"All right," the prince said doubtfully.
Cimorene did not like leaving him, but she was even less enthusiastic about taking him to see Roxim. Roxim probably wouldn't object to the prince himself, though Cimorene suspected that there might have been some difficulty over his proposed theft of the Water of Healing. But explaining everything to the gray-green dragon would take hours. Roxim was nice, but he tended to take a simple view of things, and the prince's situation was anything but simple. So Cimorene gave the prince one more warning, just to make sure he understood, and started off toward Roxim's cave to finish her errand.
12
In Which Cimorene Calls on a Dragon, and the Stone Prince Discovers a Plot
The shortcut to Roxim's worked just as well as Cimorene had hoped, and she even made up some of the time she had lost earlier. Roxim was in, too.
She could hear the scraping of his scales as he moved around inside.
She stepped up to the entrance of the cave and called, "Dragon Roxim!"
Something round and shiny flew through the air, missing Cimorene by inches. It hit the wall of the tunnel with a loud clang and slid rattling to the floor. Cimorene jumped.
"Roxim!" she shouted at the top of her lungs.
"What's this?" the dragon said, poking his nose out of the cave entrance. "I am Cimorene, princess to the dragon Kazul, and I offer you greetings and good fortune in all your endeavors." Cimorene thought it best to be particularly polite, in case Roxim were in a bad mood. She suspected he might be. In her experience, someone in a good mood did not throw things at visitors.
"Very good," Roxim said. "Nice to see you again and all that, but I haven't got time for visitors at the moment. Sorry."
"I'm not a visitor, exactly. Kazul sent me with a message for you."
"Oh, well, that's different. Just hand me that shield there, would you?"
Cimorene picked up the shield from the floor of the tunnel. There was a large dent in one side where it had hit the tunnel wall, and several smaller ones over the rest of it from banging against things on its way to the tunnel floor.
"You ought to be more careful," she said severely. 'Just look at this?"
"Ha!" Roxim snorted, examining the dents. "Shoddy work, shoddy work, that's the problem. In my day, you could roll a knight in full armor down the far side of the Vanishing Mountain and bounce him off two or three cliffs without so much as scratching his surface, much less denting it.
This cheap modern stuff just doesn't hold up."
"If you know it doesn't hold up, you shouldn't throw it around like that," Cimorene said. "You almost hit me."
Roxim shifted uncomfortably. "Sorry. Didn't mean anything by it."
"All right, but next time look before you throw things," Cimorene said, handing him the shield.
"I always have this problem when I try to find something," Roxim confided. "Never know where to look. Gets frustrating, and next thing you know I'm pitching armor at the walls. Bad habit, but hard to break."
"Maybe I could help," Cimorene suggested. "After I give you Kazul's message, that is."
"Don't need help to put dents in things," Roxim said. "Comes to that, I don't really want it."
"I didn't mean help to throw things," Cimorene said patiently. "I meant help to find whatever you're looking for."
"Oh, that. Well, come in then."
Cimorene followed the dragon into a moderately large cave, similar to the one Kazul used as a living area. Roxim's cave, however, was full of clutter. Cimorene had to pick her way past bits of armor, one half of a pair of bookends, a box of tea, a pink scroll, three mismatched kitchen pots, a small wooden statue, a broken flute, and four partially burned candles.
Roxim walked straight over the mess as if it weren't there, squashing a mangy-looking stuffed pigeon and flattening a tin cup in passing. He dropped the shield on a pile of silk flowers and waved Cimorene to a seat on a large wooden chest near one wall. "Now, what's this message of Kazul's?"
"It's about the wizards," Cimorene said, settling gingerly onto the dusty surface of the chest. She made a mental note to find Roxim a nice princess as soon as she possibly could. "Alianora and I found one of them picking dragonsbane a few days ago, and Kazul thinks King Tokoz will listen to you if you tell him about it."
"So that's where they got it," Roxim said in tones of disgust. "Pity you didn't mention it sooner."
Cimorene got a sinking feeling. "What do you mean?"
"Somebody poisoned King Tokoz this morning," Roxim explained.
"Slipped some dragonsbane in his coffee. Fast-acting; nothing to be done.
Now we need a new king."
"That's awful!" Cimorene said. "Do you know who did it?"
"Those dratted wizards, that's who," Roxim said angrily. "It's obvious.
Stupid thing to do; has to be wizards, by George! But Woraug won't listen to me."
"Woraug? What's Woraug got to do with it?"
"He's in charge of the investigation," Roxim replied. "Taking his time about it, too, if you ask me."
"But if the King was only poisoned this morning…"
"What does that have to do with it?" Roxim said unreasonably.
"Besides, if Woraug doesn't hurry, he won't have the culprit in hand by the time the trials start tomorrow."
"Trials? You mean with Colin's Stone, to choose the new king?"
Cimorene said with some hesitation. She did not see how it could be a trial for the person who had killed the King if they hadn't caught him yet, but she was not completely certain that the dragons didn't have some way of getting around the problem and trying him anyway.
"That's it," Roxim said, pleased. "And before I leave I have to find that emerald I picked up fifty years ago. Coronation present for the new King."
"But you haven't got a new King yet," Cimorene said, feeling somewhat bewildered. "And what if you're the King?"
Roxim smiled broadly. "Knew you were a nice gal. Me, the King! I rather like the idea. I still have to find the emerald, though.
Wouldn't do to show up at the trials without a coronation present. Rum thing to do. Over-confident."
Though she was upset and more than a little worried, Cimorene helped Roxim as best she could. After about an hour of poking through the clutter, Cimorene found the emerald, wrapped in a gold-embroidered handkerchief and stuffed into the mouth of a large brass horn. Roxim thanked her and invited her to stay to tea, but Cimorene politely declined. She was eager to get back to Kazul, to tell her what had happened and decide what to do next.
Cimorene hurried back to Kazul's cave by the shortest route, thinking so hard about Tokoz's death that she forgot everything else. She found Kazul sleeping and was forced to wake her, despite her words about the dragon's health. She knew Kazul would want to hear about the King of the Dragons as soon as possible, and she wanted to hear what Kazul made of Woraug's involvement in the investigation.
"Back already?" Kazul said, opening her eyes. "Didn't Roxim get you in to see King Tokoz?"
"No," Cimorene said. She hesitated, uncertain of the best way to break the news. "It was too late."
"Too late?" Kazul raised her head, startled. She eyed Cimorene briefly, then said, "All right, let's have it. What's happened?"
"King Tokoz was poisoned this morning. Roxim said someone put dragonsbane in his coffee."
Kazul snorted. "Somebody knew Tokoz pretty well." Seeing Cimorene's surprised expression, she explained, "Tokoz drank Turkish coffee every morning. The stuff is strong enough to take the roof off your mouth.
It's why no one ever went to talk to him over breakfast. You could boil a whole field's worth of dragonsbane in Turkish coffee without changing the taste enough to notice. Or the texture."
Cimorene tried to imagine coffee, even Turkish coffee, strong enough to take the roof off a dragon's mouth and failed. "I told Roxim about the wizard Alianora and I met, and Roxim said I ought to tell Woraug because Woraug is in charge of finding the poisoner," she said. "But-" "But when you caught Antorell picking dragonsbane, he thought Woraug had sent you," Kazul said. "If Woraug's mixed up with wizards-" She broke off, coughing. Cimorene watched her anxiously, but the coughing spasm did not last long. "I don't like this," Kazul finished when she got her breath back.