"In desperation, Fusinian went with a small escort to a witch named Gloe, who dwelt in the rugged hills that sunder Kortoh' from its southern neighbor Vindium. The witch harkened to his plea for succor and said:
" 'As a patriotic Kortolian, I will of course help Your Majesty to my utmost. Howsomever, there is the matter of my license.'
" 'Eh? What is this?' said the king. 'My kingdom totters on the brink of ruin, and you babble of licenses?'
" 'It is no mean matter, sire,' replied Gloe. 'Know that I am no illicit practitioner of magic through choice. Thrice I have applied to your Bureau of Commerce and Licenses, and thrice they have turned me down. They demand a diploma from the Lyceum of Metouro or other institution of higher learning, or that I pass an examination, or take a refresher course, or some other nonsense of this sort, when I have been successfully healing the sick, summoning spirits, finding lost articles, and foreseeing the future for sixty years)'
" 'But what has all that to do with the peril of Kortoli?' asked the king.
" 'Because the efficacy of magic depends upon the state of mind of the magician. Did I but know that you would summarily command your finicking clerks to issue me a proper license as wizardess forthwith, the relief to me would enhance my chance of success.'
"The king frowned. 'I like not to interfere in the orderly processes of administration, nor yet to urge partiality upon my officials,' he said. 'But in this extreme, I suppose I must swallow my scruples. Very well, if your spell work, you shall have your license, though you know not a zoomorph from a zodiac. Pray, madam, proceed.'
"So the witch went into a trance and writhed and mumbled and spoke in strange voices, and shadows flickered about her cave without material objects to cast them, and strange, dissolving faces appeared in mid-air, and the king was seized by freezing cold, whether from some being from outer space or from simple fright is not known. When the king had stopped shivering and the shadows had gone away, the witch said:
" 'Know, O King, that you must slay the dragon Grimnor, who sleeps under a mountain nine leagues hence. Then you must take out every one of this dragon's teeth. On a night of a full moon, you must sow these teeth on a plowed field, and there shall spring up from these teeth that which will enable you to vanquish Aussar.'
"So King Fusinian journeyed westward, following Gloe's directions, until he came to the mountain. The dragon lay snoring in a cave, which opened into a ravine at the root of the mountain. Fusinian feared that neither his arrows nor his lance nor his sword would pierce the dragon's scales—which are, as everyone knows, so hard that they make excellent mail, provided that one can obtain a dragon's hide to begin with— especially since Fusinian stood only three finger-breadths above five feet. At last Fusinian and his men found a boulder of the right size and drove an iron spike into it, and to this spike they belayed a long rope. Then they balanced this boulder precariously over the mouth of Grimnor's cave.
"Then Fusinian went to the mouth of the cave and shouted a challenge to Grimnor. And the dragon awoke and came looping and hissing out of the cave. Risinian ran back before him, and when he saw that the head and a few feet of the neck were out of the cave, he jerked the rope. Down came the boulder, with a snapping of draconic skull bones. The thrashing and writhing of that beast were fearful; they shook the mountain and brought down a small landslide. But at length Grimnor lay still and dead.
"Fusinian discovered that the dragon had forty-seven teeth in each side of each jaw, making a total of one hundred and eighty-eight. He had thoughtfully brought along the royal dentist, who extracted these teeth. Fusinian put the teeth in a bag and, on the night of the next full moon, he sowed these teeth on a plowed field. He sowed and sowed, thus."
Jorian strode about the hall, making sowing gestures. Actually, he was tossing into the air above the heads of the diners pinches of the Powder of Discord, the packet of which he concealed in his left hand. He continued:
"Just as Gloe had predicted, the points of spears could presently be discerned, sticking up through the soil and shining in the moonlight. And then came the crests of helms, and soon there stood up, in the moonlight, one hundred and eighty-eight giants, eight feet tall and armed to the teeth.
" 'We are the Teeth of Grimnor,' said the tallest of the giants in a voice of thunder. 'What would you of us, little man?'
"Clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, Fusinian said: 'Your task, O Teeth, is to vanquish the armies of Aussar, which are overrunning my fair kingdom.'
" 'Harkening and obedience,' thundered the giant who had spoken. And off they marched towards the Aussarian border, so fast that they soon left King Fusinian and his escort behind. So Fusinian returned to Kortoli City to see how things fared there. And when he arrived, he found that the Teeth were there ahead of him. They had routed the Aussarians so utterly that those who escaped the carnage ran all the way back to Aussar City before stopping to draw breath. For it transpired the Teeth had hides of such toughness that the blows of swords and the thrusts of spears were no more to them than the scratches of a kitten are to one of us.
"Well, a pair of the giants at the West Gate admitted King Fusinian and his escort. But when Fusinian got to the palace, he was taken aback to find the biggest of the Teeth sitting on his throne—or rather, on a table top laid across the arms of his throne, for the throne itself was too small to accommodate that monstrous arse.
" 'What,' quoth he, in all the heavens and hells are you doing in my chair?'
" 'I am not in it, I am on it,' said the Tooth. 'And as for what I am doing, we have decided to run your kingdom for ourselves. This is but natural, since we are so much stronger than you that it were ridiculous for us to take orders from you. Besides, only thus can we assure ourselves enough to eat, for our appetites are to yours like those of tigers to those of titmice. I have taken your queen for my concubine, and now I shall make you my body slave—'
"But Fusinian, with that quickness of wit that long served him so well, raced out of the throne room, dodged a giant or two who tried to snatch him up, vaulted on his horse, and spurred like a madman for the gate. He was out and on his way ere the Teeth could prepare themselves to stop him. They set out a pursuit; but, although they could run as fast afoot as Fusinian's horse could gallop, he knew the country better than they. By weaving back and forth like a fox dodging the hounds, he got over the border to Govannian.
"Fusinian had been on good terms with the Hereditary Usurper of Govannian until the latter refused to aid him against Aussar, as he had once promised to do. Fusinian's news, however, was ominous enough to patch up the quarrel. No fool, the Hereditary Usurper raised an army to scotch the Teeth before they decided to annex his realm as well as Kortoli.
"Fusinian meanwhile went from one to another of the Twelve Cities with his story. In most of them he got contingents for the army of liberation, although the Syndics of Ir demurred on the ground that it would cost too much, and the Senate of Vindium debated endlessly without deciding aught, and the Tyrant of Boaktis declared it was all a hoax by Fusinian to subvert his own enlightened and progressive rule and restore the reactionary exploiters.
"At length an army, with contingents from all the remaining Twelve Cities—even from Aussar—gathered on the border of Govannian and marched into Kortoli. But alas! The army halted in dismay when the forces of the Teeth approached them. Some of the Teeth were riding on mammoths, which they had bought from the cham of the Gendings, in Shven. The beasts had been towed down the coast on rafts. Other Teeth fought on foot as officers of platoons of Kortolians, whom by terror they had trained to obey their slightest command.