Page 4

Such was the dragon Chedupuram as he appeared to the knight Starkiller; and even the knight’s fearless heart shrunk a little inside him when he contemplated the creature that towered above him now.

Then the dragon spoke, and his voice was gentle and yet a little amused. "And have you seen enough, knight? What will you do now, go home and leave me to my task – or must I fight you?"

"I have never shirked a challenge," the knight said in reply, gazing up at the gigantic beast. "I shall not shirk one now."

"Fair enough, Starkiller, greatest hero of your reality. But, before you force the issue, I want to ask you something." The dragon cocked his immense head, studying the knight. "You are only one man, however great. Do you believe you possess the knowledge and ability to actually control the realities? Bear in mind that this is something not even I, who am the guardian of the centre, can think of attempting."

"If I haven’t tried," Starkiller asked, "how can I know if I can? Has anyone ever tried?"

The dragon shook his immense head. "No. Nobody has ever tried in all the aeons that I have been guardian."

"Have you always been the guardian?"

There was a long pause. "No," said the dragon at last. "There have been guardians before me. And there shall be guardians after me, as long as the realities exist. The centre of the realities must always have a guardian. And the guardians have never failed in their duty – and they never shall."

"Perhaps," Starkiller said, "that is because those who might have tried to reach the centre were merely afraid of you. But I am not afraid."

"I can see that you are not," the dragon Chedupuram acknowledged. "But not being afraid of me, and being able to master the structure of reality, are two very different things, Starkiller. The centre of the realities means just that – the centre of all the realities, all the infinities of them. Do you understand what that means?"

"What?"

"There are aspects of reality which would be so strange to your senses that you could not begin to comprehend them, Starkiller. Your mind, structured to fit the reality you were born into, would flee, gibbering, into madness. And that is if you are lucky."

"What does that mean – if I am lucky?"

"I hope you will not have to discover the alternative," the dragon said. "Well, knight – what is it to be? Will you return to your reality, with honour intact? Or must it come to battle between us?"

"I have never retreated," Starkiller replied. "Nor do I believe that my mind is so weak as to be affected by the stranger aspects of reality. So, I must order you to let me by to the centre of the realities, or to taste the edge of my sword."

"Then," the dragon replied in a tone of voice that held a smile within it, "shall we begin?"

There could be sagas written on the colossal struggle which followed, the thrust and parry of the knight’s sword, the frantic lunges of the dragon’s gigantic head, the clash of blade on bone plate, the roar of the dragon and the gasps of the man. Perhaps there could be such sagas written, but the end would be the same – when the obsidian blade slipped between two titanic plates of copper-hued bone, and slid into the dragon’s heart.

Then the dragon Chedupuram leapt, with his death in him, leapt until the ice-blue sky was dark as midnight, until the air grew the colour of blood with his passing; and then, suddenly, he was gone, and there was not a trace that he had ever been.

The knight Starkiller leaned a moment on his sword, wondering why it had seemed to him as if the dragon had almost opened himself to the final thrust, and what those last words were, which the great beast had murmured before beginning his death leap. But that was of little importance, because now nothing stood between him and the thing at the bottom of the pit: the centre of all the realities.

Slowly, conscious of the significance of the moment, he walked to the edge of the pit, and looked down.

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