Wrede, Patricia C - Enchanted Forest 01

by Dealing

  “But Cimorene, you know perfectly well—” Therandil started.

  “You hush,” Cimorene said. “You’ve made enough of a mess already.”

  “If he is not thy paramour, nor any of those other things, then what is he?” the jinn asked suspiciously.

  “A nuisance,” Cimorene said succinctly.

  “Cimorene, you’re not being very kind,” Therandil said.

  “What he is matters not,” the jinn said grandly after a moment’s heavy thought. “It is enough that thou and he shall die.”

  “Enough for whom?” Cimorene said.

  The jinn blinked at her. “For me. ‘Tis my will that thou and he shall die by my hand. Thou hast but to choose the manner of thy death.”

  “Old age,” Cimorene said promptly.

  “Mock me not! Thou and he shall die, and by my hand, ere this day draws to its close!” the jinn cried.

  “Do you suppose he means it?” Therandil said nervously.

  “Why would he keep bellowing it at us if he didn’t mean it?” Cimorene said. “Do be quiet, Therandil.”

  Therandil lowered his voice. “Should I offer to fight him, do you think?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Cimorene said. She saw that Therandil was distressed, so she added, “You came up here to fight a dragon. You aren’t prepared for a jinn, and nobody could reasonably expect you to challenge him.”

  “If you say so,” Therandil said, looking relieved.

  Cimorene turned back to the jinn and saw that he, too, was looking perturbed. “What’s the matter with you?” she said crossly.

  “Dost thou not wish to know why I will kill thee?” the jinn asked plaintively.

  “What difference does it make?” Cimorene said.

  “Yes, actually,” Therandil said at the same time.

  “Therandil!” Cimorene said in exasperation. “Shut up!”

  “Hear my story, 0 luckless pair!” the jinn said with evident relief. “I am one of those jinn who did rebel against the law of our kind, and for my crimes I was sentenced to imprisonment in this bottle until the day should come when human hands would loose me. As is the custom of my people, I swore that whoso should release me during the first hundred years of my imprisonment I would make ruler of the earth; whoso should release me during the second hundred years I should make rich beyond all dreams of men; whoso shall release me during the third hundred I should grant three wishes; and whoso should release me after any longer span of time I should grant only the choice of what death he would die.”

  “You’re going to kill us because it’s traditional?” Cimorene asked.

  “Yes,” the jinn said. His eyes slid away from Cimorene’s, and she frowned suddenly.

  “Just how long were you in that jar?” she demanded.

  “Uh, well, actually .. .” The jinn’s voice trailed off.

  “How long?” Cimorene insisted.

  “Two hundred and seventeen years,” the jinn admitted. “But nobody ever releases a jinn before the three hundred years are over.”

  “You’re trying to get around your oath!” Therandil said, plainly shocked by the very thought. “You pretended you had to kill us so you wouldn’t have to give us the wishes!”

  “No!” the jinn said. “Thinkest thou that the granting of wishes alone would so trouble me? Needs must I kill thee and thy fair companion, for I cannot return home and say that thou didst release me and I left thee living! I would be a laughingstock. Never in three thousand years has such a thing occurred!”

  “Then you shouldn’t have sworn an oath,” Therandil said sternly.

  “I had to!” the jinn said miserably. “It is the custom of our kind. Twould be ... ‘twould be ...”

  “Improper?” Cimorene murmured.

  “ Twould be improper to do otherwise,” the jinn said, nodding. “But now thou hast found me out, and what am I to do? If I kill thee, it will violate my oath; if I kill thee not, the remainder of my life will be a torment.”

  “You could go back in the jar for another eighty-three years,” Cimorene suggested delicately.

  “I could ... go back?” The jinn blinked at her for a moment. “I could go back. I could go back!”

  “And in eighty-three years we’ll both be dead of old age,” Cimorene said. “Since that was my choice of death, your oath will be fulfilled and you can go straight home without killing anyone else or giving men any riches or power or anything.”

  ‘Truly, thou art a jewel among women and the very Queen of Wisdom’s daughters!” the jinn said happily. “Thou hast found the perfect solution to my difficulties!”

