WE LOOKED AT each other and then at the elf. “What you can do,” said Shiara, “is answer some questions.”
“My dear lady, I would be delighted,” the elf said. “What do you want to know?”
“Why were you following us?” the dragon rumbled.
“I thought she was asking the questions,” said the elf.
“We’re all asking questions,” Shiara told him. “So you can just stop dodging and answer that one.”
“What one?” the elf said. The dragon growled and made a snapping motion at the elf, who jerked back hastily. “Yes, ah, of course,” he said. “That question. I was, um, looking for information.”
“Information? Ha!” said Shiara. “What kind of information?”
“Who you are, where you’re going, and what you’re going to do when you get there,” the elf replied promptly. He was pointedly not looking at the dragon.
“That’s all?” Shiara said sarcastically. “It sounds a lot like what we want to know about you.”
“How nice,” the elf said, beaming. “We have something in common.”
“Excuse me,” I broke in. “But who exactly are you?”
The elf looked at me with a pained expression. “I’m an elf.”
“I can see that,” I said politely. “But would you mind telling me your name? I mean, I’d sort of like to know to whom I’m speaking.”
“My dear boy, I would be delighted.” The elf rose and bowed with a flourish. “My name,” he said, “is Janril.” He sat down again and looked at me expectantly.
“Pleased to meet you, Janril,” I said. “This is Shiara, that’s Nightwitch...” I hesitated a moment. Dragons don’t pick their names until they’re old enough to pick what sex they’re going to be, too, and I wasn’t quite sure how to introduce one. I couldn’t leave it out, though. “This is a dragon—”
“Somehow I guessed,” the elf muttered.
“—and I’m Daystar,” I finished.
Shiara was frowning at me, but before she could say anything the elf bounced to his feet and said, “Daystar! Not Cimorene’s son? My dear boy, I can’t tell you how glad I am you’ve finally come. It’s about time things got straightened out a little.”
“I don’t trust elves,” Shiara said. “And why should we listen to you, anyway?”
“My dear girl, if you expect me to answer questions, you’re going to have to listen to me,” said the elf. “Otherwise there’s no point in it. Why don’t you trust elves?”
Shiara didn’t want to tell the elf anything. I was beginning to like him, though, and I didn’t see what difference it would make, so I told him about the first elf and the wizard’s staff. When I finished, Janril nodded solemnly.
“That,” he said, “explains everything. I am afraid you ran into one of the Darkmorning Elves; they’re a rather disreputable lot. They’ve been running wild since the King disappeared, so of course they’d cause you trouble.”
“Why ‘of course’?” said Shiara suspiciously. “And what King are you talking about?”
“The King of the Enchanted Forest,” the elf said. “The Darkmorning Elves don’t want him to come back; they like the way things have been run since he left. Since you have his sword, of course they would want to get rid of you. If they could,” he added thoughtfully. “Personally, I don’t think they really know what they’re doing.”
“How do you know about Daystar’s sword?” Shiara asked suspiciously.
“My dear girl, everyone who lives in the Enchanted Forest knows something about the Vanished King’s Sword,” Janril said. “It—”
“Wait a minute!” I said. “I only have one sword, and I thought it was called the Sword of the Sleeping King.”
“Sleeping, vanished, run away—what difference does it make?” Janril said. “He’s gone.”
“I don’t care about the sword,” the dragon said. “I want to know why you were following us.”
The elf looked annoyed. “My dear... ah... dragon,” he said, “I told you already, I wanted to find out more about you. I believe that’s the usual reason for following people around.”
“But that doesn’t explain anything,” the dragon complained.
Shiara’s eyes narrowed suddenly. “All right, then, why did you want to know more about us?” she said.
Janril considered for a moment, then grinned reluctantly. “Because I’m trying to find out what the Darkmorning Elves are up to.”
“What does that have to do with us?” I asked.
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to follow you,” the elf said reasonably. “But the Darkmorning Elves have been very active in this part of the woods for the past few days, and we thought it might be you they were interested in. And of course, if they’re interested, so are we.”
“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” I said.
“The Goldwing-Shadowmusic Elves,” Janril said with a touch of pride. “We are on the side of the King, even if he is missing right now. We follow the sword.”
“What does that mean?” Shiara demanded. “And how many kinds of elves are there?”
“Quite a few,” said Janril. “But the only ones you have to watch out for are the Darkmorning Elves and the Silverstaff Elves. Fortunately, the Silverstaff Elves don’t know the sword is back yet, but I doubt that your luck will hold much longer.”
“How do you know these Silverstaff Elves don’t know about Daystar’s sword?” Shiara asked.
“My dear girl, if they did, you’d have wizards all over the place. The Silverstaff Elves are in league with them. Undiscriminating, that’s all I can call it.” Janril looked prim. A prim elf is almost as odd-looking as a dignified lizard; I found myself wishing Suz were still around so I could compare them.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Shiara said.
“I suppose you don’t,” the elf said cheerfully. “But it doesn’t really matter. We’ll still be glad to help you.”
Shiara snorted. “The last elf who said he was going to help us almost got Daystar killed.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Janril said politely. “But I simply can’t take responsibility for the Darkmorning Elves. Now, I must be going; I have to let the rest of the Goldwing Shadowmusic Elves know what’s going on. We’ll see you in the castle.”
“Just a minute!” Shiara said. “What makes you think we’re going to let you go?”
“Can you think of anything else we could do with him?” I said.
“I could eat him, I suppose,” the dragon said. He looked dubiously at the elf. “I don’t think I want to, though; elves don’t taste very good.”
I decided not to ask how the dragon knew that. “I really don’t think you have to eat him,” I said. “I think we should just let him go.”
“But Daystar—” Shiara stopped and thought for a moment, biting her lip. “Oh, all right. If you want to let him go, let’s do it.”
“Are you sure?” I said, surprised. “I thought you didn’t like the idea.”
“I don’t,” Shiara said, glaring at me. “But we’ll be here all day if we start arguing. Besides, it’s your sword.”
I wasn’t quite sure what that had to do with anything, but I didn’t ask. “All right,” I said to the elf, “I think you can go. But I don’t really think you’d better follow us around anymore.”
“But of course!” said the elf. He bounced to his feet again, bowed to each of us including Nightwitch, and whisked off. Shiara scowled after him and opened her mouth, then apparently decided not to say anything.
“Well, let’s go,” I said after a minute. We picked up our bundles and started walking again. The dragon and I both watched the trees for a while, but the elf apparently kept his promise to quit following us.
Shiara walked just behind the dragon, looking thoughtful. “Do you really believe that elf?” she finally asked me.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t think it makes much difference, though. I’d still be going to see Kazul, no matter what he said. I want to find out about this sword and what it does and what’s really going on around here.”
I must have sounded sort of annoyed, because Shiara frowned at me and said, “What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m getting sort of tired of people chasing my sword,” I said. “I’d like to know why they want it so badly.” I was also beginning to realize that I didn’t know nearly as much about the Enchanted Forest as I thought I did, which made me very nervous. I wasn’t going to mention that to Shiara just yet, though.
“Oh.” Shiara looked thoughtful again. “Well, you could—”
The dragon looked backward over its shoulder. “You’re slowing down,” it said. “Can’t you talk and walk at the same time?”
We started walking faster, which really did make it harder to talk. I kept watching for elves or wizards, but I didn’t see any. In between, I thought about the sword, but I didn’t come up with anything new.
We made fairly good time for the rest of the afternoon, and we were just beginning to think about stopping for the night when we came to the clearing. The dragon stopped right at the edge of it, very abruptly. Fortunately, Shiara and I were back far enough to stop before we ran into it or stepped on its tail or something. Bumping into a dragon is not a particularly good way to end a day.
“What’s the matter now?” asked Shiara.
“This looks just like that last clearing,” the dragon said. “The one that had the castle in it.”
“You mean we’ve been going in circles?” Shiara said.
“No!” said the dragon. “I know my way around the Enchanted Forest better than that! I just don’t like this.”
“I don’t see why you’re worried,” Shiara said. “You’re not the one who got turned into a statue.”
“Well, if you think it’s fun to go banging into something you can’t see, you go first,” said the dragon.
I put my hand on the hilt of my sword, and felt a nice, strong rumble, like a cart full of bricks on a bumpy road. There was definitely something in the clearing, or at least close by. I said so.
“If it’s invisible, I don’t want anything to do with it,” Shiara said decidedly. “Can’t we just go around?”
“No,” said the dragon grumpily. “I want to know who’s putting all these invisible things in my shortcut. If there’s another one here, I’m going to find out about it.” It stalked cautiously out into the clearing, heading straight through the middle.
Nothing happened. The dragon walked all the way across, then turned and looked at us. “Are you sure there’s something here? I can’t find anything.”
I touched the sword again. “It feels like there is,” I said. I looked at Shiara. She looked dubiously across the clearing. “Hurry up,” said the dragon.
I sighed and started forward. I kept one hand on the hilt of my sword, just in case, and I walked across the same part of the clearing the dragon had. Shiara shook her head and started around the edge of the clearing.
I got about five steps. Then there was a whooshing noise and a wall of flames shot up around me, very hot and bright. I yelled, because I couldn’t see where I was going anymore, and I yanked at my sword. I think I had some vague idea that the sword might be able to keep me from burning to death; I certainly couldn’t see to fight anything.
Something hit me in the middle of my back just as the sword came out of its sheath. I felt something from the sword; it wasn’t a tingle, it was more like a wave of anticipation followed very closely by a surge of disappointment. I was so surprised I nearly dropped it. Then I realized that it wouldn’t matter if I did drop it, because I was lying on the ground. I was also much cooler man I had been a minute ago, and someone was pounding on me.
“Stop it!” I said. The someone sat back, and I saw that it was Shiara.
“Are you all right?” Shiara said.
“I think so,” I said. “Why were you pounding on me?”
“Your clothes were on fire,” Shiara said. “I was trying to put them out. If I’d known you were going to fuss about it, I’d have let them burn.”
I apologized and thanked her, then looked around. Shiara and I were sitting on the ground just inside a ring of fire. In the center of the ring was a short, round building with a pointed roof; it wasn’t quite tall enough to call a tower, but it wasn’t short enough to call a house, either. I moved away from the flames, which were uncomfortably warm, and looked at Shiara. “What happened?”
“How should I know? One second you were walking across the clearing, and the next second there was all this fire and you were yelling,” Shiara said. “And when I tried to shove you out of it, we both got in here instead, and that thing was sitting there.” She waved at the not quite tower.
“At least it isn’t invisible,” I offered. Shiara gave me a disgusted look, but she didn’t say anything.
“Hello?” called the dragon’s voice from the other side of the wall of fire. “Are you there?”
“We’re here,” I called back “Both of us.”
“How did you do that?” the dragon shouted.
“I don’t know,” I said. “And I don’t think I want to stay here to find out.” I picked myself up off the ground and put the sword back in its sheath. “I think maybe we’d better go,” I said to Shiara. “Before something comes out of that house.”
“It isn’t a house,” Shiara said. “But I think I agree with you.”
“Achoo!” said the dragon from the other side of the fire.
“Just a minute, here!” a voice said behind me.
I turned around. A medium-sized man was standing about ten feet away, leaning on a staff that was about three feet taller than he was. He had black hair and three rings on each hand, and he was frowning irritably at Shiara and me.
“Oh, rats,” said Shiara disgustedly. “Another wizard!”
“You,” said the man, ignoring her statement completely, “are trespassing. I don’t know how you got in here, but it was a great mistake for you to do so.”
“We didn’t exactly do it on purpose,” I said. “We were just trying to get across the clearing.”
“Young man, there is a reason why I surround my home with a wall of fire,” the wizard said. “And the reason is that I do not wish to be disturbed. I wish to know how you penetrated it, or I would not be wasting my time talking with you.”
“I’m a fire-witch, that’s how!” Shiara said. “And if you don’t want to be disturbed, you ought to be more careful with your stupid wall. We would have gone right by if it hadn’t jumped up all over Daystar when he tried to cross the clearing!”
“A fire-witch?” the man said. He gave Shiara an extremely odd look. “You haven’t mislaid an invisible castle recently, have you?”
“No!” said Shiara. “It isn’t mine!”
The wizard looked even angrier. “You know of it!”
“Well, sort of,” I said. “It isn’t ours, but we ran into it this morning.”
“Did you,” said the wizard. He sounded skeptical and very dangerous. I decided I didn’t want to talk about the castle anymore.
“I think we ought to be going now,” I said. “We’re really very sorry to have bothered you.”
“I’m not!” Shiara said.
“Shiara!”
“Well, I’m not,” Shiara said. “I think he ought to apologize to us, not the other way around. And anyway, I’m not apologizing to any wizard, especially not one that messes around with invisible castles!”
The man with the staff frowned, but this time he looked more thoughtful than angry. “What is your complaint against wizards?”
“Ha!” said Shiara. “You should know.”
“No,” said the man, “I should not. I am not a wizard.”
“Achoo!” came the dragon’s voice, and the wall of the fire bulged inward on that side.
“Excuse me, but if you’re not a wizard, why are you carrying a staff?” I said. “And why is the dragon sneezing?”
The man looked startled. “Dragon? You travel with a dragon?”
“No, it travels with us,” I said. “Does it make a difference?”
“Perhaps,” the man said. He looked at the wall of fire and made a pass with his staff. The flames began to die, and a moment later we could see the clearing again.
THE DRAGON WAS still sneezing in medium-sized puffs of flame. The man with the staff looked at it closely and shook his head. “That certainly is a dragon.” He made another pass with his staff.
The staff vanished, and the dragon stopped sneezing abruptly. The dragon looked extremely surprised; it sniffed a couple of times in an experimental way, as if it were expecting to start sneezing again any minute. I was surprised, too. I mean, wizards never let go of their staffs, not willingly, anyway.
The man bowed politely to the dragon. “I must apologize for inconveniencing you,” he said. “I offer you greetings and welcome to my home, and I wish you good fortune when you leave.”
“What?” said the dragon.
The man looked a little startled and peered at the dragon more closely. “Oh, I see,” he said after a moment. “Well, you’re welcome; come and make yourself comfortable.”
Shiara scowled at him and bent to pick up Nightwitch, who had come running toward her as soon as the flames had died. The dragon looked suspiciously at the man.
“I don’t like wizards,” it said. “And I don’t like people who put invisible things in the middle of my shortcut.”
“I am not a wizard,” the man said with a sigh. “And my tower has been here for years, and it isn’t invisible. Now, come in and talk. There hasn’t been a dragon by for a long time, and I’m a bit behind on the news.”
“If you’re not a wizard, who are you?” Shiara said, petting Nightwitch and glaring at the man.
“I’m a magician,” the man said. “And my name is Telemain.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said.
“Mrrow,” said Nightwitch, and started purring loudly.
Telemain looked at the kitten, and suddenly he began to laugh. He had a nice laugh, sort of deep and friendly. I started thinking that I might be able to like him after all, even if his firewall had nearly burned me to a cinder.
“I don’t believe I have ever seen a group quite like this one,” Telemain said when he finished laughing. “Please, tell me who you all are.”
I introduced everyone, and Telemain nodded courteously to each of us. “Welcome to my home,” he said.
“Some welcome!” Shiara said. “You nearly got Daystar killed, and you started the dragon sneezing again. And how come the dragon was allergic to you if you aren’t a wizard?”
“Dragons aren’t allergic to wizards,” Telemain said, sounding surprised. “What gave you that idea?”
“I did!” the dragon said. It came forward and sat down emphatically, right next to me. “All dragons are allergic to wizards. I should know: I sneeze every time I get near one.” It eyed Telemain belligerently.
“Oh, I don’t doubt that at all,” Telemain said. “But I am afraid it isn’t wizards you’re allergic to; it’s their staffs. You stopped sneezing as soon as I got rid of mine, didn’t you?”
The dragon looked startled. “I did, didn’t I?” it said after a minute.
“If you aren’t a wizard, what are you doing with a wizard’s staff?” Shiara asked.
Telemain raised his eyebrows. “What business is it of yours, may I ask?”
“We’ve been having some trouble with wizards,” I said before Shiara could answer. I didn’t want her to make him angry; we had enough people mad at us already.
“Really,” Telemain said. He looked as if he were going to laugh again. “All of you?”
“Well, mainly just Shiara and me,” I said. “We’ve been sort of worried about them. Most of them are after Shiara,” I added.
“What would the Society of Wizards want with a fire-witch?” Telemain said. “I can see that I shall have to invite you in, if only to hear your tale.”
“How do you know about the society?” Shiara said angrily. “And why should we trust a wizard, anyway?”
“Anyone who knows much about magic can tell you’re a fire-witch, and the only reason I can think of for a fire-witch to have several wizards after her is if she has done something to offend the Society of Wizards,” Telemain said. He still sounded amused. “And for the third time at least, I am a magician, not a wizard.”
“What’s the difference?” Shiara demanded.
“Magicians deal with many ways of magic,” Telemain said. “Wizards with only one. Now, will you come in and sit down?”
Shiara was still looking at him doubtfully. Telemain smiled. “Will an oath content you? If you mean no harm, I am not your enemy, and I will do you no harm while you are my guests, save in self-defense. I swear by the sword.”
I felt a kind of popping at my side, even though I wasn’t touching the sword, and a ripple ran through the clearing, like a shimmer of light in the air. I thought it kept on going, out into the forest, but I couldn’t be certain. Shiara started and dropped Nightwitch, who landed on her feet with a yowl. The dragon stretched its neck; it looked almost as if it were trying to purr. Telemain suddenly looked very intense.
“That is the way of it, then?” he said when the ripple passed. “I don’t think I blame you for your caution.” He looked pointedly at my sword.
Shiara scowled again, but I thought she looked a little more doubtful than the last time. “If you’re so smart...” she began, and stopped. Nightwitch was rubbing against Telemain’s leg and purring. “Nightwitch?” said Shiara.
“An intriguing name for a cat,” Telemain said, bending over to pick up Nightwitch. “Even more interesting for a kitten. Where did you come by her?”
“She was a present,” Shiara said grudgingly. “From a witch named—”
“Morwen?” said Telemain. Nightwitch started to purr. “I suspected as much. Now, will you come in? Or do you wish to continue this discussion where anyone may hear?”
We went in. The door of Telemain’s home looked like an ordinary, normal-sized door, but it couldn’t have been because the dragon fit through it without any trouble. The room inside was made of stone and very bare. In the center of the floor were two iron staircases that twisted around each other in a spiral and disappeared into the ceiling. The whole place seemed much taller from the inside; if I hadn’t seen it before we came in, I would have been sure we were in a tower.
As the door closed behind the dragon, Telemain waved his hand. A table and three chairs materialized beside the stairs. “Sit down,” said Telemain, “and tell me more about yourselves.”
We sat down, except for the dragon, who sort of curled itself around the outer edge of the room. I started explaining about Mother and Antorell and everything that had happened in the Enchanted Forest. I wouldn’t have mentioned the Sword of the Sleeping King at all if I hadn’t been pretty sure from the way he looked at it that Telemain already knew something about it. Too many people seemed to be interested in it; I didn’t think it was a good idea to keep talking about it.
There wasn’t much I could do about Telemain, though. The questions he asked made it pretty clear that I was right: he did know something about the sword. Maybe more than I did; he sounded like he knew exactly what answers he expected, and when I told him about the voice that had said, “All hail the Bearer of the Sword,” he nodded in satisfaction.
Then I explained how Shiara and I had met, and why the wizards were after her, and about the one who’d tried to get us at the stream. Shiara frowned at me, but she didn’t interrupt. When I told him about meeting Morwen, Telemain seemed very interested. “I haven’t seen Morwen in years,” he said. “How is she?”
“You know Morwen?” Shiara said.
“We grew up together,” Telemain said shortly, and if Nightwitch hadn’t started purring again, there would have been an awkward silence.
After a minute, I cleared my throat and kept going. Telemain asked a lot of questions about the things the Sword of the Sleeping King had done, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in the wizards. He wasn’t interested in the Princess at all. Then I told him about finding the invisible castle and the fire-witch.
“So that’s how you knew about it,” Telemain said. “I was wondering about that.”
“That’s how we knew,” Shiara said. “How did you know?”
“The castle landed in my clearing sometime around noon,” Telemain said dryly. “I was understandably curious as to why someone would go to all the trouble of making a castle invisible and then drop it on top of a magician who can’t help noticing it.”
“It’s not there now,” Shiara said.
“Of course not! What would I want with an invisible castle? When I found no one home, I cleaned the place up a bit and got rid of it.”
“Cleaned it up?” I said, puzzled.
“The most recent owner had a number of unattractive habits,” Telemain said even more dryly than before. “Turning people into statues was one of them; there were others. I don’t believe you would be at all interested in the details.”
“Oh.” He was right; I didn’t really want to know about it. Telemain looked at Shiara again.
“I believe I owe you an apology,” he said. “I knew that the castle was the property of a fire-witch, and I’m afraid that when you showed up, I thought you had some connection with it.”
