The Runaway Dragon (15 page)

Cam ranged a little ahead while Spinach ministered to Dilly’s leg. He nearly fell down himself when he ran into something thigh-high, but it gave a little, and Cam realized it must be a rug. He climbed up to walk along it and promptly got his foot stuck down between two
bunches of cloth. It was a rag rug, apparently. Cam wrestled with the rug, trying to free his foot. Finally he was able to get loose and rejoin the group. “There’s a rug up ahead,” he said nonchalantly. “It’s pretty hard to walk on.”

“We should keep to the side of the hall,” Dilly said.

As they crept along the wall, well away from the treacherous rug, Cam thought he knew why mice usually stayed to the edges of a room. He was glad that in the Belowlands, at least, he wasn’t really a mouse. Cam felt a pang of homesickness for his nice quiet life in Greeve. He missed his garden, the peaceful green of his squash vines and the hopeful two-leafed look of seedlings when they first sprouted.

It was a long journey to the kitchen.

When they got there, the five of them automatically clustered at the door leading outside. When a person leaves a house, it is only natural to want to depart through the door. However, the disadvantages of this sort of thinking presented themselves all too clearly to the giant’s five prisoners as they looked up at the distant shape of the immense door handle.

“How can we turn the handle?” Dilly asked in a whisper. Cam thought that their ordinary voices were probably too soft to wake up the giants, but it seemed right to whisper simply because they were
sneaking.

“A window would be better,” Crobbs said.

The kitchen was in one corner of the house and had
two windows. It was hard to see them from far down on the floor, and with so little light.

“They’re closed,” Nort concluded.

“If they were open, we’d feel the cool night air,” Spinach said. The others stared at her. “I’ve made a great study of windows and breezes,” she explained.

“We could see if any of the other windows in the house are open,” Dilly suggested.

This led to an exploration of the house, an endeavor enlivened when Cam and Spinach found out just how loudly a giant could snore. But not one window was open, and the group eventually returned to the kitchen, tired and discouraged.

The great wizard Lex sat in Malison’s magic workroom in an overstuffed chair covered with black brocade, drinking hot chocolate from a gold mug and wiggling his sock-clad toes.

Malison’s workroom was nicer than Lex’s. Well, not nicer so much as better, which didn’t surprise him a bit. Lex felt a faint buzzing in his head, but he gave it a shake and the buzzing went away. He stole another look at Malison, who sipped her hot chocolate with dainty malevolence.

Then Lex noticed a slender onyx tube in one corner of the room. “Is that a Corilanus cry-flute?” he asked.

“It is. Do you like it?”

“Oh yes,” Lex breathed. He liked everything in this room: the lizard-birds in cages made of bones, the books that snapped at him when he passed the rows of shelves, the scarred blackwood worktable, the desk piled with sinister papers and glimmering knickknacks, the rows of glass vials and jars filled with liquids in each of the seventeen colors of flame, the stuffed basilisk hanging overhead—Lex blushed, thinking of his own alligator—and of course, Malison herself. Malison was very pretty
and
she knew about magic. Lex sighed blissfully. Then he looked around. There was only one thing missing from this marvelous room. “Where’s Meg?” he asked.

“She wasn’t interested in seeing my workroom,” Malison said, watching Lex closely. “She is not like you and me.”

“You and me,” Lex repeated, feeling a little fuzzy. Lex and Malison. That was a good thought. But what did the sorceress mean about Meg? “She isn’t? What are we like?”

Malison pulled her chair closer to Lex’s, which wasn’t easy to do, since it was made of a single bleak stone. The carvings on the armrests and sides showed an army of hideous beings attacking a city where people screamed and died in terror. Lex peered at the carvings. “What are those creatures?”

“Undead warriors,” Malison said. “But you asked a question: ‘What are we like?’”

“Oh, right.” Lex wondered why he felt so groggy.
And coming up the hall, his legs had been strangely stiff. He reminded himself that he’d walked up a mountain and a lot of stairs today. Plus just being around Malison seemed to have an effect on him.

