The Hero and the Crown Read Online Free PDF Page B

words were archaic
    and unfamiliar, so she had to puzzle out the meanings. But it was worth it, for this
    book told her stories more exciting than the ones she made up for herself before
    she fell asleep at night. And so, as she read, she first learned of the old dragons.
    Damar had dragons still; little ones, dog-sized, nasty, mean-tempered creatures
    who would fry a baby for supper and swallow it in two gulps if they could; but
    they had been beaten back into the heavy forest and the wilder Hills by Aerin’s
    day. They still killed an occasional unwary hunter, for they had no fear, and they
    had teeth and claws as well as fire to subdue their prey, but they were no longer a
    serious threat. Arlbeth heard occasionally of one—or of a family, for they most
    often hunted in families—that was harassing a village or an outlying farm, and
    when that happened a party of men with spears and arrows—swords were of
    little use, for if one were close enough to use a sword, one was close enough to
    be badly burned—went out from the City to deal with them. Always they came
    back with a few more unpleasant stories of the cunning treachery of dragons;
    always they came back nursing a few scorched limbs; occasionally they came back
    a horse or a hound the less.
    But there was no glamour in dragon-hunting. It was hard, tricky, grim work, and
    dragons were vermin. The folk of the hunt, the thotor, who ran the king’s dogs
    and provided meat for the royal household, would have nothing to do with
    dragons, and dogs once used for dragons were considered worthless for anything
    else.

    There were still the old myths of the great dragons, huge scaled beasts many
    times larger than horses; and it was sometimes even said that the great dragons
    flew, flew in the air, with wingspreads so vast as to blacken the sun. The little
    dragons had vestigial wings, but no one had ever seen or heard of a dragon that
    could lift its thick squat body off the ground with them. They beat their wings in
    anger and in courtship, as they raised their crests; but that was all. The old
    dragons were no more nor less of a tale than that of flying dragons.
    But this book took the old dragons seriously. It said that while the only dragons
    humankind had seen in many years were little ones, there were still one or two of
    the great ones hiding in the Hills; and that one day the one or two would fly out of
    their secret places and wreak havoc on man, for man would have forgotten how
    to deal with them. The great dragons lived long; they could afford to wait for that
    forgetfulness. From the author’s defensive tone, the great dragons even in his day
    were a legend, a tale to tell on festival days, well lubricated with mead and wine.
    But she was fascinated, as he had been.
    “It is with the utmost care I have gathered my information; and I think I may
    say with truth that the ancient Great Ones and our day’s small, scurrilous beasts
    are the same in type. Thus anyone wishing to learn the skill to defeat a Great One
    can do no better than to harry as many small ones as he may find from their
    noisome dens, and see how they do give battle.”
    He went on to describe his information-gathering techniques, which seemed to
    consist of tirelessly footnoting the old stories for dragonish means and methods;
    although, thought Aerin, that could as well be from the oral tale-tellers adapting
    the ancient dragons to the ways of the present ones as from the truth of the
    author’s theory. But she read on.
    Dragons had short stubby legs on broad bodies; they were not swift runners
    over distance, but they were exceedingly nimble, and could balance easily on any
    one foot the better to rip with any of the other three, as well as with the barbed
    tail. The neck was long and whippy, so that the dragon might spray its fire at any
    point of the circle; and they often scraped their wings against the ground to throw
    up dust and further confound their enemies, or their prey.
    “It