Wrede, Patricia C - Enchanted Forest 01

by Dealing

  On the other hand, it seemed unlikely that anything dreadful would happen to Cimorene if she were traveling with a dragon, and she was looking forward to seeing Morwen again. Besides, Cimorene was curious.

  “And anyway,” she said to herself, “Kazul says I’m going, and there’s no point in worrying about it if I don’t have any choice.” Nevertheless, she decided to take one of the smaller magic swords along with her, if Kazul said it was all right. Cimorene saw no point in taking unnecessary chances.

  Kazul had no objection, so Cimorene picked out a small, plain-looking sword in a worn leather scabbard that made the wearer invincible, and they started off. Cimorene had assumed that Kazul would fly through the pass, but Kazul said no.

  “It’s not that easy to get into the Enchanted Forest,” she explained. “At least, not if you’re trying to get in. Princes and youngest sons and particularly clever tailors stumble into it by accident all the time, but if one wants to go there on purpose, one has to follow the proper route.”

  “I didn’t think dragons had that kind of problem,” Cimorene said.

  “Dragons don’t,” Kazul replied. “But you’re not a dragon.”

  So instead of flying through the Pass of Silver Ice, Kazul led Cimorene through the tunnels. Cimorene had to walk very quickly to keep up, even though Kazul was moving slowly. It was not long before she was wishing that the tunnels were high enough for her to ride on Kazul’s back. The route twisted around and up and back and forth and down and around again until Cimorene was thoroughly lost. Finally they came to a gate made of iron bars that completely blocked the passage. Cimorene studied it carefully, but she could see no sign of a handle or a lock.

  “This is the entrance to the Caves of Fire and Night,” Kazul said. “Be careful from here on, and don’t wander away or you’ll get lost.”

  Cimorene refrained from saying that as far as she was concerned, they were lost already. “How are you going to open it?” she asked instead.

  “Like this,” said Kazul.

  “By night and flame and shining rock

  Open thou thy hidden lock.

  Alberolingam!”

  As the sound of Kazul’s voice died away, the iron gate swung silently open. “That’s a very unusual opening spell,” Cimorene commented, impressed.

  “It wasn’t always that complicated,” Kazul said. She sounded almost apologetic. “I believe the first version was very simple, just ‘Open sesame,’ but word got around and we had to change it.”

  Cimorene nodded and followed Kazul through the gate and into the Caves of Fire and Night. For the first hundred yards or so, the only difference Cimorene could see between these caves and the ordinary tunnels on the other side of the gate was that the Caves of Fire and Night were warmer. Then, very suddenly, her lamp went out, plunging everything into complete and utter blackness.

  Cimorene stopped walking immediately. “Kazul?”

  “It’s quite all right. Princess,” Kazul’s disembodied voice said from out of the darkness. “This happens all the time here. Don’t bother trying to relight the lamp. Just put your hand on my elbow and follow along that way.”

  “All right,” Cimorene said doubtfully. She groped with her free hand in the direction of Kazul’s voice and scraped her knuckles on the dragon’s scales. “Ow!”

  “Take your time,” Kazul advised.

  “I’m ready,” Cimorene said. Her right hand was pressed flat against the cool, rough-edged scales at the back of Kazul’s left forearm. “Just don’t move too fast, or I’ll lose you or get stepped on or something.”

  Kazul did her best to oblige, but Cimorene still had difficulty in keeping up. She had to take at least three steps for every one of Kazul’s, and it seemed that every time she moved her foot, she hit a rock or an uneven place in the tunnel floor. Then she would stumble, and her hand would scrape and slide against Kazul’s scales, so that she was afraid she would lose contact with the dragon.

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t try and relight the lamp?” Cimorene asked after her fifth painful stumble-and-slide.

  “Quite sure,” Kazul said. “You see, it isn’t—ah, there it goes.” While Kazul was speaking, there was a flicker of light, and then the darkness rolled aside like a curtain being pulled. Cimorene found herself standing in a large cave whose walls glittered as if they were studded with thousands of tiny mirrors. The lamp in her left hand was burning cheerfully once more.

