There seemed to be more policemen at St Pancras than there were passengers. The station was almost completely empty apart from the armed officers walking carefully to and fro across the concourse and in their wake the lonely travellers clustered anxiously round their bags. People spoke in whispers and seemed lost and insignificant in great, solemn space of the station.
Ridley ushered Oscar along towards the farther side of the station, past queues that were forming at the head of every platform, as people waited to have their bags searched by stern policemen. Already Oscar could see Magi, in a green uniform that he couldn't recognise, moving down the queues, scrutinising the passengers as they passed by.
Their own destination, however, was obscured by a great billowing cloud of smoke and steam. Oscar wondered if something somewhere was on fire - black smuts started to dot his clothes and the smell of burning stung his nose as Ridley led him down the platform.
Through the thick steam he caught glimpses of colourful and ornately decorated carriages, covered all over with lots of gleaming brass fixings and delicate and mysterious patterns. All the windows were decorated too, with magical symbols cut into the glass and many of them were closed by thick green velvet curtains. Through the few that were open he could just about make out an interior full of more green velvet and gold braid.
It wasn't a long train - only three or four carriages long - and soon the steam began to thin and Oscar could see they were approaching the engine. It was completely unlike any train engine he had ever seen, outside of old films and books. It was black and gleaming and a number of Magi in overalls that would have been practical apart from the magical patterns embroidered on them, wandered back and forth polishing and tending the machinery. Only was it machinery? Peering through the wreathing smoke, the pipes began to look like tentacles or whiskers, the metal started to look like it was made up of many iridescent scales, the whole tender seemed to swell and fall as if it were... breathing...
And then, as they approached closer, the whole of the front of the engine rose up and turned towards them: a great, bearded, shiny face, with a short, blunt muzzle, a hint of huge white teeth and two dimly glowing red eyes like warning lights. It wasn't a steam engine at all: it was a dragon.
Oscar stood, rooted to the spot, as the Engine Dragon shook his enormous, heavy head at them and snorted steam out through nostrils like gleaming funnels. Ridley reached up and patted the Dragon's hissing muzzle and it nudged her back with evident affection. The black cat came sauntering down the platform and sat down next the Ridley, regarding the dragon with a curiously superior expression. One of the Magi in overalls came up to them, wiping his hands on a piece of cloth and looking very pleased with himself.
"Took all six of us to conjure her back up - took five of us just to find which shed she'd been left in..." he patted the Dragon and then wiped where his hand had been.
"Its good to see her again, isn't it girl?" Ridley scratched the Engine under the chin with her staff - it sounded like someone running a stick along a piece of corrugated iron, "Are we ready to go?"
"She's fed and we've got a full head of steam up," said the Magi Engineer, "The first full run of the Great Northern in twenty years: it's going to be quite something."
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go..." Ridley turned and started back towards the carriages.
"Right then," said the Engineer and, with a great grin plastered on his face, he took a whistle from his pocket and blew it: "All aboard!"
Oscar sprinted after Ridley and followed her and the cat up the steps into the first carriage as all the Engineers ran up towards their special cabin just behind the Engine Dragon. Then Chief Engineer blew his whistle again and, with a great bellow and a rush of steam the Dragon sprang forward down the lines, catapulting Oscar through the door into the soft green seats of the compartment, as they leapt forward, out of the station, and away in a whirlwind of smoke and sparks and magic, away through the tunnels and between the houses, away up the lines to York.
Oscar sat back in his seat, watching the countryside rush past, as they sped up the line north. Ridley sat opposite him, on the other side of a table stacked high with tea things, including, Oscar had been pleased to discover, a large number of cakes that Ridley didn't seem to want. There had to be some kind of spell cast on the carriage, because in here it was incredibly hard to tell that they were travelling at all, but even when the carriage did occasionally shake and rattle, the tea things were all very careful to brace themselves and make sure that nothing spilt. They weren't being helped, though, by the black cat, who was amusing herself by chasing a particularly nervous saltcellar around the table.
"Told you it would be worth going by train, didn't I?" said Ridley, grinning, "Only way to travel. I never thought I'd see any of the great Engine Dragons running again in my lifetime, let alone be able to commission one for my own business in broad daylight... amazing, quite amazing... You know," She leant forward, "When I was your age they only ran them at night - and that was only in emergencies - the only time I ever got to ride in one before today was the night the Wild Ride attacked our college. That was pretty much the last time before they put them away for good."
