Talking to Dragons ef-4

by Patricia Collins Wrede

  The quozzel wobbled backward, toward the caved-in part of the tunnel.

  I rolled onto one elbow and looked back over my shoulder, trying to see what it was doing.

  A medium-sized rock came crashing down beside me. The quozzel made an angry whistling noise. "H-hold still"

  "So you can drop rocks on me?" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a long pile of something that seemed to end in a tangle of red hair.

  Shiara hadn't been buried under the rocks, then. Unfortunately, she didn't look like she would be able to help me with the quozzel anytime soon, and I still didn't know where Nightwitch or the dragon was. I twisted sideways, moving off the sword as much as I could with my legs pinned, and started working the Sword of the Sleeping King out of its sheath. It's not easy to draw a sword when you're lying on top of it, but I thought I might need it if the quozzel came any closer.

  There was a sizzling noise from somewhere behind me, and a dozen or so rocks of assorted sizes came rolling down on top of me. Some of them hit places that had already been battered by the cave-in, and I yelled.

  The quozzel bubbled happily, and a few more rocks went by on one side.

  I shoved myself up on my hands as far as I could and yanked the sword the rest of the way out of the sheath and out from under me at the same time. I twisted around, just as two more large rocks came rolling down.

  Awkwardly, I swung at the rocks with the flat of the sword, trying to deflect them a little. There was a bright flash as the sword hit them, and the rocks went flying toward the far wall of the tunnel. I heard a low humming sound that changed suddenly into a rumble, and the light in the cave went out. For some reason, I thought of the clearing where I'd said the spell at the Sword of the Sleeping King, when everything had gone dark and the voice had called me the Bearer of the Sword.

  This time I didn't hear any voice, but the rumbling got louder and louder, and suddenly I realized that my legs were free. I curled them up under me, so I wouldn't be trapped again if the quozzel started another cave-in or something. The rumbling began to die down, and I heard faint shouts mixed in with it, and the bubbling noise that the quozzel made, and someone groaning. Then the rumbling stopped, and I could see again.

  Carefully, because my legs felt kind of rubbery, I stood up and looked around. I could still hear the shouting; it sounded faint and far away, and after a moment it faded completely. Shiara was the person who had groaned. As I looked at her, she moved a little, and suddenly I felt a lot better about things generally. Then I heard squishing noises from in back of me, and I whirled.

  Behind me, the tunnel was completely blocked by a sloping pile of rocks and dirt. At the base of the pile, where I had been trapped, was an empty space that looked as if something had sliced cleanly through the rocks and lifted them out of the way. Midway up the slope was the quozzel.

  It was wobbling hastily toward the tunnel floor. I pointed the Sword of the Sleeping King at it, and it stopped abruptly.

  "Just a minute, you!" I said. "You have some questions to answer."

  "I d-d-d-didn't know," said the quozzel. "I still don't. K-k-keep the k-key. Nice to m-m-meet you. Gug-gug-good-bye."

  "Oh, no, you don't." I stepped in front of it, so that if it wobbled forward any more it would get stuck on my sword.

  "I'm gug-gug-gug-going," said the quozzel. It seemed to be stammering a lot more than it had before. I found myself hoping it was even more nervous than it looked.

  "You aren't going anywhere until you explain why you want this key so badly," I said. "And maybe not then. I don't think I ought to leave something as sneaky and treacherous as you running around loose." I tried to sound intimidating, even though I had no idea what I was going to do with the quozzel. I didn't think I could just kill it, and I certainly didn't want to bring it along with me, but I wasn't about to tell the quozzel any of that.

  After what it had tried to do, I thought it deserved to worry a little.

  "Daystar?" Shiara's voice distracted me from the quozzel, which was bubbling and popping worriedly to itself. "Daystar, what happened?"

  "The quozzel made the tunnel cave in," I said. "It was trying to kill me so it could get the key. Are you all right?"

  "Of course I'm-yow!" said Shiara. I looked quickly around and saw her sitting up very carefully. She looked a little pale. "I think I broke my arm," she said.

  "Can I do anything to help?" I asked.