  “Was it the lamp?” Cimorene asked after studying it for a moment. “Or was it me?”

  “It was the caves,” Kazul said. “That was one of the reasons they’re ‘of night’ as well as ‘of fire.’ “

  “Only one of the reasons?” Cimorene said thoughtfully. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “You’ll be quite all right as long as you’re with me,” Kazul assured her. “Very few things are willing to mess with a dragon, even in the dark. And the periods of darkness don’t last long. Ifs because the magic of these caves doesn’t affect us as much as other people, or so I’m told.”

  “You mean that blackness is likely to come back?”

  Kazul nodded.

  “Then let’s get as far as we can before it does,” Cimorene said, and started across the cave.

  There were four tunnels leading out of the opposite side of the glittering cavern. Kazul took the second from the left without hesitating an instant.

  “Where do all these tunnels go?” Cimorene asked, glancing at the other three openings as she followed Kazul.

  “The one on the right end leads to a chain of caverns,” Kazul said over her shoulder. “The first few are quite ordinary, but then you come to one full of hot sulfur pools. Some of the older dragons bathe there. They claim the water is good for rheumatism. Beyond that is a cave with molten silver dripping down the walls, and the chain ends at a deep chasm with a river of red-hot melted rock at the bottom.”

  “Doesn’t sound very attractive,” Cimorene commented.

  “The dwarfsmiths find it very useful for forging magic swords,” Kazul assured her. “The second tunnel on the right takes you into a maze. The tunnels and caverns constantly shift around, so that no matter how carefully you mark your way, you always get lost.”

  “Even dragons?”

  Kazul nodded. “Though I believe there was one prince who managed to find his way out with a magic ball of string.”

  “Oh, bother!” said Cimorene. The lights had gone out again, just as they emerged into a small cave.

  “It’s quite all right. This part’s easy,” Kazul said.

  “Next time I’m going to bring a cane,” Cimorene muttered. “Where do the other tunnels lead?”

  “The one on the far left goes through a couple of caverns that are pretty, but not very interesting. We’re always chasing knights and princes out of it, though. They come for flasks of water from the bottomless pool at the far end.”

  “What does it do?” Cimorene asked. “Ow!” She had just banged her right elbow against the wall of the cave in the dark.

  “It casts a cloud of darkness for twenty miles around when it’s poured on the ground,” Kazul replied.

  “How useful,” Cimorene muttered balefully, rubbing her elbow.

  “And this tunnel leads to the Enchanted Forest, by way of the King’s Cave,” Kazul finished.

  “Oh, good. I was hoping to see that,” Cimorene said. The King’s Cave was the chamber where the first King of the Dragons had found Colin’s Stone, and the Historia Dracorum had not described it anywhere near well enough to suit Cimorene. “And here’s the light coming back, thank goodness. Let's hurry before it goes again.”

  They went through three small caves and two more periods of blackness before they reached the King’s Cave. Kazul pointed out various locations of interest, such as the wall of crystal with a chip in one comer where the Prince of the Ruby Throne had stolen a piece to make a magic ring and the jewel-studded cavern where the King of the Dragons met with people who needed impressing. T
here was one very eerie cave full of slabs of black rock. Most were standing on end, though a few had fallen over. Kazul said they were all enchanted princes.

  “All of them?” Cimorene asked, appalled. There were at least forty of the stone slabs, and the cave was quite crowded.

  Kazul shook her head. “No, the one on the end there is just an ordinary boulder.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “The princes came to steal some of the Water of Healing from the well at the end of the cave,” Kazul said. “There are two dippers by the well: one is tin, the other is solid gold and covered with jewels. The princes all tried to use the gold one, even though they’d been told that only the tin dipper would work. It’s no more than they deserve.”

  Cimorene frowned, thinking of some of the princes she had known. “Well, I won’t deny that they probably behaved foolishly, but—”

  “Foolishly!” Kazul snorted. “Any reasonably well-educated prince ought to have sense enough to follow directions when he’s on a quest, but all of these fellows were sure they knew better. If they’d simply done what they were told, they wouldn’t be here.”

