Myth-Told Tales

The dragons collided as they charged toward a gap that led out of the meadow into the hills. Two of the fire-breathers who wanted to go through at the same time started to fight One of them hauled back his head and let out a jet of flame that incinerated a stand of trees. On the way it hit the other dragon square in the face, and annoyed him. It tore up cart-size clawfuls of earth and heaved it at its opponent, following up with a huge blast of lightning from its own throat. The first one let out a roar that shook the ground. The Master of the Hounds charged directly at the two dragons and started shouting commands. The rest of the dragons and hunters milled around in the muck waiting until the owners came forward with control wands to pull the combatants apart. That traffic jam wasn't going to clear for a while. I looked around. There were several other gaps to try. I could take one and hope that the paths met up again after a while. It would be easier than waiting here.

The judges seemed to have the same idea. I saw five shapes go overhead. One of them was Massha's familiar roundness. She gave me a thumb's-up as she veered to the right I turned to the left and lost sight of her.

Beyond the lip of the valley hills closed in on the path until I was threading a round-topped maze. Hoofprints told me at least one of the others had come this way, too. It had been a brilliant idea, but I didn't flatter myself that it was unique. I kicked Fireball into a trot. We rode along the bed of a foot-wide stream, kicking pebbles. I didn't care if Glory heard me; I wasn't in the running for the prize, nice as it would be to have. I was there to see that there wasn't any funny stuff. So far I had not lost track of any of the hunters. I took a small device that Massha had given me out of my belt pouch (you can't get into pants pockets in the saddle) and flipped it open.

The flat screen was as neat as any tracker you could buy in a hunting and fishing shop on Perv: the tiny blips superimposed over a map of the landscape indicated the contestants, the dragons, the observers and the palace staff. We'd purposely unblipped Glory so that if the device fell into someone else's hands they couldn't use it to find her. I traced the trails. Yes, sooner or later they all met up ahead. I'd just go and wait up there for the confusion to clear up. Nothing was in my way. Except one blip, almost directly ahead of me. I looked up.

"You! What are you doing out here?"

"Hello, Aahz."

"Massha, look to your left! Fine that rider five points. He's cheating!" Carisweather ordered. The big fluffy guy pointed. I looked down. The fancy-pants dude in the turban had slipped a gizmo out and was twisting a dial on the face of it. You couldn't call me big know-all when it came to hunting contests, but if I'm an expert in anything, it's magikal gadgets. I knew a variable-output controller when I saw it The silky snake was breaking in on the spells being used by hunters trying to control their dragons and, by the smirk on his scaly face, he was enjoying the resultant chaos. With a flick of my flight ring I dropped down next to him and picked it out of his hand.

"Naughty, naughty," I said, waggling my finger at him. In fury, his forked tongue flicked in and out of his mouth. "Promises, promises," I sighed, and flew up to join my fellow judges. Three of the four had big grins on their faces, but Carisweather shook his head.

"We're only observers, Mistress Massha," he said, disapprovingly.

"You can say that if you want, big chief," I told him, "but one of those dragons could kill somebody."

"That, alas, is one of the pitfalls of the contest," Carisweather said, mournfully. "These are blood sports, and, once in a while, blood runs."

"That should be when it's unavoidable, Hot Pants," I said, in a huff. I can't stand it when people give me that "accidents of war" garbage. "This is avoidable. Short of searching everybody, we can't find these tricks until they try to use one, but that doesn't mean they get to keep it once we see it" I tossed the disk in the air and caught it again. "He can have it back at the end of the race."

Carisweather sighed. I looked around again for Glory. She had shot away on foot from the starting position so fast I hadn't seen which way she went. Once we hit the skies I saw her prints on the soft ground. She had always been a good runner when she was a little thing, able to outdistance elk-deer and wrestle them down with her bare hands. She told me she'd been training hard for more than a year to make this the best contest Brakespear had ever seen. I wanted it all to work out for her.