Dragonslayer: A Novel by Wayland Drew Read Free Book Online

inhabited, or to be debased, or perverted." He shrugged. "Or simply to live too long, so that the world changes, and, in just being what you are, you come to seem evil. Oh yes, my friend." His stern wise eyes turned to Greil, who dropped his gaze. "I know that condition which the simple and the unfeeling call evil, but speaking for myself, I prefer to think of it as infinite sadness."
    He fell silent, and for a time they all stood quietly, gazing at the relics on the table and particularly at the last one, which Valerian had brought forward while Ulrich was speaking. It was a red-gray chitinous hook, a foot long, serrated along the inside edge. "I don't know what this is," Valerian said.
    "I know," Ulrich replied. "It is a dragon's claw."
    There was a long silence. At last Valerian cleared his throat. "Will you help us, sir?"
    "I have not decided."
    "You are the only one who can."
    "So you say."
    Again Valerian coughed discreetly. "The old scrolls relate that dragons and sorcerers go back a long way together."
    Ulrich fingered the great claw. "That is true," he said.
    "In fact, according to some accounts it is said—forgive me, sir-but it is said that dragons are the creatures of sorcerers, the results of their unbridled lust for power, and of incantations gone awry."
    Ulrich looked sharply at the youth. "So it has been alleged," he said.
    "It is said further that all of those who accept the power of sorcery also accept responsibility for the alleviation of great suffering."
    "Some do and some don't," Ulrich replied. He was still looking intently at Valerian.
    "Please," said Greil softly, "you are our only hope." The others added their murmured requests.
    Ulrich's hand still rested almost affectionately upon the claw. His gaze had drifted above their heads, and beyond—far beyond— the boundaries of Cragganmore and time. At last he inhaled deeply. "I shall have to think," he said. "Summon mead . . ." He had almost reached the stairway to his conjuring room when he turned back absentmindedly and pointed with the great claw. "Galen," he said, waving the thing, "you'd better come with me."
    He began to labor up the stairs, using the right foot to climb each step and drawing the left painfully up behind it. "Supplicants! Petitioners! My life has been filled with them. Always wanting something that they think they can't do for themselves."
    "But this isn't a little request, is it, Ulrich? This is different, isn't it?"
    The old man laughed abruptly. "Oh yes," he said, leaning against the door of the conjuring room, "this is indeed different!" Inside, he began to poke and point with the claw among great stacks of scrolls and folded parchments. "Now then, Galen, I shall need your help. Bring that one out. And that. And that one up there."
    He soon had a mound of documents spread on the table. All were very old, so old that some began to crumble even as he unfolded them, becoming indistinguishable from the dust with which they were covered. On many, the ink was scarcely discernible, so faded had it become, or so blended with ancient water stains. Galen saw quickly, however, that all dealt with dragon lore. Here were various enormities, horned and smooth, two- and four-legged, tailed and tailless. "Each is different," Ulrich was saying, tracing details with a palsied finger. "All mortal, thank goodness, and most dead. The question is, which of them remains?"
    Galen looked with horror at the drawings as Ulrich discarded them. He had never seen anything so loathsome. He could not imagine that nature had produced such creatures, or that the natural world, otherwise so sensibly ordered, had room to contain them. "Sir . . ."
    The old man was lost deep in the drawings, his thumb gingerly running across the serrated edge of the claw.
    "Ulrich?"
    "Hm?"
    "That boy, Valerian, said that. .
    "Hm? Well, what?"
    "Well, he said that sorcerers created dragons."
    "He is not the first to say so," Ulrich replied, peering close at a very old and frail