Serge stood at the east floor entrance, door ajar, tossing his jet mane, and standing stoic at the top of the arena floor--as if this were his choice.

Horses might burn in a stable inferno, but did they charge into the flames?

What was Serge doing? Had he some twisted instinct of self destruction? Or was the beast only mimicking master?

"Go," Felderon muttered under his breath. "Get out of here!"

The dragon's tail swept low to the east in a perfect arc toward the animal's hind quarters. But Serge leapt up in perfect synchrony, almost from a standstill, high enough to clear the barbed end of the tail, which clipped only his hoof. The landed solidly notwithstanding.

"What is this beast? A pet? The knight's noble steed?" the dragon grunted aloud in outrage.

The dragon would only take pleasure the stallion's destruction if he knew Felderon's favor. "Not loyal. Come to celebrate my death! That beast nearly killed me!" Felderon waved a hand to the scabbed skin across his front torso.

The dragon swung his massive snout low, angling his left golden eyeball to an examination of Felderon's still fresh wounds. The eyeball hovered in front of him and blinked. "An ugly specimen, for a reigning king. Couldn't they do any better?"

"Not unless you want a deposed king."

The head of the serpent recoiled as if in disgust. "I loathe the taste of toppled kings."

Felderon made a feeble motion toward Serge, while simultaneously trying to attend to the dragon's momentary interest.

The horse did not move, except to stamp his hooves upon the dust. Felderon knew that behavior. He gritted his teeth. Don't do it.

The dragon breathed a low flame. "They reek of disappointed ambition."

"King Olanda is a stout royal. I'm surprised you dislike him."

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"A coward and a ssssss--snake." A long tongue hissed forth from the serpent's maw, lashing forward and coiling around Felderon's body. His neck snapped as the tongue lifted him bodily from the arena floor, and he gasped under the crushing pressure around his ribs.

"The bold are mo-oor satish-fying." The dragon slurred the words without the full use of his tongue.

Suddenly, the stands around the arena erupted in a fury of applause, catching the serpent, and Felderon, off his guard.

Women tossed silk kerchiefs onto the arena floor. Men waved their hats. And the screams deafened.

The dragon released his tongue and Felderon dropped, grunting as he hit the open wounds of his face and chest. But the dragon pitched forward in one motion, sweeping low in a gallant bow to the ecstatic multitude.

Felderon groaned, pulling his torso up from the dust in time to notice a flurry of black movement on the underneath of the serpent's tail.

What?

Serge! He blinked in alarm to see the stallion charging up under the dragon's tail, planting his front hooves, swinging around and kicking upward with his powerful hind quarters.

On impact, the dragon grunted, pitched further forward and heaved an uncontrolled blast of furnace-hot fire into the stands. Screams of ecstasy blended to horror as the fire caught and raged through the crowd!

Felderon swung up to his feet, and swept up the dropped spear in his right hand. A shot of adrenalin flooded his blood as he raced to the underside of the serpent, wound his shoulders and thrust with everything he had for the roundest section of the broad underbelly. At the same moment, Serge planted his feet again. The stallion let go a ragged cry of outrage as he kicked.

The dragon careened, shuddered, and toppled above Felderon, pinning him to the ground, crushing him under the weight of two thousand pounds.

Felderon grunted, gasping under the stifling weight, wounds throbbing. Fire and heat like an inferno blazed in every direction. Screams burst from Felderon's already crushed ribs as the heat raged over his body. The smell of burning hide and hair permeated the air. And the sound of white-hot fury lifted on the wind, wafting to the heavens.

***

After the bedlam, nothing stirred in the arena for several hours, nor disturbed the scene of scorched earth on the arena floor.

The carcass of a serpent lay stretched out in the center. Bits of ash drifted on a light wind. For such a scene of carnage, there was little blood, and from first examination it would be difficult to detect what it was that had actually killed the great serpent. There was a scuff against the armored belly where a spear had struck him, but there was no penetration. There was at some faint distress of blunt force trauma from, apparently, a horse's hooves. But the impact had missed the serpent's vital organs.

The dragon's eyes might offer the best hint of what had killed him.

The blazing gold of his brassy gaze had turned to coal-black smoke. And beside his dead eyes, resting on the ground, a horse's saddle bag half burned and contents spilled upon the arena floor.

And there! A curious stone, dark and lustrous, like an ancient mirror.