“We are the Powerful Ones,” Malison intoned.

Lex tried to pay attention, but he wasn’t sure what his hostess was trying to say. “We are?” he said, puzzled. “Oh, you mean because of the magic.”

“Magical greatness isn’t an ordinary thing,” Malison told him.

Lex took another swallow of his hot chocolate. “No. My father and mother were always saying that. ‘Lex,’ they told me, ‘you’re a weird boy. But we love you anyway.’”

“ ‘Weird’?” Malison said distastefully.
“My
parents cowered at my feet.”

Lex was astonished.
“Why?
I mean, I can’t imagine my parents doing that.” Malison must have had a very odd childhood.

Only a teensy bit exasperated, Malison forged ahead. “Well, maybe not your parents, then. But, Lex—is that really your name?—haven’t you ever wanted to wield your vast power out in the world?”

“Wizards don’t tell their real names,” Lex said primly. Not even to wonderful sorceresses, he thought with a twinge of regret. It just wasn’t done.

“Fine. But what about your power? And your inner darkness? Don’t you want to set it free? Say, loose it upon an unsuspecting populace?”

“It’s just …” Lex said, embarrassed. “No, I can’t tell you that.”

Malison attempted to look sympathetic. “You can, too. I won’t laugh.”

Lex hesitated. On the one hand, this girl apparently
liked
inner darkness; on the other, Lex had always been one to spill his guts and hope for the best. “I don’t think I actually have any inner darkness,” he blurted.

“What about your black clothes?” Malison asked, frowning. Then she got a little sarcastic. “Are you sure you aren’t an apprentice thief? Perhaps a junior assassin?”

Lex drew himself up in his chair. “I am a wizard,” he said with dignity. “But I’m not mean.” His mind didn’t feel quite so fuzzy anymore.

Malison gritted her beautiful teeth and tried again. She waved her hand at the desk. “What’s mean about wanting to own the Languid Eye of Toth? Or the Deceptive Dagger of Hee-Kethlan-T’resk? Or even”—she paused dramatically—“the Angled Orb of Non-being?”

Lex brightened. “You have all that? Can I see?” He set his nearly empty mug down on top of a pile of extremely expensive books and almost tripped rushing over to Malison’s desk, where he lifted each magical artifact, peppering her with questions. “Does it just make people
think
they’re in another world? Or are they really
in
another world, at least their spirits, maybe not their
bodies? How did you ever get into the Locked Temple of Crenellation? Is this one made of dragon’s gold, or regular gold? Did the Priests of Moop let you borrow their ring of power? Do you have to give it back sometime?”

“Lex!” Malison said in a not-at-all-elegant voice.

Startled, Lex put down the object he was holding, a small onyx cup shaped like an ear, complete with a ruby-and-diamond earring. “What?”

“Do you or do you not want to join your magic to mine and help me extend my evil empire?”

“Oh. Is that what you want?” Doing anything with Malison sounded enticing, but evil empires weren’t exactly Lex’s style. “Well, no. It’s very nice of you to ask, though. But I’m on a quest with Meg. When is she coming back, anyway? She likes hot chocolate almost as much as I do.”

Malison appeared to be counting to ten under her breath for some reason. “Perhaps she’ll join us for breakfast.” Malison imitated a smile. “I believe she said she was too tired to join us for dinner.”

“I’m tired, too,” Lex said. “But I’d like to read some of your books. Or maybe you could show me one of your spells.”

Little did he know, Malison told herself with a fair dose of irony. She considered the possibilities. “It’s getting late. I’ll take you to your room, and then tomorrow morning you can come look through my library.”

“All right,” Lex said, unaware that his face was now
blue with yellow spots and that butterfly wings were sprouting from the back of his head. “Hey, is that a toe knuckle from a seven-toed ice monster? I’ve always wanted one of those. Where did you get it?”

But Malison was already out the door, and Lex had to hurry to keep up. As he walked, his face changed back to its usual color. A moment later, the butterfly wings detached themselves from his head and flew away down the hall. “Did you say something?” Lex asked.

