'Why do you think you are the first Dragonslayer to ever come up to the Dragonlands?'

'I don't know.'

'Then let me ask you something else. Why do you suppose you are here at all?'

I thought the question a bit obvious but answered nonetheless.

'To slay any Dragons guilty of violating the Dragonpact?'

'But in four centuries none of us has ever ever violated the pact. Have you any idea why?' violated the pact. Have you any idea why?'

'Because you respect the Dragonpact?'

'No. I'll tell you. Shandar suggested the use of a force-field surrounding the marker stones to keep humans out. Such an act of magic is vast; he requested that we help him and we readily agreed, binding the magic of the marker stones so tightly it could never be undone except by the death of the Dragon it was there to protect.'

'And?'

'He tricked us. The weave of the magic was tighter than we imagined. The marker stones don't just keep humans out, but us in but us in. These Dragonlands are not a safe haven but a prison!'

I digested this new information.

'Then the Dragonpact wasn't a pact at all!'

'Exactly. Shandar earned his twenty dray-weights of gold, believe me. The first Dragon who tried to get out of his lands was vaporised instantly. We sent around a message warning of the danger, and here we have sat, dwindling in numbers, communicating rarely and watching our magic slowly siphoned out of us by the energy of the very force-field that was meant to protect us!'

'So why have Dragonslayers at all?'

'Window dressing,' replied the Dragon. 'The Dragonslayers, far from being a most n.o.ble profession, are really nothing more than a contractual obligation. In Shandar's plan you would never have come up here at all.'

'Then... I don't have to kill you.'

The Dragon raised a claw in the air and wagged it at me.

'Well, that's the wrong wrong answer, I'm afraid,' he said reproachfully. 'We've planned this for a long time. You were chosen by us to do this deed; at midday you answer, I'm afraid,' he said reproachfully. 'We've planned this for a long time. You were chosen by us to do this deed; at midday you have have to kill me!' to kill me!'

I could feel large salty tears well up in my eyes. It all seemed so unfair.

'But I've never killed anything in my life!'

'Big Magic is by definition highly specific. Someone like you must must do it.' do it.'

'What's special about me? Why can't Sir Matt Grifflon do it?'

'You are more special than you realise, Jennifer.'

'Tell me why it has to be me!'

'I am only the last in a long line of greater minds. Not even I have all the answers. All I know is that you have to discharge your duty using your own free will and judgement. It is your destiny, Jennifer. You will will do it.' do it.'

I picked up Exhorbitus as a clock started to strike twelve somewhere in the distance, and Maltca.s.sion lifted his chin to reveal the soft flesh beneath his throat. I started to cry, large drops that ran down my face and on to the soft earth. Sometimes your duty takes you to dark places that you'd rather not be, but duty, as they say, is duty.

I held the sword aloft as a light wind whipped the leaves and twigs into motion. I placed the tip against his skin and paused.

'Goodbye, Jennifer, Gwanjii Gwanjii. I forgive you,' he said.

I closed my eyes and thrust the sword upwards as hard as I could. The effect was immediate, and dramatic. Maltca.s.sion shuddered and slumped to the ground with a mighty crash. A large cloud of dust was thrown up by his falling bulk and knocked me backwards into the dirt. I was momentarily winded and struggled to my feet, expecting some sort of magic to start happening. I stole a glance at Maltca.s.sion then hurriedly looked away. The jewel in his forehead had stopped glowing and an unnerving silence invaded the forest.

Abruptly, the marker stone stopped humming. What if I had been wrong? Big Magic, Wizard Moobin had told me, has rarely more than a 20 per cent success rate. Maltca.s.sion and the Dragons had staked their survival on that; pretty long odds but the best they could get. I had done my best for them but there was no magic. No high winds, no noises, no mysterious flashes of light, no 'bzzz' sounds nothing nothing. If this was Big Magic, it was a grave disappointment. I suddenly felt very small and solitary. One person alone in 320 square miles of disputed territory, sandwiched right between two huge armies with artillery and lands.h.i.+ps, and with only forty tons of dead Dragon for company. I apologised to the large beast but he could not hear me. It was over. The ancient order of the Dragons was dead.

