9

THE HARDEST PART was getting the dragon and the knight to agree about rules. The Princess didn’t help much. She kept talking about the marvelous tourneys she’d seen, and which knights had been wounded. The dragon would start looking at the knight, and pretty soon it would want to know why it couldn’t bite off one of the knight’s arms, or at least a hand. The knight would get worried, and the Princess would start crying, and Shiara and I would have to talk the dragon out of it. As soon as the dragon agreed, the Princess would cheer up and start talking about tourneys again.

Finally, Shiara told the Princess to shut up. It wasn’t very polite, but it worked. Well, sort of. The Princess didn’t stop talking, but as long as she was complaining about Shiara and not talking about tourneys we didn’t have any more problems with getting the dragon and the knight to agree.

When we finally decided on the rules, we had to draw a circle in the middle of the clearing for them to fight in. It was harder than it sounds. For one thing, a circle has to be pretty big if a dragon is going to fit inside it, even if it’s a small dragon. Also, the moss in the Enchanted Forest grows awfully fast. By the time we finished drawing the circle, the first half of it had already disappeared. Shiara watched for a minute, then looked at the knight.

“Are you sure you have to have a circle to fight?” Shiara said.

“I really do think so,” the knight said apologetically. “It wouldn’t be a proper tourney without it, don’t you see.”

“I’m sick of proper dragons and proper Princesses and proper tourneys,” Shiara said under her breath. Fortunately, the dragon didn’t hear her.

We started redrawing the circle, trying to make the line wider this time. The knight scratched at the moss with his sword. Shiara used a stick. So did I; I didn’t think Mother would approve if I used the Sword of the Sleeping King to cut moss. Nightwitch and the dragon sort of dug at the ground. The Princess sat under a tree.

Eventually we finished, and the knight and the dragon stepped inside the circle. “Well, what are you waiting for?” Shiara demanded.

“Someone has to say ‘Go,’“ the knight said in a reasonable tone.

“Go!” I said quickly.

Shiara gave me a disgusted look, but she didn’t say anything, because as soon as I shouted the dragon and the knight got started. They were fairly evenly matched. The dragon was much larger, of course, and it had a very good sense of timing, but it didn’t have much experience. The knight was wearing armor, which helped, and he was obviously used to fighting, but he was a little awkward most of the time. They were both good at dodging, though; they each managed to take three or fours swings without hitting the other. The dragon was just starting to take another swipe at the knight, when a little tree sprouted up in front of him and hit him in the nose.

I was surprised. I mean, even in the Enchanted Forest, trees don’t usually grow that fast. The dragon was even more surprised than I was. It sort of reared back, and its tail came around very fast to balance it. Nightwitch was a little too close and had to scramble back out of the way. “Hey, watch out!” Shiara said.

The dragon jumped and swung around, looking as if it expected another tree to pop up behind it. Its tail swung in the other direction, and the end of it caught the knight right in the middle of his chest plate as he was trying to back out of the way. The dragon yelped, the Princess screamed, and the knight fell over backward into the pool of water that my sword had made when the Princess had tried to take it.

He sank out of sight right away; evidently the pool was a lot deeper than it looked. The Princess screamed again and leapt forward. I ran over, too; by the time I got to the pool, the Princess had hold of the knight. She wasn’t quite strong enough to pull him out, but she wasn’t letting go, either.

Shiara got to the pool about the same time I did, and together the three of us managed to get the knight out of the water. He was unconscious, and he had a large dent in his armor where the dragon’s tail had hit him. The Princess checked to make sure he was still alive and then burst into tears.

“Alas! See now how sad is my fate! For my love has been grievously injured and I am without protection in this awful place. Ah, woe is me!”

“Is he dead?” asked the dragon from right behind me. I jumped a little; I hadn’t noticed it come up. It peered curiously over my shoulder at the knight.

“Monster!” said the Princess. “Your base attempt to slay my love has failed! No second chance shall you have to harm him while I can stand between you! For if my love be slain, I shall care not whether I live or die, and thus I now defy you.”

She threw herself across the knight’s chest. The knight coughed, moaned, and opened his eyes. “I say, Isabelle,” he said weakly. “That really is a bit uncomfortable.” The princess sat up and started weeping all over his face. It didn’t seem to make him much more comfortable.

The dragon was still peering. “That was a very good fight,” it said to the knight. “Except for the last part. My tail still stings; I think I sprained it. Is armor always that hard?”

The knight tried to answer and started coughing instead. The Princess cried harder, until Shiara said pointedly, “I don’t think all that water is doing him much good.” The Princess stopped crying and glared at Shiara for a minute, then turned back to the knight. Somehow, she looked a lot more unhappy now that she wasn’t crying. I felt sort of sorry for her.

