They materialized at the very edge of a river, on a flat, narrow rock that jutted out over the water, and Alianora immediately slipped on the wet stone. If the stone prince had not been so solid and heavy, all three of them would have fallen into the river. As it was, it took Cimorene and Alianora several seconds to regain their balance. When she was finally sure of her footing, Cimorene breathed a sigh of relief and quickly looked about her.
The Ford of Whispering Snakes was crowded. Dragons of all sizes and shades of green lined the banks of the river and filled the spaces beneath the towering trees of the Enchanted Forest. On the far bank, a pale dragon was poring over a parchment list that Cimorene thought she remembered seeing during one of the many errands she had run the previous night. All the dragons seemed to be talking at once, and none of them noticed Cimorene and her friends.
“Hello, dragons!” Cimorene shouted, trying to make herself heard above the noise.
“Here, now! What’s all this?” an olive-green dragon on the bank demanded, turning. “Someone’s trying to sneak a look at the trials.”
“S-s-s-sneakssss,” hissed a soft but nonetheless clearly audible voice from somewhere near Cimorene’s feet. Cimorene jumped and looked down, but though she craned her neck to see all around her, she could not find the second speaker.
“Get rid of them before Troum comes back with Colin’s Stone,” another dragon advised.
“We aren’t trying to sneak in, and we don’t care about watching the trials,” Cimorene said, wishing she dared to look around for Kazul. “We came to warn you about the wizards.”
“Wiz-z-zardssss,” the soft voice echoed.
“Wizards?” the olive-green dragon said skeptically. “There aren’t any wizards here.”
“No, but they’ve figured out some way of interfering with your choice of the next king,” Cimorene said. “They’re hiding somewhere. You have to put off the trials with Colin’s Stone until we can find them and stop them. If you’ll just tell Kazul we’re here—”
“Put off the trials?” the olive-green dragon interrupted. “Impossible! They’ve been under way for half an hour. We can’t just stop in the middle. Who are all you people, anyway?”
A flicker of motion caught Cimorene’s eye, and she looked down just in time to see a thin red snake dart from one clump of weeds to the next. “S-s-s-sneaksss,” whispered the soft voice an instant later. “S-s-sneaksss and wiz-z-zardsss.”
“I wasn’t asking you,” the dragon said severely in the general direction of the snake. “And whatever they are, they certainly aren’t wizards.”
“They look like somebody’s princesses to me,” a blue-green dragon said. “Pity, that. It would be so much simpler to eat them and get them out of the way.”
“Are you sure?” said a third dragon. “The one on the end doesn’t look like a princess.”
“I’m beginning to think this wasn’t such a good idea,” the stone prince said.
“He may not be a princess, but he doesn’t look edible, either,” the blue-green dragon pointed out. “And these other two are definitely princesses. You can’t go eating them out of hand.”
“Princesssessss,” hissed the voice from under the rock.
“Oh, princesses,” the olive-green dragon said. “No wonder they’re so full of wild tales.”
“It’s true!” Cimorene said desperately. “If you don’t believe us, take us to Kazul; she will.”
“I can’t do that!” the olive-green dragon said, shocked. “Kazul’s third in line now, after Mazarin and Woraug. You can’t talk to people who are that close to making their attempt with the stone. It would distract them.”
“Woraug!” Alianora said. “Woraug’s next in line?”
“Yes, he should be starting off any minute now,” said the olive-green dragon. “Then comes Mazarin, and then Kazul. I don’t expect it will take long, though. Nobody’s carried the stone for more than a mile or two yet.”
“But I’m Kazul’s princess!” Cimorene said.
“I don’t care who you are,” the dragon replied crossly. “You can’t talk to Kazul until she’s done with her turn.”
“That will be too late!” Cimorene cried. “You don’t understand. Woraug and the wizards—”
“I’ve had enough of your wizards,” the olive-green dragon said. “You’re a confounded nuisance, and you ought not to be pushing your way in here where you’re not wanted. Go away!”
“Cimorene, what are we going to do?” Alianora said as the olive-green dragon turned and stalked determinedly away.
