Calling on Dragons (23 page)

“And
you
have no business aiding and abetting the theft of important magical items from the King of the Enchanted Forest,” Cimorene said.

“Besides, I'm a witch,” Morwen put in. “Isn't it
traditional
for witches to steal people away?”

“Not people like me!” Vamist said. “Babies and princesses.”

“Babies and princesses are of no practical use whatsoever,” Morwen said. “Most of them, anyway. And the ones that are useful don't need to be kidnapped.”

“That's not the point!”

“No,” said Cimorene. “The point is that we have more important things to do right now. We'll deal with you later; until then, you stay with us. Telemain, can you take us to the castle now?”

“It will be simpler if you will all stand a little closer together,” Telemain said. “That's better.” He gestured, and the familiar mist rose around them.

When it cleared, they found themselves in a large empty area. Forty feet ahead of them, the enormous trees of the Enchanted Forest rose in massive splendor, but where they stood were only ashes and bare, blackened ground. For a moment, Morwen thought Telemain had made a mistake. Then she turned her head and saw the castle, with its improbable towers and windows and staircases, shimmering inside a giant ball of golden light.

“Good heavens!” said Cimorene, speaking for them all. “What's
happened?”

F
OR A LONG MOMENT, NO ONE ANSWERED
. Then Morwen said, in a voice that sounded grim even to herself, “The Society of Wizards happened. I just wonder where they've all disappeared to.”

“Good riddance, wherever it is,” Scorn said. “
What
a mess.”

“Maybe they're inside the castle?” Brandel sug- gested.

“No,” said a pleasant female voice behind them. “Outside the forest. At least, that's what the dragons tell us. Hello, Brandel; it's nice to see you again.”

“Amory!” Brandel spun around, kicking up a small cloud of ash, and hugged the slender red-haired woman standing in back of him. “So Marli passed my message on.”

“Yes, and we've certainly had an interesting time of it.” The red-haired woman smiled over Brandel's shoulder at the rest of the group. “I'm Brandel's cousin Amory. You must be Queen Cimorene and the others King Kazul told us about. She wants to see you right away.”

“I should hope so,” said Trouble.

“What's been going on here?” asked Cimorene. “And where's Mendanbar?”

“Who?” said Amory.

“The King of the Enchanted Forest,” Brandel said. “Her husband.”

“Oh. I'm afraid I don't know anything about him. I think King Kazul does, though.”

“Then take us to Kazul right away,” Cimorene said.

Telemain took hold of Vamist's shoulder—the bald man had been trying to slip off again, although there was nowhere near to slip off to—and they followed Amory around the castle. As they walked, little eddies of ash followed everyone except Killer. The cats were very unhappy about the way the fine gray particles stuck to them; Trouble even tried to jump onto Killer's back to get out of the dust, having forgotten about the donkey's lack of solidity.

A quarter of the way around the castle, they saw the first few dragons walking purposefully along the boundary between the forest and the ashy area. As they went on, they saw more dragons, some walking, some flying above the trees. A number of red-haired people—presumably more of Brandel's fire-witch relatives—were standing guard near the edge of the glow that surrounded the castle. Amory nodded to them in passing and cut across the open area to the forest on the far side.

Kazul was just inside the forest, talking with another dragon and two more fire-witches.

“. . . and now it seems to have stopped growing completely, Your Majesty.” The second dragon had a deep, clear voice that carried plainly to the approaching party. “Nobody's sure why.”

“Well, it's a good thing, whatever the reason,” Kazul said. “Send someone over to—”

“Kazul!” Cimorene quickened her pace. “What's been happening? Where's Mendanbar?”

“I think he's still in there,” Kazul said, nodding at the castle, which was partially visible through the trees. “I see you got the sword. I'm glad
something's
gone right lately.”

Trouble and Scorn ran ahead and jumped onto Kazul's tail, but Horatio hung back.

“Mrow?”

“If Kazul doesn't care, I don't see why you should,” Scorn told him, and began to wash the ashes off of her back.

