Talking to Dragons (25 page)

“Hey!” Shiara said. “Watch what you're doing with that sword!”

“I'm sorry.” I stood up, stuck the key in my pocket again, and held out a hand to help Shiara up. “Is your arm all right?”

“I think so,” she said absently. “At least, it doesn't hurt any more than it did already. Now, which way do we go?”

“I don't know.” The door shook as something hit it, and a moment later there was a muffled explosion. “I think we should get out of here, though.”

“Aren't you going to put that stupid sword away first?”

“No,” I said. “I'd rather have it in my hand, in case some of the wizards do get into the castle.”

Shiara scowled, but she didn't object again, and we started hunting.

The castle was even more confusing on the inside than it was on the outside. Rooms opened into more rooms and then suddenly into a hallway or a flight of stairs. All of them were full of chairs and tables and books and suits of armor, and everything was dusty. The wizards' spell had kept spiderwebs and cobwebs out of the castle, but it hadn't done anything at all about the dust. Nightwitch didn't like it at all. She kept sneezing, until finally Shiara picked her up and carried her.

It took a lot longer to figure out where we were going than I'd expected. I could feel the sword pulling me toward the center of the castle, but it was very hard to just go in that direction. In spite of Kazul's instructions, Shiara and I kept getting into hallways that curved the wrong way and chains of rooms that ended with nowhere else to go. It was very discouraging.

Finally, we came to a pleasant room with a big window and a desk in one corner. “This doesn't look right, either,” Shiara said. “Do you think—”

“Doesn't look right?” growled a voice up near the ceiling. “Of course it doesn't look right! It's been seventeen years since anybody has dusted in here.
And
I haven't had any visitors except the mice.”

I looked up and saw a wooden gargoyle in one corner. It made a face at me and went on, “Who are you, and what are you doing in here?”

“I'm Daystar, and I'm looking for the King of the Enchanted Forest,” I said.

“Oh yeah? What for?” the gargoyle demanded suspiciously.

“I think I'm supposed to return his sword.”

“His—Oh, I see. Well, he isn't here. Hasn't been for seventeen years, and boy, am I going to give him an earful when
he
gets back.”

“Come
on,
Daystar, we're wasting time,” said Shiara.

“Try the great hall, down the corridor to your left,” the gargoyle yelled after us as we left the room. “And send somebody to wipe the dust out of my ears! The things I put up with—”

Since nothing else had worked, we followed the gargoyle's directions and found ourselves in front of a large door at the end of a long hall. It was three times as wide as a normal door, and much taller, and it was made of gold with designs in relief. There was a staff lying on the floor in front of it, and I could tell from the jangling of the sword that it was a wizard's staff. When I stopped to look at it, the sword jerked impatiently toward the door.

“I think this is the place we've been looking for,” I said.

Shiara tried the door. “It's locked. Where's the key?”

“Just a minute.” I dug for it. As soon as I touched it, I felt the key pulling at me, the same way the sword was. “Hey!”

“What is it?” Shiara said. “Come on, hurry up!”

“It's this key,” I said as I unlocked the door. “It feels almost like the sword, except—”

I stopped as the door swung open. The room inside was very large and very high, full of light and not dusty at all. In the center of the floor stood something like a shallow iron brazier, about three feet tall and nearly five feet across, full of glowing coals. On the other side of the brazier was a couch, and lying on the couch was a man.

He was dressed in expensive-looking clothes, but there were tears in them, as if he had been in a fight. He didn't look old, even though his beard was long and gray. His head was bare, and at his side was a jeweled scabbard, empty. He was asleep.

Shiara took a deep breath. “That must be him. Come on, Daystar, let's get this over with.”

I stepped into the room and walked slowly toward the couch.
This is too easy,
I thought. As I came around the brazier, I saw that there was another wizard's staff lying beside the couch. Something felt wrong, and I slowed down even more. I stopped, standing next to the couch with the key in one hand and the sword in the other.

“Well, now that we're here, how do we break the spell?” Shiara asked, coming up on one side of me.

“Something's wrong,” I said, and as I spoke I realized what it was. The key was still pulling at me, but as soon as I had stepped into the room, the pulling from the sword had stopped. All I could feel from the sword was the jangling of the magic in the wizards' staffs.

“Maybe if you lay the sword on him it'll work,” Shiara said, ignoring me. “You have to try something or we'll be here all day.”

“I wouldn't try anything at all, if I were you,” said a voice behind us.

Shiara and I spun around. The doorway was full of wizards.

I
STARED AT THE WIZARDS
for an instant, then turned and jumped for the couch, hoping I could break the spell before the wizards did anything. I didn't make it. As I brought the flat of the sword down, the sleeping man vanished. The sword clanged softly against the couch, and I spun back to face the wizards.

Something hit me as I turned, and suddenly I couldn't move my body at all. I could turn my head far enough to see Shiara, but that was all. Shiara looked as if she were concentrating on something, so I turned my head back to the wizards. They were standing around the sleeping man, who was now lying on the floor in front of the doorway.

“Well done,” said one of the wizards to another.

“Thank you,” the second wizard said. “It was a mere trifle.”

There was a stir at the back of the group of wizards, and a moment later Antorell pushed forward to the front. He had a bandage around one arm, probably where the dragon had bitten him. “I want the boy!” he said. “Now!”

The wizard in front, who seemed to be the leader of the group, looked at Antorell coldly. “We permitted you to join us in order to give you an opportunity to repair some of the damage you did seventeen years ago. Not to further your private ambitions.”

“But you said I could have the boy!”

“Antorell, you're a fool,” the leader said. “You may have the boy, but
after
we have possession of the sword, not before.”

“I'll give you the sword, then!” Antorell said angrily. He strode around the edge of the brazier and reached for the hilt of the sword, just above my hand. I wanted to jerk away, but I still couldn't move.