"This is what I don't understand," said Oscar, who was now full of cake and able to concentrate on less important matters, "The Magi have been around for ages, right? And I know everyone was hiding from the Erl King, but Uncle Rufus isn't that old - I mean, you just said that there were even Dragons before then - I mean, how come no one knows about you? Someone must have noticed something..."
"Oh they did - lots of people have known or suspected, at different times - after all, Isaac Newton set up the original Brotherhood with the permission of the King - so he must have known - but the Magi have always liked to keep things secret, even from each other. It takes a lot of research and skill and training to summon spirits, you know - and before the Brotherhood was founded it was even more difficult than it is now - back then Magi were always scared of someone else finding out their tricks and stealing their spirits, so they kept everything secret and, well, old habits die hard, I suppose..."
"Maggs said something about Newton: but I still don't really understand what he did."
"I'm afraid that's another one of the mysteries of the Magi, really: you see, Newton and the other founders of the Brotherhood created the Great Work, the spell that created the modern Royal Order, but how they did it was kept secret and today is lost completely...
"But I'm getting a little ahead of myself - I take it you know the story of Merlin?"
"The wizard? With King Arthur and the knights and dragons and everything?"
"Well, there weren't really knights back then, but there were dragons, of course..." Ridley paused for a moment and looked at him, "Perhaps I'll refresh your memory anyway...
"A long time ago, after the Romans had left Britain, but long before the Normans came, and far away to the West, there was a King called Vortigern. Vortigern was trying to build a castle to protect himself from his enemies, but each time he got it halfway built, the earth would shake and the Castle would collapse back down into a huge cloud of dust and a little pile of rubble. Then Vortigern would have the architects whipped and start all over again.
"After several tries, though, the architects were starting to get a little fed up at this arrangement, and Vortigern wasn't too pleased, either, so he called together all the wise men and asked them what he should do to keep his Castle up. And they told him that he had to sacrifice a child with no father at the base of the tower and only then would it stay in one piece. Now, obviously, children without any kind of human father at all aren't in plentiful supply, but fortunately for Vortigern there was one, a boy called Merlin, whose father was said to be the Devil, or perhaps a faerie, but certainly not a normal man. So Vortigern had Merlin brought to him and prepared to sacrifice him.
"Merlin, however, was not overjoyed at being killed just to keep a Castle up, and told Vortigern that his wise men were wrong, and what he had to do was dig a deep pit beneath where the castle stood. Well, Vortigern dug the pit and at the bottom they discovered a Red Dragon and a White Dragon, locked in fierce combat, and it was their buffetings and crashings that was making the ground shake and destroying the Castle...
"Now, obviously that's just a story, and it has a more complicated ending and might mean all kinds of complicated things, but what Newton discovered was that it held a grain of truth - there are two dragons: the two most powerful spirits in Britain, spirits so powerful and so ancient that no Magi would dare even trying to capture them with magic. They simply wouldn't know how.
"But what Newton also discovered was that there was a way to do it. The ancients had built monuments - standing stones, barrow mounds, that sort of thing - that helped them channel and use the powers of the greater spirits, but in the thousands of years since the skills had been forgotten and the new cities and castles and houses had ruined the spell.
"So Newton set about working it all out, just as he did with Mathematics and Physics, and eventually he was ready to perform 'The Great Work'. With the help of other Magi - including a famous architect called Hawksmoor - he had constructed a system of buildings that worked as a spell, binding one of the Great Spirits: the White Dragon, placing it in the power of the Magi.
"And that Great Work became the keystone of the Brotherhood of the Magi: ensorcelling the White Dragon changed Magic forever - it put great power into the hands of the Brotherhood, power that was shared with every Magi that joined. What had been a little London club became the official body of Magic in Britain. And that power made the practise of magic easier - many other spirits bowed before the White Dragon - it meant that instead of all the research and experimentation, to command a spirit you just needed to know the right words of command:" and here she said something in a language that Oscar could almost, but not quite, understand, "and they obey you..."
As she spoke the cake stand waddled uncertainly towards Oscar and then shuffled round until the last two remaining cakes were facing him. He took one and it bowed graciously and then sidled back to its place by the teapot.
"So... I... I could do magic if I wanted?" asked Oscar.
"You're already making crumbs appear from nowhere," said Ridley, "Seriously though, yes, you could, you could and you will... I promise. Once all this is over..."
"You and Maggs? You'll teach me?"
"I'd be honoured."
And Oscar sat back, visions of whole armies of cake stands at his beck and call filling his head as he gazed rapturously out of the window and, before he knew, fell fast asleep.
