Jason Hightman - The Saint of Dragons - Samurai

The fox wriggled its snout at him and Simon felt a tickling in his head as if whiskers had brushed over his brain. Then Fenwick held its mouth open, as if its breath held magic. And it did, Simon had learned.

He had, over time, earned the animal’s trust enough to be rewarded with a bit of his mother’s magic, a spell she’d left on him: Fenwick brought Simon things the fox had heard.

First, Simon saw only darkness and heard a group of voices, all of them boys, kids he knew from the Lighthouse School. Fenwick had eavesdropped on them and captured their conversation in the wind, pulling it into his mouth.

Now Simon saw them in his mind, talking about him:

“Weird guy …”

“Always by himself when I see him …”

“What’s so weird about him? He’s just home-schooled.”

“You ever know anybody home-schooled? It means their parents are kinda out of it.”

“I’m not saying that, but he’s never there, he won’t talk about what he learns all day, I see him out there practising with, like, a steel lance, riding his horse, it’s totally bizarre and if you get close, his dad chases you away from the house.”

“His dad is weird.”

“That lady isn’t though. Is that his mum?”

“No, she’s too young …”I think she might be a stepmum or something. She’s really nice. I’ve talked to her a few times in town. If it weren’t for her, I’d think that place he lives in was a nuthouse.”

“He always liked playing with fire when he was here,” said one boy.

Another said, “He was always building bonfires out on the beach. It’s totally obvious he was the one who set fire to the joke shop, ’cause that girl who works there said she didn’t want to see him any more.”

Simon groaned. Now he was prime suspect in town for the fire that had ruined his home. Life was interesting. Very interesting.

He patted the fox, wondering if Fenwick felt sorry for him.

He would have felt sorry for himself – but a scream interrupted his thoughts.

Alaythia.

What Alaythia saw with her dream-eyes was not a world anyone would seek out. For the longest hour she’d ever known, she had experienced life, or pieces of it anyway, as a female Pyrothrax from Brazil, the Ashlover Serpent.

Alaythia saw herself burning the houses of the poor throughout South America; she saw herself consuming lost children, runaways on the streets of Rio de Janeiro during crazed celebrations in the night. She heard strange music in the serpent’s head and contemplated the moon in the jungle with such love, she was surely insane.

When the Ashlover burned bones and flesh, Alaythia felt the fire leave her mouth, and it felt sweet in her throat, like ambrosia, like chocolate, like rainwater after a desert journey. The flames gave her visions and a sense of giddy joy, every time a different taste than the last.

The memories were a clash of events, a jumble. Alaythia would see one thing happen, then another, without knowing when they happened, but among all these events she could hear a calling, a cry, a memory of a sound in the serpent’s head.

The Ashlover Serpent had been drawn to New England, called there, pulled there, by a humming in its ears, by a force, a need, and it had followed the source all the way through South America, north through Mexico, and up the ragged North American coast to Ebony Hollow. The serpent had been plagued with terrible dreams. It had needed to stop these nightmarish visions. And so it had gone to the source: the castle home of the St Georges …”and to Alaythia.

Alaythia’s love for Aldric had sent a sound and a light and a tremor into the world that she could not control; it was true of all magicians who fell in love with a Dragonhunter. All magicians were women, and from the Old Ages it was always a terrible risk for them to fall in love with the knights they protected. The dragons could feel this power emanating from the magician and could track it. It was as simple as following a beacon of light.

The Ashlover Dragon had come for Alaythia.

More would come now.

Alaythia knew she would have to leave this house.

There is no other way , Alaythia’s note read. The serpents can find us wherever we go; they can catch the scent of our emotions the way blood in the water draws a shark. I cannot hide my feelings for you, Aldric, or, for that matter, for Simon. I don’t know how to bury them. I cannot stop feeling .

Simon sat at the table in the dim early light as Aldric paced the ruined kitchen.

“Dreamer,” Aldric muttered. An insult judging by his tone.

Barely awake, Simon ran a hand through his hair and stared at the letter again. He’d seen it first, but he still couldn’t quite believe it and he found himself reading aloud in a whisper, If there is a magic I can learn that will disguise my feelings, a way to hide so no serpent can find us, I do not know what it is. The hope I have is that I can find the Chinese Black Dragon and bargain with him for help of some kind. He is no ordinary dragon and if he helped us once, perhaps he will again. Forgive me for leaving. With all of my love …”Alaythia .

“We’ve tried that, Alaythia,” grumbled Aldric, speaking to the letter as if she could hear him. “We weren’t able to find him, what’s different now?”

“Maybe she saw something in her dream,” said Simon quietly, remembering her expression in the trance. “Something from the dead serpent that gave her a clue about where the Black Dragon went.”

“Then why didn’t she tell us? We could’ve helped her.”

“Well, I guess she doesn’t think so. I mean, anywhere she goes with us, the dragons sense exactly where she is,” Simon protested.

“You’re being pretty bloody reasonable, aren’t you?”

“You think I like this?”

“Why didn’t you see this coming?”

“If you didn’t see it, how am I supposed to know what’s going on in her head?”

“You’re closer to her,” griped Aldric, and Simon felt himself turning red.

“Everything was going fine, we had it all set right, didn’t we?” Aldric muttered on. “It was all working. We could’ve got our minds round this together …”

“What’re you talking about?” said Simon, getting angry now. “Everything’s back the way it used to be. You get to yell and scream at me, and there’s no one to tell you you’re wrong. There’s nobody here on my side.”

“ I’m on your side.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You want to have a row right now? Fine. But you can’t blame everything on me. You’d like to, wouldn’t you?”

I’d like you to shut up , Simon was thinking, burning to say it.

“You’re a loner, Simon, you like being alone. You don’t have friends and you want it that way. Stop blaming me for every little thing in your life, for your own good.”

Aldric’s eyes hardened and Simon cowered inside as his father went on. “I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t you say it outright? I drove her away, is that it?”

Simon stared back. “Not on purpose, but I think, yeah, you wanted her out of here. Everything was just getting way too normal for you to stand it.”

“That’s a bunch of rot. Tell me where the note says anything like that,” Aldric retorted. “She was happy. I gave her a good place to hone her talents. I was always here for her.”

“You’re so here for her, she’s not here.”

“Well, I’m going to get her back.”

Silence. It took Simon a second to react. “We’re going to go after her?”

Aldric was tapping his pipe on his teeth the way he did when he was deep in thought, a habit that always annoyed Simon. “But figuring out where to start won’t be easy,” Aldric said, fumbling for a plan. “She could be anywhere. The Black Dragon hasn’t been seen since London. And Alaythia has a head start on us.”