The Lazy Dragon and Bumblespells Wizard (7 page)

Moire Ain painted, stretching the contents of the little pot of paint as best she could, but as she finished
for Hire,
she realized she still wouldn't have room for all the words. She decided to leave out the word
Wanted
to make the paint last. The pot was dry when she finished
Rates
. With the sun hovering, the banner would dry quickly.

She needed a short nap too. Tucking herself under a bush, she was soon dreaming of learning from her book, of doing great magick, and of never being hungry or afraid again. When she woke, Raspberries was stabbing his beak through one of the corners of the banner.

“Are you sure you're not an enchanted prince? Or artist?” She slid a look out of the corner of her eye, but Raspberries ignored her, now preening the length of one wing feather. “Raspberries. You're such a clever … bird.”

Once the banner was threaded with the rest of the vines and ready to hang, Moire Ain folded it, tucking it under her arm. There was enough day left, so she and Raspberries took off hunting for the right tree on which to hang this important poster.

For the banner to be seen by lots of folks, they had to hang it on a tree along the roadway. Which was risky, and meant they had to keep watch to avoid Hedge-Witch. Moire Ain shushed Raspberries often to make sure they did not attract attention. She hoped Hedge-Witch had not changed her habit of skulking through the woods rather than using a main road. As long as they were out where travelers could see them, Moire Ain hoped they'd be safe from the old crone.

But still she worried about their voices carrying into the forest, along a creek, or in a hollow. If the old crone found them, she'd force Moire Ain to return to the village. At the very least, Hedge-Witch would punish Moire Ain horribly for her disobedience, but worse, Hedge-Witch would carry out her plan to use Moire Ain for the murder.

It only took minutes to get to a place along the road that Moire Ain was sure would be perfect for travelers to see her poster. Raspberries snagged the top of the banner and flew up into the tallest tree. He wound the vines from the top corners of the banner into high branches. Moire Ain tied the bottom tethers down to the base of the tree. Since the banner was tall instead of wide, Moire Ain's part was simple. She would have had to stretch the banners between trees and climb a lot if she'd gone with a wide banner. She felt pretty smart about her idea.

But it took almost an hour before Moire Ain was satisfied with how the banner hung. Raspberries grumbled as Moire Ain made him change branches so the top edges were even, but he kept at it until she smiled at him. Moire Ain and Raspberries turned and headed back toward the cave to rest again.

Things had gone so well, she started worrying. Her luck couldn't hold; it never had before. Still afraid they might run into Hedge-Witch, Moire Ain crept quietly through the woods' shadows, listening hard for the witch. Twice they detoured off to drink from a spring. After the second drink, Moire Ain recognized the rusty knight's screams. He was yelling at someone. This time his venom was not directed at his horse.

“Get your slimy scaly cowardly green tail out of that tree, dr'gon!”

Cl'rnce's eyes snapped open; the scratchy bellow below him gobbled up his dreams of home and peanut-butter-topped-with-honey sandwiches. Faster than he could blink, the stench hit him, choking Cl'rnce on a gagging breath filled with the sour-soil reek of rotted rutabagas. He didn't have to look down through his nap-tree's branches. Nasty Sir George had found him again. That was twice since this Journey began.

Pacing under the tree, Nasty Sir George rattled and screeched in his rickety, hole-ridden, and mismatched armor. Cl'rnce was pretty sure Nasty Sir George's helmet was once a war horse's head armor. No matter how clownish Nasty Sir George might look, it was a mistake to think the knight wasn't dangerous.

This was the second nap Cl'rnce had missed in two days. The first time his exasperating twin sister had found him and awakened him to rail about the Journey
and the duty he had to fulfill. She was impossible, mean, and rude. But unfortunately she had been right about how dangerous the Journey was turning out to be without a Wizard Partner.

Her nagging words still rang in Cl'rnce's head. It irritated him that she pretended to worry about him but had no problem kicking her twin into this situation without a Wizard Partner. Sisters!

She'd caught him as he left and hissed out one little tiny warning, her irritation-hot dr'gon breath nearly knocking him over.

