A Dragon-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic

by Margaret Weis

  “Sixty-forty.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, but I’ll bet you’ve got the figures transposed.”

  “Maybe fifty-five and forty-five then.”

  “Down the middle, and let’s drink on it.”

  “Fair enough. Why haggle?”

  “Now I know why I dreamed of fighting a great number of knights, all of them looking like you. You’re going to make a name for yourself, George.”

  THE DRAGONBONE FLUTE

  Lois Tilton

  The flute was white as ivory, white as bone.

  It had been made from a dragon’s hollow wing-bone, found one day by a shepherd in a mountainside cave. The bones had lain gleaming in the darkness, the high-arched ribs, the skull with its deep hollow sockets, the razor-edged teeth. Yet it was only one delicate wingtip that he took home to the sod-roofed hut where he lived on the mountain, to spend the long summer evenings patiently boring the fingerholes.

  When it was finished he took it outside and blew the first tentative note. The sound was thrillingly clear, high and light. Soon, if he shut his eyes while he played, it almost seemed that he could see dragons soaring, their eyes like jewels, vast wings extended to catch the updraft from the sunwarmed valleys far below.

  Summer ended, and when the sky turned gray and the cold wind began to blow down from the peak, the shepherd gathered his animals and went down into the valley. Within days the trails were blocked by snow, and now was the time to sit by the fire in the company of other men. From time to time, when the tavern in the village was full of laughter and dancing, the shepherd would take out his flute and join in with the viol and recorder while the villagers skipped and rollicked to the well-known country tunes. It was a good way to pass the winter evenings and earn a tankard or two of thick brown ale.

  But when the snow melted and the new grass came green on the mountain, he gathered up his newly shorn flock to drive it back up to the summer pasture. Now, once again, his songs were of dragons and flight. They seemed to come from the heart of the flute itself, as if the hollow bone retained an echo of the dragon’s own voice.

  So he sat and played on the mountainside one day when suddenly a black shadow seemed to blot out the sun. As his sheep ran bleating in mindless panic, he looked up to see the vast shape of a dragon plunging down at him, talons extended, tail lashing the sky in a frenzy of rage. Then he heard its voice in his mind, even as he dropped to the ground in a futile effort to evade those claws: Mlakazar! My mate! Death! Death! Who killed him? Who has his bones?

  The shepherd in his desperate terror cried aloud, “No!” and felt the wind of the dragon’s passage engulfing him in its hot, sulphurous scent as he awaited the piercing agony of the talons seizing his flesh. But instead he rolled free, cowering on the ground as the dragon hovered directly overhead, the beating of its wings battering him like a gale. My mate! I heard the voice of his bones!

  The shepherd in his fear got to his knees, stammering, “I…found the bones in a cave. I took only one—this one—to make a flute. I never killed…never…”

  Slowly the dragon lowered itself to the ground, transfixing the trembling man with its gaze, red tongue licking in and out of its mouth. Yes, this is his, this is his voice. Show me. Show me the rest of the bones.

  He led, the dragon followed, claws scoring the earth of the mountainside to bare stone. The cave was above the grass line, a place the shepherd had found the year before while climbing up to retrieve a strayed lamb. It was then he had spotted the break in the rock and the dim gleam of fleshless bone inside.

  The dragon was only barely able to squeeze its bulk through the opening of the cave. The bones lay as the shepherd had found them, as they must have lain for tens of years to be stripped and worn so white. The shepherd felt the cry of the dragon’s grief: Mlakazar!

  He began to plead for his life, “You can see how long ago it must have been. I swear! I meant no harm! I never touched—never took but the one bone. Oh, forgive!”

  The dragon lowered its head in sorrow. The shepherd could see now that it was old and a female, her blue-green hide and scales worn. Her eyes were pallid opals, red-veined with age. Let me hear, she said at last. Let me hear the voice of my mate.

  So the shepherd took his flute from his belt and with shaking hands began to play. He played the song of flight, the song of freedom in the air, glorying in the strength of his wings. He played from the flute’s heart, not knowing how he did, and beside him the dragon wept huge golden tears.

