Cimorene had almost missed seeing him, and no wonder. His clothes, though well cut, were the same dark gray as the stone of the tunnel walls, and he was curled into a lumpy, dejected ball. He looked like a large rock. If he hadn’t moved his hand as she passed, Cimorene would never have realized he was alive.
The man on the other side of the bars raised his head, and Cimorene saw with shock that his hair and skin were the same dark, even gray as his clothes. His eyes, too, were gray, and their expression was apologetic.
“Forgive me for startling you,” the man said, climbing ponderously to his feet. “I didn’t see you coming.” He made a stiff, formal bow.
“Who are you?” Cimorene demanded. “And what are you doing in there?”
“I’m a prince,” the man said in a gloomy tone, “and I’m reaping the rewards of my folly.”
“What folly?”
The prince sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“Somehow they always seem to be long,” Cimorene said. “You haven’t come to rescue me from the dragons, have you? Because if you have, I’m not going to let you out of there. I haven’t got time to spend an hour arguing today.”
“I have no interest whatever in dragons, I assure you,” the prince said earnestly. “And if you would let me out, I’d be extremely grateful. Um, who are you, by the way?”
“Cimorene, princess of the dragon Kazul,” Cimorene said. She studied the prince for a moment and decided that he looked trustworthy. “All right, I’ll let you out. Turn around and put your fingers in your ears.”
“What?” the prince said, looking considerably startled.
“It’s part of the spell to open the gate,” Cimorene said. She wasn’t about to let him overhear the words Kazul had used to unlock the door, even if he did look trustworthy.
The prince shrugged and did as she directed. Quickly, Cimorene recited:
“By night and flame and shining rock
Open thou thy hidden lock.
Alberolingarn!”
For an instant nothing happened, and Cimorene was afraid she had not remembered the charm correctly. Then the iron gate swung silently open. The prince, whose back was to the gate, did not notice. Cimorene touched his shoulder to get his attention, and her eyes widened.
“Oh!” she said as he turned. “You’re—you’re stone.”
“I know,” the prince said. “It’s part of that long story I mentioned earlier. I haven’t gotten used to it yet.” He stepped through the gate, and it closed noiselessly behind him.
“I’m afraid I don’t have time to listen to stories just now,” Cimorene said politely. “I have a rather urgent errand to run, so if you’ll excuse me—”
“Can’t I come with you?”
Cimorene stared at him. “Why do you want to do that?”
The stone prince looked down at his feet with an embarrassed expression. “Um, well, actually, I’m lost. And you seem to know your way around down here.” He glanced hopefully at Cimorene’s face, then sighed. “I suppose I can just wander around some more. I’ll have to find a way out eventually.”
“You’ll run into a dragon and get eaten.”
“I don’t think it will hurt stone,” the prince said. He sounded almost cheerful, as if he had only just realized that being made of stone might have some advantages.
“Maybe not, but you’re sure to give the dragon indigestion,” Cimorene said. “Bother! I don’t have time for this!”
“I could wait here if you’re coming back this way,” the stone prince suggested.
Cimorene brightened, then frowned and shook her head. “No, one of the dragons might need to get into the Caves of Fire and Night, or it might be the turn of those dratted wizards. You can’t stay here.”
“Then—”
“I know! You can wait in the serving room, just off the banquet hall,” Cimorene said. “It’s close, there’s plenty of room, and I know no one’s using it today because I checked the schedule for Alianora yesterday. I can take a shortcut out the back to get to Roxim’s without losing any more time. Come on.”
“I really appreciate this,” the stone prince said as they started off. “You don’t know what it’s like, being lost in the dark in these caves.”
“How did it happen?” Cimorene asked.
The stone prince’s expression became gloomy once more. “It’s all that soothsayer’s fault,” he said.
“Soothsayer?”
“My father didn’t think it was appropriate to invite fairies to a prince’s christening, so he invited a soothsayer instead,” the prince replied. “The soothsayer took one look at me and said that I would grow up to do a great service for a king. I’ve been stuck with his blasted prophecy ever since.”
