the head. The eyeholes alone were big enough for Simon to walk through. The boy stayed at the door, clearly disturbed.
“Oh, come on, don’t be afraid,” said Aldric in disgust. “You can see it’s dead. Dead as Friday’s mutton. For heaven’s sake, you’re going to have to show some guts. We’re going after the real thing in a few hours.”
“But it’s so big,” said Simon. “I didn’t know it was so big.”
“That’s an old dragon,” said Aldric. “It’s six hundred years old. Haven’t you been listening? Dragons today are man-sized. They don’t look anything like this.”
The bones around the mouth and nose of the skeleton were black. The fire it spewed out must have burned the bone over time.
“What do the Dragonmen look like?” asked Simon.
“Like this,” said Aldric, and he thrust another skull into Simon’s face.
Simon almost screamed, but he held it in. The skull in Aldric’s hand was indeed smaller. It was quite a bit larger than a human skull, though, and shaped like a little replica of the giant fossil nearby.
“This is the skull of the Dragon of Seville,” said Aldric. “The first dragon I took on, when I was about your age. He was an ugly Pyrothrax. Had six rows of teeth. See? Like a shark.” Simon ran his fingers over the old teeth. Still sharp. “Father and I went in together. It was the first time I’d been out of England. Easiest serpent I ever killed.” His voice took on a melancholy tone. “The next one would put an end to Dad.” He took the skull back and set it on a shelf with at least a dozen more such skulls.
Simon’s eyes were drawn to several steel cases with glass doors on them. Inside the cases were lighted torches. Some of the torches burned green, some blue.
“Serpentfire can burn for a very long time if the magic is strong,” said Aldric. “It’s hard to handle, that kind of fire, it seems to have a mind of its own, but it can be a good tool if you have nothing else. You never, ever want to use it unless you need it. I keep it around in case of dire circumstances. I hate to admit anything Serpentine can be useful.” Absentmindedly he picked up a dragon’s claw from a pile of them on the table and used it to scratch his neck.
The room had a smell like old leather. On several cabinets and hung on the walls were layers of dragon hide. Simon reached out and touched the closest. It felt leathery and tough and scaly, like a snake, in parts.
“Serpent skin resists fire,” said Aldric, “unless the fire is from another dragon. Another good reason to keep serpentfire around. It used to be that the best way to kill a dragon was to introduce it to another dragon.”
“Really? They don’t like each other?”
“Oh, they despise each other. They despise everything, really. They’re just gluttons for hatred,” Aldric revealed. “It all goes back to the Queen of Serpents. Once she vanished, they turned against each other, all blaming the other for what had happened.”
“That was thousands of years ago,” recalled Simon.
“Yes, but they’ve never got over it,” was the answer. “They have long memories.”
“They?”
“It. I keep forgetting, there’s only one of the terrors left,” smiled Aldric. “We’re soon to be out of a job, aren’t we? Maybe we’ll go into the fishing business. Or, who knows, maybe this last one has a treasure we can make off with. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
He took the dragon hide from Simon. “It’s nasty material, this is, but you can drive a silver sword or a silver arrow through it if you move fast. You need the right weapons.”
With that, he clicked on another light, and on the far side of the room Simon could now see an entire wall filled with suits of armour and dragon-fighting equipment. There were swords of every kind, crossbows, shields, bows and arrows – everything made of silver.
It was an amazing sight. The boy’s jaw dropped.
He felt something brush against his leg and looked down to see Fenwick carefully moving in next to him.
“Get out of here, you fish-mongrel,” Aldric yelled at the fox, to no effect. “He seems to like you.”
But Simon’s eyes were on the weaponry.
“The favourite weapon of the Dragonhunter,” explained Aldric, “is the silver crossbow.” He went over to the wall and handed one to Simon. It was heavy, like holding a bowling ball.
“This one is yours.”
Simon stared at it in disbelief. “This is how you slay dragons?” he asked.
“No, this is how you harm dragons. Silver can hurt a dragon, but their skin regenerates over time. There is only one way for us to eliminate a dragon – to destroy it completely. And that is with a deathspell.”
“A what?”
“Long ago magicians discovered that every dragon has a spell that will bring it to an end,” Aldric related, “and every spell is written into the Book of Saint George. I know all the words to the spells; I’ve committed them to memory and so shall you, for the last of the creatures. Each dragon has a weakness. A soft piece of flesh in the middle of its chest, right over its heart. Its weakest part. You lay your hand on its heart, press against this skin and call out the deathspell. And the dragon will … expire.”
“What happens then?”
“They all go down differently,” said Aldric. “You’ll see it for yourself.”
Simon could hardly believe it. He was really going to hunt a dragon. He looked at his silver crossbow and noticed for the first time that it was covered in spell-writing. Runes. An enchanted protection of some kind.
Then he noticed a small piece of glass fitted over the middle of the weapon, and inside that glass was a small, burning light, a silver oval that was beating like a heart. The crossbow had a heart!
“It’s alive,” said Simon.
“Of course it’s alive,” said Aldric, “everything enchanted is alive. It will try to help you as best it can.”
The boy scratched his head, unnerved.
Fenwick sniffed at the crossbow. He seemed worried.
“Will you show me how to use it?” Simon asked.
There was a glint of pride in Aldric’s eye when he nodded.
“Our first and last hunt.”
The White Dragon was, indeed, purely white. His leathery skin was white with tiny cream speckles, with small white plates that stuck
