by Jack Dann
BESTIARY!
EDITED BY
JACK DANN
AND GARDNER DOZOIS
BESTIARY!
All rights reserved.
Copyright ® 1985 by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.
Cover art by Carl Lundgren.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
ISBN: 0-441-05506-0
eISBN: 978-1-62579-138-2
Electronic Edition by Baen Books
Acknowledgment is made for permission to print the following material:
"The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule," by Lucius Shepard. Copyright © 1984 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Draco, Draco," by Tanith Lee. Copyright © 1985 by Tanith Lee. First published in Beyond Lands of Never (Unicorn). Reprinted by permission of the author.
"The Rule of Names," by Ursula K. Le Guin. Copyright © 1975 by Ursula K. Le Guin. First published in Fantastic, April 1964. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.
"The Black Horn," by Jack Dann. Copyright © 1984 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Walk Like a Mountain," by Manly Wade Wellman. Copyright 1955 by Fantasy House, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1955. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Treaty in Thrtessos," by Karen Anderson. Copyright © 1963 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1963. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"The Woman Who Loved the Centaur Pholus," by Gene Wolfe. Copyright © 1979 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, December 1979. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.
"The Sleep of Trees," by Jane Yolen. Copyright 0 1980 by Jane Yolen. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1980. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agents, Curtis Brown, Ltd.
"The Hardwood Pile," by L. Sprague de Camp. Copyright © 1940 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.; copyright renewed 1968 by L. Sprague de Camp. First published in Unknown, September 1940. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"The Blind Minotaur," by Michael Swanwick. Copyright 0 1984 by TSR, Inc. First published in Amazing, March 1985. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.
"Landscape With Sphinxes," by Karen Anderson. Copyright 1962 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1962. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Simpson's Lesser Sphynx," by Esther M. Friesner. Copyright 1984 by Esther M. Friesner. First published in Elsewhere III (Ace). Reprinted by permission of the author.
"God's Hooks," by Howard Waldrop. Copyright ® 1982 by Terry Carr. First published in Universe 12 (Doubleday). Reprinted by permission of the author.
"A Leg Full of Rubies," by Joan Aiken. Copyright ® 1974 by Joan Aiken. First published in A Small Pinch of Weather (Jonathan Cape, Ltd.). Reprinted by permission of the author, Doubleday & Co., Inc., and Jonathan Cape, Ltd.
"The Valor of Cappen Varra," by Poul Anderson. Copyright 1957 by King-Size Publications. First published in Fantastic Universe, Jan. 1957. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"The Troll," by T. H. White. Copyright ® 1978 by T. H. White. First published in Dark Imaginings (Delta Books). Reprinted by permission of G.P. Putnam's Sons.
"Return of the Griffins," by A. E. Sandeling. Copyright ® 1948 by Hallie Burnett. From Story magazine, 1948. Reprinted by permission of Hallie Burnett, Inc.
"The Last of His Breed," by Rob Chilson. Copyright 0 1984 by Rob Chilson. First published in Beyond Lands of Never (Unicorn). Reprinted by permission of the author.
The editors would like to thank the following people for their help and support:
Trina King, Stu Schiff, Michael Swanwick, Susan Casper, Jeanne Dann, Virginia Kidd, Gene Wolfe, Jane Yolen, Hallie Burnett, Janet and Ricky Kagan, Perry Knowlton, Pat Cadigan, Edward and Audrey Ferman, George Scithers, Tom Whitehead and his staff of the Special Collections Department of the Paley Library at Temple University, Patti McLaughlin of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Deborah Williams and her staff of the Binghamton, N.Y., Public Library, Brian Perry and Tawna Lewis of Fat Cat Books (263 Main St., Johnson City, New York 13790), Tom and Mike of Quick Printing in Binghamton, the staff of Sir Speedy Printing on 13th Street in Philadelphia, Beth Fleisher, Sue Stone, and special thanks to our own editors, Ginjer Buchanan and Susan Allison.
PREFACE
A Bestiary is, quite literally, a "book of beasts." Most of the ones we are familiar with were codified in medieval times, some as late as the Renaissance, but they drew upon a body of traditional animal lore that had been passed along from scholar to scholar for many hundreds of years. Ancient authorities such as Aristotle, Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, Oppian, Gaius Julius Solinus (sometimes referred to as "Pliny's ape"), and Claudius Aelianus were the sources for much of the information in the Bestiaries, supplemented by oral tradition (some of it hundreds of years old), Christian allegorical lore, "traveller's tales" (i.e.: lies) by charlatans like Sir John Mandeville or the later Baron Munchausen, and the genuine (if often somewhat muddled) reports of legitimate explorers, especially those who (by Renaissance times) were beginning to penetrate the unknown fastnesses of the New World.
