Strabo’s head snapped up. “The mists at the edge of the fairy world — that’s where I saw you. Several weeks ago wasn’t it? I was asleep and you wandered past me. Stared at me so hard you woke me. Rude of you to do that, I might add.” He paused. “That was you, wasn’t it?”
Ben nodded mechanically, an image flashing in his mind of the dragon blowing him away head-over-heels like a feather caught in the wind. He brushed the image aside. He was still unable to believe that he was actually hearing the beast talk.The dragon had an odd voice, a sort of machinelike hiss that reverberated as if released from an echo chamber.
“Who are you?” the dragon asked, head lowering again.
“What were you doing in the mists?” He showed his teeth as his lips curled back from his gums. “Are you one of the fairies?”
Ben shook his head. “No, I’m not.” He gathered his wits quickly now. “I’m Ben Holiday, from Chicago. From another world, really. I’m Landover’s new King.”
“Are you?” The dragon seemed unimpressed.
“Yes.” Ben hesitated, his courage slowly returning. “You know, I didn’t think dragons talked.”
Strabo shifted his bulk slightly, undulating his long, serpentine body so that his backside rested against a series of smaller pools, the flames dancing close against his scaled hide. “Oh, one of those,” he sniffed.
Ben frowned. “One of which?”
“One of those humans who think dragons are illiterate, mindless beasts who spend their time wreaking havoc on poor, hard-working, simple folk until some champion appears to do them in. You’re one of those, aren’t you?”
“I suppose I am.”
“You read too many fairy tales, Holiday. Who do you think spreads those stories about dragons? Not the dragons, you can be sure. No, humans spread those stories, and humans are not about to characterize themselves as the bad folk and the dragon as the one mistreated, are they? You must consider the source, as they say. It is much easier to cast the dragon as the villain, burning fields, devouring livestock and peasants, seizing beautiful princesses, and challenging knights in armor. It all makes great reading, even if it isn’t the truth.”
Ben stared. What kind of dragon was this?
“There were dragons before there were humans, you know. There were dragons before most of the fairy creatures came into being.” Strabo bent down. His breath was terrible. “The trouble didn’t start with the dragons; it started with the others. No one wanted the dragons around. The dragons took up too much space. Everyone was frightened of the dragons and what they were capable of doing — never mind that it was only a few giving the rest a bad name! And our magic was so much stronger than theirs that they could not control us as they wished.”
The crusted head shook slowly. “But there are always ways of getting what you want if you work hard enough at it, and they worked very hard at getting rid of us. We were exiled, hunted, and destroyed, one after the other, until now there is only me. And they would destroy me as well, if they could.”
He didn’t specify who “they” were, but Ben guessed he meant everyone in general. “Are you saying you aren’t responsible for any of the things for which you are blamed?” he asked, looking a bit doubtful.
“Oh, don’t be stupid, Holiday — of course I’m responsible! I’m responsible for practically all of them!” The voice hissed softly. “I kill the humans and their tame animals when I wish. I burn out their crops and homes if I choose. I steal their mates because it pleases me. I hate them.”
The tongue flicked. “But it wasn’t always so, you see. It wasn’t so until it became easier for me to be the thing they thought me than to try to survive as the creature I once was…” He trailed off, as if remembering. “I’ve been alive for almost a thousand years, you know, and all alone for the past two hundred of those. There are no more dragons. They’re all legends. I’m all there is — like the Paladin. You know of him. Holiday? We’re both the last of our kind.”