Patricia Wrede - Dealing with Dragons

"Stop that? Alianora said. Antorell ignored her. "I said, stop it!"

Alianora shouted, and threw her bucket at Antorell's head.

Alianora's aim was off. The bucket hit Antorell's shoulder. A bolt of fire shot from the end of his staff and whizzed between Cimorene and the stone prince to strike the far wall with a whumping noise and a shower of sparks. Antorell staggered, slipped in the cascade of soapy water, and fell over the bucket, dropping his staff in the process.

Cimorene darted in and kicked Antorell's staff out of his reach. He stared up at her from a mound of soggy silk and soapsuds. "You can't do this to me!" he shrieked.

Something in his voice made Cimorene and her friends look at him more closely. Alianora's eyes went wide, and Cimorene blinked in surprise.

"He's-he's collapsing," Alianora said in a stunned voice.

"He's melting," Cimorene corrected her.

"I can't be melting!" Antorell cried. "I'm a wizard! It's not fa-" His head disappeared into a small brown puddle, and his cries stopped.

There was a moment of astonished silence. "I thought it was witches who melt when you dump water over them," the stone prince said at last.

"It is, usually," Cimorene said. "What on earth did you put in that bucket, Alianora?"

'Just water and soap, and a little lemon juice to make it smell nicer," Alianora said.

"Um," said Cimorene, thinking hard. "I'll bet there's a simpler way of melting wizards, but we don't have time right now to figure out what it is.

How many buckets can you get hold of in a hurry?"

"Buckets?" Alianora said. "Two, counting this one. And I suppose I could borrow one from Hallanna; that's three."

"And I've got two in the kitchen, and I expect the iron kettle is big enough. That's six altogether; two for each of us. You will help, won't you?"

Cimorene added, turning to the stone prince.

"Of course," the prince assured her. "Help with what?"

"Stopping those wizards," Cimorene said. "We can't let them make Woraug the next King of the Dragons by trickery."

"I don't see how we can stop them," Alianora said. "We can't possibly get to the Ford of Whispering Snakes before the trials start, and even if we could, we don't know where the wizards will be hiding."

"If we tell the dragons that Woraug's trying to cheat, they'll stop the trials," Cimorene said with more confidence than she felt. "That will give us time to find the wizards. And I've got a way to get us to the ford. You go start collecting buckets. I'll meet you at your place after I get the things I'll need from Kazul's."

"What about…" Alianora gestured with distaste at the wet, messy lump of robes in the center of the puddle that was all that remained of Antorell.

"We'll clean it up when we get back," Cimorene said. "This is more important."

Alianora nodded, and the three left the banquet room. The stone prince decided to accompany Alianora since he was not a fast walker and Cimorene had farther to go. Cimorene left them when they reached the main tunnel and ran back to Kazul's cave. There she went straight to her room and opened the drawer where she kept odds and ends. In the back left-hand corner, carefully wrapped in a handkerchief, were the three black feathers she had taken from beneath the left wing of the bird she had killed in the Enchanted Forest. She shoved the whole packet into her pocket without bothering to unwrap it and went on to the kitchen to collect her buckets.

Then she hurried through the tunnels to Woraug's cave, where Alianora and the stone prince were waiting.

When Cimorene arrived, she found the stone prince pumping water to fill Alianora's third bucket while Alianora mixed soap and lemon juice into the second. Cimorene set her pots and pails next to the pump and went to help Alianora.

"Now what?" Alianora said when all the buckets were full of cleaning mixture.

Cimorene reached into her pocket and dug out the package. Gently, she unfolded the handkerchief and removed one of the feathers, noticing as she did that the package also contained the pebble she had picked up in the Caves of Fire and Night. "If we each take two buckets, can we still link elbows without spilling too much?" she asked.

Alianora and the stone prince looked at each other, shrugged, and picked up two buckets each. Cimorene took the last bucket and the iron pot, holding the handle of the pot with only three fingers so that she could keep a grip on the feather with her thumb and forefinger. A series of awkward maneuvers followed as Alianora and the stone prince tried to link elbows with Cimorene without losing their balance or dropping one of their buckets.

In the process, Cimorene's skirt got soaked.

"It's a good thing I'm not a wizard," Cimorene said. "Ready? Here we go." She twisted her hand toward the edge of the iron pot and let go of the black feather. "I wish we were at the Ford of Whispering Snakes," she said as the feather fell, and the room dissolved around them.

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."