"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.
"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.