Tales of Ethshar

She looked at him, at his unyielding face, and realized that if she remained silent she would be treated as a common thief. While that would probably mean flogging or imprisonment rather than beheading, it still wasn’t anything she cared to experience. Islander accent or not, she had to speak.

“I’m Irillon of... Irillon the Apprentice,” she said, trying to imitate the captain’s accent.

“Apprentice what? Who’s your master?”

“Apprentice to Ethtallion the Mage. I’m a wizard.”

“I thought so. Only a wizard would have any immediate use for a dead man’s hair.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Well, Irillon, we don’t want any trouble with the Wizards’ Guild, but you were caught stealing. Can you prove you’re a wizard’s apprentice?”

“Yes,” Irillon said. “If you give me back my knife I can show you a spell. And there’s a spell on me that will tell my master if I’m harmed...”

“The Spell of the Spinning Coin, I suppose?” Alderamon interrupted.

“Yes,” Irillon admitted, startled that a non-wizard had ever heard of it. She had certainly never heard of it before her apprenticeship.

“So if your heart stops, the coin will stop spinning. I’ve had it explained to me before. We certainly don’t want that. Now, what spell can you demonstrate? Something harmless, please!”

“Ah... the Spell of Prismatic Pyrotechnics?”

Alderamon nodded, and a moment later Irillon had the spell ready. She blew on the silver whistle, and a shower of sparks in a hundred different hues sprang up from the little silver tray, exploding in tiny bursts of color.

“Very pretty,” Alderamon acknowledged. “It would seem you are indeed a wizard’s apprentice. Now, in that case, why were you stealing that hair, rather than buying it?”

Irillon blinked in surprise.

“Buying it?” she said.

“Of course.”

“Ethtallion... my master just said to fetch the ingredients...”

“And he didn’t mention that we sell them?” Alderamon sighed. “Well, we do. I told you, we don’t want any trouble with the Wizards’ Guild. That means we don’t try to withhold ingredients wizards need for their spells — but that doesn’t mean we’ll just give them away! You don’t give away your spells, do you?”

Irillon stared at him in amazed silence.

“Wizardry has been around for centuries, Irillon,” the captain said. “In all that time, naturally we’ve found arrangements that are comfortable for everyone. What sort of fools would we be if we didn’t know wizards use hair and blood and bone, and pieces of scaffold, and fireplace ash, and dragon’s scales, and a thousand other things? And what would be gained by either denying wizards those ingredients, or giving them away for free?”

Irillon still couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Now, do you have coins, or will we need to work out an exchange?”

“Uh... how much... I have some...”

And the dickering began.

In the end, Irillon paid seven bits in silver — all she had with her — and placed the Dismal Itch on two guardsmen who had been involved in a drunken brawl, promising to remove it again in three days. In exchange, she kept the blood, hair, and splinters she had already collected, and was allowed to depart freely.

Captain Alderamon escorted her to the castle gate. There he patted her on the shoulder and said quietly, “Here you go, girl, safe and sound — but take my advice and don’t come back here. I told you we didn’t want any trouble with the Wizards’ Guild, and we don’t, but next time might be different. Don’t come here again.”

Irillon, greatly relieved that her mission appeared to be a success and made bold thereby, looked up at him. “Why not?” she asked.

Alderamon grimaced. “Do you really need to ask? Your imitation of a Coastal accent is terrible.”

Then he pushed her out the gate and turned away.

About “Sirinita’s Dragon”

I was invited to contribute a story to an anthology called The Ultimate Dragon. I saw no reason it shouldn’t be an Ethshar story, and something other than the standard hero-slays-dragon piece. I had previously mentioned wealthy Ethsharites keeping baby dragons as pets, and babies grow up, so what happened to those pets? Sirinita finds out.

Sirinita’s Dragon

“You’re going to kill him?” Sirinita said, staring at her mother in disbelief.

Sensella of Seagate looked at her daughter with surprised annoyance.

“Well, of course we’re going to kill it,” she said. “What else could we do? In a few sixnights it’ll be eating us out of house and home — and in a year or two it might very well eat us. Just look how big it’s getting!”

Sirinita looked.

She had to admit, Tharn was getting large. When he had first hatched she could sit him on her shoulder, with his tail around her neck, and almost forget he was there; now she could barely pick him up with both hands, and he certainly didn’t fit on her shoulders.

And he did eat a lot.

“Really, Sirinita,” her mother said, “you didn’t think we could keep a full-grown dragon around the house, did you?”

“No,” Sirinita admitted, “but I thought you could just let him go, somewhere outside the walls — I didn’t know you were going to kill him!”

“Now, you ought to know better than that,” Sensella said. “If we turned it loose it would eat people’s livestock — and that’s assuming it didn’t eat people. Dragons are dangerous, honey.”

“Tharn isn’t!”

“But it will be.” Sensella hesitated, then added, “Besides, we can sell the blood and hide to wizards. I understand it’s quite valuable.”

“Sell pieces of him?” This was too much; Sirinita was utterly horrified.

Sensella sighed. “I should have known this would happen. I should never have let you hatch that egg in the first place. What was your father thinking of, bringing you a dragon’s egg?”

“I don’t know,” Sirinita said. “Maybe he wasn’t thinking anything.”

Sensella chuckled sourly. “You’re probably right, Siri. You’re probably just exactly right.” She glanced over at the dragon.

Tharn was trying to eat the curtains again.

Sirinita followed her mother’s gaze. “Tharn!” she shouted. “Stop that this instant!”

The dragon stopped, startled, and turned to look at his mistress with his golden slit-pupilled eyes. The curtain, caught on one of his fangs, turned with him, and tore slightly. The dragon looked up at the curtain with an offended expression, and used a foreclaw to pry the fabric off his teeth.

Sensella sighed. Sirinita almost giggled, Tharn’s expression was so funny, but then she remembered what was going to happen to her beloved dragon in a few days’ time, and the urge to giggle vanished completely.

“Come on, Tharn,” she said. “Let’s go outside.”

Sensella watched as her daughter and her pet ran out of the house onto the streets of Ethshar.