Hurriedly, Aldric led Simon and Alaythia to the ship, as the piranha-animals began eating at the ice around them, nearly chewing away the path.
The damaged ship launched, and its tattered sails carried them away from the small, frenzying creatures. Simon looked back to see the shapes of skeletal faces in the ghostly mist. The battered ship was making terrible creaking noises, but it had taken them from the Coast of the Dead. Simon’s heart calmed; he felt his head clearing.
Within a few hours the sailboat, tilting unevenly in the water, limped to a misty harbor in Russia. Aldric told Simon to be on guard. He had noticed something. They had been followed for some time by a military vessel.
As Simon, Aldric, and Alaythia stepped off the boat to the pier, the soldiers from the vessel moved in. Aldric was dragging a huge black supply trunk, hoping to refill some of the ship’s supplies. He yelled to the ship, “Lock up,” and the cabin doors and windows locked soundly.
Soldiers swarmed around them. The men were barking questions already.
“Russian,” said Simon, recognizing their language.
Aldric felt in his coat for the White Book of Saint George. Simon could see his nervousness.
The Russians came in and looked them over, as well as the supply trunk. They did not speak English very well, and they were very suspicious of these new arrivals. They ordered the St. Georges and Alaythia back to their station house in a nearby village.
Since more soldiers were arriving out of the snowy forest, Aldric decided to go without a fight for now.
Simon was very worried as the hostile Russians pulled them away. Suspicion was bred into the bone with these men; not just anyone could get past them. At the coastal station, they asked many questions, and if they didn’t like the looks of you, off you’d go to a cold Siberian prison. Or so they threatened.
“You have nice digits,” said one soldier to Alaythia. His English was bad. He meant to say she had a nice figure. Aldric was now clenching his fists, watching and clearly wishing he could get to his weapons.
There were many, many soldiers here, and they were large, and it seemed to Simon they were angry, waiting for any excuse to strike them.
Just then, a smiling Russian, smooth and well-dressed, entered behind the hulking guards. He was clearly the boss. “It is our displeasure to detain you.” He grinned. “Please enjoy a view of television while we review your case.”
Literally. The Russians were trying to open Aldric’s black steamer trunk marked with the Dragonhunter symbol. In the meantime, Simon glanced over at the TV news. He was astonished at the images he saw.
The news showed tremendous devastation, some kind of horrid storm destruction that ran throughout the French countryside. There were images of a beaten Paris, a smashed Berlin, a storm-struck Geneva—homes were leveled, people were crying, wandering aimlessly.
“That storm went through France, Germany, Poland…,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” said Alaythia.
“It is beginning. Whatever the Venetian is planning, this is the start of it all,” Aldric said. “He’s building toward his ‘Fire Eternal.’”
The news showed coffins being prepared in the hundreds. Parts of Berlin looked as it had after World War II—broken buildings, shivering people. A world map showed the giant storm headed for the Russian plains.
“It’s headed for Moscow,” whispered Alaythia.
Aldric pondered this. “Why…?”
The smiling Russian returned to them. “We have found cause for concern,” he said. “I would like to see personally that you get to my superior. Please come with the guards. No cause for concern.” His smile never left his face.
Aldric looked angry, sizing up the hulking men. One of them pushed up his sleeves, ready to fight, revealing a Dragon tattoo with runic writing. Simon looked at his father. He could see the tension leave him.
The grinning Russian escorted them all to an ancient, rickety train.
Aldric whispered to Simon with satisfaction, “These are the servants of a Serpent. There must be a Russian Dragon. They’ll be taking us right to him.”
Thank goodness, Simon thought miserably.
Aboard the train, the lead guard sat opposite them, smiling. In the train car was a large portrait of a hefty old general. He did not look like a Dragon. In photographs, they never do.
“General Pirakov, de facto chief of the military,” Aldric told Simon. “Always nice when a Dragon is in command of a nuclear arsenal.”
The thought gave Simon a chill.
There were two other guards aboard, toying with Aldric’s black steamer trunk.
“Let me help you with that,” said Aldric, and he played with a latch. A compartment opened. From inside, one of the guards pulled out a sword, staring at the red knob on its hilt, which was glowing.
“Enchanting little instrument, isn’t it?” Aldric smiled. Staring at the hilt, the Russians’ eyes glazed over, hypnotized. Their jaws went slack. Aldric calmly turned the sword toward the smiling official. He continued smiling, mesmerized, as Aldric shoved him into a sleeping compartment and closed it shut.
One of the guards grunted in satisfaction. “He drives us crazy with that smiling.”
“Quiet,” ordered Aldric. “Go to the end of the car.” The guards obeyed. They would now do anything they were told.
Alaythia looked at Aldric, worried. “You realize we’re going right into the path of that storm.”
“That’s the idea.”
Simon swallowed hard.
The train to Moscow did not seem quite up to the job. The cold and storms of many winters had beaten it down. The locomotive’s giant steel head pressed on through the snow with a Russian stubbornness.
The journey was long. Simon stared out at the snow-coated mountains, and had hours to worry about the future.
