Tales of Ethshar

beds for the winter, but this year, instead, frogs were slipping into people’s houses to stay warm. Peasants would come home from a day in the fields and find a couple of huge bullfrogs sitting on the hearth — big, determined bullfrogs that did not flee when chased with a fireplace poker, but merely ducked in a corner and waited for the poker-wielding peasant to give up and go away.

Frogs even began slipping into the castle.

And not only were these frogs getting in where they weren’t wanted, but having consumed all the available insects, they were getting into the food, as well. Finding a frog on one’s plate, licking at a pork chop or a leg of mutton, could ruin a man’s appetite, and sent many a woman running for the poker.

Worst of all, the frogs seemed to recall enough of their human origins to have a rather warped sense of humor. Several people reported finding frogs in their beds and bathtubs, grinning lewdly — until now, nobody had realized that frogs could grin lewdly, but everyone agreed that that was exactly what the transformed Lassuronians did.

Even royalty was not spared. Queen Edara scandalized the castle by running out into the corridor shrieking and totally nude after discovering a frog crouched between her legs in the bath, grinning up at her and licking about lasciviously.

The last straw was when the king himself, while dispensing high justice in the throne room, realized that something was wrong. Everyone seemed to be staring at the top of his head.

Puzzled, he reached up and found a frog, perched atop his crown and leering over the gold and jewels at the gathered courtiers.

Furious, he flung the crown to the floor and charged from the room, his councillors at his heels. Shouting imprecations, he marched up the stairs to the castle’s highest tower, where he barged into the wizard’s chamber without knocking and demanded, “Do something about these damned frogs!”

The wizard, startled, looked up from the book he was reading, blinked, and said, “What?”

King Kelder turned an interesting shade of purple as he stood in the center of the wizard’s chamber, speechless with fury, trying to think of something suitably scathing to say.

At last he burst out, “These damned frogs are all your fault! You turned those soldiers into frogs! You couldn’t sweep them away with a whirlwind, or make the earth swallow them up, or turn them into something harmless like rocks or daisies, no, you had to turn them into frogs! And now we’ve got frogs coming out of our ears, frogs in the bath, frogs in our beds, frogs simply everywhere!”

At that moment, the frog that had been on the crown stuck its head out of the back of the king’s collar, where it had fallen when the crown was snatched off, and croaked loudly.

The king could take no more; he began shrieking wordlessly at the wizard as his councillors watched in horror from the doorway.

The wizard simply sat on his bed, the book on his lap and a baffled expression on his face, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do.

At last, the king had to pause for breath, and the wizard asked mildly, “But what do you want me to do, your Majesty?”

“Do your damned magic, wizard! Do something!” the king said, as he marched forward and reached out to grab the wizard by the throat.

The wizard shrank back on the bed, but to no avail; King Kelder was a big man, and despite his age and his fat he had long, strong arms. He closed his hands around the wizard’s neck and shouted, “Do something! Do something!”

The wizard had never liked being shouted at, and he discovered he liked being grabbed by the throat even less. It made thinking very difficult indeed.

So without any thinking, he did something. His hand came up in a magical gesture, and he did it.

He turned the King into a frog.

Instantly, as the hands shriveled away from his throat, he regretted it, but it was too late.

The councillors stared from the doorway as their sovereign shrank down inside his robes, turned green, and hopped out of his collar as a bullfrog.

This was no ordinary, placid frog, either. This was a big, fat frog, and this was a very angry frog. It let out a loud croak.

The other frog, the one that had been sitting at the back of the king’s collar, croaked as well, and seemed to smirk.

The wizard looked at the two frogs, at the half-dozen courtiers jammed into his doorway, at the book on his lap, and then back at the two frogs sitting on the king’s empty robes.

The situation, he saw, had gotten totally out of hand.

The wizard didn’t think it would be a good idea to stay around. Not only would it not be a good idea to stay around for any extended period, but any stay at all seemed unwise.

In fact, he thought that the quickest possible departure would be a very good idea indeed. He hurriedly closed the book and put it aside, then got to his feet and raised a hand threateningly.

“Step aside,” he said, “or I’ll do the same to you!”

The king’s councillors immediately stepped back, squeezing against both sides of the narrow hallway as the wizard marched past them and down the stairs.

Once he was out of sight he began running, because he knew that the councillors would not stay cowed for long. Sooner or later they would come after him, and the wizard did not want to know whether he really would turn more people into frogs if threatened with capture. He hoped he would not, but he wasn’t sure.

He was safely across the drawbridge and out of the castle before he saw any signs of pursuit. Some simple little sleight-of-hand tricks sent most of the hunters off in the wrong direction, and he was able to slip safely away, across the border into Klathoa.

He made his way down to the highway, where he turned west and departed the Small Kingdoms for the Hegemony of Ethshar. By the middle of Newfrost he had reached the gates of Ethshar of the Spices itself.

In the city he found himself an honest, if humble, position as a scribe in the overlord’s palace, copying out proclamations to be posted in the city’s markets. He lived there in peace for the rest of his life, and he never again turned anyone into a frog.

Well...

Almost never.

About the Author

Lawrence Watt-Evans is the author of four dozen novels and over a hundred short stories, including the Hugo-winning “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers.” He has been a full-time writer for more than thirty years and lives in Takoma Park, Maryland with his wife and an overweight cat.

His web page is at www.watt-evans.com, and readers of this book may also want to check out www.ethshar.com.