CHAPTER NINE ―
WHERE DRAGONS DWELL
At first light, a heavy shower of rain woke them, and the fire sizzled, steamed, spluttered and went out. Cold and soaked to the skin, the band of travellers made their way up to the rim and continued south, entering a forest of grass. The rain stopped as they marched in single file along the flattened trails.
“What do you think made these?” Tommy asked.
“Some very large animals that I hope we don’t bump into,” Fig said.
“Could be elephants,” Tommy guessed, looking from one side to the other of the wide corridor in the grass, which a double-decker bus could have passed along with room to spare.
“Somehow I think that if this world has elephants, then they’ll be twice as big as and ten times more dangerous than the ones where we come from,” Sam said.
“And Gorf saw a bright glow,” Ben said. “Maybe whatever it is only comes out at night.”
“I don’t like the sound of giant animals carrying torches,” Speedy said.
The sun came out, and as the temperature rose, insects buzzed and darted around them. Mosquitoes the size of hornets were biting them, and only Gorf and Pook were not troubled. Having thick fur had its benefits.
Gorf stopped in front of the first large patch of scorched earth he came to. It reminded Sam, Ben and Tommy of the black circle that nothing now grew on in the field at the edge of Grassington, almost opposite the National Park Centre entrance, where an enormous bonfire had been built the previous year for November the fifth. The official firework display had been as good as anything they had ever seen on TV. Starbursts of all colours had exploded like giant chrysanthemums to light up the night sky. And there had been trays of treacle toffee, and even a roast chestnut stall.
Sam felt weepy. She remembered Emily gripping her hand and screaming with delight as each firework went off. It had been a spectacular evening, and afterwards they had enjoyed fish and chips with salt and vinegar on, served to them by Tommy’s mother at the local ‘chippie’. Walking down the street and eating their supper with greasy fingers was a wonderful way to end a perfect day. Sam could almost taste the battered, flaky, white haddock.
“That must have been the glow you saw, Gorf,” Fig said. “Someone had a much bigger fire than ours burning last night.”
They carried on, and the grass became shorter, and then very soggy and marshy underfoot. The ground sloped down to the edge of a lagoon. It was tropical, surrounded by mangrove trees, just how Tommy imagined the Everglades in Florida to be.
“We’ll have to go around it,” Fig said. “And hope it doesn’t stretch for miles.”
Gorf hesitated, walked down to where the ground was muddy, and knelt next to something. It was a footprint, and near it were many more. Each was almost as long as his bow.
“What made them, Gorf?” Speedy asked the kneeling troll.
Gorf shrugged his massive shoulders. “I have no idea. Something extremely big.”
“Looks like giant birds’ footprint,” Sam said.
“More like a Tyrannosaurus Rex,” Tommy said, examining the indentations.
“What’s a tyroni..tyranta―?” Speedy started.
“Tyrannosaurus,” Tommy said. “Tyrannosaurs were one of the most fearsome carnivores to ever walk the...our Earth. A top predator for millions of years.”
“I suppose you read about them,” Fig said.
“Yeah. I know all about them.”
“How big are they?” Speedy asked.
Tommy pointed at a mangrove tree about twenty feet tall. “They grew to about that big, maybe bigger, and weighed four or five tons.”
“What is a ton?” Gorf asked.
“Heavy. More than the weight of all of us put together. So five tons is―”
“Very heavy. Let’s get as far away from here as possible,” Fig said. “This might be their local water hole, and I don’t want to be anywhere near it when they get thirsty.”
Skirting the lagoon, they kept moving, not stopping to eat or rest. It was during the late afternoon, while pushing through thick, clumpy, knee-high grass, when everything happened.
The ground shook, and a herd of animals resembling cattle, but with two pairs of long, curved horns instead of one, cut across their path, racing wild-eyed, bumping and jostling each other as they galloped along.
Sam gasped as with great strides a scaly beast the size of a double-decker bus bore down on the herd. Its head was at least five feet long, and its neck was stretched forward. The sight of it brought back the memory of the dream she had had on the night before they had found the gold chalice. As she and the others watched, the giant predator opened its massive jaws to disclose rows of fangs that made Ben think of the pointed stalagmites and stalactites in the cavern of the spiders.