“No.”

Lex was sure Malison had said something, even if it was under her breath. “You were talking to yourself, weren’t you? You did it before, too. On the stairs.”

Malison flicked him a look. “You caught me. I was thinking out loud.”

“It’s not such a bad habit,” Lex said kindly, but the sorceress didn’t answer. He followed her along two more halls and up a flight of stairs, unaware that halfway up he turned into a pug dog. By the time he reached the door of the room where Malison said he’d be sleeping, he had changed back into a boy. Lex’s bark transformed itself abruptly into words. “Something smells funny,” he said.

“I’m sure it does,” Malison told him, trying to think of another spell. She’d been throwing one trick of magic after another at this wizard boy, and none of them seemed to stick. The best she’d gotten was a bit of a daze and enough of a deafness spell to separate him from his friend, but both had soon faded. Then the spell for canceling
out magic had canceled itself out, and the one for total obedience had produced only a mild good cheer, which Malison suspected was mostly Lex’s personality.

He seemed to like her, but not slavishly, the way her enchanted guards adored her. Not the way he was supposed to. She didn’t want him blushing and stammering; she wanted him in her
thrall
, so when she said “Evil henchman,” his only response would be to ask, “How evil?”

Malison scowled. She had turned Lex into a marble statue on the way to her workroom, but it hadn’t lasted five minutes. She had barely had time to name the thing
Young Wizard Vanquished
when all of the color had flooded back into Lex’s face and hands.

Malison tried a sleep spell, that old standby. But Lex merely yawned.

This was a new experience for Malison, and it made her very unhappy.

EG CLOSED THE DOOR OF HER DUNGEON CELL
behind her. When Stefka left, she’d gone off to the right. Down the other way Meg could just see the doors of other cells. Inside one of those dark spaces was Alya, and Alya needed to be let out.

Meg walked slowly along the rough stone corridor, looking into each barred window. She saw nothing in the first or the second, but when she peeked in the third, a ghastly face looked back at her, something yellowish with fangs. Meg shrieked and then hushed herself. The thing whined at her pathetically, but Meg was afraid to let it out. “Sorry,” she whispered, moving on to the next door. “Alya?” she said, but no one answered. She checked another cell, and another.

“Who is that?” she heard up ahead. Meg hurried to find the source of the voice. “Alya?” She stopped in front of the right door at last.

Alya stared back at her for a shocked instant before she said, “Meg? Princess—what are you doing here?”

Meg hurriedly unlocked the door. “I’m looking for my dragon. I hear Miss Arrogance took your village captive.”

“Yes,” Alya said shortly, stepping into the dim corridor. The Bandit Queen was thin and dirty, her black hair a tangled mass. “How did you get the key? None of my people have been able to get their hands on one.”

“There was this hawk,” Meg began, but seeing the look on Alya’s face, she interrupted herself. “Never mind. I don’t know where anything is, though. I was locked up until just a little while ago. Now I need to find Lex.”

“Lex?”

“The wizard boy. He’s up there with her.”

“That’s all she needs, a wizard under her spells.” Alya started walking.

“What are you going to do?” Meg asked her.

Alya smirked. “Organize the women in the kitchen, of course. It’s something men never seem to expect.”

Meg nodded and followed Alya up the dungeon stairs, hoping there wasn’t a guard posted at the top.

There was, but he was dozing a bit, though he woke up when Alya attacked. Pretty soon the guard was sitting in his chair again, but this time he was tied to it, and his mouth was full of black cloth ripped from his own shirt.

They nearly ran across another pair of guards as they
looked for the kitchen, but Meg and Alya were able to hide behind a cabinet and a pompous vase full of harpy feathers until the men passed, their torches flickering weirdly.

The next person they met was a servant woman, one of Alya’s band. She almost dropped the basket full of black laundry she was carrying. Her mouth went round with astonishment. Then she smiled, hope blossoming in her face. “Alya! It’s really you!”