The Runaway Dragon (2 page)

“Very good.” Master Zolis got up again and began pacing back and forth, swinging his sword as if it were much lighter than it looked, as light as Meg’s sword. “And if a wizard throws a spell at you?”

“Duck?”

“Certainly. What if a very large man with twenty years of experience at sword swinging comes after you?”

Meg sighed. “I should run away.”

“That is correct.”

“Have you been talking to my father?” Meg asked. A worse thought occurred to her. “Or my
mother?”

“Not at all. But instructors are famous for dosing their students with wisdom or, in this case, plain common sense.” He grinned. “I’ve seen how fierce you get in practice.”

Wasn’t that a good thing? “But if there’s always someone better than me around the corner …”

“Or simply more eager to strike a deathblow than you are,” Master Zolis suggested.

“Or that. Then why bother studying?” Meg stuck out her lower jaw a bit.

Master Zolis’s eyes twinkled. He gave his sword an intricate flourish. “As I’ve often told you, swordsmanship is an art. Come, Princess. Let me see the Seventeenth Griffin.”

Meg got up and unsheathed her own sword, which was looking far more ordinary at the moment, as if it had been listening to the swordmaster’s speech. Meg adjusted her grip on the silver sword hilt, relishing the cool feel of it in her hand. She set her left foot at a slight angle to her right and then lunged forward, twirling to her left at the last second and then dropping to one knee so that the tip of her sword rested just below her instructor’s chin. Or that was the plan, anyway. Instead she felt a slight rush of air as the swordmaster moved, not acting at
all like the opponent of Meg’s imagination. Meg ended up flat on her back with Master Zolis’s foot lightly resting on her inner elbow and her sword halfway across the room.

“Much better,” the swordmaster said, moving his foot aside. “Hop up and do it again.”

If magic had been any easier for her, Meg’s least favorite class would have been royal etiquette, in which Mistress Mintz instructed Meg far too thoroughly in court protocol. All Meg could do was smile grimly and say, “Yes, Mistress Mintz,” or “No, Mistress Mintz,” as she tried to remember the prissy details that accompanied her royal status like so many chaperones. Just because she’d run away from home and acted in various unseemly ways a year ago didn’t mean she was completely lacking in courtly graces. But her mother had thought so, and that was the reason for Mistress Mintz.

Meg approached the parlor where Mistress Mintz reigned over a little kingdom of lace doilies and flowered armchairs. Meg preferred real flowers herself—they were sloppy and friendly and swayed in the wind. Of course, nothing dared to move out of its place in Mistress Mintz’s parlor. The complete opposite of the sword-master’s austere domain, it was stuffed with ruffles and furbelows and amazingly adorable large-eyed knickknacks. Meg shortened her steps automatically as she came through the door.

It seemed to her that the etiquette teacher should dress in pale-colored flowers to match the decor, but as usual Mistress Mintz was wearing a tense black dress. She greeted Meg with chilly formality, asked her in appalled tones to take off her sword, and informed her that the topic of today’s lesson was curtsies. “Now, Princess Margaret, let me see you curtsy,” the etiquette instructor said. Her small eyes narrowed, anticipating Meg’s least mistake.

Still, Meg dipped with such care that she really thought she’d gotten it right.

Mistress Mintz pursed her lips. “And to whom was that curtsy directed?”

“Um—to you?”

“To you, Mistress Mintz,” the woman prompted.

“To you, Mistress Mintz,” Meg repeated.

“No!” Mistress Mintz snapped. “I should certainly hope not!”

“Why ever not?” Meg asked.

“Why ev—” Mistress Mintz began.

“Why ever not, Mistress Mintz?” Meg said, trying again.

“I can’t imagine you are entirely unaware that there are eleven types of curtsies,” Meg’s instructor announced. “Did you not read the lesson pages?”

“Oh, it’s just that … what happened is … I was busy with other assignments,” Meg said, twiddling her skirt nervously.

“Princesses do not make excuses,” Mistress Mintz said. Then she looked at Meg’s hands pointedly. “And they do
not
fidget.”