  His voice lives again, she said at last.

  “I meant no harm,” the shepherd said again, uncertainly. “I was alone up here on the mountain. I thought, a little music, a song or two…”

  Yes, said the dragon. I know what it is to be alone. And after a moment she spread her wings and beat her way into the sky.

  The shepherd immediately put down the flute and began to search the mountainside anxiously for his flock, hoping they had not all plunged to their deaths in their panicked rush from descending death. He glanced nervously up at the dragon, soaring about a distant peak, well aware that she could easily swallow a sheep with a single snap of her jaws.

  It took three days to gather in the flock, scattered as they had been. And for days after that he did not dare touch the flute for fear of the dragon, that it might return and devour them. Yet from time to time he could see her far-off shape wheeling above him in the sky, bringing back memories of the song of flight, and finally he realized that nothing he did could endanger his sheep or protect them if the dragon wished him harm. So he let the dead dragon’s voice live again, and he was no longer alone on the mountain.

  But as the summer days grew longer, the presence of the dragon had other consequences. One day an armed man rode up to the high pasture. A squire rode with him, leading a much larger stallion bearing weapons and armor, most conspicuously a lance fully twelve feet long.

  The shepherd pulled off his cap as the knight beckoned him over. “Herdsman! Here! What do you know of the drake?”

  “Sir?”

  “The dragon, lout! I’ve had word there’s a dragon been spotted up in these mountains. Prime trophy! Looking for his lair. Well?”

  The shepherd glanced nervously up into the empty sky, then shook his head. “No, Sir. No dragon up here, Sir.” As the knight scowled, he added, “I couldn’t stay up here with my sheep if there was a dragon on the mountain, Sir. Not with my sheep.”

  The horseman cursed and turned his glare onto his squire, dismounting. “It’s getting late. I’ll stay here the night. Go fetch one of those lambs.”

  The shepherd protested in vain as his lamb was slaughtered and spitted over his own fire. The knight only threw him a coin and ordered him to stop his complaints. In the morning the unwelcome visitors rode on, but the shepherd knew they would not be the last.

  That winter, when he led his flock down from the mountain, the villagers pressed him with questions of their own, for they had seen the far-off shape of the dragon soaring high among the peaks. But the shepherd would admit nothing. Only, at last, that nothing had been at the sheep, no dragon, no eagle, no stray pack of wolves. And as they could see for themselves that the flock had not noticeably diminished, the villagers could only shake their heads.

  But the shepherd kept mostly to himself throughout that winter, nursing a solitary ale at the side of the fire, and when the patrons of the tavern called for a song from his flute, he shook his head, saying he had lost it on the mountain.

  In the spring, he drove his flock out almost before the snow had cleared the trails. Never had the mountain air seemed so fresh and clean, the sunshine so bright. And in the far, far-off distance, a speck of dark flew against the glistening snowcaps, a dragon soaring on outspread wings. His heart lifted at the sight.

  She descended almost as soon as he had reached his pasture, with a stiff rustle of leathery wings. Play, shepherd, play. Let me hear his voice again. And the shepherd put the flute of bone to his mouth and let the song of
flight spill out.

  “He was your only mate?” he asked her once.

  The dragon shook her scarred, blue-scaled head. A mate is for life.

  “For life,” the shepherd said sadly, thinking of the churchyard where he had buried his wife so many years ago, before he went up onto the mountain. “Yes, it is the same with some of us.”

  The dragon was ancient, even for one of her kind. Her leathery wings were scarred, her scales broken and cracked. The shepherd was concerned, for all her immense size, thinking of errant knights and the cruel steel heads of their lances. “This place is dangerous for you,” he urged her, but again and again the dragon would return. Play, shepherd. Let his voice live again.

  Then indeed rumors spread that a dragon had returned to the mountain. Knights and other adventurers would make their way to the high pasture in search of the great head for a trophy, the fabled gold of the hoard. Always the shepherd would show them the flock grazing placidly and unmolested on the tender grass. “I’ve been grazing this flock up here for half a man’s lifetime. Think you that I’d bring my sheep to a dragon’s lair?”