“Well, I don’t, but I suppose I can see why you might have gotten mad,” Shiara said. She sounded a lot friendlier than she had before; I think she would have been friendly to anyone who didn’t like that other fire-witch. Then she frowned. “How did the castle get into your clearing, anyway?”
Telemain shrugged. “As far as I can tell, it was designed to move around the Enchanted Forest more or less randomly. It’s a rather unusual spell to put on a castle, particularly an invisible one; it’s too easy to be outside when the castle moves, and get left behind.”
“Then why on earth would anyone put a stupid spell like that on a castle?”
“Presumably this fire-witch didn’t expect to have any problems finding the castle again. I don’t believe it occurred to her that someone else might find it first.” He smiled. “I left a few surprises for her; somehow, I doubt that she’ll be pleased.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” the dragon said. “Daystar got rid of her.”
Telemain looked at me. “Really. How did you manage that?”
“She threw some sort of spell at me, but Nightwitch scratched her, so she missed,” I said. “And after that, I had the sword out.”
“You used the Sword of the Sleeping King on a fire-witch?” Telemain said. He sounded somewhere between shocked and horrified.
“I couldn’t think of anything else that might work,” I said apologetically. “And it did work, sort of. I mean, it got rid of the fire-witch.”
“She went up in smoke,” the dragon said with considerable satisfaction. “I watched.”
“She went up in smoke,” Telemain repeated in tones of fascination. “And what were you doing while this was going on?”
“I was trying to hang on to the sword,” I said. “It was glowing red, and my hands felt like they were burning or something, so it was sort of hard to do. But as soon as the fire-witch was gone, it stopped.”
“You are extremely fortunate,” Telemain said. “I don’t recommend that you try that again. Stick to wizards; that’s what the sword was meant for.”
“It was?” said Shiara. “How do you know? What else does it do?”
Telemain looked at her. “Magicians know many kinds of magic.” He turned back to me. “Please, continue.”
I was curious about what the sword did, too, but Telemain obviously didn’t want to talk about it, so I didn’t ask. Instead, I explained about fixing Shiara and not finding the castle and meeting the second elf. Telemain listened carefully, then shook his head.
“So the war is beginning again,” he said, half to himself. “I had best make my own preparations.”
“War?” Shiara and I said together.
Telemain looked up, almost as if he had forgotten we were there. “The war between the dragons and the wizards,” he said in the tones of someone trying to be patient.
The dragon, who had been falling asleep, suddenly came awake. “War with the wizards?”
“What else can it be?” Telemain said a trifle crossly. “The elves are choosing sides, the dragons are restless, the wizards are coming into the Enchanted Forest in large numbers, and the Sword of the Sleeping King has returned. What more do you need to know? It is obvious!”
“What does the Sword of the Sleeping King have to do with a war between the dragons and the wizards?” I asked before the dragon could take offense.
“The sword is what started the war in the first place,” Telemain said, and then refused to say any more. “If Cimorene didn’t see fit to explain, I certainly won’t,” he said. “When you meet Kazul, I am sure she will tell you whatever you need to know. I’m afraid I don’t have time at the moment; I must see to things at once, if we are to win this war at last.”
“Who do you mean, ‘we’?” Shiara said suspiciously.
“The dragons,” Telemain said, “and the rest of us who follow the sword. Now, if you will excuse me?” He rose and started for the stairs.
“Wait a minute!” Shiara said. “What about us?”
“What? Oh, of course,” Telemain said. He waved his hand again and muttered something, and suddenly the table was full of plates and bowls of food. I jumped. Telemain didn’t seem to notice. “Help yourselves while I am gone,” he said. “I don’t expect to be long.”
He turned away and went up one of the iron staircases. Shiara and I looked at each other. “Now what do we do?” Shiara said.
“I think I’m going to eat,” I said. “Would you like something?”
Shiara snorted, but she reached for one of the bowls. There was plenty for all of us, including Nightwitch and the dragon. About the time we finished, Telemain came back.
“I was right,” he said to no one in particular. Then he looked at me. “I think you should all stay here for the night,” he said. “It will be much safer for everyone, and it will give me time to look into things a little more. You’ve been extremely lucky so far; there’s no reason to take any more chances until you must.”
I started to nod, then looked at Shiara. Shiara looked at me, then looked at Nightwitch, who was curled into a small ball on Telemain’s chair. She looked back at me. “Let’s stay, then,” she said.
“You will find rooms upstairs, on the second floor,” Telemain said. “Just pick one and go in.” He turned to the dragon. “I think you would be more comfortable down here.”
“I think you’re right,” said the dragon, eyeing the iron staircases a little dubiously.
“And thank you very much for your hospitality,” I said.
Telemain nodded. Shiara and I started for the stairs. Shiara got there ahead of me and started climbing, but she didn’t get anywhere. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
“There’s something wrong with this stupid staircase!” Shiara said. “I keep trying to climb up, but I don’t go anywhere!”
Telemain, who had been talking quietly to the dragon, turned. “I’m sorry; I should have warned you. You’ll have to take the other staircase. The one you’re trying to use only works going down.”
“That’s ridiculous!” said Shiara. “How can a staircase only work going in one direction?”
“He’s a magician,” I said.
“Oh, all right.”
We didn’t have any trouble getting up the other stairway. Telemain’s tower really was a lot taller than it looked from the outside, because the stairs kept going after they got to the second floor. Shiara and I didn’t climb any farther, though. We got off on the landing at the second floor and looked around.
We were standing on a narrow circle of wooden floor around the hole where the two staircases came through. Around the edge were six identical wooden doors. It looked even barer than the room below had when we arrived. “Well, he said to just go in,” Shiara said.
Each of us picked a door and opened it. The rooms on the other side were identical; they looked very comfortable and not at all bare. They each had a bed, a table, a lighted lamp in a bracket on the wall, a padded chair, and a small set of drawers with a mirror above it. Shiara looked thoughtful. “I wonder if he keeps lights going in all these rooms?”
“He might,” I said. “I mean, he is a magician. Does it matter?”
Shiara glared at me and went into the room she’d picked, slamming the door behind her. I stood there for a moment, wondering whether to knock on the door and apologize. I decided not to; I didn’t even know what to apologize for. I decided to wait until morning to talk to Shiara, since by then she probably wouldn’t be mad anymore.
I kept the Sword of the Sleeping King with me all night. It was a little uncomfortable sleeping that way, but I felt better knowing where it was. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Telemain; I was just getting more and more worried about the sword. Everyone I met seemed to know about it, or want to know about it, or something. I spent a lot of time thinking about it instead of sleeping.
Telemain served breakfast the next morning on his magic table. He was very quiet while we were eating, but as soon as we finished he looked at me and said, “I have watched the Enchanted Forest all night, and there are some things you should know, but I do not wish to detain you against your will.”
“What things?” Shiara demanded.
Telemain smiled slightly. “I fear you will have some difficulty in reaching the castle,” he said. “I found no less than twelve wizards searching the area between it and you.”
“Oh, great,” Shiara said disgustedly. “Just what we need: more wizards!”
“I don’t think it’s very good,” the dragon said. “Why do you?”
“I don’t,” Shiara said.
“Then why did you say so?”
“What can we do about them?” I asked Telemain.
“I think you can avoid them if you go through the Caves of Chance,” Telemain replied.
WE ALL STARED. “Ha!” Shiara said finally. “The Caves of Chance are even more dangerous than the wizards!”
“I don’t think so,” Telemain said. “I have been through them, and they’re not as bad as most people think. Furthermore, there is an entrance to the caves within half a day’s travel, and an exit that is very close to the castle. And once you are inside the caves, the wizards will not be able to find you.”
“Why not?” Shiara said.
“The Caves of Chance do not welcome wizards’ magic,” Telemain said.
“Can you give us directions?” I said. Telemain nodded and pulled a large map out of his sleeve. I was extremely curious; I’d never seen a map of the Enchanted Forest before. Most people don’t bother to even try making maps, because things change so fast that an ordinary map is only good for a few days. This one must have been magic, because it seemed to be fairly accurate. At least, all the things Shiara and I had seen were in the right places.
Telemain showed us where his tower was and where the castle was, and he pointed out the places where he’d found wizards. I didn’t ask how he knew they were there. Then he showed us where the entrance to the caves was. It really did look a lot closer and safer than trying to get by all those wizards. Even Shiara looked less doubtful.
Then Telemain turned the map over, and on the back was a map of the Caves of Chance. He went over the routes from the entrance to the exit we wanted and what to do about some of the things we might run into inside. I was very interested; I knew that trolls are allergic to milk, but I hadn’t known that rock snakes like mirrors enough that they’ll stop squeezing someone in order to look at their reflections. He also told us to hold anything we really didn’t want to lose in one hand until we were out of the caves.
When Telemain was satisfied that we knew our way as well as he could make us, he rolled the map up and put it back in his sleeve. We went outside to say good-bye.
“When you meet Kazul, tell her I will be coming for the battle,” Telemain said. “She should be expecting you; I sent a spell to her last night to let her know that you’re on your way.”
“I’ll remember,” I said. “And thank you again for your help.”
“Yes,” said Shiara. I looked at her, a little surprised, but she was watching Telemain with an odd look on her face. “I think I ought to apologize to you,” she said finally. “I wasn’t very nice last night.”
This time I really did stare, but she didn’t seem to notice. Telemain bowed. “Neither of us was blameless,” he said. “I shall forget it, if you will.”
Shiara nodded and turned to me. “Let’s go, then.”
I shut my mouth and picked up the bundle Morwen had given me. Shiara already had hers. We waved good-bye to Telemain and started off into the forest again.
Nothing much happened all morning. Shiara and I were both nervous anyway, thinking of all those wizards ahead of us. The dragon didn’t seem bothered, though, and Nightwitch certainly wasn’t. We found the first few landmarks Telemain had told us about, and we were fairly close to the entrance to the Caves of Chance when the dragon stopped and demanded lunch.
As soon as the dragon mentioned food, Shiara and I realized that we were hungry, too. We started looking for a good place to sit down and eat, and we found one almost immediately. It was a small clearing with a huge tree lying on the ground in the middle of it.
The dragon wrapped itself around a medium-sized tree in front of us; it said it was much more comfortable than lying on the ground. Nightwitch wandered around investigating the interesting holes and crannies around the tree. Shiara and I sat down and started eating.
“How much farther is it to the castle?” Shiara asked the dragon, handing it a slice of gingerbread.
“Oh, not very far,” the dragon said. “About another day, if we weren’t going through the caves. I’ve never been in the caves, so I don’t know how long that will take.”
“I thought you said this was a shortcut,” Shiara said.
“It is a shortcut,” the dragon said in a hurt tone. “How was I supposed to know a fire-witch was going to get in the way? Not to mention an elf and a magician.”
“Do you think Kazul will tell us anything about the sword when we get there?” I said. I was beginning to wonder; nobody else seemed willing to explain anything.
“I’m sure she will,” the dragon said reassuringly. “That is, if you’re polite to her. Kazul is very particular about... about... ahh... ach.. “
Shiara and I dropped our lunches and ducked hastily to either side. “Achoo!” said the dragon. A large spurt of flame shot across the clearing, just missing us, and the dragon’s tree shook. “Achoo! Oh, bother. Achoo!”
“Daystar!” Shiara shouted. “Over here!”
I ran around behind the dragon, who was now sneezing almost continuously. I pulled out my sword as I went. When my hand touched the hilt, I felt the same jangling that I’d gotten from Antorell earlier. Then I came around the tree, and even before Shiara pointed, I saw the wizards. There were two of them right in front of Shiara, leaning on their staffs and looking from Shiara to the dragon and back.
“Hurry up,” one of them said nervously. “We don’t want this to get out of hand.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait,” another voice said from behind him. The first wizard jumped, and Antorell stepped out of the bushes. “You see, I want him, too.”
“Urn, can’t we discuss this somewhere else?” said the nervous wizard, eyeing the dragon.
“Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” Antorell said, following his gaze. He smiled nastily. “I came prepared.” He held up his free hand so that alt of us could see the spray of spikey, saw-edged purple leaves he was holding.
“Dragonsbane,” he said unnecessarily.
The other wizards relaxed a little. “Such forethought,” murmured the tall one. He exchanged glances with his companion, then bowed to Antorell. “Under the circumstances, we will be happy to split the reward with you.”
“I am afraid that is out of the question,” Antorell said over the dragon’s sneezes. “The boy and his sword are mine.”
“The boy!” said the nervous wizard. “But—” The tall one frowned at him, and he stopped.
The tall wizard turned back to Antorell. “As you say, the boy is yours. I trust you have no objection if we take the girl?”
Antorell frowned. He turned toward Shiara and stared at her for a minute, then shrugged. “She’s no use to me. Of course I have no objection.”
I started moving very, very slowly toward Shiara, so that when the wizards starting throwing spells at us I could try and stop them with the sword. The wizards didn’t notice, and neither did Shiara. By the time the wizards finished deciding what to do with us, I was almost over to her. “It’s settled, then,” Antorell said. “We help each other. The girl first?”
“Ah, why not start with the dragon?” the nervous wizard said.
Antorell smiled condescendingly. “Very well.” He stepped forward and started muttering over the dragonsbane. Right away the dragon started yelling.
“Yow!” it said. “Achoo! I hate wizards. Ouch! Achoo! Help!”
“You stop that!” Shiara said to Antorell. The wizards ignored her, and Antorell kept mumbling.
I started forward; if I could knock the dragonsbane out of Antorell’s hand, the spell would stop. I wasn’t sure whether it would be completely broken, but at least he wouldn’t be able to hurt the dragon anymore. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten about the other wizards. I didn’t even realize one of them had done something until my feet stuck to the ground and suddenly I couldn’t walk forward anymore. I almost lost my balance; it was very disconcerting. Antorell was still out of reach.
I took a quick glance back over my shoulder. The dragon was sneezing much too hard now to be able to say anything at all. It was also starting to lose its hold on the tree; I could see its coils going slack. Here and there, its scales were turning pink around the edges. Even the tree was looking wilted.
“Shiara!” I yelled. “Get the dragonsbane!” I didn’t think I could get loose in time, but the wizards wouldn’t be able to stop a fire-witch. I didn’t wait to see what she did. I leaned forward a little and tried to lay part of the Sword of the Sleeping King across my feet. It hadn’t helped Shiara when she was a statue, but this was a wizard’s spell, not a fire-witch’s spell, and Telemain had said the sword was meant to be used on wizards. Besides, I couldn’t think of anything else.
It worked. I straightened up just in time to see a little tongue of flame shoot up from Antorell’s hand. Antorell yelled and dropped the dragonsbane, which was burning brightly. Before it even hit the ground, there was nothing left of the plant except ashes. I looked behind me. Shiara was standing with a surprised look on her face and one finger pointing at Antorell. The dragon was still sneezing, but the green was already starting to come back to its scales. I sighed in relief; I sort of liked the dragon.
“This is the assistance you give us?” the tall wizard said to Antorell, who was brushing ashes off the front of his robe. “The dragon still lives!”
“Did I say anything about killing it?” Antorell said. I got the feeling he was trying to sound haughty; he only managed to sound annoyed. “You need have no more fear of it; it will take some time to regain its strength, and by then we shall be finished. What next?”
“The girl, I think,” said the tall wizard. “That is, if you’re sure you can handle her?”
Antorell glared. “That is the least of my problems,” he said grandly.
“Ha!” said Shiara loudly. I moved back over to her, holding the sword in front of me. The three wizards looked at us, then at each other. “Let us begin,” said the tall one.
All three of them raised their staffs, but instead of pointing them directly at us, they brought them together, so that they made a kind of star about a foot from their ends. There was a bright flash as the three staffs touched, and I felt a shock from my sword. I jumped, and suddenly I realized that I could feel the forest. The magic of the forest, I mean; it was all around me, waiting. I felt almost as if the whole Enchanted Forest were watching me.
Right in front of me, I could feel the wizards’ power growing and building. There was a kind of pattern in it that kept getting clearer and more complicated, and I knew I had to do something about it before the wizards finished. I stepped forward and swung the sword right through the middle of the pattern.
I felt a huge jolt of power from the sword, but it didn’t hurt the way the fire-witch’s spell had; in fact, it didn’t hurt at all. The pattern collapsed in an invisible tangle. Antorell’s eyes started to narrow; the other two wizards just looked stunned. And then something exploded.
I couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t that things had gone dark, and it wasn’t that the light had blinded me. It was more as if the whole world had suddenly become invisible, so there was nothing left to see. There was a rushing noise all around me, and I felt as if I were floating. I heard a chorus of voices cry, “All hail the Wielder of the Sword!” and then the noise and the voices vanished, and I was standing in the clearing with the Sword of the Sleeping King shining in my hand and three very surprised wizards in front of me.
I stared at the wizards. The wizards stared at me. Antorell recovered first. “Enough of this!” he cried. He started to raise his staff, and right then the ground in front of him humped up a little bit. A second later, a tree shot up about twelve feet into the air. It reminded me of someone opening an umbrella very quickly. A moment later, it burst into bloom with a sound like a hundred little bells tinkling.
Antorell looked even more surprised than before; then he scowled angrily and pointed his staff at me again. The tall wizard next to him grabbed his arm. “Wait, fool! Don’t you know what that sword is?”
“What it is?” Antorell’s eyes sparked at the other wizard. “It is mine! I will have it!”
“You will be dead, you mean,” the tall wizard said, but he let go of Antorell’s arm. “This is a matter for the whole Society of Wizards; there may still be time to stop him if we can bring them quickly enough.”
“More wizards? Achooo! Oh, no you don’t! Achoo! Oh, drat, achoo!” said the dragon. It dove out from its tree, unwinding itself like a spool of string, very quickly. Its head shot past me, and I got a fleeting glimpse of green scales and golden eyes and a very, very red tongue. One of the wizards yelled, and the dragon sneezed again. I jumped forward just in time to see all three of the wizards vanish hastily. Antorell was in the middle; he looked a little white and he had one hand clutched around a dark, wet-looking spot on his other arm.
I looked at the dragon. It snapped its teeth together twice, swallowed something, and sat back, looking very pleased with itself. “Wizards,” it announced, “taste much better than elves.”
I swallowed hard and decided I didn’t really want to finish eating lunch. The dragon looked at Shiara. Shiara scowled.
“Don’t you look at me like that!” she said. “I’m not a wizard, I’m a fire-witch.”
The dragon looked thoroughly shocked. “But I wouldn’t eat you!” it said. “You’re my friend; it wouldn’t be polite at all!”
Shiara looked suspiciously at the dragon, then nodded. “I just wanted to make sure you remembered,” she said.
“I think we’d better get going,” I said. “Those wizards sounded like they were going to come back with more, and now they’re after both of us.”
“Oh, terrific,” said Shiara. “Let’s go, then. Where’s Nightwitch?”
“Mrow,” said a kitten-voice from somewhere above me.
I looked up. Nightwitch was perched on a branch of the tree that had sprouted up in the middle of the fight. She was washing her paws. She stopped and looked down at me for a second, then went back to washing.
“Nightwitch, come down!” Shiara said. “Those wizards might come back any minute!”
Nightwitch ignored her. The dragon came over and peered curiously at the tree. “Where did this come from?” it asked.
“It grew,” I said. “I think you were sneezing when it happened.”
“Kazul is going to be surprised about this!” the dragon said happily. “Two new trees in a couple of days!”
“What are you talking about?” Shiara said. “It’s just a tree!”
“No, it isn’t,” the dragon said in an offended tone. “It’s a new tree. And it’s the second new tree I’ve seen in two days, so it’s important. The other one hit me on the nose,” it added in an aggrieved tone.
“You mean it’s been a long time since there were new trees?” I asked.
The dragon nodded. “Kazul mentioned it once; she sounded worried about it. I think they’re a nuisance, popping up like that.”
“But where do they come from?” Shiara said. “And why do they show up when we—” She stopped short, and we looked at each other.
“Daystar,” said Shiara finally. “It’s the wizards.”
“It can’t be,” I said. “What about the first one?”
“What are you talking about?” said the dragon.
“The trees,” Shiara said. “Both of them grew in places where a wizard tried to throw a spell at us. But there wasn’t any tree when the first wizard tried to drown us, so it can’t be wizards.”
I looked down, trying to think, and saw the Sword of the Sleeping King in my hand. “It’s the sword!” I said. “It stopped Antorell’s spell the first time, and a little while later a tree sprouted. This time it stopped a bigger spell, and we got a bigger tree. It didn’t stop any spells when the first wizard made that water monster, so no new trees grew. It has to be the sword.”
“You didn’t get a tree when you fought the fire-witch,” Shiara said, but she sounded half-convinced.
“Telemain said the sword was meant for wizards,” I said. “It probably only does that for wizards’ spells.”
“Your sword grows trees?” the dragon said.
“I suppose it sounds a little silly,” I said.
“Mmmm-ow!” said Nightwitch. We all looked up. The kitten launched herself at Shiara, who just barely managed to catch her. I remembered that the wizards were going to come back, so I suggested that we leave. Shiara scowled until I mentioned the wizards, then nodded. We picked up our things and started off again.
