They weren’t there. The spot was the same one she had seen before. The trees were identical—a large elm with dead vine stalks weaving up the side opposite a shaggy-barked hickory with a broken branch hanging from its top creaking back and forth at right angles. But the little pool of blossoms that had nested between them was missing. Kneeling with less grace and agility than her Great-granny Brown, Carole examined the place where the flowers had been. Broken stems pricked up among the moss-bearded tree roots, and one or two leaves remained to reassure her that indeed these were the remains of the flowers she sought.
She shivered and looked quickly around her, searching the gloom. She saw no one, either friend or foe, and half-shrugged, half-flexed her stiff shoulders. At any rate, she was fairly certain that the armed mercenaries on their winged steeds were unlikely to be her rival posy pickers. As her eyes scanned the trees, however, they lit on a refreshing patch of white. This time her effort was rewarded with success and she returned to her companions with her skirt cradling enough flowers to brew the tea.
The enchanted rain was short-lived, but so was the sunlight in the steep-sided valley, and by the time the one left, so had the other. Grippeldice lit a fire with only a minimum of delay caused by the need to dry the travel log. Rupert and the merchant huddled so near that their clothing smoldered. The dragon stayed close, her invisible tail whipping like a gale across the grass as she thrashed it anxiously, rumbling concern for her Prince.
Though Grippeldice had not had the foresight to drop them conveniently near a stream, every curled leaf and every knot hole on every fallen tree in the forest held water, so that was no impediment to making the tea. The dragon stopped rumbling concern for Rupert and started bellowing on her own behalf, however, when Carole said that all they needed was an implement in which to brew the tea and suggested to Grippeldice the only item she could think of with which they could improvise such an implement.
“One of my scales? That is not one of your hotter ideas, witch.”
“Perhaps not, but there’s nothing else available that’s fire resistant. Don’t be so selfish. Look at poor Rupert. He needs that tea.”
A long silence. Rupert remained huddled, but looked up at his name and attempted a valiant smile, which didn’t work out at all.
Near Carole’s face a curl of smoke blossomed, a long sigh smelling of rotten eggs escaping with it. “I’m sure it will hurt quite a lot,” the dragon said.
“I thought you said you loved him,” Carole chided shamelessly. “What about all those noble deeds one hears involving great pain and sacrifice for love between dragons and knights?”
“Is that what they were about?” Grippeldice brightened a little. “I somehow never thought they went that way from the snatches I heard. Mummy said I was too young yet to be told. Do you know any?”
“I’m not much good at telling stories, but once the Prince is feeling better, no doubt he’ll recall some he learned from the Archives when he was a boy. I’ll be happy to translate.”
“Well… oh, holy smokes, I suppose so. It won’t have to be a very large scale though, will it?”
“Large enough for at least one cup of tea. I can reuse it to make enough for that other man and me.”
The dragon snuffled and smoke boiled forth with enough volume to cause Carole to step backwards.
“This is an emergency, you know. I do wish you wouldn’t be such a baby.”
“I know, and I’m trying to be brave, but I am a baby,” the dragon protested. “I’m still not quite a quarter of a century old. That’s extremely young for a dragon.” She snuffled again. “Very well. You may take a scale. But try to take one of the ones low on my side, near my belly, where the ground and the air currents loosen them anyway.”
Carole reached toward the voice till she touched the dragon, who guided her with rather finicky instructions until she worked her way down the invisible side to a scale sufficiently loose to suit its owner and sufficiently large for her own purposes. Gently but firmly, the witch gave a sharp tug and dislodged the scale. The dragon almost forgot herself and burned down the forest.
Rupert and the merchant found that in spite of their infirmities they could move with amazing speed when necessary. Carole hugged the ground with the scale shielding her head until Grippeldice regained her composure.
