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 Maltcassion 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 shells 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

The New Order

‘Is it dead?’ said a voice.

‘Not it, she,’ said a second.

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

‘I hope not.’

I opened my eyes and found myself staring into the kindly face of not one but two Dragons. They were not that much different to Maltcassion 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 snigger.

‘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 Maltcassion, the Quarkbeast, the Dragonlands and most of free Wales.’