THE ENTRANCE TO the Caves of Chance wasn’t very difficult to find. That worried me a little, partly because Antorell and the other wizards would probably figure out where we had gone, and partly because it isn’t usually that easy to find something in the Enchanted Forest. Especially if you’re looking for it.
Not that the way into the Caves of Chance looked as if it could be moved around easily. It was a large, smooth, circular hole in the ground, with moss growing right up to the edge of it, and it was very dark. The dragon and Shiara and I stood around the edge and stared down into it for a while.
“How are we going to get down there?” Shiara said finally. “I can’t even tell how deep it is.”
“We’ll have to use the blankets Morwen gave us,” I said. “We can tie them together and climb down.”
“What about me?” said the dragon. “I can’t climb down blankets.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we’ll think of something once we know how far down it is.”
“What if you can’t think of anything?”
“Hey!” Shiara had opened her bundle to get the blankets out, and now she was staring down into it as if she’d never seen it before. “Daystar, look at this!”
The dragon looked a little put out. It usually isn’t a good idea to interrupt someone’s conversation with a dragon, but for once I decided not to say anything, because I was glad Shiara had yelled. I didn’t know what was going to happen if I couldn’t think of a way to get the dragon into the Caves of Chance, and I didn’t really want to say so. I said, “Excuse me,” to the dragon and went over to Shiara. “What is it?”
“This,” said Shiara. She pulled a coil of rope out of the top of the bundle. “It wasn’t here before.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Of course I’m sure!” Shiara said. “Look in your pack; maybe you have one, too.”
Shiara was right: there was another coil of rope in my bundle, along with a little silver lamp and a set of flints, and I didn’t remember seeing any of them in there before. We tied the ropes together, then tied one end around the tree closest to the hole. The dragon watched, grumbling the whole time. When we finished, Shiara and I argued about who was going to climb down first. We wound up tossing a coin, and I won.
I stuck the flints and the lamp into my belt, right next to the Sword of the Sleeping King, where I could find them easily. Then I lowered myself over the edge of the hole and started to climb down the rope. It wasn’t easy; the rope kept twisting around, which made me dizzy, and I kept bumping into the side of the hole. I had to keep going, though, so I did. I’d gotten about seven feet from the top of the hole when the lights went out.
I stopped climbing for a minute and just hung there. I couldn’t see anything except a circle of sky right above me, and that looked much farther away than it should have. Then I realized that I had to start climbing one way or another because my arms were going to get tired very quickly if I didn’t move. I looked up at the sky; I knew I’d only come down a couple of feet, and it shouldn’t be difficult to climb back up. On the other hand, I knew it could be extremely dangerous to start things and not finish them in the Enchanted Forest. I started down again.
Climbing in the dark is not pleasant. I couldn’t see where I was going; I couldn’t even see the rope. It seemed like years before my feet finally touched something flat below me. I felt around to make sure what I’d found wasn’t just a narrow ledge, then let go of the rope and called to Shiara that I was at the bottom.
The next thing I did was to get out the lamp and light it. I had a little trouble, since I was doing everything by feel, but I finally got it going. At first all I could see was the tiny yellow flame; then the lamp made a popping noise and suddenly I could see the cave.
Actually, it was more like a tunnel. Where I was standing, the walls were a smooth, speckled stone, but as soon as the tunnel got out from under the hole the walls looked rough. It was cool and dry, and it looked as if no one had been there in a long, long time.
“That doesn’t look so bad,” said the voice above me. I looked up. The dragon was peering over the edge of the hole. “I can jump that far.”
“I think you should wait until Shiara climbs down,” I said. “Then you can untie the rope and bring it with you.”
Shiara’s head appeared beside the dragon’s. “You’re right; it doesn’t look nearly so bad when you can see the bottom.”
“If you drop the bundles Morwen gave us, I can catch them,” I said. “Then you can climb down and we can get started.”
“All right,” Shiara said. Her head vanished for a few seconds, then reappeared along with a pair of hands and a bundle. “Ready? Catch.”
Nightwitch was more of a problem than the bundles; I got a few scratches catching her. As soon as I had everything, Shiara climbed down. We picked up our things and moved into the tunnel while the dragon took care of the rope, and then the dragon jumped down. “That was easy!” it said.
I thought about sliding down a rope in the dark and didn’t say anything. Shiara looked from me to the dragon and back. “Well? Are you going to stand there until the wizards show up again?”
“We have to decide what we’re going to hold on to first,” I said.
“Daystar, we have to carry everything ourselves anyway,” Shiara said. “What difference does it make?”
“I don’t think that’s what Telemain meant,” I said. “There are all sorts of ways to lose things in the Caves of Chance if you aren’t paying attention, but if you have something in your hand all the time and never set it down, it’s less likely to disappear.”
“If you really believe that, you’d better carry the sword,” Shiara said. “The only thing I don’t want to lose is Nightwitch, and she can take care of herself.”
“You’re right,” I said doubtfully. I didn’t really want to march through the Caves of Chance with the Sword of the Sleeping King in my hand, but I certainly didn’t want to lose it, either. Finally I decided to take the sheath off my belt and carry the sword and sheath together. I had some trouble doing it, though, and Shiara had to help.
“Are you sure this is necessary?” she said. “Why can’t you just wear it?”
“Magic things are particularly easy to lose here,” I said. “And Mother told me to take care of this sword.” I tucked the sheathed sword under my arm and picked up the silver lamp and the bundle Morwen had given me. “Let’s go.”
The tunnel slanted down for a long way, then leveled. Every now and then we came to a dark opening in the wall that led to a side passage, but we ignored all of them. Telemain had been very specific about that. Not that they were particularly tempting; the silver lamp had no difficulty lighting up our part of the tunnel, but it didn’t penetrate into the side passages at all.
After a while, the tunnel we were following jogged sharply left, then right again, and suddenly it opened out into an enormous cave. The walls were crystal, and they seemed to have hundreds of different-colored lights shifting behind them. I stopped abruptly, staring, and the dragon bumped into me from behind.
“Excuse me,” I said automatically.
“You shouldn’t stop so fast,” the dragon complained. It craned its neck to see around me. “Hey! This is nice!” It stretched upward, and a minute later it was clinging to the crystal wall several feet above us. I backed away hastily; I didn’t want to be underneath if the dragon slipped.
“Where are we supposed to go from here?” said Shiara, ignoring the dragon.
“This must be the Cave of Crystal Lights,” I said. “Telemain said to walk straight across. There ought to be three passageways on the other side, and we want to take the left one.”
“I see them,” the dragon said. It squinted across the cave, then climbed down and sat beside us. “They aren’t straight across; they’re over that way a little.” It waved toward the right.
I looked at the dragon. “I think we should follow Telemain’s directions. The Caves of Chance are even trickier than the Enchanted Forest; I don’t want to risk getting in trouble if we don’t have to.” I didn’t mention that the last time we had taken the dragon’s advice we’d run into the fire-witch and Shiara had gotten turned into a statue, but I was thinking it. Shiara nodded in agreement.
“All right,” the dragon said sullenly. “But I think you’re being silly.”
We started walking again, trying to go straight across the cave. The walls curved in and out, and the floor humped up in low mounds and ridges; between that and the shifting colored lights, it was hard to be sure we were going straight. Shiara and I went back a couple of times, just to make sure, and every time we did the dragon grumbled.
Finally we got to the other side and saw the three openings. The dragon stared at them, then looked around suspiciously. “Where did these come from? These aren’t the ones I saw!”
“Well, then it’s a good thing we followed Telemain’s directions,” Shiara said. “Otherwise, we’d be lost. Come on, let’s go.” She scowled and headed for the left-hand passageway. I started after her, and right away I tripped and fell.
“Ow!” I said. Shiara looked around, then came back to help me up.
“What happened now?” she asked.
“I tripped,” I said. “I’ve still got the sword, but I dropped the lamp. Where is it?”
“I don’t see it,” Shiara said. She sounded a little worried. She had reason. Without the lamp, we wouldn’t be able to see anything once we got out of the Cave of Crystal Lights.
“It can’t be very far away,” I said, and we started hunting. Shiara went one way and I went the other. About half a minute later, I saw something glittering. “There it is!”
“No, it’s over here,” said Shiara. She bent over and picked something up from behind a rock. “It’s still burning,” she said, sounding surprised.
“It lights up more space than it ought to, too,” I said over my shoulder. “Morwen probably put a spell on it or something.”
“Where are you going?” Shiara said.
“I saw something over here, and I want to know what it is,” I said. “Especially since it obviously wasn’t the lamp.”
Shiara started to object, but right then I saw the glittering thing again and I bent to pick it up. “Here it is,” I said. “See?” My fingers touched metal, and a fountain of sparks shot up from the floor of the cave where my fingers were resting.
I yelled and fell backward. The fountain hissed and sizzled angrily, getting bigger and brighter and hotter every minute. I scrambled backward. Blue and white and purple sparks started falling around us, and all of us ran for the left-hand tunnel. Nightwitch yowled as one of the sparks hit her, and Shiara scooped her up and kept on running.
We made it to the tunnel, but no one stopped until we were well inside, not even the dragon. When we finally got far enough to be out of reach of the falling sparks, we stopped and panted for a while. Fortunately, Shiara had remembered to hang on to the lamp as well as Nightwitch. When she set Nightwitch down, the kitten glared back toward the mouth of the tunnel, then sat down and began determinedly washing a spot on her back where the fur was a little singed.
“What was that?” Shiara asked as soon as she had her breath back.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just trying to—” I stopped.
I was holding something in my right hand; I didn’t even remember grabbing it. “It went off when I picked this up,” I said, and opened my fingers.
I had three pebbles of various sizes, a little sandy dirt, and a small gold key. A tingle ran down my back as I looked at it, and I jumped. “Now what?” said Shiara.
“I felt something,” I said. “Sort of like the sword when it’s finding magic, but not the same.”
“Is it magic?” the dragon asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out!” Shiara said impatiently. “I thought that was what the stupid sword was for.”
I sighed a little and shifted all the things I was carrying around until I could put my left hand on the hilt of the Sword of the Sleeping King. I didn’t feel any tingles, but the key started to glow.
We all stared at the key for a minute. “I knew it was magic!” the dragon said happily.
“I don’t feel anything from the sword, though,” I said. I took my hand off the hilt, and the key stopped glowing.
“So? The sword makes it glow, doesn’t it?” Shiara said. “It has to be magic. What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to keep it, at least until we talk to Kazul,” I said. “She may know what it’s for, or who it belongs to.”
“It b-b-belongs in the c-c-cave,” something said in a bubbly voice behind us.
I jumped and turned around. There wasn’t anyone there. Shiara and the dragon and I all peered into the darkness. Nightwitch looked up from washing her back long enough to hiss, then continued washing. “Who said that?” Shiara demanded.
“M-m-me. You b-better put that k-k-key back right away,” said the same voice. I still didn’t see anyone.
“Why?” I said.
“B-because it b-belongs there!” the voice said. It sounded like water hitting a hot frying pan. “Gug-give it to me, and I’ll put it back.”
“If you want it, you’ll have to come out here where we can see you,” Shiara said firmly.
There was an unhappy bubbling noise from the dark part of the tunnel, then a series of unpleasant squishing sounds. A moment later something wobbled into the light from the silver lamp. It was about four feet tall, and it looked like a slightly sloppy pillar of very dark blackberry jelly.
“There!” it said. “Now, gug-give me that key!”
I was so busy trying to figure out how it could talk when it didn’t have a mouth that I didn’t answer. I was still trying when Shiara said, “How do we know it’s your key?”
“It isn’t my key; I just take care of it. Gug-give it to me!” The jelly was shaking angrily, and the top part was bobbing up and down like the lid of a teakettle. Every time it bobbed up, the pillar of jelly stretched thin underneath it, and when it bobbed down, the jelly made a sort of flattened lump, and every time it moved at all, it wobbled. The dragon, who had been standing behind Shiara, poked its head over her shoulder to see better.
“That stuff reminds me of something,” the dragon said. “I can’t think what, though. What is it?”
“I,” huffed the jelly, “am a quozzel.” It leaned forward as if it were trying to peer at us and said haughtily, “What are you?”
“It’s a dragon,” Shiara said, a little nastily. “Can’t you tell?”
The pillar froze in mid-wobble. “There are n-n-n-no dragons under-gug-ground,” it said. “None!” It leaned cautiously in Shiara’s direction for a minute, then started bobbing again. “You aren’t a dragon. I want that k-k-key! It belongs in the cave, and it’s g-going to stay there!”
“Of course she’s not a dragon!” the dragon said. “I’m a dragon. And I’ve never heard of a quozzel before.”
The quozzel bent a little, then froze again. “Glurb,” it said.
The dragon tilted its head to one side. “I don’t think you’re very polite,” it said.
The jelly burbled unhappily to itself; it looked as if it were boiling. The dragon kept staring at it, and suddenly its eyes started to glow. “I know what it reminds me of!” it said triumphantly. “Dessert!”
The quozzel shrieked and collapsed backward into the darkness just as the dragon’s head shot toward it. The dragon kept going, knocking Shiara and me out of the way as it went past. We heard several squishing noises, and an angry snort from the dragon, followed closely by a small puff of flame that lit up the dark end of the tunnel. I got a brief glimpse of the dragon before the light died, but I didn’t see the quozzel anywhere. There was a disgusted-sounding growl, and a moment later the dragon stalked back into the light from the silver lamp. “It got away.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s gone,” Shiara said. She frowned. “You shouldn’t go around trying to eat things all the time, especially if you don’t know what they are. I wouldn’t be surprised if quozzels were poisonous or something.”
“Dragonsbane is the only thing that poisons dragons, and the quozzel wasn’t polite, and I’m hungry,” the dragon said. It shook its head sadly. “Wizards taste good, but they aren’t very filling.”
Shiara started to object again, and I put the key in my pocket and started rummaging in Morwen’s bundle. I was sure I still had some meat pies, and I didn’t like the idea of traveling with a hungry dragon. I found the food and offered it to the dragon, who brightened up a little and accepted.
“We ought to keep going,” Shiara said as the dragon sat back against the wall of the tunnel and started eating. “Suppose that quozzel thing comes back?”
“I don’t think it could really do much to us,” I said. “It didn’t look very dangerous.”
“You can’t always tell by looking,” Shiara said darkly. “And if that marmalade mess wants the stupid key badly enough, it’ll think of something.”
“The quozzel looked more like jelly to me,” I said. “And I still don’t really think it’s going to come back. Not while the dragon is around.”
“Well, you’d better carry the key in your hand,” Shiara said. “I think it’s important, and it might fall out of your pocket or something.”
“All right, but you’ll have to keep the lamp,” I said, digging the key out of my pocket again. I still wasn’t sure that the key didn’t belong to the quozzel, but the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed. And if it did have something to do with the sword, I wanted to hang on to it. “I don’t think I can manage the sword and the things Morwen gave us and the lamp, and still hold the key.”
“You wouldn’t have to until we started walking again, anyway,” Shiara said, but she kept the lamp.
Just then the dragon looked up. “I’m done,” it said. “Where do we go now?”
WE CLEANED UP the remains of the dragon’s meal and started walking again. I don’t know how far we went or how long it took us. The tunnel forked and we went right, then it forked again and we went left. We went through a large cave with walls like black mirrors, and a damp one that dripped water on our heads, and an unpleasant slimy one with grey moss on the walls. I was very glad that Telemain had told us which way to go; we would have gotten very lost very quickly without his directions.
A few times I thought I heard squishing noises behind us, but I wasn’t sure enough to say anything. I was also worrying a lot more about remembering all the things Telemain had told us than I was about the quozzel. I was beginning to think we had taken a wrong turn somewhere, when we came to another cavern.
This one was long and narrow, and the floor was about a hundred feet straight down. It was full of orange light and very hot. A narrow path ran along one wall from where we stood to a dark opening on the other side.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Shiara said, eyeing the path dubiously.
“I am now,” I said. “This was the last cave Telemain mentioned; once we’re on the other side, it shouldn’t take long to get to the castle.”
“We have to get to the other side first,” Shiara pointed out. “That doesn’t look very safe.”
“The Caves of Chance aren’t supposed to be safe,” I said. “I’m surprised we haven’t run into something a lot more dangerous than the quozzel.”
“I suppose— Nightwitch!” Shiara shouted a minute too late; the kitten was already halfway across the narrow path. Shiara sighed. “Well, now we have to go across.”
Shiara insisted on going first, because Nightwitch was her cat. I didn’t argue much. I went next, and the dragon came last. I had to hug the wall to keep from losing my balance and falling, which was hard to do with the key in one hand, Morwen’s bundle in the other, and the sword under one arm. The dragon didn’t seem to have as much difficulty as I did, even though it was a little too large for the ledge. It just dug its claws into the rock and kept coming.
When we finally made it to the other side, Shiara and I were covered with black rock dust. We took turns brushing each other off, while Nightwitch sat far enough back to avoid getting any of it on her and the dragon looked superior. Evidently rock dust doesn’t cling to dragon scales, which was very nice for the dragon but didn’t do much to improve Shiara’s temper.
“How much farther is it?” Shiara asked as we started off.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it shouldn’t take much longer.”
“I hope not,” said the dragon. “I don’t like this tunnel.”
“Why not?” Shiara asked.
“It isn’t finished,” the dragon said.
I looked around. The tunnel was a lot rougher than the others we’d come through, and there were rocks sticking out at odd angles from the walls and the roof and even the floor. Every now and then it narrowed into a crooked little passage; if the dragon had been much bigger, it wouldn’t have been able to fit through some of them. We still saw side passages once in a while, but they seemed smaller and farther apart than they had in the first part of the tunnel.
“It does look sort of incomplete,” I said. “I think—”
“Daystar, look out!” Shiara yelled. A large rock fell out of the ceiling, just missing my head, along with a shower of pebbles that didn’t. I heard a creaking noise and felt more pebbles.
“Get back!” I shouted. I dropped Morwen’s bundle and shoved Shiara. “Run!”
Shiara stumbled backward. Nightwitch yowled and made a tremendous leap right onto the dragon’s nose. The dragon jerked in surprise, and Nightwitch made another jump and vanished into the darkness behind it. I heard more rumblings, and I shoved Shiara again, just as the roof came down on top of us.
When I woke up, it was very dark. Somehow I’d managed to keep hold of the sword and the key. I could feel them, one halfway under me and the other digging into my palm. I could feel other things, too; I ached all over. I tried to move, but my legs were pinned under something heavy, and I couldn’t drag them free. I pushed myself up a little and tried to stare into the darkness. “Shiara? Nightwitch? Dragon?”
No one answered. They couldn’t all have gotten caught in the cave-in; I’d been the farthest forward, and I was just at the edge of it. I started wishing I had the lamp, and then I remembered that the key glowed when I touched the Sword of the Sleeping King. I felt around for the hilt, and something very moist and heavy hit me in the middle of my back.
I slammed back into the floor and almost lost consciousness again. I heard something above me bubbling, “The k-k-key! Let go, drop it, gug-give it to me!” Instinctively, I grabbed for the sword.
My fingers touched the hilt, and the key started to glow. It wasn’t quite as good as the lamp, but at least I could see. I heard a muffled shriek, and the weight left my back very suddenly. An instant later, I saw the quozzel bending over my hand, and I tightened my grip on the key.
The quozzel bounced angrily. “You’re still alive! I don’t want you alive. I want that k-k-key. That’s why I fixed the rocks.”
I shook my head to clear it. “You made the tunnel cave in? Just to get a key?”
“Of c-c-c-course!” the quozzel spluttered. “I’m supposed to take c-care of it. I’ll get it, too. All I need is m-m-more rocks.”
The quozzel wobbled forward, toward the caved-in part of the tunnel. I twisted, trying to see what it was doing, and a medium-sized rock came crashing down beside me. The quozzel made an angry whistling noise. “H-hold still!”
“So you can drop rocks on me?” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a long pile of something that seemed to end in a tangle of red hair. Shiara hadn’t been buried under the rocks, then. Unfortunately, she didn’t look like she would be able to help me with the quozzel any time soon, and I still didn’t know where Nightwitch or the dragon were. I shifted the key into my left hand and started trying to get the Sword of the Sleeping King out of its sheath with my right, in case the quozzel decided to try coming closer.
There was a sizzling noise from somewhere behind me, and a dozen or so rocks of assorted sizes came rolling down on top of me. I yelled; some of them hit places that had already been battered by the cave-in. The quozzel bubbled happily, and a few more rocks went by on one side. I shoved myself up on my hands as far as I could and yanked the sword out of the sheath and out from under me at the same time. I twisted around just as two more large rocks came rolling down at me.
I swung at the rocks with the flat of the sword, trying to deflect them a little. There was a bright flash as the sword hit them, and the rocks went flying toward the far wall of the tunnel. I heard a low humming sound that changed suddenly into a rumble, and the light in the cave went out. For some reason, I thought of the clearing where I’d said the spell at the Sword of the Sleeping King, when everything had gone dark and the voice had called me the Bearer of the Sword.
