Advertisement

Over the decades, some of Lucius Shepard's most popular tales have featured an immense dragon named Griaule, who lays, perhaps sleeping, perhaps dead, next to the city Teocinte. Griaule is both a sinister and dangerous figure -- in part merely because of his size and the fact that he's a dragon, but in part for what might be called psychic reasons -- and a benefit to the locals, mainly as a tourist attraction.

The latest -- and possibly, given the events of the story, though not by any means certainly, last -- of Shepard's Griaule tales is The Taborin Scale. This concerns a coin collector named George Taborin, a mostly rather stolid man, who periodically escapes his unfaithful wife to visit Teocinte, and engage in some infidelity himself. On one such trip he comes into possession of a dragon scale -- purportedly one of Griaule's, though it is rather unusual. He trades it to a whore named Sylvia for the extended use of her talents. But then, by some agency of the scale, the two are transported to another time or dimension, evidently the same physical location as Teocinte, but wilderness instead of city, and dominated not by the dead or sleeping Griaule but a much younger version of the dragon. Over an extended period, George and Sylvia perforce learn to survive, eventually adopting a teenaged girl who had been abused by her previous "family." All along they realize that they must be here for some reason of Griaule's, and the narrative tends inevitably towards the revelation of Griaule's strange purpose.

Rich Horton is an eclectic reader in and out of the SF and fantasy genres. He's been reading SF since before the Golden Age (that is, since before he was 13). Born in Naperville, IL, he lives and works (as a Software Engineer for the proverbial Major Aerospace Company) in St. Louis area and is a regular contributor to Tangent. Stop by his website at http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton.