Drake, who was leading, halted in his tracks when he thought he heard a strange noise coming from somewhere up ahead, and he cocked his head, straining to identify it. "What is it?" asked Shaun, coming alongside.

     "Listen," said the priest. "Can't you hear it?"

     They all strained their ears, trying to hear the noise that had disturbed Drake. "There's nothing there," said Petronax. "We're just wasting time."

     "Yes there is," said Lirenna. "There's a kind of crunching noise, like a man eating celery."

     "You're imagining it," said Petronax."

     "No I'm not," retorted the demi shae indignantly. "My ears are more sensitive than yours. We shae folk have excellent hearing."

     "What is it then?"

     "I don't know, but it's coming from some distance ahead, so it must be quite loud to carry this far through this noisy jungle."

     The others listened carefully, but could hear nothing except the normal screeching and chattering of the overhead jungle and the rustle of some small animal scurrying around in the dead leaves nearby. "Well, whatever it is, it's directly ahead, so we're bound to run across it sooner or later," said Drake. "Everyone stay alert. We don't want any nasty surprises."

     They started forward again, slowly and carefully, each of them straining their eyes and ears to detect the first sign of whatever it was that was causing the strange noise. Lirenna and Drake stated that the sound was getting louder, but it wasn't until they had gone another few hundred yards that the rest of them were able to hear it. It was indeed a little like the sound of a man eating a stick of celery, but it would have to have been the greatest giant in the world eating a stick of celery the size of a tree, and in fact, as the sound became louder and clearer, it became clear that what they were hearing was, in fact, the crushing and splintering of wood.

     "It must be just ahead now," said Drake when the sound became loud enough to rival all the other jungle noises. "Maybe we ought to just go around it. It might be dangerous."

     "I don't think so," said Thomas. "None of the local jungle life seems worried about it. Listen to the din they're making. If there was anything dangerous around, they'd all avoid the area and this place would be as quiet as a grave."

     "He's right," agreed Jerry, "and I'm as curious as he is to see what it is."

     "All right," said the priest, "but we go in very quietly and carefully. No-one makes a sound. Understand?" They all said they did, so Drake led them forward at a slow walk, at the same time preparing to leave at a full gallop if the strange noise proved to be dangerous.

     The noise of splintering wood turned out to come from somewhere high up in the jungle above them, out of sight, but a constant shower of green leaves, twigs and shards of wood falling to the ground testified to its location. Every so often the sound would stop briefly, and one of the greybeams would give a great shudder before it started again. The interpretation was obvious.

     "Something's eating the trees!" said Thomas. "Something big! Something with jaws so strong that it can chew hardwood as though it were celery, but what?"

     "Maybe it's got something to do with those four huge trees over there," said Diana, pointing.

     Looking, they saw four trees different from the rest. Broader and stronger looking, with a strange wrinkled bark that made them look like the legs of an elephant, but bigger, much bigger. The new trees, twenty feet thick and extending upwards as far as they could see, were the first trees other than greybeams they'd seen since entering the forest. Unlike other forests, that consisted of a rich mixture of various species, the greybeams of Fengalla squeezed out all other trees, making the forest exclusively theirs. These four must be masters of survival to be able to grow there. But in that case, why were there only four of them? Why weren't there more?

     Then they noticed something else. Beyond the four strange trees, there was a path about fifty yards wide in which all the greybeams were leaning at an angle, as if some colossal creature had forced its way through them like a man leaving a trail of bent stalks through a cornfield. Thomas looked at the four strange trees again, and noticed that they formed a square about fifty yards on a side, with two of the sides pointing in the direction of the path of leaning trees. Looking up and looking more carefully, squinting into the darkness of the underside of the jungle, he thought that he could make out some great dark shape looming above them, and that it seemed to be supported by the four massive trees, one on each corner.

     Part of Thomas's mind, the logical, rational part, put all these observations together and came to a conclusion that made perfect sense, but when it tried to present its findings to the other part of his mind, the part that had certain unshakeable opinions about what was possible and what was not, it rejected it as being simply out of the question. No living creature could be that big! it insisted. It's legs simply couldn't support the weight! Living flesh and bone simply isn't strong enough! And even if it did exist, people would know about it! It would have been seen! You simply couldn't keep such a huge creature hidden!