  “Wait a minute!” Therandil said. “What about those wishes?”

  “Therandil!” Cimorene said in a shocked tone. “I’m surprised at you! How can he give us wishes if he’s going back in the jar for eighty-three years? It wouldn’t be right at all.”

  Therandil frowned. “Are you sure? After all, we did let him out during his third hundred years.”

  “I suppose I could let thee have one wish at least, in token of my thanks for thy help,” the jinn said. “As long as thou dost not tell anyone.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Therandil assured him. “And my wish is to defeat a dragon and win his princess’s hand in marriage!”

  The jinn waved a dark hand over Therandil’s head. “There! When next thou dost fight a dragon, thou shalt surely defeat him. And thou?” he said, turning to Cimorene.

  “I could use some powdered hens’ teeth,” Cimorene said.

  The jinn blinked in surprise, but he waved his hand again, his face a mask of concentration. Then he bowed and handed Cimorene a fat brown jar. “There’s thy desire. Farewell!” With an elaborate salaam, the jinn dissolved back into a cloud of smoke that poured back into the copper jar from which it had come. Cimorene leaned over and plucked the lead stopper from the end of Therandil’s knife. She jammed it back into place and heaved a sigh of relief.

  Therandil was not paying attention. “What did you want something like that for?” he asked, looking at the jar of hens’ teeth and wrinkling his nose in distaste.

  “I don’t believe I shall tell you,” Cimorene said, putting the jar carefully into one of her apron pockets. “It has nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothing to do with me? I like that!” Therandil said indignantly. “I’m going to marry you, just as soon as I beat that dragon of yours.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to beat Kazul,” Cimorene said in a considering tone.

  “But that jinn just said—”

  “He said that if you fight a dragon, you’ll defeat him. But Kazul is a her, not a him,” Cimorene pointed out. “And you ought not to be trying to rescue me anyway.”

  “Why not?” Therandil asked truculently.

  “Because there are other princesses who’ve been captives of dragons for much longer than I have, and they have seniority,” Cimorene explained.

  “Oh,” said Therandil, looking considerably taken aback. “How do you know?”

  “They came to visit and told me all about it,” Cimorene said. “I think you should try for Keredwel. She’s from the Kingdom of Raxwel, and her hair is the color of sun-ripened wheat, and she wears a gold crown set with diamonds. You ought to get along with her very well.”

  Therandil brightened perceptibly at this description but said, “But everyone expects me to rescue you.”

  “As long as you defeat a dragon and rescue a princess, no one will care,” Cimorene said firmly. “And Keredwel will suit you much better than I would.”

  “Are you sure her dragon isn’t female, too?”

  “Positive,” Cimorene said. “Gomul’s cave is two down and three over. If you follow the path outside, you can’t miss it. He ought to be there now, and if you leave right away, you’ll be able to get everything settled before dinner.”

  “All right, then,” Therandil said. “As long as you’re sure you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Cimorene assured him ferventl
y. She saw him to the mouth of the cave and pointed him toward Gomul’s cave, then returned to the kitchen. She gathered up the jars and bottles she had been planning to check, except for the copper jar with the jinn inside, and took them back to the treasure vault.

  Then she fetched an ink pot, a quill pen, and a sheet of paper from the library and began writing out a warning to attach to the copper jar. She didn’t want anyone else to open it until the eighty-three years were over and the jinn could go home without killing anyone.

  She was just finishing when she heard Alianora’s voice calling from the rear of the cave. “I’m in the kitchen!” she shouted. “Come on back!”

  “You’re always in the kitchen,” Ahanora said when she poked her head through the door a moment later. “Or the library. Don’t you ever do anything but cook and read?”

  “Look at this, Alianora,” Cimorene said, handing her the warning she had been writing. “Do you think it’s dear enough?”

  “ ‘WARNING: This jar contains a jinn who will kill you if you let him out too soon. Do not open until at least one hundred and five years after the date when the Citadel of the Yellow Giant was destroyed,’ “ Alianora read aloud. “That’s, let's see, eighty-four years from now. It seems clear to me. You’d have to be pretty stupid to ignore a warning like that.”

