She had the worst memory in Merado. All she knew was this: her name was Illa; she wore leathers, carried daggers, swore and drank; she had turned five people into frogs and one into a prince; and she had done a thousand other amazing deeds-but couldn't remember one of them.

Illa was staying in a small rented room above a red-roofed tavern in some town she didn't know the name of. Her mind vaguely remembered fighting a hideous beast the morning before and her body clearly remembered the carousing after. However, although mind and body consulted each other fervently during the night, neither one could exactly recall how they had managed to get Illa into this small rented room above the tavern and finally agreed to not bring the question up when Illa awoke.

As it was the question was answered when Illa was roughly shoved out of bed by a man whose name began with "T" (her mind helpfully supplied) and whose hands had not seemed nearly so rough last night (her body giggled).

Illa, whatever else she might or might not have remembered, did know that she did not like being pushed out of bed. To make that point clear, she rose to her feet, crossed her arms and glared at the man.

He put down his saddlebags.

She swore a little bit, smashed a few things and set the bed on fire.

He threw the bed out the window.

She stomped her foot, bared her teeth and lunged at the man.

He kissed her.

"Good morning, darling," he said cheerfully, before kissing her again.

Illa was much too stunned by his calm familiarity to turn him into any sort of amphibian. Instead she stared slack-jawed at him, feeling for the entire world as if someone had just slapped her across the face with a dead fish.

"We'll probably have to pay the tavern-keeper for that," the man said, pointing out the broken window to the bed, which lay sprawled on the court below. "Unless, of course, you feel able to bring it in here yourself." He waved his hand and raised his eyebrows suggestively.

Illa took the hint, concentrated and waved her hand in much the same way that the man had. With a loud pop the bed reappeared in the middle of the room.

The man looked at the bed critically. "Well, you might have fixed it, but I suppose this will do for now." Three of its legs had given way and it was split down the middle. The covers were still steaming from when she had set it on fire and the headboard was webbed with a million fine cracks. Illa realized her mistake and with another pop made the bed whole.

The man smiled impishly. "Very good. I was worried that you wouldn't be able to do anything. You did drink a lot last night, even for you. And," he said, patting his chest, "I'm not a horn-eared swamp toad." He laughed at his own joke and sat down on the bed.

"Come on over here, Illa," he said, "I suppose we might as well be done with it."

Illa sat next to him and waited.

He stuck out his hand. She looked down at it, up at him and then back down at it. Illa decided that the hand was far less interesting than the face and returned her attention to contemplating his countenance, realized that this was rather plain and thought she'd try her luck with the hand again.

The man sighed, grasped her hand firmly and shook it. "Tiano," he said. "My name is Tiano."

Illa smiled encouragingly. He was doing very well.

The man muttered something and then said, "Your husband. I'm your husband."

Illa congratulated him.

"I also work as your scribe." Tiano peered at her. "Do you remember how to read this morning?"

Illa lay back on the bed. She seemed to remember that there was something rather pleasant about beds and marriage. Tiano ignored her, took a bound book out of one of his bags and handed it to her. Illa opened it and was surprised to find her own name written there. When she pointed this out to him, he explained that it was a record of her exploits and perhaps she might like to take an hour or so to thumb through it and jar her memory before they left for Burinda.

Then, after kissing her again, Tiano left.

Burinda, as Illa discovered several days later, consisted of a very fat Mayor, his very thin wife and several sniffling councilmen. There didn't seem to be any other inhabitants of that particular village-at least, she hadn't seen any, not since she had levitated the stableboy several feet off the ground merely by stretching her arms.

Stableboy notwithstanding, the little group had been herded into a stuffy chamber with several gruesome portraits on the wall. Illa turned her gaze away from one particularly monstrous ancestor to view his descendant, the Mayor, who had not ceased speaking since she had first been introduced to him. Right now his eyes were half closed, his thumbs were hooked into his lapels and his moustache was snuffing on every other vowel.

"The problem is," he said, "that we, that is, we the people of Burinda...."

"Here, here!" said one of the councilmen, waving a handkerchief with excited languor.

The Mayor bowed to his supporter. "Of Burinda, the beautiful Burinda which Aldioso the Erimatical Meradic Poet of renownéd fame called 'white-washéd Burinda' in his Libira Suprema, which contains no less than three sonnets dedicated to our humble villa, one glorious 'Ballet of A Poor Lout in Love,' and a delightful lai to paisley...."