This time I didn’t hear any voice, but the rumbling got louder and louder, and suddenly I realized that my legs were free. I curled them up under me, so I wouldn’t be trapped again if the quozzel managed to start another cave-in or something. The rumbling started to die down, and I heard faint shouts mixed in with it, and the bubbling noise that the quozzel made, and someone groaning. Then the rumbling stopped, and I could see again.
I stood up and looked around. I could still hear the shouting; it sounded faint and far away, and after a moment it faded completely. Shiara was the person who had groaned. She was starting to move a little, and suddenly I felt a lot better about things generally. Then I heard squishing noises from in back of me, and I whirled.
Behind me, the tunnel was completely blocked by a sloping pile of rocks and dirt. At the base of the pile, where I had been trapped, was an empty space that looked as if something had sliced cleanly through the rocks and lifted them out of the way. Midway up the slope was the quozzel. It was wobbling hastily toward the tunnel floor. I pointed the Sword of the Sleeping King at it, and it stopped abruptly.
“Just a minute, you!” I said. “You have some questions to answer.”
“I d-d-d-didn’t know,” said the quozzel. “I still don’t. K-k-keep the k-key. Nice to m-m-meet you. Glug-gug-goodbye.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” I said. I stepped in front of it, so that if it wobbled forward any more, it would get stuck on my sword.
“I’m gug-gug-gug-going,” said the quozzel. It seemed to be stammering a lot more than it had before. I found myself hoping it was even more nervous than it looked.
“You aren’t going anywhere until you explain why you want this key so badly,” I said. “And maybe not then. I don’t think I ought to leave something as sneaky and treacherous as you running around loose.” I tried to sound intimidating, even though I had no idea what I was going to do with the quozzel. I didn’t think I could just kill it, and I certainly didn’t want to bring it along with me. I wasn’t about to tell the quozzel any of that, though; after what it had tried to do, it wouldn’t hurt it to worry a little.
“Daystar?” Shiara’s voice distracted me from the quozzel, which was bubbling and popping worriedly to itself. “Daystar, what happened?”
“The quozzel made the tunnel cave in,” I said. “It was trying to kill me so it could get the key. Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m— Yow!” said Shiara. I looked quickly around and saw her sitting up very carefully. She looked a little pale. “I think I broke my arm,” she said.
“Can I do anything to help?” I said.
“You can keep that stupid quozzel away from me!” Shiara said. “I’m all right as long as I don’t move much.”
I didn’t believe her, but I couldn’t have done much to help anyway. I didn’t know anything about setting broken arms, except that you can make things a lot worse if you don’t know what you’re doing. I decided not to say anything; if Shiara wanted me to keep watching the quozzel instead of trying to help her, she would probably get mad if I didn’t. Besides, I didn’t want the quozzel to get away and try dropping the roof on us again.
“Where’s Nightwitch?” Shiara said after a while. “And the dragon?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I haven’t seen them since the tunnel fell in.”
“You miserable little blob!”
I looked around in surprise and was very relieved to see Shiara glaring at the quozzel and not at me.
“If anything’s happened to Nightwitch because of your stupid cave-in, I’ll, I’ll melt you into a puddle!” she went on.
“You’d better not try,” the quozzel said, starting to bounce. “The w-w-wizard will gug-get you if you do!”
“What wizard?” I said.
The quozzel bubbled unhappily. “I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, no?” Shiara said. She stood up slowly and came over beside me, holding her right arm carefully in her left one. “I guess I’d better just melt you, then, and save some time.”
“N-n-no!” said the quozzel. Little ripples ran over it, and it seemed to shrink a little.
“Then you’d better tell us what wizard you’re talking about,” I said.
“The one who gug-gave me the key,” the quozzel said unwillingly. “He told me to take care of it until he came back for it.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked, ignoring Shiara, who was rubbing her bruises and muttering to herself.
“A long time,” the quozzel said. “He never came back, so it’s still m-m-my responsib-b-bility.”
“Not if I melt you, it isn’t,” Shiara said, and the quozzel subsided very suddenly.
“What is it the key to?” I said. “And why did the wizard leave it here?”
“D-d-don’t know,” the quozzel said sullenly. “He said people would come look for it and try to take it. That’s why he wanted m-m-me to look after it. You aren’t supposed to take it. No one’s supposed to take it b-b-but the wizard!”
“What did this wizard look like?” I said. I had an unpleasant feeling that I knew already, and I was therefore extremely relieved when the quozzel described someone who didn’t sound at all like Antorell. Shiara didn’t recognize the description, either, but she wasn’t as relieved as I was.
“How do we know this stupid thing isn’t lying?” she said. “I think we should—What’s that?”
I could hear something from far down the tunnel, but it echoed too much for me to be able to tell what it was. It seemed to be getting louder. “I think something’s coming,” I said to Shiara, then, “You stay where you are!” to the quozzel, who had been trying to wobble a little closer to the bottom of the rock pile.
The quozzel froze again, and Shiara gave me a disgusted look. “I know something’s coming, but what is it?”
I didn’t answer. The noise came closer, and I saw a flickering light partway down the tunnel. I shifted position so I could watch the quozzel and still see some of the rest of the tunnel. The light got brighter, and a moment later about a dozen people came through one of the side passages. They were all short and sort of squashed-looking, bigger than the elves we’d met, but considerably shorter than a normal person. Most of them were carrying picks or shovels or long, pointed iron poles; a couple of them had torches. They seemed to be following something, but they were too far away and the light was too bad for me to be sure.
“Dwarves!” I said. They must have heard the echo, because two of them looked up and saw us. One of them shouted something, but I couldn’t make out the words.
“Terrific!” Shiara muttered as they started in our direction. “What’d you have to do that for?”
“They’d have seen us anyway,” I said. “I mean, we’d be sort of difficult to miss, with the key lighting up the tunnel like this.”
“I suppose so,” Shiara said. She squinted into the dark part of the tunnel between us and the dwarves. “What’s that in front of them?”
I didn’t have to answer, because a second later Nightwitch came bounding out of the darkness with her tail held very high. She looked extremely proud of herself. She went straight to Shiara and started rubbing against her legs and purring.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” Shiara said. She started to bend over and winced. “Sorry, kitten; I’m afraid you’ll have to wait to get petted until somebody does something about this stupid arm.”
Nightwitch stopped rubbing and looked up. “Mmrew?”
“Well, I said I was sorry,” Shiara said. “I didn’t ask to break it.”
The dwarves had reached the edge of the key’s glow, and the whole tunnel was lit up by their torches. It made things a lot more cheerful. I could see the dragon in back of the dwarves, looking almost as smug as Nightwitch had.
“Look!” it said when it got close enough to talk without shouting. “I found a whole lot of dwarves!”
“I see that,” I said. I bowed to the dwarves as well as I could while trying to watch the quozzel at the same time. “My name is Daystar, and that’s Shiara. We’re very pleased to meet you.”
“They’re going to dig through the part of the tunnel that came down,” the dragon said.
“Hold on just a minute!” one of the dwarves said. “I didn’t say I’d help. Not exactly. I said I’d look at this cave-in of yours.”
“Me too,” said another. “Proper mess it looks, too.”
“Not natural,” said a female dwarf. She looked at Shiara and me suspiciously.
“How do you know?” Shiara said belligerently.
“We made this tunnel,” still another dwarf said. “And dwarf-made tunnels don’t just fall in.”
“Not ever,” agreed the first one.
“Of course not,” I said. “The quozzel made the tunnel cave in; it was trying to stop us from getting out of the Caves of Chance.”
“The quozzel?” the dragon said, looking interested. “That dessert thing is back again?”
“You can’t eat it until we find out if it knows anything else,” I said. “Besides, you had plenty of lunch.”
The dragon sighed. “I suppose so. All right, I’ll wait.”
I looked at the dwarves. “We’d be very much obliged to you if you would help us get through this, or show us a way around it, or something,” I said.
“Now, why should we do that?” one of them said.
“I don’t see any reason,” said another.
“Lot of work for nothing,” added a third.
“And I don’t like dragons!” said a voice from the middle of the group. The dragon glared, but it couldn’t pick out the dwarf who’d spoken.
“Could you at least set Shiara’s arm?” I said.
One of the female dwarves started to reply, but she was cut off by a yell from Shiara. “Daystar! Behind you!”
I raised the sword and spun around just as the quozzel bunched itself together and jumped at me. It came flying through the air, and I ducked. Something dark and purple shot out of it toward me, and I slashed at it with the sword. I got most of the purple stuff and part of the quozzel as well. I heard it shriek, and then it had landed and launched itself again, straight for the wall of the tunnel.
“I’ll kill all of you!” it whistled angrily. “Key stealers! Cannibals! I’ll kill you d-d-dead!”
I lunged for it, but I was too late. The quozzel hit the tunnel wall, and instead of bouncing, it vanished into the rock like water being absorbed by a sponge, only faster. An instant later a shower of rocks fell out of the roof of the tunnel, and I heard the walls creaking ominously.
“Run!” I yelled. I started to follow my own advice and saw a large rock shifting in the wall of the tunnel just above Shiara’s head. I shouted again and swung the sword at it, hoping it would be deflected like the other rocks the quozzel had tried to drop on me.
The flat of the sword hit the rock, and everything seemed to slow down suddenly. There was a lot of creaking, and the top of the tunnel started to sag, as if it were trying to fall in again but couldn’t quite manage it. The sword got very heavy for a minute or two, and then there was an angry-sounding rumble and the whole tunnel shook. The rock that had been heading for Shiara went bouncing off the opposite wall of the tunnel, and all the creaking and rumbling stopped very abruptly.
I didn’t move for several seconds at least. I kept thinking that something else was going to happen; the quozzel wasn’t going to give up this easily. Then I saw a thin trickle of dark purple stuff dripping down the wall of the tunnel, where the quozzel had disappeared. I watched it for a minute or two and decided that we probably didn’t have to worry about the quozzel anymore. I looked at Shiara.
“Are you all right?”
“That’s a stupid question,” Shiara said. “My arm is broken!”
“I mean, you didn’t get any more hurt than you were already, did you?”
“No,” she said. She looked at me for a minute. “Thanks.”
I was so surprised that I couldn’t think of anything to say for at least a minute. “Um, you’re welcome,” I said finally. I realized suddenly that my sword still had some wet purple stuff on it from hitting the quozzel, and I started digging in my pocket for my handkerchief so I could wipe off the sword.
I couldn’t find it. I sighed; it had probably fallen out of my pocket somewhere on the trip through the caves. I didn’t really mind losing it, except that now I didn’t have anything to get the purple goo off my sword with. I turned to the dwarves. “Excuse me, but do any of you—”
I stopped. The dwarves were standing in a tight group, and all of them were staring at the sword. “Now, why didn’t you think to mention you had that?” one of them said.
SHIARA AND I looked at the dwarves. “He’s been holding it since before you got here!” Shiara said finally. “Why should he have mentioned it?”
“It would have saved a lot of bother,” one of the female dwarves said in an aggrieved tone.
“Time, too,” said another.
“Inconsiderate, I call it.”
“Well, not inconsiderate, exactly. A little thoughtless, maybe.”
“After all, we aren’t elves.”
“Of course you’re not elves,” the dragon said. “Anyone can see that! What difference does it make?”
“Elves can recognize that sword just by looking at it,” one of the dwarves said in a resentful tone.
“So can some other people,” said another darkly. “But not dwarves.”
“Unless we get a good look at it, of course. Which we couldn’t, because of the light, not to mention the fact that you were standing there talking and distracting our attention.”
“Which is why you should have mentioned it,” a dwarf in the back finished triumphantly.
“I didn’t mention it because there seem to be a lot of people who want it,” I said. “One of them is a wizard.”
About six of the dwarves started talking so fast it was hard to tell whether they were all speaking at the same time or whether they went one after another.
“Of course there are a lot of people who want it!”
“Particularly wizards.”
“It’s the King’s sword, isn’t it?”
“Maybe it isn’t; he hasn’t said.”
“It has to be the King’s sword, silly. There aren’t any other swords that the earth obeys.”
“What about Delvan’s blade?”
“That’s not a sword, it’s an ax.”
“And the earth doesn’t obey it, it just shakes a lot.”
“So this has to be the King’s sword.”
“Wait a minute!” I said. “What do you know about my sword?”
“It’s the King’s sword,” one of the dwarves said indignantly. Another dwarf shushed him, and a dwarf near the front of the crowd stepped forward and bowed.
“We follow the sword,” she said, as if it explained everything.
The other dwarves all smiled and nodded. I sighed and gave up. Either none of them really knew anything else, or they weren’t going to tell me, and I didn’t think it mattered much which it was. “If you aren’t going to tell me about my sword, could one of you do something about Shiara’s arm?” I said. “And after that, we’ll be going.”
“Going where?” the dragon said. Some of the dwarves jumped; evidently they’d forgotten the dragon was behind them. I was surprised; if a dragon were standing behind me, I certainly wouldn’t forget it was there.
“We have to find another way out of the Caves of Chance,” I told the dragon. “I don’t really think we can dig through this one.”
“That will not be necessary,” said the dwarf closest to me. “Had we known you were the Bearer of the Sword, we would not have objected to your request.”
“Not at all,” said the dwarf next to him. She turned and waved at the others. “Lord Daystar requires this tunnel cleared. Begin!”
I stood and stared while the dwarves all grabbed their picks and shovels and things and started toward the rocks that were blocking the tunnel. In a few minutes they were all digging furiously except for one, who came over to Shiara and bowed. “I am Darlbrin,” he announced.
“That’s nice,” Shiara said sarcastically. I sighed, but I didn’t say anything. You can’t really expect a fire-witch with a broken arm to be particularly polite.
Darlbrin didn’t seem to notice. “I have some skill at mending things,” he said, and bowed again. “If you will permit it, I would like to look at your arm.” Darlbrin looked at Shiara a shade anxiously and added, “To see if I can mend it.”
Shiara rolled her eyes, but she walked over to the edge of the tunnel and sat down so the dwarf could see better. Nightwitch followed, alternately purring reassuringly and meowing anxiously. I watched for a minute or two, then turned away. I couldn’t do anything to help, and I wanted to think.
I didn’t get the chance. As soon as I turned, the dragon stuck its head over a couple of dwarves and said, “I didn’t know you were a lord. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I’m not a lord!” I said. I think I sounded a little desperate; I know I felt desperate. I didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on, except that it had something to do with my sword. Everything seemed to have something to do with my sword; I was getting tired of it and more than a little worried.
“Well, if you aren’t a lord, why did they call you one?”
“Because he has the King’s sword,” said a dwarf, who was walking under the dragon’s chin with a boulder more than half as big as he was. The dragon pulled its head back far enough to eye the dwarf, who ignored it and kept walking.
“Oh,” said the dragon at last. The dwarf continued to ignore it.
“I really wish you’d explain a little more,” I said to the dwarf, and then I thought of something. “Why did you call me the Bearer of the Sword?”
“I didn’t call you anything,” the dwarf said without stopping. “That was Cottlestone.” He set the boulder down and headed back toward the pile of rocks, which was beginning to look smaller already.
“Excuse me,” I said loudly in the general direction of the crowd of dwarves, “but would one of you tell me which one of you is Cottlestone? I’d like to talk to him, please.”
“Cottlestone!” shouted half a dozen voices. For a minute I thought the roof was going to cave in again, but all that actually happened was that one of the dwarves stepped out of the crowd and bowed to me. He looked as if he really meant it, not as if he were just being polite. “Don’t do that,” I said.
“As you wish,” the dwarf said, bowing again. “What do you want to know from me?”
“Why did you call me the Bearer of the Sword?”
Cottlestone looked surprised. “It’s obvious. When the Bearer of the Sword holds the King’s sword, the earth obeys it. So when you held up the sword and the earth obeyed, we knew you were the Bearer of the Sword.”
“Oh.” I thought for a moment. “Have you ever heard of the Holder of the Sword? Or the Wielder of the Sword?”
“Who?”
“Never mind,” I said. “How do you get to be the Bearer of the Sword?”
“No one knows,” Cottlestone said, looking at me curiously.
“Oh,” I said again. I was trying to think of something else to ask, when there was a shout from the top of the caved-in section of the tunnel. Cottlestone bowed again. “If you will excuse me, I think they’ve gotten through to the other side. I ought to go help. It’s my job.”
“All right,” I said uncomfortably. Cottlestone turned away, and I watched him melt into the crowd of dwarves. I wasn’t sure what I’d found out, except that I didn’t like people bowing to me. I found myself hoping that the rest of the dwarves wouldn’t imitate Cottlestone.
“Did he say they’re almost finished?” said Shiara’s voice behind me. “Wonderful! I can’t wait to get out of here.”
I turned. Shiara was standing, holding Nightwitch in the crook of her left arm. Her right arm was covered from her fingers almost to her shoulder in something smooth and grey and shiny. She looked a little white, but it might have been the torchlight. “Well, what are you staring at?” she demanded.
“I wasn’t staring,” I said. “I was just checking to see if you were all right.”
Darlbrin stepped up beside Shiara and bowed. “Not quite all right,” he said. “But not bad; not bad at all.”
“I wouldn’t call a broken arm ‘not bad,’“ Shiara said sourly.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that!” Darlbrin said hastily. “I was referring to the mending.”
“I’m sure you did a very good job,” I said. “And I really appreciate it.”
“I suppose I do, too,” Shiara said. “Thanks.”
“It isn’t really mending yet, you know,” Darlbrin said with a touch of anxiety. “People aren’t as easy to fix as ax handles. It’ll be a month or so before you can take the sheath off.”
“Yes, I know,” Shiara said impatiently. “I’ve had a broken arm before.”
“Then you’re very welcome!” the dwarf said, beaming. “Happy to be of service!”
Shiara snorted, but quietly. Darlbrin didn’t notice; he bowed to each of us and went off to help the rest of the dwarves finish clearing the tunnel. I looked at Shiara. “I didn’t know you’d broken your arm before.”
“That’s because I didn’t tell you about it,” Shiara said. She looked at me for a minute, then sighed. “I was stealing apples from the Prince’s gardens and fell out of the tree, all right?”
“Oh. What Prince, and why were you taking his apples?”
“The Prince of the Ruby Throne,” Shiara said after a minute. “He had a house and garden just outside town, and he never picked any of the apples. He just left them to rot. And I was hungry. So I sneaked over the wall and climbed the tree, but there was a big snake in it, with wings. So I fell out of the tree and broke my arm, and the snake went away.”
“Shiara,” I said, and stopped. She obviously had no idea what she had almost done. I sighed and changed what I was going to say. “Shiara, the Prince of the Ruby Throne raises magic apples. All kinds of people have been trying to steal them for years and years, but he’s a very powerful magician, and there are hundreds of spells protecting his gardens.”
“That must be why he was so upset,” Shiara said in a tone of sudden enlightenment. “I’m pretty sure he was the one who told the Society of Wizards about me. I thought it was a lot of fuss to make about a few apples, but now I understand.”
I looked at her for a minute. “I don’t want to be nosy or anything, but, if you wouldn’t mind telling me, I’d really appreciate knowing if there’s anyone else who’s mad at you.”
“I don’t think so,” Shiara said, frowning.
“I’m glad,” I said. “I don’t think I want any more powerful magical people chasing us. It wouldn’t be so bad if you could use your fire-magic.”
“She can!” said the dragon, and Shiara and I both jumped and turned around. “She burned the dragonsbane, and she can make her hair burn.”
“When did you see Shiara’s hair burning?” I asked. The only time I’d ever seen Shiara’s hair on fire was when she’d gotten mad at me right after we’d met, and the dragon hadn’t been there then.
“Just a few minutes ago,” the dragon said. “You were fighting that dessert thing, so you might not have noticed.”
I looked at Shiara, and she blushed. “I was trying to do something to the quozzel,” she said. “I thought it would work, because it worked with the dragonsbane.”
“It worked on the dragonsbane,” I repeated slowly. “And remember that first wizard, the one who made a water monster out of the stream? You did something to it while I was fighting it! That’s at least twice that you’ve made your firemagic do something you wanted it to. Can you think of any others? Maybe we can figure out how it works.”
“She used it at that invisible castle,” the dragon offered. “The one where that other fire-witch lived.”
“I did not!” Shiara said. “I didn’t have time. We ran into the castle, and she came out, and bang! I was a statue.”
The dragon sat back, looking smug. “You said you wanted to know what the castle was, and then you did. That’s firemagic, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is,” Shiara said slowly.
“Then that’s three,” I said. “Can you think of any more? Before you came to the Enchanted Forest, for instance?”
Shiara frowned and was silent for a while. “No,” she said finally in a very positive tone. “Those are the only times I’ve ever gotten my magic to do what I wanted it to, ever.”
“So it’s only been happening since you came to the Enchanted Forest,” I said.