As Antorell touched the sword, there was a flash of blue-and-gold light that flung him backward onto the floor. If he'd fallen a few inches to the other side, he'd have gone into the brazier. I found myself wishing he had, then found myself staring at the brazier. Something about it nibbled at my mind, but I couldn't make it come clear. I didn't have time to think about it, because the wizards started talking again.

Antorell was picking himself up off the floor, and the leader of the wizards smiled at him nastily. “You see?”

“You knew this would happen!” Antorell said furiously.

“Of
course
I knew,” the leader said. “Had you spent your time hunting that sword instead of trying to get some sort of ridiculous revenge on Cimorene, you, too, would know.”

“Then demonstrate the proper method for me,” Antorell said sarcastically. “If you know so much, you take the sword.”

“I am not so foolish,” the other wizard replied. “No one save the King of the Enchanted Forest can take that sword from a bearer who is not willing to give it up, especially not inside this castle.”

“Then how do you expect to get it?” Antorell said even more sarcastically than before.

“We kill the King,” the wizard said, gesturing at the sleeping figure on the floor in front of him. “When the line of the Kings of the Enchanted Forest is ended, one of us can take up the rule of the castle.”

“What good will that do?” Antorell said. “The boy will still have the sword. And, as you have reminded me so many times in the past two days, he seems to be able to use it.”

The leader shrugged. “If your tale is true, I shall admit to some surprise. I thought no one but the King could use the sword. Which is why one of us must become King.”

“You accuse me of lying?”

“Why should I bother?”

Antorell scowled and started to raise his staff, then seemed to change his mind. “When the boy blows your own spells back at you, perhaps you will see what I mean.”

“Nonsense!” the leader of the wizards replied. “You obviously know little of what you speak.”

“No, of course not. I have only seen the boy in action,” Antorell said with awful sarcasm.

The leader shrugged again. “What the boy has learned matters little. The power of the sword passes to the ruler of the castle, and there is nothing he can do about it. He will be easy enough to take care of then.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker of movement. Shiara was edging toward me. I had to force myself not to turn my head. The wizards seemed to have forgotten both of us, and I didn't want to remind them. I hoped they wouldn't remember until after Shiara had done whatever she was planning to do. I also hoped Shiara was planning to do something. I certainly couldn't, and I didn't think Nightwitch would be much help against all those wizards.

“Stop talking and let's get on with it,” one of the wizards in the back said.

“An excellent suggestion. That is, if you are quite satisfied, Antorell?” said the leader.

Antorell glared and stalked over to the rest of the wizards. The leader looked around and nodded. “Begin.”

Under other circumstances, the spell casting would have been very interesting to watch. The wizards spent quite a bit of time arguing about where each of them should stand, and exactly what the correct angle was for each staff, and in what order the spells should be said. The leader seemed particularly concerned that things be done right. Evidently there was something about the castle that would cause problems if everything wasn't perfect. Finally, they agreed on what they were going to do, and they got started.

As the wizards started chanting, something touched my arm. If I could have moved, I'd have jumped. It was Shiara. “Do something before they finish!” I whispered.

“I've been trying!” Shiara whispered back. “But it isn't working.”

“Oh no.” I was so upset that I spoke the words in a normal tone of voice. Fortunately, the wizards were too busy chanting to notice. “You haven't been polite to anyone since you apologized to Telemain, and you used that up on the last bunch of wizards.”

Shiara looked stricken. “Daystar, I'm
sorry!
”

“There isn't anything we can do about it now,” I said. “If you—”

I stopped because the wizards had stopped chanting. Shiara and I both looked at them, but the wizards didn't seem to be finished with what they were doing. They looked more like they'd been interrupted in the middle of things. The leader bent over the man on the floor, who was still sleeping. A moment later the wizard straightened with an exclamation and stretched his staff out over the man's body.

The figure dissolved into sparkles, leaving a little blob of mud on the floor, and the other wizards stirred in surprise. “A simulacrum!” said someone.

I let out my breath in relief. Simulacra are very hard to make. You have to mix earth, air, fire, and water in exactly the right proportions in order to get a good one, and that's fairly tricky. A really good magician can make a simulacrum that looks exactly like someone but doesn't have any connection to the actual person at all. As a result, a simulacrum can't be used against someone the way other types of magic can. What they're mainly good for is confusing people.

This one seemed to have done an excellent job. The wizards were glaring at each other accusingly. “If that was a simulacrum,” one of them said finally, “where's the King? Who put it there, anyway?”

“Old Zemenar, probably,” an older-looking wizard said. “The simulacrum looked like him, and setting up a decoy is just the sort of thing he would do.”

“That doesn't make sense! He started this whole affair in the first place. Why would he put a false king in the castle to distract us?”

“Zemenar never trusted anybody. He probably wanted to do this himself, so he made it as hard as he could for anyone else to finish the job. Or maybe he was just being ornery.” The older wizard shrugged. “Either way, I doubt that he expected to get eaten by a dragon.”

“We have wasted enough time here,” the leader of the wizards said with sudden decision. “Silvarex, take three others and begin searching for the King at once. We cannot allow him to escape again.”

He went on giving instructions, but I stopped paying attention. He wasn't talking to me, and I had other things to worry about. I was still holding the key in my left hand, and as soon as the simulacrum disappeared, the key had stopped tugging me and started getting warm. My other arm, the one with the sword, was tingling under the jangling of the wizards, and my head felt very light. I had a sudden, strong feeling that there was something important I ought to remember, but the jangling of the wizards' magic kept distracting me before I could figure out what it was.

“Daystar!” Shiara hissed, practically in my ear.

I jumped a little and realized that the wizard's spell holding me was beginning to weaken.