I returned to the Slayermobile and drove to Maltcassion’s lair, the clearing in the forest. I parked up and stepped out. The large marker stone was humming louder than usual. The Dragon was sitting up on his hind legs. He was far taller than I had supposed – at least the height of one of King Snodd’s landships. He sniffed the air and listened carefully with his finely tuned ears.

‘I am sorry for your small friend,’ he said, looking down at me. ‘He had a good soul, despite his appalling table manners.’

I thanked him, and he told me he knew I would come, despite my own misgivings.

‘The Mighty Shandar just spoke to me,’ I said. ‘He demanded that you were to be spared. How do you account for that?’

Maltcassion growled angrily.

‘Don’t you dare speak of that scoundrel in my presence!’

I was shocked.

‘Scoundrel? You mean Shandar?’

Maltcassion roared and a sheet of flame burst from his throat and shot across the clearing in front of me, where it ignited a mature Douglas fir. The tree went up like a Roman candle. I took a few hasty steps back from the heat.

‘I told you not to mention his name!’

‘I don’t understand,’ I yelled above the crackling of the burning tree. He beckoned me to move away and I joined him.

‘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 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. 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?’