Page 58 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

The Guardian’s Bestiary

There is a secret place in our world that is carefully hidden from us by magic.

It’s a wild magnificence of a place: a land where all the creatures of myth still live and thrive.

It is known as the Glimouria Archipelago: a cluster of thirty-four islands in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, some as large as Denmark, some as small as a town square.

Across the islands, thousands of magical creatures run and fly, raise their young, grow old, die, and begin again.

To us they’re half forgotten and were long ago dismissed as children’s stories.

But we have not destroyed them; they survive. They are plentiful, and shining, and real. It is the last surviving magical place.

Batrachomyomachian mouse

The batrachomyomachians are a princely breed of mice.

Frogs are their historic enemies, dating back to a dispute with a Frog King more than two thousand years ago.

They make armor from needles and shields from nutshells: it is surprising how much damage a vegetable whittled to a point can do.

They are valiant creatures. Their desire to be of service makes them excellent allies, albeit very small ones.

Caladrius bird

Also known as the snowbird, the magnificent white-plumed caladrius can cure many forms of sickness. The bird looks the sufferer full in the face, often nipping at their lip or cheek, subsuming the illness into its own body—then it flies off toward the sun, where the sickness is burned clean away.

This does not work for hangovers or common colds, for which no cure has yet been found.

Carbuncle

A small wildcat with luminescent fur and a ruby in the center of the forehead, the carbuncle has a furious mistrust of adults; only children can approach them.

They bury their treasure, and unscrupulous humans occasionally follow them with a view to stealing it.

This is a strategy with very uncertain results, as sometimes a carbuncle’s treasure will be gold but more frequently it will be a much-cherished portion of decaying rat.

Centicore

Also known as the yale, the centicore varies in size from that of an antelope to a small goat.

They are keen and excessively inquisitive, eager to smell and chew and digest all that they encounter, whether it be a bush, a flower, or your trousers while you are wearing them—but they can fight fiercely if provoked.

Pliny the Elder wrote that their horns “are moveable; in a fight the horns are used alternately, pointed forward or sloped backward, as needed.” A centicore’s milk is the freshest drink imaginable, and gives comfort and strength to those who taste it.

Centaur

(female: centauride)

Centaurs have the body of a horse and the torso and head of a human.

They are skilled artisans and inventors, from blade-smithing to music to confectionary.

It was a centaur who devised a way to forge dragon obsidian into swords; it was a centaur who invented the airbonbon, which allows the eater to float in the air as they chew.

There are very few things a centaur cannot make, should they wish to.

Dryad

A tree-spirit, the dryad has access to the ancient wisdom of forests; they know a great deal that humans do not yet understand.

The oak dryad will be eight or nine feet tall, a sapling dryad as small as a child.

Wood freely given from a dryad’s tree has remarkable properties and will never decay.

A fruit tart made with the apples, peaches, and apricots of a dryad tree is one of the finest foods this world has to offer.

Firebird

The firebird is literally aflame; its wings are hot to the touch and glow with perpetual sparks.

Firebirds occur in more than a hundred different shades of red—maroon, scarlet, crimson, rose, ruby.

They have an exceptional sense of smell.

A firebird can smell the first green shoots before they break through the soil, can smell a human fart from half a forest away, and can be trained to detect the faintest trace of poison.

Gagana

The gagana is a large crow-like bird; its black feathers are iridescent, and in different lights shimmer from deep red and emerald to darkest navy.

The common gagana has copper claws and an iron beak.

Royal gaganas, found only on the island of Dousha, have silver claws and beaks of solid gold.

Their beaks are sharp enough to take the finger off a grown man with a single snap, but the birds are capable of extraordinary and lasting love.

The regard of a gagana is hard-won; but once gained, it is gained for life.

Harpy

The harpy has the face and shoulders of a woman and the lower body of a bird. They are said to have evolved from storm-spirits; they fly at the speed of the fastest wind. Tenacious, fearsomely intelligent, and vengeful, harpies make powerful allies and terrible enemies.

They’re often asked to act as guards for that which requires their particularly ferocious protection: spies, the state secrets of the islands, and libraries.