“At hero’s school we were always taught that if you couldn’t persuade anyone to help you with something, it meant that you were supposed to do it by yourself,” the stone prince said diffidently. “And we are prepared.” He lifted one of his buckets slightly.
“But we don’t know where the wizards are.” Alianora said. “We have to find them before we can stop them, and there isn’t time.”
“S-s-stop the wiz-z-zardsss,” whispered the soft voice.
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since we got here,” Cimorene said to the hissing whisper.
“Can’t you just wish to be where the wizards are?” the stone prince asked Cimorene.
“No, you have to know where you’re going, or the spell doesn’t work,” Cimorene said.
For a moment all three were glumly silent. Cimorene stared at the water, remembering how and where she had gotten the feathers. Suddenly she raised her head.
“We may not know where the wizards are, but I’ll bet I know someone who can find out. Hold this for a minute.”
Cimorene handed one of her buckets to Alianora, then dug out the packet of feathers. She pulled the second feather from the packet and grabbed Alianora’s elbow. “Hold tight, everybody. I wish we were at Morwen’s house,” Cimorene said, and dropped the feather.
The scenery shifted abruptly, and they were standing on Morwen’s porch. The house was just as tidy-looking as Cimorene remembered, and the porch floor gleamed as if it had just been washed. A black and white cat, startled by their sudden appearance, fell off the porch railing. Four others left off washing themselves to stare at Cimorene with unwinking green and yellow eyes.
“I need to talk to Morwen,” Cimorene said to the cats. “It’s an emergency.”
A lean tiger-stripped cat rose and oozed through a crack in the door. Cimorene unwound herself from Alianora and the stone prince and set her bucket on the porch floor. “I hope this works,” she muttered to herself as Alianora and the prince placed their buckets beside hers.
14
In Which the Wizards Try to Make Trouble, and Cimorene Does Something About It
THE DOOR OF THE COTTAGE OPENED and Morwen stepped out. “What sort of emergency?” she asked. She studied Alianora and the stone prince for a moment, then peered at Cimorene over the tops of her glasses and added with some severity, “I hope you weren’t referring to his predicament. He may well find it an inconvenience, but it certainly isn’t an emergency. Not by my standards, anyway.”
“No,” said Cimorene, “I was talking about the wizards. They’ve poisoned the King of the Dragons, and now they’re trying to interfere with Colin’s Stone so that Woraug will be the new king. We have to stop them, but we don’t know where they are, and Woraug’s going to try to carry the stone any minute. Can you find them for us?”
Morwen blinked twice and shoved her glasses back into place with her forefinger. “I see,” she said. “You’re right. It’s an emergency. I’ll do what I can. But if you don’t tell me the whole story later, when there’s a bit more time, I shall—I shall turn you all into mice and give you to the cats. Wait here.”
As she spoke, Morwen disappeared into the house. She reappeared a moment later, holding a small mirror and muttering over it. “Colin’s Stone,” she said, and breathed on the glass. She looked up. “Any wizard in particular?”
“Zemenar, the Head Wizard of the Society of Wizards,” Cimorene sai
d, wishing Morwen would go faster and knowing she couldn’t.
“I should have guessed,” Morwen said. She turned back to the mirror. “Zemenar,” she said, and breathed on the glass once more. Then she motioned to Cimorene to come and look.
Cimorene obeyed, and Alianora and the stone prince crowded closely behind her. The mirror showed a blurry, wavering picture of the Ford of Whispering Snakes. As Cimorene watched, the picture moved slowly along one bank of the river, past the waiting dragons and the immense trees of the Enchanted Forest and on down the river.
“Can’t it go any faster?” Alianora whispered.
“There’s no need to whisper, and no, it can’t,” Morwen said. “Not if you want to be sure of finding these wizards of yours on the first try, and it doesn’t sound as if you have time to waste on mistakes.”
The picture in the mirror continued to creep along the bank. Cimorene pulled the third and last feather out of her pocket and brushed it nervously across her fingers while she waited.
“What’s that?” the stone prince said suddenly.
