The Saint of Dragons Read online

  The house had a long entryway and then a set of stairs. Little could be seen in the dim light. The smell was almost overpowering. The thing had not moved from this place in years.

  “It’s not coming out,” said one of the horsemen. He was Irish. “We’ll have to ferret him out.”

  “He’s coming,” said the leader.

  “Indeed I am,” said a chilling voice. It seemed to come from their right, and then their left, and even behind them, offering no clues to the beast’s whereabouts.

  “Come out, worm,” said the leader. “This waiting is pointless.”

  “On the contrary,” said the voice, and again it was as if the walls themselves were talking. “I can smell the fear on you. It is growing minute by minute. You never really lose that fear, do you? Just a hazard of the job, I suppose….”

  The lead man, Aldric, rode his horse deeper into the house. Now the light from the doorway no longer helped him to see.

  “Do I seem fearful to you?” he said to the darkness.

  “Oh, do be brave,” whispered the thing, mockingly. “Do come in closer. And by all means, do rush forward valiantly.”

  The lead horseman hit a trigger on his lance, and an iron cylinder shot into the room. It was a kind of white flare, and it lit up with more intensity than any ordinary light could ever manage. But there was nothing to be seen. The voice was coming from nowhere.

  “I’m not here, brave warrior,” said the voice. “I am sending you my voice from far away, and your search has been in vain. I have already fled to the caves of a South American country, and you have come all this way for nothing. You will have to begin again.”

  Inside their helmets, the horsemen looked crestfallen. If this was true, untold hours had been wasted tracking and hunting this disgusting beast. Starting over would not be easy. Their hearts sank.

  The lead man held his nervous horse. “You are a perfect liar,” he said.

  “Yes, I am,” said the voice, and from out of nowhere, a rush of heat knocked into the horse, which squealed terribly—and the man was nearly knocked from his mount. A claw had torn into his arm, right through his armor. The thing would not materialize, but the men could feel its heat, and could see smoky, wavy lines like that of a mirage where the creature’s invisibility magic was wearing thin.

  “Oh, but our games are fun,” said the creature.

  The man was thinking they were anything but fun. Through his helmet, he could see waves of smoky heat ahead of him, marking the creature’s trail. His boots jabbed at his horse, and as they rushed down the hall, his lance slashed into the space just ahead of the smoky heat marks. Whatever was there made a splunking noise, as if the lance had struck against some kind of flesh, and the wall behind it collapsed. The sound that came out of that space was horrible, like a set of furious, squealing hogs, joined together with the cry of an eagle and the roar of a lion.

  To the man it was beautiful, the sound of a wretched and terrible thing dying.

  The man on the horse could not believe his luck. It had never been this easy before. His enemy must be an old one. Older than he thought, and frail.

  “Be careful, Aldric,” said the tall man behind him. “Let me handle this.”

  The Knight growled back, “No, Ormand, the thing is mine.”

  But Ormand went past him, rushing on foot into the wall’s broken space.

  Aldric followed behind him, trotting his horse forward into the hole in the wall. He was now in the kitchen.

  He could hear the wheezing breath of the wounded creature. Still, its magic was strong enough to keep it largely invisible. That might not wear off until hours after its death. You might not be sure where the dead ones were. Sometimes the smell was the only thing you had to go by.

  The kitchen was filled with the stink of rotting meat. The creature liked to let the meat go bad for weeks before it ate any of it. The man could smell pungent spices and sickly odors best left undescribed.

  Above the kitchen counter, ironwork held pots and pans and dozens of sharp, sharp knives and cleavers and meat forks. They rattled and scraped as if trying to get loose. Then they did get loose. Six knives flew at the tall man, and another four hit the man on the horse. The blades clanged off the armor, falling to the floor.

  This was the last of the thing’s magic.

  The engravings on the knightly armor glowed dimly, as if fighting to regain its magical strength. Each battle wore down the strength of the steel.

  It was time now for the tall man to lay his hands upon the beast and call out the spell that would destroy it. This was the tricky part. He would have to get in close to the thing. First the man on the horse slammed his lance down into the invisible reptilian skin once more.

  The thing gave out a painful howl.

  If you had known all the evil things that this creature had brought about in this world, you would have been happy to know its life was at an end.

  The creature’s shape began to show under layers of billowing gray smoke.

  “Its strength is passing away,” said the horseman.

  The tall man nodded, and moved closer to the smoky shape.

  “It should be mine,” said the horseman. “I should be the one to end this.”

  But the tall man frowned back at him. “A child could do this one, Aldric.”

  The other horsemen, alert in the doorway, relaxed.

  Until the wheezing voice of the unnatural beast came scraping through the house. “I’m not…,” said the voice, “finished….”

  A light began to glow in the smoky shape in the center of the kitchen. This was the heart of the creature.

  Aldric pulled at his reins to halt his frightened horse.

  Ormand moved in fearlessly over the light. “It’s over,” he said. “Your deceit is at an end.” And he put his hand on the glowing space, whispering with a touch of awe, “The heart of a Dragon. The heart of evil…”

  “Careful,” said the horseman in the glowlight. “I’ve never seen that before.”