Meg wasn’t about to tell her etiquette instructor that last night she was practicing the Seventeenth Griffin. Who had time for curtsies? You just bobbed, was all. As for the book, it was called
Royal Etiquette for Every Occasion
, and Meg couldn’t think of a single occasion when she’d wanted to read it. She and Dilly had laughed about it on and off for weeks, and not just because all of the women in the book were dressed as if they’d lived a hundred years ago, with very high collars and low-hanging, round headdresses that made them resemble a bunch of turtles.

For now, all Meg said was, “I’m sorry, Mistress Mintz.” She made an effort to talk the way she was supposed to. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to demonstrate the curtsies for me?”

Mistress Mintz gave Meg a tiny smile. “Very well.”

To no one’s surprise, it soon became clear that Meg couldn’t tell the eleven curtsies apart. And she couldn’t remember more than three or four of their names. This was probably because, instead of having wonderful names like the Seventeenth Griffin or Death Comes Swiftly, they were all named after noblewomen who had lived about a hundred years ago and looked like turtles.

“No,
this
is the Lady Evaline,” Mistress Mintz said, curtsying deeply.

“I thought that was the Queen Violet.”

Mistress Mintz’s blue-gray hair quivered indignantly. “Hardly, my dear.” When she said “my dear,” it didn’t sound endearing at all. “Watch closely.”

Meg tried and tried. With a great deal of swooshing and swishing and only a little bobbing, Meg produced a fairly good imitation of the first two curtsies.

“That was adequate,” the woman said.

Meg couldn’t help letting out a dismal sigh.

“When a young lady avoids her responsibilities as a princess,” Mistress Mintz said, looking down her nose at Meg, “she naturally finds herself lacking in the most basic of royal requirements.”

“What do you mean?” Meg didn’t like the sound of that.

“I mean that anyone who shirks her duty by leaving her assigned place and interfering with her father’s princely competition may find that she is thereafter shunned by young men of quality.”

Mistress Mintz had never before dared insult Meg this openly about her adventures. “Quality? Those princes would still be frogs if it weren’t for me!” Meg said hotly. “How would you like to be locked in a tower and have your father offer half the kingdom and your hand in marriage to some buffoon in a crown?”

To Meg’s astonishment, the etiquette teacher looked positively wistful at the thought. But the woman quickly
recovered her famous dignity. “The idea of a princess rescuing the very creatures intended to be defeated by such a contest is simply shocking, as you well know.”

“Gorba is a nice witch, and Laddy is a sweet little dragon!”

“Next I suppose you’re going to defend those bandits,” Mistress Mintz said in acid tones.

“They’re gone now. They weren’t that bad.” Even if they
had
taken eleven chests filled with dragon treasure when they went.

The etiquette teacher shook her head sorrowfully. “Princess Margaret, the work ahead of us is
extensive.”

Frankly, Meg thought her teacher’s remarks were far from polite. But there was no point in arguing. Meg kept quiet, hoping this would soon be over. Whereupon Mistress Mintz gave her a long speech about why manners were of the utmost importance, after which she assigned Meg to really, truly read the chapter on curtsies. And finally, they were finished. Which would have been very good news, if it didn’t mean that it was time for Meg’s magic lesson.

N HOUR LATER, WHILE MEG WAS BUSY STUDYING
magic with Master Torskelly in his cluttered workroom, a dragon buzzed the castle. As Dilly was to tell Meg that afternoon, Nort had been staring at Dilly in the east hallway when the uproar started. Nort had been doing that a lot lately, and it was annoying Dilly no end. She was practically missing the days when the skinny apprentice guardsman used to alternately ignore her or tattle on her to her uncle, Guard Captain Hanak. Dilly was about to march up to Nort and tell him to stop it when a strange rushing noise was heard outside the window, followed quickly by an inhuman roar, a very human scream, a whoosh, and a smell of smoke.

Half the people in the hall ran to the windows; the other half ran away. Nort and Dilly met in the middle, where he tackled her manfully and threw her to the floor.

“Get off!” she yelled.

“I’m protecting you,” he announced.