"Plaid, rather," corrected another councilman, tapping his cane upon the floor.

"No, no, it was a villanelle to plaid, a lai to paisley and a couplet to 'The Gold Embroidered Waistcoat Worn on the Sixteenth of Maryst by One Sir Alessand y Dioglio,' " said yet another councilman.

The Mayor's skinny wife laughed indecently.

"Yes, yes," the Mayor said, his eyes opening a little to glance importantly at his audience. Illa's hand twitched in her lap and Tiano placed his own very firmly upon it to keep her from levitating anyone else. "But be that as it may, the reason why we asked you to come was that a Drastic and Lamentable Misfortune has befallen our dear village which we are certain only you can rectify."

A communal sigh was directed at the ceiling by the councilmen, three of whom even went so far as to place melancholy wrists upon their melancholy brows.

"Yes," the Mayor was saying, "A most Lamentable Misfortune-that most Hideous, Terrifying, and Aesthetically Unpleasant Monster of them all has descended upon our Serene Hamlet-Bob, the Six-Wingéd Saurian!"

"Alas!" cried the councilmen.

"Alas!" cried the wife.

"Alas!" cried the Mayor.

"Aw, crap," Tiano muttered.

She did not deal well with dragons.

Ever since Tiano had known her, she had been a miserable fighter when it came to dracomir.

And he ought to know.

Witness the White Wyvern of Niñento, or the Fearsome Wyrm of Renalto, or the Telindrian Basilisk-every one a miserable failure. She had barely escaped with all her limbs the first time she had come rushing into Bob's cave in Vasyana, her once poofy ballgown in rags, her intricately coifed hair in shambles and her sword already bloody from who knew what...or whom.

But even without these embarrassing escapades in her recently forgotten past, Bob the Six-Wingéd Saurian was not a monster Tiano would willingly meet again upon a battlefield, mainly because Bob the Six-Wingéd Saurian was decidedly myopic. Although most historians, including Illa's long-suffering husband, agreed that nearsightedness in one's opponents usually proved beneficial, Bob was the exception that proved the rule. For, as a result of centuries of weak vision and even more millennia in the Distressing Damsel business, Bob had concluded that the best Damsels were the males of the human species who were not only much quieter, but generally didn’t have huge rescue parties knocking down his door every other month or so. Tiano had had the unfortunate opportunity to be Bob’s first male Damsel, and had had an irrational grudge against optometrists ever since.

And as he trudged up the hill, the entire town of Burinda sneaking along behind, Illa nearly bounding on ahead, Tiano cursed his own bad sense to have let Illa take this particular job. The Mayor had offered an handsome fee, certainly, going so far as to pay more than half in advance. The rooms given to the couple were lavish, as were the meals and extra clothing. But even this would not have been enough to draw Tiano into such folly, had not the Mayor's emaciated wife taken Tiano aside the night before and told him about the poet.

"Gianni wasn't going to mention this," she said, pulling on her nose and grinning knowingly. "But the reason why he wants your little firebrand there to hop up to those caves and run a stickler through the brute isn't because we've been losing sheep." She giggled and Tiano smiled patiently. Leaning in closer, the woman said, "It's because the dragon's got the poet."

"The poet?" Tiano asked.

The woman nodded sagely, looked right and left and said, "The poet."

From the suite the couple had been given, Tiano could hear a fierce "Yah!" and the sound of a couch overturning. He sighed, calculated the cost of the domestic pell and decided an immediate confrontation could wait.

"The one with the sestina to paisley?" he inquired.

"Lai," she corrected, "And the villanelle to...."

"Right. Aldioso, is it?"

She nodded.

"Captured by the dragon?"

Once more, a nod.

"And we're supposed to retrieve him?"

"And kill the dragon," she said, nearly sticking one brittle finger into his eye. "It's very important that you kill the dragon. Epically important."

Tiano had not had time to ask why, though, before a green mist crept from underneath the door and he excused himself to stop his wife from conjuring up a more interesting opponent.

So it was with Burinda behind and Illa ahead and Aldioso in Distress, that Tiano made his way to the exceptionally well-maintained cave, book in hand and quill strapped firmly to his side, to rescue a fellow reluctant Damsel.

The man who had all but dragged her out of bed this morning had only told her that she had to go fight a dragon. "A Six-Wingéd Saurian" was how he put it, but it all equaled the same thing.

