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  Simon was reading desperately, trying to take in the mixture of languages.

  “That’s what it says,” Aldric insisted. “It says, ‘this St. George boy has occupied Asia, and few European Dragons have heard of him. The boy has killed as many as sixteen Serpents.’” Aldric repeated, “The boy occupied Asia.”

  “Asia?”

  “Simon, he wasn’t pursuing you at all. This says he was hunting a St. George child…who lives in Asia.”

  Chapter 13

  THE UNKNOWN ST. GEORGE

  A FULL DAY PASSED ON the leaking, fetid Dragonship. The St. Georges spent hours feverishly reading the Ice Dragon’s deranged manuscripts and books, which went back years.

  “Who is this person?” Simon asked.

  “We know he’s a boy,” said Aldric, “but there’s little else we can say for certain.”

  “We can’t find the page where this all starts, this is driving me crazy. Where does he come from? Who is this other St. George?”

  Aldric rubbed his growing beard, deep in thought, and looked at Simon. “To answer that question, we have to figure out where the boy is first. It’s clear the Ice Dragon wants the boy dead. If I’m right that this Ice Dragon is still alive, he’ll still go after the child. The boy is unprotected.”

  “Wait a minute,” Simon said, “What about Alaythia? We can’t just leave her and go following this trail to who knows where.”

  “This trail could lead to Alaythia. The signal hasn’t changed and she was certainly aboard. If she learned about this boy, she might be headed to the same place.”

  “Dad, she may not know anything about it. She may never have been here.” Simon considered it. “Could the Ice Dragon have drawn us out here? I mean, he knows so much about us, and the way we work…”

  “Far more than we know of him,” Aldric said in disgust.

  Simon moved to the open door of the Dragon vessel. “So what do we do? Even if he is setting us up for something, which way do we go? She’s still out there, somewhere. Look at Fenwick, he can sense her.”

  Across from them the fox was scurrying up and down the deck of the Ship with No Name, giving a grunting signal, impatient.

  “Something’s not right with him,” Aldric agreed, and moved to the yacht’s railing. Following the fox’s gaze, Aldric looked down, where embedded at the side of the vessel was a glistening arrow.

  “She was here,” Aldric said, leaning over the rail. “Alaythia fought this Serpent.” He pulled the arrow loose, and allowed Simon to see the tiny tracer-device pin at its head.

  “He got to her.” Simon’s voice quavered.

  “She fought him off, Simon. She got free.”

  Simon wasn’t completely buying it yet. “What happened to her ship? He could’ve sunk it with her onboard.”

  Aldric smiled. “She got out of here. She knows how to take care of herself; this arrow proves it. And this boy, whoever he is, we’re talking about a new Dragonhunter, a new force to fight alongside us.”

  Simon looked skeptical. Leaving Alaythia out there was not the plan.

  “Alaythia’s probably already on her way there,” Aldric stressed.

  “This is a lot of guessing.” Simon frowned. He knew they had to find the missing boy. Alaythia could take care of herself if need be, but some kid who might not know what a Serpent is wouldn’t stand a chance. “Where do we even start? Where is this other St. George? All we know is Asia….”

  They had already studied the navigation maps and every piece of information they could find. They went back to their ship and consulted the Books of Saint George and the most obscure parchments of the Dragonhunters for clues. It wasn’t until Aldric took the time to stare at the Ice Dragon’s attack plans in his journal, over and over, that things came together.

  “I know this place,” he murmured.

  Simon looked over his shoulder. His father was staring at an historical drawing of a house, a big one with an Asian roof design, the place the St. George kid was supposed to be. It was a clipping from some architecture journal. “You know it?”

  “I’ve been there,” said Aldric. He moved across the cabin, throwing aside scrolls and papers to get to the White Book of Saint George.

  “Well, Dad, where is it? What is it?”