  “Maybe I ought to show it to Hallanna and see what she says,” Cimorene said, frowning. “I wouldn’t want anyone getting into trouble by accident, just because I didn’t make it plain.”

  “It’s plain, it’s plain,” Alianora said. “Cimorene, what on earth have you been doing? How do you know there’s a jinn in this bottle?”

  “Therandil,” Cimorene said, waving a hand expressively. “I was looking through some of the bottles from Kazul’s treasure room, to see if any of them happened to have hens’ teeth in them, and Therandil came in and wanted to help.”

  “And he opened it?” Alianora said. “Oh, dear.”

  “Exactly,” said Cimorene. “But it came out well in the end. I think I’ve gotten rid of him for good. I sent him off to rescue Keredwel.”

  “You did? What if he doesn’t beat Gomul?”

  “Oh, he’ll win. The jinn gave him a wish, and he wished to defeat a dragon.” Cimorene looked apologetically at Alianora. “I suppose I ought to have sent him to rescue you, but ...”

  “That’s quite all right,” Alianora said hastily. “Getting rid of Keredwel will help a lot. And after everything you’ve told me about Therandil, I don’t think I’d want to have him rescue me.”

  “That's what I thought,” Cimorene said. “Oh, and I got the jinn to give me some powdered hens’ teeth, so we can finally try that fireproofing spell.”

  “Good,” Alianora said. “Let’s do it right now!”

  So Cimorene got out the spell and the ingredients she had collected, and she and Alianora spent the next hour on various necessary preparations. First they had to boil some unicorn water and steep the dried wolfsbane in it. Then the mixture had to be strained and mixed with the hippopotamus oil and the powdered hens’ teeth. Cimorene did most of that, while Alianora ground up the blue rose leaves and the piece of ebony.

  Grinding the ebony took a long time, but fortunately they didn’t need much. When Alianora finally had enough, Cimorene mixed it with the blue rose leaves and more of the unicorn water in one of Kazul’s recently shed scales. Each mixture had to be stirred three times counterclockwise with a white eagle feather. Then Alianora dipped the point of her feather in her mixture and began drawing a star on the floor of the cave.

  “Is this going to be big enough for both of us?” she asked, scratching busily at the stone with the tip of the feather.

  “I think so,” Cimorene answered. “Don’t try to make it too big, or you’ll run out of liquid and we’ll have to start over.”

  Alianora did not run out, though she had used nearly all her mixture by the time she finished. “There!” she said. She sat back on her heels and studied her diagram to make sure there were no gaps, then set her dragon scale and feather aside and stood up. “Your turn.”

  “First we have to get into the center of the star,” Cimorene reminded her. “Be careful not to smudge the lines!”

  “Smudge them, after all that work?” Alianora said in tones of mock horror. She lifted her skirts and stepped carefully into the middle of the diagram. Cimorene followed, carrying a small mixing bowl half full of something that looked like brown sludge with a white eagle feather sticking out of one side. “It smells awful,” Alianora said, grimacing.

  “It doesn’t matter what it smells like, as long as the spell works,” Cimorene said. “Ready?”

  “As ready as I’m ever going to be,” Alianora re plied, shutting her eyes and screwing up her face as if she expected to have a glass of cold water poured over her head.

  Cimorene plucked the eagle feather out of the bowl and raised it quickly over Alianora’s head before it could drip on the floor. She let four large drops of the brown gunk fall onto Alianora’s hair, then brushed the end of the feather across her forehead twice. She finished by drawing a circle with the feather on the palm of Alianora’s left hand.

  “That tickles!” Alianora complained.

  “Well, you can do it to me now,” Cimorene said. Alianora took the bowl and feather from Cimorene. “You’re right,” Cimorene said a moment later. “It does tickle.”

  “Now what?” Alianora said.

  “Set the bowl down and shut your eyes,” Cimorene instructed. When Alianora had done so, Cimorene closed her own eyes and said:

  “Power of water, wind and earth,

  Turn the fire back to its birth.