The mirror-picture stopped, then moved up the bank, away from the river toward a thicket of blackberry brambles. Cimorene saw the tip of a wooden staff poking up above the thicket. Tensely, she waited for the mirror to show the far side of the brambles.
“It’s them!” Alianora said. She sounded frightened and excited at the same time. “Oh, dear!”
Cimorene took a good look at the picture in the mirror. Five wizards were standing in an opening behind the blackberry thicket, leaning on their staffs and looking at the sky. Suddenly, one of the wizards pointed. The others peered upward, nodded, and raised their staffs.
“Get the buckets!” Cimorene said. Cats scattered in all directions as the stone prince pounded across the porch behind Cimorene and Alianora. “Hang on; here we go. I wish—”
“Not without me you—” Morwen said, grabbing Cimorene’s shoulder.
“—we were at the blackberry thicket where the wizards are,” Cimorene said, and dropped the feather.
“—don’t,” Morwen finished as the porch winked out and was replaced by blackberries.
The five wizards were standing in an arc just in front of the bramble. Each of them held his staff so that the lower end was about a foot above the ground, pointing at something hidden in the moss at their feet. An unpleasant yellow-green light dripped from the ends of the staffs, and the moss where the wizards were standing was brown and dead. The wizards’ backs were toward Cimorene and her friends.
“Now!” Cimorene cried. As the wizards began to turn, she set one of her buckets on the ground and lifted the other in both hands. Taking careful aim, she flung the soapy water over a black-haired wizard in the center of the arc.
“Charge!” yelled the stone prince, and threw one of his buckets at the nearest wizard.
“Take that, you cheats!” said Alianora, dumping the first of her buckets over another.
“What—this is impossible!” said one of the wizards indignantly as he began to melt.
“Too bad,” Cimorene said, throwing her second load of water at the next-to-last wizard.
“Watch where you’re throwing that!” Morwen said to the stone prince, who had sloshed his second bucket over the fifth wizard with such enthusiasm that water sprayed in all directions.
“Sorry,” the prince apologized. “Is that all of them?”
“It’s all five of the ones we saw,” Cimorene said cautiously.
“Then we did it!” Alianora said.
“Not quite,” said Zemenar, stepping out of the bushes behind Morwen. “You interrupted the spell, of course, but we were nearly finished anyway. And as long as the stone remains enchanted, Woraug won’t have any trouble getting it all the way to the Vanishing Mountain. Look.” He pointed with his staff, and Cimorene saw three dragons, high in the air, flying steadily toward the mountains. One of them had a long black stone clutched in his claws, and the other two appeared to be escorting him at a careful distance.
“Woraug and the two judges,” Cimorene murmured.
Zemenar nodded. “You might as well put that bucket down,” he went on, turning to Alianora. “You can’t throw it at me without melting your witch friend here. What’s in it, by the way?”
“I don’t see why we should tell you,” Cimorene said as Alianora set the last of the six buckets down.
“Because I’m interested, Princess,” Zemenar said with an oily smile. “And it will pass the time until the next shift gets here, and I can decide what to do with you.”
“If you’re that interested, why don’t you take a closer look?” said the stone prince, picking up Alianora’s bucket.
“Stay where you are!” Zemenar commanded. As he spoke, he raised his staff and sidestepped so that Morwen was between him and the stone prince.
“If you insist,” said the prince. He shrugged, lifted the bucket, and flung the water over Morwen and Zemenar at the same time.
“What—no!” Zemenar cried in horror as he began to melt. “Not soapsuds! It’s demeaning.”
“There’s a little lemon juice in it, too,” Alianora offered.
Zemenar glared at her. He was less than half his normal height and shrinking as they watched, while a dark puddle spread out beneath him. “Lemon juice! Bah! How dare you do such a thing? I’m the Head Wizard of the Society of Wizards!” His voice grew fainter and higher as he shrank. “Interfering busybodies! Soapsuds! Of all the undignified tricks. You’ll be sorry for this! You can’t melt a wizard forever, you know! You’ll be sor . . .”
The wizard’s voice ceased. All that remained of him was a pile of silk robes and a long wooden staff lying on some damp moss. Alianora and Cimorene stared for a moment, then Alianora turned to the stone prince.
