Heir Apparent (28 page)

But a moment later, that didn't matter. I had a hot flash that caused a tremor in the leg on which I was balancing all my weight. In another moment that was gone, leaving a warm, tingly glow all over, from toes to fingertips. That, and the foul taste in my mouth.

I reached for a handhold, and pulled myself up as easily as an Olympic gymnast doing a chin-up.

Up and up and up I went, so easily that I asked myself why I hadn't taken the potion earlier.

Then I remembered why, for I'd come to right below the ledge of the opening to the cave where Uldemar's scrying glass showed the dragon lived.

When I was securely positioned, I got out the hat so that I could slap it on my head at a moment's notice. I held it in my teeth, so that it wouldn't accidentally brush off as I swung myself up onto the ledge.

Then I swung myself up onto the ledge.

There, close enough to spit on—if I'd been a barbarian and inclined to spit—was the dragon.

Andreanna and Rawdon had been right: The dragon was enormous. Even though I'd been prepared for its size to stun me, its size still stunned me.

The creature had its head on its paws, and its eyes were closed—which meant that it was either sleeping or trying to lull me into believing that it was sleeping, at which point it would jump on me and either eat me in one quick swallow (I could only hope it would be one) or incinerate me or squeeze the life out of me.

I fought the inclination to seven-league my way straight out of there. I fought the inclination to slap Xenos's magic hat on my head and make time stop moving for the dragon.

I knew both inclinations were stupid. After determining that I
had
to get the crown and struggling my way up that mountainside—what would running accomplish? If I didn't succeed in this, I would stay hooked up to Rasmussem's computer equipment until my brain fried. That made getting fried by a dragon look slightly ... well, not better, just less bad.

And what if I put on the hat while the dragon was asleep? That would waste its power.

Anyway, why would the dragon pretend to be asleep? If it saw me, wouldn't it simply kill me right away?

Except I remembered Uldemar explaining how dragons napped like cats. What if, like cats, they also played with their prey?

But could the dragon have kept a straight face if it saw me, a girl dressed as a page, walking on the tips of my toes, looking as though I was about to eat a ski cap? I wondered if dragons shot flames put of their mouths when they laughed.

The dragon didn't twitch.

Scattered about this area were various bones. There was a gnawed-on ox over to one side, which explained that the awful smell was not entirely dragon bad breath. But not all the bones were animals—some still had scraps of clothing attached. I kept on moving. There was a second, bigger, cave beyond, and I could see the glitter of gold.

Luckily, there was room to circle behind the dragon without having to climb onto it. I nervously kept my attention on the creature's eyelids until I realized I was endangering myself by walking backward. I could easily trip or knock something over, and the noise would surely awaken a catnapper.

I turned my full attention to the piles of treasure.

The piles and piles of treasure.

The piles and piles and piles of treasure.

How could I ever find one crown amid all that glittering hoard?

I started pawing through mounds of gold. There were coins, there was jewelry, there were boxes, baskets, combs, and plaques. There were eating utensils, musical instruments, tools, toys, knickknacks, figurines, and a bigger-than-life statue of a Greek hero. (I could tell he was Greek, because he didn't have any clothes on, the way Greek statues never do.) There were even a pair of robes woven entirely of spun gold.

But was there a barbarian crown? Not that I could see.

I started unloading one of the overflowing treasure chests—there were seven or eight, probably more buried in that one corner where the gold was piled to within inches of the cave's ceiling.

It can't be there,
I tried to convince myself.
THAT pile's been accumulating for generations, and King Cymric gave the dragon the crown only eight years ago.

Unless, of course, the dragon had been moving things around, shifting stuff from one pile to another, handling the gold while gloating over it—and why bother amassing gold if you aren't going to gloat over it? Maybe the crown had been buried.

No,
I told myself. This was a crown that could turn things into gold. Surely that would gain it a special place. Or at least not a place at the bottom of a pile.

I was putting things from the chest onto the floor so that I could get to the bottom, and there, finally, beneath a golden serving tray, was the crown.

Oops, no, wait. Wrong crown.