"Why?" she had asked, bouncing a little on the bed. (The bed was very soft, and reminded her of something.)

He had thrown boots at her, which she caught with a swiftness that surprised her. She congratulated herself. She had not known she was swift.

"Money," he had answered shortly, and there seemed to be a tenseness in his voice. Furrowing her forehead, she had tried to remember when she had heard that tenseness before.

"What's 'money'?" she had asked, pulling on the boots.

He had thrown some shiny things at her. She turned them over, bit them and threw them back, unimpressed. He had laughed and tossed two daggers, a short sword and a number of sharpened stars at her. She caught them all and placed them in the bands he had strapped to her waist and limbs earlier.

Illa had smiled and bounced on the bed once more.

The cave was very clean, she decided as she peered around one large boulder to look inside. The flagstones were swept, the ceiling was dusted and glittering things stood in neat piles according to size and color. Illa peered more intently, staring deep into the shadows now, but still saw no dragon. She considered knocking, but seemed to remember the heroic impropriety of such human niceties. Eventually she consulted the man (whose name was Tiano, and who was her husband, he had said) as to whether the best course would be to conjure up a dragon to fight in lieu of the one that no longer seemed to live there, but he shook his head no. Sighing then, and playing with a ball of pure energy, she walked into the cave, Tiano close behind. The rest of Burinda hid themselves among the various crags in the mountainside.

The small torch of witchlight illuminated to the shadowy edges of the enclosure, revealing a rather sizable library (both numerically and physically); more columns of gems, jewels, silverware and rare stamps; two side caverns; and a bedraggled man comfortably shackled to a mound of pillows.

Illa made a face: still no dragon.

The man in front of her made a similar face: a woman.

"Who are you?" the man demanded in a tired voice, flipping back what might once have been long ringleted hair. The frayed lace that hung from his throat, wrists and boot-tops was nearly indistinguishable against the artistically arranged cobwebs that seemed to chain him to the moldy cushions as effectively as the polished cuffs. His skin was tan, despite his obvious attempts towards "alabaster" via healthy doses of arsenic. A thick book lay in his lap, the margins filled with a veritable arboretum.

"Girl, I say," the man attempted again, "Who are you?"

"Illa," Illa said.

The man sniffed and bit the end of his quill. "Oh," he decided finally, returning to his writing. Then, as if just realizing something, he said, "You aren't here to be a Damsel are you?"

"No," Illa said. "I'm here to slay the giant."

"Dragon," Tiano called, walking nervously into the cave.

"Dragon," Illa amended.

The man laughed. "You!" A few of the cobwebs had loosed themselves from his brown velvet clothing and seemed to chuckle with him. "A girl who can't remember what she's going to slay is going to slay the dragon and rescue me! Well, good hunting to you, lady. I promise I'll write you an epitaphical limerick for your gravestone." He bowed as well as he could from his seat, and flipped his book to a blank page. "Let's see: Here lies a girl quite defiant/Who came to a cave with a trident (artistic license, you understand)/She said, 'I'm not braggin'/I can kill any dragon (a silly rhyme, yet "genius lieth in revision")/But I came in here for a giant!' "

From the corner of the cave Tiano flinched. A simultaneous flinch seemed to fill the whole cavern, but since the Wydoemi were unknown to Illa, she thought little of it.

"I am not here to rescue you," Illa said, turning away from the bedraggled poet and drawing out her sword. "So you needn't worry about that." She smiled suddenly, her teeth reflecting the bright witchlight. "But if you like, I can seal up the cave afterwards and you can stay here as long as you like."

The poet's eyes bulged a bit, but he said no more.

Illa tested the weight of the sword in her hand and dropped to a half-crouch. With great care she skulked around the edges of the cavern, peeking into the two side tunnels, deliberating over the piles of neat gold. Finally she returned to the poet, who had recommenced his writing, Tiano at his side.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"Where's who?" the poet responded, his eyes focused on Tiano's brutal revisions.

"Bob, the Six-Wingéd Saurian," she replied.

"Oh," the man said, pointing with his nose, "Behind you."

She swung around, her sword making a perfect arc where she supposed a dragon's neck ought to be, her ball of witchlight blazing in the claw of her left hand. The air flinched once more, creating a great whoosh that sent Illa sprawling back into the mound of pillows. She seemed to see a gaseous snort directed at the stalactites above her head, but otherwise no dragon.