The three humans sat side by side on a fallen log, any garments that could be spared draped over twigs by the fire. Until the Prince was sufficiently convalescent to deliver the promised tales of love and valor about dragons and princes, the merchant regaled Grippeldice with an account of a journey he had once guided into the realm of the Queen of Dragons, with whom he claimed to be well acquainted. Carole applied a bone needle and a bit of yarn she had unwoven from Rupert’s trouser leg to the seat of his pants while he sat bare-legged, his Miragenian robe wrapped demurely across his lap. He made ungrateful faces while sipping the first infusion of the hard-won tea.
Suddenly the wind whipped viciously across their fire, bending it low, snatching loose the twigs serving as clothes hangers and singeing the hem of Carole’s cloak. A shadow fell across the crushed brush where Grippeldice invisibly curled. Behind it, shrouded in deeper shadow, something stood, eyes mirroring the flames.
“Interloper,” it accused in a low, slightly nasal feminine voice throbbing with anger. “Defilers of magic. Ghouls who drink the very blood of universal wisdom—”
“You got us wrong, lady,” the merchant said. “This is not blood, just a little herb tea. We are not what you say. These two are Argonians and me, I’m a traveling man.”
“You are interlopers!” the voice said, its source shifting forward. The outline might have belonged to a smallish woman wearing a cloak with a stylish puffy hood, but Carole couldn’t make out the details clearly.
“Just who do you think you are to come barging in as if you owned the place, calling people names?” Carole demanded. Rupert freed a hand from balancing the scale at his lips long enough to touch her arm, silently urging restraint. Without thinking, he shifted the fingers of his left hand to support the rest of the puddle of tea suspended seemingly in midair above it.
“I am Effluvia, guardian of the valley, protectress of this sacred place and these sacred plants and their proper usage. I alone know how each magical aspect of this valley must be treated, nurtured, and cultivated to produce a power for wisdom and glory in its truest and purest form. You have dared to trample this ground, to ravish this valley for your own selfish ends. For that I will punish you, summoning the concentrated power of my own divine essence, loosing it upon you so that—” The voice stopped and focused on Rupert, who still sat with his head lowered, sipping, trying to pretend he wasn’t present. “You. Man. Dast you continue to commit your crime even as I confront you with its enormity?”
“Lady,” Carole said wearily, hoping that her whistle had been restored enough by now to allow her to deal with this creature, “My cousin has had a very hard day. If you’ll be so kind as to excuse us?”
The creature—for as it stepped forward into the firelight Carole could see it was not entirely a woman—did not respond well to firm courtesy. With a nasty snarl she stretched out her clawed hand and hurled a spell, something like a thunderbolt, but smaller and more to the point. The spell knocked the tea-filled invisible scale from Rupert’s lips. Almost in the same motion the creature spun around in the light, so that her victims got a good look at what they were dealing with. Her face was long and pointed in the middle, her chin receding, her forehead and nose prominent, eyes small and shining hard and bright as arrowheads in the rain. Her waist-length hair was unbound and blacker than the shadows except for two broad white streaks like parallel lightning bolts shooting from her widows peak to the beginning of what Carole had mistaken for a cloak. This last item had been curled around Effluvia’s head and as it unfurled was revealed as a long, luxuriant tail of black fur. This she brandished at them like a banner, except of course that she had had to turn herself around ba
ckwards to do so.
“If you would smell my flowers, interlopers, smell this as well!” the Effluvia creature cried, and her tail tip jerked.
At the same time the brush between merchant and cousins and their assailant sprang up. “Knock my friends around and attack an unarmed injured man, will you? I’ll cook your goose, skunk!” Grippeldice roared in Pan-elvin. Her three former passengers were knocked off the log by her strong tail even as that other tail jerked and a dreadful stink of dragon-sized proportions assaulted the air from around an invisible but equally dragon-sized space in front of them.
Grippeldice roared and the woman shrieked, suddenly aware that these were not just any dragonless wayfarers she was tormenting. She spun back around, caught some of her own essence reflected from the invisible scales, and reeled backwards in a swoon. A great gust of wind swept between her and her intended victims as first the grass, then the tree tops flattened with the dragons passing. A most unsavory odor floated back to settle over the spectators as the tree tops lashed back into place again.
