"Is that wizard dead?"
"No, but he probably wishes he were," Mother said. "Demons do not like surprise visitors."
"Oh, is that what Daystar did with him?" said Father's voice from behind me. "I wondered."
I jumped and turned around to see the King and Kazul standing there.
The King was looking at Mother; Kazul was looking at the little dragon.
"Where have you been?" Kazul asked in a resigned voice.
"I've been catching wizards!" the little dragon said proudly. "Well, one of them, anyway. He threw dragonsbane at me again and called a demon and Daystar got rid of both of them. I didn't even get to eat him," the dragon finished sadly.
"I see," Kazul said, shaking her head. "I think you'd better spend the rest of the day with me. It may, just possibly, keep you out of trouble."
"I don't understand? Shiara burst out. "How could Antorell do any magic without his staff?. And how could Daystar do any magic at all? And what did Antorell have to do with the sword and everything?"
The King smiled at Mother, then looked at Shiara and me. "As long as things seem to be quiet out here, why don't we go inside? That way, we can be comfortable while I explain."
Shiara and I nodded. Father waved his hand, and the Enchanted Forest dissolved into mist around us.
22
Which Contains an Engagement, a Feast, and a Happy Ending
We appeared in one of the rooms inside the castle, a small, cozy-looking place with lots of bookshelves. It was just as dusty as all the other rooms Shiara and I had been through, but when Father waved, all the dust vanished.
Mother muttered something about instant cleaning being no excuse for letting things get into such a state, and we all sat down. The King looked at us.
"I believe this should begin with you, Cimorene," he said. Mother looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded and began.
Apparently, Mother really was a princess. She was the youngest daughter of the ruler of a very large kingdom on the other side of the Mountains of Morning, and she'd thought it was boring. So she ran away and became Kazul's princess.
Kazul wasn't King of the Dragons then. She and Mother got along very well, and after a while, Kazul started teaching her dragon magic. And then the wizards helped someone poison the old King of the Dragons, and all the dragons went to the Ford of Whispering Snakes to try and move Colin's Stone, and Kazul was the one who did.
Practically the first thing Kazul did after she became King was to kick the wizards out of the Mountains of Morning, which made the wizards plenty mad. So they decided to start a war by getting the dragons to attack the Enchanted Forest.
That was how Mother met my father. He came to see Kazul about some burned parts of the forest, and he found Mother instead. Then the two of them went searching for Kazul, who'd been kidnapped by the wizards, and by the time they got her free, they had decided to get married.
Kazul was mother's matron-of-honor.
The wizards didn't make any more trouble for almost a year, but when they finally did, they made up for the wait. They stole Father's sword right out of the castle armory.
"They'd figured out that the sword was the main thing keeping them from absorbing magic in the Enchanted Forest," Father said, "and they thought that if they got rid of it, they could soak up the whole forest and use all that extra magic to wipe out the dragons. They didn't realize, at first, that even without the sword I could use the magic of the forest against them."
"Well, then what good was the stupid sword, anyway?" Shiara asked.
"If you didn't need it to stop the wizards-" "I did need it," Father said. "I can deal with one or two wizards at a time, but not the whole Society of Wizards at once. And I can't be everywhere.
The sword is connected directly to the magic of the Enchanted Forest, so it protects the whole forest and not just the area where it happens to be. If you want the technical details, ask Telemain. He helped me set it With the sword gone, Father had to stay in the Enchanted Forest to keep the wizards out. Kazul and Morwen and Telemain all volunteered to go steal the sword back, but there was a problem. When the sword is outside the Enchanted Forest, only the King of the Enchanted Forest or a member of his family can stand to hold it for more than a few seconds. And Mother was the only other member of Father's family then.
Father wasn't too pleased about this, because Mother was going to have a baby-me-but they didn't really have any other choice. So Mother and the rest left to find the sword, and Father stayed in the Enchanted Forest to fight off the wizards. They didn't expect the whole Society of Wizards to attack the castle the day after they left, but that's what happened. Fortunately, Mother had a feeling something was wrong, and she sent Kazul back to check. When Kazul saw all the wizards attacking the castle, she flew back to the Mountains of Morning and ordered all the dragons to come help.
Meanwhile, Mother and the others found the sword, with Antorell guarding it. He was the son of Zemenar, the Head Wizard of the Society of Wizards, and Mother didn't like him much. So when he tried to keep them from taking the sword back, Mother melted him.
Unfortunately, by the time they got back to the castle, the battle was over and the wizards had put their shield up. Kazul sent some dragons out to look for wizards who had gotten away, and then she and Mother and Morwen and Telemain had a long talk about what to do next.
All of them were sure that the wizards had put a spell on the King, and they were just as sure that the sword could break the spell.
Unfortunately, the sword could only be used by one of the Kings of the Enchanted Forest or his children, and then only when the earth, air, and water of the Enchanted Forest and the fire of the sword itself had recognized the person holding it as a rightful heir. And the only way to be recognized was to go out in the Enchanted Forest and hope you would do the right things at the right times.
So the dragons put their own shield up around the castle, to keep the wizards from sneaking inside, and after a while Mother had me. About that time Antorell found her. He blamed her for his father's death, because she'd taken the sword, and he tried to kill her. Mother had to melt him again.
After that, Mother decided that she'd better find somewhere to hide until I was old enough to use the sword. As long as it stayed inside the Enchanted Forest, the sword was invisible to wizards' magic.
Mother, however, wasn't. If she stayed in the Enchanted Forest, one of the wizards' spells would find her. On the other hand, she couldn't take the sword out of the forest and still keep it hidden, any more than the wizards could.
So Mother hid the sword inside the forest, then left and never went back until the day she gave the sword to me. She put up some good spells to keep Antorell from finding us, then waited. She taught me all the right spells and manners and history and things, without ever telling me anything about the sword or the King of the Enchanted Forest or the war with the wizards.
That way, I would have a chance of being recognized by the sword and reaching the castle without getting caught by one of the wizards' spells.
"I'm afraid it was rather hard on you, Daystar," she said. "But we couldn't think of anything else that had a chance of working."
"Well, I think we were lucky," Shiara said.
The King smiled at me. "Kings of the Enchanted Forest are supposed to be lucky."
Shiara blinked. "You weren't very lucky, were you? What did those wizards do to you, anyway?"
The King shook his head. "Zemenar and about ten others broke into the castle during the battle. I got a couple of them, but without the sword I was outnumbered a little too badly. They wanted to kill me, but they couldn't do it inside the castle without the sword, and they couldn't take me outside the castle because of the dragons. So Zemenar decided to put me in storage, in a manner of speaking, while he went back for the sword. The simulacrum was a decoy, in case someone managed to get into the castle while he was gone."