Roger Zelazny: Here there be dragons

"Are you sure you can do it?"

"Yes," said Bell.

"All right," said William. "You produce a dragon when I ask you to, and I promise that you will get to meet Mister Gibberling."

"It's a deal," said Bell, turning brown as he jumped into the saddlebag. "Let's get going."

William mounted his horse and they rode away together.

The princess' birthday party promised to be a gala affair. The great dining hall of the palace resounded with music. There was dancing and wine and big platters of food. There were whole roasted pigs with apples in their mouths, and there were chickens and dumplings and great roasts of beef.

All the ladies and gentlemen of the kingdom came, and the ladies wore dresses of red and yellow and blue and orange and green and violet. There was a great birthday cake, the size of an elephant and a half, and it had ten candles on it, because that was how old the princess was. Everyone brought her wondrous gifts. There was everything that a person could possibly want at a birthday party. Except for fireworks, that is. Or a fire-breathing dragon.

"Do you think he will really produce a dragon?" asked the third adviser.

"Of course not," said the second. "How could he have gotten a dragon? And if he did, where is he keeping it?"

The captain of the King's Guard laughed. "You were going to seek a dragon all by yourself, eh?" he said. "Well, where is it?"

William did not answer him. Instead, he tapped his glass with his spoon until the room was quiet. Then he cleared his throat. He appeared to be a bit nervous.

"Uh, the time has come for the fireworks display," he told them all, "in honor of her young majesty's tenth birthday. Happy birthday, Princess. This is going to be a very special and rather unusual display."

The king laughed and slapped his leg. "Yes, yes!" he cried out. "Bring it on, William! Bring it on! Medium-sized, and with colored lights, mind you!"

"Yes, your highness," said William, taking a tiny package from beneath the table and placing it before him. It is in here."

"It seems a pretty small package," said the king.

"Yes," said the first adviser.

"Yes indeed," said the second.

"Much too small," said the third.

The king opened the package. Bell jumped out and stood upon the table.

The three advisers laughed. The knights laughed. They laughed and laughed until the tears came into their eyes.

"That is supposed to be a medium-sized dragon, with colored lights?" they asked. "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

And they laughed and laughed and laughed some more, until Bell stood up on his tiny hind legs and turned to William and asked, "Now?"

"Now," he said.

Then something happened. Bell had been the color of the oakwood table, but now he was dark, red-green in color and seemed slightly larger than he had been. He opened his mouth, and a tiny spark came out of it.

Then he was bigger than the package he had come out of. He was twice as big as he had been only a moment before. He opened his mouth again, and the king drew back away from the flame that emerged.

Then Bell was as big as a man, and the platters rattled as they fell upon the floor, pushed away from him while he grew.

And he kept growing. He grew and he grew, until the table broke in half beneath him. He grew until he filled half the great banquet hall.

He opened his mouth and roared with a sound like thunder. Flames shot forth from the windows of the palace and lighted up the courtyard outside. Tapestries were scorched. Women screamed and backed against the wall. Seven knights fainted, and the captain of the King's Guard ran and hid himself behind the throne.

William felt something crawling across his foot, and he looked down under what was left of the table. The first three advisers were crouched there, shivering.

"Well?" he asked them. "Yes, it is a very good dragon," answered the first.

"Only it is not a medium-sized one," said the second.

"No, it is a large, economy-sized dragon," said the third.

"He was the best I could manage on such short notice," said William, smiling.

The king pushed the princess behind his back and stood facing the dragon.

"My, you're a big one," he said. "Please do be careful with those flames. There are expensive tapestries and people and things like that about."

The dragon laughed. No one else did.

"I am Belkis," he roared, "king of the dragons! You are only a human king, so do not give me orders!"

"But I am sovereign majesty of a mighty kingdom," said the king, "and my word is law. I order. I really do order. And I am always obeyed. So please do not go about burning tapestries and people and things like that."

Belkis laughed again, and the flames danced about the rafters.

"No one orders Belkis to do or not to do anything. I am only here for one reason. I want to meet your Royal Cartographer, Mister Gibberling. Produce him!"

AND THE KING BACKED AWAY.

"That is Mister Gibberling down at the end of the table you just broke," he said. "The man with the white beard. The one still holding a glass in his hand."

"Aha! Mister Gibberling! So we meet at last!" snarled Belkis. Mister Gibberling, who was indeed an old man, rose slowly to his feet.

"Uh I don't quite understand ..." he began.

"You are the one who is giving dragons a bad name," said Belkis.

"Wh-what do you mean?" asked Mister Gibberling.

"Your maps! Your stupid, nasty little maps!" said Belkis, burning the edges of Mister Gibberling's beard as he spoke.

"'Here There Be Dragons'! That is absurd! That is cheating! It is the refuge of a small mind!"

"Yes ! Yes !" agreed Mister Gibberling, putting out his beard by emptying his wine-cup over it. "You are right! I have always felt mine to be quite small!"

"I want you to know that over the past several thousand years we dragons have taken great pains to stay out of the way of humans," said Belkis. "We have even taken to assuming other forms such as that of the little lizard Bell, which you saw a bit earlier. We do not want people to know that we are still about or they will be forever pestering us. Take any foolish young knight out to make a name for himself: What is the first thing he does?"

"I don't know," said Mister Gibberling.

"I will tell you," said Belkis. "He looks for a dragon to kill. If he can't locate any, though, he finds something else to do. Perhaps even something constructive. But you with your dragon-filled maps! - you are keeping the old legend alive when we want it to die. We want people to forget, to leave us alone.

Every time some young squire gets hold of one of your maps, he has visions of heading for the mountains around here in order to make some rank, to get to be a knight by killing dragons. This leaves dragons with the choice of eating them all or trying to ignore them. There are too many and most of them pretty tasteless, not to mention hard to clean. So we attempt to ignore them. This is often very difficult, and it is your fault. You have been responsible for maintaining a thing better forgotten.

Also," he stated, "you are a very poor geographer."

"My father was Royal Cartographer, and his father before him," said Mister Gibberling.

"What does that have to do with you?" asked Belkis. "You are a poor geographer."

"What do you mean?"

"What lies over those mountains?" asked Belkis, gesturing with a scaly wing.

"Drag Oh! I mean more mountains, sir," said Mister Gibberling.

"Admit it! You do not know!" said Belkis.

"All right! I don't know!" cried Mister Gibberling.

"Good," said Belkis. "That's something, anyway. Have you quills and ink and parchment handy?"

"No," said Mister Gibberling.

"Then go get them!" roared Belkis. "And be quick about it!"