"Therandil," Cimorene said, waving a hand expressively. "I was looking through some of the bottles from Kazul's treasure room, to see if any of them happened to have hens' teeth in them, and Therandil came in and wanted to help."
"And he opened it?" Alianora said. "Oh, dear."
"Exactly," said Cimorene. "But it came out well in the end. I think I've gotten rid of him for good. I sent him off to rescue Keredwel."
"You did? What if he doesn't beat Gornul?"
"Oh, he'll win. The jinn gave him a wish, and he wished to defeat a dragon." Cimorene looked apologetically at Alianora. "I suppose I ought to have sent him to rescue you, but…"
"That's quite all right," Alianora said hastily. "Getting rid of Keredwel will help a lot. And after everything you've told me about Therandil, I don't think I'd want to have him rescue me."
"That's what I thought," Cimorene said. "Oh, and I got the jinn to give me some powdered hens' teeth, so we can finally try that fireproofing spell."
"Good," Alianora said. "Let's do it right now!"
So Cimorene got out the spell and the ingredients she had collected, and she and Alianora spent the next hour on various necessary preparations.
First they had to boil some unicorn water and steep the dried wolfsbane in it. Then the mixture had to be strained and mixed with the hippopotamus oil and the powdered hens' teeth. Cimorene did most of that, while Alianora ground up the blue rose leaves and the piece of ebony.
Grinding the ebony took a long time, but fortunately they didn't need much. When Alianora finally had enough, Cimorene mixed it with the lue rose leaves and more of the unicorn water in one of Kazul's recently shed scales. Each mixture had to be stirred three times counterclockwise with a white eagle feather. Then Alianora dipped the point of her feather in her mixture and began drawing a star on the floor of the cave.
"Is this going to be big enough for both of us?" she asked, scratching busily at the stone with the tip of the feather.
"I think so," Cimorene answered. "Don't try to make it too big, or you'll run out of liquid and we'll have to start over."
Alianora did not run out, though she had used nearly all her mixture by the time she finished. "There!" she said. She sat back on her heels and studied her diagram to make sure there were no gaps, then set her dragon scale and feather aside and stood up. "Your turn."
"First we have to get into the center of the star," Cimorene reminded her. "Be careful not to smudge the lines!"
"Smudge them, after all that work?" Alianora said in tones of mock horror. She lifted her skirts and stepped carefully into the middle of the diagram. Cimorene followed, carrying a small mixing bowl half full of something that looked like brown sludge with a white eagle feather sticking out of one side. "It smells awful," Alianora said, grimacing.
"It doesn't matter what it smells like, as long as the spell works," Cimorene said. "Ready?"
"As ready as I'm ever going to be," Alianora replied, shutting her eyes and screwing up her face as if she expected to have a glass of cold water poured over her head.
Cimorene plucked the eagle feather out of the bowl and raised it quickly over Alianora's head before it could drip on the floor. She let four large drops of the brown gunk fall onto Alianora's hair, then brushed the end of the feather across her forehead twice. She finished by drawing a circle with the feather on the palm of Alianora's left hand.
"That tickles? Alianora complained.
"Well, you can do it to me now," Cimorene said.
Alianora took the bowl and feather from Cimorene.
"You're right," Cimorene said a moment later. "It does tickle."
"Now what?" Alianora said.
"Set the bowl down and shut your eyes," Cimorene instructed. When Alianora had done so, Cimorene closed her own eyes and said: "Power of water, wind and earth, Turn the fire back to its birth.
Raise the spell to shield the flame By the power that we have tamed."
"Oh!" said Alianora. "That feels peculiar. Can I open my eyes now?"
"Yes," said Cimorene, opening her own. "We're finished."
"Did it work?" Alianora asked, cautiously opening one eye and squinting at Cimorene.
"Well, something happened. We both felt it," Cimorene said. "And your hair and forehead don't have brown gunk on them any more."
Alianora promptly opened both eyes and studied Cimorene. "Neither do yours. What does that mean?"
"It means we go back to the kitchen and test it," Cimorene said. She bent over and picked up the mixing bowl. "We'll clean up later. Come on."
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.