EPILOGUE
Which Hints at Things to Come
Motherhood suits Cimorene, Morwen thought as she watched the Queen of the Enchanted Forest and the King of the Dragons making peculiar noises over the infant Prince Daystar, aged two months, six days, and some- odd hours. On the moss beside them, at the foot of an ancient and enormous willow, lay Mendanbar's unsheathed sword.
'Telemain says he melted another wizard in the eastern part of the forest yesterday,' Morwen said aloud. 'They're getting bolder.'
Cimorene looked up, her face clouded. 'I know. Antorell found me this morning. It's all right. I melted him,' she added quickly. 'But he was very angry. I think he blames me because Kazul ate his father.'
'Antorell never was very strong on logic,' Kazul said. 'Ooochy-ooo.
What a fine big boy you are?'
Since this last was directed at the baby Prince, Morwen only smiled.
'It's a good thing none of my cats are here, or you'd have to make an equal fuss the next time one of them has kittens.'
'As long as I don't have to be their godmother, I'll be happy to fuss,' Kazul said.
'I didn't know your cats were expecting kittens,' Cimorene said.
'None of them is, yet.' Morwen smiled again. 'Though the way Scorn and Horatio are behaving, it's only a matter of time. You should hear some of the things Trouble says about them-'mushy' is probably the kindest.'
'It's a good thing you like cats,' Cimorene said.
'Yes, it is.' Morwen looked at Cimorene, and her smile faded.
'You're avoiding the real subject, which is, What are you going to do now? It will be a long time before Daystar is old enough to use Mendanbar's sword, and if the Society of Wizards is looking for him-' 'I don't think they are,' Cimorene said. 'I don't think they even know Daystar exists. Mendanbar and I hadn't officially announced it before they attacked, and afterward it seemed like a good idea to keep quiet about it. So they haven't heard, and they're not looking for Daystar.
They're looking for the sword, and they're looking for me.'
'It amounts to the same thing,' Morwen said. 'And doesn't Antorell know about Daystar, if he found you this morning?'
Cimorene snorted. 'Antorell was so mad at me that he didn't notice anything else. He walked right by the sword and tripped over Kazul's tail before I melted him.'
'Still, if he found you, it's only a matter of time before the rest of the Society does, too. Isn't it?'
'Not quite.' Cimorene glanced sideways at Kazul and took a deep breath. 'I've thought about this a lot, and I have an idea how to outsmart them. I want to know what you think of it.'
'You know what I think of it,' Kazul rumbled. 'I don't like it one bit.
The idea of-' 'Hush, Kazul, you'll upset Daystar. It's like this, Morwen: The Society of Wizards knows I've brought Mendanbar's sword back to the Enchanted Forest, because they can't swallow big chunks of the forest's magic anymore and they know that the sword is what keeps them from doing that. So they're poking around here, looking for me and the sword. If I leave the forest-' 'But you can't take the sword out of the Enchanted Forest or the Society of Wizards will start destroying it again,' Morwen said. 'Or else the sword will leak all the magic out of the forest, which amounts to the same thing.'
'I'm not going to take the sword out of the Enchanted Forest,' Cimorene said. 'I'm going to hide it in here, and then I'm going to take Daystar and settle down outside the forest somewhere. Not with the dragons; the wizards will expect that.'
Morwen frowned, forcing herself to consider the proposal carefully.
'So the Society of Wizards will look for you inside the Enchanted Forest, because they'll expect you to be with the sword and they'll know that the sword is still inside the forest. And since you'll be outs' the forest, you and Daystar will be relatively safe. And things won't get any worse inside the forest, because the sword will keep the wizards from destroying new bits.
Very neat. But what if they find the sword?'
Experiment with a wizard's staff, and he says that as long as the sword is inside the Enchanted Forest, it's invisible to wizards' magic. If I hide it well, they'll have to search the whole forest, inch by inch, on foot, in order to find it.'
'And I doubt any of them have the patience for that. But are you sure that the wizards won't think up a way to get around it?'
'Telemain says that the only way a wizard could use magic to find the sword would be to use a spell that finds the person who's carrying it.
And for that to work, the person carrying it has to know that what he's got is Mendanbar's sword. That's why I can't give it to you or Telemain.'
'I see. So by the time the wizards think of casting that type of spell, if they ever do, the sword will be hidden and you'll be outside the forest.'
Cimorene nodded. 'I'd like to have you or Telemain check on the sword once in a while to make sure it's all right, but if the wizards start looking for someone who knows what it is-' 'That shouldn't be a problem as long as we don't try to carry it.'
Morwen's right hand tingled, remembering the way it had burned when she held it. 'And I certainly don't intend to try!'
'Oh, that only happens outside the Enchanted Forest,' Cimorene said, then frowned. 'At least, I'm fairly sure that's what Telemain meant when he explained. Inside the Enchanted Forest, the sword does different things.'
'Well, I'm not giving it the chance to do them to me,' Morwen said.
'If you want to be certain the wizards won't catch us checking, I'll send one of the cats.'
'That should work. Not too often.'
'No, we wouldn't want to lead the Society of Wizards right to it.'
Morwen shook her head. 'I don't like it any more than Kazul does, but it sounds as if it will work. As far as it goes.'
'As far as it goes? What do you think I've forgotten?'
'The Society of Wizards put up that shield spell. What if they decide to pull it down in a year or two and take over the castle? We can't keep a guard on it for the next sixteen or twenty years. Not an effective one, anyway.'
'Speak for yourself,' Kazul said. 'Sixteen or twenty years of guarding a castle is nothing to a dragon.'
'And Kazul and Telemain have already solved that problem anyway,' Cimorene said. 'You must not have come by the castle, or you'd have seen it.'
'Seen what?' said Morwen.
'The second shield spell, the one the dragons put up.' Cimorene's eyes sparked. 'Telemain analyzed the wizards' shield spell, and then Kazul got all the dragons to duplicate it. It works the same way the Society's spell does: only the people who put it up can take it down.'
Morwen pursed her lips. 'So we can't get at the castle because of the wizards' spell, and the wizards can't get at their spell because of the dragons' spell. You do seem to have thought of everything.'
''Thank you,' said Kazul. 'Now convince Cimorene that she'll be safe in the Mountains of Morning with the rest of us, and we'll be all set.'
'I don't think I can do that,' Morwen said. 'In the first place, Cimorene is stubborn as a pig when she wants to be, and in the second place, she's right. As soon as the Society of Wizards figures out she's not in the Enchanted Forest, they'll look for her with dragons.
And they're sneaky enough to find her, and that would ruin everything.'
