My left foot followed my right. I began the descent.
“Princess Addie?”
I turned.
There was another Rhys, sailing between the trees a few yards from me. “Princess Addie? Are you here?” it called. It didn’t seem to see me.
A specter! I was about to catch a specter!
“Begone, Monster!” Rhys commanded. “You shall not—”
“No! Wait!” I stepped out of the hole. “Don’t leave, you monster,” I shouted. “I have a question to ask you.” Perhaps I wouldn’t have to go in the hole after all.
It turned at the sound of my voice. “Princess Addie? Is that you? I can’t see you. Are you wearing your magic cloak?”
Chapter Seventeen
* * *
MY CLOAK! I WHIPPED it off. Only specters and dragons could see me while I wore it. I’d been wandering with a specter! I’d been gulled again.
The spectral Rhys, the monster, the one that had lured me here, began to laugh, sounding high-pitched and cruel. It hugged itself and rocked with laughter. It began to vanish.
“Stay,” I said, my voice weak from fright and shock.
It continued to disappear. In a moment it would be gone.
“Stay!” I shouted. “I command you.”
It reappeared.
“Tell me how to find the cure to the Gray Death.”
The real Rhys took my sack from the specter.
It spoke. “I know nothing of a cure, but dragons and fairies know.” It laughed again. “But you’ll have an easier time finding a dragon than a fairy.” It bowed in a mockery of Rhys’s extravagant gesture. Then it vanished. Its baton, which I still held, vanished too, and my fingers closed over air.
I backed away from the hole. For a moment I couldn’t speak. Finally I said, “Is Meryl all right? Is she worse?”
“She’s unchanged. No weaker.”
No weaker. The specter had spoken true, about this at least.
“Are you hurt? Your arm looks—”
“I’m fine.” The specter’s trap—the tunnel—still menaced. “Can you cover that hole?”
Rhys replaced the rock over the entrance with difficulty, panting from the effort. “This is the worst spot in the forest, I think.” He paused to catch his breath. “I found a clearing not far from here. Do you want to go there?”
I nodded and followed him, struggling to overcome my fright.
He turned his head and said, “Orne believes specters are beautiful, but I . . .”
I should have recognized the monster for what it was. Rhys, the real Rhys, would never steal a ring or take advantage of a dwarf’s drunkenness.
How did I know this Rhys was real? He had saved me from the hole, but he still could be . . . Maybe I was the victim of a scheme among several specters. He too was taking me to a place I didn’t know.
I studied his back as I followed him, but it told me nothing.
“The clearing should be very close. Let me see. Ah, yes. Here it is.”
Nothing seemed wrong. Again, I was comforted by the sight of the sky. It was still night, but the stars were beginning to fade.
Rhys twirled around to face me, his cloak billowing out behind him. “I’m so glad I found you.”
“How did you know where to look?”
“Princess Meryl said she’d told you that specters might know where to find the cure.”
That was true. She had said that. For a moment I relaxed, but then I began to doubt again. A specter could know what Meryl had said.
I knelt down and began to clear away dead leaves, working furiously. When she’d caught the specter at Lake Orrinic, Meryl had shown me how to detect the creatures.
“What are you doing, Princess Addie? May I help?”
I ignored him. In a few minutes I had cleared a space. The soil was moist, spongy. I leaned on it with my hand and made a handprint.
I sat back and said, “Stand here.”
He looked puzzled but stood where I told him.
“Now step away.”
He did—and left no footprints.
“You’re . . .” My voice cracked. “You’re a specter too. You should have known better than to try to trick me twice.”
The monster stood there stupidly. It still had my sack. I reached up and snatched it, and the creature offered no resistance. Clutching the sack tight, I began to pull off my ordinary boots. “So tell me what you know, creature,” I panted. Then I shouted, roared, “How fares my sister truly?”
“Princess Addie, I’m no specter.” It fell to its knees, clasping its hands dramatically. It played the real Rhys to a fare-thee-well. “What test did I fail?”
