Her Majesty's Wizard #1 (46 page)

   "Well, then, if it must be, it must!" The dragon sighed. "Only be quick about it, Wizard-and render vanished a part of my body!"

   "Oh, don't worry, you won't feel a thing-while I'm doing it." Matt pulled up some grass and went over to the dragon. "Lie down and open your mouth."

   Stegoman grunted, folding his legs, and laid his head on the ground, opening his great mouth. Matt eyed the huge fangs suspended over his hands and decided that anesthetics were a great idea.

   It was easy to tell the bad tooth; it was much darker than the rest. Matt squeezed the grass over it, watching drops of juice strike the bad tooth as he chanted:

   "Like an ache by sleep o'ercome, Let this dragon's jaw grow numb. That there be no slightest pain; Let this juice be Novocaine!"

   The last drop splattered onto the tooth. Matt drew his hand back. "Okay, close your mouth."

   Stegoman let his upper jaw close and frowned, lips working. "Wha've 'oo duh? I ca' fee' my hung."

   "Hung? Oh, tongue. It worked faster than I thought. Well, let it sit a bit longer." He got up and sent to Sir Guy. "Do you carry a kit for fixing flats-uh, for changing horseshoes?"

   The Black Knight nodded. "Certes. What knight would not?"

   "Got a pair of tongs for drawing nails?"

   Sir Guy nodded again and went to rummage in his saddlebags. He came back with a huge pair of pincers.

   Matt took them and returned to Stegoman. He found the Operation had drawn everyone but Alisande to watch. She would probably come, too, when she was done shooting dinner.

   Matt knelt, grumbling. "Now I know why they call it an operating theater... Open wide, Stegoman."

   The dragon opened his mouth but kept his eyes closed. Matt tapped the tooth with his finger. "Feel anything?"

   "Ngo."

   Matt put on a little pressure. "Now? ... Now? ... Okay, brace yourself." He took a deep breath, jammed the pincers tight as he shoved with his foot, and threw all his weight against the handles.

   He stumbled backward, holding a huge, dripping tooth silhouetted against the evening sky.

   "Ow," Stegoman said, but not loudly.

   "The tooth-hole bleeds," Sayeesa observed. "Should it not be bound?"

   "Bound? Oh, packed. Yes, but..."

   "Here." She thrust a wad of lint into his hand. "Torn from my petticoat. I had thought you might forget."

   Matt packed the lint into the bleeding socket. "Okay, Stegoman, you can close your jaw now."

   The dragon lowered his upper jaw gingerly, letting the full weight onto his lower jaw gradually. Then he opened his eyes. "I feel no pain now." He seemed to have recovered control of his tongue.

   "Well, some of the drug's still in you. When it wears off, there'll be some pain. But it will pass-and stay gone!"

   "My thanks, Wizard. And fear not-if there's pain, I'll bear it. Guard my tooth."

   "Like a diamond." Matt turned to Sir Guy. "You wouldn't have a scrap of leather, would you?"

   "Such as would serve for mending a bridle? Aye."

   The knight brought it from his saddlebag. He must have belonged to the Coast Guard; he was always prepared.

   With a circle of the leather and a thong, Matt fashioned a bag just large enough to hold the tooth. He held it out to Stegoman. "I could tie it around your neck."

   "Aye, do so. Then he who would pluck it from me must slay me to get it!"

   Half an flour later, Matt finally decided to draw the packing out, muttering:

   "Now let all go as I have plotted; Let this blood be fully clotted."

   The wound looked clean. Matt watched it for a time to be sure there was no seepage. He started to throw the lint onto the fire, then stopped, remembering his sympathetic magic and what burning the blood might do to Stegoman.

   "I'll wash it carefully," Sayeesa said, appearing at his side. She took the wad and slipped away.

   A moment later, Stegoman sighed softly. "Ah, that feels cool and soothing."

   Matt turned away, his doubts about sympathetic magic answered. He was feeling exhausted and let down. Playing dentist to a dragon was hardly his idea of fun. Then the appearance of the valley caught his attention, now that he was not concentrating on the tooth. He looked up at the sky, still red and gold in the west. The single eastern peak glowed against gathering gloom. "Hey, this place is beautiful, isn't it?"