Finally the knight managed to get his coughing under control. He looked up at the dragon and said, “I do believe I agree with you about the fight. That trick with the tail is quite good; I don’t believe I’ve seen it before. I really must remember it.”

“Actually, it was something of an accident,” the dragon said modestly. “But I think I could do it again if I tried. Did you really think it was good?”

“Oh, quite,” the knight said. I got the feeling that he would have tried to bow if he hadn’t been lying on his back. “I think perhaps you broke one or two of my ribs.”

“I’m sorry,” said the dragon. “Is that bad?”

“It is certainly a bit uncomfortable,” the knight said. “I don’t really blame—”

A coughing spasm interrupted him. The Princess looked alarmed, but she didn’t start crying or anything. I saw Shiara watching the Princess with a surprised look on her face, and right about then Nightwitch sprang up onto the knight’s chest.

“What is this? Go hence, and leave my love in peace!” cried the Princess.

“You let my kitten alone,” Shiara said warningly.

The Princess stopped in mid-reach and looked over at Shiara. “And shall I neglect anything that may bring comfort to my love in his hurt?” she said.

“Nightwitch isn’t going to hurt—” Shiara started, then paused. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Go ahead.”

I stared at Shiara in surprise, but she was watching the Princess and Nightwitch. The Princess got scratched a couple of times before she finally managed to pick the kitten up and move her. By then the knight wasn’t coughing quite so hard anymore, but he still didn’t seem up to talking. Shiara frowned at him. “You don’t sound very good,” she said.

The dragon stuck its head farther over my shoulder. “If you can’t fix him, can I eat him?” it asked hopefully.

Nightwitch hissed. The knight looked alarmed and tried to say something, but all that came out was more coughing. The Princess said, “No!” very loudly and looked as if she wanted to throw herself on top of the knight again.

“Of course not,” Shiara said. “You promised.”

“It wouldn’t be polite,” I added. “After all, that was why you had the tourney.”

The dragon looked hurt. “I was just asking.”

“Ah, what are we going to do about them?” I said hastily, waving at the Princess and the knight. “They can’t stay here, not with the knight hurt like that.”

“It’s not so bad, really it isn’t,” the knight said, looking at the dragon nervously. He started coughing again right away, but it didn’t sound as bad as it had before and he stopped fairly quickly.

“I suppose you could come with us,” I said after a minute. It wasn’t so much that I wanted his company, or the Princess’s; it was just that I didn’t see what else I could do.

“That’s frightfully kind of you,” the knight said. He looked uncertainly at the dragon. “Very kind, to invite me to come with you. All of you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t asked the dragon about its plans yet. But you’re quite welcome to join us, if you want to.”

“Yes,” said Shiara. “I’m sure you’ll be very useful when the wizard comes back.”

“Wizard?” said the knight. He was so alarmed he almost started coughing again. “What wizard?”

“Well, actually, there are several of them,” I said. “Every now and then one of them shows up and tries to do something to us. The last one left when the dragon showed up.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back in a little while,” Shiara said. “Or one of the others will. They’ve been chasing us all over the Enchanted Forest.”

“You know,” the knight said, “I really don’t believe it would be a good idea for me to join you. I should almost certainly be a bit of an inconvenience, you see. Wet armor rusts, and with that and the ribs I’m afraid I’d be a little slow. Thank you terribly, all the same.”

“If you don’t come with us, what will you do?” I said.

“Mrow,” said Nightwitch.

“Morwen!” Shiara said. “They can go to Morwen! She’ll know what to do for them.” Nightwitch started purring loudly, sort of like a pepper grinder with rocks in it.

I thought about it for a minute. “It sounds like a good idea, but will she want to?”

“Morwen likes helping people,” Shiara said. “And I’m sure she can take care of both of them.”

“You know Morwen?” said the dragon. “I like her. She used to give me apples out of her garden.”

I tried to imagine a dragon eating apples and failed. I could imagine Morwen giving them to a dragon, though.

“Who is this Morwen?” asked the Princess, clasping her hands in front of her. “Think you that she could help my love, indeed?”

“Morwen’s sort of a friend of ours,” I explained. “She lives back that way, with a lot of cats, and her house has kind of a strange door.”

“I didn’t have any trouble with it,” Shiara said. “And she has nine cats. She told me while you were asleep.”

“Nine cats?” said the Princess, looking puzzled. “But what has that to do with my love, who is so grievously hurt?”