  “I don’t know for certain, it was…. We were hunting something…. I’ve been to that place…” his voice trailed off as he combed through the text, but he looked at the pages as if they were suddenly terribly unfamiliar. Simon took the book from him gently.

  “Forget this. It’s not helping,” Simon said quietly. “Where did you see this place?”

  “It’s like a dream, Simon, I don’t remember it well…”

  “Was it a long time ago? What do you remember?”

  “Rain.”

  “Rain? Is that it?”

  Simon could see his father’s eyes alive with old memories and abandoned emotions. “We needed shelter,” he said. “We had been attacked. We were cursing the fact we needed a Magician, someone who could interpret Dragonrunes, someone to speak the language, but there was no one with us. And there was…”

  Staring off, Aldric began mumbling something about the Asian house, a teardrop-shaped jade statue at its door.

  “Simon, you remember before I came to take you from that school of yours? You remember me talking about my brother?”

  Simon nodded, seeing Aldric was having trouble finding words.

  “My brother, Ormand, was with me, we went to this place,” Aldric said, tapping the drawing. “We were hunting a Dragon…and we ended up there for the night. I remember the innkeeper, and Ormand and I went on to attack the Dragon the next day.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Kyoto,” he said, his eyes gleaming, and before Simon could remember exactly where that was, Aldric added, “Ancient capital of Japan.”

  A course was set. Aldric cut loose the Dragon’s vessel, setting it afire to ensure nothing inside that ship would ever trouble the sea again. If the Ice Serpent wanted to be remembered through his writings, Aldric would do him no favors.

  As the flames swallowed its deck, the ship crawled with strange figures inside the fire…firelings, creatures spawned from Serpent flames. The sight of them always made Simon tremble. Aldric had salvaged some of the African Dragons’ fire, in torches kept safe in chambers on his ship, and their yellow-and-black fires were serving him well now.

  Several of the firespawns—mere silhouettes of men, flickering and billowing in the ocean wind—began climbing the cabin as the Dragon ship began to list in the waves. The firelings screeched at Simon as their brothers were swallowed by the sea and turned to a toxic yellow steam, fighting to survive in the tide.

  Their screams of rage were slung across the air, an unearthly wailing that sounded like a massacre of thousands of seagulls.

  Get us out of here, Dad, thought Simon. Get us out faster.

  The Ship with No Name began to leave the firelings behind. They were now headed to Kyoto to stop the Ice Dragon from killing the St. George boy, whoever he was. As the tide threw salt water in his face, Simon’s mind flipped through the possibilities. Who was this boy? Where had he come from?

  Aldric had always said that Simon was the last of the bloodline, the last Dragonhunter on earth. Now the idea his father could have lied to him began to tangle itself in Simon’s thoughts. He knew his mother had died when he was a toddler, but almost nothing else. The look Aldric had on his face as he remembered the Japanese mansion was a look of guilt, as if deep down Aldric had always known the truth, but was only just now accepting it. Could Aldric have had a son with some woman in Japan—someone he forgot about—a woman he left behind? Was it even possible? Anger simmered in Simon’s mind. Of course it was possible; anyone who could leave his son at a boys’ school when he’s only two years old is capable of anything. But Simon realized he could have been reading too much into his father’s expression. After all, this was an incredible discovery. It was surely a shock to Aldric as
well.

  He couldn’t have had another son.

  Could he?

  His reverie was broken by Aldric stepping nearby to watch the Swiss yacht burning on the ocean in the distance.

  “Ugly thing, firelife,” said Aldric, “You’d better man the guns in case they manage to get this far.” But when he looked at Simon, he could see he was paying little attention. “Something else on your mind?”

  “What?” Simon was looking at his face trying not to show any emotion at all.

  “Alaythia’s fine, if that’s your worry. And we’ll find out about that boy soon enough, so don’t go off daydreaming when I need you.” Then Aldric seemed to realize something. “Oh. Thinking of that girl again, were you?”

  Simon let him believe it.

  “She must be something special,” Aldric observed. “She’s safe back home, you know. Why is it you never tell me anything about her?”

