I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons

by Peter S. Beagle

“It is an old wonder to me,” Mortmain mused aloud, “that the false and the genuine so often tend to live hand in hand—as with that dagger I purchased, for instance. You wonder why I chose the fraudulent over the real? Because of precisely this puzzling divide. The haft is not in the least what it pretends, being more beautiful than the reality it imitates; while the blade is as honest and moral and straightforward as any blade could possibly be. Are the two, together, a truth unspoken or a lie concealed? Without the lure of that charming handle, would anyone have picked up the dagger at all? And without the truehearted blade, would anyone hold it for more than a moment? I ponder such matters. I do indeed. As I must, given my responsibilities.”

“My own opinion,” Robert said tightly, “is that you have fiendishly set out to bore us to death. It’s working.” “Have mercy!” Prince Reginald chimed in. “Whatever you do to us, great wizard, we beg you—stop talking, and just get it over with. In a heroic lifetime devoted to slaughtering villains, I have never encountered one who chattered so!”