   "It is," Stegoman rumbled. "'Tis much like my homeland, Wizard, which is not far distant-only a few leagues to westward. Welcome to my country. Welcome indeed, for thou hast given me the chance to come home to it. Now dost comprehend the depth of my thanks?"

   "Yeah,- I think I begin to." Matt suddenly stiffened. "Hey! What's a jet doing here?"

   A spot of bright fire moved across the sky, golden against azure.

   "I know not of a `jet,' but I know well that sight!" Excitement quickened Stegoman's voice as he rose. "'Tis a dragon, a high riding sentry, gilded by the last ray of sunset!" He set himself and thundered, "Glogorogh!"

   The point of light swerved sharply, then swung around in a circle, dimming as it swelled, spiraling down, till Matt could make out the sinuous, bat-winged form. Its voice echoed down, tinny with distance; "Who summons Glogorogh?"

   "'Tis I, 'tis Stegoman!" The dragon's wings exploded as he leaped into the sky, flapping heavily till he caught a thermal, then gliding upward. Glogorogh sank lower, crying, "Thou dost lie, for Stegoman is slitwinged and exiled!"

   "Nay, I speak truth! For my wings are mended, and I ride the high air again!"

   Glogorogh pulled up ten feet above Stegoman, his wings cupping air with a boom that shook the valley. "It cannot be! ... But thou hast his semblance!" And the dragon sentry flapped aside, veering away from Stegoman.

   "More than his semblance-himself! Why dost thou flee? Dost not know me?"

   "Aye, I know thee! I do nor hold thee ill, Stegoman-but hover far from me! I have no wish to risk thine antics!"

   Stegoman banked to a halt, sitting on an updraft, hurt and baffled. "Thou dost shy from me as though I were some unnatural thing!"

   "And art thou not?" Glogorogh countered. "How is it thy wings are mended? What foul sorcery is this?"

   "Not sorcery, but wizardry! A wizard from another world hath healed me, Glogorogh! And nay, not my wings alone, but all of me-my heady blood and flights of fancy! I could burn a forest now and still be clear of head as any of the elders!"

   "If that is so, then I rejoice to hear it." Glogorogh still sounded skeptical. "Yet pardon me, that I do doubt. Thou must needs understand, thou wert a thing of peril!"

   "Aye, I know it well," Stegoman rumbled. "Yet if thou dost doubt, then see!"

   He whirled away upward, blasting, tracing a great half circle of fire across the sky, then spiraled higher and higher, trailing a fiery gyre.

   Matt took a deep breath and crossed his fingers. Showing off had away of canceling out virtues.

   But this was evidence, not bragging. Stegoman's torch cut off, and he dropped like a stone .through the fading fiery spiral, then slapped his wings open with a thunderclap as he bellowed out, "Now see me! I am clear as any dragon could be!" And he wheeled away in a graceful series of curves. Matt stared, transfixed by the beauty of the flight.

   Glogorogh's breath rasped in. "Nay, 'tis the dance of victory! And sure, 'tis warranted-for thou dost fly it without the slightest fault of line or place!"

   Stegoman streaked back, hovering near. "Dost still doubt?"

   "I cannot; I can but ride amazed! How comes this, Stegoman? A lifelong failing, of more than a century's duration, cured in mere years!"

   Stegoman's mouth lolled wide in a grin. "'Tis no work of mine, as I have told thee, but all the gracious doing of this wizard that I spoke of. He came upon me and never once did he spy pity; nay, he's far too chivalrous for that! A lord he is, in bearing and in title, and a maze of scholarship bewildering, a very font of wisdom! He but chanted one brief verse, and my wings boomed wide about me! Then together we did face monster after monster, and, oh, Glogorogh! My spirit quailed within me! For at the last, there came a salamander-"

   "A salamander!" Glogorogh shied back twenty feet. "Nay, Stegoman, thou dost jest! How could a dragon meet the very father of our blood and live to speak of it?"

   "By wizard's power," Stegoman caroled, "by the aid of a familiar that he lent me! I drove it down with tooth and claw; too late, it saw the waters there below and struck into their bosom with a booming hiss that filled the world! The flowing element overbore the fiery; it lay chilled, damped out, extinguished! And all through the wizard's power!"