  So the season passed and the one after. Each spring the shepherd climbed the mountain trails more slowly. The dragon’s eyes grew more dim.

  Then one spring the sky was empty when the shepherd arrived at the high pasture with his flock. He went to bed that night with a heavy heart, and his flute was silent. But in the morning when he opened the door of his hut she was waiting for him, steaming in the mists. The huge head hung low, and her wings were tattered. Play, shepherd. Let me hear him one last time.

  He played, and the music of the flute soared higher and lighter than ever. He played until his breath was exhausted, while the dragon’s golden tears ran silently from the faded veined opal of her eyes.

  When he was finished, she began to creep away with painful slowness, dragging her ruined wings. The shepherd knew her destination. He followed until she came to the cave where her mate’s bones lay. Before she crawled inside, squeezing her bulk through the narrow opening, she turned one last time to face the shepherd. He was black! Bright black! Mlakazar!

  He waited until sunset colored the mountaintops, but she never emerged again.

  The shepherd returned to his solitary existence on the mountain, to his sheep and their new lambs. From time to time he would take out the dragonbone flute and play a few notes, but the sky remained empty.

  Then one day in late summer he felt a strange stirring in his heart. He put the flute to his mouth and played the old song of flight, the song of the dragon in his youth and power, soaring on the highest currents of the wind.

  At first the shepherd thought he must be dreaming. The sky was full of dragons, wings outstretched, their jewel-tone scales glinting in the sunlight. He blinked, and the flute almost fell from his hands, but the dragons were still there and he could hear their voices in his mind, crying, Flight! Flight!

  Then, as they dove closer, he saw that these dragons were each no larger than a swan, and he realized they must be newly hatched. Flight! they called. Flight! Flight! And he played for them again, watching with renewed joy as they swooped and plunged and tumbled in the air. Though he spoke to them, they made no answer, only repeating the same cry.

  The next morning, the shepherd once again made the climb to the cave near the mountain’s peak. His steps were slower than they had been when he first made this ascent and found a cave full of dry white bones. But this time dragons played above his head.

  The immense bulk of a dragon does not decay quickly, even in the summer heat, and the shepherd had to tie a scarf over his face before he could enter the dark, narrow space of the cave. But as soon as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, he was able to make out what he had sought—the precious broken, gold-veined shards of the dragons’ eggs, incubated long months in the decomposing warmth of their mother’s remains. His heart raced at the first sight of so much wealth, but at last he left the cave as empty-handed as he had come. How could he sell them, even downriver in the marketplace? How could he let the world know of their existence?

  Dragons flew over his head as he climbed slowly back down the mountain.

  There were twelve of them—gold and green and russet and blue and a solitary jet-brilliant black. Their eyes were bright, their wings supple and unscarred. They grew rapidly in the waning summer days, preying on the smaller beasts of the mountainside. As their wings became stronger they went farther and farther from the cave, until they were flying from peak to peak, higher and higher, until they soared above the most lofty snowcaps.

  Yet always they returned to the mountain where they had been born, to the sound of the shepherd’s dragonbone flute.

  But there came a day in autumn, when the grass was turning coarse and yellow, when the shepherd came upon the carcass of one of his yearling lambs on an outcrop of rock, torn open and half-devoured. The marks of a dragon’s talons were clearly visible on the remains.

  Despite the shepherd’s increased vigilance, several days later another lamb was missing. He grieved, knowing that by the next spring the dragons would be grown strong enough to carry off a mature ram. Now at last he felt the bitter truth of the answer he had always made to the questing knights, that he would not be able to pasture his flock on the mountain if there were dragons laired nearby.

  That fall he drove his sheep down to the valley before the first snowflakes flew in the sky. Some of the villagers shook their heads and wondered aloud how many more years the old shepherd would be able to spend all alone up on the mountainside. A few of them suggested that he ought to hire a boy to run after the sheep. To all of them the shepherd made scant response. He sat alone through the winter evenings by the fireside of the tavern, and when people spoke of dancing, none of them seemed to remember the sweet, lively music of the bone flute, lost so many years ago.