I yanked the magic boots out of the sack and pushed my ordinary ones in. “You know the test, and so do I. Now you must answer my question. Tell me true, how fares my sister?” I stuck my right foot into a magic boot—the left magic boot. I pulled the boot off. “Answer me, I command you.”
“If I don’t answer you, doesn’t that prove I’m no specter?”
I sat still. I didn’t know. Then I shook my head. “You proved what you are when you couldn’t leave a footprint.”
It chuckled. Chuckled! It was having a fine time, toying with me.
“That’s the trouble?” it said. “I can leave a footprint, nothing easier.” It stepped back into the space I’d cleared, then stepped away, leaving two undeniable boot prints.
“They’re the boots, not you. You’re a sorcerer. You can do anything. I mean, you’re a specter, and you can do anything.”
It sat on the ground and began to unlace its boots. “Sorcerers’ feet are very ugly, very bony. I would have spared you the sight.” It pulled off its hose, which had a big darn at the right heel.
Its toes were bony, with a tuft of hair at the knuckles. Its toenails needed trimming. It returned to the cleared spot . . .
And made two glorious footprints.
He was Rhys!
I smiled up at him, flooded with relief. “But why didn’t you leave a footprint at first?”
He blushed. “Few humans know this about us.” He sat on the ground next to me. “Our natural state is flying or floating in the air, not walking. We’re supposed to truly walk and put our weight down when we’re with humans. But . . .” His blush deepened. “. . . I cheat. I float a hair’s width above the ground.” He chuckled. “Don’t tell Orne.”
Orne! I wondered if the specter had been truthful about him. “Rhys . . . Do you know . . . Did Orne . . . Was your teacher ever married?”
Rhys looked at me quizzically. “Did the specter tell you he had been?”
I blushed. “To a human.”
“Orne?” He shook his head. “I doubt it. He’s against sorcerers marrying.”
I returned the magic boots to my sack and put my ordinary ones on again. I was a fool to feel disappointed.
Rhys began to put his hose back on. “Orne is usually taciturn, but he can talk for hours about the folly of marriage.”
I changed the subject hastily and told the tale the specter had spun. I asked if there really was a ring to extend the dwarf queen’s life.
“Yes, but it has power only over dwarfs. It wouldn’t help Princess Meryl, and it isn’t kept in a chamber under Mulee Forest.”
“What would have happened if I’d continued my descent? Would the specter have sealed me in with a boulder?”
He stood and shook his head. “I don’t think so. That wouldn’t be the specters’ way. More likely the tunnel would have looked as it should have for a while, but then it would have branched—”
“And I wouldn’t have known which way to go.” I pictured it. “I would have turned to call back for advice, and I would have seen more tunnels and no one to . . .” I almost swooned. I took deep breaths and didn’t faint.
“Are you all right?”
I nodded and changed the subject again. “Before I came to the Mulee, I defeated an ogre.” I told Rhys about it, and the telling made me feel better.
“Your first victory.” He bowed to celebrate—exactly as the specter had, which made me shiver.
“Addie . . . Princess Addie . . .”
I shivered again and wondered why Rhys’s tongue had slipped. I couldn’t imagine that I was “always Addie, simply Addie” in his thoughts too. But if I had let the false sorcerer address me informally, I might as well let the true sorcerer do so. “You may call me Addie, without my title. I don’t mind.”
He nodded solemnly. “Thank you, Prin- Thank you, Addie.” Then he smiled broadly and said, “At the citadel yesterday I worked on something for you, something to impress and astonish you.”
It was absurd to feel so pleased.
“May I show you now, to celebrate your triumph over the ogre?”
“Please do.” A dragon might fry me tomorrow, and then I’d never know what it was.
Rhys took his baton out of his wide flowered sleeve and pointed it at the sky. He pulled down a small cloud, which he hung over the clearing. “First we need to brighten the Mulee’s gloom.” He twisted the baton, and the cloud tucked itself into the shape of a crescent moon. He stabbed the air, and the cloud lit up and glowed yellow, the prettiest, most comforting moon I’d ever seen.