As the train grew closer to Moscow, Simon took out the Dragonmap and was horrified to see the ripples of magic expanding. On the map the chaos now reached Europe, Russia, Africa, and parts of China. Whatever evil the Dragon of Venice had begun, it was now in rapid motion.
Next to Simon, Alaythia was feeling a slight pain in her head. The closer they got to the Dragon, the louder the high-pitch humming in her ears. She thought it was just her own fear building, and she said nothing about it.
The storms raging across Europe had scraped around Moscow as well, and Simon could see from the window of the train intense devastation ringing the city. Houses had been thrown around, buildings collapsed. People stood on the rubble of their ruined homes and looked over the destruction in despair. The damage went on for miles and miles.
Even stranger, the blizzard conditions swirling around the train kept stopping and starting, like a spigot turned on and off. Winter had gone mad.
Simon held back a shiver as a feeling of hopelessness ran its fingers over him.
“Strange forces of magic are being unleashed, and we’re going to find out how,” warned Aldric. “We can expect more of this.”
He put on a brave face, but Simon thought Aldric had aged twenty years since this voyage began. How old was his father? It was hard to tell. At times, he seemed a slovenly old buzzard, but in battle, he wielded his sword lightning-fast.
Simon just hoped expertise with a sword would get them through this alive.
“Take us to the man you serve,” Aldric ordered the guards when the train reached Moscow.
They all walked into the swirling snow, the guards pulling the steamer trunk. Simon tried to keep his balance over slippery ice. The adults and the two soldiers seemed to have no trouble. Why was it that he was always so clearly a kid, so clearly not the man in the group?
Alaythia helped him as he almost fell, managing to do so without embarrassing him.
After walking for some time, they turned down an avenue absolutely overrun with cats. Hundreds of them, a plague of cats.
Every kind of cat was present. Some darted from house to house, seeking food; others, most of them, sat
idly in the street. People were wading through the flood of them, trying to go about their day.
Eerily, none of them made a sound. Not a sound.
It was quiet in the realm of the Russian Dragon.
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE RUSSIAN DRAGON
THE RUSSIAN RED DRAGON was a melancholy reptilian gentleman with red-brown fur and a wolflike face, four small eyes, two of which were always sleeping and all of which were set close together above his jutting, rounded snout. He had a set of fangs that could have intimidated Dracula, or even Stalin.
Over the light fur that covered his body he wore a heavy gray army coat with a thick white fur collar. He wore an army general’s old Russian cap, for he was, when he pretended at being human, an old Russian general.
On his gray coat were medals. They meant nothing. They were for show.
Under his gray coat was a belly full of bones.
Inside his mind were many voices, constantly chattering—a side effect of his magic. The people he had sent to their deaths as an army commander remained with him in his head and uttered every word they had ever said while alive. Thus, he was forced to listen to radical ideas that angered him.
He covered the noise of the voices with Tchaikovsky symphonies, which he played on the old Gramophone in his living room, but the sound of chattering people contradicting him and contradicting each other was a never-ending headache.
He was often in a foul mood.
Only one thing lessened his sorrows.
The Russian Red Dragon loved cats.
He filled his home with cats.
He made magic that called them to his home.
And then, because he did not like their noise, he quieted them with magic.
Once in a while, he would eat them. He did it quickly. They felt no pain.
He taught his cats tricks, like fetching his slippers and clawing people to death.
The expression “There is more than one way to skin a cat” was not academic to him.
He made photographs of his cats. They hung on all his walls. Not just the photographs. Sometimes the cats, which paid the price for the Dragon’s foul moods.
The cats would herd around his feet, warming him. This was pleasant for the Dragonman. He would watch black-and-white television (old recorded images of government meetings and interrogations), and the cats would lie on him, all over his body, warming his shoulders, arms, his belly, and his tail.
The cats had learned to tolerate fire. The Russian Dragon would sometimes be struck with a fit of coughing, which caused plumes of fire to shoot from his mouth. Other times, he would send fire out of his mouth in a kind of laugh when something amusing happened on his television.
He lived within sight of the capital, the Kremlin, those giant towers with turbanlike hats. He had a beautiful view from his large mansion home. He liked to keep the windows open, even in snowy winter, so his view was not blocked by a single thing. He was always plenty warm. He had fire in his belly and cats on his sleeves.
He liked being alone, living just with his cats and a couple of tireless women who did his cleaning. At the present, the tireless women had been sent away, for he had dangerous visitors coming. The Dragon of Venice, for starters.
It disturbed him.
The Venice Dragon was younger and more erratic. The old Russian hated the Venetian’s flashy style. For a long time, he’d suspected the Venetian wanted to swallow his shiny medals. And the Venetian surely hated the Russian’s dullness.
The Venetian had warned he was coming. He needn’t have bothered. It was obvious.
When a Dragonman meets with another, their powers rake against each other. Their magic goes haywire and does what it wants. So, for the first time, the Russian Dragon was cold in his house. The fire inside him did not keep him warm. The walls kept shaking from irritating little earthquakes. The books in his library would flap around like birds and resettle in places he did not want them to be. Sometimes they would bleed black ink.
