Edward Hoch - Isaac Asimov's Worlds of Fantasy. Book 6 - Mythical Beasties

He looked up when the cold gust of wind came shrieking across the fields, and shouted something, and sprinted for the black dragon. The beast tore a last hunk of meat from her father's horse, swallowed, and rose reluctantly into the air.

The rider flailed his whip.

Adara saw the door of the farmhouse burst open. The other two riders rushed out. and ran for their dragons. One of them was struggling into his pants as he ran. He was barechested.

The black dragon roared, and its fire came blazing up at them. Adara felt the searing blast of heat, and a shudder went through the ice dragon as the flame played along its belly.

Then it craned its long neck around, and fixed its baleful empty eyes upon the enemy, and opened its frost-rimed jaws.

Out from among its icy teeth its breath came streaming, and that breath was pale and cold.

It touched the left wing of the coal-black dragon beneath them, and the dark beast gave a shrill cry of pain, and when it beat its wings again, the frost-covered wing broke in two.

Dragon and dragonrider began to fall.

The ice dragon breathed again.

They were frozen and dead before they hit the ground.

The rust-colored dragon was flying at them, and the dragon the color of blood with its barechested rider. Adara's ears were filled with their angry roaring, and she could feel their hot breath around her, and see the air shimmering with heat, and smell the stink of sulfur.

Two long swords of fire crossed in midair, but neither touched the ice dragon, though it shriveled in the heat, and water flew from it like rain whenever it beat its wings.

The blood-colored dragon flew too close, and the breath of the ice dragon blasted the rider. His bare chest turned blue before Adara's eyes, and moisture condensed on him in an instant, covering him with frost. He screamed, and died, and fell from his mount, though his harness hand remained be hind, frozen to the neck of his dragon- The ice dragon closed on it, wings screaming the secret song of winter, and a blast of flame met a blast of cold. The ice dragon shuddered once again, and twisted away, dripping. The other dragon died.

But the last dragonrider was behind them now, the enemy in full armor on the dragon whose scales were the brown of rust. Adara screamed, and even as she did the fire enveloped the ice dragon's wing. It was gone in less than an instant, but the wing was gone with it, melted, destroyed.

The ice dragon's remaining wing beat wildly to slow its plunge, but it came to earth with an awful crash. Its legs shattered beneath it, and its wings snapped in two places, and the impact of the landing threw Adara from its back. She tumbled to the soft earth of the field, and rolled, and struggled up, bruised but whole.

The ice dragon seemed very small now, and very broken.

Its long neck sank wearily to the ground, and its head rested amid the wheat.

The enemy dragonrider came swooping in, roaring with triumph. The dragon's eyes burned. The man flourished his lance and shouted.

The ice dragon painfully raised its head once more, and made the only sound that Adara ever heard it make: a terrible thin cry full of melancholy, like the sound the north wind makes when it moves around the towers and battlements of the while castles that stand empty in the land of always" winter.

When the cry had faded, the ice dragon sent cold into the world one final time: a long smoking blue-white stream of cold that was mil of snow and stillness and the end of all living things. The dragonrider flew right into it, still brandishing whip and lance. Adara watched him crash.

Then she was running, away from the fields, back to the house and her family within, running as fast as she could, running and panting and crying all the while like a seven-yearold.

Her father had been nailed to the bedroom wall. They had wanted him to watch while they took their turns with TeriAdara did not know what to do, but she untied Ten, whose tears had dried by then, and they freed Geoff, and then they got their father down. Ten nursed him and cleaned out his wounds. When his eyes opened and he saw Adara, he smiled.

She hugged hhn very hard, and cried for him.

By night he said he was fit enough to travel. They crept away under cover of darkness, and took the king's road south.

Her family asked no questions then, in those hours of darkness and fear. But later, when they were safe in the south, there were questions endlessly. Adara gave them the best answers she could. But none of them ever believed her, except for Geoff, and he grew out of it when he got older.

She was only seven, after all, and she did not understand that ice dragons are never seen in summer, and cannot be tamed nor ridden.

Besides, when they left the house that night, there was no ice dragon to be seen. Only the huge dark corpses of three war dragons, and the smaller bodies of three dragonriders in black-and-orange. And a pond that had never been there before, a small quiet pool where the water was very cold.

They had walked around it carefully, headed towards the road.

Their father worked for another fanner for three years in the south. His hands were never as strong as they had been, before the nails had been pounded through them, but he made up for that with the strength of his back and his arms, and his determination. He saved whatever he could, and he seemed happy. "Hal is gone, and my land," he would tell Adara.

"and I am sad for that. But it is all right. I have my daughter back." For the winter was gone from her now, and she smiled and laughed and even wept like other little girls.

Three years after they had fled, the king's army routed the enemy in a great battle, and the king's dragons burned the foreign capital. In the peace that followed, the northern provinces changed hands once more. Ten had recaptured her spirit and married a young trader, and she remained in the south.

Geoff and Adara returned with their father to the farm.

When the first frost came, all the ice lizards came out, just as they had always done. Adara watched them with a smile on her face, remembering the way it had been. But she did not try to touch them. They were cold and fragile little things, and the warmth of her hands would hurt them.

The firedrake is a form of dragon. The second syllable, ' 'drake,'' does not refer to a male duck, but is a shortened form of the Greek drakon {large snake, or dragon).

Where emphasis is placed upon the dragon's fiery breath, it can be called a "fire-dragon" or firedrake. Both Sigurd (Siegfried) and Beowulf kilted firedrakes as culminating deeds of heroism.

The firedrake is, in the following story, abstracted into a principle of heat. People have, after all, always suffered from excess of heat and cold (depending on the season. altitude, and latitude) and have tended to maievolize them (if I may coin a word).

The sun is the obvious principle of heat, but it is difficult to maievolize the sun unless you live in an unusually hot, dry climate. The sun is too obviously a bnnger of welcome warmth and light, and is clearly a fructifying force on which life depends. A firedrake must then be converted into the principle of excessive heat. The discovery of fire gave humanity something else that showed this double aspect. It could warm and give life like the sun and could burn and kill like the firedrake.

There is no natural principle of cold-for cold is only the absence of heat. It is possible to invent one, however.

The Scandinavians in their myths had, among the enemies of the gods, both the fire-giants and the frost-giants. Naturally, considering the Scandinavian climate, it was frostgiants who were emphasized.

In the following utterly charming story not only is there a firedrake but also a sort of frost-giant which the author calls the Remora (a name also given to a small fish with a sucker organ on its back that hitches rides on sharks). The Remora, as described, seems even more frightful, though less malevolent, than [he firedrake.