  Simon didn’t say anything, and Aldric nodded. “Well, I can listen. That’s something I can do, isn’t it? Doesn’t take much skill, does it?”

  He was really trying to be a normal father; it was almost touching. Still, Simon couldn’t let go of the idea Aldric might have another son somewhere. He told himself he was being crazy.

  Simon looked out to sea.

  In the distance, the firespawns were clinging to the mast of the sinking ship, fighting each other for life.

  The wails and screaming of the yellow-black firelings merged with the ocean noise, and all the bodies began to drop and roll into the sea, creating a swirl of flame and chaos, sizzling and hissing and steaming. The blaze spread over the ocean and then was abruptly sucked back into a single flame—yellow and black—that died on the water with a distant sigh, the embers drifting about with a whispering psss psss psss, a final note of implacable fury.

  Simon could only stare.

  This kind of anger dies slowly.

  Chapter 14

  THE DRAGON OF JAPAN

  THE JAPANESE DRAGON LOVED ORDER.

  He used order to create suffering. Orderly deaths in train accidents, orderly deaths in factory mishaps, orderly deaths in automobile crashes, and so on. To the Dragon of Japan, death and suffering were beautiful, and to achieve these results with careful, deliberate, regimented planning was his highest aspiration.

  The Dragon of Japan enjoyed tea made from the blood of Japanese people. If the tea were made from any other type of person, he would know it, and he would be angry.

  The Dragon of Japan did not like to feel anger. He worked hard to create a calm, serene, meditative state, all the better to enjoy the dying and misery with which he surrounded himself.

  Equilibrium was the watchword of his life. To never grow too pleased, nor too unhappy, to always keep all feelings in perfect balance—that was the highest state of being.

  Equilibrium.

  He was known among the Dragons as Najikko. In Dragontogue, it meant Master of the Healing Power of Death.

  Of this, he was indeed master. In his human guise, the Serpent of Japan looked like a young, pleasant-faced Asian doctor, who wore bright blue contact lenses in his eyes and a tailored suit on his trim body. He was a man who put people at ease as soon as they met him. He always had candy for the children, a firm handshake for the men, and a warm smile for the women.

  He was a plastic surgeon.

  He was terrible at his work. He could be counted on to make awful mistakes, slashes and slips and slices and slivers, but no one ever sued him or stopped him from practicing medicine. No matter how much he fouled up people’s faces and bodies with his wretched surgeries, the patient always left feeling sad, but satisfied; miserable, but calm; and almost no one ever complained.

  If they did—if they were strong enough to resist his enchantments—they were eliminated by the doctor’s “associates,” cruel men and women who were skilled at painful assassinations. Not quick. Not clean. But painful.

  His medical practice had begun many years ago when he realized he could treat burn victims who had been harmed in his fires, and could take even more joy from their suffering.

  Dr. Najikko, as he styled himself, was not content with the agonies he could create in just one hospital. He was the head of a massive medical corporation called Murdikai, which operated hospitals in twenty-seven countries, most of them in Asia. In these hospitals, death rates were extraordinarily high. People checked in complaining of a sore throat and a cough, nothing serious, really—and they were never heard from again.

  Their organs were heard from again, however. Dr. Najikko extracted from dying patients their hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, and so on, to secretly sell to people who needed transplants. He would sell the organs and make huge sums of money, and then the people who received the transplants usually died anyway.

  Dr. Najikko, the Serpent of Japan, had no fondness for humans.

  One day, a long time ago, a human had attacked Najikko and badly injured his leg. It was injured so badly, in fact, that he did not have a leg; he now has a golden artificial leg attached to his body. You could see it only when he was in his Dragon form; otherwise, he looked like a normal man, unspoiled, handsome. The injury, however, was a constant reminder of the dangers of human beings, and when he felt anger rise in him, the gold-plated leg would glow with the heat of fire beneath it.