“And met you and got bitten by that stupid sword,” Shiara added, and stopped. We looked at each other for a minute.
“Not again!” I said. I thought for a minute. “It can’t be the sword alone, or you would have been able to do something to the quozzel. There has to be something else, too.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Did you do anything differently when it worked?”
“No.”
“Well, then did you do anything differently right before it worked?” I said. “There has to be some—” I stopped, remembering. “Oh,” I said.
“What is it?”
“I think I know what makes your magic work,” I said. I didn’t think Shiara was going to like it much, but I couldn’t just keep quiet about it, either. “I think you have to be polite to people.”
“What? That’s stupid!”
“It makes sense,” I said. “You apologized to me after we got out of the hedge, and then when the first wizard came along your magic worked against the snake thing. You were nice to the Princess because you felt sorry for her, and right after that you knew about the invisible castle. And you said thanks to Suz and apologized to Telemain, and then you made the dragonsbane burn.”
“But that other fire-witch wasn’t polite!” Shiara objected.
“I didn’t say all fire-witches have to be polite to people before their magic will work,” I said. “I only said your magic works that way. And I’m not positive. I mean, it could be something else.”
“Well, I’m not going to go around being nice to people just so I can do magic!”
“I don’t think it would work, anyway,” I said unhappily. “I mean, I don’t think you can just say things, I think you have to really mean them. You meant it when you apologized to me, and when you were nice to the Princess, and when you were talking to Telemain.”
“Oh, great,” Shiara said disgustedly. “I bet this is all that stupid sword’s fault. It sounds like something it’d do.” She glared at me for an instant, then turned her back. I sighed.
“Excuse me. Lord Daystar,” said a voice by my elbow. I looked down; the dwarf bowed as soon as I turned.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Certainly, my lord,” she said, and started to bow again, then stopped and looked confused. “The tunnel is clear; you may continue your journey whenever you wish.”
I looked around. She was right; the pile of rocks that had been blocking the tunnel was nearly gone. A few boulders were left along the sides, but there was plenty of room to walk through, even for the dragon. “Thank you very much,” I said. “But I really ought to tell you: I’m not a lord.”
The dwarf smiled tolerantly. “Of course not, my lord. Is there anything else we can do for you?”
“I’d appreciate it if we could borrow one of your torches,” I said. “Our lamp got lost in the cave-in.”
“We would be pleased to offer you a torch,” the dwarf said. “You can leave it by the exit, and someone will get it later. It isn’t far.”
We gathered up what was left of our things, and the dwarves did some more bowing. One of them handed Shiara a torch. She grumbled a little because she had to put Nightwitch down in order to take it, but she was the only one of us who could carry it. I had the sword in one hand and the key in the other, and the dragon couldn’t hold a torch.
Fortunately, Nightwitch didn’t seem to mind walking. We thanked the dwarves and said good-bye, and they all bowed again, and finally we started off.
The tunnel started slanting upward almost as soon as we were past the cave-in, and shortly after that we stopped seeing side passages. Eventually we came to a flight of stairs that curled around and around until all of us were dizzy. Just when I didn’t think I could climb anymore, the stairs ended against a hard, rocky surface, like a trapdoor made of stone.
I shoved against it, but it didn’t budge. “It’s too heavy.”
“Really?” said the dragon. “It doesn’t look so bad.”
I looked down at the dragon, who was last on the stairs because neither Shiara nor I had wanted to be behind it if it slipped. “It probably isn’t too heavy for you. Why don’t you try it?”
The dragon agreed, and Shiara and I squashed ourselves against the side of the stairs so it could climb past us. There were a couple of minutes of grunts, and the dragon’s tail whipped back and forth, which made Shiara and me retreat farther down the stairs. Finally there was a loud noise like extremely rusty hinges, and the dragon started moving upward. A moment later, it stopped. “Uh-oh,” it said.
“What’s the matter?” Shiara called.
The dragon didn’t answer, but it moved out of the way so we could climb up. Shiara and I got to the head of the stairs at almost the same time and looked around.
We were standing at the top of a small rise. The sun was starting to set, but there was still enough light to see the castle clearly. It was quite close, not more than a few minutes’ walk from where I was, and it fascinated me. At first, I thought it was made of something shimmery, like mother-of-pearl; then I realized that it wasn’t the castle that was shimmering, it was something around the castle, like a giant soap bubble. I was still trying to figure out what it was when Shiara poked me, and I looked down. There were approximately two hundred dragons sitting on the ground around the little hill we were standing on. Watching us.
I SWALLOWED HARD, and for a moment I wished I were wearing my sword instead of carrying it under my arm. Every dragon in the Enchanted Forest had to be there, and quite a few from outside it. They were spread out in all directions, so that I couldn’t even see the ground, and I realized suddenly that there was a lot of open space around the castle. The forest circled the castle at a distance, and there seemed to be something wrong about it. I couldn’t tell what, though, and besides, I had other things to worry about right then. Two hundred dragons, for instance.
I stepped forward and bowed carefully in all directions. One of the first things Mother taught me about dragons was that dragons expect a new arrival to make the first move. They always allow you one chance to convince them that you’re too polite or too important to eat. I was going to have to rely on being polite; I didn’t think I could convince two hundred dragons that I was particularly important, especially since I didn’t believe it myself. I took a deep breath.
“Sirs and madams, I apologize most profoundly for intruding upon you in this fashion, and I hope we have not inconvenienced you in any way,” I said, trying to talk loudly enough for all the dragons to hear me and still sound polite.
“Nevertheless, I offer you greetings in the name of myself and my companions, and I wish you good fortune in whatever endeavors are most important to you.”
The dragons stirred briefly, then settled back again. After a moment, an old, grey-green male slid forward. “We greet you, and wish you well,” he said. “May we know your names?”
I bowed again, the half bow of respect for a dragon of great age and uncertain status. “I thank you for your greeting,” I said. “I am called Daystar, and my companions are Shiara and Nightwitch.” I didn’t ask for the dragons’ names. It’s perfectly acceptable not to, and I didn’t feel like standing there through two hundred introductions, especially since the dragons would expect me to remember them all.
“Well met, Daystar,” the old dragon rumbled. “We’ve been expecting you since early this afternoon; I’m glad you finally got here.”
“I’m sorry if I kept you waiting,” I said. “We had problems with some wizards, and a cave-in, and a quozzel, and I didn’t really know you were waiting. I hope it hasn’t been long.”
“Of course not; Telemain only told Kazul yesterday that you were coming. Silly way to do things, making everyone gather in such a hurry.” He looked at me for a minute, then I nodded approvingly. “Well, come along; no sense wasting any more time. You might as well bring the girl and the cat, too; this way.”
Our dragon lifted its head. “What about me?” it demanded. It looked much smaller next to the full-grown dragons all around us, and it sounded considerably younger as well.
“You had better keep quiet,” the older dragon said indulgently. “You’re in quite a bit of trouble already; I wouldn’t make it worse if I were you.”
“I don’t have to keep quiet!” our dragon said. “I found a Princess, even if I did decide not to keep her, and I fought a knight and bit a wizard. I can talk if I want to!”
The crowd of dragons shifted again, very slightly. Shiara , shivered and held Nightwitch closer; I thought about wiping my hands on my tunic, then decided it would be too noticeable. The older dragon ignored all of us; he just stood and stared at our dragon, which finally shook its head and settled back, watching the crowd below us with a sulky expression. The old dragon smiled slightly and turned his head. “What do you think?” he asked the crowd of dragons behind him.
All of the dragons roared at once. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, or even if they were saying anything, but the old dragon nodded again and looked at the little dragon. “You’ll get your wish, then. Well, don’t just stand there.”
I nodded and stepped forward as the old dragon turned. Shiara followed behind me, very closely, and our dragon came behind her. “Where are we going?” Shiara whispered to me.
The old dragon looked back over his shoulder, and his eyes glinted with amusement. “You’re going to see Kazul.”
“Oh,” Shiara said. We stepped down from the little hill, and there was a loud clattering and rumbling as the dragons moved out of our way. I stopped short in shock.
The ground around the hill was dry and brown and bare. It looked even worse than it would have normally, because I’d spent several days looking at the rich moss in the Enchanted Forest. Then I remembered that we were still in the Enchanted Forest, and I started being worried as well as shocked. I knew from experience how fast the moss grew, and how hard it was to clear off even a small strip of ground;
I didn’t like to think about what had stripped the moss from the area around the castle.
Shiara poked me, and I started moving forward again. Fortunately, the dragon ahead of us hadn’t noticed my pause. A few of the ones at the edge of the crowd had, but they seemed more amused than anything. I decided not to worry about it and walked a little faster, trying to ignore the large shapes on either side of me. With two hundred dragons around, I could waste a lot of time worrying if I wasn’t careful.
The old dragon led us toward the castle. As we got closer, I could see that there were two shimmerings in the air around the castle, one a few feet inside the other. The outer one looked like a shifting, green-and-silver veil, very thin and transparent. The inner one seemed to be a pale golden glow, but I couldn’t be sure because of the way the one on the outside shifted around; it seemed to interfere with my seeing the inner one clearly. After a few minutes, I gave up on trying to look at the shimmerings and tried looking through them instead.
The shimmerings didn’t seem to get in the way at all; I discovered that I could see quite a bit of the castle. Part of the reason was that there was no wall around it, only the shimmerings and a water-filled moat just inside them. The castle itself was a wonderful, rambling-looking place, with about six towers of various sizes and large square windows and four balconies. I could see several stairways running up to oddly shaped doors or around the outside of the towers, and a lot of walls that seemed to be there just to confuse people. I was so busy studying the castle and the shimmerings that I almost didn’t notice when the dragon stopped; I was lucky not to step on his tail.
We were about halfway around the castle, and there seemed to be fewer dragons around. I was trying to guess which one was Kazul, when the old dragon who had been leading us stepped a little to one side and bobbed his head respectfully. “King Kazul, these are the travelers who wish to see you. That one’s Daystar, the other one’s Shiara, and the cat is Nightwitch.”
Right away I bowed very deeply, and so did Shiara. I was relieved; I hadn’t been completely sure she would do any of the things I’d suggested. As I straightened up, I got my first look at Kazul.
Even lying on the ground, she looked large for a dragon. Her scales were just beginning to turn grey around the edges, which surprised me; I’d expected someone older. Her eyes were hypnotic, green-gold ovals. She was the most dangerous-looking dragon I’d ever seen. Kazul smiled broadly. Dragons have a lot of teeth.
“So,” she said, “you are the people Telemain sent through the Caves of Chance, and you have the Sword of the Sleeping King.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said. I took the sword out from under my arm and held it up so she could see it better. “Mother gave it to me a few days ago, and I was told you would want to know about it.”
“Ahhhhhh.” Kazul’s eyes glowed as she looked at the sword. Literally; the light from them was a little like firelight, except it didn’t flicker. After a minute, she transferred her gaze to me. “And you got it here safely. Well done, Cimorene’s son.”
“Thank you. Your Majesty,” I said. “You knew my mother?”
Kazul smiled again. “Cimorene was the best Princess I ever had.”
Shiara choked. My jaw dropped; the little dragon said, “That’s how she knew dragon magic!” in a pleased tone.
I closed my mouth, swallowed hard, and bowed to Kazul. “Excuse me, Your Majesty. I was, um, startled. Mother is a Princess?”
“She certainly was once,” Kazul said. She looked at the sword again. “I’m glad she managed to keep it safe. We didn’t have a lot of choice at the time, but it’s still worrying to have to take a risk like that.”
I wasn’t certain what to say to that; Kazul didn’t seem to be talking to me, but it isn’t a good idea to ignore a dragon. I decided not to say anything and bowed again.
Kazul looked up from the sword. “You needn’t bother being quite so formal,” she said. “I have a lot to tell you, and it will make the conversation a lot easier if you’re not quite so stiff.”
Before I could reply, Kazul turned toward the old dragon, who was still standing beside me. “It will be tomorrow morning. Let everyone know; the preparations must be finished by then.”
The old dragon nodded and left. Kazul looked back at us. “Come with me.” She started to rise.
“What about me?” the little dragon demanded.
Kazul sighed. “Yes, you may come, too.” She stood, which made her look twice as big as she had before, and started walking. Shiara and I looked at each other and followed. There wasn’t anything else we could do; after all, Kazul was King of the Dragons.
By this time the sun was completely down, but there was still enough light in the sky that we could see where we were going. Kazul led us a little farther around the castle, then turned away from it. As we walked along, the other dragons would slide out of the way for Kazul and bow their heads respectfully to her; then Shiara and I would walk by and bow respectfully to the dragons. It kept us too busy to see much of where we were going.
Kazul led us to what looked like a jumbled pike of rocks a little way from the castle. There was a dark opening at one side of the pile, and Kazul went right in. Shiara and the dragon and I followed.
It was very dark inside, almost as black as the Caves of Chance. I stopped immediately; I didn’t want to step on Kazul’s tail in the dark or run into her accidentally. Shiara bumped into me, squeezing Nightwitch between us. Nightwitch said, “Mrowww!” in a complaining tone, and Kazul’s voice came out of the darkness.
“I suppose you human people need some light.”
“Only if it won’t be inconvenient,” I said hastily.
“Not at all,” Kazul replied, and added about five hissing words.
Silvery light sprang up all around us. I had to squint for a minute; then I blinked. The inside of the pile of rocks looked a lot like a cave. I looked for the source of the light and realized with a shiver that the light was coming from the rocks.
That shook me. Dragons don’t usually do magic casually; they take it too seriously. In particular, the King of the Dragons wouldn’t normally work a spell just for a visitor’s convenience. I looked at Kazul, wondering exactly what was going on.
“Sit down,” said Kazul, nodding toward a row of rocks. We did. The little dragon sat down by the entrance, looking half-sulky and half-defiant. Kazul ignored it.
“I think you had better tell me your story first,” she said, looking at me intently. “Start at the beginning, when Cimorene gave you the sword.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll start with the sword if you want me to, but I think the beginning is the wizard.”
“Wizard?” said Kazul.
“His name’s Antorell; he came to our cottage the day before Mother gave me the sword, and Mother melted him.”
“Oh, him.” Kazul shook her head. “Sounds like he hasn’t learned anything since the last time he tangled with Cimorene. Yes, start with him, by all means.”
So I told Kazul everything that had happened to me since Antorell had walked up to our cottage and knocked the door in. It took a long time, especially the part after Shiara and I met the dragon, because the dragon kept adding things. Finally, Kazul told it to either be quiet or go away. It looked terribly offended, but it quit talking.
Kazul didn’t ask any questions at all. Once, when I mentioned finding the key in the Caves of Chance, she made a noise that sounded like an astonished snort, but she apologized for interrupting and told me to go on. I did, once I got over the shock of having the King of the Dragons apologize to me.
When I finished, there was silence for a minute or two. Then Kazul stirred. “So. You have accomplished a great deal in a short time, Daystar.”
“It doesn’t really seem like it to me,” I said.
“A great deal,” Kazul repeated. She sounded as if she were talking to herself.
Shiara shifted restlessly. “Are you going to explain about Daystar’s sword?” she demanded.
“Shiara!” I said, horrified. Nobody talks to the King of the Dragons in that tone of voice.
Except Shiara. “No,” said Kazul. “Or at least, I’m not going to tell you as much as you want to know. It’s one of the problems with that sword right now. The Society of Wizards has more than a hundred spells hunting for it, and all of them depend on finding someone who knows what he’s carrying; the sword itself is invisible to wizards’ magic. If Daystar knows too much about that sword too soon, we’ll be up to our wings in wizards right away. I don’t want that to happen yet.”
“I don’t like wizards,” the little dragon said suddenly. “They make me sneeze.”
Kazul’s head turned and she eyed the little dragon for a minute. “I think it is time you made yourself useful,” she said at last. “Go find Marchak and tell him to bring us dinner. Then go back to your teacher and apologize for running off, and after that you can start getting ready for tomorrow.”
“What happens tomorrow?” the little dragon said suspiciously.
“We have a war,” Kazul said. “Which you might manage to live through, if you’re ready for it. So go!”
“Yes, ma’am!” The little dragon disappeared out the door of the cave.
Kazul looked after it for a minute, then shook her head. “That is undoubtedly the most irritating grandchild I have.”
“Who are you going to be fight— Grandchild?” said Shiara.
“Yes, of course,” said Kazul, looking mildly surprised. “It’s an annoying youngster, but precocious children frequently are. I’m hoping it will grow out of it.”
“Oh,” said Shiara. She stared out the entrance thoughtfully.
“I enjoyed its company, most of the time,” I said honestly.
“I’m glad,” Kazul said.
“Um, if you wouldn’t mind telling us, I’m sort of curious about whom you expect to be fighting tomorrow,” I said after another minute. I was also wondering whether Kazul thought Shiara and I were going to be included in this. I wasn’t particularly anxious to get involved in a war between dragons.
Kazul smiled; I got the feeling she knew what I was thinking. “Wizards,” she said. “There will be a few elves, of course, and maybe some ogres and trolls, but mostly we’ll be fighting wizards.”
“Oh,” I said. I was even less interested in getting involved in a war between dragons and wizards. Dragons alone might overlook Shiara and Nightwitch and me, but wizards certainly wouldn’t.
“I’m afraid you already are involved,” Kazul said.
“Because of the sword?” Shiara asked while I tried to remember whether I’d said anything out loud about not wanting to get involved.
“Yes,” said Kazul. “The sword, and other things. It’s a long story; I hope you’re comfortable.”
We both nodded, and Kazul smiled again. “Well, then. There are two types of magic in the world: the kind you’re born with, and the kind you get from something else. Dragons”—Kazul looked smug—“elves, unicorns, and fire-witches are born with magic, to name a few. Ordinary witches and magicians get their magic from objects or from rituals involving things that have magic; it works quite well and doesn’t upset things.
“Wizards, on the other hand, get their magic from everything around them that happens to have magic. Those staffs of theirs absorb little bits of it constantly and it gets worse every time a wizard stores a new spell in his staff. That, by the way, is why dragons are allergic to them; whenever those staffs get near us, they start trying to soak up some of our magic. It creates other problems, too.”
“You mean those stupid wizards have been grabbing my magic every time they come near me?” Shiara said indignantly.
“Not yours,” Kazul said. “Wizards can’t use fire-witches’ magic; it’s too different. Their staffs explode if they try.”
“Good!” said Shiara vindictively. Her face grew thoughtful. “I wonder if I could learn to do it on purpose?”
Kazul looked as if she agreed with Shiara. “Wizards get most of their magic from the Enchanted Forest, but if they absorb too much magic in any one place, things die.”
“The moss!” I said. “That’s why it turns brown when a wizard’s staff touches it.”
“Yes,” said Kazul. “The Kings of the Enchanted Forest had a way of reversing the process, taking magic out of a wizard’s staff and putting it back in the forest, so wizards weren’t too much of a problem until about seventeen or eighteen years ago, when one of the wizards managed to steal some rather important items from the King’s castle. One of them in particular was critical to the King’s control of the wizards.” Kazul paused and looked at me expectantly.
“The sword?” I said. “Telemain said it was supposed to be used on wizards.”
“Telemain talks too much,” Kazul said a little sourly. “The wizard who stole the sword didn’t know exactly what he had, at first, but he knew enough to convince the rest of the wizards to attack the castle. They were trying to kill the King and take his place, but before they succeeded, the sword was stolen again. A few wizards managed to get inside the castle, but without the sword they didn’t have enough power to actually kill the King. The best they could do was find a way of keeping him out of action while they hunted for the sword.”
“They put the King to sleep?” I said doubtfully. It sounded a bit unlikely. Sleeping spells are very effective on guards and Princesses, and even a kingdom now and then, but they can’t usually do much against a good magician, and whatever else he was, I was sure the King of the Enchanted Forest had to be a master magician.
“We don’t know exactly what they did,” Kazul admitted. “We know the King isn’t dead, because the Enchanted Forest reacts very strongly when a King dies. We know they did something, though, because the seal they have around the castle wouldn’t hold the King in by itself.”
“You mean those shimmerings around the castle?” I said.
“The outer one is ours,” Kazul said with a grim smile. “The wizards put up a spell to keep everyone but themselves out of the castle, so we put one to keep the wizards out. Without the sword, there wasn’t anything more we could do.”
“Then how did Daystar’s mother get hold of the sword?” Shiara asked.
Kazul smiled again. “Cimorene was the one who stole it back from the wizards in the first place. They’ve been trying to get hold of it again ever since. They’ll show up as soon as we break through their barrier tomorrow, but by then we should be ready for them.”
“Uh, you expect Shiara and me to help you fight the wizards?” I said.
“Of course not,” Kazul replied. “You’re going to get into the castle and break whatever spell the wizards put on the King seventeen years ago.”
THAT TOOK SOME explanation. What Kazul meant was, the dragons would lower the barrier they had put up around the castle. Then I would draw the Sword of the Sleeping King and put it into the wizards’ barrier, which, according to Kazul, would break their spell. The wizards would know immediately that something was happening, and they would start trying to get to the castle. The dragons and their various allies would hold off the wizards and whomever they brought to help them, while I ran into the castle, found the King, and broke the spell.