She scowled.

"Where is he?" she asked again, struggling to rid herself of gold tassel trim and cotton batting.

The poet sighed. "Behind you," he said, this time gesturing not only with nose, but chin as well. "Are you blind?"

"Truly original rejoinder," Tiano commented dryly, "but inaccurate. Illa," he called. Illa glanced up at him. "I want you to very slowly look out of the corner of your eye, and imagine, if you will, that there's a huge dragon's head right next to you, connected to an equally enormous body." Illa did as she was told and indeed saw the promised creature. His scales were a deep green, and his eyeball a luminous yellow. She caught a glimmer of his teeth as he smoked out breath. His six webbed wings filled up nearly half the cavern. An oddly woven talisman hung around his neck. He seemed almost familiar.

She shook her head and scrambled to her feet.

"Bob?" she asked politely, not daring to look at him straight in the eyes lest he disappear again. With help from the far reaches of her mind, she managed to execute a barely passable curtsy.

The dragon did not respond at first. The whole cavern seemed to hold its breath. And then with a slow trickle of steam, the dragon whispered, "Kill him."

"Kill whom?" she asked, puzzled.

The dragon's upper lip lifted in a massive snarl. "The blasted poet," he said. "Kill him."

Illa shook her head and stuck her hands on her hips. "Are you, or are you not, Bob?" she asked, the witchlight bobbing emphatically by her shoulder.

"I am," the dragon said.

"Then I'm supposed to kill you, not the Damsel." She dropped again to a fighting stance. "Have at thee!" she roared, brandishing her sword in an impressive but largely ineffectual gesture.

The dragon began to laugh. His six wings flapped in gargantuan mirth, steam and smoke and bursts of flame launched themselves at the ceiling, and three separate stalactites embedded themselves permanently in the ground. When he was through, he lifted his tail and delicately wiped away tears. "Come over here," he said.

Illa complied. Bob got down on all fours and lowered his head to look more closely at her. "I thought I recognized you," he said. "I certainly recognized the other one over there." From the corner of the room, Tiano lifted his leg so that Illa could see the chain locked around his ankle.

"While you were skulking," he explained.

"Free him," Illa said, throwing the witchlight at the beast. The ball disintegrated as soon as it hit, coughing into a puff of apologetic smoke before shaking itself into existence and toddling back to rest just above her shoulder.

"You said that the last time, too, I think. But I'm afraid I'm not going to let him go unless you kill the poet, Illa. Myopic I may be, but not deaf." He began pacing the length of the cavern, his tail flicking in annoyance. "I'm impervious to steel, I'm impervious to magic, I'm even impervious to you, but I swear that there's not a creature in all Merado impervious to the blathering of that idiot."

"Some people have no appreciation for art," Aldioso whispered to Tiano who merely smiled tightly.

"Would you believe," Bob continued, sitting down among a clump of jewelry, "that he walked in here and demanded that he be made a Damsel? Now, I took him in, not fooled at all by his effeminacy-which, I learned later, he considers fashionable-thinking how delightful it was that I wouldn't have to go Damsel-hunting myself, even more grateful that I was getting a male of your type, and triply thankful that in recompense for his Damselship he brought me this little gift," here Bob pointed to the strange talisman at his throat, "which wouldn't remedy my...er...ocular handicap, shall we say, but would make sure that I could view my sustenance before pouncing upon it. Invisibility, you see. Terribly effective. Do you know how disappointing it is to be slavering after a nice hunk of mutton only to end up with horse? Anyway, little did I know that he, yes he," here he swung around, pointing one buffed talon at the lethargic poet, "offered up his services only to use me as plot fodder for an epic!"

"And a bad one at that," Tiano offered.

"I will have you remember that I am a consummate poet and also attentive," Aldioso piped in his nasal voice. "You will kindly refrain from slandering my name and my art in my presence."

Bob grinned, eyes glimmering darkly. "Nothing would please me more than slandering you behind your back. I don't suppose you would care to leave?"

"Not remotely."

"Pity."

Aldioso shrugged, arranging the lace around his boot-top. "I am well content where I am. You have been provided with every amenity conceivable by the most honorable Mayor and his illustrious wife and could hardly want for mutton now."

"Fat lot of good the talisman has been, then! Scheming buggers."

Aldioso sniffed. "The talisman is advance payment. Besides, it lends you the air of mystery necessary for this most wondrous epic."