“Word's out. Sir George is after you, and he's crazy. Mind you, he's not crazy funny like you try to be, Cl'rnce.” Hazel'd smacked Cl'rnce behind the front horn to make him stop screwing his face up and giving her his famous crossed-eyes look. “Listen up; you get the Whisper Stone to the Council in the next five days. Are you paying attention?”

She'd paused and let a particularly long flame slide out of her left nostril. Cl'rnce stopped mimicking her and nodded. If she added flame from the right nostril, she'd fire it at Cl'rnce and fry him again. His sister had no sense of humor, not even a tiny bit.

“You'd better be listening, and you'd better get going,” she'd continued. “Gaelyn scried the crystal waters. Even if he's not one of the expected obstacles for the Journey, Sir George is in the vicinity. He's killed dr'gons
from seventeen of the eighteen dr'gon tribes. He's bragged he'll add a River Dr'gon.” She'd paused, made her prissy, tight-lipped face, and stared at him.

Like always, Cl'rnce filed his sister's fears away under
Crazy and Doesn't Have Enough to Do So She Makes My Life Miserable.
But to get rid of her without being assaulted again, he'd nodded enthusiastically. She finally let him go.

Unfortunately, Hazel had been right.

“Time's up, dr'gon. Come down, or I'll burn the whole forest.” Nasty Sir George crouched at the base of Cl'rnce's tree. The knight began beating a small rock against another larger one. When he got a spark, he laughed. He stood and pulled up a handful of dried weeds, tossing them down on the big stone. “I'll have some roasted dr'gon if you don't climb down.” He snickered, then smashed the rocks together harder. He blew at the sparks, sending them dancing over the dried leaves.

“Why?” Cl'rnce said. It was a good question, not just for Nasty Sir George but for Cl'rnce too. Why was he being diverted and irritated by this lunatic? He had only three more days to get the Whisper Stone to Ghost Mountain. If Hazel hadn't been scarier than this knight, Cl'rnce would have chucked his inheritance, run home to Dr'gon and Wizard Technological School and Knights Academy, and hidden in one of his nap places. At least until he could come up with an easy way to do
the Journey or foist it off on Hazel.

His sister was plenty bossy enough to be the Primus; she could handle the Council. If life was fair, Hazel would be the one delivering the Whisper Stone. All-day napper was the kind of River Dr'gon Cl'rnce wanted to be. He shouldn't be running and hiding from a crazy killer knight or taking responsibility for the Whisper Stone.

Nasty Sir George ignored Cl'rnce. He pounded the rocks together in a rhythm and sang,

“
Sir George will kill them all.

Every dr'gon dies.

Sir George will kill them all.

Each nest of dr'gonelles will roast.

Primacy will go.

Every tribe will die.

Dr'gon Slayer and I!”

As he came to the last word, he dropped the rocks and drew out his overlong and rusty sword. Cl'rnce heard the knight murmur, “Dr'gon Slayer.”

For a moment, Nasty Sir George stared down the length of his sword, smiling from his mostly-holes helmet with the long face plate that he wore backward. After a full minute, he blinked and looked around. “What was I doing?”

Cl'rnce clamped his lips together and hoped. Maybe the crazy knight had forgotten Cl'rnce and would wander off. But Nasty Sir George slowly looked up and grinned. “Kill the dr'gon!” he shouted, and swung to hurl his sword up at Cl'rnce.

But as his arm arced backward, a hand grabbed an edge of the knight's arm armor and jerked him down to the ground.

“No one dies today!” a small girl yelled. “No killers!” She kicked Nasty Sir George in the helmet, making his head rattle from side to side in the metal. Then she jumped back with one hand over her mouth like she was shocked at what she'd just done.

Nasty Sir George made growling noises, but like a turtle on his back, he couldn't quite swing himself upright. “I'll kill you next,” he screamed, thrashing but not getting back up on his feet.

“You won't,” the girl said calmly, and took a breath. She breathed again and muttered, “This time I have to make it work.” She drew a short rowan tree branch out of her ragged sleeve and pointed it at the knight. “Stay until released!” she said slowly. She repeated it three times, until the twig cracked and fell out of her hand. She looked up at Cl'rnce. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” He dropped off his branch, unfurling his wings just enough to glide. Shifting his weight to the right, he managed to land on top of Nasty Sir George.
Cl'rnce settled on the squirming knight's face. “I think we'd better get out of here.” He shifted his eyes to the trail to their right that he was pretty sure led in the direction of Ghost Mountain and the Dr'gon Council Chamber, the Uamha.