     He was forced to accept the reality of it, however, when the creature moved. One of the treelike legs lifted, bending slightly halfway up, revealing a huge, elephantine foot on the end, complete with four huge blunt claws the size of barn doors. Lirenna gave a yelp of alarm as the foot moved fifty feet forwards before coming gently down again, fallen branches cracking and breaking under it. The leg diagonally opposite the first then moved in the same way, and then the huge bulk of the animal's body moved slowly and relentlessly forward, the greybeams around it cracking and groaning as they were pushed aside. The other two legs then moved, bringing them into position with the first two, and then the creature stood still again to resume feeding on the treetops, five hundred feet above, completely oblivious to the eight people standing around its feet.

     "What in the name of the Gods is it?" asked Shaun, awestruck.

     "There's only one creature that grows this big," said Thomas. "Titanodrag."

     "Titanodrag?" said Drake. "The mythical plant eating dragon?"

     "Not mythical after all, apparently," said Thomas. "You always hear stories about people wandering in the wild, unexplored places stumbling across all kinds of fantastic beasts, each more improbable than the last, obviously just yarns told in taverns to get people to buy them drinks…”

     “I met a guy once who claimed to have met a minotaur,” said Shaun. “Totally bonkers, of course.”

     Thomas frowned at the interruption. “I always thought the titanodrag was like that,” he continued. “Just made up. I mean, we always knew that such creatures used to exist. We know them mainly from fossils dug up by the trogs and the...” He glanced across at Lirenna, but turned his eyes away hurriedly. She frowned in puzzlement.

     “And others,” continued Thomas. He hurried on before she could ask any awkward questions. There were races that the shae folk considered to be especially hateful, and he didn't want to upset her with the suggestion that some human communities had friendly links with them. “I read a book once about the golden age of dragons, the time before most of them became extinct, and it had a whole chapter on the huge plant eaters. They're flightless, of course, and their wings have atrophied to the point of uselessness. Their bodies are about the same length as those of ‘normal' carnivorous dragons, about one hundred and fifty feet long, but they're much taller, about five hundred feet tall. It's estimated that they weigh as much as thirty five thousand tons!"

     "Thirty five thousand tons!" breathed Diana, unable to grasp the meaning of such a great weight, all of it warm, living flesh and blood. "But how do they survive? A creature that big must be almost defenceless! It can't exactly run away from ordinary carnivorous dragons!"

     "No. When it moved just now, that's probably just about as fast as it can go. It's quite capable of defending itself, though. We know from the fossils that its skin's almost a foot thick in places and unbelievably tough, and both its head and tail are armed with long, sharp spikes which, according to Boswell of Bluevale, it can whip around fast enough to kill anything that gets too close. According to the travellers' tales it can also spit a spray of poison potent enough to kill a dozen red dragons, although your guess is as good as mine as to whether that part's true. Even without that, though, I would imagine that even red dragons would only attack in flights of three or four."

     "How wonderful!" exclaimed Diana, straining her neck to stare at its underbelly. "First the island fish and now this. Isn't it funny how the largest creatures are the ones that go unnoticed."

     "Hilarious," said Petronax dryly. "And now shouldn't we be going? I hate to drag you all away from your new friend, but we are in a hurry."

     "Yes, of course," agreed Drake. "Come on Tom, time to go."

     The wizard nodded reluctantly, but as he turned away from the colossal creature to follow the others south he couldn't help but wonder what the rest of it looked like, the upper body that was known only from partial and fragmented fossils. The huge head with its gigantic forward pointing horn with which it could impale anything foolish enough to attack from the air. The long neck that blended into its great sloping back like the side of a mountain. The long whiplike tail terminating with wicked spines. He knew that he would have given anything, anything at all, for a single proper glimpse of the creature in open country, where he could have gazed upon the full majesty of the colossal flightless dragon, the largest living creature ever to walk the planet Tharia.

     He looked back one last time as his horse carried him away, then turned his mind to the way ahead. The city of Connistantol couldn’t be far away now.