  “Still, turning them into slabs of stone forever seems a little extreme.”

  “Oh, they won’t be stone forever,” Kazul said. “Sooner or later someone will come along who has the sense not to improvise, and he’ll succeed in getting the water. Then he’ll use some of it to disenchant this lot, and the cave will be empty for a while until the next batch of young idiots starts arriving.”

  Cimorene felt better knowing that the princes would someday be freed, though she had sense enough not to try doing it herself. Since she had not been sent on a quest for the Water of Healing, it was highly unlikely that she would be able to disenchant the princes even if she succeeded in taking the water. And she knew enough about quests and enchantments and the obtaining of things with magical properties to know that she would probably get into a lot of trouble if she tried. So she tucked the matter into the back of her mind and followed Kazul through the stone-filled cavern. She was careful not to step on any of the fallen slabs.

  Just outside the entrance to the next cave, Kazul stopped. “This,” she said, “is the King’s Cave. We have to cross it as quickly as we can. Don’t stop in the middle, and don’t say anything while we’re inside. Understand? Good. Come on, then.”

  As soon as she stepped inside the cave, Cimorene understood the reason for Kazul’s request for silence. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor were made of dark, shiny stone that multiplied and threw back echoes of even the smallest sound. The soft scraping of Kazul’s scales against the floor sounded like thirty men sawing wood, and the tiny gasp Cimorene gave at the sight and sound of the cave was as loud as if she had shouted. Cimorene went on as quietly and carefully as she could.

  Halfway across, she noticed the vibration. It began as a gentle and not unpleasant buzzing in her bones, unrelated to the loud and continually multiplying echoes of her passage, though it, too, grew stronger the farther into the cave she went. Kazul was in front of her now, and she saw the dragon’s tail lash once, as if in pain or anger. Suddenly she remembered Kazul’s description of the aura that made it impossible for most dragons to carry Colin’s Stone, and that this was the place where Colin’s Stone had been found. No wonder Kazul was uncomfortable.

  Cimorene found herself wishing she could stop and pay attention to the humming in her bones, but she remembered Kazul’s directions and continued walking. She had nearly reached the exit when she saw a pebble about the size of her thumbnail, made of the same dark, shiny stone as the cavern walls. Kazul had said nothing about picking things up, so Cimorene veered a little to the right and scooped the pebble up as she passed. A moment later she was out of the cave.

  “Phew!” said Kazul. “I’m glad that’s over. From here on, it should be easy.”

  “Good,” said Cimorene. She dropped the pebble into her pocket to look at more closely later and followed Kazul down the narrow, winding tunnel.

  8

  In Which Cimorene and Kazul Pay a Call,

  and Cimorene Gets into a Fight

  A few minutes later they came out of the Caves of Fire and Night into bright sunlight. Cimorene had to shade her eyes against the sudden glare. As her eyes adjusted, she saw a large clearing around the mouth of the cave. The ground was covered with short grass, so lush and dense that it made Cimorene think of green fur. Here and there a tiny flower twinkled among the blades of grass. At the edge of the clearing the forest began, but Cimorene could only make out the first row of trees. They were enormous, so large that they dwarfed even Kazul.

  “Leave the lamp here,” Kazul said. “There’s no sense in carting it around the forest when we won’t need it until we come back.”

  Cimorene set the lamp on the ground just inside the mouth of the cave. “Now what?” she said.

  “Now we go to Morwen’s,” Kazul said. “And we’ll get there more quickly if you ride. If you climb up on that rock over there, you ought to be able to get on my back without too much trouble.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” Cimorene said, scrambling up onto the rock Kazul had indicated.

  “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I minded,” Kazul said. “Right there will be fine. You can hang onto the spike in front of you and you won’t foul my wings if I have to take off suddenly.”

  Cimorene did not like the implication that there were things in the Enchanted Forest that were nasty enough to make a dragon want to take off suddenly, but she did not say so. It was too late to back out, and she certainly wasn’t going to wait at the mouth of the cave all alone while Kazul went off to visit Morwen. There was no reason to think that waiting would be any safer than going along.