  "You can keep that stupid quozzel away from me!" Shiara said. "I'll be fine as long as I don't move much."

  I didn't believe her, but I couldn't have done much to help anyway. I didn't know anything about setting broken arms, except that you can make things a lot worse if you don't know what you're doing. And if Shiara wanted me to keep watching the quozzel instead of trying to help her, she would probably get mad if I didn't. I doubted that that would be good for her arm, either. Besides, I didn't want the quozzel to get away and try dropping the roof on us again.

  "Where's Nightwitch?" Shiara asked after a while. "And the dragon?"

  "I don't know," I told her. "I haven't seen them since the tunnel fell in."

  "You miserable little blob!"

  I looked around in surprise and was very relieved to see Shiara glaring at the quozzel and not at me.

  "If anything's happened to Nightwitch because of your stupid cave-in, I'll-I'll melt you into a puddle?she went on.

  "You'd better not try," the quozzel said, starting to bounce. "The w-w-wizard will gug-get you if you do!"

  "What wizard?" I said.

  The quozzel bubbled unhappily. "I can't tell you."

  "Oh no?" Shiara said. She stood up slowly and came over beside me, holding her right arm carefully in her left one. "I guess I'd better just melt you, then, and save some time."

  "No-n-no!" said the quozzel. Little ripples ran over it, and it seemed to shrink.

  "Then you'd better tell us what wizard you're talking about," I said.

  "The one who gug-gave me the key," the quozzel said unwillingly. "He told me to take care of it until he came back for it."

  "How long ago was that?" I asked, ignoring Shiara, who was rubbing her bruises and muttering to herself.

  "A long time," the quozzel said. "He never came back, so it's still m-m-my responsib-b-bility."

  "Not if I melt you, it isn't," Shiara said, and the quozzel subsided very suddenly.

  "What is it the key to?" I said. "And why did the wizard leave it here?"

  "D-d-don't know," the quozzel said sullenly. "He said people would come look for it and try to take it. That's why he wanted m-m-me to look after it. You aren't supposed to take it. No one's supposed to take it b-b-but the wizard!"

  "What did this wizard look like?" I asked, although I had an unpleasant feeling that I knew already.

  The quozzel's description sounded a little like Antorell, but he was definitely older and he'd been wearing blue-and-gray robes instead of blue and brown. I was extremely relieved. Shiara didn't recognize the description, either, but she wasn't as relieved as I was.

  "How do we know this stupid thing isn't lying?" she said. "I think we should-what's that?"

  I could hear something far down the tunnel, but it echoed too much for me to be able to tell what it was. It seemed to be getting louder.

  "I think something's coming," I said to Shiara; then, "You stay where you are!" to the quozzel, who had been trying to wobble a little closer to the bottom of the rock pile.

  The quozzel froze again, and Shiara gave me a disgusted look. "I know something's coming, but what is it?"

  I didn't answer. The noise came closer, and I saw a flickering light partway down the tunnel. I shifted position so I could watch the quozzel and still see some of the rest of the tunnel. The light got brighter, and a moment later a bunch of people came through one of the side passages. They were all short and sort of squashed looking, bigger than the elves we'd met, but considerably shorter than a normal person. Most of them were carrying picks or shovels or long, pointed
iron poles, and a couple of them had torches. They seemed to be following something, but they were too far away and the light was too bad for me to be sure.

  "Dwarves!" I said. They must have heard the echo, because two of them looked up and saw us. One of them shouted something, but I couldn't make out the words.

  "Terrific!" Shiara muttered as they started in our direction. "What'd you have to do that for?"

  "They'd have seen us anyway," I said. "I mean, we'd be sort of difficult to miss, with the key lighting up the tunnel like this. And maybe they'll help us. Dwarves do, sometimes; Mother had me study a whole lot of examples two years ago, after the prince came through looking for the glass coffin."

  "I thought princes looked for glass shoes, not coffins," Shiara said.

  She squinted into the dark part of the tunnel between us and the dwarves.

  "They're coming this way. What's that in front of them?"

