I turned off the engine and stepped out on to the springy turf. Across the low valley was a sea of white tape that criss-crossed the untouched land, tied at intervals to pegs hammered into the ground. Someone was in the Dragonlands. Someone was already staking claims.
I heard a cheery whistling on the breeze and walked to the brow of a low hill, where I saw a small man wearing a brown suit and an unmistakable derby hat. It was Gordon van Gordon. He hadn’t been busy looking after his mother after all—he had been busy claiming as much of the Dragonlands as he could. He was, after all, my apprentice, and only a Dragonslayer or their apprentice may enter the Dragonlands. He was cheerfully banging claim stakes into the ground, and hadn’t noticed I was watching him.
‘Something you want to share, Gordon?’
He jumped as I spoke and looked up at me, but he didn’t seem too worried.
‘Not really.’
‘Let me see.’
He gave me one of the stakes he had been banging into the ground. There was an aluminium disc attached to each stake, and it was stamped with the name of the company Mr Trimble had been negotiating for earlier: The Consolidated Useful Stuff Land Development Corporation. Gordon had successfully claimed the land. The area enclosed within the named stakes legally belonged to ConStuff—or it would do, as soon as the Dragon was dead and the marker stones lost their power. Gordon had claimed a lot. As far as I could see there were marker tapes tied to stakes.
I shook my head sadly.
‘I trusted you, Gordon. Why all this?’
‘Sorry, Miss Strange, but this is strictly business. I like you as a person. You have many fine qualities that I admire. But you are out of time. You should have been born a century ago when values such as yours meant something.’
Gordon smiled. But it was a smile I hadn’t seen before. It was as though I was meeting a different person. The Gordon I knew, the friendly and helpful Dragonslayer’s apprentice, had never been real at all.
‘You had me fooled.’
‘Don’t beat yourself up over it,’ he said kindly, ‘we’ve been running Last Dragonslayer Drill for a number of years now.’
I frowned.
‘This was all planned?’
He knocked a peg in, wrapped a tape around it and walked off in the direction of a stream. I followed, more out of a sense of shocked disbelief than anything else.
‘We knew that Brian Spalding was expecting someone to replace him. He resisted all our attempts to get him to appoint an apprentice so we watched him, waiting for the time the new Dragonslayer would come and take his place. It just so happened that you chanced along on my shift.’
‘How long were you waiting?’
‘Sixty-eight years. A team of six people, working round the clock. My father gave his working life to ConStuff. He watched Brian Spalding for over thirty years.’
‘Thirty years? Just for some real estate?’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he said, as though I were some sort of idiot. ‘Snodd and the Duke of Brecon are powerful, Miss Strange. They have the power, as you have seen, to change the law at a whim and outlaw their citizens at their command. But even they are merely transient when it comes to the might of commerce. Governments may come and go, wars will reshape the Ununited Kingdoms many times. But companies will stay, and flourish. Show me any major event on this planet and I will show you the economic reason behind it. Commerce is all powerful, Miss Strange. Commerce rules our lives. ConStuff have put a lot of time and money into Project Dragon, and their investment is about to bear fruit.’
‘Money,’ I murmured.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘money. And lots of it.’ He spread his arms wide and looked around to make the point. ‘Do you have any idea just how much this parcel of land is worth?’
‘Of course,’ I replied, ‘I have a very good idea of the value of the Dragonlands. But you and I are talking about different currencies. You’re talking about gold and silver, cash and securities. I’m talking about the sheer beauty of the land, the value of unpolluted parkland made wild and staying wild for ever.’
‘Dream on, Strange,’ he sneered, ‘in every direction are millions of greedy speculators eager to lay claim to a few square yards. While you have been gallivanting around pondering the imponderables, I have potentially laid claim to sixty per cent of the lands. We already have plans drawn up. We will build an access road through that oak forest and just over there’—he indicated a small copse of silver birches—‘will be a retail park for over seventy different shops, with parking for a thousand cars. Over there,’ he pointed to another hill in the other direction, ‘will be a luxury housing development. Just beyond that hill there will be a power station and a marzipan refinery. This is progress, Miss Strange. A billion moolahs’ worth of progress. We were lucky you turned out to have such high ideals—if you had fallen for King Snodd’s schemes to claim the Dragonlands on his behalf you might have been something of a nuisance to us. As it is, everything has turned out admirably.’
‘Then I pity you,’ I replied, ‘pity you because you will never know or see a decent act. You have given nothing, you will receive nothing.’
‘I have a bank balance that proves you wrong, Jennifer. My share alone in this project amounts to over thirty million. I watched Brian Spalding doggedly for over twenty-three years. Don’t tell me I don’t deserve it!’
‘You don’t deserve it.’
We stared at each other for a few moments.
‘So all those Dragonattacks. They were arranged by ConStuff?’
‘Certainly. As soon as the prophecy began we could see how we could use it to our advantage. Even King Snodd and the Duke of Brecon wouldn’t have dared fake a Dragonattack. We just helped things along. Massaged fate, if you like. Look at it our way—we have actually helped solve the Dragon Question. I think the Mighty Shandar would be grateful.’
‘And the prophecy that began all this? You as well?’
‘If only!’ said Gordon, laughing. ‘If that was in our power we could have engineered all this sixty-eight years ago. Nope, that wasn’t us.’
We continued to stare at each other for a moment longer. ConStuff and Gordon were playing with things quite outside their understanding. ‘Money is a form of alchemy,’ Mother Zenobia had often told me, ‘it turns kind, normal people into greed-mongers, intent only on acquisitiveness.’
‘You have no idea what’s going on, have you?’ I told him, my voice rising. ‘I know that,’ I added, ‘because I have no idea what’s going on, and I’m the Dragonslayer. Everyone wants the Dragon dead except me and Shandar. Even the Dragon wants the Dragon dead. If I were you I’d get out of the Dragonlands while you still can.’
‘You’re blabbering, Jennifer. I’ll be staking claims until the first Berserker comes over that hill.’
I couldn’t think of much to do, so as a pointless gesture I pulled up a marker stake and threw it in the river. Gordon wasn’t impressed. He pulled a service revolver out of his waistband and pointed it at me.
‘Be a good little girl and leave me alone. Do something useful like kill the Dragon so we can finish this all up and get to the bit where I am handed wads of—’
There was a growling and a snapping noise and I looked up. The Quarkbeast had left the safety of the Rolls-Royce and was running down the hill as fast as his short legs could carry him. He’d been keeping his anger in as I had ordered, but out in the Dragonlands his instincts were taking over. He was going to protect me whether I liked it or not. I wasn’t mad keen on Gordon but no one deserves to be savaged by a Quarkbeast.