“Well, stop it!” Dilly spat, managing to say just what she’d been wanting to say about Nort’s staring at her only a moment before. Dilly pulled free of her rescuer and hurried to the window, where she was treated to the sight of a red-and-gold tail flopping up over the battlements. “Dragon!” someone shouted rather obviously, and a volley of arrows sprayed the sky.

The tail looked familiar, Dilly thought. “Laddy?” she said.

“Meg’s dragon?” Nort rushed to stand beside her.

The dragon seemed to fall backward. Everyone at the windows gasped, some hopefully and, in Dilly’s case at least, others worriedly. Then the dragon spun itself about in midair and, thrusting against the castle wall with a back claw, launched off into furious flight.

The dragon wasn’t huge, but it was a beauty, its underbelly and wings golden and its back scarlet touched with amber. It soared out of reach of the arrows, higher and higher, till it looked like a lost sunbeam and then disappeared altogether. “That
was
Laddy,” Dilly whispered. Forgetting her annoyance, she turned to run. “We’ve got to find Meg!”

Meg’s first thought was that she had conjured up something horrible. A few minutes earlier, she had been concentrating
on her magic lesson, thinking maybe this time she would get her spell to work. Her magic tutor, for his part, had been thinking in a depressed, philosophical sort of way that some people who wanted to paint were color-blind, some people who wanted to sing were tone-deaf, and some people who wanted to make magic were—well, Princess Margaret. He did not say so, however, though the expression on his face was particularly eloquent.

“Not even close?” Meg asked woefully.

Master Torskelly shook his head. “No, Princess. Not a bit.”

Meg peered down at the circle of spellwork. It
looked
just like the picture in the book. The hensleaf and the tickwort were in the right spots, as were a cricket and a bit of tapestry. Meg was also pretty sure she had said the spell properly: “Poppilin callifus haig.” The spell just didn’t do what it was supposed to: transform the cricket into a buttercup.

There was no help for it. Meg was abysmally bad at magic. Now, anyone can be incapable of magic, and that is what it means to be bad at magic. To be abysmally bad at magic, a person has to be able to cast a spell, but make it come out wrong every time.

For that reason, Meg’s tutor waited anxiously, hoping the princess’s spell wouldn’t work at all. It was hard to tell. One of Meg’s spells had seemed to fail, but a pitcher
of cream in the next room was later found to have turned to seawater. And the twelfth third-floor housemaid had been more than a little distressed when another of Meg’s attempts at magic had changed the woman’s speech to the bloodthirsty cry of a gorebeast. They’d had to call in the boy wizard, Lex, to take care of that one.

Thbbbbbhbt!
Meg heard, surely not in her head. “Sir?” Had her tutor really just given her the raspberry?! And behind her back?

“Yes?” Master Torskelly said, his voice as mild and cultured as ever.

“Did you speak or,” Meg hesitated, “make a sound, just now?”

“Not at all. I know you need quiet to concentrate.”

Maybe the poor old man was gassy. Or maybe she’d just imagined the sound. Meg began to rearrange her spell. Then a tumult filled the halls and poured in at the window.

“Now what?” Meg said.

Master Torskelly sighed for the fifth time that morning. “Come along. We’ll find out what happened.”

In the halls, everyone was rushing about and calling out the word “dragon.”

Meg looked sideways at her tutor. “I don’t think I could have conjured up a dragon.”

They were just heading around the corner toward the throne room when Dilly caught up with them. “Meg! Laddy’s gone!”

“Not before scaring everyone half to death,” Nort added, skidding to a halt beside Dilly.

“Ha!” Meg said to her tutor. “I knew I hadn’t conjured up a dragon!” Then she frowned. “What do you mean, Laddy? Not
Laddy.”

Dilly nodded. “He made someone scream and—I’m not sure what he did, except that they started shooting arrows at him and he flew away.”

“Arrows!” Meg cried. “Was he hit?”

“I don’t think so,” Dilly told her.

They were nearly to the throne room now. Even from the hallway, Meg could hear voices grumbling and griping. Suddenly the king’s voice roared out, worse than a dragon’s: “Margaret!”