“It doesn’t sound so terrible to me,” Cimorene said.
“It wasn’t, at first,” the stone prince admitted. “I had special tutors in all sorts of interesting things to prepare me for being of great service to a king. My father even sent me to a special school for people who’re supposed to do special things.”
“Did you do well?”
“I was the top of my class,” the stone prince said with a flash of pride. His face fell again. “That’s part of the problem.”
“I don’t understand,” Cimorene said. “This way. And can you walk a little faster, please? I’m in a hurry.”
“It’s been three years since I graduated, and everyone’s still waiting for me to do something spectacular,” the stone prince said, lengthening his stride. “The rest of my classmates are already making names for themselves. George started killing dragons right away, and Art went straight home and pulled some sort of magic sword out of a rock. Even the ones nobody expected to amount to much have done something. All Jack wanted to do was go back to his mother’s farm and raise beans, and he ended up stealing a magic harp and killing a giant and all sorts of things. I’m the only one who hasn’t succeeded.”
“Why not?”
The stone prince sighed again. “I don’t know. At first it seemed as if I wouldn’t have any trouble finding a king to serve. Every time there was a war, both kings asked me to lead their armies, and every king for miles around who’d lost his throne to a usurper sent a messenger to my father’s court. It should have been simple. Only they were always so worried about whether I was going to side with their enemies that it was easier not to pick anyone.”
“I see,” said Cimorene. Privately she thought that the stone prince had been rather wishy-washy.
Some of her opinion must have crept into her tone because the stone prince nodded glumly. “You’re right. It was a mistake. As long as I didn’t pick a king to serve, all the messengers and ambassadors and envoys stayed, hoping to persuade me. The inns around the castle were stuffed with them. It got to the point where I couldn’t show my face without at least three of them pouncing on me.
“Finally I couldn’t stand it any more, and I ran away. It was a relief at first, not having everyone hovering over me waiting for me to do something great. But after a while I started feeling uncomfortable. Then I realized that even if nobody around me expected me to do anything special in the service of a king, I expected me to do something.
“I was so flustered that I ran up to the next palace I saw and asked whether the king needed any services done. It turned out that he was ill, and his doctors had told him that the only thing that would cure him was a drink of the Water of Healing from the Caves of Fire and Night. So I left to get it at once.”
“So that’s what you were doing!” Cimorene said.
The stone prince gave her another gloomy nod. “I should have known better. That king had three sons, and the first two had already gone off to get the water and failed. Anyone with sense would have seen that the youngest son was the one who would succeed; it sticks out all over. But I was too eager to do my great service and get it over with, and I didn’t stop and think.”
“What happened?”
“It took me a long time to find the Cave
s of Fire and Night, but once I did, it wasn’t hard to find the Water of Healing. The chamber’s getting crowded. All the princes who’ve tried to get the water and failed have been turned into slabs of rock.”
“I know. I’ve seen them,” Cimorene said. “Watch out for your head; the ceiling is low along here.”
“Then you know what it’s like, and you’ve seen the two dippers on the wall by the spring.” The stone prince’s shoulder’s sagged. “I knew I should use the tin one. It was one of the first things we learned at school. But I thought it wouldn’t do any harm if I just looked at the gold one, so I took it off the wall. And as soon as I touched it, I started to stiffen up.”
“Um,” said Cimorene. The stone prince was obviously well aware of how foolishly he had behaved. She saw no reason to make him feel worse by pointing it out to him again.
“So I stuck my arm in the spring,” the prince said.
“You stuck your arm—oh, I see! That was clever,” Cimorene said.
“Do you really think so?” the stone prince asked anxiously. “I thought that since the water from the spring is going to turn all the slabs of stone back into princes when someone finally succeeds in the quest, then the water ought to keep me from turning into a slab of stone in the first place. Only it didn’t work the way I expected,” he finished disconsolately.
“I can see that,” Cimorene said. “But at least you can still do things. It would be much worse to have to lie there waiting for the right prince to come along and break the spell.”
