Free Dragonslayer: A Novel by Wayland Drew

said also that there is a stone . . ." He mused, remembering, his hand to his mouth, indifferent at first to the incredulous mutterings of the villagers. "No, no, not an ordinary stone, of course. In fact not a stone at all—the old manuscripts refer to it as res, a thing, but from the description. ... Of course, it is not all that certain that it exists, the two allusions that I have found are so old, so vague . . ."
    The crowd had grown restless, and the king's centurion bent forward and touched his elbow. "Hurry up!"
    The old man gathered his thoughts and concluded. "It is called res potentissimum, the most powerful of things, and it is said that it was made by that man whose carelessness made dragons. It is said that, overcome by shame and guilt, he poured all the best of his craft and gathered power into it, so that the whole of the Old Sorcery is magically concentrated there . . ." He stood silent, lost in contemplation.
    "And?" the crowd asked.
    "Where is it?"
    "Does it exist?"
    "How does that help?"
    "But perhaps the very knowledge . . ." He shook his head slowly, and raised his empty palms to the audience. He had no more to say. He stepped down leaving the crowd disgruntled, so that, even after the king stood again, it was several minutes before they fell silent.
    "There is, alas," the king said, speaking with difficulty and with frequent pauses, "little solace in these scholarly pursuits. No, the third alternative is the only one I can recommend to you, because it alone has a chance of success. Tomorrow is the equinox. We know that dragons are most active then, although we do not know why. And . . . and we know, too, that they are insatiably fond of the flesh of young women, particularly maidens . . ."
    The king was unable to finish his sentence, or to continue looking at the hopeful, upraised faces before him. But he did not need to finish. The significance of his suggestion swiftly dawned on the villagers. In the long silence that followed, when they found that they could not meet each other's gazes, they knew the first twist-ings of shared guilt, and they took the first steps to enclose that guilt in ritual.
    "I believe," the king said at last, "that there is no other way."
    Vermithrax slept that night on the ledge at the mouth of its cave.
    Just before dawn, it became aware of movement in Swanscombe. At first it was so slight that the dragon did not rouse itself, allowing it to play like a distant insect on the edge of its vision. When at last Vermithrax's eyes focused, it saw that a small snake of light had detached itself from the village and was winding through the sparse woods and along the gullies toward the cave. The dragon's head lifted; its tail flicked. It watched the little serpentine line draw closer. At the head was a group of horsemen on mounts. Some of the horsemen were armed, some were not. In their midst was a striking pair—a warrior all in black, and a female clothed in white. Behind the horsemen followed several knots of villagers, each clustered about a torch. The dragon's gaze lingered here and there as it passed down the line; but it was to the white-gowned figure that its eye always was drawn back.
    When the procession reached the edge of the blackened area, it fanned out and stopped. Alone, the horses of the black warrior and the white maiden came forward, stepping gingerly among the ashes and flinching under the man's prodding. Their whinnying stirred the dragon's digestive juices, and it inched forward. A strand of saliva spilled between its jaws and hissed into the granite. Spasms ran through the muscles of its wings; its legs quivered. It was on the verge of slipping from the ledge, gliding the intervening half league, and engulfing both man and woman in a wash of flame. But it hesitated.
    About half-way to the mouth of the cave, the horses balked. The warrior dismounted and lifted the white-gowned figure from her saddle. Vermithrax noticed for the first time that the woman's arms