The Bestiaries, particularly the later ones, were not just compilations of marvels, but serious and substantial works of science, the beginnings of modern zoology ... but because reliable zoologic information was so rare, the compilers of the Bestiaries often had difficulty distinguishing the real from the imagined, so that you will find dragons and crocodiles, manticores and rabbits, beavers and cockatrices, all sharing the same pages—pages where, in the words of M. St. Clare Byrne, "superstition and fact, myth and observation are all inextricably mixed." In his Historie of Foure-Footed Beasts (1607), for instance, Edward Topsell devotes 152 pages of text to the horse, much of it closely observed, and then, a bit later on, tells us that dragons hide in ambush for elephants by watering holes, and that when the elephant "putteth downe his trunke they take hold thereof, and instantly in great numbers leap up unto his eare ... where out they sucke the blood of the Elephant untill he fall downe dead, and so they perish both together." It should also be noted that Topsell makes a careful distinction between the rhinoceros and the unicorn, and then goes on to chide his readers for the "impiety" of not believing in the existence of the magical beast just because there are various one-horned creatures in mundane nature that might superficially resemble it.
This last point is particularly important. Although, as many biologists point out, there are still hundreds of species of insects and plants in the Amazon Basin alone that have never been described or classified by science, in our modern smugness we sometimes seem to feel that we have explored even the remotest corners of the world and know everything there is to be known about the creatures who inhabit it. We congratulate ourselves on the fact that we have no difficulty distinguishing the real from the fabulous, that we can flip through the pages of a medieval Bestiary and with easy confidence relegate elephants, antelopes, cats, beavers, and bison to one category, and manticores, unicorns, dragons, griffins, and cockatrices to the other. We might even allow ourselves to sneer a little at the credulity of our forebears. And yet, even though we know that they're not "real," the fabulous cr
eatures of legend and mythology have not gone away. They still live in the pages of fantasy literature all over the world, and new generations of readers still encounter them there with the same shock of recognition, the same thrill of wonder and awe as their forefathers. In that sense, we still "believe" in them, just as credulously as our ancestors did. There is something about these creatures which is still potent, and their images still speak to something that lives in the deep places of the spirit. In the words of Jorge Luis Borges, "We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe, but there is something in the dragon's image that appeals to the human imagination, and so we find the dragon in quite distinct places and times. It is, so to speak, a necessary monster, not an ephemeral or accidental one ..."
In this anthology we will examine some of those "necessary monsters," the magical beasts who are still alive and well in the pages of fantasy literature: Creatures from the pre-Dawn world of myth, from before the coming of man.... Creatures who walk the neon-lit streets of our own modern world.... Creatures civilized and charming. Creatures ravening and monstrous. Creatures who'll make you laugh, creatures who'll freeze the marrow of your bones. Creatures born of fire, creatures of dreadful night, creatures of gentle magic. The fabulous creatures that still stalk through our dreams . , . . and our nightmares.
THE DRAGON
Dragons are by far the most potent and widespread of all mythological beasts, and dragons or dragon-like creatures appear in just about every mythology in the world. So omnipresent is the image of the dragon, and so powerful the emotions that it evokes, that Carl Sagan, among others, has suggested that dragons are actually a racial memory of dinosaurs, left over from the days when our remote ancestors were tiny tree-dwelling insectivores who cowered in shivering terror whenever one of the immense flesh-eaters like Tyrannosaurus Rex came crashing through the forest. Whatever the truth of that, it's certainly true that dragons are one of the few mythological creatures that it's almost pointless to bother describing. As Avram Davidson puts it, "Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, nobody knows what a wombat looks like, and everybody knows what a dragon looks like." There are variations, of course—sometimes the dragon is wingless and rather like a gigantic worm; sometimes like a huge snake; most often like an immense, winged lizard. Sometimes it breathes fire, sometimes not—but, for the most part, the rule holds. With very few exceptions, almost everyone does know what the dragon looks like, which is why it is one of the master-symbols of fantasy. (Or perhaps it's the other way around.)
Although the Eastern Dragon (and particularly the Chinese Dragon) is usually depicted as a wise and benevolent creature, a divine being associated with the bringing of the life-giving rains, what we have been describing here primarily fits the Western Dragon ... and, not surprisingly, it is the Western Dragon, the terrible fire-breathing dragon of folklore and fairy tales, that has been the dominant image of the dragon in Western literature and art. In addition to its well-known fondness for snacking on princesses, the Western Dragon is a covetous beast, and can often be found guarding the immense treasures of gold and jewels that it's ravaged from human realms. Although sometimes portrayed as merely a huge mindless beast, the dragon is just as often depicted as having the gift of speech; in this guise, it is frequently a sorcerer, an active magic-user itself as well as merely being a magical creature, and some say that Dragon Magic is the strongest and most ancient magic of all .. .