The merchant was laughing, his eyes and nose running in unseemly chorus. Carole fanned the air rapidly with both hands while holding her breath and wondering if her magic could come up with a fume-dissipating song. Rupert struggled to his feet and approached the fallen skunk-woman, who had recovered enough to cough, a feat complicated by her attempts to hold her nose at the same time.
“Madam, I fear there has been some terrible mistake that has caused distress to us all. Pray let us help you clean yourself and we’ll discuss this like civilized creatures,” Rupert offered gallantly, though nasally, for he too was of necessity holding his nose.
She said nothing, too busy coughing to speak or even to hear him, and he turned, walked away a short distance, sighed deeply, squatted down, and very carefully began to pick up a handful of large wet leaves, with which he proceeded to wipe all exposed surfaces, save the fur of her tail, which he left strictly alone for reasons of prudence as well as propriety.
“Watch that tail or she’ll have you for sure this time,” Carole cautioned, but he shook his head.
“I don’t think she’s able. She’s quite debilitated by her own—er—essence. But see here, cousin, her tail has caught most of the stink and she is a lady whatever. I don’t suppose you would mind, uh… ?”
She rolled her eyes but obligingly gathered a fresh batch of leaves and, with Rupert supporting Effluvia’s front end, brushed the fur of the creatures tail with them until she was unable to hold her breath any longer. She staggered away, breathed deeply for a moment, gathered fresh leaves, and started over again.
Effluvia still could barely speak. She looked up at Rupert wonderingly, blinking rapidly as the tears coursed down her cheeks. Rupert patted her shoulder. “Maybe you can make magic with some of the other flowers you have here to improve the atmosphere.”
Effluvia’s lips moved, murmuring, “My God,” it sounded like then, pettishly, “I have been shamed. You’re trying to rub it in.”
“We’re trying to rub it off,” Carole corrected her with exaggerated patience. “If you hadn’t been so possessive about a few little flowers…”
“But I am the guardian of magic in this valley and the custodian of its use.”
“Unless I missed something, those flowers were just flowers,” Carole scolded. “They’re not magic at all until you use them and anyone has a right to use wildflowers, for pity’s sake. I’ve heard of game preserves where you can’t chop wood or kill animals, but plucking wildflowers?”
“Standards must be maintained,” the skunk-woman said, her long nose twitching but her beady eyes looking pleadingly at Rupert.
“In that case, lady, why did you not ask to taste my tea?” Rupert asked gently. “You could have told in that way that my cousin upholds the highest standards in her brewing. She sought only to ease my pain so that we might continue our quest to find my infant niece, who has been ruthlessly abducted.”
“But surely you must understand that no one knows how to truly use the magic of this sacred valley but myself,” Effluvia continued to plead, now whining slightly as she brushed the moisture from her pointed face with two hands still odiferous enough to cause her snoutish nose to wrinkle. “I must protect the wonders of this place against those who ride the flying horses. Those pimps of magic dwelling in Miragenia are not fit to step foot in this valley.”
“I do understand,” Prince Rupert said quickly, “and we couldn’t agree with you more, could we, Lady Carole? As our—er—native guide mentioned, we are Argonian ourselves, not Miragenian at all. He is, of course.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Prince,” the merchant said, raising a finger to draw attention to himself. He was standing as far from them as he could while still remaining as close to the ruined embers of the fire as possible.
“Later,” the Prince said firmly.
“As His Highness pointed out, I think we’ve had a misunderstanding here, Effluvia,” Carole said just as firmly. “I take it that you are a sorceress or a priestess of some sort, charged with protecting this valley. Yet we saw no signs posted, no wards against entering, no medicine bags in the trees, no guardian beasts. We had no way of knowing we were trespassing on your realm. I occupy a similar position to yours myself in my own village, so you see if anyone can understand your position, I can. And while I must say I still maintain that wildflowers are wild and should be free to anyone, we had no mind to offend you. Had you spoken to us first before just wading in and attacking Rupert, this could have all been settled without so much fuss. As it is, you made the dragon angry, spilt the tea and didn’t do yourself any good either.”