“I wouldn’t have had to lie there very long,” the stone prince said. “That king’s youngest son is going to arrive any day now, I just know it. Anyway, if I were a slab of stone, I wouldn’t know about it until it was all over and I’d been turned back into a prince again.”
“How do you know?” Cimorene demanded. “Have you ever been a stone slab?”
The stone prince looked startled. “No, I haven’t. I never thought of that.”
“Well, start thinking now,” Cimorene said tartly. “Here’s the service room. Wait here for me, and don’t go wandering off if I’m late getting back. I don’t know how long this errand is going to take, and it would be very awkward for me if the dragons found you roaming through their tunnels.”
“I’ll remember,” the stone prince promised. “But what do I do if someone comes in?”
“Duck into the banquet area,” Cimorene said, showing him. “And if someone comes in there, too, curl up in the corner and pretend you’re a rock.”
“All right,” the prince said doubtfully.
Cimorene did not like leaving him, but she was even less enthusiastic about taking him to see Roxim. Roxim probably wouldn’t object to the prince himself, though Cimorene suspected that there might have been some difficulty over his proposed theft of the Water of Healing. But explaining everything to the gray-green dragon would take hours. Roxim was nice, but he tended to take a simple view of things, and the prince’s situation was anything but simple. So Cimorene gave the prince one more warning, just to make sure he understood, and started off toward Roxim’s cave to finish her errand.
12
In Which Cimorene Calls on a Dragon, and the Stone Prince Discovers a Plot
THE SHORTCUT TO ROXIM’S WORKED JUST AS WELL as Cimorene had hoped, and she even made up some of the time she had lost earlier. Roxim was in, too. She could hear the scraping of his scales as he moved around inside. She stepped up to the entrance of the cave and called, “Dragon Roxim!”
Something round and shiny flew through the air, missing Cimorene by inches. It hit the wall of the tunnel with a loud clang and slid rattling to the floor. Cimorene jumped.
“Roxim!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
“What’s this?” the dragon said, poking his nose out of the cave entrance.
“I am Cimorene, princess to the dragon Kazul, and I offer you greetings and good fortune in all your endeavors.” Cimorene thought it best to be particularly polite, in case Roxim were in a bad mood. She suspected he might be. In her experience, someone in a good mood did not throw things at visitors.
“Very good,” Roxim said. “Nice to see you again and all that, but I haven’t got time for visitors at the moment. Sorry.”
“I’m not a visitor, exactly. Kazul sent me with a message for you.”
“Oh, well, that’s different. Just hand me that shield there, would you?”
Cimorene picked up the shield from the floor of the tunnel. There was a large dent in one side where it had hit the tunnel wall, and several smaller ones over the rest of it from banging against things on its way to the tunnel floor.
“You ought to be more careful,” she said severely. “Just look at this!”
“Ha!” Roxim snorted, examining the dents. “Shoddy work, shoddy work, that’s the problem. In my day, you could roll a knight in full armor down the far side of the Vanishing Mountain and bounce him off two or three cliffs without so much as scratching his surface, much less denting it. This cheap modern stuff just doesn’t hold up.”
“If you know it doesn’t hold up, you shouldn’t throw it around like that,” Cimorene said. “You almost hit me.”
Roxim shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it.”
“All right, but next time look before you throw things,” Cimorene said, handing him the shield.
“I always have this problem when I try to find something,” Roxim confided. “Never know where to look. Gets frustrating, and next thing you know I’m pitching armor at the walls. Bad habit, but hard to break.”
“Maybe I could help,” Cimorene suggested. “After I give you Kazul’s message, that is.”
“Don’t need help to put dents in things,” Roxim said. “Comes to that, I don’t really want it.”
“I didn’t mean help throw things,” Cimorene said patiently. “I meant help find whatever you’re looking for.”
“Oh, that. Well, come in then.”