“I’m glad he’s gone,” she said, “but how could you melt Morwen just to get at that wizard?”
“But I didn’t,” the stone prince said. “Look.”
Cimorene and Alianora turned. Morwen seemed no shorter than usual, though she certainly looked very damp. She had taken off her glasses and was shaking water off them. “Don’t just stand there,” she said crossly to Cimorene. “Hand me a dry handkerchief.”
“Just a minute,” Cimorene said, checking her pockets. She found the handkerchief that had been wrapped around the magic feathers and handed it to Morwen. “Um, why didn’t you melt?”
“Clean living,” Morwen said as she began to dry her glasses on Cimorene’s handkerchief.
“I thought as much,” the stone prince said in a satisfied tone. “Nobody who lives in a house as clean as yours could possibly melt in a bucket of soapsuds.”
“Quite right,” Morwen said approvingly. “You have a good head on your shoulders, young man. What’s this?” She held up a sharp-edged black pebble.
“It’s a piece of stone I found in the Caves of Fire and Night,” Cimorene said.
“Where, exactly?”
“In the King’s Cave,” Cimorene said. “Morwen, shouldn’t we do something about that spell Zemenar mentioned?”
Alianora was watching the sky, shading her eyes with her hand. “Woraug’s nearly halfway to the mountain,” she said anxiously.
“Good,” said Morwen, though neither Cimorene nor Alianora could tell which of them she was talking to. The witch shook her wet robes and walked over to the patch of dead moss where the wizards had been working, picking her way carefully past little piles of robes and staffs. Cimorene followed. In the center of the brown area was a black stone the size of Cimorene’s fist. A web of yellow-green light flickered across its smooth surface.
“Sloppy,” Morwen said. “Very sloppy. Though I’m not surprised. Wizards always seem to depend on brute force when a little subtlety would be far more effective.” She fingered Cimorene’s pebble for a moment, then reached out and dropped it on top of the wizards’ stone.
There was a noise like a great deal of popcorn all popping at once, and the light that flickered over the black stone spat yel
low-green sparks in all directions. Alianora jumped and backed away. Cimorene would have liked to do the same, but she did not want to give Morwen a bad impression of her courage, so she stayed where she was.
The sparks died, and the flickering light went out. From the sky high above came a faint shriek of surprise and rage. Cimorene looked up and saw three black specks in the sky. No, not three: four, and the two escort dragons were swooping to catch the speck that was Colin’s Stone, which Woraug had just dropped.
Cimorene gave a sigh of relief and looked at Morwen. “So much for Woraug and the wizards,” she said. “We didn’t even need the fireproofing spell. What did you do?”
“And what happens now?” Alianora added.
“Duck,” said Morwen, and threw herself sideways into the bushes.
“Wha—” said the stone prince, and then he and Cimorene and Alianora were engulfed by a blast of dragon fire.
The stone prince leaped in front of the two princesses, but he was much too late to protect them. Fortunately the fireproofing spell was still in effect, and neither of them even felt warm, though Alianora lost the ends of her sleeves and Cimorene’s hemline rose six scorched inches.
“I knew I shouldn’t have said that about the fireproofing spell,” Cimorene muttered.
With a wordless snarl and a thunder of wings, Woraug landed just in front of the little group.
“You!” he shouted when he saw Cimorene. “I might have known it would be you!” Flame shot from his mouth once more, but it was just as useless as it had been the first time.
Cimorene glanced up and saw one of the escort dragons spiraling down to see what was going on. “You might as well give up, Woraug,” she said, hoping to distract the angry dragon long enough for help to arrive. “You can’t be King of the Dragons now.”
“I’ll tear you limb from limb!” Woraug raged. “Every last one of you!” One arm shot out as he spoke, and shining silver claws snapped around the stone prince’s waist.
Alianora screamed.
“Hurry up!” Cimorene shouted at the dragon in the sky.
The dragon heard and dove toward them, but he was not fast enough. Woraug shoved the stone prince into his mouth and bit down hard. An instant later he howled in pain and spat out the prince and four teeth.