I looked behind me. Shiara was standing with a surprised look on her face and one finger pointing at Antorell. The dragon was still sneezing, but the green was already starting to come back to its scales. I sighed in relief.
"This is the assistance you give us?" the tall wizard said to Antorell, who was brushing ashes off the front of his robe. "The dragon still lives!"
"Did I say anything about killing it?" Antorell said. I got the feeling he was trying to sound haughty, but he only managed to sound annoyed. "You need have no more fear of it. It will take some time to regain its strength, and by then we shall be finished. What next?"
"The girl, I think," said the tall wizard. "That is, if you're sure you can handle her?"
Antorell glared. "That is the least of my problems," he said grandly.
"Ha!" said Shiara loudly. I moved back over to her, holding the sword in front of me. The three wizards looked at us, then at each other.
"Let us begin," said the tall one.
All three of them raised their staffs, but instead of pointing them directly at us, they brought them together, so that they made a kind of star about a foot from their ends. There was a bright flash as the three staffs touched, and I felt a shock from my sword. I jumped, and suddenly I realized that I could feel the forest. The magic of the forest, I mean; it was all around me, waiting. I felt almost as if the whole Enchanted Forest were watching me.
Right in front of me, I could feel the wizards' power growing and building. There was a kind of pattern in it that kept getting clearer and more complicated, and I knew I had to do something about it before the wizards finished. I stepped forward and swung the sword right through the middle of the pattern.
I felt a huge jolt of power from the sword, but it didn't hurt the way the fire-witch's spell had. In fact, it didn't hurt at all. The pattern collapsed in an invisible tangle. Antorell's eyes started to narrow; the other two wizards just looked stunned. And then something exploded.
I couldn't see anything. It wasn't that things had gone dark, and it wasn't that the light had blinded me. It was more as if the whole world had suddenly become invisible, so there was nothing left to see.
There was a rushing noise all around me, and I felt as if I were floating. I heard a chorus of voices cry, "All hail the Wielder of the Sword!" and then the noise and the voices vanished, and I was standing in the clearing with the Sword of the Sleeping King shining in my hand and three very surprised wizards in front of me.
I stared at the wizards. The wizards stared at me. Antorell recovered first.
"Enough of this!" he cried, and raised his staff. As he did, the ground in front of him humped up a little bit. A second later, a tree shot up about twelve feet into the air. It reminded me of someone opening an umbrella very quickly. The branches shivered once as the leaves unrolled, and then it burst into bloom with a sound like a hundred little bells tinkling.
Antorell looked even more surprised than before, then he scowled angrily and pointed his staff at me again. The tall wizard next to him grabbed his arm. "Wait, fool! Don't you know what that sword is?"
"Of course I know, oaf." Antorell's eyes sparked. "It is mine! I will have it!"
"You will be dead, you mean," the tall wizard said, but he let go of Antorell's arm. "This is a matter for the whole Society of Wizards.
There may still be time to stop him if we can bring them quickly enough."
"More wizards? Achoo! Oh, no you don't! Achoo! Oh, drat, achoo!" said the dragon. It dove out of its tree, unwinding itself like a spool of string, very quickly. Its head shot past me, and I got a fleeting glimpse of green scales and golden eyes and a very, very red tongue. One of the wizards yelled, and the dragon sneezed again. I jumped forward just in time to see all three of the wizards vanish hastily. Antorell looked a little white and he had one hand clutched around a dark, wet-looking spot on his other arm as he disappeared.
I looked at the dragon. It snapped its teeth together twice, swallowed something, and sat back, looking very pleased with itself. "Wizards," it announced, "taste much better than elves."
I swallowed hard and decided I didn't really want to finish my lunch.
The dragon looked at Shiara. Shiara scowled.
"Don't you look at me like that!" she said. "I'm not a wizard, I'm a fire-witch."
The dragon looked thoroughly shocked. "But I wouldn't eat you! You're my friend. It wouldn't be polite at all!"
Shiara looked suspiciously at the dragon, then nodded. "I just wanted to make sure you remembered."
"I think we'd better get going," I said. "Those wizards sounded like they were going to come back with reinforcements."
"Oh, terrific," said Shiara. "Let's go, then. Where's Nightwitch?"
"Mrow," said a kitten voice from somewhere above me.
I looked up. Nightwitch was perched on a branch of the tree that had sprouted up in the middle of the fight. She was washing her paws. She stopped and looked down at me for a second, then went back to washing.
"Nightwitch, come down!" Shiara said. "Those wizards might come back any minute!"
Nightwitch ignored her. The dragon came over and peered curiously at the tree. "Where did this come from?" it asked.
"It grew," I said. "I think you were sneezing when it happened."
"Kazul is going to be surprised about this!" the dragon said happily.
"Two new trees in a couple of days!"
"What are you talking about?" Shiara said. "It's just a tree."
"No, it isn't," the dragon said. "It's a new tree. And it's the second new tree I've seen in two days, so it's important. The other one hit me on the nose," it added in an aggrieved tone.
"You mean it's been a long time since there were any new trees?" I asked.
The dragon nodded. "Kazul mentioned it once. She sounded worried.
I think they're a nuisance, popping up like that."
"But where do they come from?" Shiara asked. "And why do they show up when we-" She stopped short, and we looked at each other.
"Daystar," said Shiara finally. "It's the wizards."
"It can't be," I said. "What about the first one?"
The dragon tilted its head to one side and looked at us. "What are you talking about?"
"The trees," Shiara said. "Both of them grew in places where a wizard threw a spell at us .... But there wasn't any tree when the first wizard tried to drown us, so it can't be wizards."
I looked down, trying to think, and saw the Sword of the Sleeping King in my hand. "It's the sword!" I said. "It stopped Antorell's spell the first time, and a little while later a tree sprouted. This time it stopped a bigger spell, and we got a bigger tree. It didn't stop any spells when the first wizard made that water monster, so no new trees grew. It has to be the sword."
"You didn't get a tree when you fought the fire-witch," Shiara objected, but she sounded half-convinced.
"Well, Telemain told us the sword was meant for wizards. It probably only does that for wizards' spells."
"Your sword grows trees?" the dragon said skeptically.
"It does sound a little silly," I said.
"Mmmrrrow!"
We all looked up. Nightwitch launched herself at Shiara, who just barely managed to catch her.
"Good," said Shiara. "Now, if you're all done fussing about trees and swords, how about leaving? Before the wizards come back."
The dragon and I looked at each other and nodded. We picked up our things and started off.
15
In Which They Take a Chance
The entrance to the Caves of Chance wasn't very difficult to find.
That worried me a little, partly because Antorell and the other wizards would probably figure out where we had gone, and partly because it isn't usually that easy to find something in the Enchanted Forest.