“I said it wasn’t that bad, Isabelle,” said the knight uncomfortably. “Really, I wish you wouldn’t make such a fuss. I shall be quite all right in a little, I’m sure.”

“If this woman with the many cats can help you, then shall we go to her,” the Princess declared with more spirit than she had shown about anything else. “For you are my love, and I will have you whole and well.”

“Oh, but really, Isabelle—”

“I’m sure Morwen won’t mind,” Shiara put in. “She fixed Daystar up just fine. She’s even good with wet swords.”

The Princess looked thoroughly confused, but the knight brightened a little. “Are you quite sure? Because I’m frightfully wet, sword and armor and everything, and it would be very nice if I could keep it all from rusting. It’s rather expensive, you see.”

“I’m sure she could manage that,” Shiara said. “Of course, you don’t have to go. You could stay here and wait for the wizard to come back.”

The knight didn’t argue much longer; I don’t think he liked the idea of staying around the dragon, especially if a lot of wizards were going to show up any minute. As soon as he agreed, the Princess started telling him how wise and brave and wonderful he was. Shiara looked disgusted, but the knight seemed to like it. He sat up and even managed not to cough very much.

Shiara and I told the knight how to find Morwen’s house. He and the Princess said good-bye and started walking off down the stream. “That’s a relief!” Shiara said when they were out of earshot. “For a while I thought you were going to make us go with that stupid Princess! It was bad enough having to listen to her here without following her around.”

I blinked at her. “But I thought you changed your mind about her!” I said. “You were being a lot nicer to her after the knight got hurt.”

Shiara snorted. “So I felt sorry for her. She really does care about that klutz in the tin suit; you could tell. That doesn’t mean I like her! I still think she’s dumber than you are, but I’m glad they’re going to see Morwen.”

I still wasn’t really sure whether Morwen would object or not, but I didn’t say anything else about it. I mean, by then it was too late anyway; the knight and the Princess were completely out of sight. I turned around to see where I’d put the bundle of food and things Morwen had given me. The dragon was staring at me.

“Why,” it said, “do you have wizards chasing you?”

“It’s a rather long story,” I said. “I’ll be glad to explain, but you might want to make yourself comfortable first.”

The dragon sighed. “Have you ever tried to be comfortable with a sprained tail?”

Shiara giggled. I ignored her. We waited while the dragon tried curling into a couple of different positions. One of them looked sort of like Suz when he was halfway through getting up on his tail. Finally, the dragon curled itself around the little tree that had sprouted up in the middle of the tourney. “That’s better,” it said. “Enchanted trees are always more comfortable than regular ones.”

“Enchanted trees?” Shiara said.

“Of course,” the dragon said. “What else do you expect to find in an enchanted forest? I’m going to have to remember to tell someone about this, though; there haven’t been any new ones in a long time.”

I looked at the tree a little more closely. It was about six feet tall now, and it seemed to have stopped growing. It didn’t look very different from the other trees in the Enchanted Forest, except that it was a lot smaller than any of the ones growing around the edge of the clearing. And, of course, none of the other trees had dragons wrapped around them.

“You were going to tell me about the wizards,” said the dragon.

So I explained about Mother and Antorell, and the Sword of the Sleeping King, and everything. It took a long time. The dragon didn’t say anything at all the whole time I was talking, but its tail twitched a couple of times. Every time it did, the dragon winced.

“That’s very interesting,” the dragon said when I stopped. “Where are you going now?”

“Morwen told us to follow the stream,” Shiara said. “And Suz said we should go talk to someone named Kazul.”

“It’s the same thing,” the dragon said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The stream goes to the castle, and Kazul lives right outside it. I wonder why she wants to see you?”

“What castle?” Shiara said in an exasperated voice. “And who is this Kazul person, anyway?”

“It must have something to do with that sword,” the dragon said, ignoring her questions completely. “Especially if it really does belong to the Sleeping King.”

“You mean you know something about it?” Shiara said. “Well, then tell us what the stupid thing does!”

The dragon looked sheepish. Dragons just weren’t meant to look sheepish. “I don’t know. I’m not old enough yet,” it said.

“Not old enough?”

“That’s why I wanted a Princess,” the dragon said. “Otherwise, Kazul won’t tell me anything important until I’m two hundred. She says that before then dragons are irresponsible, unwise, and talk too much.” It looked faintly indignant. “I don’t talk too much.”

“Who is Kazul?” I said. I was getting a little nervous about meeting her. I mean, I didn’t think I’d ever know anyone who could tell a dragon what to do, even a young one. Well, Mother might be able to get away with it.

“Oh, I thought you knew,” the dragon said. “Kazul is the King of the Dragons.”