Wrede, Patricia C - Enchanted Forest 02 (11 page)

“I don’t trust it.”

“We managed before. It ought to be easier now that we know what to expect. Here, help me.” She knelt and began unrolling the carpet as she spoke.

“
Do
we know what to expect?” Remembering the bumping, spinning, unpredictable ride, Mendanbar shuddered.

“Look, I don’t like it any better than you do, but we have to do
something
about that sword. Besides, the sooner we get to the forest, the sooner you can find out where those wizards have Kazul. And do we have any other choice?”

“I could probably use the sword to get us to the Enchanted Forest,” Mendanbar suggested.

Cimorene sat back on her heels, staring at him. “You can do that? Why on earth didn’t you say so to begin with? We could have gone straight to Kazul’s grandchildren’s cave and saved a lot of time.”

“I didn’t mention it before because I’m not
really
sure it will work,” Mendanbar said. “I’ve never tried that particular spell outside the Enchanted Forest before, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to test it for the first time to get somewhere I’ve never been. Especially somewhere that isn’t in the Enchanted Forest either.” Actually, he hadn’t tried
any
of his usual spells outside the Enchanted Forest before, for the very good reason that he hadn’t
been
outside the Enchanted Forest since he’d become King and started working magic, but he didn’t like to mention that in front of Cimorene. He was quite sure that if
she
had suddenly become the ruler of a magical kingdom, she would have tested all her new spells and powers and abilities immediately, under as many different conditions as she could come up with. He didn’t want her to think he was careless or neglectful.

“So we can either experiment with the carpet again or experiment with your spell,” Cimorene said. She scowled thoughtfully at the teddy bears, then looked up at Mendanbar and smiled. “Let’s try the spell. What do you want me to do?”

“Just stand there,” Mendanbar said, returning her smile. “I’ve never worked with another magician, and one experiment at a time is enough.”

“Why haven’t you?” Cimorene asked as she climbed to her feet. “Worked with another magician, I mean. From what you were telling me yesterday, you’ve got more than enough work for a couple of assistants.”

“I’ve never had time to find any assistants,” Mendanbar said. “Except Willin, my steward, and he’s never learned much magic.”

“You mean you’re trying to run the whole Enchanted Forest
by
yourself?”
Cimorene said. “You’re as bad as the dragons!”

“What?”

“It took me six months to persuade them that the King of the Dragons didn’t need to do everything all the time,” Cimorene explained. “And then it took me three more months to get a system set up so they wouldn’t keep running to Kazul with every little problem.”

“You set up a system? How? I mean, how did you know . . .” Mendanbar’s voice trailed off.

To his surprise, Cimorene flushed very slightly. “I studied a lot of unusual things when I was growing up,” she said. “Unusual for a princess, I mean. Politics was one of them.”

“It sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing for a princess to study to me,” Mendanbar said. “Look how useful it’s been for you.”

“Well, it’s not one of the things a princess is
sup
posed
to learn,” Cimorene said. “You wouldn’t believe the fuss they made when they found out I’d talked my protocol teacher into covering it.”

“What were you supposed to be learning, then?”

Cimorene made a face. “Embroidery and dancing and etiquette and
proper
behavior.”

“No wonder princesses are silly, if that’s all they’re supposed to know about,” Mendanbar said without thinking. He blinked and added hastily, “Not you.

I mean, you aren’t silly, even if you are a princess. I mean—”

“Don’t try to explain any more; you’ll only make
it worse,” Cimorene said, laughing. “Now, hadn’t we better try that spell? We
are
in a bit of a hurry, remember.”

“Right.” With some difficulty, Mendanbar pushed the discussion out of his mind and tried to remember how he had been planning to work the transportation spell. Usually he simply twisted one of the threads of power that crisscrossed the Enchanted Forest, pulling himself to his destination, but outside the forest there were no threads that he could feel. There was power in the sword, though, and it was linked with the Enchanted Forest. If he pulled on that, he should be able to move whatever he chose back to the forest.

Before he moved anything, however, he would have to indicate who and what he wanted to move. He didn’t want to arrive in the Enchanted Forest with a magic carpet covered with pink teddy bears and no Cimorene. Mendanbar suppressed a sigh. Spells were so much easier at home, where he didn’t have to think about them as much. He dismissed that thought and concentrated on figuring out the shape of the spell he wanted.