“Could I . . . Might I touch it?”
“Go ahead.”
I approached the cloud, which obligingly lowered itself. I stretched out my hand, and . . . my finger tingled. I was touching a cloud! “It tingles,” I said, patting it. “And it’s springy. I like it. It’s lovely.”
Rhys grinned, looking delighted.
I pushed gently with my finger, and the cloud let me in. Now my whole hand tingled. “Oh!”
After a few moments I withdrew my hand and went to stand next to Rhys.
“Now that we have light . . .” He pulled down another small cloud, an oval that hovered only a few inches above the ground. As I watched, it changed shape and color and became the image of the bench in the old courtyard at home.
Rhys pulled down another cloud. He moved the baton up and down, describing small s shapes and figure eights, and then he pressed the baton in various spots, much as if he were playing the flute.
I gasped. There I was—me as a cloud—seated on the cloud bench.
The cloud me was me at my best—no, beyond my best. The actual Addie had never looked so pretty as this cloud maiden, sitting there in the glow of a cloud moon.
On the cloud Addie my straight brown hair wasn’t wispy, was full and graceful instead. My pose—no, her pose was graceful too, her back straight, her long legs tucked under the cloud bench. Her gray eyes were luminous, ardent. She blinked them too often, as I do, which Bella always says makes me look addlepated. But the cloud’s blinking only made her look sweet. To my amazement her gaudy green gown became her, brought out the color in her cheeks. She was charming, this cloud Addie.
Another cloud joined me on the bench and began to take form. I expected it to be Rhys, and it was, except—
“Your chin isn’t so long.”
“I can never get myself right. That’s what I was going to improve before I showed you.”
The cloud Rhys stood and bowed. The cloud me curtsied. The cloud Rhys gestured at the sky. The cloud Addie pressed her hands to her heart and nodded.
And then the cloud Rhys picked the cloud me up in his arms and flew her up into the rosy dawn sky!
“Oh!” I said, wishing to be my cloud self.
The cloud moon rose too, and the cloud Rhys and I circled it three times and then set off into the sky, darting here, darting there, entering into the mass of ordinary clouds and reemerging.
The real Rhys at my side waved his baton, and the cloud figures and the moon dissolved into ordinary clouds. Another wave, and the cloud bench rose and merged with its brethren.
“Did you like it?”
“It was glorious!”
He bowed.
If he hadn’t told me about Orne’s views on marriage, I might have wondered why he’d flown my cloud self in his arms. But now I knew it was only his delight in the dramatic, his pleasure in giving pleasure.
I looked at the sky. It was morning outside the forest, and I had to resume my quest. “Let’s leave the Mulee now.” I reached into my sack for the magic boots.
“You don’t need those. I can fly you out.”
Fly me? The real me? In the sky?
“I won’t drop you. Flying is . . .”
Hurtling along in my boots was uncomfortable, but I was used to it, and there wasn’t far to fall.
“. . . the nicest—I can show you how the wind feels, and you can touch more clouds.”
He looked so eager. I fought back a hysterical laugh. If he dropped me, at least I wouldn’t have to go to a dragon.
“Don’t fly me over the moon or around the sun.”
“I won’t. I promise. Which way are you heading?”
“West.”
He lifted me the same way the cloud Rhys had lifted the cloud Addie, one arm under my back, the other under my knees, so I was reclining in his arms. My heart began to hammer—fear and something else I wouldn’t name.
“We’ll leave the Mulee the quick way,” he said.
The forest floor fell away. A moment later we were sailing above the highest leaves on the tallest trees. Rhys flew vertically, as though standing upright. He wasn’t nearly as fleet as my magic boots, but this mode of travel was much sweeter, once I got over my fright. I leaned my head against his chest and was surprised to feel the heat of his skin through his cloak.
“Do you feel my sorcerer’s flame?” he said into my hair. “It burns there, just above my breastbone.”