“You
think
Mendanbar's in the castle?” Cimorene paled slightly. “Why don't you know? Kazul—”

“Stop flapping your wings over it and let the dust settle,” Kazul said. “I'll explain in a minute. Marchak, send someone to notify the air patrol about this area, and tell them that if they find any other ashed-out spots they're to check whether the spots are stable before they report in. Let them know that Cimorene's back, with Mendanbar's sword.”

“Right away, Your Majesty,” said the other dragon. With a cheerful wave in Cimorene's direction, he walked off.

Cimorene took a deep breath. “Kazul, tell me right away. Is Mendanbar all right, or . . . or . . .”

“Mendanbar is
not
dead,” Morwen said firmly.

“Why are you so sure of that?” Kazul asked.

“I've lived in the Enchanted Forest for a long time. I was here four years ago when the old King, Mendanbar's father, died. Believe me, when a King of the Enchanted Forest dies, the forest makes sure everyone knows it. I didn't get a good night's sleep for a week, and neither did anyone else.”

Trouble looked up from washing his tail. “
Including
cats,” he said in tones of deep disapproval. “I remember that.”

“That's good,” Kazul said. Then her head turned to look at the castle and the sphere of gold light that surrounded it. “I think.” She glanced at Cimorene and sighed. “It was the Society of Wizards.”

“
Of course
it was the Society of Wizards,” Cim­orene said shortly, and Killer backed away from her, ears twitching nervously. “But what, exactly, did they
do?
”

“Well, when I got here late last night, they had the castle surrounded,” Kazul said. “They must have been using their staffs a lot, because there was a good thirty yards of dead forest around the castle already. I thought it would be better to head back to the Mountains of Morning for reinforcements.”

“I should think so!” said Amory. “Even a dragon can't take on the whole Society of Wizards singlehanded. 'Scuse me, Your Majesty.”

“We attacked at dawn,” Kazul continued. “About fifteen minutes after the fight started, that bubble went up around the castle and no one could get in. A couple of wizards came out, but I'm afraid they, ah, got eaten in all the excitement, and no one thought to ask them any questions first. So we don't know what happened inside.”

“Isn't there some way of finding out?” Cimorene turned to Telemain. “Can't you adjust your magic mirror spell to get through that bubble, now that you know it's there? If I could talk to somebody inside—”

“There isn't anybody inside, Your Majesty,” said a new voice, and everyone turned to see Willin, the castle steward, standing by the base of a nearby oak. The normally immaculate elf looked awful: his gold lace collar was torn and blackened; his crisp white shirt was wrinkled, dusty, and smeared with ashes; his velvet coat was ripped in several places and was missing most of its buttons; his white silk hose were torn and dirty; and his left shoe had lost its gold heel.

“Willin!” said Cimorene. “Sit down—you look exhausted. What happened? How do you know there's no one in the castle?”

“I should say, no one other than His Majesty,” Willin said. “When he realized that the Society of Wizards intended to attack the castle, he sent the staff away. Including me. I wouldn't have left, Your Majesty, only he insisted . . .”

“You mean Mendanbar was all alone in there when the wizards got here?”

“An unusual strategy, but quite possibly an extremely effective one,” Telemain said thoughtfully. “I doubt that anyone but Mendanbar really knows all the passages in that castle, and with everyone else gone, he could use his magic full force, without worrying about hurting someone on his own side.”

“Well, it doesn't seem to have worked very well, does it?” Cimorene snapped.

“Kazul, did you manage to catch Head Wizard Zemenar?” Morwen asked. “If anyone knows what the Society of Wizards did, he does.”

Kazul shifted in evident embarrassment. “I'm afraid I ate Zemenar myself. I caught up with him coming out of the Caves of Chance just a little while ago, and by then I was so angry . . .”

“It's a good thing you did,” Amory put in. “That was what set the rest of them running. Before then, we were barely holding our own.”

“I'm confused,” Killer said. “And this talk about eating is making me hungry. Somebody explain it all so we can have lunch.”

“You can't have lunch,” Trouble said. “You're insubstantial.”

