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  So he had that to worry about, on top of everything else.

  Once they were at sea, however, Simon’s mind was kept busy with the ship. Alaythia had left its magic intact, and there were traces of it still alive in the rigging and the sails, but everything about the vessel seemed sluggish and moody, like someone awoken in the middle of the night. Simon had to hammer on some of the devices and rods that worked the sails just to keep them going. Aldric scowled at that—the ship had been made by Simon’s mother, the renowned Magician Maradine, and anything she touched had a sacred feel to Aldric.

  His father had allowed Alaythia to make the ship her own, though, and Simon noticed the many additions she had brought in over the past few months. Not all of them were magical: homemade pottery and dried plants hung about the ship in leather pouches and slings, ornate hand-painted tea kettles, and little knitted “sweaters” for things like oil canisters and medicine bottles. She would always see herself as an artist, even if no one else did. But it did warm up the look of the place.

  As Aldric set the course, stubbornly the ship took on the waves, and stabbed its bowsprit eastward, for all the good it would do them.

  How would they find her?

  Aldric seemed to have a plan, though he didn’t seem confident it would work, and Simon had to press him for the details. Many times Simon had seen Aldric hovering around an old brass globe in a nook near the galley, and when Fenwick nosed around it, Aldric had gotten angry. The importance of it was not lost on Simon.

  “It may do us no good,” Aldric warned. “She’s more clever than us. But if she was in a hurry, she might’ve forgotten a few details. See.” He allowed Simon to look closer at the globe.

  The way it worked was this: Many times, they could not get close to a Dragon, only to its men, its workers, its minions, so Alaythia and Aldric had developed a technique to handle the problem. They had created a set of extremely small arrows attached to little tracking devices, homing beacons, for lack of a better term. Shoot these tiny darts into the henchmen or their clothes or cars without them knowing it, and their movements could be tracked on the globe.

  It looked like technology, but it wasn’t. It was the methodical work of a Magician using a kind of sorcery at least four centuries old.

  “Alaythia took weapons with her,” Aldric explained, “one of which was an arrow containing the tracer device. We can use that to follow her, if she hasn’t purposely thrown us off the mark.”

  Simon nodded. A little light was glowing on the brass globe showing the beacon Alaythia was carrying. The fox gave a little whimper, and placed its snout on the signal, pointing somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

  The clue puzzled Simon.

  Was she headed to China? That was the last place the Black Dragon had lived. Back then, he had been an enemy, but what was he now? He had helped Simon when it really mattered, in the battle of the Serpent Queen, when every life on Earth was in the balance, but who was he really?

  And how would he react to Alaythia on her own?

  Chapter 8

  THE ICE DRAGON

  EVERYONE WANTED THE BLACK Dragon dead.

  Rumors were swirling around the Serpentine world that perhaps the Black Dragon, or Ming Song as he called himself, had gone back to China, for there had been news reports of drought and animals dying en masse in the inland country.

  But then, Serpents of every kind had been there searching for him, causing their own distortions in nature. It was a kind of mania. The Dragons had an unquenchable thirst for revenge. Their prey was elusive, though. Some Serpents had even come to believe the Black Dragon had passed through their borders, like a ghost, leaving no trace whatsoever. He was fast becoming a legend.

  No one knew anything for certain.

  However, in the Swiss Alps there had been some hikers who reported sightings of a small, furred creature darting its way among the rocks, something shadowy that vanished into holes and caves. The reports became a joke around Swiss mountain towns.

  Such incidents were not laughed off by Herr Visser, the Beast of Switzerland, the Ice Dragon, a lowly worm in the grand scheme of things, a rare Creature who did not seek out riches or high office, but instead enjoyed smaller pleasures: torture, mind games, spreading sorrow and grief, and the occasional quiet homicide.

  Not that he was without vanity. He kept his slick Serpentine skin clean and well-groomed, right down to the hairy spikes on his head and goatee, and in his human form, he always tried to be presentable—even to those he despised.