I didn’t like the sound of it at all, but I couldn’t say much. Mother had given me the sword, and I was pretty sure this was what she’d wanted me to do with it. Besides, Kazul seemed to think I was the only one who could use the sword to break the spell, and how do you tell the King of the Dragons that you won’t do something she wants you to do?
Shiara, on the other hand, had a lot to say. She thought it would be stupid for me to go into the castle by myself. Kazul asked if she was volunteering, and Shiara said that she wasn’t going to be left out just when things were getting interesting. Kazul pointed out that Shiara’s arm was broken, and Shiara told her that being inside the castle with me sounded safer than being outside with a lot of wizards and dragons fighting each other.
Finally, Kazul said Shiara could go with me if she wanted to. Shiara said good, and were the dragons going to be able to keep all of the wizards out of the castle, or were some of them going to sneak in after us? They kept on like that for quite a while. I was very glad when a middle-sized dragon arrived with dinner and interrupted. I couldn’t see why Kazul was being so patient with Shiara, and I was getting worried that it wouldn’t last much longer.
Dinner was excellent. Kazul didn’t eat with us; she spent most of the meal lying on the floor and watching us inscrutably. Dragons are very good at being inscrutable. I found it a bit unsettling, but it didn’t seem to bother Shiara or Nightwitch much.
After dinner we talked some more. Kazul told us about the castle and what the floor plan was. She also told us about a lot of things to watch out for; most of them were magical items that would only be dangerous if we accidentally did something to them, but there were a few traps, too.
“This castle sounds awfully big,” Shiara said after a while. “How are we supposed to find this King, anyway?”
“You look for him,” Kazul said. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you exactly where. The only people who knew where the King was were the wizards who went in and put the spell on him, and as far as I know they’re all dead.”
“As far as you know?” I said.
“Some of them didn’t come out of the castle,” Kazul said.
“But you’re sure that the ones who did come out are dead?” I said.
“Positive,” said Kazul.
“So what?” said Shiara. Kazul and I looked at her. “I don’t care about the wizards who came out,” she said defensively. “I’m worried about the ones who might still be in there.”
“They have to be either dead or enchanted,” Kazul said. “Even a wizard can’t live seventeen years without food.”
“I suppose so,” Shiara said. “Well, what does this King look like?”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kazul said. “Besides, he’s the only other person in there.”
“Oh, great,” said Shiara. “We have to hunt through an empty castle for someone we don’t even know, while a bunch of wizards are trying to get in and stop us.”
“It shouldn’t be that bad,” Kazul said. “The sword and the key should both help considerably.”
“The key?” I said.
“Of course the key!” Kazul said impatiently. “For one thing, it’ll make it a lot easier for you to get into the castle; you could have done it with the sword alone, but it will be much faster with the key as well.”
“Are you saying I just picked up the key to the castle by accident?” I said.
“Accidents like that happen all the time in the Caves of Chance,” Kazul said dryly. “Where do you think they got their name?”
“How do you know it’s the right key?” Shiara demanded. “The quozzel said some wizard put it there.”
“It was one of the things that were stolen along with the sword,” Kazul replied. “But if it will make you more comfortable, I can look at it.”
I dug the key out of my pocket and held it out to Kazul. Kazul glanced at it and started to nod, then stopped suddenly and stared at the key very intently.
“That wizard’s done something to it,” she said after a moment. She sounded outraged.
“Wonderful,” said Shiara disgustedly. “All we need is another wizard to get mixed up in this.”
“He isn’t another wizard,” Kazul said. “He’s the same one who stole the key in the first place, and he’s dead.”
“You’re sure he’s not one of the wizards who didn’t come out?” Shiara said. Kazul nodded, and Shiara frowned. “Can you tell what he did?”
Kazul didn’t answer. She stared at the key instead, and her eyes started glowing again. The key began getting warmer and warmer in my hands. Just before it got too hot for me to hold, the key jerked in the direction of the castle outside; a second later, I dropped it. I stood shaking my fingers, while Kazul and Shiara stared down at the key, and Nightwitch walked over and sniffed at it.
“Nightwitch!” said Shiara. “Stop that; you’ll get enchanted or something.” She bent over and grabbed awkwardly for Nightwitch with her left hand. The kitten jumped away, and Shiara’s fingers brushed the key. A look of surprise came over her face, and she picked the key up. “It feels like fire,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “It burned my fingers.”
“No, I don’t mean it’s hot,” Shiara said. “It just feels like fire.”
“It shouldn’t,” Kazul said, sounding interested. “Bring it over here.”
Shiara took the key to Kazul, who looked at it for a few minutes and handed it back. “I thought so. It’s part of what that wizard did.”
“But what’s it for?” Shiara said.
“I don’t know,” Kazul admitted. “The spell is connected to something inside the castle, but I can’t tell what with the barriers around the outside. He may have set a trap with it; he was one of the wizards who got inside during the battle, you know.”
“No, I didn’t,” Shiara said. “And how could he use the key inside the castle if it was sitting down in the Caves of Chance the whole time?”
“He couldn’t have,” Kazul said calmly. “He probably left the key there after he got out of the castle; he was the last one of the wizards we caught, and he had plenty of time to do it.”
“May I have my key back, please?” I said. Kazul and Shiara both looked at me, and Shiara handed me the key. “Thank you,” I said, and put it in my pocket. I wasn’t quite sure why I wanted it; I only knew that it felt right, somehow.
“Is there anything else we ought to know about right now?” I asked after a minute. “I mean, we’ve walked a long way today, and been in a cave-in, and Shiara has a broken arm, and if we’re going to do all of these things tomorrow, I would sort of like to get some rest.”
“Mrrrroww!” said Nightwitch emphatically.
Kazul chuckled. “It seems you aren’t the only one who would like rest. Very well. Marchak!”
The middle-sized dragon who had brought us dinner appeared, and Kazul had him show us to our rooms. They turned out to be normal, human-sized rooms, and quite comfortable. I was surprised until it occurred to me that the King of the Dragons would probably have occasional human visitors, who would need a place to stay. I wondered how many human magicians kept a special place for visiting dragons in their castles and towers and things, and right in the middle of wondering, I fell asleep.
A loud pounding noise woke me; someone, probably a dragon, was knocking on the door of my room. “Just a minute, please,” I called, and the pounding stopped.
I got out of the bed, which I couldn’t remember having gotten into, and picked up my swordbelt. I checked my pockets to make sure I had the key, started for the door, and stopped suddenly in the middle of the room. If the dragons expected me to do things with the Sword of the Sleeping King. I wasn’t going to carry it under my arm like a bag of laundry. I put the swordbelt on and opened the door.
“It’s about time,” said the little dragon in the hall. Shiara and Nightwitch were already there.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know you were in a hurry.”
The dragon snorted and started off down the hall. “Come on.”
We went after it. It didn’t seem to be in a particularly good mood, and I didn’t understand why until Shiara told me that it wanted to come into the castle with us, but Kazul wouldn’t let it. I couldn’t see why it wanted to come; there weren’t supposed to be any wizards inside the castle, and I thought the little dragon wanted to fight wizards. I didn’t say anything, though. Arguing with a grouchy dragon isn’t safe, even if it’s a small dragon.
The dragon brought us back to the cave where we’d talked to Kazul the previous night. Kazul wasn’t there, but breakfast was, and we sat down right away. We were almost done with it when Kazul arrived.
“Go on, finish,” she said when she saw we were still eating.
“Urn, that’s all right,” Shiara said hastily. “I don’t want any more.”
“I’ve had plenty, too,” I said. “It’s very good.”
Kazul nodded absently. “Well, if you’re finished, let us begin.”
I stood up from the table, wishing suddenly that I hadn’t eaten quite so much. My stomach felt as if it were full of lead, and my head was very light. “How do we start?” I said.
“Follow me.” Kazul slid out of the cave without looking back at us. Shiara and I followed, and Nightwitch and the little dragon came behind us.
Kazul led us back across the hard, brown ground toward the castle. All around us, dragons were polishing their teeth and sharpening their claws; some of them were muttering spells under their breath. A couple of times, I saw elves hurrying through the crowd, and once I saw a group of intense-looking red-haired people who had to be fire-witches. Everyone was very serious and grim.
None of us said anything until we got to the castle. Kazul led us around the outside of the shimmerings until we were at the front of the castle; if I concentrated on looking through the barriers, I could see a flat wooden bridge across the moat and a large door with steps leading up to it. Kazul stopped and turned to the little dragon. “You’d better go find your place now,” she said.
“But I want to—”
“Go!”
The little dragon went. Shiara and I looked at each other, and then at Kazul. Kazul smiled. “Are you ready?”
I nodded jerkily. Shiara bent and picked up Nightwitch. Kazul’s smile widened. “When I tell you ‘now,’ draw your sword and run for the castle. Don’t look back, and don’t stop for anything.”
I nodded again, because I didn’t trust my voice just then. Kazul turned to the crowd of dragons, and suddenly everything was completely silent. A shiver ran down my back, and I put my hand on the hilt of the Sword of the Sleeping King.
I felt the bee-in-the-jar buzz that was Shiara’s magic, and a strong humming from all the dragons, but the strongest feeling of all was the purring I’d felt from the first time the sword made my arm tingle. It was coming from the castle. Not from the shimmerings around the castle; they just got in the way. What I was feeling was the magic of the castle itself.
I took a tighter grip on the hilt of the sword. The tingling from the dragons got stronger and more positive, and abruptly Kazul turned and shouted, “Now!” As she spoke, the silver-and-green shimmering around the castle vanished.
I yanked the Sword of the Sleeping King out of its sheath and swung it at the golden glow that was still left between me and the castle. I felt a shock like a lightning bolt as the sword hit, and then the shimmering vanished in an explosion of golden light. I shook my head and heard Kazul shout, “Run!”
I took two steps and almost lost my balance. The ground wasn’t hard and bare anymore; it was covered with slippery green fuzz. Shiara grabbed my arm just as I heard a series of explosions from behind us.
We ran. I could feel the jangling from the sword that meant there were wizards around somewhere, but I didn’t stop to look for them. I was too busy trying to keep up with Shiara, hang on to the sword, and dig the key out of my pocket, all at the same time. It didn’t work very well.
Shiara was standing in front of the door, panting, when I got up to it with the key. I didn’t see a keyhole, but as soon as my foot touched the top step of the stairs, the door swung open.
“Daystar,” Shiara said, “are you sure—”
Something hit the stone of the castle next to the door and exploded, showering us with little chips of rock. Shiara and I dove through the door and landed on the floor inside with Nightwitch on top of us. I sat up just as the door closed silently behind us.
“Hey!” Shiara said. “Watch what you’re doing with that sword!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I stood up, stuck the key in my pocket again, and held out a hand to help Shiara up. “Is your arm all right?”
“I think so,” she said absently. “At least, it doesn’t hurt any more than it did already. Now which way do we go?”
“I don’t know,” I said. The door shook as something hit it, and a moment later there was a muffled explosion. “I think we should get out of here, though.”
“Aren’t you going to put that stupid sword away first?”
“No,” I said. “I’d rather have it in my hand, in case some of the wizards do get into the castle.”
Shiara scowled, but she didn’t object again, and we started hunting through the castle.
The castle was even more confusing on the inside than it was on the outside. Rooms opened into more rooms and then suddenly into a hallway or a flight of stairs. All of them were full of chairs and tables and books and suits of armor, and everything was dusty. The wizards’ spell seemed to have kept spiderwebs and cobwebs out of the castle, but it hadn’t done anything at all about the dust. Nightwitch didn’t like it at all; she kept sneezing. Finally, Shiara picked her up and carried her, which helped a little.
It took a lot longer to figure out where we were going than I’d expected. I could feel the sword pulling me toward the center of the castle, but it was very hard to just go in that direction. In spite of Kazul’s instructions, Shiara and I kept getting into hallways that curved the wrong way and chains of rooms that ended with nowhere else to go. It was very discouraging.
Finally, we came to a large door at the end of a long hall. It was about three times as wide as a normal door and much taller, and it was made of gold with designs on it in relief. There was a staff lying on the floor in front of it; I could tell from the jangling of the sword that it was a wizard’s staff. When I stopped to look at it, the sword jerked impatiently toward the door. “I think this is the place we’ve been looking for,” I said.
Shiara tried the door. “It’s locked. Where’s that key?”
“Just a minute,” I said, and dug for it. “Hey!” I said.
As soon as I touched it, I felt the key pulling at me, the same way the sword was.
“What is it?” Shiara said. “Come on, hurry up!”
“It’s this key,” I said as I unlocked the door. “It feels almost like the sword, except—”
I stopped as the door swung open. The room inside was very large and very high. It was fall of light and not dusty at all. In the center of the floor was something like a shallow iron brazier, about three feet high and nearly five feet across, full of glowing coals. On the other side of the brazier was a couch, and lying on the couch was a man.
He was dressed in expensive-looking clothes, but there were tears in them, as if he had been in a fight. He didn’t look old, even though his beard was long and grey. His head was bare, and at his side was a jeweled scabbard, empty. He was asleep.
Shiara took a deep breath. “That must be him; come on, Daystar, let’s get this over with.”
I stepped into the room and walked slowly toward the couch. As I came around the brazier, I saw that there was another wizard’s staff lying beside the couch. I slowed down even more; something felt wrong. I stopped, standing next to the couch with the key in one hand and the sword in the other.
“Well, now that we’re here, how do we break the spell?” Shiara said, coming up on one side of me.
“Something’s wrong,” I said, and as I spoke I realized what it was. The key was still pulling at me, but as soon as I had stepped into the room, the pulling from the sword had stopped. All I could feel from the sword was the jangling of the magic in the wizard’s staffs.
“Maybe if you lay the sword on him it’ll work,” Shiara said, ignoring me. “Come on; you have to try something or we’ll be here all day.”
“I wouldn’t try anything at all, if I were you,” said a voice behind us. Shiara and I spun to look backward. The doorway of the room was full of wizards.
I STARED AT the wizards for an instant, then turned and jumped for the couch, hoping I could break the spell before the wizards could do anything. I didn’t make it. As I brought the flat of the sword down, the sleeping man vanished. The sword clanged softly against the couch, and I spun back to face the wizards.
Something hit me as I turned, and suddenly I couldn’t move my body at all. I could turn my head far enough to see Shiara, but that was all. Shiara looked as if she were concentrating on something, so I turned my head back to the wizards. They were standing around the sleeping man, who was now lying on the floor in front of the doorway.
“Well done,” said one of the wizards to another.
“Thank you,” the second wizard said. “It was a mere trifle.”
There was a stir at the back of the group of wizards, and a moment later Antorell pushed forward to the front. He had a bandage around one arm, probably where the dragon had bitten him. “I want the boy!” he said. “Now!”
The wizard in front, who seemed to be the leader of the group, looked at Antorell coldly. “You were permitted to join us in order to give you an opportunity to repair some of the damage you did seventeen years ago. Not to further your private ambitions.”
“But you said I could have the boy!”
“Antorell, you’re a fool,” the leader said. “You may have the boy, but after we have possession of the sword, not before.”
“I’ll give you the sword, then!” Antorell said angrily. He strode around the edge of the brazier and reached for the hilt of the sword, just above my hand. I wanted to jerk away, but I still couldn’t move.
There was a flash of blue-and-gold light as Antorell touched the sword, and he was flung backward onto the floor; if he’d fallen a few inches to the other side, he’d have gone into the brazier. I found myself wishing he had, then found myself staring at the brazier. There was something about it that nibbled at my mind, but I couldn’t make it come clear. I didn’t have time to think about it, because the wizards started talking again.
Antorell was picking himself up off the floor, and the leader of the wizards smiled at him nastily. “You see?”
“You knew this would happen!” Antorell said furiously.
“Of course I knew,” the leader said. “Had you spent your time hunting that sword instead of trying to get some sort of ridiculous revenge on Cimorene, you, too, would know.”
“Then demonstrate the proper method for me,” Antorell said sarcastically. “If you know so much, you take the sword.”
“I am not so foolish,” the other wizard replied. “No one save the King of the Enchanted Forest can take that sword from a Bearer who is not willing to give it up, especially not inside this castle.”
“Then how do you expect to get it?” Antorell said even more sarcastically than before.
“We kill the King,” the wizard said, gesturing at the sleeping figure on the floor in front of him. “When the line of the Kings of the Enchanted Forest is ended, one of us can take up the rule of the castle.”
“What good will that do?” Antorell said. “The boy will still have the sword. And, as you have reminded me so many times in the past two days, he seems to be able to use it.”
The leader shrugged. “If your tale is true, I shall admit to some surprise; I thought no one but the King could use the sword. Which is why one of us must become King.”
“You accuse me of lying?”
“Why should I bother?”
Antorell scowled and started to raise his staff, then seemed to change his mind. “When the boy blows your own spells back at you, perhaps you will see what I mean.”
“Nonsense!” the leader of the wizards replied. “You obviously know little of what you speak.”
“No, of course not; I have only seen the boy in action,” Antorell said with awful sarcasm.
The leader shrugged again. “What the boy has learned matters little. The power of the sword passes to the ruler of the castle, and there is nothing he can do about it. He will be easy enough to take care of then.”
Out of the comer of my eye, I saw a flicker of movement; Shiara was edging toward me. I had to force myself not to turn my head. The wizards seemed to have forgotten both of us, and I didn’t want to remind them. I hoped they wouldn’t remember until after Shiara had done whatever she was planning to do. I also hoped Shiara was planning to do something; I certainly couldn’t, and I didn’t think Nightwitch would be much help against all those wizards.
“Stop talking and let’s get on with it,” one of the wizards in the back said.
“An excellent suggestion. That is, if you are quite satisfied, Antorell?” said the leader.
Antorell glared and stalked over to the rest of the wizards. The leader looked around and nodded. “Begin.”
Under other circumstances, the spell-casting would have been very interesting to watch. The wizards spent quite a bit of time arguing about where each of them should stand, and exactly what the correct angle was for each staff, and in what order the spells should be said. The leader seemed particularly concerned that things be done right; evidently there was something about the castle that would cause problems if everything wasn’t perfect. Finally, they agreed on what they were going to do, and they got started.
As the wizards started chanting, something touched my arm; if I could have moved, I’d have jumped. It was Shiara. “Do something before they finish!” I whispered.
“I’ve been trying!” Shiara whispered back. “But it isn’t working.”
“Oh, no.” I was so upset that I spoke the words in a normal tone of voice; fortunately, the wizards were too busy chanting to notice. “You haven’t been polite to anyone since you apologized to Telemain, and you used that up on the last bunch of wizards.”
Shiara looked stricken. “Daystar, I’m sorry!”
“There isn’t anything we can do about it now,” I said. “If you—”
I stopped, because the wizards had stopped chanting. Shiara and I both looked at them, but the wizards didn’t seem to be finished with what they were doing. They looked more like they’d been interrupted in the middle of things. The leader was bending over the man on the floor, who was still sleeping. A moment later the wizard straightened with an exclamation and stretched his staff out over the man’s body.
The figure dissolved into sparkles, leaving a little blob of mud on the floor, and the wizards stirred in surprise. “A simulacrum!” said someone at the back of the wizards.
I let out my breath in relief. Simulacra are very hard to make; like most major spells, earth, air, fire, and water have to be properly mixed in order to get a good one, and that’s fairly tricky. A really good magician can make a simulacrum that looks exactly like someone, but it doesn’t have any connection to the actual person at all. As a result, a simulacrum can’t be used against someone the way other types of magic can; what they’re mainly good for is confusing people.
This one seemed to have done an excellent job. The wizards were glaring at each other accusingly. “If that was a simulacrum,” one of them said finally, “where’s the King? Who put it there, anyway?”
“Old Zemenar, probably,” an older-looking wizard said. “It looked like him, and setting up a decoy is just the sort of thing he would do.”
“That doesn’t make sense! He started this whole affair in the first place; why would he put a false King in the castle to distract us?”
“Zemenar never trusted anybody. He probably wanted to do this himself, so he made it as hard as he could for anyone else to finish the job. Or maybe he was just being ornery.” The older wizard shrugged. “Either way, I doubt that he expected to get eaten by a dragon.”
“We have wasted enough time here,” the leader of the wizards said with sudden decision. “Silvarex, take three others and begin searching for the King at once. We cannot allow him to escape again.”
He went on giving instructions, but I stopped paying attention. He wasn’t talking to me, and I had other things to worry about. I was still holding the key in my left hand, and as soon as the simulacrum disappeared, the key stopped tugging me and started getting warm. My other arm, the one with the sword, was tingling under the jangling of the wizards, and my head felt very light. I had a sudden, strong feeling that there was something important I ought to remember, but the jangling of the wizards’ magic kept distracting me just before I could figure out what it was.
“Daystar!” Shiara hissed, practically in my ear.
