Chapter 5

Chapter Five IN WHICH They Find the Meaning of "Here There Be Dragons" By reflex, Jared looked behind him, but the goblins were no longer there. The griffin landed with a clatter of claws on top of a car, denting it, and immediately began to groom himself like a cat. Simon grinned from Byron's back. Jared turned to Mallory, but she was staring at the cow. It was chained to the ground, lowing softly, eyes wide enough to show the whites. Her udder was

covered in what appeared to be writhing black snakes jostling for a position at her reddened teats. They blackened the metal sheeting on the ground beneath her like a squirming carpet. After a moment Jared realized the creatures were larger salamanders. "What are those things doing?" Mallory asked. The bloodstained sword hung limply from her hand, and Jared was overwhelmed with the impulse to take it from her and clean it before she'd have a chance to notice. He stepped closer to the cow instead. "Drinking the milk, I think." "Ugh," Simon said, squinting down from Byron's back. "Weird." Several more salamanders were lying in the dirt, their scales dull and their bodies wriggling. They were far larger than the tiny finger-length ones Jared and Mallory had seen in the fire. "They're shedding their skin," Simon said. "What are they?" Jared shook his head. "Fire-resistant salamanders. But they aren't supposed to get big like this. They

look almost like..." But he wasn't quite sure what it was they reminded him of. Something nagged at the back of his mind. At that moment Byron darted forward and seized one of the wriggling black creatures in his beak, tossed it into the air, and gulped it down. Then he seized another and another. Greedily he went for an even larger one, as long as Jared's arm, curled up in the sun. It turned and hissed, and suddenly Jared knew what he was looking at. "They're dragons," he said. "They're all dragons." Out of the corner of his eye Jared saw something moving toward them, fast as a whip. He whirled, but the black thing hit him hard in the chest. Falling

backward, he only had time to throw his hands up over his face before the thick body of a dragon as long as a couch scrabbled over him. Jared's head struck the ground, and for a moment everything went hazy. "Jared!" Mallory howled. The dragon opened its mouth to show hundreds of teeth, thin as needles. Jared froze. He was too terrified to move. His skin burned where the slick body had touched him. Mallory chopped hard with her sword, catching the dragon's tail. Black blood spurted as the dragon turned toward her. Jared got to his feet, dizzy and shivering. His skin was reddened, and the cut he'd gotten earlier throbbed angrily. "Watch out," he called. "It's poisonous!" "Byron!" Simon yelled, pointing toward the black shape that was hurtling after Mallory. "Byron! Get it!"

The griffin swung up into the air with a screech. Jared looked after Byron and Simon desperately. How would Mallory escape the dragon now? She was cutting and thrusting as best as she could, but the dragon was too fast. Its body coiled and leaped like a snake, small forearms clutching and gripping, mouth so wide it seemed like it could swallow her whole. Mallory couldn't last. Jared had to do something. Jared grabbed the nearest thing—a piece of metal— and hurled it at the dragon. The creature spun again and started toward him, lightning fast, jaws open. It hissed.

The dragon coiled around Byron.