Anger

I stood up and looked around at the forest, wondering what to do. Far in the distance there was the crack of an artillery piece. A few seconds later and a faint whistle preceded a sh.e.l.l that exploded somewhere in the Dragonlands. That was the sign. The war had begun. Everything that had happened over the past few days now seemed unimportant. I had failed Wizard Moobin and the Big Magic, I had failed Maltca.s.sion and the centuries-dead Dragon Council. Maltca.s.sion had suggested I was chosen for this task because of some kind of purity or moral rect.i.tude that he thought I possessed. I was obviously not good enough. I had felt no remorse when Gordon of Stroud was vaporised and I felt nothing but disgust for ConStuff, King Snodd and the hordes of claimants that waited eagerly outside the Dragonlands. I had once tugged at the convent cat's tail, too. Perhaps there had been a mistake; perhaps there was another another Jennifer Strange somewhere. One with true purity and goodness. A Jennifer with nothing but forgiveness who had never tugged at a cat's tail and led a blameless and charitable life. Perhaps she would have triumphed. Jennifer Strange somewhere. One with true purity and goodness. A Jennifer with nothing but forgiveness who had never tugged at a cat's tail and led a blameless and charitable life. Perhaps she would have triumphed.

There was another distant crack crack and a second artillery sh.e.l.l came whistling over and exploded, opening up a hole in the fertile earth of the Dragonlands. I looked again at the old Dragon. He looked more like a huge pile of rubble than he ever had before. Perhaps in years to come someone would remember what had happened here and open a small museum that explained what the Dragonlands had been like, the treachery of the Mighty Shandar and the final effort of the Dragons to survive. On the other hand, perhaps they wouldn't bother. They'd probably build a museum to Yogi Baird and it would as likely as not be sponsored by Yummy-Flakes breakfast cereals. and a second artillery sh.e.l.l came whistling over and exploded, opening up a hole in the fertile earth of the Dragonlands. I looked again at the old Dragon. He looked more like a huge pile of rubble than he ever had before. Perhaps in years to come someone would remember what had happened here and open a small museum that explained what the Dragonlands had been like, the treachery of the Mighty Shandar and the final effort of the Dragons to survive. On the other hand, perhaps they wouldn't bother. They'd probably build a museum to Yogi Baird and it would as likely as not be sponsored by Yummy-Flakes breakfast cereals.

I sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and listened as another sh.e.l.l was lobbed into the lands. Only a few more minutes and the battle would begin. King Snodd's ma.s.sive lands.h.i.+ps would lumber across the hills, churning up the ground with their heavy tracks, laying waste to all before them as they pushed their way towards the Duchy of Brecon and beyond in their campaign to conquer Wales. I ducked instinctively as a sh.e.l.l landed in the forest about a hundred yards away and felled an old Douglas fir, which crashed into the undergrowth with a tearing of foliage. But their aim was wild and erratic. The Hereford gunners were firing blind into the Dragonlands.

I noticed that my pulse had started to race, and I felt hot and angry. I pulled at the collar of my s.h.i.+rt as a bad feeling started to rise within me like a fever. I clenched my fists as a red veil of rage descended upon me. I tried to swallow the anger down but it was too strong. I simmered for a few seconds, then I boiled. All rational thought vanished. I was out of control. The image of the Quarkbeast and the leering face of Gordon a.s.saulted my mind. I thought of the crowds around the Dragonlands, waiting for the moment of the Dragon's death with greedy expectation. Suddenly, I wanted to run to the marker stones and attack and kill and maim as many of the greedy, bloodsucking, Dragon-hating people as I could. I leapt for Exhorbitus and grasped the hilt. My hand latched on to it with a tightness that made me cry out in pain. I felt strong enough to take on a lands.h.i.+p, tear at its iron hull with my bare hands and face the guns with an iron resolve. I let fly at a boulder with the sword, hoping to release the rage that rose within me; the boulder fell neatly in two but I felt more angry, not less. A noise like a hurricane had started in my head and every muscle in my body tightened like a spring.