  Then one evening, as night was coming on, there was a commotion outside the tavern: the stamping of horses and the ring of steel. The innkeeper bustled, shouting for his sons to tend the beasts, his maids to look lively in the kitchen and make up the best bed for the noble knight and his servant.

  The customers nearest the door hurried outside, followed quickly by the rest. The shepherd left his seat last of all, dread in his heart. The crowd had gathered thickly around the horses, hindering the tavern’s boy in his efforts to lead them into the stable. It was only at the last moment that the shepherd caught a glimpse of what was tied across the largest mount’s back, a dragon as large as the horse itself, wings trussed, up so they would not drag on the ground, the jewel-tones of its eyes gone dull and its scales still lustrous, gleaming black, the rarest of dragon-colors.

  Never again would his wings bear him up into the sky, never again would he experience the pure joy of flight or ever know the long, loyal happiness of a mate.

  Soon the knight came into the tavern, followed by the admiring company, where the landlord himself served him his ale. He was a young fellow, fair and flushed with pride, not at all reluctant to boast of his deed in slaying the drake.

  “He flew at me with his claws all extended, mouth wide open, hissing—”

  “Breathing fire?” one of the serving maids asked eagerly.

  “Well,” the knight admitted, reluctantly compelled to honesty, “not exactly.” He took a deep swallow of his ale. “I couched my lance. The drake came at me, and I spitted him like a charging boar. The point of my lance ran in below his ribs and out between his wings. The force drove my mount to his knees.” The knight was on his feet with the excitement of his own ale. “I jumped clear, pulled my sword—”

  The crowd exclaimed at the bright ring of steel, stepping back as he pulled his blade free, reenacting the epic battle. “But the drake was already dead. Killed with one blow!”

  The shepherd at the back of the room shook his head in sorrow. “Young and foolish, young and foolish,” he thought. What had the black dragon known in his short life of knights or lances or swords?

&nb
sp; He realized suddenly that a question was being addressed to him. “You, shepherd! You graze your flock on the mountains, is that right?” the knight was asking. “Did you ever see any dragonsign up there? Any sign of a lair?”

  The shepherd shook his head again. “Knights came here before, asking me. No, no dragonsign on my mountain. Couldn’t bring my sheep up there if there was dragons, now, could I?”

  As always, the crowd nodded in acknowledgment of this obvious truth. The shepherd added, “Now, that one I saw tied on the horse. I don’t think that one looked the size to take a sheep. Lamb, maybe. Young lamb. Not a sheep, though.”

  The young knight scowled at this belittling of his deed and shouted loudly to the innkeeper for more ale. In the morning he would be gone with his trophy, but others of his kind would come when they heard of his deed, eager for dragonslaying. One by one the dragons would fall to the lance, the gold and green and russet and blue.

  It was a harsh winter that came to the valley that year, filling the passes with snow, so that the village was cut off for weeks from the rest of the world. By the time the snow began to melt, the shepherd had sold his flock, telling the buyer, “Getting too much for me, climbing up the mountain every year. Slowing down. Ache in my joints these days.”

  He pocketed the gold, little as there was. He might have gotten a better price at the spring fair downriver at the market town, but there wasn’t time for that.

  He made one last stop before he left the village, at the graveside of his wife. He knelt for a moment on the damp, cold ground, but after so long he hardly knew what to say. “Not like a dragon,” he thought, getting stiffly back to his feet. “We forget.”

  Without his flock, he was only three days climbing up to the hidden cave, even with the half-melted banks of snow blocking his way. From time to time he glanced up, and at last he saw them, the faraway specks that were dragons circling overhead.

  At the very back of the fissure in the rock, beyond the carcass of the blue-green dragon, the precious gold-veined broken shells were still untouched. Carefully, he picked them up, the green, the red, the jet, and put them away in his pack. Then, using his knife, he began to cut away a single hollow wingtip bone from the dried and leathery remains.