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 little 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 round 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?”
“Wrong with me?” said Visser, his lips trembling.
“This is not scary,” said the woman. “It’s just random notes and …”and poetry. Poetry about snakes. Is that what you write?” She was bewildered.
“Not snakes,” said Visser through clenched, yellowish teeth. “Serpents. Dragons.”
Nothing seemed funny to the woman any more.
The other two customers looked over, alarmed.
Visser rose. Now he towered over the woman, almost two metres tall, his skin rippling as heat waves passed over him, and her jaw dropped as she realised she was staring at a black and white beast with eyes like yellow marbles.
“True poetry is not written in ink,” said the Ice Dragon, “but in fire.”
And he set the woman ablaze in the colours of good and evil, a black and white fire that matched his own skin. The fire leaped into the air and carried her up to the ceiling, dropped her ashes in a split-second and then spread to the photographers. One burned away in white fire, the other burned away in black.
Burn a little hope, today, snuff out a little light.
Ebony doesn’t burn, my friend, it only turns to white.
Die, die, and learn to like it, child …
It only stings a little while, it’s really very mild …
His Serpentine mind was humming. But he found himself abruptly disappointed, for the fire he had made was turning to ice. It behaved like fire, flickering and moving about, but it was ice, no doubt about it. He had no control.
The ice-fire stopped its quivering, the sharp spires of ice stilled and the moving mass of crystalline flames ceased their crunching, breaking passage. The serpent was left alone with frost-filled walls and ceilings.
His fire had gone cold.
Gloomily, he watched the rest of his TV show in the frigid ruins. Then he left the lonely café in the mountains and headed for the sea to set his plans in motion.
CHAPTER NINE A Loneliness of a Great Ship
Simon St George and his father had found their way to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where the globe had showed Alaythia, but there had been no sign of her. Simon began to have serious doubts they would find her even with the tracer device because they could never quite catch up.
“If she took a plane, she would be in China by now,” commented Simon.
“Yes, but if she took a boat,” said Aldric, “she would be closer to the ocean and she’d have a better chance of sensing the Black Dragon. He may very well be on the sea, on the move.”
Simon frowned, considering the predicament.
They were at the table near the galley and the stove began belching black smoke. Aldric cursed and tried to save his stew. Nearly everything they cooked went bad now; it was as if the ship were punishing them for losing Alaythia.
The ship itself seemed lonely without her. At night it made howling noises with the wind in its sails, and the rigging clanged rhythmically as if calling out to her.
Simon and Aldric knew exactly how the old ship felt.
To stave off the emptiness – Aldric could spend entire days not talking at all – Simon had begun writing to Emily back in Ebony Hollow, though he knew he’d never send the letters, and if he did, she’d never read them. There were too many details in them about dragon signs and dragonhunting; they would have sounded insane to her, but he kept trying to find a way to make the dark world he knew seem reasonable.
The ship felt like the most desolate place on Earth and the only thing that filled it up was the thought of Emily. He had started talking to her in his head. He knew he was thinking about her mainly because he had no real friends, but it was a useful way to kill time and he figured it honed his skills for talking to people his own age. He worried endlessly about how to explain it all to her, and he worried she might be in danger, if a stray serpent seeking Alaythia somehow found its way to New England. He worried that he and his father wouldn’t find Alaythia, or that they’d find her dead, and then he feared that even thinking about it could make it happen. There was always something to worry about.
Simon’s stomach churned that night as he began a new letter.
“I think I’m getting an ulcer,” he muttered and looked over at Fenwick on the floor. “I wish you could talk,” he added, lying in the dim light of his bunk built into the ship’s side. The fox stared back with no particular expression.
Fenwick would have no sympathy for him. Fenwick had no worries. He was strong.
“Never mind, I’m glad you can’t talk,” said Simon, feeling chastised.
Then he heard his father clanging around in his cabin, sparring with no one, brandishing his sword. These days, Aldric never seemed to sleep. He blamed himself for everything and Simon wished things would go back to the way they were in the old days – when Simon got blamed for everything.
After a while, Aldric came out of his cabin and into the passageway where Simon’s bunk was. Simon stood staring, afraid he was in trouble.
Gruffly, Aldric handed Simon a bottle of ginger ale. “Here. Drink with me.”
And that was all he said.
Simon looked at Aldric, holding the warm bottle in his hand.
“I was thinking we might talk,” his father said sharply, sounding angry although he clearly wasn’t.
Simon just stared.
“Well, go on then, open it,” Aldric said, and Simon pried off the bottle cap. He stood there awkwardly.
Time passed like sandpaper over skin, the two of them in the passage, saying nothing, the ship rocking gently.
Aldric was in another world altogether.