  “His lifeforce, I’d wager,” said the tall warrior, “draining out of him.”

  With that, the tall Knight began to recite words that would have sounded bizarre to anyone except those gathered in the house. They were words that brought death to these creatures. Words of great magic. The light beneath his naked hand burned, but the tall warrior did not flinch.

  The horseman who watched above him did not know anything was wrong. But his horse was thrown into terror. With a squealing neigh, the horse pranced backward but could not get through the hole he’d come in.

  “Whoa!” shouted Aldric, but any control over his horse was gone. In panic, it launched forward and jumped over the downed beast.

  As man and horse leapt over the glowlight, it suddenly burned more intensely.

  The light grew hotter and fiercer, and the nearly invisible Dragon rose up with its last strength and began a fierce rush toward his attacker. The creature was old, wounded, and could not see well, but it was full of wild rage and energy, and it blew Ormand backward, carrying him toward the other horsemen in a giant growing wave of flame. The tall man flew backward helplessly.

  Meanwhile, Aldric threw his wild horse on its side as the heat rushed over and past him, sprawling outward. It was a fire like no other. The only way to describe the explosion is to say that it screamed.

  The rumble of that explosion was heard for miles. Mirrors cracked. Pictures fell from the walls. Dogs yelped and hid themselves away under furniture. In all the homes around the blast, for sixteen miles, milk curdled into a disgusting cream.

  At the center of the blast, much of the house was left in rubble.

  The lead horseman was the only one left.

  The fire had risen high, and spared him.

  He woke up and nudged his horse. It was knocked out. Leaving it behind for the moment, the man got up and walked toward the destroyed front of the house.

  What he saw outside shocked him.

  The fire from the dying cre
ature had lasted only a second, but it had demolished the huge stones that made up the front of the house, it had burned away the yellowed flowers in the garden, it had knocked down the iron fence. It had even burned foliage down the street.

  In the scorched trees above him, his fellow horsemen were spread out, draped in the ugly branches. Their armor had been burned to black and still smoldered, sending smoke into the air. Their lances were twisted corkscrewlike, or splayed in two, and hung loosely in the bony trees. The horses were gone; they had no armor, so they had vanished instantly in the blast. The man took some comfort in knowing they had felt no pain.

  It was the only comfort the man had left to him. The other Knights were dead. His friends, the closest people to him in the world, were gone forever. They had been through so much together. It would not be easy without them.

  The man stepped through a trail of red ash to find the skull of the terrible beast. As its spirit died, he heard its insufferable voice.

  “Ssshame the boy won’t carry on your work,” taunted the voice. Aldric was stunned, and leaned closer. “Oh, we know about the boy…. Sweet little child…not long for this world…”

  And then it was dead.

  At first, Aldric’s mind rejected what he’d heard. How could anyone know about his boy?

  But he felt fear rising inside him, a growing sense that the Serpent’s words were true.

  Angrily, he lifted the skull. It broke apart in his hand, turning to crimson ash.

  There was a sound behind him. The snort of an animal. He turned in alarm—only to find his horse in the smashed doorway.

  The next moment, Aldric was riding away from the scene with all possible speed. Police would be coming soon, and emergency people. He couldn’t wait around answering questions.

  How did the thing know he had a child?

  The thought tore at him. Fighting emotion, he galloped through the quiet town in a rush, down an alley filled with old cars, avoiding the wailing sirens on the streets. Autumn leaves floated past him.

  His mind was racing even faster than the horse.

  The creature had outwitted them. Playing at being weaker than it was, it had fooled them into taking their time, and it had let loose all of its powers as it died. The spell had indeed killed it; but the beast had a dangerous death rattle. They should have let it weaken first, before getting closer. Always full of tricks, the things were. I must learn from this, the man thought. I must strike harder, move faster. I must bury my feelings. I must fight with all that’s in me. And have nothing left over.

  It knew, he thought. The creature knew. Its spies had found his child. The thing had said, We know about the boy. We.

  He tried not to think anymore.

  But in his heart, he knew three things to be true.

  He was the last Knight on earth.

  His son was in danger.

  And he had one more Dragon to face.

  Chapter Three

  THE SCHOOL IN THE LIGHTHOUSE

  FOR SIMON, THE INCIDENT of the beetles swarming the streets had been a dreamlike event, and none of the other boys seemed to feel right talking about it, either. Life slipped back to normal. No one ever listened to Simon much, anyway; his voice never seemed loud enough to get attention.

  He was known for only one thing. It had long been a rumor that Simon was poor and that he was allowed to stay at school for free, out of charity to orphans. The rumor hurt him deeply, but everyone had come to believe it.

  He had always been treated like a pauper. With no parents to pick him up on weekends or holidays, Simon had come under the care of the lighthouse keeper and his wife. The lighthouse keeper naturally ended up giving Simon all kinds of chores, so the boy came to be known as something of a junior janitor. To the rich snobs at the Lighthouse School, Simon seemed like a servant, a second-class citizen.

  He didn’t even sleep in the regular rooms with everyone else. Simon lived in the lighthouse. He stayed in the little two-story building next to the beacon lamp with the old lighthouse keeper and his wife. That’s the way it had always been.

