"Not bad," admitted the old shopkeeper, blowing out a small jet of flame from his nose. "It's a bit ostentatious though."
Shaking his head, Peter wondered how the king would react. To his surprise, the king just smiled at the old dragon and wandered off through a doorway to yet another part of this intriguing building. Gee Tee, in the meantime, had commandeered Yoyo and Tank and was busy dishing out instructions.
"Apprentice, when the first items arrive I want you to start preparing everything," grunted the old shopkeeper, still gazing around the room they all found themselves in. Lacking the normally quick response from his apprentice that he was used to, the master mantra maker whirled round to face him. Tank stood, hands on hips, a defiant look scrawled across his face.
'Things,' Peter thought, 'seem to have changed significantly between the two of them.'
Tank and Gee Tee continued to stare at each other from eight feet away, Yoyo standing uncomfortably between them. Flash let out a low moan from the sofa, which was ignored by everyone.
"Is there a problem... apprentice?" enquired Gee Tee, poking his plastic glasses as far up his nose as they would go.
Tank just stood there in silence, refusing to budge or speak.
'I've never seen him like this before,' thought Peter. 'I really hope he knows what he's doing.'
Flash let out another groan, this time longer and much harsher. Slipping out from between the two colleagues, Yoyo rushed over to the sickly dragon with all the speed of someone much younger. Peter watched as Yoyo turned Flash onto his side, trying to ascertain the state of the lethal wound that ran diagonally across his back. Not sure whether to go and try and help, as it would mean getting in between Tank and Gee Tee, Peter hoped desperately for a quick resolution to whatever was going on. Surprisingly, he got his wish almost straight away.
Squinting through his glasses, Gee Tee let out a short sigh.
"Please would you start the preparations when things begin to arrive... Tank?"
Peter's eyes widened like never before. Tank's stern look disappeared immediately.
"I would be happy to... Gee Tee," replied Tank with a fondness in his voice that nobody in the room missed.
Another moan from Flash grabbed everybody's attention.
"You'd better come and take a look at this," Yoyo commanded from the sofa. "His wound is getting steadily worse."
Gee Tee plodded over and, leaning down, inspected the wound that ran across Flash's back.
"You're right," whispered the old shopkeeper quietly. "It's deteriorating at quite a rate. Unless we do something soon, he'll be dead before everything arrives."
Looking to Gee Tee for guidance, Peter, Tank and Yoyo watched as the master mantra maker stood up straight, head to one side, apparently thinking about the next course of action. You could have heard a pin drop, the silence was so loud. However, it wasn't Gee Tee who interrupted it.
"Got it!" exclaimed Tank. "At least, I think I have."
The others turned to look at him inquisitively, particularly his employer.
Gathering his thoughts, Tank started to pace back and forth on the lush carpet that covered the floor of the room, while his friends waited on. Turning to face Gee Tee, he tried to explain what he had in mind.
"About two years ago, a European dragon came into the shop to have a mantra repaired."
His employer was about to interrupt, but Tank held up one of his huge fingers and stopped him.
"He was a long, tall dragon, dark yellow all over, except for some red markings that looked like honeysuckle running down his back. He spoke with either a Spanish or Portuguese accent. The mantra he needed repairing was... was... ummmm... let me see. It was something to do with shipping something... plants or animals... or something. Ahh, that's it. Shipping giant squid... architeuthis, which I'm sure Peter knows, means dominant squid," he said, turning and smiling at his friend.
Peter returned his smile, still after all this time marvelling at his friend's ability to know practically all there was to know about plants and animals.
"So," interrupted Gee Tee softly, "what has this got to do with... ? Ahhh... I see. Good work appr... Tank. The mantra he brought in to be repaired froze the squid right down to the cellular level for a short period of time if I remember correctly."
Tank nodded wholeheartedly.
"So we freeze Flash with the mantra until everything we need arrives and then... bang, unfreeze him and hit him with the mantra that will cure him. Okay..." muttered Gee Tee to himself. "Let's see if I can remember that mantra. It was... it was... Sumerian if I'm not mistaken... um... yes, I think I have it. Right, let's give it a go. Stand back please Yoyo, there's a good dragon."
Yoyo, ignoring the dripping condescension, and not knowing what to make of everything, did as he was told. In all his time he'd never met a dragon like Gee Tee, and guessed that he wasn't likely to again, anytime soon.
Gee Tee leant over Flash, whose moaning continued at barely a whisper. The noise from the words the master mantra maker was uttering seemed seductive to Peter. He could only grasp a few out of context, random words: murgu he knew to be 'back,' lirum he knew was 'physical strength,' and the only other one he could get a handle on was mush, which he was pretty sure was either 'snake' or 'reptile.'
After barely a minute, Gee Tee called Yoyo over to have a look at the very still Flash. It only took a matter of seconds for the physician to confirm that the mantra had indeed frozen him, right down to the cellular level. With that done, the three settled down and waited for the requested items to arrive.
As they all once again took in the intricacies of the room, the king poked his head round the corner of a doorway and asked Peter to join him.
Tearing himself away from a picture of the king jamming with the Beatles, Peter crossed the room and followed the monarch's soft footsteps into the space beyond. A wide twisting corridor, sparsely lit, wound its way up a slight gradient to open out into a very plain bedroom. Upon entering, Peter was taken aback by the sight of the wooden floor, which was made from the most amazing oak floorboards. The colouring and grain were remarkable, but that wasn't what had caught his attention. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of intricate carvings across all the boards throughout the room. Kneeling down, running his hand across a carved scene that depicted a running battle of some sort, he was hardly able to believe the quality of the craftsmanship that had gone into making it.
"Nice, aren't they?" chirped the king from the far end of the room.
"Magnificent," answered Peter, momentarily lost for words.
"A very famous dragon artist by the name of Flirty Downdraft, probably a little before your time, owed me a favour for saving his life. Anyway, when I became king, Flirty offered to make me something that he said would 'make me change the way I think every day.' He spent nearly five years designing and crafting those boards. It took a whole month and five dragons to fit them. Oh the council kicked up a fuss about the cost of putting them in here, but in the end I got my own way, despite making one or two more enemies because of it."
"Why would dragons go as far to become your enemy over something like this?" asked Peter. "It seems so petty and... small."
A low chuckle rumbled from the king's mouth as he sat down on the edge of what could only be described as a proper 'king sized' bed, because it was, in human terms, more like a ground-floor-of-a-house sized bed, with a duvet that could have covered streets, and pillows the size of cars.
"Contrary to popular belief Peter, we as a race are not nearly so far removed from the humans as we'd like to think. Pettiness, squabbles, bickering, scheming, one-upmanship, plotting other dragons' downfalls... it all goes on I'm afraid to say. If you asked most dragons in the outlying suburbs, they'd tell you that we're above all of that and we leave it to the humans and their politicians above ground. But it's simply not true. It goes on in the council and in a lot of other parts of the dragon domain."