I jumped a little and realized that the wizard’s spell holding me was beginning to weaken. I couldn’t move very much or very fast, though, and if the wizards noticed, they’d just throw the spell at me again. I decided not to move at all until I was sure I could move the sword fast enough to block another spell if they threw one at me, then whispered to Shiara, “Don’t do that. They might notice.”
Shiara snorted. “If you don’t want them to notice, you’d better try to notice sooner. That was the third time I called you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“So am I. What are we going to do?”
“If you could— Nightwitch!” I broke off in mid-sentence as a small black streak darted toward the group of wizards. One of them raised his staff; Shiara cried out and Nightwitch dodged. The spell hit the marble floor in a ball of light, and a moment later the kitten was among the wizards’ feet. I couldn’t see what was happening, but I could hear the wizards shouting.
“There it goes!”
“Stop it!”
“It got away.”
“Find it,” the leader of the wizards commanded. “You, Grineran, go after it; it may lead you to the one we seek.”
One of the wizards nodded and left, and I blinked. There were only three wizards left now: a short, round wizard, the wizard who was giving orders, and Antorell.
Antorell was staring at Shiara and me. “What about them?” he said suddenly. “They may know something.”
The leader of the wizards looked thoughtful. “For once, Antorell, you may have made a useful suggestion. Persuading them to explain what they know may be difficult, however.”
Antorell grinned nastily. “I think I can manage it.”
“Really.” The leader sounded skeptical. “The girl is a fire-witch, and the boy has the sword, remember.”
“Sword or no, he cannot be immune to spells or Silvarex would never have been able to bind him,” Antorell said.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Something like this.”
Antorell waved his staff casually in my direction as he spoke. Even if I’d been able to move, I wouldn’t have been able to twist the sword into a position to block the spell before it hit me, especially since I didn’t realize what he was doing until the pain struck. It felt as if I were fighting the fire-witch again, only this time the pain was all through my body instead of just in my arms. It was worse than anything I’d ever felt. I think I screamed, but I’m not sure.
Beside me, Shiara shouted, and a long ribbon of fire shot through the air in front of me, straight at Antorell. The pain stopped abruptly and the key in my left hand got even hotter. Antorell was on fire; he was slapping at his clothes and his staff, trying to put out the flames. Neither of the other wizards was helping; they were staring toward Shiara and me.
The ribbon of fire still hung in the air above the brazier, making a curtain of flames between us and the wizards. Slowly, reluctantly, it began to fade, and as it died, the heat from the key in my left hand faded along with it. Fire, I thought. Fire in the brazier, fire in the key; Kazul had said something about the key and fire....
I lifted my left hand, fighting the remnant of the wizard’s spell, and threw the key forward into the brazier.
There was a whoosh of flame that leapt all the way to the ceiling, then died. I thought I saw something in it, but it vanished before I could be sure. The brazier began to glow, and the whole room was suddenly full of magic, the magic of the castle and the Enchanted Forest. It seemed to be getting ready for something, or perhaps waiting; I was sure there was something else I should do, but I couldn’t think what.
“Stop them!” the leader of the wizards shouted.
“Move, Daystar!” Shiara cried, and ducked down behind the brazier.
I tried to follow her, but I couldn’t move fast enough because of the remains of the binding spell and because I was worrying about what else I was supposed to do in order to finish the spell I’d started with the key. I saw Antorell and the other wizards bring their staffs up, and I tried desperately to move the sword far enough to block whatever they were throwing at me. I made it, but only just.
There was a flash as the wizards’ spell hit the sword, and a tingle ran through me. The spell that had been binding me vanished; I could feel what was left of it flowing through the sword along with the rest of the magic the wizards had thrown at me. It felt a lot like the jolt of power I’d gotten in the forest, when I’d used the sword on the spell the wizards had tried to throw at Shiara, except that this time I could tell where the power was going.
The power was flowing through me, into the magic of the Enchanted Forest itself. Back where it had come from in the first place, if Kazul was right about where wizards got most of their magic. Back to...
I felt my eyes widening and almost missed blocking the next spell. Then I saw more wizards appearing behind the three in the doorway; if I didn’t do something soon, I wouldn’t be able to do anything except block spells. There was no way to find out whether I was right except to try.
I stepped up to the edge of the brazier, took a deep breath and said loudly:
“Power of water, wind, and earth,
Turn the spell back to its birth.
Raise the fire to free the lord
By the power of wood and sword.”
As I spoke the last word, I thrust the Sword of the Sleeping King into the middle of the coals in the brazier.
As the sword touched the coals, I felt the magic of the forest surge forward around me. Fire shot up to the ceiling, the same way it had when I threw the key into the brazier, but this time the flames didn’t fade. They got brighter and brighter until all I could see was fire. I heard a rumbling sound like the roof of the Caves of Chance falling in, and the floor shook under me. A voice said loudly, “All hail the Waker of the Sword! Hail!” and voices all around me shouted, “Hail!”
Echoes from the shout rolled around the room, like thunder rolling back and forth across the sky. I felt very lightheaded; I couldn’t see anything except fire, I couldn’t hear anything except echoes, and I couldn’t feel anything at all Then something in my head seemed to snap into place, and the noise stopped abruptly.
I let go of the sword and stepped back a pace. The light in my eyes started to dwindle into flames again, but now I could see things in them, outlined in fire: dragons fighting wizards outside the castle, and dwarves fighting elves, and elves fighting wizards and other elves. I couldn’t tell who was winning; sometimes it seemed to be one set of fiery little shapes, and sometimes it seemed to be the other.
As I stared at the fire, I realized that I could feel the jangling from all the wizard’s staffs and the deep rumbling of the magic of the Enchanted Forest and the purring of the castle itself, even though I wasn’t holding the sword any more. I could even feel the shape of the wizards’ spells inside and outside of the castle, including the one around and over the brazier. I could feel the magic of the sword, too, weaving a bright pattern through all the other types of magic. I followed the pattern until I saw how it worked, and then I reached out toward all the different kinds of magic and twisted.
The jangling of the wizard’s staffs stopped abruptly as the power of the Enchanted Forest swallowed up the power of the staffs. Immediately, the flames in front of me swirled and pulled together, so that the pictures I’d been watching disappeared, and I found myself staring at a crowd of very angry ex-wizards through a shifting curtain of fire.
At least two of the wizards were wearing swords, and they were reaching for them. The leader started to point in my direction, and I ducked instinctively. Almost every wizard who’s any good carries a spell or two outside his staff, just in case the staff gets stolen. The wizards at the castle didn’t have any magic in their staffs anymore, but they might still be able to make trouble with their spare spells.
I got behind the brazier just in time to avoid being hit by something like a large lightning bolt. I swallowed, hoping these wizards didn’t have very many more spells like that. I heard shouts, and I rolled to my feet, expecting to see the wizards with the swords coming after me.
Wizards were running in several directions, but none of them seemed to be heading for me. For a moment, I was puzzled; then I saw Morwen, Telemain, and a couple of elves charging into the room from the hallway. I didn’t stop to worry about how they had gotten there. I turned back to the brazier, to pull the Sword of the Sleeping King out of it so I could join the fight, and stopped.
The flames were still swirling in the air above the brazier, but they were denser somehow, and brighter. All I could see was a mass of white-and-yellow light, shot with power. Then something flashed so brightly that I had to cover my eyes. When I could see again, there was a door in the center of the brazier, right on top of the place where I had thrown the key and facing the point of the sword. The door was hung between two pillars that looked as if they were made of solid light, and I couldn’t see anything in back of it except light and flames.
I stared at the door for a moment as it grew even more solid. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out what was on the other side. Doors like that are even worse than the one in Morwen’s house; they can go anywhere. I reached for the Sword of the Sleeping King, but before my hand touched it, the door opened and a man stepped through.
He didn’t look at all like the simulacrum; he was taller, with black hair and tired-looking grey eyes, and he didn’t have a beard. He was dressed in plain clothes, but there was a feeling of strength about him, and power. Even without the thin gold circlet he wore I would have guessed who he was. I took a deep breath of relief as he stepped down from the brazier and onto the marble floor in front of me.
As he did, the doorway behind him melted back into leaping flames, which faded quickly until there was nothing there except the brazier and the glowing coals. The room was utterly silent. I looked up at the King of the Enchanted Forest for a moment, then turned to the brazier and reached for the hilt of the Sword of the Sleeping King.
The sword wasn’t even warm from the fire, but the blade shone even more brightly than it had the day Mother brought it out of the Enchanted Forest and gave it to me. I looked at it for a minute, then turned back to the King and held it out.
“I’ve come to return your sword, Father,” I said.
FOR A LONG moment the King of the Enchanted Forest looked at me over the hilt of the sword. Then he reached out and took it. He held it up for a moment, then turned and brought it down hard on the edge of the brazier.
The brazier split and fell apart, scattering embers. As soon as it hit the floor, it started to melt and vanish, and in a few seconds there was nothing left of it except the key. The King bent and picked it up, then turned back to me and smiled. “Thank you, Daystar.”
“You’re welcome,” I said automatically. Then I noticed Shiara sitting on the floor, where she had dived when the wizards started throwing spells around. She was looking from me to the King and back, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “Shiara, this is the King of the Enchanted Forest. Father, this is my friend, Shiara. She’s a fire-witch.”
Father bowed. Shiara looked at him and cleared her throat, then cleared it again and said, “Hey, urn, are you really Daystar’s father?”
The King smiled slightly and nodded. “Of course. Only the Kings of the Enchanted Forest can use the sword.” He raised it so that the light flashing from the blade filled the room, then in one fluid motion he sheathed it. He looked at me and smiled again.
Shiara blinked, then turned her head and glared at me “Why didn’t you tell me the King of the Enchanted Forest was your father?” she demanded.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t know it myself until just now,” I said.
“Ha!” said Shiara. “Why—”
Before she could finish her sentence, Nightwitch pounced on her. I was just as surprised as Shiara; I hadn’t seen the kitten coming. “Nightwitch!” Shiara said. “Where did you come from?”
“I believe she came with them,” Father said, nodding toward the doorway.
Shiara and I turned. A dozen wizards were sprawled on the floor in a tangled pile. Some of them were wrapped in vines, some of them seemed to be frozen, and some of them had elves and cats sitting on them. As soon as we turned to look at them, the elves all got up and bowed, then sat down again quickly before the wizards could get up and do anything. The cats just sat and blinked at us.
“I don’t think you need to be quite so careful,” the King said to the elves. “If you’ll let them up one at a time, I’ll decide what to do with them.”
The elves nodded, and one of them stood up and bowed politely to the King. Father walked over to the wizard the elf had been sitting on and started asking him questions. The wizard didn’t answer. Finally, Father shrugged and waved a hand. The wizard disappeared, and Father went on to the next one.
As soon as they got off of the wizards, the elves started gathering up the staffs into a big bundle; most of the cats just sat down and washed their paws. None of the wizards would say anything to Father, and he didn’t waste much time on any of them. In a few minutes, there were only three wizards left. I was watching them when Shiara poked me.
“Daystar, where’s Morwen?” she said when I turned around. “Those are her cats; she has to be around somewhere.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I remember seeing her right before Father showed up, and Telemain was with her.” I looked toward the door, where the last few wizards were, and blinked. “Shiara, where’s Antorell?”
“Didn’t he disappear already?”
“No, he didn’t. I was watching,” I said. Shiara and I looked at each other for an instant, then headed for the doorway.
No one tried to stop us. One of the elves gave us an odd look, but another elf grabbed his arm and whispered something to him, and he only bowed deeply as we passed. It made me feel almost as uncomfortable as I felt when the dwarves bowed to me; I didn’t like it at all.
Outside in the hallway we found Morwen, kneeling on the floor beside Telemain and wrapping long strips of black cloth around his right shoulder. There were pieces of odd-looking plants all over the floor, and a little way down the hall was a puddle of something dark and slimy. The puddle had a wizard’s staff lying across it, and a wizard’s robe was sort of crumpled up under the staff; I got the distinct feeling that the puddle used to be a wizard.
“Morwen!” Shiara said. “What happened? Can I help?”
“What happened was a battle,” Morwen said. “I should think that would be obvious enough.”
“But how did—” Shiara stopped, because Telemain was stirring. A moment later he opened his eyes and looked up at all of us.
“What was that?” he said rather hazily.
“That,” said Morwen, “was a sword. They are usually long, very sharp, and pointed. You’re lucky it didn’t take your head off.”
Telemain started to shake his head, then winced. “A plain sword. No wonder I couldn’t block it; I thought it was a spell.”
Morwen snorted. “You may be one of the greatest magical theoreticians in the world, but you don’t have a particle of common sense,” she said acidly. “Why, in heaven’s name, didn’t you duck?”
“I did duck!” Telemain said, looking startled and indignant. “He wasn’t aiming for my shoulder, he was aiming for my chest. And if you think I’m going to put up with you and your—”
“You,” Morwen said firmly, “are going to put up with me until that shoulder is healed. Which, may I remind you, means that I will have to put up with you for the same period of time. Fortunately, it shouldn’t take very long; a few days, at most.”
“A few days!” Telemain said. “Woman, are you mad? It’ll take at least a week!”
“Not if I change herbs twice a day,” Morwen said in an irritated tone. “I should know; it’s my field.”
“Well, it’s my shoulder!”
“I’m so glad you noticed,” Morwen said. “Stop fussing, or you’ll make things worse and I will have to put up with you for a week.”
Telemain stopped talking and just glared. It didn’t seem to bother Morwen in the least. She dusted her hands and began picking up some of the plants that were scattered all over the floor. When he saw that Morwen wasn’t even watching him, Telemain stopped glaring and tried to sit up. Right away, Morwen was beside him, pushing him back down on the floor.
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” Morwen asked. “Stop jumping around like that.”
“I’m quite capable of sitting up,” Telemain said. He didn’t look as if he were telling the truth; he was too pale, and he was having a lot of trouble pushing himself upright even before Morwen started pushing in the opposite direction.
“You are too stubborn to know what is good for you,” Morwen informed him.
Telemain glared at her again. “This floor is cold, hard, and extremely uncomfortable. Do you expect me to lie here all day?”
“That would be far too much to ask,” the King of the Enchanted Forest said from the doorway behind us. “But I believe I can do something about it.”
Morwen stood up and nodded, then frowned at Telemain, who was trying to sit up again. “I told you to stay there, and I meant it, Kings or no Kings. Excuse me, Mendanbar,” she added, looking at the King.
“Morwen, you are incorrigible,” Father said, smiling. He looked at Telemain. “You may as well do as she says; Cimorene’s the only person I’ve ever met who has more determination than Morwen. Which room do you want?”
“The brown one,” Morwen said before Telemain could answer. “He’ll need a firm bed to support that shoulder.”
Father laughed. “Of course.” He started to lift his hand, and I cleared my throat.
“I would like to ask them something before they go,” I said when Father turned toward me. He nodded, and I looked at Morwen. “Did you happen to notice what happened to the wizard who was halfway around the brazier when you came in? I didn’t see him afterward.”
“You mean Antorell? Yes, I thought I saw him,” Morwen said. “I’m afraid I don’t recall. He wasn’t the one I melted, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Could he have gotten away?” Shiara asked.
Morwen glanced at the King. “If you will allow me, I can find out fairly quickly.” Father nodded, and Morwen made a chuckling sort of sound. Two of the cats poked their heads around the comer of the doorframe.
“Daystar wants to know what’s become of one of the wizards,” Morwen said to the cats. “The one named Antorell.”
The cats looked at each other, and one of them twitched its tail. The other one looked back at Morwen and said, “Rroowww!” and they both pulled their heads back out of sight.
“He got away,” Morwen said, turning back to the King. “Scum says he ducked down the hall while Telemain and I were busy with the rest of them.”
Father frowned in concentration. “Well, he isn’t inside the castle anymore,” he said after a moment. “I suppose I’d better go find him; he might still be able to cause trouble, and I think it’s about time we checked on things outside, anyway.” He looked at me. “Is there anything else you need to ask right now?”
“No,” I said. There were still a lot of things I wanted to know about, but I couldn’t really say I needed to know any of them. Father nodded and looked back at Morwen. “The brown room, I think you said?”
Morwen nodded, and Father waved his hand. Morwen and Telemain disappeared. Father raised his hand for another gesture, then paused and looked at Shiara and me. “I suppose you want to come, too?”
“Yes, we do. That is, if it isn’t going to cause problems,” I said.
I hadn’t quite finished my sentence when the castle dissolved into mist around us. The mist cleared immediately, and we were standing on springy green moss with the trees of the Enchanted Forest all around us. At first I thought Father had taken us to a place a long way from the castle; then I saw all the dragons and elves among the trees. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the castle right behind us.
“Hey, where did all the trees come from?” Shiara said.
“They came from the wizards’ magic,” Father said. “When Day star released the magic they had stored in their staffs, it went back into the forest, and things got back to normal in a hurry.”
“When Daystar did what?” Shiara said.
“It was part of the sword and the fire and the brazier,” I said hastily. “I think you were busy ducking.”
“Oh,” said Shiara.
By that time the dragons and elves had seen us, and everyone started cheering and bowing. In the middle of the cheering and bowing, one of the dragons came over. “It is good to see Your Majesty again,” she said.
“It is good to be here again,” the King replied. “How goes the battle?”
“It is quite finished,” the dragon said. “There are a few still out herding prisoners together, but that’s about all. Oh, yes, we won,” she added.
“Excellent!” the King said, but he was watching the trees out of the comers of his eyes, and there was a tiny crease between his eyebrows. “If King Kazul is about, I would like to speak with her.”
The dragon smiled and her eyes glittered as if she were enjoying a private joke. “Kazul will be here in a moment.”
Father nodded, managing to look impatient and polite at the same time. Suddenly the cheering got much louder, and then the dragons drew apart and Kazul came through the trees toward us. She was smiling, and she looked very large and green and shining. She was so magnificent that none of us saw the figure with her until they were both quite close to us.
I was the first to notice that Kazul had someone with her. When I saw who it was, I blinked and swallowed hard. “Mother?”
“Cimorene!” shouted Father. He took three strides forward and took her in his arms. Kazul smiled and sat back, looking smug.
Mother was laughing and crying at the same time; I’d never seen her react like that to anything before. Not ever. I was still staring when Shiara poked me.
“Don’t stare,” she whispered when I turned. “It’s not polite.”
I looked at Shiara for a minute, and my face got hot. I couldn’t really say anything, though; she was right. I felt very peculiar, but fortunately Mother and the King stopped hugging each other just then and started paying attention to the rest of us instead.
Father went to talk to Kazul, and Mother came over to us. She looked at me for a moment, then put her hands on my shoulders and said, “You’ve done very well, Daystar. For the most part, that is.”
I didn’t say anything, because I was sure she meant the way I had almost lost the Sword of the Sleeping King to the Princess. Then Shiara shifted uncomfortably, and I remembered that I hadn’t introduced her. “Mother, this is my friend, Shiara,” I said. “She’s a fire-witch.”
“I can tell that by looking at her,” Mother said. She smiled at Shiara. “You’ll stay with us for at least a few days, won’t you?”
Shiara nodded.
“Good,” Mother said. “Now, if you will excuse me, there are still a few things I have to attend to.”
“Mother,” I said, and she turned. “That wizard, Antorell. He was in the castle, but he got away; I thought you should know.”
“He did not get away!” said a familiar voice behind me. “I caught him myself. Do you want him for anything, or can I eat him?”
We all turned. The little dragon was sitting on the other side of the bridge, holding on to one of Antorell’s arms. Antorell’s robe was dirty and he didn’t have his staff anymore. He looked very tattered and very unhappy; the dragon looked extremely pleased with itself. “Well?” it said. “Can I eat him?”
I looked at Mother, and she shook her head. “I don’t think you should eat him,” I said to the dragon. “The King talked to all the other wizards, and he’ll probably want to talk to this one, too.”
“Well, I want him back when the King gets finished with him,” the little dragon said. “I caught him, and I’m going to eat him.”
“He’ll probably give you a stomachache,” Shiara said.
I stopped listening to the conversation, because Antorell had straightened and was glaring past me, at Mother. He looked more powerful, somehow, but no one else seemed to have noticed anything unusual. I looked uneasily over my shoulder and saw Father, still talking to Kazul. I looked back, wondering whether I really had anything to worry about. Without his staff, all Antorell had were his extra spells, and he’d probably used them up in the battle. At least, I hoped he had.
Shiara and the dragon were still arguing. Suddenly, Antorell twisted and made a throwing motion with his left hand. The dragon shrieked in pain and let go of him, and he ran toward the bridge, waving his hands and shouting. I felt a sudden, intense surge of magic around him, and an instant later the demon appeared.
It materialized right in front of us, all purple scales and orange claws and silver-green teeth. Fortunately for them, demons are color-blind. Antorell shouted again, in a language I didn’t understand, and pointed at Mother. The demon nodded, and darted out.