"The Burindiad is hardly what I'd consider epic. A lot of hackneyed verse from The Perils of Penelope."

"Dracomir were never noted for the delicacy of their literary palate."

"I'm afraid I'm not fond of regurgitated mud, no. But I'd hardly hold that a fault against my kind. Duplicitous hackneyed moron!"

"Clichéd six-winged saccharine ignoramus!"

"Ink-stained blank-verse angst-ridden phantasmagoric word-monger!"

"That's ghostwriter, scaly incorrigible uncooperative banal stock character!"

Amidst this torrent, Illa sat back down on the cushions. "I think you need a jury, not me," she said, scratching absently behind one ear. "I think we left some jury out on your front porch." She stood and began striding towards the door. Bob stopped her with one casually extended wing.

"No, Illa, I need you."

From outside, Illa could hear cries and moans as the Burindians with a front-row view were suddenly thwarted by the dragon's wing. Among those voices Illa noticed the outraged snuffing of the Mayor and the weak protests of the councilmen.

"Let me out," Illa said.

"No, Illa. This must be settled now. I cannot afford a seventh ulcer. I need you, Illa, and in return I'll not only set Tiano free—excellent Damsel though he is—but I'll also set you on the path to annulling your curse." His eye came down and peered intently at Illa. "I promise."

Illa pursed her lips and stuck out her hip. The witchlight twirled around and around as she thought. Finally she said, "Why can't you just fly out of here?"

Bob snarled. "For the same reason I need you, with your complete lack of literary taste, to kill him. I take two steps by the door and Aldioso...."

"Why can't you kill him?" Illa interrupted.

"Watch," Bob sighed.

Slowly, he paced toward the bedraggled poet, opening wide his jaws. With no trace of surprise, alarm, or even the desire for immediate survival, the poet began reciting:

"And then the fierce Six-Wingéd Saurian
With mighty fangs saliva dripping
Likened unto silveréd pearls
Swept upon the sweet damsel fair
And with gruesome discourtesy
Would snap the innocent in twain."

With surprise Illa saw huge glimmering tears brimming on the rim of one of the dragon's eyes. The poet had somehow risen to stand precariously atop his mound of pillows, his normally laconic voice grown to a thunderous pitch belying any femininity his lace and velvet might otherwise imply.

"Ah, sad, thus might end the short life
Of beautiful Penelope-"

"Penelope?" Tiano muttered to Illa, who merely smiled in her own innocent oblivion.

"With ne'er her bonny swain to see
Nor touch his rosy lips again
But lonesome mourn within the beast.
Ah, sad, thus might end the brief life-"

A foul stench rose up from one of the side caverns, and Illa saw with a start that her reptilian adversary had moved discreetly to a corner to relieve his stomach.

"Of that most fair Penelope,
To never read the lovelorn po'ms
Of the genius Aldioso!"

From outside a cheer every bit as thunderous as Bob's nausea and Aldioso's oration responded to the epic. The Mayor's wife was heard to shout "Hurrah!"

Aldioso bowed to his now-visible audience and returned to a state of abject Distressfulness atop his comfy mountain. The village cheered again, nearly drowning out the sound of Bob's enormous sobs.

From her corner of the cave, Illa tapped her forefinger thoughtfully against her cheek. "I think I've got a solution," she said to no one in particular.

She would have to remember that windy mountaintops were not the best locations for being bound to sacrificial stakes.

The chance of her remembering such advice was, like her present situation, precarious at best, but the mental note was made regardless. Hurricane-prone mountaintops were customary, Tiano had assured her. Somehow she suspected the custom had more to do with the dramatics implied in heroically billowing hair and skirts than with the comfort of the Distressed. Her fingers twisted against the largely ornamental knots and created a gentle current of air around her. Her hair and skirts (the latter recently acquired, barely covering the tops of her boots and the hem of her trousers) settled down as her chattering teeth began the slow process of thawing.

Far beneath her she could see the town of Burinda, nestled smugly at the base of the mountain. To her left, on a convenient plateau, Tiano was clunking around in antiquated, borrowed armor, while Aldioso orated to the assembled town. Straining, she could just make out the words "noble hero" and "fierce arm" and "programs, programs here!" over the excited hush of the culture-starved Burindians.