  I didn't have to answer, because a second later Nightwitch came bounding out of the darkness with her tail held very high. She looked extremely proud of herself. She went straight to Shiara and started rubbing against her legs and purring.

  'm glad to see you, too," Shiara said. She started to bend over and winced. "Sorry, kitten; you'll have to wait to get petted until somebody does something about this stupid arm."

  Nightwitch stopped rubbing and looked up. "Mmrew?"

  "Well, I said I was sorry," Shiara said. "I didn't ask to break it."

  The dwarves had reached the edge of the key's glow, and the whole tunnel was lit up by their torches. It made things a lot more cheerful, as well as letting me get a good look at the dwarves. There were seven of them, five males and two females, all carrying shovels and picks. I could see the dragon in back of the dwarves, looking almost as smug as Nightwitch had.

  "Look!" it said when it got close enough to talk without shouting. "I found a whole lot of dwarves!"

  "I see that," I said. I bowed to the dwarves as well as I could while trying to watch the quozzel at the same time. "My name is Daystar, and that's Shiara. We're very pleased to meet you."

  "They're going to dig through the part of the tunnel that came down," the dragon said.

  "Hold on just a minute? one of the dwarves said. "I didn't say I'd help. Not exactly. I said I'd look at this cave-in of yours."

  "Me too," said another. "Proper mess it looks."

  "Not natural," said a female dwarf. She looked at Shiara and me suspiciously.

  "How do you know?" Shiara said belligerently.

  "We made this tunnel," still another dwarf said. "And dwarf-made tunnels don't just fall in."

  "Not ever," agreed the first one.

  "Of course not," I said. "The quozzel made the tunnel cave in. It was trying to stop us from getting out of the Caves of Chance."

  "The quozzel?" the dragon said, looking interested. "That dessert thing is back again?"

  "You can't eat it until we find out if it knows anything else," I said.

  "Besides, you had plenty of lunch."

  The dragon sighed. "I suppose so. All right, I'll wait."

  I looked at the dwarves. "We'd be very much obliged to you if you would help us get through this, or show us a way around it, or something," I said."

  "Now, why should we do that?" one of them said.

  "I don't see any reason," said another.

  "Lot of work for nothing," added a third.

  "And I don't like dragons!" said a voice from the middle of the group.

  The dragon glared, but it couldn't pick out the dwarf who'd spoken.

  "Could you at least set Shiara's arm?" I asked.

  One of the female dwarves started to reply, but she was cut off by a yell from Shiara. "Daystar! Behind you!"

  I raised the sword and spun around just as the quozzel bunched itself together and jumped at me. It came flying through the air, and I ducked.

  Something dark and purple shot out of it toward me, and I slashed at it with the sword. I got most of the purple stuff and part of the quozzel as well. I heard it shriek, and then it had landed and launched itself again, straight for the wall of the tunnel.

  "I'll kill all of you!" it whistled angrily. "Key stealers! Cannibals! I'll kill you d-d-dead!"

  I lunged for it, but I was too late. The quozzel hit the tunnel wall, and instead of bouncing, it vanished into the rock like water being absorbed by a sponge, only faster. An instant later a shower of rocks fell out of the roof of the tunnel, and I heard the walls creaking ominously.

  "Run!" I yelled. I started to follow my own advice but saw a large rock shifting in the wall of the tunnel just above Shiara's head. I shouted again and swung the sword at it, hoping it would be deflected like the other rocks the quozzel had tried to drop on me.

  The flat of the sword hit the rock, and everything seemed to slow down suddenly. There was a lot of creaking, and the top of the tunnel started to sag, as if it were trying to fall in again but couldn't quite manage it. The sword got very heavy, and then there was an angry-sounding rumble and the whole tunnel shook. The rock that had been heading for Shiara went bouncing off the opposite wall of the tunnel, and all the creaking and rumbling stopped very abruptly.

  I didn't move for several seconds at least. I didn't think the quozzel would give up this easily. Then I saw a thin trickle of dark purple stuff dripping down the wall of the tunnel where the quozzel had disappeared. I watched it for a minute or two and decided that we probably didn't have to worry about the quozzel anymore. I looked at Shiara.

