'Oh, dear,' said Cimorene.
Kazul smiled again, and her teeth glittered silver in the lamplight.
'He'll look extremely foolish when it becomes obvious that you're still here.
Which is one reason I've asked a few of my friends to dinner tonight.'
'You've what?' Cimorene said. All her worries about Moranz were instantly replaced by worries about fixing dinner on short notice for an unknown number of dragons. 'How many? What time will they be here? Where are we going to put them all?'
'Six. Around eight-thirty. In the banquet cave. And you won't be doing anything but dessert. I've already arranged for the rest of the meal.'
'Arranged? With whom?'
'Ballimore the giantess. She's loaned me the Cauldron of Plenty that she uses when her twelve-headed son-in-law drops in for dinner unannounced.
It'll handle most things, but all it can produce in the way of dessert is burned mint custard and sour- cream-and-onion ice cream.'
'Ugh!' said Cimorene. 'I see your problem.'
'Exactly. Can you manage?'
'Not if you want cherries jubilee,' Cimorene said, frowning. 'I haven't got a pot large enough to make seven dragons' worth of cherries jubilee.
Would chocolate mousse do? I can make two or three batches, and there should be time for all of them to chill if you're not starting until eight 'Chocolate mousse will be fine,' Kazul assured her. 'Come along and I'll show you where to bring it.'
Cimorene picked up a lamp and followed Kazul into the public tunnels that surrounded Kazul's private caves. She was a little surprised, but when she saw the size of the banquet cave, she understood. It was enormous. Fifty or sixty dragons, perhaps even a hundred of them, would fit into it quite comfortably. Obviously it had to be a public room; there simply wasn't enough space under the Mountains of Morning for every dragon to have a cave this size.
Kazul made sure Cimorene could find her way to the banquet cave without help and then left her in the kitchen to melt slabs of chocolate and whip gallons of cream for the mousse. By the time she finished, she was hot and tired, and all she really wanted to do was to take a nap.
But Kazul was expecting her to serve the mousse, and Cimorene wasn't about to appear before all those dragons in her old clothes with sweaty straggles of hair sticking to her neck and a smear of chocolate across her nose, so instead of napping, she pumped a cauldron of water, heated it on the kitchen fire, and took a bath.
Once she was clean she felt much better. She checked to make sure the mousse was setting properly, then went into her own rooms to decide what she should wear. Unfortunately, she was afraid she didn't have much choice. The wardrobe in her bedroom was full of neat, serviceable dresses suitable for cooking in or rummaging through treasure, but the only dressy clothes she had were the ones she had arrived in. She got them out of the back of the wardrobe and found to her dismay that the hem of the gown was badly stained with mud from her long walk. There was no time to clean it; she would have to wear one of the everyday dresses.
With a sigh Cimorene turned back to the wardrobe and opened it once more to look for the nicest of the ordinary clothes. She gasped in surprise.
The hangers were now full of the most beautiful gowns she had ever seen.
Some were silk, and some were velvet; some were heavy brocade, and some were layers of feather-light gauze; some were embroidered with gold or silver, and some were sewn with jewels.
'Well, of course,' Cimorene said aloud after a stunned moment.
'Why would a dragon have an ordinary wardrobe? Of course it's magic.
What's in it depends on what I'm looking for.'
One of the wardrobe doors waggled slightly, and its hinges creaked in smug agreement. Cimorene blinked at it, then shook herself and began looking through the gowns.
She chose one of red velvet, heavily embroidered with gold, and found matching slippers in the bottom of the obliging wardrobe. She let her black hair hang in loose waves nearly to her feet and even dug her crown out of the back of the drawer where she'd stuffed it on her first night. She finished getting ready a few minutes early. Feeling very cheerful, she went to the kitchen to fetch the mousse.
It took Cimorene four trips to get the mousse down to the serving area just off the banquet cave. A dragon-sized serving was a little over a bucketful, and she could barely manage to carry two at a time. When everything was ready, she stood in the serving area and waited nervously for Kazul to ring for dessert. She could hear the muffled booming of the dragons' voices through the heavy oak door, but she could not make out what any of them were saying.
The bell rang at last, summoning Cimorene to serve dessert. She carried the mousse into the banquet cavern, two servings at a time, and set it in front of Kazul and her guests. The dragons were crouched around a shoulder-high slab of white stone. Cimorene had to be very careful about lifting the mousse up onto it. Fortunately, she didn't have to wonder which dragon to serve first. She could tell which dragons were most important from their places at the table, and she made a silent apology to her protocol teacher, who had insisted that she learn about seating arrangements. (Protocol had been one of the princess lessons Cimorene had hated most.) As she set the last serving in front of Kazul, one of the other dragons said in a disgruntled and vaguely familiar voice, 'I see the rumors are wrong again, Kazul. Or did you have to go after her and haul her back the way the rest of us do?'
Cimorene turned angrily, but before she could say anything, a large gray-green dragon on the other side of the stone slab said, 'Nonsense, Woraug! Girl's got more sense than that. You shouldn't listen to gossip.
Next thing you know, you'll be chasing after that imaginary wizard Gaurim's been on about.' Cimorene recognized the speaker at once. He was Roxim, the elderly dragon she had given four of her handkerchiefs to.
'I suppose it was that idiot Moranz again, trying to cause trouble,' a purple-green dragon said with bored distaste. 'Someone should do something about him.'
'Kazul still hasn't answered my question,' Woraug said, and his tail lashed once like the tail of an angry cat. 'And I'd like her to do so if the rest of you will stop sidetracking the conversation.'
'Here, now!' Roxim said indignantly. 'That's a bit strong, Woraug! Too strong, if you ask me.'
'I didn't,' Woraug said. 'I asked Kazul. And I'm still waiting.'
'I'm very pleased with my princess,' Kazul said mildly. 'And no, I didn't have to haul her back, as you would realize if you'd given the matter a little thought. Or does your princess normally leave seven servings of chocolate mousse in the kitchen when she runs away?'
'Hear, hear!' Roxim said.
Cimorene noted with interest that Woraug's scales had turned an even brighter shade of green than normal and that he was starting to smell faintly of brimstone.
'One of these days you'll go too far, Kazul,' he said.
'You started it,' Kazul pointed out. She turned to the gray dragon.
'What's this about Gaurim and a wizard, Roxim?'
'You haven't heard?' Roxim said, sounding surprised. 'Gaurim's been raving about it for weeks. Somebody snuck into her cave and stole a book from her library. No traces, but for some reason she's positive it was a wizard. Achoo!' Roxim sneezed, emitting a ball of flame that just missed hitting his bowl of mousse. 'Gives me an allergy attack just thinking about it.'
'If it wasn't a wizard, who was it?' the dragon at the far end of the table asked.
'Could have been anybody-an elf, a dwarf, even a human,' Roxim responded. 'No reason to think it was a wizard just because Gaurim didn't catch him in the act. Not with the amount of time she spends away from home.'
'Which book did she lose?' said the thin, brownish-green dragon next to Kazul.
'What does it matter?' the purple-green dragon muttered.
'Some history or other. And that's another thing-what would a wizard want with a history book? No, no, Gaurim's making a lot of fuss over a common thief. That's what I say.'
'It could have been a wizard,' said the dragon at the far end. 'Who knows why they want the things they want?'
'Ridiculous!' Roxim replied with vigor. 'A wizard wouldn't dare come through this part of the mountains.