  As soon as Cimorene was settled, Kazul set off into the forest at a rapid pace. At first Cimorene had to concentrate on holding on, but after a while she began to get the hang of it. Soon she was able to look at some of the things they were passing. The trees were huge; Cimorene guessed that even if there were four of her holding hands, she would not be able to reach all the way around one of the trunks. The ground was carpeted with bright green moss that looked even thicker than the grass in the clearing. Cimorene saw no flowers in it, but she spotted several bushes and a vine with three different colors of fruit.

  Kazul changed course several times for no reason that Cimorene could see, but she did not like to distract the dragon by asking questions. They passed a mansion guarded by a fence made of gold and a short tower without any windows or doors. Then Kazul splashed through a shallow stream and made a sharp turn. The trees thinned a little, and Kazul stopped in front of a neat gray house with a wide porch and a red roof. Over the door was a black-and-gold sign in large block letters reading, “NONE OF THIS NONSENSE, PLEASE “

  There were several cats of various sizes and colors perched on the porch railing or lying in the sun. As Cimorene dismounted, Kazul said to one of them, “Would you be good enough to tell Morwen that I’m here and would like to talk to her?”

  The cat, a large gray torn, blinked its yellow eyes at Kazul. Then he jumped down from the porch rail and sauntered into the house, his tail held high as if to say, “I’m doing this as a particular favor, mind, and don’t you forget it.”

  “He doesn’t seem very impressed,” Cimorene commented in some amusement.

  “Why should he be?” Kazul said.

  “Well, you’re a dragon,” Cimorene answered, a little taken aback.

  “What difference does that make to a cat?”

  Fortunately, Cimorene did not have to find an answer, for at that moment Morwen appeared in the door way. She was wearing the same black robe she had worn when she visited Cimorene, or another one exactly like it, and she peered through her glasses with the air of someone studying an unexpected and rather peculiar puzzle.

  “Good morning, Kazul,” she said after a moment. “This is a surprise.”

  “Good,” said Kazul. “If you aren’t expecting us t
o be here, no one else is, either.”

  “That's the way of things, is it?” Morwen commented thoughtfully. “How much of a hurry are you in?”

  “Not much of one, as long as no one knows we’re here,” Kazul replied.

  “Then Cimorene had better get down and have something to drink,” Morwen said in a tone that forbade contradiction. “There’s cider, or goat’s milk, though if you want that, you’ll have the cats after you, or I can put a kettle on for tea. Good gracious, what have you done to your hand?”

  While Morwen had been talking, Cimorene had turned and slid carefully down Kazul’s side. It was a long slide, and when her feet hit the ground, she had to put out a hand to keep from falling. Morwen’s exclamation made her blink in surprise, and she looked down. The palm of her right hand was covered with blood from half a dozen deep slashes and as many scrapes.

  “Oh, dear,” Cimorene said. “It must have happened in the caves, when it was so dark. I didn’t realize. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “Hurting or not, it needs attention,” Morwen said firmly. “Come inside, and I’ll see to it while Kazul tells me why you’re here. You’ll have to go around back this time,” she added, turning to Kazul. “The front steps won’t take the weight. A gnome stole one of the supports, and I haven’t had time to get it fixed yet. Pesky creatures—they’re worse than mice.”

  “Don’t the cats keep the mice away?” Cimorene asked, mildly puzzled.

  “Yes, but they don’t do a thing about gnomes, which is why gnomes are worse. Mind the step.”

  Kazul started walking while Morwen shooed Cimorene up the wooden steps and into the house. Several of the cats eyed Cimorene curiously as she passed, and a tortoiseshell kitten got up and followed her in.

  The front door led into a large, airy room with an iron stove in one comer. There was a good deal of furniture, but everything except the table and the stove had at least one cat on top of it. Morwen frowned at a fat and fluffy Persian that was sitting on one of the chairs. The cat stood up, yawned, gave its front paws a cursory lick or two just to show that this was all his own idea, and jumped down onto the floor. As Cimorene sat down in the vacated chair, there was a knock at the wooden door on the opposite side of the room.