   "Indeed, he must be wondrous, if his strength through thee could best a salamander!" Glogorogh definitely sounded shaky. "Where does he lair?"

   "He has no home now," Stegoman rumbled, "for he fights for the Princess Alisande, to free the land from vile Malingo and Astaulf! He stands below, silver in the gleaming, knight, lord, and wizard!"

   Glogorogh looked down, startled, saw Matt, and quickly averted his eyes. "He doth appear- so slight-no greater than any other of the Handed Folk. Yet I cannot doubt your words." Reluctantly, he lowered his eyes to Matt again, dropping down to hover, wings rolling like great drums, just twenty feet above. "Great Wizard, thanks, from all the deepest wells of dragons' hearts! If we may ever aid thee, be sure we shall; all Dragondom doth stand within thy debt, for thou hast returned one lost to us!"

   "Uh ..." Matt swallowed. "I was just helping out a friend."

   "Nay, I'll speak then for him," Stegoman bellowed. "We ride against the sorcerer and his pawn, good Glogorogh-and we ride without an army! Any aid that we may have, we'll need-and do not hover overlong in waiting. Go to the elders and the Council. Ask that I be restored to fellowship and tell them of his deeds! Then if they acknowledge tribal debt, ask that they aid us now, myself and this great man to whom I have sworn fealty!"

   "Indeed I shall!" Glogorogh sheered off, winging upward in a high, wide spiral. "I shall lay the matter before them ere tile midnight and demand their aid! I mind some few who owe me debts of battle, and more who stand in blood debt to yourself!"

   "Conjure them by debts," Stegoman agreed, wheeling up with him. "Conjure them by honor! Conjure them by every means and bring them to us on the morrow, if thou canst! The storm gathers, and any hour may bring the deluge!"

   Glogorogh turned and hovered. "Aye, we have felt great forces about to brew and boil around us. Yet we are loathe to act, seeing no part within this quarrel, and fearing that one act may start that which will force us again to fight for every inch of our high mountains!"

   "Fight now, while you've got a few allies," Matt shouted up at him.

   Glogorogh looked down, startled, then nodded. "I'll trumpet loud the cry. If the elders will not send a force, I, at least, shall come to aid you, and, I doubt not, several score of good young dragons!"

   "My thanks and blessing on you!" Stegoman trumpeted.

   "And mine!" Matt shouted, waving.

   Glogorogh wheeled away over the mountain and was gone.

   Stegoman spiraled down, swung over the valley in a long, great arc, and landed in the meadow before Matt, his wings booming shut. "'Tis done; and my heart sings high within me! Aye, I'll fly in my home mountains once again!"

   "He certainly didn't seem to have too many reservations about accepting you." Matt lifted his visor, yanked off a gauntlet, and wiped his brow. "Whew! Your folks don't stop to mull things over much, do they?"

   "What need?" Stegoman demanded. "Act, and if thou dost later find thyself deceived, act again to counter it."

   "Leave the worrying to the High Command, huh?" Matt nodded judiciously. "But you might have been a little deceptive yourself, the way you sang my praises."

   The dragon fixed him with burning eyes. "I was not," he said. "When wilt thou learn?"

   It might have been Matt's imagination, but he could have sworn that Alisande had been trying to avoid him all day. To test the theory, he sat down next to her at dinner time.

   Her back stiffened. She seemed to pull in on herself and inch just the slightest bit away from him. "Good even, Lord Wizard."

   Good even? They'd been riding in the same company all day! Matt clamped his jaws on a tough strand of partridge. "Good evening, your Highness."

   Off to a great start, wasn't it? Where did he go from there? "Pardon my ignorance, but-is this the Plain of Grellig?"

   She seemed to think it over before she answered. Then, unwillingly, she nodded her head toward the two peaks to the west. "Nay, 'tis beyond-a high plateau."

   "Just over there, huh?" Matt raised his eyebrows, looking across her. Sure enough, what he'd thought was a long saddle between the peaks was actually a bit beyond them, and was the lip of a high tableland. "Why did you make that the rendezvous point?"

   "'Twill likely be the scene of our final battle," Alisande said offhandedly. "Malingo must know why we are here and also that, once we wake Colmain, he must crush us ere we can begin to march back towards Bordestang; for then, with every mile we march, we'll gain a hundred men."