop it. We can identify the creature – do you think it would allow that? It owes a great debt in blood to the St George family. It would love to find you and get its revenge. That lighthouse keeper is getting older – you think he could protect you? Don’t you see? The wretched thing knows where you are. All these years I’ve kept you secret, but now it knows you exist.”

Simon’s mind flashed back to the strange man in the trench coat crossing the street, the man who seemed to have a tail. But that was just a shadow, surely. Or was the man in white one of the dragon’s agents? This simply can’t he happening, he thought.

Aldric interrupted his musings. “I’m sorry all of this is rushed, but I’m on to something. I think I know where the dragon is. I was closing in on him weeks ago, until my brother called me away to help with a serpent he’d found in the heartland. That was when I realised you were in danger. We’ve got to get back on the hunt. You are the only one in the world I have left. Your mother passed away years ago and there is no more family; you are the last of the bloodline.”

Simon was shocked. He had decided he wouldn’t like his mother, whoever she was, but he always imagined she was alive, out there in the world, sipping fancy wine on a big yacht and never giving her son a thought. It shattered something in him to know that he would never meet her.

“We have very little time,” continued Aldric. “If the Pyrothrax knows we’re on his trail, he’ll move on and we’ll miss our chance.”

Simon was now convinced the man was off his rocker. But then Aldric added something: “I don’t expect you to swallow this story without any proof. I’m going to show you what I’m talking about.”

Simon’s head hurt from so much information. It must have shown on his face. “In the morning,” Aldric said. “In the morning I will show you proof that the creature is real and things will be much clearer.”

Smoke burned in Simon’s eyes and he thought he was going to faint.

“Now get some sleep,” he heard his father say, but he was already slipping into dreamland, worn out. He wanted to hear the rest of the story, but his brain had shut off. It had had enough.

The real shock was that morning would prove to be even more amazing.

Come morning, he would indeed be joining the family business …

CHAPTER SIX

The Family Business

Simon felt a large tongue licking his face. He was being eaten.

In shock, he opened his eyes and rolled on the floor. He scrambled to his feet, ready for battle. But the creature he was looking at was not a dragon. It was a horse.

Aldric must have moved Simon into the hold of the little ship while the boy was sleeping. He had put him down to sleep in the hay. Not very comfortable, thought Simon. Not very nice.

Nevertheless, he had slept without waking once, even with the tilting and swaying of the ship. He must have been totally drained.

He backed away from the horse and looked around. The hold had a tidy and sizable space for the animal, and along the wall there were some chickens in pens.

“Good, you’re awake,” said a voice from above. Simon looked up at the hatch that led to the galley. His father threw down a bunch of apples. “You can feed the horse.”

Simon looked up at him, but all he could see was his shape, lit by the bright sunlight flooding into the hold. Simon picked up the apples. He’d been awake two seconds and already he was doing chores.

“Give her some oats. You’ll find them in the wood bins on the port wall,” Aldric added, disappearing somewhere up above deck.

Simon threw some oats into the horse’s stall and held an apple out for it to eat. The horse chomped the apple eagerly. Simon was hungry himself. He took one of the other apples, sinking his teeth in for a big bite.

“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.