Hercinia

A radiant silver bird, the hercinia glows so vividly that it has been known to guide travelers when they lose their way in the dark.

Its wafer-thin eggs are pure silver, and the chick is born featherless, with silver skin and an immense appetite.

Hercinia droppings, which are liquid silver, are highly prized and make unusual jewelry for those who like that sort of thing.

Jorogumo

Joro spiders, as they’re known, are endemic to the Glimouria Archipelago.

Joros cast silver-green light in the dark.

They can grow to be as large as a rhinoceros and have been known to hunt humans, horses, and even rocs; the small spiders, however, are entirely harmless, as long as you don’t deliberately touch them.

If you do, whatever happens afterward is very much your responsibility.

Manticore

The manticore has the tail of a scorpion, the face of a human, the teeth and body of a lion, and the personality of a self-righteous politician.

Some subspecies are winged, with a ball of porcupine quills at the tip of the tail.

Manticores, like karkadanns, are one of the very few creatures who will attack humans on sight, even when not in need of food.

They lie and kill for the pleasure of it. They smell of decay.

[Addendum: The horned subspecies is more violent and more terrible than the common variety, and delights in death.]

Naiad

The naiads are freshwater nymphs, found in the rivers, lakes, and streams of the Archipelago.

Their skin is silver-blue, and they have neither gender nor age, being born from the water itself.

Naiads are known for their reckless joy—ebullient time-cherishers, dizzying truth-enthusiasts—and are as swift and vivid as the streams they guard.

Peryton

The peryton has the head and forelegs of a deer or stag and the wings and hind legs of a bird.

They are shy, inclined to bite, and intelligent beyond measure.

An ancient Greek scholar once wrote that “when the sun strikes it, instead of casting a shadow of its own body, it casts the shadow of a man.”

Phoenix

The ancient historian Herodotus, who traveled frequently to the Archipelago, wrote that the phoenix’s “plumage is partly red, partly golden, while the general make and size are almost exactly that of the eagle.” When it grows old, the phoenix builds a small bonfire of wood, lavender, cinnamon, and yellow myrrh.

It faces the sun and catches fire, joyfully fanning the flames with its wings until it’s consumed.

From the ashes rises a new, young, ravenously hungry phoenix. The tail feather of a phoenix, when snapped in two, emits light and the sweet scent of winter bonfires.

Roc

The enormous roc, first found in Persia, is the largest bird in the Archipelago; their wings can grow as long as fifty feet, equivalent to seven dining tables set end to end.

The explorer Marco Polo estimated that their individual feathers were as big as palm leaves.

Rocs have been known to eat elephants and behemoths, catching them in their claws and dropping them onto the rocks below—but, if you are not an elephant, most are gentle in temperament and eager to play.

Their play can, admittedly, lead to a fair amount of accidental maiming, but they do try not to.

Salamander

The salamander is a spotted fire-dwelling, fire-breathing lizard.

Salamandric fire is a treasured resource of the Archipelago—if you can catch the fire breathed in a salamander’s final breath with a scrap of paper or wood, the fire never goes out; it will survive hurricanes and torrential rain.

Collecting the fire is made complicated by the toxic quality of salamandric spittle; if a salamander licks a human, their hair will fall out.

Bald men are encouraged, therefore, to go into salamander-handling.

Terasque

The monstrous terasque has the physicality of a tank and the withering stare of an unimpressed teenager.

Its head is lion-like, its six feet end in bears’ claws, and its turtle-shell back is sharp with spines, which it can retract at will.

Some can exhale poisonous fumes; “terasque breath” is a popular insult among schoolchildren.

While some humans have been able to tame and calm the terasque, they are unpredictable creatures and better kept at a very, very respectful distance.

Winged unicorn

The winged unicorn is a hybrid species, born of the union of a pegasus and a common unicorn.

Their horns and wings are gold, and their flight is fast; they move in great herds, blanketing the sky with radiance.

Winged unicorns, when not in flight, are happiest by the ocean, where the salt water cleans the sweat from their wings.

They swim well, and their glimourie-rich breath on the waves creates a white sea-foam, which spreads out beyond the Archipelago and into the Outerlands.