Roger Zelazny. Here there be dragons
Illustrated by Vaughn Bode
Chapter 1
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a king who was king of a very
small country. Indeed, his kingdom was so small that most
people were not even aware it existed.
The king thought that it was a fairly large kingdom,
though, as kingdoms went. This was because there were many
mountains around the place, mountains which were difficult to
climb. Because of these mountains, travelers would just go on
around the kingdom, rather than go through it. And very few
people ever left the kingdom, to come back and tell of other
lands. People were pretty much afraid to do that.
They were afraid of the dragons.
They never saw any dragons, mind you, but they were afraid
of them. This is because all the maps in the kingdom showed
that they were surrounded by dragons dragons here, dragons
there, dragons all over the place, all because of Mister
Gibberling.
Mister Gibberling was the Royal Cartographer. (That means
he was the official mapmaker.) Mister Gibberling was the Royal
Cartographer because his father and his grandfather had been
Royal Cartographers. Mister Gibberling had learned his
profession from his father, who had learned it from his father.
Since people did not visit the kingdom very often, and the
king's subjects seldom crossed over the mountains themselves,
it was difficult for the Royal Cartographers to know exactly
what to put down on their maps to show what was outside. So, as
he had learned from his father (who had learned it from his
father), whenever he did not know what to show as being in any
certain place, Mister Gibberling picked up his quill, and with
a great flourish of the feather wrote (in fancy letters):
-HERE THERE BE DRAGONS-
Then he would smile, because he had explained a new
territory. Of course, since he did not really know what lay
beyond the mountains in any direction, it soon came to appear
that the entire world was infested with dragons. (And he would
draw little pictures of fire-breathing dragons, roaring and
flapping their wings, beneath what he wrote which certainly