Flames slipped out of his body like convicts escaping a prison. Vague, fiery figures, men made of flames, danced around the rooms, burning things at will. They looked into places where they shouldn’t be looking. They did not behave. They were like terrible children, and they chased the Russian’s cats without mercy.
All of this was a worry for the Russian Dragon. To lose control of your own fire was frightening. Fire which had its own mind was a true danger.
“Get back into the fireplace,” he yelled at one fire-figure, but the little character would hear nothing of it.
I am free, the crackling voice seemed to sing. It was like a voice from an old record or an old telephone. You putrid worm. Today, I am a slave to no one.
The Russian Dragon rolled his eyes in annoyance. He could hear the fire-figures jumping into his huge pretty bath and playing with fire, as children play with water. They would ruin the nice porcelain bathtub. It would burn and crack. Unforgivable, he thought.
How Dragons do love their baths. The Russian had his nicely lined with cat hair, just as he liked it.
“Get out of there!” he roared while sitting in his armchair. “You’re making too much noise!”
You’re making too much noise! mocked a fire-figure man, and the Russian thumped at his vest like a gorilla behind bars.
Show us some hospitality, came a chorus of crackling fiery voices. They echoed in the Russian’s brain. We are your guests now.
The Russian put all of his energy into making the fires die out, and had just succeeded as his newest guests began to approach his room.
His teeth were aching. Growing old came with a good deal of pain.
Several blocks away, the Kremlin buildings towering ahead of them, the St. Georges and Alaythia followed the Russian guards. Simon waded through the street cats, staring up at the ones who had found homes in the trees. The trees were bare, and all of them were bent in creepy, twisting ways.
Approaching the mansion, the Dragonhunters prepared their weapons.
“Open it,” Aldric ordered the Russians, and they lifted the steamer trunk’s lid. It was no ordinary suitcase. Inside were four torches of green serpentfire.
The guards stood blankly watching like toy soldiers.
Aldric began using one of the torches to set fire to his silver arrows. He gave a torch to Simon, who set his own arrows afire. Then they placed their fiery bolts into specially made quivers that were capped, to close the arrows in completely. The quivers had been made by Simon’s mother, Maradine, long ago.
Simon slung his quiver over his shoulder, alongside his crossbow. Although the quiver was a safe holder for the arrows, it nonetheless gave off an unpleasant heat. Simon’s skin began to itch from having the serpentfire so near him. It was as if the fire wanted out.
He noticed Alaythia looked worried about going in empty-handed.
Then Aldric lifted out three long silver shields. He gave one to Simon and another to Alaythia. “They’ll protect you from the flames, should things get out of hand,” he said. “This fire is stronger than the last we used. It will be far more dangerous.”
As Aldric donned his armor, Simon and Alaythia looked over the rune-covered shields. They looked beaten and flimsy, considering the danger.
“One more thing,” Aldric said, and he pulled from the trunk a chestplate of armor for Simon, pulling off the boy’s trench coat to fit him with it. It was heavy, but Simon was pleased with the added protection.
“I finished the adjustments to it. It was made for you, son, long ago,” Aldric said gravely.
Simon’s attention sparked at this. He had not been forgotten—he had been expected. In some way, it lightened his mood for the battle ahead.
Aldric looked at Alaythia. “I’m sorry the same can’t be said for you,” he told her, lifting out other pieces of armor. “This was forged for one of my fellow knights. It won’t fit you, but it will keep you safe.”
Alaythia let him tie the straps together, and he slapped her long cloa
k over the uncomfortable armor.
Aldric handed her the White Book of St. George.
“You’ll need to guard that at all costs,” he said.
“You won’t have to say it twice.”
“Good. The fire is fierce, but the armor is strong,” Aldric cautioned them, “and filled with secrets. You may not be able to handle it. If anything goes wrong, throw down the armor and leave it behind.”
Alaythia and Simon stared back at him nervously.
“Let’s be going,” said Aldric.
They trekked closer to the mansion, Aldric keeping the Russian guards up front.
“Call your master,” said Aldric when they reached the great doors of the mansion. Then he, Simon, and Alaythia took cover behind a statue.
The Russian soldiers took turns rapping the brass snake-head door knocker, until it suddenly came to life. “What do you want with the General today?” it said, with a vicious voice.
“We have much to discuss,” said the first soldier.
“I doubt he has much to say to you, unintelligent drone,” said the brass head. “Who is seeing to the General’s business if you are here and not working at his labors?”
“We are seeing to his business by coming here,” said the second soldier. “We need to see him.”
“He will see no one now,” said the brass figure. “He has urgent business this day.”
Aldric glared at the second soldier, urging him on.
The second man tried once more. “I insist you let us in.”
The brass face angered. “You insist? You do not give orders to the General. No one is allowed in today. And impertinent trespassers will be prosecuted.”
Trapdoors on either side of the doorway opened beneath the guards, and they fell into a deep darkness. Cats deluged the trapdoor, diving down from all directions.
“Feed, my lovelies,” said the brass head, and the trapdoors slammed shut.
“Hurry,” said Aldric, and he smashed his shield into the front entry, slashing the knocker’s head off the door.
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