“Curses! I keep forgetting how fragile humans are!” rumbled a huge voice. Derk recognized it as the one that had been calling him. “Are you badly hurt?” the voice asked him.
Derk scrambled slowly around on his knees to stare at the enormous green dragon lying by the stream just below him. It glistened healthily in the rain. At first he thought it was a complete stranger. Then he saw the stitches in the nearest vast peaked wing. “Oh,” he said, “it’s you.”
“And if I had not specifically called you, I would not have known you either,” the dragon rumbled. “My apologies. I asked you here to make amends. Once your wife had explained the situation to me, I saw that I had acted hastily and stupidly. I should never have burned you.”
“Er, thanks. Very decent of you,” Derk answered.
“Not decent,” boomed the dragon. “Ashamed. It was not you I should have attacked. But I was angry, very angry and shamed. I had been asleep—possibly I had settled down to die—when I was suddenly woken to find the world a different place. Dragons I had known as infants were now not only full grown but—of all things!—kowtowing to humans, taking part in a ridiculous game. And when I asked them their reasons, all they would do was stare into distance and pretend to be immeasurably wise.”
“Yes, they do that, the modern dragons,” Derk said. “I thought it was the dragon way.”
“I don’t hold with it,” said the great green dragon. “No living creature has the right to claim wisdom. There is always more to find out. I should know that. I imagine you know it, too, Wizard.”
“I’ve never ever felt wise,” Derk said frankly. “But I suppose it is a temptation, to stare into distance and make people think you are.”
“It’s humbug,” said the dragon. “It’s also stupid. It stops you learning more. I went away from the adults and asked the fledgling dragons. There are only two of them. That’s bad. Dragon numbers are badly down. They said the adults are too busy with those Pilgrim Parties to breed these days. So I asked about the Pilgrim Parties, and they told me that a Mr. Chesney is responsible for them and that the dragons side with this Mr. Chesney because he is the chief evil in the world. Foolishness. Dragons are never on anyone’s side. And they told me also that the Dark Lord represents Mr. Chesney in our world. I was very angry and very shamed for my people, and I came here directly, intending, I am afraid, to kill the Dark Lord. You were lucky, Wizard, that I was tired and feeble and had no real fire.”
“It was bad enough as it was,” Derk admitted. “What woke you up?”
“I wish I could remember,” said the dragon. “It’s been puzzling me. At my age, in my condition, I should simply have slept until I died. Of course I didn’t know how bad I was. Your wife and that little healer woman had to tell me. But I should have been too feeble to wake. All I know is that something did wake me, something that struck me like blue lightning—maybe it was lightning, though how it reached my cave I can’t think—and that I was awake and learning from the minds around me that this world had become a small, bad place.”
Derk had a notion what the blue lightning might have been. So I brought this on myself by trying to conjure a demon! he thought. But that was a small, fleeting thought beside his eager delight at discovering this dragon could read minds. It was something he had hoped the griffins would be able to do, and he had always been disappointed that they couldn’t. I’m ridiculous, he thought. Here I am on a wet hillside, getting soaked in this rain and feeling too ill to get up, and all I can think of is that there truly is a creature who can read minds. “I’m quite excited to know you read minds,” he told the dragon. “There aren’t many who can these days.”
“Nobody bothers to practice, that’s all,” said the dragon. “It used to be one of the first things they made you do when you started to learn magic. You could do it, Wizard, if you’d been properly taught. And be thankful that I was properly taught. I’ve been lying here learning things about you and about your household that I wouldn’t otherwise know. If I hadn’t, I might have killed most of your little cat-birds—certainly the brown one. She was most insulting. But the other two were quite rude, too.”
“What, Lydda and Elda as well?” said Derk. He was impressed that they had had the courage to insult a dragon. Callette was big enough to think she might get away with it—though she had seen what happened to Kit—but Lydda was only about the size of one of the mayor’s cows, and Elda w
as smaller than that. And the dragon had eaten at least half the mayor’s herd. I must pay the mayor back! Derk thought. Where do I find any money? “I apologize for my griffin daughters,” he said.
“They were worried about you,” the dragon explained, “and they rightly blamed me. They took out their temper on me. And it was the same with the two very thin people—though no doubt they hoped I would not think them worth eating. I saw my own behavior in theirs. It is impressive the way all your people have such great regard for you, Wizard. But the skinny small boy, your son, is the one who troubles me most—”
“Did Blade insult you, too?” Derk groaned.
“He was entirely polite,” the dragon said. “But it was partly on his account I called you here. It seems that he and three others are engaged in marching six hundred murderers across the country.”
What a mess! Derk groaned again. Apart from the danger, there should surely have been more than six hundred soldiers. Barnabas said there were to be a thousand. “Yes, I’d better see about that at once,” he said. He tried to scramble up, but his feet slipped in the wet grass, and his knees refused to hold him.
“Wait and hear me out!” The dragon puffed out a cloud of steam. The steam surrounded Derk in moist warmth, smelling grassy and sweet and quite unlike the smokes it had tried to kill Derk with. “I was about to say that this is where I should make reparation. Speaking as something of a murderer myself, I would say your other fledglings are in trouble.”
“I know they are!” Derk said faintly.
“Then I suggest that if you will give me your authority, I go and try intimidating these murderers.”
“Willingly,” said Derk. “Any authority you want.”
“While you go back to your house and continue to heal,” said the dragon.
“I’m well enough,” Derk lied.
“You are not. I have been healing you as you sat here,” said the dragon. “This was my other reparation. But you will need at least one more day in which to recover your strength. Meanwhile I should perhaps tell you that you have six members of the Elder Race, as they wrongly call themselves—dragons are much older—waiting in your house upon some footling errand of honor which they regard as hugely important.”
“Oh,” said Derk. “Bother, I’d forgotten those elves. I’d better see them now.”
He stood up again. This time his knees seemed stronger, although they showed a tendency to forget they had kneecaps and to try to bend the wrong way. He steadied himself with one hand on the soaking hillside and watched the dragon stand up, too. It stood by stages, front legs first and then, with a roaring grunt and a long puff of steam, heaving its back legs under it. The mayor’s cows belled with terror. “I know how you feel,” the dragon remarked, with its huge face now level with Derk’s. “I’m off for a practice flight to see if I still need the stitches in this wing. If all goes well, I shall glide gently in pursuit of your fledglings. Expect to find me with them.”
Derk nodded and managed to translocate himself home as far as the terrace. While he hung on to the outdoor table there for a moment, wild cackling from Big Hen and squeals from the pigs alerted him to the fact that the dragon was now in the air. He looked up and saw it pass above the house, dwarfing everything with its huge wingspread, grass green and glittering under the rain. It was a magnificant sight, even though it did fly rather slowly and stiffly.
“And this house has to be turned into a Citadel! Gods! The things I still have to do!” Derk groaned. He let go of the table and tottered to the dining room.