I grabbed something I couldn’t see out of the air in front of me and pulled. The demon vanished, and Antorell cried out in surprise. I yanked at the something again and sent Antorell after the demon; after what he’d been trying to do, I didn’t care whether the King wanted to talk to him or not. Then I saw that the little dragon was turning pink around the edges again. I let go of whatever it was, grabbed a different one, and twisted. The dragon gave a surprised-sounding squeak and turned green again, all at once.
I dropped the piece of nothing I’d been holding and turned. Mother was shaking her head. “That was a bit extreme, Daystar,” she said, but her expression was proud.
“Daystar, what did you... I mean, how did you...” Shiara gave up and just stared at me.
“I don’t know,” I said. I was at least as surprised as she was. “I’m not even sure what I did.”
“What happened?” the little dragon asked. It looked around suspiciously. “Is that wizard dead?”
“No, but he probably wishes he were,” Mother said. “Demons do not like surprise visitors.”
“Oh, is that what Daystar did with him?” said Father’s voice from behind me. “I was wondering.”
I jumped and turned around to see the King and Kazul standing there. The King was looking at Mother; Kazul was looking at the little dragon. “Where have you been?” Kazul said in a resigned voice.
“I’ve been catching wizards!” the little dragon said proudly. “Well, one of them, anyway. He threw dragonsbane at me again and called a demon and Daystar got rid of both of them. I didn’t even get to eat him,” the dragon finished sadly.
“I see,” Kazul said, shaking her head. “I think you’d better spend the rest of the day with me. It may, just possibly, keep you out of trouble.”
“I don’t understand!” Shiara burst out. “How could Antorell do any magic without his staff? And how could Daystar do any magic at all? And what did Antorell have to do with the sword and everything?”
The King smiled at Mother, then looked at Shiara and me. “As long as things seem to be quiet out here, why don’t we go inside? That way, we can be comfortable while I explain.”
Shiara and I nodded. Father waved his hand, and the Enchanted Forest dissolved into mist around us.
WE APPEARED IN one of the rooms inside the castle, a small, cozy-looking place with lots of bookshelves. It was just as dusty as all the other rooms Shiara and I had been through, but when Father waved all the dust vanished. Mother muttered something about instant cleaning being no excuse for letting things get into such a state, and we all sat down. The King looked at us. “I believe this should begin with you, Cimorene,” he said. Mother looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded and started talking. Apparently, Mother really was a Princess. She was the youngest daughter of the ruler of a very large kingdom on the other side of the Mountains of Morning. It sounded like a nice place, unfortunately. Mother thought it was boring. So, when she was about sixteen, she ran away. She went straight to the Mountains of Morning, to the Pass of Silver Ice that the dragons guard, and demanded that the surprised dragons make her a prisoner. The dragons weren’t quite sure what to do, but finally Kazul agreed to take her. Although Kazul wasn’t King of the Dragons then, she was fairly important, and she and Mother got along very well. A couple of knights from her father’s court showed up after a while, but Mother told them in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want to be rescued. The knights went away, and Mother stayed with the dragons.
Mother spent a long time as Kazul’s Princess. After a while, Kazul started teaching her dragon magic, and Mother got very good at it. She made quite a few friends in the Enchanted Forest, too, because Kazul traveled a lot. And then the old King of the Dragons died, and all the dragons went to the Ford of Whispering Snakes to try and move Colin’s Stone, and Kazul was the one who did.
That was how Mother met my father. The dragons had been friends of the rulers of the Enchanted Forest for centuries, so when he heard that the dragons had a new King, the King of the Enchanted Forest came to pay his respects. He also wanted to talk to Kazul about the Society of Wizards; they were getting a little out of hand, and he was trying to decide whether to use the sword on them.
“The sword can do quite a few different things,” Father explained. “One of them is to drain off the power in a wizard’s staff gradually, over a period of time; another is to empty a staff of magic all at once. Most of the time, I used the sword to keep wizards from draining too much magic out of the Enchanted Forest, not to destroy their staffs completely, but the Society of Wizards was becoming a problem in spite of what I was doing with the sword.”
“Then why didn’t you empty their staffs?” Shiara demanded. “It would have saved us an awful lot of trouble.”
“It would have saved me some trouble, too,” Father said. “But I couldn’t destroy their magic completely like that without a very good reason. Which was why I went to talk to Kazul.”
Mother and Kazul both liked Father very much, and he started visiting them more often. The wizards kept making problems, so he had lots of reasons. Finally, he and Mother decided to get married, but before they could even announce it, someone stole the sword.
The King and Mother dropped everything else to find out who had it and where it was. It didn’t take long; evidently the sword does strange things when it’s taken outside the Enchanted Forest, so it wasn’t hard to locate. One of the wizards had it, of course, and he’d put it in a tower well away from the forest, with a lot of spells around it to keep the King from getting to it.
That was when the argument started. Father and Mother both wanted to go steal the sword back, and neither of them wanted the other to go. Kazul was the one who settled it; she said that the wizards were expecting Father to try to get the sword back, but they weren’t expecting Mother. The King still objected. He said the sword might do something awful to Mother, because she wasn’t one of his family. Kazul told him that if that was all he was worrying about, he should many Mother right away, so she’d be a member of his family. Apparently, he still didn’t like the idea of Mother going off to steal the sword back, but he could see that he wasn’t going to be able to out-argue Mother and Kazul. So he and Mother got married.
Kazul performed the ceremony, and a few days later Kazul and Mother flew off to the tower where the sword was. It took them nearly three days to get there. By the time they arrived, most of the wizards had left for the Enchanted Forest, but the sword was still there. The only wizard in the tower was Antorell.
Mother knew Antorell fairly well. He was the son of Zemenar, the wizard who’d stolen the sword, and he’d been courting her for several years. Mother found out that he didn’t know what the sword was; he’d been left to watch it without being told anything, and he was very sulky about it. Mother managed to talk him into letting her inside the tower to see the sword, then she broke the last of the spells guarding it and took it. Right away, Antorell tried to kill her and take the sword himself; evidently, he’d let her into the tower because he knew she could break the last warding spell and he couldn’t. So Mother melted him.
On their way back to the Enchanted Forest, Kazul and Mother were met by one of the dragons, who told them about the wizards’ attack on the castle. Kazul flew straight there, but by the time they arrived the battle was over, and the dragons had put their own shield up around the castle. Kazul sent some of the dragons out to look for the wizards who had gotten away, and then she and Mother had a long talk about what to do next.
Both of them were sure that the wizards had put a spell on the King, and they were just as sure that the sword could break the spell. Unfortunately, the sword could only be used by one of the Kings of the Enchanted Forest or his children, and then only when the earth, air, and water of the Enchanted Forest and the fire of the sword itself had recognized the person holding it as a rightful heir of the sword. And the only way to be recognized was to go out in the Enchanted Forest and hope you would do the right things at the right times.
Mother and Kazul spent a lot of time trying to figure out a way to get the sword to work for someone besides the King, but they never did. Then Mother found out she was going to have a baby, and about that time Antorell found her. He blamed her for his father’s death, because she’d taken the sword, and he tried to kill her. Mother had to melt him again.
After that. Mother decided that she’d better find somewhere to hide until I was old enough to use the sword. The wizards were hunting for the sword, but as long as it stayed inside the Enchanted Forest it was invisible to them. Mother, however, wasn’t, and she knew that if she stayed in the Enchanted Forest, one of the wizards’ spells would find her eventually. On the other hand, she couldn’t take the sword out of the forest and still keep it hidden, any more than the wizards could.
So Mother hid the sword inside the forest, then left and never went back until the day she gave the sword to me. She put up some good spells to keep Antorell from finding us, then waited. She taught me very carefully, without ever telling me anything about the sword or the King of the Enchanted Forest or the war with the wizards, so that I would have a chance of being recognized by the sword and reaching the castle without getting caught by one of the wizards’ spells.
“I’m afraid it was rather hard on you, Daystar,” she said. “But we couldn’t think of anything else that had a chance of working.”
“Well, I think we were lucky,” Shiara said.
The King smiled at me. “Kings of the Enchanted Forest are supposed to be lucky.”
Shiara blinked. “You weren’t very lucky, were you? What did those wizards do to you, anyway?”
The King shook his head. “Zemenar made a bad mistake when he attacked the castle without bringing the sword with him. He and about ten others broke into the castle during the battle. I got a couple of them, but without the sword I was outnumbered a little too badly. They wanted to kill me, but they couldn’t do it inside the castle without the sword, and they couldn’t take me outside the castle because of the dragons. So Zemenar decided to put me in storage, in a manner of speaking, while he went back for the sword. The simulacrum was a decoy, in case someone managed to get into the castle while he was gone.”
“But where were you for seventeen years?” Shiara said.
“There are... places that can be reached through the proper doors, places that can’t be gotten into or out of except through such a door. Some of them are very large; some aren’t. Zemenar found one that suited him and put me in it, then hid the door. Without the sword or the key, I couldn’t get out until someone put the door back up.”
“But I still don’t understand about Antorell. He acted as if he wanted to do something to Daystar a lot more than he wanted the sword.”
“Antorell never knew what the sword was,” Mother said. “Zemenar and the Head Wizard were the only ones who knew the whole story, and after the way Antorell failed to guard the sword, the Head Wizard wouldn’t tell him anything.”
“Ha!” said Shiara. “Served him right. But what did Daystar do to Antorell, anyway? And how? He never did anything like it before.”
“He couldn’t do it before,” Father said. “The Kings of the Enchanted Forest can use the magic of the forest directly, but only after the sword has acknowledged them. Daystar wasn’t acknowledged until he put the sword into the fire.”
“Oh.” Shiara sat back, looking thoughtful.
There was a moment’s silence, then I thought of some thing else I wanted to ask about. “Mother,” I said, “do you know anything about fire-witches’ magic?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Why do you want to know?”
“Could you teach Shiara how to do things?” I said. “She helped me a lot, and I think she ought to have some sort of reward, and that’s why she came to the Enchanted Forest in the first place.”
“I didn’t do very much,” Shiara objected. “You kept me from staying a statue, and I think you saved my life when the roof of the Caves of Chance fell in. You’re the one who deserves a reward.”
“I think,” Mother broke in before I could answer Shiara, “that it is time you told us what you have been doing these past few days. I have a general idea, but I would like a few more details, and Mendanbar hasn’t heard anything about it yet.”
I looked at Father, and he nodded, so Shiara and I went through our story again. I did most of the talking, with Shiara putting in a comment now and then when she thought I was leaving something out. I finished by explaining about Shiara’s magic. Both Mother and the King looked rather startled, and then the King began to smile.
“A polite fire-witch,” he said thoughtfully. “Very unusual.”
“I don’t want to have to be polite to people!” Shiara said angrily.
“Why not?” I said. “You’re getting much better at it.”
“Especially not to you.” Shiara said.
“I can understand that,” Father said. “It’s his fault, after all.”
“What?” said Shiara and I together.
“It’s Daystar’s fault that you have to be polite,” Father repeated. “His and the sword’s. One of the things the sword does besides controlling wizards is unlocking people’s talents, particularly magical talents. When you met Day star, both of you touched the sword at the same time. You wanted to be able to use your magic and Daystar wanted you to be more polite; I think the sword did the best it could, under the circumstances.”
“I knew it!” Shiara glared at me. “I said it sounded like something that stupid sword would do!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know. But at least you can use your magic now, sometimes; isn’t that better than not being able to use it at all?”
“No!” said Shiara. “It’s worse! I have to go home and be nice to people, and it probably won’t work most of the time because I have to mean it, and how can I mean it if I’m always thinking about being able to do magic? And it’s boring at home, and people will still keep expecting me to do things I can’t do. I don’t even know anyone who could teach me about magic even if I could get it to work all the time. I’ll never learn anything!”
Little flickers of flame started running down Shiara’s cheeks. It took me a minute to realize that she was crying fire, and when I did, I didn’t know what to do about it.
“That is quite enough of that,” Mother said while I was still thinking. Shiara looked up.
“You don’t know what it’s like! It’s horrible.”
“On the contrary, I know quite well what it’s like,” Mother said. “And the solution is quite obvious. In fact, it’s the same one I used.”
“What?” Shiara blinked, and the flame-tears stopped running down her face. “What do you mean?”
“You can become Kazul’s Princess,” Mother said. “She doesn’t have one at the moment. It would have a great many advantages on both sides. You will learn considerably more about magic, dragons, and the Enchanted Forest than you would anywhere else, and Kazul will get a Princess who can’t be accidentally roasted if one of the other dragons gets out of hand. And you’ll be living nearby, which will give Daystar and Mendanbar a chance to figure out how to reverse that ridiculous politeness spell.”
“But I’m not a Princess!” Shiara said.
“If Kazul says you are a Princess, then you are a Princess,” Mother said firmly. “Besides, it will be excellent experience for you later.”
I opened my mouth to ask what Mother meant by that, and Shiara said, “But are you sure Kazul would be willing to do it?”
“Kazul will have no objection whatever to training the next Queen of the Enchanted Forest,” Mother said calmly. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
I closed my mouth very quickly and looked at the floor, feeling my face getting hot. I heard Shiara say, “Oh,” in a small voice, and then the King laughed.
“Cimorene, I think you’re going a little fast,” he said, still chuckling. “If Shiara wants to go live with Kazul, I’m sure we can make the arrangements, but there’s no reason to hurry. She can stay here until she decides; there’s plenty of room. Now, if you don’t mind, I think we should go back outside; Kazul said something about a feast, and I haven’t had a good meal in seventeen years.”
Mother didn’t object, so the King moved us all to the feast with another wave. Everyone was there: dwarves and dragons and elves and cats, and even a few wizards who had been on the King’s side. Morwen was there, too, but she spent quite a bit of time popping back to the castle to make sure Telemain wasn’t doing anything she disapproved of.
Mother and the King sat at one end of a long table, and Kazul sat at the other. Shiara and I sat in the middle. The people in between us kept changing, and all of them wanted to hear about how the King and Mother had gotten married, and how Mother had stolen the sword back, and how Shiara and I had gotten into the castle and broken the spell on the King.
“I’m getting tired of this,” Shiara whispered to me while some of the people next to us were changing seats. “Let’s go someplace else for a while, and let them tell each other about the stupid wizards. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“I don’t, either, but I don’t think we should leave,” I said.
“You don’t? No, of course you don’t. How very tiresome,” said a squeaky voice from the ground by my left foot.
“Suz!” I said, looking down. “Where did you come from?”
“The forest, of course,” said the lizard. He ran up the leg of the table in a thin gold streak, then stopped and looked around nervously. “Is that—that kitten anywhere close by?”
“No, she’s inside,” said Shiara. “I don’t think she likes the crowd. Why?”
The lizard looked at her. “If you’d ever been jumped on by something four times as big as you are, and been rolled around until you were dizzy, not to mention bruised, you wouldn’t have to ask.” He balanced on his tail and peered over the edge of a bowl of nuts.
“Would you like something to eat?” I said.
“I believe I would,” said Suz. He made a very fast bouncing motion, and a moment later he was holding one of the nuts. “What are you going to do now that the wizards are gone?”
“They aren’t all gone,” I said. “Some of them were on our side, and I think some of the others actually got away.”
“They did?” Suz considered for a moment. “I suppose they did. How very annoying. But what are you going to do?” He looked from me to Shiara and back.
“I’m going to be Kazul’s Princess,” Shiara said before I could answer.
Suz fell over backward, just missing a silver bowl full of cranberry jelly. “Oh my gracious goodness my oh!” he squeaked. “However did that happen?”
“Mother suggested it,” I said. I looked at Shiara. “But I thought you hadn’t made up your mind yet.”
“I just decided,” Shiara said. “Home is boring, and this way I can learn things, and maybe even stop having to be polite to get my magic to work.”
I suspected Shiara was more interested in not having to be polite than she was in learning things, but I didn’t say so. “I’m glad you’re going to be staying,” I said instead.
“You are?” Suz said skeptically. He peered up at me. “Why, you really are! How amazing.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but fortunately I didn’t have time to think about it. Father and Mother and Kazul all stood up just then and everyone else got very quiet. Father looked around for a moment, smiled, and started speaking.
First he thanked everyone for coming to help with the wizards, and then he introduced Mother formally as “my wife, Cimorene.” All the dragons and elves and other people shouted and applauded; the din was tremendous. Then he introduced me, and I had to stand up and be clapped at. After that, Kazul said that the dragons were pleased to be of assistance, and everyone sat down and started talking again. The whole thing didn’t take very much time, which surprised me. I’d thought speeches at feasts were supposed to be longer.
Even with short speeches, the feast lasted longer than I expected. Shiara left after a while, to go find Nightwitch and talk to the little dragon. I stayed at the table. I didn’t have much choice; every time I tried to get up, someone new would pounce on me and start asking questions. I got very tired of it after a while, but I couldn’t seem to get away. I was glad when it was finally over.
The next few days were a little hectic, but then the elves and dragons who’d been in the battle went home and things started to settle down a little. Morwen and Telemain were almost the last to leave, because of Telemain’s shoulder. Morwen had to stay to take care of it, and she wouldn’t let Telemain go anywhere until he was well.
“It’s simply ridiculous,” Telemain grumbled at breakfast on the third morning after the battle. “I am quite capable of traveling with my arm in a sling.”
“Yes, and the first time you ran across a slowstone or a pool of transformation-water you’d take your arm out of the sling and start tinkering with it,” Morwen said. “Which would not be good for that shoulder.”
Telemain glared at her. “I disagree.”
“You may disagree all you wish, but you aren’t leaving the castle for another two days,” Morwen said. She picked up a basket of muffins, took one, and passed the rest to Mother.
“Two days!”
Mother raised an eyebrow. “Is our hospitality unwelcome?”
“No, of course not, but... Cimorene, I have a tremendous amount to do if I’m to be ready for the wedding in time.”
I hadn’t heard about any weddings being planned, but I was carefully not looking at Shiara anyway. Then Father looked up.
“Wedding?” he said.
Morwen smiled. “Telemain and I are getting married.”
Shiara and Father and I all said, “What!?” at the same time, but we were nearly drowned out by a chorus of startled meows from Morwen’s cats.
“Yes, married,” Morwen said to one of them. “And it has nothing to do with you, so you may as well be quiet and accept it.”
The cats made unhappy noises for another minute, until Morwen frowned at them. Then they all got up and went over to a corner of the room, where they sat muttering to each other with their tails twitching. Morwen watched for a moment before she nodded and turned back to the table. “They’ll get used to the idea,” she said.
“Um, congratulations to both of you,” I said.
Father was looking at Mother. “Cimorene, did you know about this?”
“Not exactly,” Mother said, and smiled.
“I see.” Father shook his head. “Well, congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Telemain said. He started to reach for a plate of sausages with his bad arm, and Morwen stopped him.
Two days later, Morwen announced that Telemain’s arm was well enough for him to travel. She promised to invite all of us to the wedding, even the dragons, and then she and Telemain left the castle, followed by a string of disapproving cats.
Shiara and Kazul were the last to leave. I was a little taken aback when I heard. It hadn’t occurred to me that Kazul lived in the Mountains of Morning, and that if Shiara was going to be Kazul’s Princess, she would have to live there, too. I didn’t say anything about it, though; I felt too silly for not having realized it before.
Father and Mother and I went out to see them off. Mother gave Shiara some advice about princessing, and Father told her that if she was going to glare at dragons, she’d have to learn to glare politely. Then they both went to talk to Kazul.
Shiara looked at me.
“I’m beginning to wonder whether I really want to do this or not,” she said. “Does he really expect me to practice glaring at people?”
“No, just at dragons,” I said. “If he wanted you to glare at everyone, he would have said so.”
“Well, I think it’s— Nightwitch!” Shiara bent to retrieve the kitten, who had been investigating one of Shiara’s bundles a little too vigorously.
“Where did you get all of this, anyway?” I asked as she straightened up. There were at least three bundles in the heap Nightwitch had been climbing, and I knew Shiara hadn’t had any of them when we’d arrived at the castle.
“Morwen gave me that one, and Cimorene gave me the others,” Shiara said. “She said I would need them if I was going to live with Kazul. I don’t even know what’s in all of them yet.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say because just then I realized how much I was going to miss having Shiara around. The Mountains of Morning weren’t exactly close to the castle, and I didn’t think Kazul would be interested in flying back and forth every day.
Shiara frowned. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I was just wishing you were going to be living a little closer to the castle,” I said.
“I don’t see why. I’m going to have to come here a lot anyway, at least until you get that stupid politeness spell off of me so I can use my fire-magic. So what difference does it make? I’m the one who has to do all the traveling back and forth.” Shiara looked toward Kazul. “I think they’re ready to go. Come on, Daystar.”
She picked up one of the bundles and started walking. I didn’t say anything, but I felt a lot happier than I had a few minutes earlier. Getting rid of that spell didn’t sound easy, and until it was gone Shiara would have to spend quite a bit of time at the castle. I was sure that if I had enough time, I could think of some reason for her to keep visiting after the spell was gone, and even if I couldn’t, Mother would be able to. Smiling, I picked up the other two bundles and started after Shiara.