When he was satisfied that he knew exactly what he intended to do, and in what order, he put a hand on the hilt of his sword and looked at Cimorene. “Ready?”

“Whenever you are,” Cimorene said.

Mendanbar nodded and drew his sword. He heard Cimorene suck in her breath as he raised the weapon over his head and swung it in a slow circle. Carefully, he pointed the sword at the carpet and pushed a tiny bit of power out to label it for the next part of the spell. Then he pointed the sword at Cimorene and repeated the process even more gently than before. Cimorene shivered, but she remained silent.

Turning, Mendanbar pointed the sword in the direction of the Enchanted Forest. Now for the tricky part. He drew on the power in the sword, feeling it hum through the hilt and into his hands. In his mind he pictured the giant trees of the Enchanted Forest, ranged in silent rows around the rocks that edged the Green Glass Pool, with the still water reflecting them like a green mirror. When he was sure he had the picture clear and steady in his mind, he gave the power in the sword the same twisting pull he used to move from place to place within the Enchanted Forest.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, the rocks began to blur and fade. Mist rose, wavering, to veil the mountains and sky. Then, just as the landscape was about to vanish into thick, woolly grayness, the mist stopped condensing. For a moment, everything was still. Then the mist thinned and the outlines of the rocks and mountains grew sharper.

Almost,
thought Mendanbar.
It must need more power because we’re outside the Enchanted Forest.
He clenched his hands around the hilt of the sword and pulled again, hard.

Gray fog slammed down around him like a window shutter dropping closed. Something hit him like a giant’s hammer, and he felt himself falling.
Now I’ve
done it,
he thought vaguely, just before everything went black.
I
hope Cimorene is all right.
Then he lost consciousness completely. He didn’t even feel himself land.

S
omething was wrong. Mendanbar could feel it, even before he was fully awake. The magic of the Enchanted Forest floated all around him, but it seemed tenuous and tottery, almost disconnected. He thought he had better get up and fix it. He opened his eyes.

Cimorene’s concerned face hovered a foot above him. Her braids had come loose from their tight crown and there was a worry line between her eyebrows. He didn’t want her to be worried. He tried to say so, but all he managed was a coughing fit. Cimorene bit her lip, and her troubled expression intensified.

“Don’t
try
to talk,” she said unhappily. “Don’t try to do anything yet. Your sword is safe, and I’m all right, and everything else can wait for a few minutes. Just lie there and breathe slowly.”

It occurred to Mendanbar that Cimorene was anxious about
him
. That was nice, in a way, but he still didn’t want her to be unhappy. In fact, it was suddenly very important to him that Cimorene should not be worried or unhappy in the slightest. He closed his eyes to consider how best to convey this and fell asleep at once.

When he woke, the sky was the pale blue of late afternoon. Rubbing his eyes, he sat up carefully, remembering what had happened earlier when he’d tried to talk. Cimorene was at his side at once.

“Are you sure you should do that?” she said.

“It hasn’t hurt so far,” Mendanbar replied. “What happened?”

Cimorene studied him for a moment, then relaxed visibly. “I’m not sure,” she said. “One minute we were going somewhere, and the next minute we weren’t. When I picked myself up, you were lying there looking three-quarters dead and as white as cracked ice, and you’ve been that way for over four hours. If that’s your transportation spell, I think I would have preferred the carpet.”

“At least it got us to the forest.”

“Not exactly.”

Mendanbar blinked at her, then looked around. The carpet, on which he and Cimorene were sitting, lay in the center of a twenty-foot circle of thin green fuzz. Seven saplings, pencil-thick and none more than waist high, poked randomly upward through the fuzz. Beyond the circle, patches of short, brownish-green grass alternated with mottled gray rock that rose quickly into cliffs and ridges and the sudden, sharp heights of mountains that shadowed them all. None of it looked familiar, though it still felt vaguely like the Enchanted Forest to him.

“Well, at least we went
somewhere,”
Mendanbar said after a moment.

“Yes, but where? Those are the Mountains of Morning, but this bit”—Cimorene waved at the green fuzz and the saplings—”looks as if it belongs in the Enchanted Forest. So what’s it doing here?”

“It feels like the Enchanted Forest, too,” Mendanbar said. He shifted, and his hand touched cool metal. Even without looking, he knew it was his sword. He picked it up and looked at it thoughtfully. “Cimorene, is this still ‘leaking magic’ the way you said it was earlier?”

