Here There Be Dragons

Chapter 6

AND THE KING BACKED AWAY.

"That is Mister Gibberling down at the end of the table you just broke," he said. "The man with the white beard. The one still holding a glass in his hand."

"Aha! Mister Gibberling! So we meet at last!" snarled Belkis. Mister Gibberling, who was indeed an old man, rose slowly to his feet.

"Uh I don't quite understand ..." he began.

"You are the one who is giving dragons a bad name," said Belkis.

"Wh-what do you mean?" asked Mister Gibberling.

"Your maps! Your stupid, nasty little maps!" said Belkis, burning the edges of Mister Gibberling's beard as he spoke.

"'Here There Be Dragons'! That is absurd! That is cheating! It is the refuge of a small mind!"

"Yes ! Yes !" agreed Mister Gibberling, putting out his beard by emptying his wine-cup over it. "You are right! I have always felt mine to be quite small!"

"I want you to know that over the past several thousand years we dragons have taken great pains to stay out of the way of humans," said Belkis. "We have even taken to assuming other forms such as that of the little lizard Bell, which you saw a bit earlier. We do not want people to know that we are still about or they will be forever pestering us. Take any foolish young knight out to make a name for himself: What is the first thing he does?"

"I don't know," said Mister Gibberling.

"I will tell you," said Belkis. "He looks for a dragon to kill. If he can't locate any, though, he finds something else to do. Perhaps even something constructive. But you with your dragon-filled maps! - you are keeping the old legend alive when we want it to die. We want people to forget, to leave us alone.

Every time some young squire gets hold of one of your maps, he has visions of heading for the mountains around here in order to make some rank, to get to be a knight by killing dragons. This leaves dragons with the choice of eating them all or trying to ignore them. There are too many and most of them pretty tasteless, not to mention hard to clean. So we attempt to ignore them. This is often very difficult, and it is your fault. You have been responsible for maintaining a thing better forgotten.

Also," he stated, "you are a very poor geographer."

"My father was Royal Cartographer, and his father before him," said Mister Gibberling.

"What does that have to do with you?" asked Belkis. "You are a poor geographer."

"What do you mean?"

"What lies over those mountains?" asked Belkis, gesturing with a scaly wing.

"Drag Oh! I mean more mountains, sir," said Mister Gibberling.

"Admit it! You do not know!" said Belkis.

"All right! I don't know!" cried Mister Gibberling.

"Good," said Belkis. "That's something, anyway. Have you quills and ink and parchment handy?"

"No," said Mister Gibberling.

"Then go get them!" roared Belkis. "And be quick about it!"

"Yes, sir!" said Mister Gibberling, stumbling over his cloak as he dashed from the hall.

". . . Be very quick about it!" said Belkis, flaming. "Or I will take this place apart, stone by stone, and drag you out by your whiskers like a rat from a brick heap!"

Mister Gibberling was back in record time. While he was gone, though, Belkis ate three roasted pigs and a dozen chickens with dumplings. Then he roared again and scorched the ceiling and charred the throne.

"You have them now?" he asked.

"Yes, yes! Right here! See?" "Very good. You are coming with me now."

And with that, he seized Mister Gibberling's cloak in his talons and flew out through the great double-door at the end of the hall, through which the Honor Guard sometimes entered on horseback. He took him high into the sky and they both vanished from sight.

"I wonder where he is taking him?" asked the third adviser.

"It is probably better not to think about it," said the first.

"We'd better get to work cleaning up this mess," said William.