  As a Dragon, the Ice Serpent bore permanent camouflage for winter. The left side of his body was perfectly black, the right side purely white. The colors split him down the middle; black ice clung to his darkened side, and frost collected on his ivory side.

  He saw the world in black and white. Everything he did was pure as snow, but anyone who went against him was viewed as black as pitch, and disposed of appropriately.

  Of course, he wanted to dispose of the Black Dragon more than anything.

  Wouldn’t that be nice, to freeze him in ice and watch him rot for the next few years?

  The Ice Serpent considered the Chinese Dragon a turncoat who had tried to make himself look grand in old age by siding with human allies during a great battle.

  Killing the traitor would make the Ice Creature famous among his kind.

  Otherwise Professor Visser would remain an unimportant snake posing as an unremarkable teacher of history, even his murders unnoticed. And he had little time left to change his destiny.

  The Ice Dragon was dying. Old age would get him—and soon. He had pressing things to do before that happened.

  Switzerland would not be safe for him much longer, with all the turmoil in the Serpent world, with so many Dragons wanting new lands to conquer. But he was unhappy for other reasons still. His fire did not keep him warm, and no matter where he went, he felt a chill upon his skin, a frightening touch from old Mr. Death, who was on his way, reminding him each day with a white kiss of frost.

  He hated snow and ice. It so happened he was born into a place that, in the past, was not often fought over by other Serpents—a refuge for a weak Dragon. Living here was no blessing, however; the cold world around him had affected his magic.

  The frost settled on him after he woke each morning, and could often be seen even when he took his human form, as a blue-skinned and isolated old man. There was no magic that could keep him from looking old. He tried. The wrinkles always returned to his weak human disguise. The teeth yellowed. The eyes he saw in the mirror grew dim and veined and blurred. His powers were withering. No question about it.

  But there was new hope he could make something of himself before it was too late.

  The Ice Creature had followed the reports of the Chinese Black Dragon’s appearance in the Swiss Alps, but when he arrived in a new ski village, he sensed the enemy had already moved on. It was only when the Ice Dragon investigated a remote crevice blocked by fallen trees that he found anything of import.

  And what a thing it was. The Ice Dragon had found the remains of a cave encampment, fresh with the scent of the Black Dragon. Ahhh, he thought. Here is a Serpentine soul nearly as old as myself, and one filled with barbaric memories.

  Left behind in the Black Dragon’s haste was a traveling tea set, and a much-used pipe. As the Ice Creature poked his claw into the bowl, he could feel remnants of life, for a Dragon’s breath contains traces of his spirit.

  These were fresh ashes. And ashes speak to Dragons.

  Ashes and dreams, dreams and ashes, time for the rotten to take their lashes, he thought, remembering one of his own old poems. In his mind, he was no mere history professor; he was an undiscovered poet of rare talent.

  Below him, little beetles covered in frost wriggled out of the ashes of the Dragon’s campfire trying to survive. The frost shook loose, revealing their black coloring.

  How long ago had the Black Dragon been here? The Ice Serpent mulled it over—and had an answer soo
ner than he thought. Suddenly, he heard a rustling deeper in the cave….

  His old heart quivering, the Swiss Dragon darted back behind a rock, watching as a black shape entered the icy white den. The Chinese Dragon, hairy and hobbled and small, was returning to his nesting spot—not abandoned at all—and immediately knew something was wrong. His hair stood on edge, his nostrils flaring.

  “Who hunts me?” asked the Chinese Creature.

  The Ice Serpent had nowhere to run. “I hunt a traitor,” he cried, and he leapt out and tackled the Black Dragon, the old Serpents growling like two badgers, rolling about in the ice and snow, fighting feverishly.

  The Ice Dragon dug his claws into the furred flesh of the Chinese Beast and pried open its jaws. He then used the most disgusting of magics—he sucked out part of the Black Dragon’s spirit.