Staring at the knight beneath Cl'rnce, the girl smiled. “No hurry.” The girl swept auburn curls behind her ears and smiled. “I enchanted that mean knight. He's not going anywhere. He can't move.”

Underneath Cl'rnce, Nasty Sir George was anything but still. He rocked and squirmed, shoving at Cl'rnce's posterior and definitely saying things that he should have his mouth washed out for. Clearly the girl had
not
be-spelled the killer knight.

“Good job,” Cl'rnce said, not in a hurry to insult someone who had possibly just saved his life. “But this knight is a tricky sort. I think we'd better get out of here before … uh … before your spell expires.”

“Spells do that?” The girl reached into a worn leather pouch on her rope belt and pulled out a small book. “Spells expire. I didn't see that part.” She thumbed through the book, then stopped. “I can't exactly read all the lessons, only some of it.”

Cl'rnce leaned over to see the title of the book.
Magicks Mysteries
.

With the pressure off his face, Nasty Sir George screamed, “I'll kill you both.”

“Ah,” the girl said, “he seems not to be be-spelled any longer. Maybe we should go.”

“Good thinking.” Cl'rnce stood up, kicking Nasty Sir George in the helmet for good measure. The knight stopped screaming, and if Cl'rnce heard right, started snoring. “Shall we go, uh … I didn't catch your name.”

The little girl tucked the book back in her pouch and wiggled one half of the broken twig up her robe's frayed sleeve. She held out her hand. “I'm Great and Mighty Wizard.”

“Really?” Cl'rnce managed not to let his mouth drop open in what his sister would have called
Rude Surprise.

“Actually, my name is Moire Ain, but I'm learning to be the world's greatest wizard. I've decided believing that I will succeed is important, right? So I've changed my name to Great and Mighty Wizard.”

“Glad to meet you.” Cl'rnce tapped her tiny hand with two of his long golden claws. “I'm Cl'rnce of the Merlin tribe of the River Dr'gons.”

“That's a mouthful of a name,” Great and Mighty Wizard/Moire Ain said.

“Well, actually it's Cl'rnce Merlin Clan Principus River Dr'gons. But you can call me Cl'rnce.” He liked this perky little girl. She looked to be no more than maybe twelve or less in human years. Kind of skinny, but judging by her ragged clothes, she was thin because she came from a pretty poor family. Which unfortunately
meant that among the things she would not have in her pouch was food, like peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Cl'rnce's stomach growled.

“You can call me Great and Mighty. Okay?” The little want-to-be-wizard looked like saying yes to this was about the most important thing Cl'rnce could do.

“Great and Mighty it is. And thank you for saving me from Sir Nasty. Shall we?” He pointed down the dirt road and started walking. Cl'rnce was certain it would be a really good thing to get away fast, before Nasty Sir George woke up and rocked and rolled himself over onto his knees and came after them. No matter what this girl believed, she was not a for-real wizard. They had to run for it.

But no sooner did Cl'rnce urge her to leave than an overly large raven plummeted out of the sky and squeezed off a large dropping, which plopped smack on Cl'rnce's head just behind his left horn. With a satisfied squawk, the ebony bird landed on Great and Mighty's shoulder.

“Raspberries!” Great and Mighty said, scratching the mangy bird between the eyes. The little want-to-be wizard's mouth twitched at the corners like she fought to keep from smiling. “That wasn't a nice thing to do to Cl'rnce. He's our new friend. He's going to help me become a proper wizard. And I'm going to help him fly.” She bent closer to the bird, whispering like Cl'rnce
wouldn't hear. “In my book, proper dr'gons don't walk or glide. They fly. He needs our help. Don't you think?”

The raven grumbled but didn't move.

Cl'rnce wasn't overly pleased that the want-to-be wizard was excited about butting in and teaching him to fly, but he decided for now not to point out that she had not been invited to interfere. “Is that your rude bird?” Cl'rnce looked around for something to wipe his head with. He'd have demanded that the little wizard want-to-be give up her robe, but it was so worn he was afraid it would fall to pieces before he could rub the raven poop out from between his scales.