  "Are you all right?"

  "That's a stupid question," Shiara said. "My arm is broken!"

  "I mean, you didn't get any more hurt than you were already, did you?"

  "No," she said. She looked at me. "Thanks."

  I was so surprised that I couldn't think of anything to say for at least a minute.

  "Um, you're welcome," I said finally. I realized suddenly that my sword still had some wet purple stuff on it from hitting the quozzel, and I started digging in my pocket for my handkerchief so I could wipe off the sword.

  I couldn't find it. I sighed. It had probably fallen out of my pocket somewhere on the trip through the caves. I didn't really mind losing it, except that now I didn't have anything to get the purple goo off my sword with. I turned to the dwarves. "Excuse me, but do any of you-" I stopped. The dwarves were standing in a tight group, and all seven of them were staring at the sword.

  "Now, why didn't you think to mention you had that?" one of them said.

  17

  In Which They Get out of the Caves and into Even More Trouble

  Shiara and I looked at the dwarves. "He's been holding it since before you got here!" Shiara said finally. "Why should he have mentioned it?"

  "It would have saved a lot of bother," one of the female dwarves said in an aggrieved tone.

  "Time, too," said another.

  "Inconsiderate, I call it."

  "Well, not inconsiderate, exactly," said one of the male dwarves, eyeing the dragon. "A little thoughtless, maybe."

  "Thoughtless?" The dragon looked puzzled. "Why? What difference does it make if Daystar has a sword?"

  '"A sword is one thing. That sword is something else again."

  "Someone should have told us."

  "Someone should definitely have told us."

  "After all, we aren't elves."

  "Of course you're not elves," the dragon said. "Anyone can see that! What does that have to do with Daystar's sword?"

  "It's not his sword!" one of the dwarves objected. "It's the King's!"

  "And elves can recognize it just by looking at it," a female dwarf said in a resentful tone.

  "So can some other people," said another darkly.

  "But not dwarves."

  "Unless we get a good look at it, of course. Which we couldn't, because of the light, not to mention the fact that you were standing there talking and distracting our attention."

  "Which is why you should have mentioned it," a dwarf in the b
ack finished triumphantly.

  "I didn't mention it because there seem to be a lot of people who want it," I said. "One of them is a wizard."

  About six of the dwarves started talking so fast it was hard to tell whether they were all speaking at the same time or whether they went one after another.

  "Of course there are a lot of people who want it!"

  "Particularly wizards."

  "It's the King's sword, isn't it?"

  "Maybe it isn't; he hasn't said."

  "It has to be the King's sword, silly. There aren't any other swords that the earth obeys."

  "What about Delvan's blade?"

  "That's not a sword, it's an ax."

  "And the earth doesn't obey it, it just shakes a lot."

  "So this has to be the King's sword."

  "Wait a minute!" I said. "What do you know about my sword?"

  "It's the King's sword," one of the dwarves said indignantly. Another dwarf shushed him, and a dwarf near the front of the crowd stepped forward and bowed.

  "We follow the sword," she said, as if it explained everything.

  The other dwarves all smiled and nodded. I sighed and gave up. Either none of them really knew anything else, or they knew and weren't going to tell me, and I didn't think it mattered much which it was. "If you aren't going to tell me about my sword, could one of you do something about Shiara's arm?" I asked. "And after that, we'll be going."

  "Going where?" the dragon said.

  Some of the dwarves jumped. Evidently they'd forgotten the dragon was behind them. I was surprised; if a dragon were standing behind me, I certainly wouldn't forget it was there.

  "We have to find another way out of the Caves of Chance," I told the dragon. "I don't really think we can dig through this one."

  "That will not be necessary," said the dwarf closest to me. "Had we known you were the Bearer of the Sword, we would not have objected to your request."

  "Not at all," said the dwarf next to him. She turned and waved at the others. "Lord Daystar requires this tunnel cleared. Begin"

  I stood and stared while the dwarves all grabbed their picks and shovels and things and started toward the rocks that were blocking the tunnel. In a few minutes they were all digging furiously-except for one, who came over to Shiara and bowed.