With a deafening roar, the reptile breathed out a long jet of flame, and the old animal that was limping along behind the rest of the herd was immediately charred black, and looked like a potato roasted in a fire...but with legs.
“It’s a dragon,” Gorf said. “I didn’t think they existed.”
“Well now you know they do,” Speedy said.
The huge dragon stopped, put one great foot on the smoking carcass, to hold it in place, and lowered its jaws to tear at the partly cooked animal’s flesh.
“Wicked!” Tommy said as the dragon lifted its head up and gulped down ragged chunks of steaming meat.
The dragon was a magnificent beast. Its eyes were almost golden, with black slits for pupils. It raised its head, and its flared nostrils sniffed at the air, before it lowered its rippling, muscular neck, snapped up the remains of the cow-like animal and headed off towards some distant trees.
“Now we know what made the trails in the grass, and the scorch marks,” Ben said.
“And what I saw glowing in the dark,” Gorf added.
“What shall we do?” Sam said. “If one of those catches us out in the open, we’ll end up like that poor animal did.”
“We need to stay near the lagoon,” Fig said. “I don’t think it would follow us into water.”
“What if it can swim?” Speedy asked.
“Then we get eaten, but not cooked first,” Gorf said.
They stayed close to the mangrove swamp at the edge of the lagoon, and followed its shoreline until it was almost dark. It was to be the most miserable night they had spent since leaving the Oak Palace. Lighting a fire might have attracted a dragon, or something equally dangerous, so they split up into two groups. Fig, Speedy and Gorf climbed up into one tree, and Sam, Ben and Tommy – with Pook clinging to Tommy’s back – climbed the one next to it. They made themselves as comfortable as possible astride thick branches, and waited for daylight.
“You okay, Pook?” Tommy asked, cuddling the bear in the same way he had done years ago, every night in bed.
“In a word, no,” Pook said. “I didn’t know that being alive would be so scary. And feeling cold and hungry isn’t much fun. And my legs ache, and my paws are very sore. And―”
“I get the picture,” Tommy said. “Bad stuff happens, Pook. My mum once said that the bad days make the good days all that more special. And that you’ve got to have rain as well as sunshine.”
“I’d rather just have good, sunny days,” Pook said.
Tommy agreed. So would he.
“That wasn’t a tyrannosaur,” Sam said.
“No, but it looked like a dinosaur, and it was even more awesome than a T-rex,” Tommy replied, sounding excited. “Did you see those bony plates at the sides of its head? And the wings on its back?”
“They were too small for it to be able to fly,” Ben said.
“Maybe,” Sam said. “Anything can happen in this place. You should know that by now. And what about bumble bees? They’re supposed to be too heavy for the size of their wings to fly, but they can.”
“It was brilliant to see,” Tommy said. “It was coloured like camo gear, all patchy oli
ve and green and light brown. You could be two feet away from it and not see it if it didn’t move.”
During the night, they heard the grass rustling, and saw bursts of flame in the distance, that they now knew to be dragons flame-grilling some unfortunate prey. And the leaves of the trees they were in trembled, and the branches shook more than once as something big plodded past below them in the darkness.
When dawn broke, they climbed back down to the ground. They were all aching and tired, except for Gorf, who never seemed to feel any discomfort.
They watched as a large, white bird glided down from a treetop and skimmed across the lily pad-covered surface of the murky lagoon. It dipped its long, curved beak into the water and grasped a small fish. And as it flapped its wings and began to rise, a huge, pointed snout came up, snatched the bird by its legs and dragged it beneath the surface. A large triangular dorsal fin just a little darker green than the lily pads and as big as a small yacht’s mainsail appeared, and then vanished again.
“That counts out diving in there to get away from a dragon,” Sam said. “Nowhere is safe.”
“Those hills are no more than half a day’s walk away,” Fig said, pointing to the distant range. “If we can make it across the rest of this grassy plain, then I think we’ll be all right.”