  For Najikko, the best part about being a doctor was the ability to cause injuries like his own.

  He considered the false leg to be his only blemish. His Serpent body was gold-silver, and armored like a rhinoceros, with a black pattern on it that looked like randomly scribbled biohazard signs spread all over his skin. His Dragon head was small and sharp, with horns at the top, a twisted fist of spikes he often made use of.

  Najikko lived in Tokyo, in a penthouse above a hospital, so that the pain of the sick and dying would always be there, close by, to give him strength. Except for a parlor to receive guests, his house was not really a house at all, but a series of enchanted operating rooms that were in use. His chairs and couches and appliances and such were placed nearby operating tables, while ancient medical instruments—hooks and syringes, axes and saws—decorated the rooms. Paintings of medical procedures were carefully placed on the walls, to bring a feeling of serenity and quiet happiness to him any time he looked upon them.

  As he wandered alone from room to room, his tail sliding behind him, he could hear the low moaning and pleading of some of his patients, who were supposed to be in real operating rooms, but who instead had been secretly brought up here for a brief stay by the hospital staff who directly served the good doctor.

  As he casually picked up his tea from the sterile steel kitchen, Najikko clicked a button, and one male patient (in his forties, nonsmoker, businessman, complaining of troubled breathing) was given far too much medicine, and quickly passed away.

  He pulled back from the sense of joy that flooded him. Equilibrium always. That was the key. Mustn’t allow the unclean rise of emotion get the better of him.

  He complimented himself on his discipline, when the sight of a newcomer to the room shattered his quietude. It was a beetle. An amber-gold beetle that crawled out from under a steel lamp.

  The Japanese Dragon stared in disgust.

  An insect. Impossible. In his sterile, perfectly clean dominion.

  Unacceptable.

  The Dragon clicked his metal claws on the metal floor, following the beetle and trying not to grow too irritated. The insect moved quickly, pittering on tiny feet that the Serpent’s sensitive ears could not help but hear, circling wildly around a steel armchair, its miniscule mind locked in terror.

  Down came the Dragon’s gold foot, and his clean environment was satisfactorily stained with beetle guts.

  Najikko’s Serpent heart did not permit glee, but it was tempted.

  And then came a second ticking of beetle legs.

  More than one, this time.

  Then more, and more.

  Najikko turned and saw on the steel floor a small swar
m of clicking, wandering golden beetles emerging from under his stove—a veritable invasion. His eyes narrowed. This was a clean environment. Sterile means sterile. Nothing germ-ridden, nothing unwanted, nothing earthy and out of his control.

  Calm. Equilibrium.

  This was the dilemma of being Serpentine. Wherever he went, nature found him and grew perverse, no matter what he did to stop it, and insects were the most common and vile of the effects. It took enormous effort and concentration to keep the pests away. One’s success at this was a measure of power.

  Disgusting things, he thought, and with great precision, he fired a small blast of flame into the swarming beetles, and turned them into a smearing mark of black ash on his perfect floor. A mess.

  Control the anger, he rebuked himself. They are nothing, less than nothing. You are lord over their pathetic lives as you are lord of your own emotions. You are perfection, he told himself, perfecting itself.

  He washed the ash away with a flick of a switch, as clean water was shot out of automatic nozzles he’d installed everywhere, and the liquid carried the beetles away down a drain in the floor. A last beetle crawled up out of the drain, but Najikko crushed it with his foot.

  Repulsed, he cleaned his claw, scraping off the bug guts.

  He turned and moved away from the kitchen area before anything else could compromise his good feelings, his equilibrium repaired. A Tibetan monk would have been impressed.

  In fact, Najikko felt a surge of power as he surveyed the city from his penthouse. The afternoon view was spectacular. Earlier in the day, he had used his magic to cause an airplane crash on a major roadway. He could see the chaos from his home, rescuers and wounded, helicopters and hubbub. It was good for business at the hospital, and it gave him a wonderful sense of calm.