Simon left the school and Emily, riding back home upset. He passed some teenagers pulling in with their cars and it finally hit him that he must look incredibly stupid to Emily on his horse. How great and impressive I thought I was. Look at me. What an idiot. All the kids looked so confident, so ordinary, with nothing to worry about except homework or a Friday night date.
I don’t know how to act, I don’t know how to be
As his horse weaved through the light traffic and back to the weed-sprouting trolley car tracks, Simon passed a group of boys in suits headed for the Lighthouse School further away, their hands full of a junk-food breakfast from the corner shop.
They watched Simon pass. He was the mysterious boy, the one who had left the boys’ school on Halloween night and then came back to live hidden in the old castle house outside of town.
“Simon St George,” he heard them whispering. He had always wanted to be a legend at school. He never knew it would make him feel so alone.
“Doesn’t all that riding make you bar-legged?” said one boy, as if challenging Simon.
“Bow-legged,” said another boy. “Not bar-legged. Idiot.”
“Whatever,” said the other. “He’s so weird. He never leaves his house, his horse is his only friend.” He made kissing noises. “It’s his girlfriend.”
Pathetic jokes. Simon rode past them. They still lived in their little land of dumb humour and stupid pecking orders.
He knew things they would never know at the Lighthouse School – the darkness under life, the pain and fear of battle – and he was content to know all this, but it felt like the days of struggle ahead were endless, the enemy unconquerable, and he would never be done with the fighting until he was dead.
He could see boys lining up for roll call on the field beside the lighthouse, neat rows in neat uniforms, and for a minute he wanted to wrap himself in their perfect boring school day, to avoid the disorganised, rambling lessons he’d get later from Alaythia, and the harsh training he’d get from his father.
He saw his old friend Denman, the lighthouse keeper, heading into the tower. The gruff old Scotsman and his wife had practically raised him from infancy, but now Simon felt they were strangers, caretakers who did a job and rarely smiled. Without knowing it, Simon had been a burden, a danger to them because of the dragons who were always hunting him, and he was a precious thing too, the last of the Dragonhunters, bringing a responsibility that made the old couple weary. He knew his father disapproved of the way they raised him. To this day, Aldric seemed to begrudge them the fact they had seen Simon’s growing-up years. Simon still spent time with Denman now and then, but not today. There was no time.
Simon turned Norayiss, moving away from these old memories.
As he came up the hill and rejoined the road, he noticed there were no birds chirping in the trees. The world had been enveloped in a strange quiet. When he looked down at the horse’s hooves, they made no sound on the pavement; it was as if Simon had momentarily gone deaf.
He stopped his horse, worried.
And then …”the shadows began to shift. The ones on the left side of the road vanished and suddenly the shadows of the trees on the right side of the road began to stretch towards him. The darkness reached forward, like a set of black claws. It was as if someone had moved the sun to the wrong side of the sky.
Simon swallowed hard.
Then he noticed that the trees far off in the forest, near his home, were beginning to rustle as if tremendously agitated. The whole forest there was shaking. A great, immense thing was moving in those trees, or causing the trees to shudder somehow. And it was headed for his house.
He spurred Norayiss on.
The horse sped down the street and tore off into the forest. As he neared the castle, struck with panic, Simon realised he had only a small silver dagger for protection. He never dreamed he’d need body armour this close to home. He felt open; easy prey.
He took hold of the knife. Silver was the finest weapon against dragons, but it was the deathspell that killed them – and if it was a serpent on the attack, he had no idea which spell to use as they were specific to each dragon.
So which one was on the attack? There were hundreds of the beasts listed in the White Book of Saint George.
The horse dashed through the Ebony Hollow forest and Simon noticed with horror that the ground was rippling with beetles which were pouring out of the ground. Green-yellow insects wriggled from the earth and swarmed around the horse’s hooves.
This kind of warping of nature could only mean a dragon in their midst. But where?
As he thundered down the road to the castle, he found no sign of the killer, just Aldric and Alaythia outside in the field, brushing Valsephany. Simon felt calmer, thinking perhaps the serpent had merely been spying on them, and the idle talk he caught between his father and Alaythia relaxed him for an instant.
“It’s just really weird, what happened in Africa,” Alaythia was saying. “The brothers knew where we were, they were ready for us, they set a trap. And they knew how to trick me into coming in first. They knew we were coming into that village just at that time, and they knew exactly where we were.”
“Keep it down,” he heard Aldric say. “Simon’s coming. He doesn’t need to know all of this.”
“Listen, something’s happening,” Simon warned. “There’s something here—”
Suddenly, a set of claws snatched him around the shoulders from behind and hoisted him off the horse, into the air. He screamed, childishly, instantly hating himself for it, but he couldn’t see what had him.
He heard the beating of terrible wings, the smell and heat of rancid breath were everywhere.
“SIMON!” Alaythia screamed, and Simon suddenly saw her down below, firing small bolts of silver from a wrist device. They shot towards him, narrowly missing his ear. He heard a dart plunge into the beast that clutched him, but the animal made no reaction and Simon was carried further up, the pasture growing small far beneath him, and then he saw it twist away in a terrifying spin.
Simon’s head swirled from dizziness and he tried to see what it was that had taken him. But there was no way to see; it was behind him.
He heard his father’s rocket-arrows shooting up from below – Aldric must’ve got to his travel pack, left by the horse trough. The rockets hissed, whisking around the dragon, and Simon saw in the spinning world above Ebony Hollow the white flare of their passing.
“You want to get back to your father.” The serpent laughed. “I’ll make sure you do …”
The voice was pure terror. A female, breathing these threats with fearsome delight.
Simon clambered to get hold of the creature’s claws so he couldn’t be dropped.
“The question,” said the Serpentine beast, “is whether you go down in one piece …” And she dropped him, just enough so his stomach sickened, then snatched him back. “Or in many different, bleeding pieces …”
Suddenly, one of the rockets connected! A silver barb slammed into the dragon’s neck.
The creature was now streaming fireblood – sparks showered down on Simon from the injury, burning his skin in little pinpricks of agony. Green-yellow flames flickered lightly from the dragon’s wound. It was enough to get the creature to descend, but still the dragon held tight to Simon.
Now the creature let loose a massive torrent of flame and Simon felt a disgusted thrill at being with the dragon as the fire charged loose. It engulfed the upper part of the old castle and the wood tiles of the roof, knocking down stones in the walls from sheer force. On the second