Gorf opened his bag and took out one of the gifts that Mephisto had given them to protect themselves with. It was an arrow, but no ordinary one. It appeared to be made of hollow glass, pointed at one end. It was slender and longer than his own wooden arrows, and was iridescent, containing all the colours of the rainbow swirling within it.
“Richard of York gained battle in vain,” Tommy said, looking at the arrow.
“And just what does that mean?” Speedy asked.
“It’s an easy way to remember the colours of a rainbow, and what order they are in: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.”
“Oh. And who was Richard?”
“Some king. We used to have lots of them. But nowadays we only have one king or queen at a time in what we call the United Kingdom.”
“Do you think that the arrow will kill a dragon?” Sam asked Gorf, interrupting the conversation between Tommy and Speedy.
“I don’t know, Sam. But I do know that my own arrows would just bounce off the scales. If one attacks us, then I might as well try it.”
They began to walk across the plain, looking all around for dragons.
“Head for that,” Fig said, pointing to a large round tower that was standing in the middle of a burnt patch of ground. “We can rest in it for a while and wait for nightfall, before we make a dash for the hills.”
“I...I think we might be t...too late,” Ben said as the ground seemed to come alive less than fifty yards to their right.
The dragon raised itself up on its hind legs, looked in their direction, and roared. It had been resting, sleeping after a night spent hunting buffalo and tusked hogs. The loud bellowing from its cavernous mouth froze them to the spot with fear. The beast scraped its feet on the ground in the way a bull will before charging, then lowered its head and made straight for them, gathering speed with every step.
“Run! Run!” Gorf shouted to the others as the dragon advanced.
Tommy didn’t need to be told twice. With Pook tucked under his arm, he raced off in the direction of the tower. The rest of them followed, leaving Gorf to face the dragon alone.
Gorf stood his ground, fitted the glittering arrow to his bow, drew back the string as far as it would go, and took careful aim.
The dragon lurched to a stop in front of him. It was not used to its prey standing still and facing it. Taking a vast amount of air into its lungs, which swelled its chest out, the dragon made ready to burn Gorf up. Thin ribbons of blue-grey smoke drifted out of its nostrils, and Gorf knew that it was about to incinerate him. He let the arrow go, and watched it fly straight and true, to penetrate the thick skull and sink into the dragon’s brain.
The dragon jerked, and then snorted. It was swaying on its feet as if drunk. A thick, purple tongue slipped out from between its jaws, to slap wetly against a scaly chin. Shuddering from head to foot, it lost all control of its muscles and toppled over to thud onto the ground like a felled tree, flattening a vast area of grass beneath it. The mighty jaws snapped shut, and razor sharp teeth sliced through the fat tongue, severing it. Dark green blood gushed from the reptile’s mouth, to foam in a growing pool around the enormous head.
Gorf walked up to the mortally wounded animal. The small wings on its back flapped weakly, and with a smoky sigh, the dragon died.
Sitting astride its neck, Gorf gripped the end of the arrow with both hands and strained to pull it free. With a sucking sound, the shaft came out, and Gorf fell backwards, down onto the grass.
Wiping the bloody arrow clean on his tunic, he watched as its bright colours faded. The glass became brittle, began to splinter, and then shattered into a million glittering particles. Mephisto had told them that each one of the three items could only be used once. Now, to save them from the dragon, the magic arrow was gone.
Shouldering his bow, Gorf jogged after the others to the tower.
“Neat shooting, Gorf,” Tommy said when the troll joined them outside the door of the tower. “You really nailed that freakzoid.”
“Oh, no, there are more of them,” Sam said, looking in the direction that they had come from. They counted five dragons, not more than a quarter of a mile distant, all heading towards the tower.
“We can’t get inside,” Speedy said to Gorf. “The door’s locked.”
The door was made of steel that was blackened with soot, and there was no handle or keyhole. The surface had deep scratch marks gouged into its surface. Stepping back a few paces, Gorf ran at it, crashing into it with his shoulder, only to bounce off. The door did not budge, and Gorf rubbed his now bruised shoulder.