“Oh, I do see your point, and while I was only doing my appointed sacred duty to the greater glory of the Grand Prismatic, as I’m sure you’ll understand”—this with an almost coy look at Rupert—”I accept your apology and ask you all to be my guests. You must tell me of your travail and let me show you the compassion and hospitality the valley can offer to those who would honor rather than defile it.”
“We do appreciate that,” Rupert said humbly.
“I must ask, of course, that you leave your own guardian beast outside,” Effluvia said. “Whatever it was.”
“A dragon,” Carole enlightened her quickly. “A very protective and jealous dragon.”
Chapter VII
By the time the group reached Effluvia’s den, Effluvia had gone from trying to run them off to being effusively thrilled that they were honoring her humble hut with their presence—”they” meaning Rupert, of course.
Her den burrowed into a mountainside, with an entrance of slim branches and packed mud fronting on a shallow cave. A curtain of furs hung over the doorway. Their suddenly solicitous hostess wrapped everyone in furs from a pile that smelled faintly of skunk and poorly tanned hides.
To Rupert she said, “Your Highness, if you and your companions will divest yourselves of your wet and soiled garments, I will take them outside and wash them in a bath of herbs that will leave them clean and sweet-smelling.”
As she expected, everyone was too stunned by her graciousness to object, and she gathered the clothing and departed with it without interference. Once outside her muzzle split in a wide toothy version of the human grin she had once been capable of displaying, her little eyes dancing with blissful wonder at the gift that the god had bestowed upon her in the guise of the Prince. After hugging his clothing to her until she reached a semblance of calmness, she dumped the entire pile in the hollowed log that served as a rain barrel. She was thankful that the magic many-hued tulip, whose mate bloomed within the great temple, was some distance away from her hut. If the Prince knew of the power of his sacred face, he was being very cagey about it. But he was not the only one who could be cagey. Though she had known him at once when he bent over her after what had seemed her ignominious defeat, she had kept her peace, waiting for a sign. When he maintained his pose of humility and ignorance, she maintained hers of loyal guardi
an who had to be won over by unintentional interlopers. But all the while, the knowledge burst in her breast that the god had jested with her. While pretending to send an opponent to defeat and disgrace her, the Great Polyhued had manifested himself in this amazing show of grace. She could hardly wait to tell His Brilliance. She would, though. The blessing was hers alone, and she of all of the god’s servants knew best how to use it to its fullest advantage. Kneeling, she whispered the briefest possible message into the tulip’s petals.
Rupert was nodding when she returned, without the clothing and with a smug expression on her snout. Effluvia brushed his face with the end of her tail, newly and more pleasantly scented. She was not prepared for them to sleep. Rupert, gratified by her apparent change of heart and curious to learn what caused it, was content to loll against the wall, a roll of skins supporting his bare back while the fur robe covered him from mid-chest to mid-shin. His lower legs and feet hung out. Effluvia tapped them with her tail from time to time, to emphasize certain things she had to say. This made him smile no matter how serious the subject. Fur tickled.
He told her without embellishment or unnecessary explanation why he and Carole sought Gorequartz. In her present friendly mood, perhaps she could help. On the other hand, he did not yet trust her and disliked volunteering any more information than absolutely essential to elicit a sympathetic response.
“I think what you wish to do is very noble,” Effluvia gushed when Rupert had finished. “But I doubt if the evil King will allow it. You’ll need the help of the priests.”
“You seem to know a great deal, madam, for a woman who sports a tail and lives in the woods,” the merchant observed slyly from his cozy nest of skins.
“You seem to speak freely for one who has not even given his name,” she countered.
The Christening Quest Page 11
