Vedagaisic's Unanswered Questions

As they rode, Vedagaisic tried to make sense of what he had learnt the previous evening. There were several things that puzzled him. He could appreciate that Penny might want to help her beloved even if doing so would mean breaking the rules. But why had she thought that those two spells might be valuable to him? A spell for killing dragons would have been a different matter, had she only known such a spell, but the two which she had learnt seemed unlikely to be useful. Unless Penny and Simon had thought that the painter might be able to transform the dragon into a steingeweser? Though he would still be very formidable, he would no longer be able to fly, and it seemed unlikely that he would still be able to breathe fire. Trying to make sense of all this, Vedagaisic wondered if even now Penny might be holding back some information.

Judging by what had happened to Astra, it appeared that the Aqualarians' fears that the dragon might obtain the spells of a magic user sent to confront him had been well founded. The beast must have learnt at least the steingeweser spell, to have turned the princess into one. (For clearly Simon would never have done such a thing.) Perhaps the dragon had planned to create a whole army of the creatures, for such a force would be almost unstoppable? But something had clearly gone wrong. He must have expected that Astra would be under his control once she had been transformed, or he would not have used the spell on her, but he had obviously miscalculated. Perhaps the pair of them had fought in single combat, and he had been vanquished, for even a dragon would probably be outmatched by a being as unyielding as solid rock.

One thing puzzled Vedagaisic above all, though. He could see why the Aqualarians would not want to send a magic user against the dragon, but what did they think that they might achieve by sending a painter, of all unlikely people?

He also wondered how Penny's secret could have been discovered. It seemed unlikely that it was no more than coincidental that Rose had questioned the girl so soon after his own conversation with her. Could someone have chanced to overhear the two of them, and have been concerned enough to report it? He hoped that the explanation was not that he himself had been kept under covert - perhaps magical - surveillance. That thought made him very uneasy, for it was not how one should treat a guest.

Meanwhile, back in the hidden valley those trapped there had had nearly a week to speculate on how Astra might be getting on, as well as to try to work out just what had happened on the night that the dragon died. One puzzle was where the second Hespaniard Nuthatch call could have come from. The obvious suggestion was that it had been made by either Simon or Anselm, since they would not have wanted rocks raining down on the dragon while they were trying to negotiate with him. But Fred - who with the possible exception of Thomas and Astra had been in the best position to hear - said that he had not heard a bird call from either of them. He received suspicious looks from one or two of the others. He was the most recent arrival, so that they did not know him well, and perhaps he had been one of the conspirators?

Presumably those who lived in the caves and worked for the dragon must by now be aware that something had happened to him. Seemingly he had not told any of them that he was coming to the valley, and - supposing that they were aware of its existence - it had not yet occurred to them to search it. The dragon's charred corpse was too big to bury or hide, and would at once be visible to anyone who came to the region of the lake in the centre of the valley. It was also beginning to stink, so that you did not even have to see it to be aware of its presence.

1. Thomas had recovered from his injuries.
2. Thomas seemed no better, but on the other hand he seemed no worse.
3. Thomas had died not long after Astra left the valley.
4. Thomas had recovered physically, but unlike Astra he had been unable to cope mentally with his transformation.

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