“No,” Cimorene said. “I can tell it’s a magic sword, and an odd one at that, but only if I study it. It’s not—not so
obvious
anymore.”

Mendanbar pushed himself to his feet. It took more effort than he had expected, and by the time he finished, the worry line had reappeared between Cimorene’s eyebrows.

“I’m all right,” he told her. “Mostly.” He waited a moment for his head to stop spinning, then walked cautiously to the edge of the circle of fuzz. He stepped over the boundary onto a patch of grass. The comforting sense of being surrounded by magic vanished, and although he had more than half expected it, he staggered slightly.

Cimorene was beside him almost at once. “What is it?”

“It was just the change. Can you feel my sword now?”

“Yes,” Cimorene said. “But it’s nowhere near as bad as it was this morning.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Mendanbar looked at the circular area of green and sighed. “I hate to do this, but you’re right. It doesn’t belong here.”

He started forward. Cimorene grabbed his arm. “Wait a minute! What are you talking about?”

“This.” Mendanbar pointed at the saplings with his sword. “In a way, it really
is
part of the Enchanted Forest. That’s why it feels like home to me, and that’s why the sword doesn’t feel ‘obvious’ when it’s inside.”

“That makes sense,” Cimorene said. She still had hold of his arm. “But how did it get here?”

“I don’t think it did, exactly,” Mendanbar said. “I think the sword made it for us when we couldn’t get through to the real forest. That’s why it’s so—so newlooking.”

“Your sword . . .” Cimorene paused, thinking. “Yes, you told me it was linked to the Enchanted Forest.” She looked at the green area. “I didn’t realize it could do things on its own, without someone directing it.”

“Normally it doesn’t,” Mendanbar said. “Unless it’s picking the next King of the Enchanted Forest.”

“Picking the next . . .” Cimorene’s voice trailed off and she shook her head. “I think you’d better tell me about that sword. All about it, not just dribbles of information when something comes up. I have a feeling we’re going to need to know.”

“I don’t know that much,” Mendanbar said. “And I have to take care of these things first.” He waved at the saplings.

“What are you going to do?”

“If the sword did it, it ought to be able to undo it,” Mendanbar said. “I don’t want to erase this patch, but I can’t think of anything else to do with it. It wouldn’t be a good idea to leave a bit of my kingdom disconnected like this.”

“No, I can see that,” Cimorene said, releasing his arm at last. “Just watch what you’re doing with that spell. It’s going to be dark soon, and I don’t want to spend another four hours waiting for you to wake up.”

“I don’t like the idea myself,” Mendanbar said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

“You’d better be.”

Mendanbar smiled, raised the sword, and walked back into the tiny forest. He paced around the edge, getting the feel of the magic that was spread spiderweb thin across the circle. Then he stopped. With his left hand, he lowered his sword so that the tip rested on the green fuzz that might one day have grown into moss. With his right, he reached out and touched the web, gathering in the threads. When his hand was full, he began to feed the threads into the sword.

It was touchy work, for the invisible strands were thin and fragile, and he knew that if he missed even one he would have to begin all over again. The task took a lot of concentration, for the sword accepted the threads with great reluctance. He was not at all sure he would have the strength to do it twice, so he worked with painstaking slowness.

When he was halfway through, the saplings began to shrink. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the little trees grew shorter and more slender, until they disappeared into the green fuzz. For a moment, nothing more seemed to happen. Then the circle of green began to shrink. Like a drop of water being sucked up by a napkin, the green edge drew back toward the sword, leaving bare rock behind. In a moment, the retreating border was out of sight beneath the carpet.

Mendanbar continued feeding magic into the sword. There were only a few threads left, and he slowed down even more. A puddle the size of a wagon wheel was all that was left of the original circle. It shrank to the size of a dinner plate, then a pancake, then a penny. Then it was gone.

For a heartbeat longer, Mendanbar held his position, checking to be certain he had not missed anything. Finally he let go of the end of the spell and lifted the point of the sword from the ground. He felt much better than he had when he began. He looked up and smiled at Cimorene.

“That was extremely interesting,” Cimorene said. She eyed the bare ground around the carpet. “Is that all of it?”

“I think so. Why?”

“Because if we don’t want to spend the night here, we’re going to have to leave quickly. It’ll be getting dark soon.” Cimorene paused, then added, “You’d better put that sword away. It’s dripping magic again.”