  It was another reason Simon didn’t grow close to the other boys: He lived apart from them.

  His room in the lighthouse was plain and simple, often quite cold and drafty. The only thing notable about it was a fireplace, which he was never supposed to use without permission.

  The other kids were down the hill in dormitories that had once been used by Revolutionary War soldiers. So even the buildings had a past, which Simon was left out of.

  Simon did get some use out of the fireplace when he could get away with it. He loved the way the flames shivered and swayed, making little sculptures, how they created flickering shadow plays on the wall.

  Recently, he had gotten caught several times and punished with cooking duty. He had started taking more chances in the things he did lately, that was certain. The principal had given him a stern talking-to. Old Denman the lighthouse keeper, who was Scottish, had tried to explain to Simon that fire was a terrible thing, the most awful, sickening thing imaginable to a wood-and-brick place like the school.

  “You know how we feel about you, boy,” Denman had said, his wife looking on. “We’ve watched you since you were a little child. We’ve never tried to step in and replace your true parents. We’ve never looked at caring for you as anything but a job, to be done well and without complaint. And we’ve done it. But you listen to me: Fire is nothing to play with. Don’t you ever harm this old lighthouse…it’s your sanctuary.”

  These were more words than the lighthouse keeper had ever said to Simon at one time in his entire life. They didn’t talk much. They worked together tending the lighthouse and had the shared sense of accomplishment that came with it, but the old man was not a father figure. His wife was not motherly. Both of them had seemed old and tired since as far back as Simon could remember.

  They were tired of Simon’s questions about his family.

  Maybe the rumors were true: Maybe he was a poor kid, an orphan, allowed to stay at school for free. Wouldn’t someone have told him if his parents were dead? Or was the school sparing him from the truth? For Simon, it was a depressing possibility. All he knew of his family came from the few things Denman had told him, that they were good people, that they cared about him, that they wanted the best for him. They felt he was better off here than living with them, for reasons Simon didn’t understand.

  No one else at school knew much, either. The day after the beetles, on Halloween, Simon had sneaked into the school office to get a look at his file while everyone was out decorating for the masquerade. The file had nothing interesting in it, but the principal and his secretary passed through, and Simon heard them talking while he hid out of sight.

  “He claimed he was Simon St. George’s father,” said the secretary, and at this Simon perked up to listen, “but you should have seen him. He was a wreck. His hair hadn’t been washed for Lord knows how long, he had dirt and grime all over his face, he was wearing the shabbiest secondhand clothes you ever saw, and he had these wild eyes like a madman!”

  “What did you tell him?” the principal asked.

  “Well, I sent him away, of course,” she said. “I think he was a homeless man who had rifled through some of our garbage and found Simon’s name. Probably wanted to snake out some of the boy’s money. Of course, the money’s all set up in a trust fund, and no one can get to it. His parents set that up years ago so they wouldn’t ever have to mess with him.”

  “Scam artist,” muttered the principal. “He chose the wrong boy on that one. If Simon St. George’s father ever shows up, I’ll have a cardiac arrest.”

  Then they left, and, hiding in the darkness, Simon tried not to feel bad. What they had said was true, after all. But it spooked him to know that someone was asking for him.

  There was little doubt that the man was an imposter. In all his years at the Lighthouse School for Boys, Simon had never heard from his parents. Not once. They clearly did not want to hear from hi
m. He didn’t even have an address to send them a Christmas card.

  There was simply no reason for his father to appear out of nowhere after all this time.

  At least that’s what he thought.

  Later that afternoon he was cleaning the lighthouse windows, hanging from a rope tied to his waist. Below him was a cliff that dropped off to the sharp rocks of the shore. It was one of the dirty jobs he did from time to time for the lighthouse keeper.

  Boys had walked by earlier, and he heard them making fun of him. Even his friends, such as they were, avoided him when he was working. He was completely alone.

  Simon was scrubbing the grimy film off of the windows and thinking how badly they needed it. They had not been cleaned for months. He was listening to the wind whistle around the giant circle of the lighthouse when suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed his leg. He screamed and looked down in horror.

  Standing on the narrow cliffside was a bright-eyed man who was in sorry need of a bath and a shave. The wind was blowing hard enough to carry him off the cliff, but still he stood there.

  “I need to talk to you,” he whispered loudly.

  Simon couldn’t believe it.

  “They don’t believe I’m your father,” he whispered again.

  “I don’t believe you’re my father,” said Simon, and he kicked loose from the man’s hand. The man had to catch his balance to keep from falling off the cliff.

  “Just don’t scream,” said the man. “I only want a chance to tell you who you are.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” said Simon, clinging to the rope.

  “Don’t you see a family resemblance?” the man called.

  Simon turned back, his heart drumming. The man looked crazy.

  “I can answer so many questions for you,” the man said, and Simon could see he was desperate to talk. He seemed tired and in a hurry at the same time. “You could be in danger. Listen to me. I care what happens to you.”

  “Then you are definitely not my father,” Simon called back, and he clambered up the rope and escaped to the lighthouse deck. When he looked back down, the man was gone.