Free The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

the Dragonslayers could do little. By the time the year was out and snow once more blanketed the land, only three Dragons had been slain to seven lost Dragonslayers. It was a disaster, and the seventy-eight kings, emperors, queens, presidents, dictators, dukes and elected representatives who paid Mu’shad Waseed for not very much fiercely regretted not spending the extra eleven dray-weights of gold and employing the Mighty Shandar instead.’
    ‘That’s quite a story,’ I said as Mother Zenobia stopped for breath, ‘but if there were still dozens of dragons, where did all the forehead-jewels come from?’
    ‘No one knows,’ replied Mother Zenobia. ‘Perhaps the Dragon census was inaccurate, or Waseed decided to claim his reward by making false jewels. How am I meant to know? But that’s not the best bit.’
    She paused for a moment, produced a pair of pliers from the air and plunged them into the Quarkbeast’s open mouth.
    ‘Sister Angeline had a Quarkbeast,’ she mentioned in explanation and, panting slightly with exertion, added, ‘A pair of pliers, a corkscrew and an angle-grinder should be included in the grooming kit. Ah – got it!’
    She withdrew the pliers as the Quarkbeast shut his jaws with a snap. In the pliers was a piece of twisted metal.
    ‘Piece of a tin can. Just behind the fifth canific molarcisor. Common problem. Where was I?’
    ‘You were about to tell me the best bit.’
    Mother Zenobia smiled.
    ‘This: the Mighty Shandar did not return that winter. He did not return that spring. Summer turned to autumn, turned back to summer and then to spring again. And then one day, the following summer after that , Shandar reappeared.
    ‘“Sorry I’m late,” he said once all the ambassadors had gathered before him, “I had one or two things to attend to.”
    ‘“You must help us,” begged the ambassadors, all hastily replaced but one, “Mu’shad Waseed tried to create Dragonslayers, but now the Dragon Question is worse than ever—”
    ‘“I know, I know,” said the Mighty Shandar, interrupting them, “I read all about it in the papers. Frightful business. My price for peace with the Dragons is now twenty dray-weights of gold. Do you accept?”
    ‘After a brief conversation, the seventy-eight ambassadors accepted unconditionally, and Shandar got to work.
    ‘In the first year he learned to speak Dragon. In the second year he learned where the Dragons held their annual general meeting. In the third and fourth year he attended the meetings, and in the fifth, he spoke.
    ‘“Oh, Dragons wise and bountiful,” he said, although we have only his word for what happened, as no one accompanied him. “The humans seek my help in destroying you, and I could do precisely that . . .”
    ‘Here he turned the Dragon next to him to stone to demonstrate what he could do.
    ‘“Paltry human!” scoffed Earthwise, the elected head of the Dragon Council. “Watch this!”
    ‘But try as he might, not even the finest magic of the strongest Dragon could turn their comrade back from stone again. Nor could they even attack Shandar, as he had woven a force of electricity between himself and the Dragons, and anyone who came close got their claws zapped. When they had calmed down, Shandar changed the stone Dragon back to flesh again and said:
    ‘“You have seen my word of death. With it you know that my word of life will be true also. Men will not be puny mortals for ever. I can see a time when the cannonballs they annoy you with now will be even more powerful; great land creatures made of iron will crawl up to your lairs and blast you with cannons more powerful than you can possibly imagine. After that I see winged creatures of steel flying faster than sound itself. I can see all this in the future and I say to you now that peace needs to be made with the humans.”
    ‘Earthwise looked at him, a wisp of smoke escaping out of his nostrils and floating to the roof of the cave. Earthwise could see parts of