Then, just as Tiano had managed to set his helmet somewhat comfortably on his head, Bob's enormous shadow hovered over the grassy knoll and the excited hush turned to a breathless silence. A shot of fire illuminated the late afternoon sky, blending nicely with the beginning pinks and ochres of the departing sun. The crowd applauded appreciatively. Bob, acknowledging his success, cartwheeled in the sky before dive-bombing at the fumbling Tiano (and missing him by a full three yards).

The collective breath of the audience was released in one long, disappointed gasp, only to be caught again as Tiano ran up to where Bob had settled on a rocky outcropping. The borrowed helmet, a truly monstrous piece of equipment featuring a visor with a crooked eye-slit and loose hydraulics flapped with each leap up the hillside, reverberating the clang like a "peal of distant thunder" (so Aldioso wrote). Finally Tiano, realizing that his nose was in danger of being sliced off his face by the metal visor, threw the entire helmet away and completed his run willy-nilly up the hill. His dark, curly locks bobbed in the harsh wind, making him look rather handsome despite the veins popping out of his neck and forehead. A brainless giggle wriggled its way through the young ladies assembled there.

Above this giggle, Aldioso pontificated on Tiano’s act of defiance, and his manly appearance, and the thunder crash, and how chipper the trees were looking at that particular moment, and how he would be available for some serious giggling time after the evening’s fight, if anyone was interested.

Bob and Tiano both shuddered.

Then, raising his snout to the air once again, Bob let forth a mighty belch of flame¾ which was Illa’s cue. Wriggling her fingers again, she amplified their voices, so even she could hear.

"Bob!" Tiano roared, brandishing his weapon with both hands. "I defy thee and challenge thee for that fair Damsel…er…Penelope."

"Tiano!" Bob replied in a much more impressive roar, "I defy thee and accept thy challenge for that fair Damsel...ugh...Pen...Pen...."

"Don't think about it," Tiano suggested, as sotto voce as possible.

Bob nodded. "...elope," he said, swallowing the word like some particularly foul medicine.

Tiano patted his flank fondly. Bob grinned.

"Have at thee!" Tiano shouted, driving the point of his sword towards Bob's underbelly. The dragon swung his tail around and shoved him out of the way. Undeterred, Tiano clambered up the scaly back, using the ridges as rungs for the steepest parts. Once Tiano was firmly ensconced, Bob spiraled upwards, flapping his wings and denting even Illa's cocoon of warm air with the force of his motions. Tiano, holding on with just his knees, reversed his hold on the sword, bit his lip and aimed for the dragon's neck. Bob bucked, toppling Tiano onto a carefully chosen patch of moss.

From her vantage, Illa sighed and leaned against her stake. The shadowy corners of her memory seemed to recall something similar once, some other time when Tiano had shown his bravery. Her brow contracted as she struggled toward that dim image, but it eluded her, until, sighing once more, she let it go.

Bob was panting for breath, having missed Tiano several times due to poor depth perception, and Tiano was pushing damp hair from his eyes and straining for breath just as hard. They were circling each other, occasionally meeting, occasionally clashing, occasionally wheezing out a very non-poetical expletive, which Illa censored as best she could. There were children in the audience, after all.

Aldioso, much put upon to find nine-syllable lines suitable to the situation, stuttered out stock phrases that were surprisingly better than his previous "creativity." Bob's whole body turned, if possible, a darker shade of green as the stanzas echoed up to him. His wings drooped, his muscles quivered, and huge rumbles issued forth from his combustible tummy.

The rumbling stopped when Illa smote Aldioso with an instant case of lockjaw.

The true adversary mum for the moment, the fight continued.

Bob snorted a jet of steam at Tiano that tumbled him to the ground. Tiano, underneath the dragon now, rolled between the monster's sharp claws, stabbing at the soft belly whenever possible. Suddenly Tiano lunged, seeming to slice the dragon across his forearm. The beast reared up on his hind legs and darted his head toward the struggling hero, opening his jaws and baring his teeth. Tiano scrambled to his feet, wincing as his ankle jarred on a rock.

"Come on, then!" Tiano called as he hobbled his way up the rest of the windy precipice. Bob growled something that didn't sound exactly pleasant, pulled his incisors free of some particularly gooey loam he had hit when "aiming" for Tiano, and lumbered awkwardly up the mountainside.

Tiano had already reached the top, loosened Illa's bonds, and kissed her, much to the audience's delight. They would not have been as delighted, Illa thought, if they had to smell him. But she could do nothing to transmit Tiano's parfume d'armor, since Tiano had wisely pinned her hands behind her back as soon as he had swept her up into his arms.