High above, a steel window shutter opened in the wall and a face poked out and looked down at them.
“What want you?” a shrill voice shouted.
“To come in, please,” Sam said. “There are dragons heading this way.”
“You not in here allowed,” was the squeaky reply.
“But we’ll be fried alive and eaten,” Tommy shouted back.
“Then shouldn’t in this preserve you be.”
“What do you mean, preserve?” Ben asked.
“Where dwell the last great dragons.”
“Who are you?” Fig asked.
“Matamu, the Lord Sylvester’s dragon keeper.”
“What does that mean?”
“I the hunts arrange, for the apprentice knights their tests to pass.”
“I don’t want to worry you unduly, Fig,” Ben said. “But if this back-to-front talking dork doesn’t let us in soon, we’ll all wind up like well-done burger meat.”
“I’ve already slain one of your dragons,” Gorf shouted up to Matamu. “And if you don’t give us shelter, then I will have to kill more. It’s your decision.”
The window shutter slammed shut.
“I think you upset him, Gorf,” Sam said.
There was nowhere to run or hide. The dragons had the base of the tower surrounded. One of them, the biggest, came to within thirty feet of where they stood. Drops of flame dripped from its mouth as it made ready to burn them up.
Gorf fired one of his arrows at it, but the sharp point could not penetrate the creature’s thick, scaly hide and bounced off. He needed more of the magic arrows.
They all closed their eyes, huddled together, and waited for the hot sheet of flame to hit them. They were pressed up against the door, and when it was yanked open, they fell in.
Even as Matamu closed it, the door was hit by a jet of flame. Gorf’s fur caught fire, and the others beat it out with their hands and bags. He was lucky to escape with just a bare patch on one shoulder and a few blisters on the navy-blue coloured skin that was now revealed.
&nb
sp; “Okay, in you are,” Matamu said. “You will here stay until the next knight in three moons’ time arrives. Bring him in a dragon-proof cart they will, and you back to the castle will taken be.”
Cripes, he’s ugly, Tommy thought. The creature that called itself Matamu had the look of a deformed turtle, possessing no forehead or hair. It had a snout with beak-like jaws, and large, watery-yellow eyes. Its body was encased in a thick shell, from which short arms and legs protruded. Unlike a real turtle, it stood upright.
Inside, the tower was similar to a windmill. There were six floors, each reached by a wooden ladder bracketed to the wall and leading up to a trapdoor above it.
Matamu led them up to the very top of the tower, from where they had an unrestricted view all around. To the west they could see the distant outline of a large castle that looked very similar to the one in the Magic Kingdom at Disney World in Florida.
From below them came a loud roar, and flame hit the hard, heat resistant volcanic rock that the tower was built from, to shoot up in front of their faces.
“You worry need not to,” Matamu said. “The dragons away soon will go. They know that get in here they cannot.”
Matamu led them back down to the fifth floor. “Where from do you creatures come?” he asked them as they gathered round a table that had a small-scale model of the tower and dragon preserve on its top.
“We have journeyed far,” Fig replied. “Through the Living Forest, across the Desert of Storms, and into the Valley of Mist, before reaching this place.
“That impossible sounds,” Matamu said. “Thought I that the world beyond the Royal Preserve of the Dragon in a cliff edge ended in that direction.”
“Thought you wrong,” Tommy said, adopting ‘Turtlespeak’. “You obviously travelled a lot haven’t.”
“Don’t you start talking like Yoda,” Sam said. “I’m having enough trouble following what Matamu says.”
“Do you know how far the Lake of Life is from here?” Fig asked.
“The shiny sea five moons walk away be. Why go there would you?” Matamu asked.
“To reach the Crossroads of Time,” Speedy replied.
“A place of people vanished,” Matamu said. “No one who there ventures comes ever back. You wiser would be to where came you from return.”
“We have to go on,” Sam said. “But thank you for giving us shelter from the dragons, and for your advice.”
Matamu could not smile. His horny beak only opened up and down, and did not allow him to form any expression on his leathery face.