Then the pain started. It was like a burning sensation that attacked every nerve ending in my body. Instinctively I knew of only one form of relief; I opened my mouth and screamed. It was quite a scream. They heard it at the marker stones. They heard it in Hereford. Animals turned and fled and milk curdled in the churns. Babies cried in their cots and horses bolted. But it wasn't just a scream. It was more. It was a pointer, a marker, a conduit for other energy to follow, like the small spark that precedes a lightning bolt. I pointed the blade of Exhorbitus at Maltca.s.sion and from the blued steel there flowed a sinuous white source of energy that moved into the old Dragon's body and made the lifeless husk squirm and dance. I carried on screaming, the noise dominating everything around me. The dust started to lift from the ground and the water began to steam. The trees shed their leaves and birds dropped unconscious from the sky. I saw more sh.e.l.ls falling to earth in a slow and lazy arc, but I could not hear them. One of them exploded near by and I felt a piece of shrapnel pluck at my sleeve. A tree fell in the clearing but I didn't flinch. All that mattered to me was the power of the scream, the uncontrolled rage that wrung the energy from the air. The sky darkened and a bolt of lightning descended to the marker stone, splitting it in two. But it couldn't last. A darkness opened up in front of me as I screamed the last of the air from my lungs. I knew then that my scream was everything. It was all consuming. It was the scream of Dragons long dead, it was the collective emotion of millions of people. It was other things but most of all it was a scream of renewal. It was the Big Magic.

The New Order

'Is it dead?' said a voice.

'Not it, she she,' said a second.

'I can never tell the difference. Is she she dead, then?' dead, then?'

'I hope not.'

I opened my eyes and found myself staring into the kindly face of not one but two two Dragons. They were not that much different to Maltca.s.sion except considerably smaller and a great deal younger. My temper had left me; all I was left with was an aching body and throbbing temples. Dragons. They were not that much different to Maltca.s.sion except considerably smaller and a great deal younger. My temper had left me; all I was left with was an aching body and throbbing temples.

'Have either of you a paracetamol?' I croaked, my throat feeling as though I had slept with a toad in my mouth.

The Dragon who had spoken first gave a sort of harrumphing cough that I took to be a sn.i.g.g.e.r.

'We are glad you still have your sense of humour.'

I sat up.

'My sense of humour I kept,' I replied, clutching my head and groaning. 'What I lost was Maltca.s.sion, the Quarkbeast, the Dragonlands and most of free Wales.'

'You could do with a drink,' said the second Dragon. He nodded and a gla.s.s of water appeared beside me.

'How did you do that?' I asked suddenly.

'Magic,' replied the Dragon.

I smiled and sipped at it gratefully.

'Hmm,' said the first of the Dragons as he unfurled his wings and looked at them thoughtfully, the same way a baby might examine its own foot and wonder what it was for.

'Two of you?' I asked. 'Two from one? Is that how it works?'

'Usually,' replied the second Dragon. It sneezed violently and a small jet of flame leapt across the clearing and ignited a shrub.

'Whoops,' he said. 'I'm going to have to get that that under control.' under control.'

The two Dragons sniffed around, eager to investigate their new world. Of Maltca.s.sion there was no sign, just a forehead-jewel on top of a pile of grey ash that was being blown by a light wind into the Dragonlands.

'Shh!' I said. 'Listen!'

They both c.o.c.ked an ear into the breeze and frowned.

'We don't hear anything.'

'That's exactly it!' I replied. 'The guns. They've stopped stopped.'

'Of course,' countered the Dragon. 'The Old Magic is unwoven. New Magic has taken its place. The force-field is back up but we may pa.s.s freely in both directions. The Dragonlands are still Dragonlands. But I have no manners. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Feldspar Axiom Firebreath IV, and this is Colin.'

Colin the Dragon bowed solemnly and said: 'We would like to thank you, Miss Strange, for without your fort.i.tude and adherence to duty, dear Maltca.s.sion really would would have been the last Dragon.' have been the last Dragon.'

I thought for a moment, trying to make sense of the strange course of events. I had lost my temper in a big way; I was confused.

'I wasn't chosen for my purity, was I?'

'I'm afraid not,' replied Feldspar. 'But don't be disappointed. It's as well that true virtue is rare, for it would have to be balanced by the purest evil. The Dragon Council chose well. I would never have guessed in a million years that you were a Berserker.'

I looked at them both in turn.

'A Berserker? Me?'

'Of course. Didn't you know?'

I had no idea, of course. How could I? Life at the convent had always been sheltered and happy. I had never had cause to lose my temper. Unbeknown to me I was a member of a rare cla.s.s of fearless warriors a person who could draw energy from those about them during uncontrollable bouts of rage and channel it with terrifying violence against a foe. If I let it be known I was a Berserker, I would either find myself inducted into the army or confined to a psychiatric hospital, my mind kept numb with marzipan. I shuddered at the prospect.

'You won't tell anyone?'