  Raise the spell to shield the flame

  By the power that we have tamed.”

  “Oh!” said Alianora. “That feels peculiar. Can I open my eyes now?”

  “Yes,” said Cimorene, opening her own. “We’re finished.”

  “Did it work?” Alianora asked, cautiously opening one eye and squinting at Cimorene.

  “Well, something happened. We both felt it,” Cimorene said. “And your hair and forehead don’t have brown gunk on them any more.”

  Alianora promptly opened both eyes and studied Cimorene. “Neither do yours. What does that mean?”

  “It means we go back to the kitchen and test it,” Cimorene said. She bent over and picked up the mixing bowl. “We’ll clean up later. Come on.”

  10

  In Which Cimorene and Alianora Conduct

  Some Tests and Disturb a Wizard

  Back in the kitchen, Cimorene and Alianora quickly determined that the fireproofing spell had indeed worked. First Cimorene, then Alianora tossed a pinch of feverfew into the air and recited the spell-verse, then put a hand into a candle flame and held it there. Neither was burned at all, though Alianora claimed that the candle tickled almost as much as the eagle feather had done.

  “How long does the spell last?” Alianora asked.

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” Cimorene said. “At least an hour, but I’ll have to do some tests to pin it down beyond that. I hope Kazul gets back soon. I want to see if it works with dragon fire.”

  “You’re going to have Kazul breathe fire at you, just to see if the spell works?” Alianora said, horrified. “What if it doesn’t?”

  “Then I’ll talk to Kazul, and we’ll go see Morwen, and the three of us will try to figure out what to change to make the spell work for dragon fire, too. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to stand in front of Kazul and have her breathe fire at me. I’ll just stick out a finger, the way we did with the candle.”

  This was not enough to convince Alianora, but Cimorene was determined. “The whole point of trying this spell was to make ourselves immune to dragon fire,” she said. “If it doesn’t work, I don’t want to find out for the first time when one of Kazul’s guests gets mad and breathes fire at me because he doesn’t like the way I cooked his cherries jubilee.”

  Alianora had to admit that this
was a good point, but she was still disposed to argue. The discussion was cut short by Kazul’s return. At first the dragon was more inclined to agree with Alianora than with Cimorene, but after Cimorene proved her invulnerability to candle flames, lighted torches, and the fire she had built in the kitchen stove, Kazul agreed to the trial. She insisted, however, on working up to full firepower in gradual stages, and Cimorene was forced to agree.

  Before they began, Cimorene threw another pinch of feverfew into the air and recited the couplet again, just to be sure the spell wouldn’t wear off in the middle of the test. Then Kazul lowered her head nearly to the ground, and Alianora watched nervously as Cimorene lowered her hand slowly into various intensities of dragon flame. Finally, Cimorene stood right in front of Kazul while the dragon breathed her hottest. The spell worked perfectly every time.

  “There!” Cimorene said when Kazul stopped at last. “Now we know it works. Aren’t you glad?”

  “I’m glad,” Alianora said fervently. “And I hope I never have to watch anything like that again as long as I live. I didn’t dare blink for fear you’d go up in smoke while my eyes were closed.”

  “Why don’t you try it yourself?” Cimorene said mischievously.

  “No!” said Alianora and Kazul together.

  “Watching you was bad enough,” Alianora went on with a shudder. “I believe it works. I don’t see any reason for me to test it.”

  “Besides, I’ve done more than enough fire-breathing for one day,” Kazul added. “I’m starting to get overheated.”

  “All right, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to,” Cimorene said. “If we’re all done, I’d better go tidy up.”

  Alianora stayed to help Cimorene finish cleaning up the traces of the spell, by which time she had calmed down considerably and was very nearly her usual self again. Cimorene gave her a pouchful of dried feverfew before she left and made her recite the words that activated the spell several times, to make sure she had memorized them correctly.

  “Remember, you only have to repeat the first half of the verse to get the spell going, now that it’s been set up,” Cimorene said. “Can you do it?”