Tales of Ethshar

been her home.

Her parents were waiting.

“When you weren’t home by midnight we were worried, so this morning we hired a witch,” her mother explained, after embraces and greetings had been exchanged. “She said you’d be home safe some time today, and here you are.” She looked past her daughter at the dragon. “And Tharn, too, I see.” She hesitated, then continued, “The witch said that Tharn saved your life last night. We really can’t keep him here, Siri, but we can find a home for him somewhere....”

“No,” Sirinita interrupted, hugging her mother close. “No, don’t do that.” She closed her eyes, and images of the man with the burned face screaming, the other man with his hair on fire and his neck broken, the two of them lying half-eaten between the rows of corn, appeared.

Tharn had been protecting her, and those men had meant to rape her and maybe kill her, but she knew those images would always be there.

Tharn was a dragon, and that was what dragons did.

“No, Mother,” she said, shuddering, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “Get a wizard and have him killed.”

About “Portrait of A Hero”

Lester del Rey, my editor at the time, had discovered an artist whose work he really liked, by the name of Michael Pangrazio. He wanted to do a project to showcase the guy’s work, so he got together with his assistant Risa Kessler (at least, I think she was his assistant; I never dealt with her directly) and put together an anthology called Once Upon A Time, which would feature “modern fairy tales” by all Del Rey’s top fantasy authors. Each story would be illustrated with a painting by Michael Pangrazio. I was very flattered to be included in this, but wasn’t sure about writing a “modern fairy tale.” On the other hand, one of my sisters had asked me to write a story with a prophecy in it, so I had started one that I had originally intended to be a novel, but once I started working on it I realized it didn’t have enough plot for a novel. I abandoned it unfinished.

When Once Upon A Time came along I finished the prophecy story, cut it down even more, and sent it to Lester, who bought it. My sister got her prophecy novel a few years later, in the form of Taking Flight.

Portrait of A Hero

1

The dragon atop the mountain loomed over the village like a tombstone over a grave, and Wuller looked up at it in awe.

“Do you think it’ll come any closer?” he whispered to his aunt.

Illure shook her head.

“There’s no telling, with dragons,” she said. “Particularly not the really big ones. One that size must be as experienced and cunning as any human that ever lived.”

Something was odd about her voice. Wuller glanced at her face, which was set in a rigid calm, and realized that his aunt Illure, who had faced down a runaway boar with nothing but a turnspit, was terrified.

Even as he looked, her calm broke; her eyes went wide, her mouth started to open.

Wuller whirled back in time to see the dragon rising from its perch, its immense wings spread wide to catch the wind. It rose, wheeled about once, and then swept down toward the village, claws outstretched, like a hawk diving on its prey.

For a moment Wuller thought it was diving directly at him, and he covered his face with his hands, as if he were still a child.

Then he remembered how high that mountaintop was, and his mind adjusted the scale of what he had just seen — the dragon was larger and farther than he had assumed. Ashamed of his terror, he dropped his hands and looked up again.

The dragon was hovering over the village, directly over his own head. Wuller felt a tugging at one arm, and realized that Illure was trying to pull him out from under the great beast.

He yielded, and a moment later the creature settled to the ground in the village common, the wind from its wings stirring up a cloud of grey dust and flattening the thin grass. The scent of its hot, sulphurous breath filled the town.

A swirl of dust reached Wuller, and he sneezed.

The dragon’s long neck dipped down, and its monstrous head swung around to look Wuller directly in the eye from a mere six or seven feet away.

He stared back, frozen with fear.

Then the head swung away again, the neck lifted it up, and the mighty jaws opened.

The dragon spoke.

“Who speaks for this village?” it said, in a voice like an avalanche.

“It talks!” someone said, in tones of awe and wonder.

The dragon’s head swept down to confront the speaker, and it spoke again.

“Yes, I talk,” it rumbled. “Do you?”

Wuller looked to see who it was addressing, and saw a young man in blue — his cousin Pergren, just a few years older than himself, who had only recently started his own flock.

Pergren stammered, unable to answer coherently, and the dragon’s jaws crept nearer and nearer to him. Wuller saw that they were beginning to open — not to speak, this time, but to bite.

Then a man stepped forward — Adar, the village smith, Wuller’s father’s cousin.

“I’ll speak for the village, dragon,” he called. “Leave that boy alone and say what you want of us.”

Wuller had always admired Adar’s strength and skill; now he found himself admiring the smith’s courage, as well.

The dragon reared up slightly, and Wuller thought it looked slightly amused. “Well!” it said. “One among you with manners enough to speak when spoken to — though hardly in a civil tone!”

“Get on with it,” Adar said.

“All right, if you’re as impatient as all that,” the dragon said. “I had intended to make a few polite introductions before getting down to business, but have it your way. I have chosen this village as my home. I have chosen you people as my servants. And I have come down here today to set the terms of your service. Is that clear and direct enough to suit you, man?”

Wuller tried to judge the dragon’s tone, to judge whether it was speaking sarcastically, but the voice was simply too different from human for him to tell.

“We are not servants,” Adar announced. “We are free people.”

“Not any more,” the dragon said.

2

Wuller shuddered again at the memory of Adar’s death, then turned his attention back to the meeting that huddled about the single lantern in his father’s house.