'Berserkers have nothing to fear if they can control their anger, Jennifer. You would be surprised how many concealed Berserkers walk among the citizenry. You have a gift. Learn to use it wisely.'

'So you planned all this?'

'It was a grand plan, Jennifer, a plan forty decades in the making. When Shandar imprisoned us we knew that as individuals we could do nothing to unweave the strong magic. Dragons have always been renewed by death. Kill one and two rise in its place. Mu'shad Waseed didn't know that but Shandar did. That's why he didn't want you to kill Maltca.s.sion. A Dragon that dies of old age leaves no offspring.'

'So any time in the past four hundred years a Dragonslayer could have killed a Dragon and added one more to the population?'

'It wouldn't have done much good. Two Dragons imprisoned instead of one? No; we needed to do more. We needed a spell to overcome all that Shandar had done and a little bit more besides. A spell of almost incalculable size and complexity. A spell that could release us and also recharge the power of wizardry, lest Shandar return to make good his promise to destroy the Dragons. He is an evil man, but an honourable one, and twenty dray-weights of gold is a sizeable chunk of change and I'm not sure he's the sort of Wizard who likes giving refunds.'

'Big Magic.'

'Precisely. But Big Magic is unpredictable stuff, and we were still without the vast quant.i.ty of raw wizidrical energy to make it work. Shandar cast the spell, so we would need more more than the power of Shandar to undo it. Such a power is spread too thinly upon this planet to be useful we needed to find a way to collect it.' than the power of Shandar to undo it. Such a power is spread too thinly upon this planet to be useful we needed to find a way to collect it.'

'Like the grains of gold on the beach,' I murmured, remembering Mother Zen.o.bia's words.

'Just so. Valuable but essentially worthless since you can't extract it. The power that comes closest to the energy that makes up what we call magic is human emotion. The power in one person is negligible, but a large group of people can generate an almost limitless amount of energy.'

'Emotion? You mean like love?'

'Powerful, I agree,' conceded Feldspar, 'but impossible to generate artificially. Avarice Avarice, on the other hand, is far more simple to create. All we needed to do was gather together a lot of humans and the tantalising possibility of something for nothing.'

'The claims,' I whispered. 'The Dragonlands.'

'Precisely. At eleven fifty-nine and fifty-five seconds there were eight million people staring anxiously at their watches, their hearts beating faster, the sweat raised on their brows in expectation of claiming enough land to retire. Greed is all powerful, greed conquers all. Greed channelled the Big Magic; greed set us free.'

'But why leave so much to chance?'

'Big Magic works in mysterious ways, Jennifer. If you push destiny it has a nasty habit of pus.h.i.+ng back. All things must come together, in confluence. There had to be you, death by Exhorbitus and all that raw emotion. Once Maltca.s.sion was sure you were ready, he used the last of the Dragon's magic to send out the premonition of his own death and a broad feeling of greed that caught on like a virus. He knew a bit about ConStuff and a lot about human nature. Once the crowds were gathered the death of a Dragon would kickstart the spell, with you as the Berserker to draw the power from those around you and Exhorbitus to channel the power. I think you'll agree that it all turned out rather well.'

I digested what he had said. Maltca.s.sion had sown, farmed and then harvested the emotional energy from eight million people. The Dragons had defeated the most powerful wizard the world had ever known, and taken over four hundred years to do it. Maltca.s.sion had given his life to make it happen. I sighed.

'We sense your sorrow, Jennifer. If it's any consolation there is much in us that was Maltca.s.sion. He hasn't gone for good, just, well, fragmented fragmented slightly.' slightly.'

'So what happens now?'

'Well,' said Colin, 'the Dragonslayer's work is done. We will live here and grow strong. We want only peace with humans and have much to teach you. You will come and see us, and you will be our amba.s.sador. We thank you again for all you have done.'

I picked up Exhorbitus from where it had fallen. It was a fine weapon, worthy of a Berserker if he or she were ever to have need of it. When I had grown older and was stronger, perhaps I might even learn to wield it with skill. I bowed to both Dragons using the traditional method of departure and they returned the compliment. I walked a few paces then turned back. There was still one question I wanted to ask.

'Maltca.s.sion used a word just before he died. He called me a Gwanjii Gwanjii.'

'Ah,' replied Feldspar solemnly, 'that is an old Dragon word. A word that one Dragon might use to another perhaps twice in his lifetime.'

'What does it mean?'

'It means friend friend.'

The End of the Story