During our lunch King Grimbold had described his people's crown, and this wasn't it.

Maybe, over the passage of years since his father had lost the thing,
maybe
Grimbold hadn't remembered correctly?

Not likely, I knew.

I set the crown on the head of a waist-high statue of a monkey. If I couldn't find the right crown, maybe Grimbold could be appeased by this one, along with whatever other trinkets I could stuff into my now-empty provision bag. And Andreanna. I very much hoped I could give away Andreanna.

My teeth were sore from holding the hat for so long. I took it out to work my jaw. A watch would have been nice about now, to know how long since I'd taken Orielle's potion. My guess was about a half hour. I wondered if I'd have any warning, any sense of weakening, or if I'd just keel over.

I went to put the hat back in my mouth and somehow brushed against the monkey statue. The thing must have been hollow for it wobbled. I grabbed it just in time to keep it from going over.

But the crown fell off the back of its head.

A golden crown hitting a cave floor doesn't make all that much noise. But enough.

The dragon was awake and on its feet in less time than it took me to glance in its direction.

For the moment, as I crouched beside the chest with the monkey statue between us, the dragon couldn't see me. But I could see it. I could see its nostrils dilate as it sniffed.
Sniff, sniff.
It took a step toward me, its massive belly dragging on the floor.
Sniff, sniff.
For a creature that slept next to an ox carcass that was at least a couple days old, surely it couldn't have a very well developed sense of smell. Another step. And then its huge head swiveled, and it was looking directly at me.

I jammed the hat onto my head, pulling it so low it stretched beyond my earlobes. I felt no change, but the dragon wasn't moving. Was it?

I peeked an eye open.

No, the dragon wasn't moving.

Slowly I got to my feet. I moved cautiously to the left.

Its glittering eyes didn't follow me.

I started breathing again. Then I started counting, "One Rasmussem Enterprises, two Rasmussem Enterprises, three..." I kept on counting as I hurled golden objects out of the chest, no longer needing to be quiet.

At "fifteen Rasmussem Enterprises," I got to the bottom of the chest, and there was no other crown. I moved to another chest. That took me to "sixty Rasmussem Enterprises," with no sign of a crown. Four minutes left—less, because I hadn't started right away.
Three hundred Rasmussem Enterprises
was looming close.

I kicked at a heap of gold sitting on the floor, scattering coins. A crown rolled out. I snatched it up. Then threw it down in frustration. Still not the right one.

The next chest was a big one with clumsily shaped heavy objects I had to lift out one by one, and it took me to "one hundred forty-four Rasmussem Enterprises" to find there was no barbarian crown in there.

There was a chest about the size of a two-drawer filing cabinet on its side. With my added strength coupled with the adrenaline of desperation, I held it upside down, scattering its contents on the floor. I threw the chest behind me and lunged for the crown I glimpsed, but it was the same one that had fallen off the monkey statue before. "One hundred sixty-seven Rasmussem Enterprises," and I was already looking twice in the same place.

Ignoring the other chests, I began pawing through the huge pile, convinced the crown had to be in the single hardest place to get to.

"Two hundred fourteen Rasmussem Enterprises ... two hundred twenty-five Rasmussem Enterprises ... two hundred thirty-seven Rasmussem Enterprises..." I kicked the Greek hero in frustration and glanced back at the dragon.

Not moving yet, but it would be soon. How many "Rasmussem Enterprises" had I lost while shivering under the unseeing gaze of the time-stopped dragon? Five? Six?

And what was the matter with me? I should have known better than to think other numbers while I was trying to count. Had I actually counted to "two hundred forty-five Rasmussem Enterprises," or had I skipped numbers because I'd been thinking the number five? I didn't actually remember saying, "forty-two," "forty-diree," or "forty-four Rasmussem Enterprises," but maybe I had, and meanwhile, trying to figure it out, I'd lost more time.

Where was I?
Never mind. I gave up counting entirely.

Once again I looked at the dragon. I had to get out of there, save myself now, try coming back later, with a better plan.