  As the Black Dragon gasped for air, its spirit-traces were invisibly pulled out.

  Acting fast, the Black Dragon burst away in a flurry of sparks that bedazzled the white cave and transported himself to safety several yards outside the cave. He hobbled off down the mountain, getting away, though the trick had cost him energy.

  The Ice Serpent was worse off. Older and weaker, he was in no condition to give chase.

  But the icy beast had won something in the battle. In the split second that he had touched the jaws of the Black Dragon, he had tasted his spirit. It so happened the thought he touched upon was the memory of an encounter with, of all things…

  Oh, to write this down, he thought, I must record this immediately.

  Everything he knew went into his books, his History of Serpentkind. It was his obsession, an attempt to write all of the stories of the Dragon race, and now to have found spirit-traces of the Black Dragon, the most despised of them all, was a great treasure. The new knowledge the Ice Dragon had gained would make an absolutely perfect capstone to his work.

  Chasing the Black Dragon now was only a piece of the puzzle. The Ice Serpent had gotten something better than a turncoat. A new plan was forming in his head.

  Hours later, he went back to a little café in the mountains for the warmth of its fire, though it did him little good. He quaked from the constant cold, and his lips were turning blue, though he still managed to look human. At times his lizard skin could become visible, so he covered himself well these days. His old black trenchcoat, smelly and stained, fanned out around the chair. In its pockets were books of poetry and out-of-date travel writing from the 1950s Beat era. At the moment, however, he was doing far more important writing of his own.

  He was jotting furiously in his book: “The Black Dragon must now be remembered not just for the freeing of the Saint George child, but also for this astounding discovery, which will ultimately be the undoing of the entire Dragonhunter tribe. This requires immediate and meticulous investigation. There are two groups of hunters, unknown to each other, but known to the Black Dragon, and now to me, both in number and location.” The Black Dragon had encountered these other hunters, and the Ice Dragon had seen his memory of escaping without detection.

  Herr Visser shivered and wheezed and laughed, and the woman who served him coffee looked at him with unhidden disgust. Visser stroked his goatee proudly, and he clutched the book tightly against his chest.

  “Some kind of secret you have there?” the waitress asked.

  “Oh, I should say it is, yes,” snorted Visser, in gravel-throated German.

  “You’re a writer?”

  “Yes, yes. To be sure,” he said, looking away from her and hunching his shoulders. The place was nearly empty. Just two other travelers. Photographers, from the look of their gear.

  “I like good writing,” said the waitress.

  “You won’t find any of that here.” The Swiss professor smiled, showing coffee-stained teeth. “It’s a nasty little bit of writing.”

  “Is it a scary story?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Let me take a look at it,” said the waitress curiously. “Let me be a sounding board. I might have some advice for you.”

  “Oh, no doubt, yes,” mocked the professor. “When in doubt, go to a coffee counter of an out-of-the-way restaurant for literary criticism.”

  “You don’t have to be rude about it,” the woman replied. “I read a lot of books of every kind, and it gets a little dull around here, in case you haven’t noticed. Just let me take a look, give you some feedback.”

  “The writing’s over!” Visser snarled and slammed the book down, away from her reach. “I want to watch some television, and I want some privacy, thank you very kindly.” With that, he pulled from his pocket a little black-and-white television.

  “And warm up the coffee,” he ordered, eyes fixed on the screen, shivering again. “It’s not hot enough, it doesn’t warm me at all!”

  The woman wandered off, confusion and a bit of humor dancing in her eyes, as if she might be laughing at him.

  The Ice Dragon’s chest was pounding. The discovery of the Black Dragon’s little secret, the peering eyes of the waitress, all of it was upsetting his old heart. He didn’t ask much of life, but he wanted things quiet, and that was hard to get these days. He considered himself a person of simple pleasures: good music, good wine, the burning of a good woman now and then. He liked to think, to prepare a little bit of a meal for his mind. And he liked a little privacy when it came to writing.

