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it. You’ll learn about that.
    “Most of them are rich, too. That makes it hard to find them, to catch them. But they like to walk the streets—most people have walked right past one without knowing it—and sooner or later I pick up on where they’ve been. Their magic leaves behind unwanted side effects. Wherever there are strange things going on, you can bet a Dragon has been in the vicinity.”
    “And you destroy them?” asked Simon.
    “Every single one of them I find,” said Aldric, with a gleam in his eye. “In fact, I think I’ve gotten just about the last of them.”
    “Sounds like you’ve done pretty well out there on your own,” said Simon, trying to humor him. “What do you need me for?”
    “You,” said Aldric, “are about to join the family business. Dragonhunting.”

Chapter Five
A B RIEF H ISTORY OF D RAGONS
    “S OME THINGS YOU’LL LEARN on the job,” said Aldric, and he took out an old curly pipe, relaxing for the first time since Simon had met him. “And some of it you need to know right away.”
    Simon reclined against the wall. The ship swayed gently, and pipe smoke filled the room with a pungent smell.
    Aldric began. “Nobody knows when the first Dragon was sighted, but it must have been a very long time ago. They began their lives right after man began to walk the earth. They were born when the first man had his first evil thought. They grew like a tiny worm in his head, and when the man died and was buried, they went into the ground and spread. From this tiny beginning, many more of them grew from tough, leathery eggs hidden deep in the earth. White, like a spider’s eggs, they were, but giant.
    When the young Dragons hatched, they crawled their way to the surface. They have caused constant trouble for humankind ever since.
    “What does a Dragon want? It wants nothing more than to cause people pain, fear, and sadness. The Dragon feeds on these things. It is attracted to human misery—it thrives on it, in much the same way that plants need sunlight and water.
    “Whenever a person feels down, the Dragon wants to be nearby. It crawls underground and feels with its tongue for vibrations of sadness. It sucks up the sadness right through its skin, and this makes the creature stronger. In turn, a Dragon, through his magic, can make people more unhappy. Whenever a person feels self-doubt, whenever a person thinks he or she cannot succeed, that life is not worth a penny, it’s a good bet a Dragon is behind it. Nothing causes more evil in the world than self-hatred. When a person hates himself, he will do terrible things. He wants everyone to feel as bad as he does. A Dragon loves to make people hate themselves.
    “Dragons have always wanted to dominate mankind. They need us, but they look at humans as if we were rats or cockroaches. They see us as pests. Vermin. There are so many of us that the Serpents have never been able to wipe all of us out. But they try. They try to thin our numbers. They try to get us to wipe ourselves out by tricking us into hating each other. There were only two thousand Dragons at the height of their power, and they could never get rid of the millions and billions of people in the world.
    “You see, Pyrothraxes see themselves as better than humans, superior in intelligence. Stronger. They cannot stand humans because to them, humans are weak.
    “Add to that the fact that humans hate fire. Pyrothraxes love fire. Their favorite place is inside the heart of a good blazing fire.They play with fire, they eat fire, they sleep in fire. Most of the time when you hear about a building going up in smoke, it was a Pyrothrax having some fun.
    “The worst part is, they can’t help themselves. They are addicted to fire. They have to have it, and more and more of it every time. If the Pyrothrax had no fire, he would go mad. He couldn’t stand it. And, since humans are the enemy of fire, Dragons are the enemy of humans.
    “For a long time, there were warriors who would