“So somebody can fix me, and
then
we can have lunch,” Killer said.

“I'm confused, too,” Brandel said. “Even if I'm not particularly hungry.”

“Then let us take things in a proper order,” said Telemain, for all the world as if he were talking about laying out a new spell. “Willin, you are the reasonable person to begin. What happened at the castle after we left?”

Willin glanced at Cimorene to make sure it was all right to let this unofficial person take charge. When she nodded, he began to speak. At first, the others interrupted him frequently with questions, but Telemain insisted that answers wait until the whole tale had been told. Once they realized that he meant it, everyone except the cats stopped interrupting.

The first wizards, Willin said, had turned up almost as soon as Cimorene and her party had left the Enchanted Forest. Mendanbar had melted them with Telemain's spell, but they had damaged several sections of the Enchanted Forest before he caught up with them. Without the sword, he could not repair the harm they'd done, and he had been very concerned. To help minimize the problem, he'd called in several tribes of elves and asked them to keep watch.

“The elves could melt some of the wizards with soapy water and lemon juice,” Willin said, “and if they couldn't get close enough, or if there were too many wizards, they could let the King know right away. Then he'd come and take care of the wizards before they did too much damage.”

Unfortunately, the wizards were well prepared. The following morning, the entire Society of Wizards had appeared outside the castle. Before anyone had realized what was happening, they had destroyed a wide patch of the forest, leaving the elves no way of getting near them with buckets of soapy water.

“That was when King Mendanbar sent us away,” Willin finished sadly. “I tried to make him let me stay, I really did, but—”

“I understand,” Cimorene said. “You did your best.”

“Did you see what happened outside the castle after you left?” Telemain asked.

“Some of it. The wizards cleared a twenty-foot ring around the castle and then spent most of the day working some spell; I wasn't close enough to see what. Around the middle of the afternoon, the circle they'd cleared started to expand. Fortunately, it didn't grow very fast, and those of us who were watching had plenty of time to move back. Then about ten of them walked across the main bridge into the castle. That's all I can tell you, I'm afraid. It got harder to see what was going on because I kept having to move back to stay out of sight.”

“Was Head Wizard Zemenar one of the group that went into the castle?” Morwen asked.

Willin nodded.

Turning to Kazul, Telemain said, “So when you got here that night, Zemenar was inside the castle and the rest of the Society of Wizards were camped in the burned-out area just outside.”

“Right,” said Kazul. “I called in the rest of my people, and we attacked in the morning. Four or five wizards came out of the castle, the shield spell went up—”

“Wait a minute,” said Brandel. “Shield spell?”

“That glow around the castle,” said Telemain. “The Society of Wizards invented it, and it's really a remarkable piece of work. Nobody can get in or out while it's up, not even a dragon—remember, Morwen?—and they're the only people who can take it down.”

“Not quite,” Morwen said. “Mendanbar's sword got rid of the last one we ran into.”

“Mmmm, yes. Cimorene, how well can you use that sword?”

“I can't use it at all really, the way you mean,” Cim­orene replied. “From what Mendanbar said, the sword has to . . . to agree to work for you somehow before you can use it for magic, and it'll only do that for the Kings of the Enchanted Forest and their direct descendants. I'm a member of the family, so it will let me hold it as a sort of courtesy, but I'm not a direct descendant of any of the Kings of the Enchanted Forest, so I can't use its magic.”

“Blast. It's probably got a selectivity module in the central linkage generator, and if it's braided to the spell core . . .” Telemain's voice trailed off into muttering.

Morwen frowned. The last time they had encountered the Society of Wizards' shield spell, the wizards had been using it to hold Kazul prisoner. And if she remembered correctly . . . She caught Trouble's eye and motioned to him. Tilting his head, Trouble considered for a moment. Then he jumped down from Kazul's back and sauntered over.

“What is it?”

“Do you think you could get inside the shield spell around the castle?” Morwen asked in a low voice. If the answer was no, she didn't want Cimorene getting her hopes up.