  Was that so much to ask?

  He scratched at his black turtleneck sweater, feeling tightness at his throat. Through his thin, dark, half-circle eyeglasses, he glanced at the waitress, who had gone into the back of the café. Good. He relaxed a bit.

  He usually liked to be left alone. And yet, there was something in her interest in him that was exciting. His nervousness came out of anger.

  He felt a sudden, careless desire to tell the waitress everything about himself. He was dying, he knew that, and he just wanted someone to know who he was, someone to understand. No more hiding.

  And what would he say to her? What would she care to know?

  He played the flute. He was a horrid player, but his magic made people hear the music as if he were a great master.

  He played cards and gambled. He always won. He gave the money to women. Then sometimes he’d eat them. In summer, he sold poisoned flowers on the streets of Zurich just to talk to people.

  Loneliness had driven him to find human companions, but eventually they disgusted him. One woman he rather liked had turned to ice before his eyes when he touched her, and her arm fell off with a clunk, her blood frozen inside like a Popsicle. Things he touched would often freeze. Nothing could be done. He found ways to fill his time without friendships.

  He was a fan of the TV show Columbo. He generally watched it in a smoky café, on the tiny black-and-white television set he carried with him everywhere.

  It was the only thing that ever played on the television. He was watching it now.

  He spent his nights on the tops of buildings, under the stars, next to the stone gargoyles. He would read them poetry. They had no opinions, and he liked that.

  His poems were bleak, and made sense only to him. He thought of them when he was burning people or freezing them to death; when his mind would think in dreamy, rattled words:

  “Dark. The Souls of the People.

  White. The Art of the People.

  Kiss the rage, and kill it if it doesn’t look like us.

  Fold the riddle over, and the riddle stays the same.

  Howl and fight and it does you no good.

  Eat of this darkness and I’ll give you dessert.”

  There were others worse than that. Hundreds of them, written over two centuries, in many languages.

  He wrote the poems on pages that were half black and half white—the same shades as his dirty apartment in Zurich, and his dirty office at the university.

  People hated the poems. He’d tried to get them published for centuries. No magic he could conjure could get people to like them. And people hated him, no matte
r what disguise he took on. People hated him. And Dragons hated him.

  And this was who he was.

  Maybe the lady wanted to know these things about him, maybe he would tell her. Maybe he would tell the waitress that he was going to die in a blaze of immeasurable glory, and her world would grow very dark after that, for the only books that would be read would be his.

  There were pieces to put in place first, however. Finding the Black Dragon was possible now, for he had torn a bit from the old lizard’s mind, and knew his immediate destination. He would go after him soon. That was the simple part. Far more challenging would be to bring the hunters all together, and have them die in a single blow. There’s your fame. There’s your poetry. Dead together, all at once, and you to plan it, witness it, put it into your book.

  He would write his own place in history as the killer of the Hunters.

  It ought to have been a triumphant thought, but the Ice Dragon’s eyes came to rest on a heap of beetles outside the window, dead from the frost. He liked to keep the beetles and gnats and bugs alive in the cold, and sometimes he’d even keep them warm in his mouth.

  It struck him that if he couldn’t keep his own collection of insects alive, he hardly had the strength to kill the Dragonhunters himself. Pathetic little thing I am, he thought. He’d require help to destroy them, but who could he turn to? The new Russian Beast, fresh from Chechnya? An Arab Sand Dragon? The two strongest in Asia, the Japanese Dragon and the Bombay Serpent, would have nothing to do with him. Would they? Now there’s an interesting thought. Lots of potential there. But he’d need to move fast.

  Suddenly, he heard the waitress laugh, and he spun around to see her standing there, reading his book.

  My book.

  “What’s the big deal, I just wanted to look,” said the woman, noticing his eyes. “I don’t have anything to do around here. What’s wrong with you?”