Cimorene followed the dragon into a moderately large cave, similar to the one Kazul used as a living area. Roxim’s cave, however, was full of clutter. Cimorene had to pick her way past bits of armor, one half of a pair of bookends, a box of tea, a pink scroll, three mismatched kitchen pots, a small wooden statue, a broken flute, and four partially burned candles. Roxim walked straight over the mess as if it weren’t there, squashing a mangy-looking stuffed pigeon and flattening a tin cup in passing. He dropped the shield on a pile of silk flowers and waved Cimorene to a seat on a large wooden chest near one wall. “Now, what’s this message of Kazul’s?”
“It’s about the wizards,” Cimorene said, settling gingerly onto the dusty surface of the chest. She made a mental note to find Roxim a nice princess as soon as she possibly could. “Alianora and I found one of them picking dragonsbane a few days ago, and Kazul thinks King Tokoz will listen to you if you tell him about it.”
“So that’s where they got it,” Roxim said in tones of disgust. “Pity you didn’t mention it sooner.”
Cimorene got a sinking feeling. “What do you mean?”
“Somebody poisoned King Tokoz this morning,” Roxim explained. “Slipped some dragonsbane in his coffee. Fast-acting; nothing to be done. Now we need a new king.”
“That’s awful!” Cimorene said. “Do you know who did it?”
“Those dratted wizards, that’s who,” Roxim said angrily. “It’s obvious. Stupid thing to do; has to be wizards, by George! But Woraug won’t listen to me.”
“Woraug? What’s Woraug got to do with it?”
“He’s in charge of the investigation,” Roxim replied. “Taking his time about it, too, if you ask me.”
“But if the King was only poisoned this morning . . .”
“What does that have to do with it?” Roxim said unreasonably. “Besides, if Woraug doesn’t hurry, he won’t have the culprit in hand by the time the trials start tomorrow.”
“Trials? You mean with Colin’s Stone, to choose the new king?” Cimorene said
with some hesitation. She did not see how it could be a trial for the person who had killed the King if they hadn’t caught him yet, but she was not completely certain that the dragons didn’t have some way of getting around the problem and trying him anyway.
“That’s it,” Roxim said, pleased. “And before I leave I have to find that emerald I picked up fifty years ago. Coronation present for the new King.”
“But you haven’t got a new King yet,” Cimorene said, feeling somewhat bewildered. “And what if you’re the King?”
Roxim smiled broadly. “Knew you were a nice gal. Me, the King! I rather like the idea. I still have to find the emerald, though. Wouldn’t do to show up at the trials without a coronation present. Rum thing to do. Overconfident.”
Though she was upset and more than a little worried, Cimorene helped Roxim as best she could. After about an hour of poking through the clutter, Cimorene found the emerald, wrapped in a gold-embroidered handkerchief and stuffed into the mouth of a large brass horn. Roxim thanked her and invited her to stay to tea, but Cimorene politely declined. She was eager to get back to Kazul, to tell her what had happened and decide what to do next.
Cimorene hurried back to Kazul’s cave by the shortest route, thinking so hard about Tokoz’s death that she forgot everything else. She found Kazul sleeping and was forced to wake her, despite her worries about the dragon’s health. She knew Kazul would want to hear about the King of the Dragons as soon as possible, and she wanted to hear what Kazul made of Woraug’s involvement in the investigation.
“Back already?” Kazul said, opening her eyes. “Didn’t Roxim get you in to see King Tokoz?”
“No,” Cimorene said. She hesitated, uncertain of the best way to break the news. “It was too late.”
“Too late?” Kazul raised her head, startled. She eyed Cimorene briefly, then said, “All right, let’s have it. What’s happened?”
“King Tokoz was poisoned this morning. Roxim said someone put dragonsbane in his coffee.”
Kazul snorted. “Somebody knew Tokoz pretty well.” Seeing Cimorene’s surprised expression, she explained, “Tokoz drank Turkish coffee every morning. The stuff is strong enough to take the roof off your mouth. It’s why no one ever went to talk to him over breakfast. You could boil a whole field’s worth of dragonsbane in Turkish coffee without changing the taste enough to notice. Or the texture.”