Yeah, right.
If I was capable of thinking up a better plan, I wouldn't be here now.

That wasn't the same as being willing to let the dragon lunch on me.

I ran past the huge beast, back out onto the ledge, to the very edge overlooking the steep cliff with hand- and toeholds. I was going to have to go racing down there?...with my strength about to give out probably a few minutes after the hat spell gave out?...with a dragon sniffing after me?

The other choice was to hang around and wait for the dragon to gnaw on me like it had been gnawing on that ox.

I saw the gashes on the stone from the dragon's talons. I also saw two globs of gold on the ledge and realized what the dragon had done with its Midas touch—it had tried to turn Old Hag Mountain to gold, but instead had only gotten two golden rocks. No doubt it had been plenty ticked off.

Just like it's going to be now,
I thought, suddenly aware of the breeze in my hair:
Good-bye, hat. Hello, dragon.

I turned back to meet my fete.

The dragon was in the inner cave, feeing the way it had been when, from its perspective, I'd disappeared. But now that I was on the ledge feeing this direction, I saw what I hadn't seen before. The crown. Out here. The dragon had been sleeping with it tucked safely in the crook of its elbow, like a kid with a teddy bear.

I dove for the crown just as the dragon turned. A blast of flame frizzled the air at my back. I grabbed up the crown like an oversized bangle bracelet on my arm and looked over the nearest edge, which wasn't even the way I'd come up. How could I ever make it down onto flat ground with the dragon so close behind? Even now I could hear the grate of its scales as it heaved its massive body back out onto the ledge.

Without even turning back to look, I said, "Seven leagues," and stepped forward, though the ground was a mountain's height below me—hoping the boots worked in thin air.

I found myself on someone's thatched roof. I turned hurriedly, said, "Seven leagues" hurriedly, and stepped hurriedly, because my foot felt about to go through. Now I was in the middle of a field of something-or-other—I didn't take the time to make out what. I turned, said, "Seven leagues," and took another step. Now I was in a wooded area, having just missed a tree, which was good, because I was in no mood to have to climb down.

I'd just completed three sides of a square. One more and I'd be stepping back onto the mountain ledge I'd just stepped off of. Where the dragon might or might not still be sniffing around for the one who'd made off with its favorite crown. And even if the dragon had flown off, I'd have to climb back down. If my strength gave out while I was hanging from that cliff face, that would be the end of me. Instead I tried to estimate how to walk, in regular steps, to a point where after I turned and "seven-leagued," I'd be at the foot of Old Hag Mountain.

But landing on iffy ground was a danger. I'd do best to walk farther than I thought I had to. So I walked and walked and walked. And then all of a sudden I collapsed.

Oh,
I realized,
the potion must have worn off.
I couldn't even move my legs to a more comfortable sprawl. My left arm, the one on which I'd been carrying the crown, was under me, and the tines of the crown were sticking into me, but there was nothing I could do. I did finally summon the energy to close my eyes.

I felt sweat trickle down my sides, I felt bugs crawl on me, I felt that miserable crown sticking into my rib cage.

I ... felt ... two ... hours ... pass ... one ... moment ... at ... a ... time....

And then suddenly my right arm worked. I'd been concentrating on getting my hand to move—it only needed to cover about two inches before it could reach to wipe the sweat from dribbling into my eyes—and suddenly there it was, behaving like a perfectly normal arm with a perfectly normal hand attached to it, a hand whose fingers flicked away a drop of sweat that was about to roll into my eye and make it sting.

I sat up. There was no lingering weakness. I wiped my face with my sleeve and loosened my belt in an attempt to get some airflow under my clothes.

The crown was only slightly out of shape from my lying on top of it. I put it in the empty food bag tied to my belt.

I walked some more, until the sun was close to overhead, maybe eleven or even eleven-thirty where people had normal clocks instead of canonical hours based on monasteries' prayer times. I turned. I took a deep breath, said, "Seven leagues," and stepped.

I was—at least I hoped I was—in the correct vicinity. There were mountains in the distance that I
thought
were the group of which Old Hag was one.