Suddenly one of Bob's enormous yellow eyes came into view, followed shortly thereafter by the rest of his head and body. "She is mine!" he hissed, flapping all six of his wings and lashing his tail. "Release her, mortal, or face my wrath!"

Whirling, Tiano loosed his sword and hurled it at the saurian's eye. Illa's fingers flicked out, exploding the sword in a dazzle of blue light. Bob was unaffected.

"Think ye that ye can o'ercome me?" he roared, stuttering only a little on the scripted words. "Not to mortal steel nor to 'sorceled spark do I tremble and fall!"

"Then shall I conquer thee, thou scurvy knave," Tiano growled, glaring briefly at the mute Aldioso, "with the Eternal and Ineffable and Indefatigable Power of Love!"

And with that the couple dropped off the cliff.

The audience gasped.

And Aldioso slipped quietly out of sight.

Nearly choking on his own internal combustion, Bob managed to yell out "Nooo!" and send another shot of flame against the sky, artistically coordinating it with the last flash of the sun. The audience let out a happy "ooh." The mountainside shook as the Six-Wingéd Saurian clawed his way into the air, huffing and panting with each pump of his webbed appendages. He hovered for a moment, silhouetted against the first of the rising moons, and then dove after the couple—

—And his own Freedom.

The stars were just dotting into existence when Illa and Tiano rose from behind the cliff to float out over the audience. A large cheer erupted as the couple, hand in hand, walked down an invisible staircase of air, stepping gracefully on the plateau. Several giggly girls, Illa noticed, were already looking at their own 'Tianos,' measuring them for possible epic potential. Aldioso had apparently run off, leaving behind his book, which was rapidly being trampled in the soft earth.

Only the Mayor's wife frowned, calling out after the departing duo, "The dragon! You were supposed to kill the dragon!"

Tiano laughed. "We did," he said simply, before pulling on Illa's hand to tromp down the rocky path towards the now-deserted cave.

Illa screwed up her face. "We did?"

Tiano nodded. "Certainly. No one will be interested in Aldioso's work now. At least I hope they won't."

"Aldioso was the poet, Tiano," Illa said.

Tiano raised one eyebrow and grinned. "Was he?" Then swinging his arms he laughed. "He didn't even make a good Damsel. Call it professional pride, if you will."

Illa shrugged and yawned. Their horses were waiting at the mouth of the cavern, already weighted down with gold, gems and ancient books Bob had given them in recompense for his freedom from the poet and the town. It was past midnight when they set foot on the highway, Burinda no more than a cluster of flickering lamps and shadows behind them. Illa offered to take the first watch since Tiano had had such an unusually strenuous day.

The steady pace of the horses' hooves, and her husband's breathing provided a pleasant background against which Illa could think. So many events had jarred her memory today, so many events.... She shook her head to clear away weariness. Naps, Tiano said, were fatal to her. And she wanted, wanted desperately, to remember.

The sun was just rising as Tiano stirred, eventually wriggling his way into a sitting position. He looked over at his wife and smiled. She was still wearing the skirt, he realized. It had been a long time since he had seen her wearing a skirt.

"Good morning," he said, leaning over and kissing her full on the lips.

"Good morning," she said, returning the kiss.

"My name is Tiano," he said, sticking out his hand.

She grasped it firmly in her own, her drooping eyes belying the wakeful gesture. "I know," she said, yawning.

"Your husband. I'm your...."

Illa laughed and lifted her hand slightly. Both Tiano and horse rose about two feet off the ground. "I know," she repeated, laughing.

"Haven't slept yet, have you?"

"Not...yet..." she said, grinning up at him.

Tiano chuckled and squinted eastward, admiring the sunrise from his levitated vantage point. The horse did not appear to be enjoying the impromptu high ground quite as much, but had been with this particular duo long enough to merely whisk in nervousness. "Our next stop is Salmiño. But we're not engaged there for another week, so I was thinking of stopping by Viata for a few days, that is, if you didn't want to go to where Bob suggested we start searching for...."

A long snore interrupted him.

Tiano sighed and patted the chestnut consolingly. Overhead, the huge form of Bob rushed by, adding his own triumphant flame to the burning sun on the horizon.

(c) 1999
By Emily C. A. Snyder
Website: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!
Biography