“Yes,” I murmured. “I feel it.”
We passed beyond the forest, but he continued flying for several minutes before lighting on a hillside overlooking a lake. I stood away from him and hoped my heart would stop pounding soon.
He spread his arms wide. “Isn’t it fine, Addie?”
I nodded. The lake reflected the sky and was home to two handsome swans. A line of flowering trees, bedecked with pink blossoms, marched up the hill.
“Thank you for setting me down here.”
He bowed, reminding me of the specter again. “I suppose a specter would be able to mimic me as completely as it mimicked you,” I said.
“I’m not sure. It wouldn’t know whether to be the timid Addie or the Addie who tosses ogres to their fate and orders specters to do her bidding.”
I shook my head at the compliment. “I was terrified both times.”
“You managed nonetheless.” He paused and then said, “I have to leave you in a few minutes. Where are you going next?”
I took a deep breath. “To the desert to find a dragon.”
“A dragon!” Rhys was quiet. Then he said, nodding, “You’re right. A dragon is Princess Meryl’s best hope. But Addie, I don’t like . . . I wish I could . . .” He fell silent again for a few moments. “I know something of dragons, more than humans know.”
“Please tell me.” I sat on the grass.
He crouched next to me. “They’re solitary. They dislike other dragons and hate all other creatures. Yet they’re lonely and they enjoy conversation. It’s why they spin out the deaths of their human victims. If you’re captured, you must keep the dragon entertained.”
Entertained! I hated talking to strangers. How would I entertain a dragon? “What entertains them?”
“I suppose . . .” His face became still. “They’re calling me, and I won’t be able to leave again.”
“When will it end?”
“The final event is in six days.” He added, speaking quickly, “Dragons’ bellies aren’t their only tender spot. They can be hurt through the undersides of their claws and through their ears.” He stood. “Take care. I would hate . . .” He rose into the air.
Hate what?
In a moment he was but a speck, and then he was gone. I wished he could have stayed. I had never felt so alone. I was the wrong sister for this.
I pulled the spyglass out of my sack. Time to find a dragon. Time to entertain a dragon.
Chapter Eighteen
* * *
BELLA HAD TAUGHT US about dragons, and Meryl used to pore over the tomes in Father’s library for dragon lore. They were known to hunt for a day or more at a time, preying on horses, cattle, goats, or sheep, and, when the mood struck them, on people. They’d usually gorge on the livestock immediately, and the animals’ owners would find the bones. But human bones were never found. And more than once a dragon had been spotted flying with a captive clutched in a coil of its tail. We believed that they toyed with their prisoners, sometimes for months, before killing them. In Drualt the hero rescued a maiden after slaying the dragon Yune, and the maiden was witless and half dead from five weeks of torment.
When not hunting, dragons slept a great deal, but they also gloated over their hoards of bones and plunder—weighing, counting, admiring. What else they did I didn’t know, whether they recited poetry or sang or whittled chair legs.
I knew one thing more. I knew I’d never defeat a dragon in combat. My only hope lay in tricking it. But how would I trick a creature known for its cunning? I thought about it, and the morning ticked by.
Finally an idea came to me. I’d go to its lair while the dragon was asleep or away hunting. I’d stand still in my seven-league boots—no mistakes, no stumbling—and wait for the dragon to awaken or to return. As soon as it did, I’d say that I expected to die for the knowledge, but would it please tell me the cure for the Gray Death? It would think I couldn’t get away, so it might tell me. As soon as it uttered the words, I’d take a step and be gone.
It seemed simple.
I pulled out Rhys’s map of the western desert. There were few landmarks—an oasis near the desert’s northern border, another in the central desert, and the lairs of three dragons. A lair marked Kih was within twenty miles of our western border with the kingdom of Pevir. Another, marked Jafe, was southeast of the first, about a hundred miles away. The third was in the central desert, not far from one of the oases. That one was marked Vollys, the same Vollys who had swooped down and taken a farmer last year. The same Vollys whom Meryl had hoped to slay.
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