“Welcome you are,” he said. “Please water and food have. On the floor below find it you will. I must my duty get back now to.”
Going over to a window, Matamu opened the shutter and looked out, then opened others around the room, so that by walking in a circle he could see in every direction. After a few circuits, he returned to the table and moved small glass models of dragons to different parts of it. There were sixty of the little creatures in all. Tommy counted them. And they were all painted with a different combination of coloured bands, so that each individual dragon’s location was known at all times.
“Let’s eat,” Speedy said. “I’m starving.”
“I hope he has some pancakes,” Pook said, rubbing his tummy.
They left Matamu to his job of dragon spotting, and climbed down the ladder to the fourth floor. There was a large round table made from a massive tree stump, with smaller stumps placed around it to sit on.
Gorf sniffed out the food. There were chunky loaves of dark brown bread, full of some type of grain, and a large wedge of what looked to be Danish Blue cheese that smelled really terrible. From a hook in a stone fireplace hung a steaming pot of thick soup over a crackling fire.
They ate some bread and cheese, and Gorf found some wood bowls and served them with the soup. There were no spoons that they could find, so they dipped the bread into the soup to soak it up.
Tommy picked up his bowl and began drinking noisily from it, then cried out and dropped it, spilling the contents all over the table and down his trousers.
“Eyes!” Sam said, pushing her own bowl away. “It’s got eyes in it.”
Sure enough, the chunky, brown soup was full of eyes that might have been from birds or fish, or some other small creatures.
“Wrong is something?” Matamu called down to them.
“The soup is what’s wrong,” Tommy shouted. “It’s got eyes in it.”
“Good is rats’ eyes for you,” Matamu replied.
“RATS!” Tommy cried. “You mean we’ve been eating rats’ eye soup?”
“And their tails and feet chopped up is also there in. Good soup make I, yes?”
“Yes,” Gorf said. “I think it tastes almost as good as broth made from the brains of spadefoot targs.”
Tommy swallowed hard and clamped his lips tightly shut, but could not stop himself from being sick. He turned sideways, away from the table, and threw up...all over Pook.
“Oh, thank you very much,” Pook said. “That’s all I needed. If today hadn’t been bad enough already, you have to make it worse by puking on me.”
“S...Sorry, Pook,” Tommy groaned. “It was an accident. I couldn’t help it. It was the thought of eating eyes and feet and...”
...and he upchucked again, and Pook used bad language that only a bear knows, as the parts of his fur that had not already been barfed on were coated in the hot, lumpy liquid.
Gorf carried on eating. It was his kind of food. He was used to eating all sorts of animals, and never wasted any part of them that wasn’t poisonous.
For the next three days, the others stuck to bread and cheese, and a flan that Matamu baked using some kind of eggs, cheese, and an orange vegetable that looked like a pepper but tasted oniony.
It was on the fourth morning that the steel cart arrived. It was as big as a six-berth caravan, and was pulled by four horses that were harnessed inside the front of the vehicle, with no floor beneath them. And as the cart stopped next to the tower’s door, a dozen dragons appeared and bellowed at it from a distance.
A large flap in the side of the ‘caravan’ popped open and dead animals as big as sheep but with black fur instead of wool were catapulted out into the air. The dragons belched fire on them, maybe to heat them up, or to burn the fur off them, or perhaps because they thought that they were still alive. And as they feasted, a door at the rear of the caravan opened, a ramp was lowered, and a trainee knight in armour rode a pure white stallion down it and into the tower. He carried a shield of burnished copper, and a long lance.
“How can he kill dragons?” Tommy asked Matamu.
“By very brave being,” Matamu replied. “His shield the fiery breath deflect will. And the tip of his lance with a swamp snake’s venom is coated. If the heart of the dragon the knight strikes, and to Lord Sylvester returns he its head to, then pass the test he will have, and proclaimed a knight proper he will be. Now go, in the cart get, and taken to safety you shall be.”
They thanked Matamu for his hospitality, ran up the ramp and entered the strange vehicle. The door closed behind them, and they were greeted by a figure made of metal that appeared to be a robot.
―