In the stories that follow, we'll see a dragon so immense that he has literally become part of the landscape, watch a battle between a Hero and a ferocious dragon of the genuine old-fashioned maiden-eating variety, and then, for a change, get to see a little of the dragon's side of the story .. .
Lucius Shepard is a hot new writer whose work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Universe, and elsewhere. His acclaimed first novel Green Eyes was published as an Ace Special last year. Upcoming is a new novel, called Foreign Devils.
Tanith Lee is one of the best known of modern fantasists, and one of the most prolific, with well over a dozen books to her credit. Her most recent book is the collection The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales. She has won two World Fantasy Awards for her short fiction.
Ursula K. Le Guin is a multiple award-winner, and has been widely hailed as one of the major writers of our times. She is the author of such landmark books as The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and the reknowned "Earthsea" trilogy, among others. Her most recent book is the novel Always Coming Home.
Theme anthologies about dragons include Dragons of Light and Dragons of Darkness, both edited by Orson Scott Card, and Dragon Tales, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles Waugh.
The Man Who Painted
The Dragon Griaule
by
Lucius Shepard
"...OTHER THAN the Sichi Collection, Cattanay's only surviving works are to be found in the Municipal Gallery at Regensburg, a group of eight oils-oncanvas, most notable among them being Woman With Oranges. These paintings constitute his portion of a student exhibition hung some weeks after he had left the city of his birth and traveled south to Teocinte, there to present his proposal to the city fathers; it is unlikely he ever learned of the disposition of his work, and even more unlikely that he was aware of the general critical indifference with which it was received. Perhaps the most interesting of the group to modern scholars, the most indicative as to Cattanay's later preoccupations, is the Self Portrait, painted at the age of twenty-eight, a year before his departure.
"The majority of the canvas is a richly varnished black in which the vague shapes of floorboards are presented, barely visible. Two irregular slashes of gold cross the blackness, and within these we can see a section of the artist's thin features and the shoulder panel of his shirt. The perspective given is that we are looking down at the artist, perhaps through a tear in the roof, and that he is looking up at us, squinting into the light, his mouth distorted by a grimace born of
intense concentration. On first viewing the painting, I was struck by the atmosphere of tension that radiated from it. It seemed I was spying upon a man imprisoned within a shadow having two golden bars, tormented by the possibilities of light beyond the walls. And though this may be the reaction of the art historian, not the less knowledgeable and therefore more trustworthy response of the gallery-goer, it also seemed that this imprisonment was self-imposed, that he could have easily escaped his confine; but that he had realized a feeling of stricture was an essential fuel to his ambition, and so had chained himself to this arduous and thoroughly unreasonable chore of perception.... "
—from Meric Cattanay: The Politics of Conception by Reade Holland, Ph.D.
1.
In 1853, in a country far to the south, in a world separated from this one by the thinnest margin of possibility, a dragon named Griaule dominated the region of the Carbonales Valley, a fertile area centering upon the town of Teocinte and renowned for its production of silver, mahogany, and indigo. There were other dragons in those days, most dwelling on the rocky islands west of Patagonia —tiny, irascible creatures, the largest of them no bigger than a swallow. But Griaule was one of the great Beasts who had ruled an age. Over the centuries he had grown to stand 750 feet high at the midback, and from the tip of his tail to his nose he was 6,000 feet long. (It should be noted here that the growth of dragons was due not to caloric intake, but to the absorption of energy derived from the passage of time.) Had it not been for a miscast spell, Griaule would have died millennia before. The wizard entrusted with the task of slaying him—knowing his own life would be forfeited as a result of the magical backwash —had experienced a last-second twinge of fear, and, diminished by this ounce of courage, the spell had flown a mortal inch awry. Though the wizard's whereabouts were
unknown, Griaule had remained alive. His heart had stopped, his breath stilled, but his mind continued to seethe, to send forth the gloomy vibr
ations that enslaved all who stayed for long within range of his influence.
This dominance of Griaule's was an elusive thing. The people of the valley attributed their dour character to years of living under his mental shadow, yet there were other regional populations who maintained a harsh face to the world and had no dragon on which to blame the condition; they also attributed their frequent raids against the neighboring states to Griaule's effect, claiming to be a peaceful folk at heart—but again, was this not human nature? Perhaps the most certifiable proof of Griaule's primacy was the fact that despite a standing offer of a fortune in silver to anyone who could kill him, no one had succeeded. Hundreds of plans had been put forward, and all had failed, either through inanition or impracticality. The archives of Teocinte were filled with schematics for enormous steam-powered swords and other such improbable devices, and the architects of these plans had every one stayed too long in the valley and become part of the disgruntled populace. And so they went on with their lives, coming and going, always returning, bound to the valley, until one spring day in 1853, Meric Cattanay arrived and proposed that the dragon be painted.