Dealing with Dragons - Wrede Patricia Collins - Страница 23

10

In Which Cimorene and Alianora Conduct Some Tests and Disturb a Wizard

Back in the kitchen, Cimorene and Alianora quickly determined that the fireproofing spell had indeed worked. First Cimorene, then Alianora tossed a pinch of feverfew into the air and recited the spell-verse, then put a hand into a candle flame and held it there. Neither was burned at all, though Alianora claimed that the candle tickled almost as much as the eagle feather had done.

"How long does the spell last?" Alianora asked.

"I'm not sure, exactly," Cimorene said. "At least an hour, but I'll have to do some tests to pin it down beyond that. I hope Kazul gets back soon. I want to see if it works with dragon fire."

"You're going to have Kazul breathe fire at you, just to see if the spell works?" Alianora said, horrified. "What if it doesn't?"

"Then I'll talk to Kazul, and we'll go see Morwen, and the three of us will try to figure out what to change to make the spell work for dragon fire, too. Don't look at me like that. I'm not going to stand in front of Kazul and have her breathe fire at me. I'll just stick out a finger, the way we did with the candle."

This was not enough to convince Alianora, but Cimorene was determined.

"The whole point of trying this spell was to make ourselves immune to dragon fire," she said. "If it doesn't work, I don't want to find out for the first time when one of Kazul's guests gets mad and breathes fire at me because he doesn't like the way I cooked his cherries jubilee."

Alianora had to admit that this was a good point, but she was still disposed to argue. The discussion was cut short by Kazul's return. At first the dragon was more inclined to agree with Alianora than with Cimorene, but after Cimorene proved her invulnerability to candle flames, lighted torches, and the fire she had built in the kitchen stove, Kazul agreed to the trial. She insisted, however, on working up to full firepower in gradual stages, and Cimorene was forced to agree.

Before they began, Cimorene threw another pinch of feverfew into the air and recited the couplet again, just to be sure the spell wouldn't wear off in the middle of the test. Then Kazul lowered her head nearly to the ground, and Alianora watched nervously as Cimorene lowered her hand slowly into various intensities of dragon flame. Finally, Cimorene stood right in front of Kazul while the dragon breathed her hottest. The spell worked perfectly every time.

"There!" Cimorene said when Kazul stopped at last. "Now we know it works. Aren't you glad?"

"I'm glad," Alianora said fervently. "And I hope I never have to watch anything like that again as long as I live. I didn't dare blink for fear you'd go up in smoke while my eyes were closed."

"Why don't you try it yourself?" Cimorene said mischievously.

"No!" said Alianora and Kazul together.

"Watching you was bad enough," Alianora went on with a shudder. "I believe it works. I don't see any reason for me to test it."

"Besides, I've done more than enough fire-breathing for one day," Kazul added. "I'm starting to get overheated."

"All right, if you don't want to, you don't have to," Cimorene said.

"If we're all done, I'd better go tidy up."

Alianora stayed to help Cimorene finish cleaning up the traces of the spell, by which time she had calmed down considerably and was very nearly her usual self again. Cimorene gave her a pouchful of dried feverfew before she left and made her recite the words that activated the spell several times, to make sure she had memorized them correctly.

"Remember, you only have to repeat the first half of the verse to get the spell going, now that it's been set up," Cimorene said. "Can you do it?"

"It's only two lines, and they rhyme!" Alianora said, laughing. "How could I forget that? My memory isn't that bad!"

"Maybe not, but say it anyway," Cimorene said. Alianora laughed again and did so. At last she set off into the tunnels, and Cimorene went back to the main cave to see what Kazul and Roxim had found out about the Caves of Fire and Night.

Kazul was somewhat out of temper, and Cimorene thought privately that she had been telling the truth about getting overheated. Rather than annoy the dragon further, Cimorene asked if she could read the book Kazul had borrowed from Morwen.

"It's in the treasure room," Kazul said. "Read it there. And I hope you see something in it that we didn't."

Cimorene nodded, picked up her lamp, and hurried off before Kazul could change her mind. The book was lying near a pile of sapphires, next to an ornate gold crown. She picked it up, went over to the table, which was large and very sturdy because it was intended for counting piles of gold and silver coins, and sat down to read.

It was even dryer and duller than Kazul had said. There were a great many "mayhaps" and "perchances" and "wherefores," strung together in long, involved sentences that compared the strange and wonderful things in the caves to obscure philosophical ideas and odd customs from places Cimorene had never heard of. After a few pages, Cimorene put the book down and went and got a quill pen, an ink pot, and some paper, so that she could write down the things she thought were important. She didn't want to have to read A Journey Through the Caves of Fire and Night more than once.

For the next three days, Cimorene spent bits of her spare time in the treasure room, taking notes on the DeMontmorency. It took her that long because she could never manage to read for more than a little while without getting so bored that she nearly fell asleep. Her persistence gained her several pages of notes about the caves, but nothing that seemed as if it might be of particular interest to wizards.

Alianora came to see her a few days later, looking very cheerful.

"It worked!" she announced as she came into the library where Cimorene was going over her notes. "Keredwel's gone. Therandil rescued her, just the way you said he would."

"Good," Cimorene said. "I'm glad something is going right."

"What's the problem?" Alianora asked, seating herself on the other side of the table from Cimorene.

"This," Cimorene said, waving at the paper-covered table. "Kazul is sure that the key to what the wizards are after is somewhere in that dratted book she borrowed from Morwen. I copied out everything that looked interesting, but none of it seems like anything a wizard would care about."

"How do you know that?" Alianora asked curiously.

"I don't," Cimorene said. "I'm just guessing. That's the problem."

"Oh." Alianora picked up the sheet of paper nearest her and frowned at it. "What on earth does this mean?"

Cimorene looked at the page Alianora was holding. "'Thus these Caves of Fire and Night are, in some sense, indivisible, whereas the Caves of Chance are, by contrast, individual, though it is preposterous to claim that these descriptions are true of either group of caves in their entirety…" That's one of the bits I copied word for word; the whole book is like that. I think it means that if you have a piece of something magical from the Caves of Fire and Night, you can use it in a spell as if it were the whole thing."

"I can see why you wouldn't be sure," Alianora said. "Do you think it would help you figure things out if you stopped for a while?"

"I have stopped," Cimorene pointed out. "Or did you have something more specific in mind?"

"I'm almost out of feverfew," Alianora said, looking down at the table.

"I was hoping you'd come with me to pick some more."

"You're almost out?" Cimorene said in surprise. "How did that happen?"

Alianora shifted uncomfortably. "I've been working that fireproofing spell every hour or so for the past two days," she admitted. "Woraug has been getting more and more unpredictable, and I don't feel comfortable otherwise. Hallanna was visiting yesterday when he came in-in the middle of the afternoon!-and he was roaring and dripping little bits of flame when he breathed. She was terrified, and I don't blame her. If it weren't for the spell, I'd be scared to death."