“Sorry,” Mendanbar said. “Why don’t we—”

With a rattle of small stones and a vicious hiss, a long, gray-black snake shot out of a crevice at the top of the nearest cliff and dropped toward Cimorene. Mendanbar jerked his sword up and sent a crackling bolt of power to meet the serpent. The hiss became a choking gurgle as the snake flared into a bright line of fire and disintegrated. Flakes of ash drifted the last few feet to fall around Mendanbar and Cimorene.

Three more snakes launched themselves from parts of the cliff,
and another slithered from behind a boulder. From the corner of his eye, Mendanbar saw Cimorene yank her sword out of its sheath. He hoped briefly and intensely that she was good at fighting, and then he had no time or attention for anything except the snakes.

A second blast of magic disposed of two of the three in the air, and a single sword-stroke chopped the third in half. By then four new snakes were in the air, and Mendanbar could hear more hissing on all sides. He sent another spell skyward, and another, then swung at two snakes that had leaped from a crack barely shoulder-high above the ground. After that he lost track of how many snakes he struck or stabbed or chopped and how many he burned or blasted. He had no time for anything but fighting. He swung his sword until his arms were tired and his head hurt from concentration and spell-casting. And then, suddenly, there were no more snakes.

The ground was dusted with ashes and littered with pieces of snakes, and the air smelled of charred meat. Slowly, Mendanbar lowered his sword. A few paces away, Cimorene was straightening up from a fighter’s crouch with the same wary hesitation. Her sword was covered with dark blood, and there were quite a lot of dead snakes around her.

“Oh, wonderful,” Mendanbar said with heartfelt sincerity. “I was hoping you were good with a sword.”

“You aren’t bad with one yourself,” Cimorene replied a little breathlessly.

“It’s a magic sword,” Mendanbar reminded her, but he felt absurdly pleased nonetheless.

Cimorene grinned. “So is mine. I know a little about fencing, but not enough to do me any good against most of the things in the Mountains of Morning. That’s why Kazul lets me carry this.” She lifted her sword, and a drop of snake blood fell from the tip. She frowned and began fishing in her pockets with her free hand. “It’s supposed to make the bearer impossible to defeat.”

“Sounds good to me,” Mendanbar said, looking at the bits of snake near Cimorene’s feet. “What’s the catch?”

“Getting killed isn’t the same as being defeated,” Cimorene said. She pulled a handkerchief from a pocket, smiled, and began cleaning the sword with it. “Not always, anyway. And it doesn’t keep you from getting hurt, either. So I still have to be careful. Do you Want to use this?” She held out the stained handkerchief.

“Thank you,” Mendanbar said, taking the square of cloth. He wiped his sword carefully, resheathed it, and hesitated. “Do you want it back? I’m afraid it’s ruined.”

“That’s all right,” Cimorene said. “I always carry one or two extras.” She retrieved the handkerchief, grimaced, and tied it into a tight bundle, which she stowed in her belt pouch. “There. Now, let’s get out of here.”

“Why such a hurry?”

“We still have to rescue Kazul. And besides—do you
want
to fight more rock snakes?” Cimorene asked. “That’s what we’ll be doing if we stay, We’ve cleaned out this part pretty well, but there’s sure to be several other colonies around.” She pointed at a dark ridge a couple of hundred feet farther on. “There, for instance. Or there.” She gestured in the opposite direction, at a wrinkled cliff.

“I don’t see how we can get past them on foot,” Mendanbax said, frowning.

“Well, we can’t stay here. They’ll slither over as soon as the last of the light goes. We’ll have to take the carpet.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” said a new voice.

Together, Mendanbar and Cimorene turned. The voice belonged to a dark-haired man who stood calmly next to the magic carpet, watching them with interest. He was several inches shorter than Mendanbar, with bright blue eyes and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He wore tall black boots, dark gray leggings, a loose-sleeved, high-necked shirt in pale gray, and an open knee-length black vest covered with pockets of all shapes and sizes. Under the vest, his wide black belt was hung with strangely shaped pouches and sheaths. The air around him crackled with magic.

“Who are you?” Cimorene asked. “And why don’t you want us to use the carpet?”

“My name is Telemain,” said the man, bowing, “and I have a considerable familiarity with the basic mechanics of carpets. Magic ones, that is. And this carpet”—he gestured left-handed, and three silver rings glinted in the fading light—”is plainly defective.”