The Lazy Dragon and Bumblespells Wizard (6 page)

Moire Ain let her eyes droop closed. When she jerked awake, everything was dead silent. Too quiet. She sat up, holding her breath and scanning below her for the old witch.

At first Moire Ain saw nothing. Then loud clanking and cursing burst through the woods. Into the clearing below her stomped a knight in rusted armor. He led a horse that snapped at the knight's rear every three steps. The knight was so busy smacking the horse's head away and studying the ground that he didn't notice behind them the length of fabric unraveling from under the horse's saddle.

Finally the knight stopped and bent over something on the ground. He straightened up and said, “That's his print. The dr'gon went that way!” He pointed straight at the cliff.

“Dr'gons,” Moire Ain whispered. She'd never seen one, but she'd studied the pictures in her book. Even if she couldn't read all the words, she'd found a few bits
and pieces in her language that said dr'gons and wizards stood together as partners. If dr'gons and wizards worked together, and she meant to be a wizard, then dr'gons were good. At least dr'gons were one thing she didn't need to fear. Hedge-Witch was enough.

Moire Ain wondered if that was why this knight was hunting for a dr'gon. She'd never seen a wizard. What if this knight was a wizard looking for a dr'gon? Maybe she should follow him and find her own dr'gon.

The knight spun on a rusty heel and pointed away from Moire Ain's cliff, deeper into the woods. When he held his hand out, his arm's armor fell off. When he bent to grab it, the horse took its opportunity and bit him in the rear.

The knight jumped and yelled at the horse, “If I didn't need you, you miserable excuse for a knight's warhorse, I'd strike you down.” Holding his loose armor over his butt with one hand, the knight reached for the sword stuck through his rusty metal belt.

The horse snorted. His eyes glared a hot-coal red.

Moire Ain scooted back into the cave and behind the branches covering the opening, then peeked out. The horse's eyes still flamed, but the knight showed no fear. He swatted the horse on the side and lifted a leg to get up in the saddle. But he was still holding his broken armor and only had one hand to hoist himself up on the horse. The horse turned as the knight flailed about
trying to pull himself up. When the knight fell back on the ground, the horse nickered. Moire Ain was sure the sound was horse laughter.

Now the knight rolled on the ground, jerking this way and the other trying to get up off his back. Finally he rammed an armored foot into the dirt and managed to lever himself onto his feet. When he was upright, he pulled a leather strap out of the chest piece of his armor. He used the leather to tie his arm armor back on, then marched to the horse and snatched the reins. This time he stilled the horse for a second, but not long enough for the knight to struggle back on top.

As he tried a fourth time to mount, the knight finally spied the long fabric hanging off the back of the turning horse. One leg in a stirrup the knight roared, “I say
stop
!”

The horse froze. The sudden lack of movement hurled the knight over the horse's neck. The rusty knight landed on his narrow dented bottom. The horse nickered again.

“Not much of a rider, sir knight?” Hedge-Witch strolled into the clearing.

Moire Ain scooted farther back from the ledge, clinging to the shadows inside the cave. She held her breath, hoping neither of them had seen her move.

But Moire Ain's thundering heart told her the truth. Hedge-Witch had found her. Moire Ain was trapped.

“I will have no sass from you, peasant,” the knight screamed. “And get away from my horse.”

The old witch backed away but grabbed the length of trailing cloth.

“Let go of that, you old crone,” the knight yelled. “That's not yours.”

The Hedge-Witch glared at the knight. “Have you seen a girl? A scrawny thing a bit taller than I, with mud-brown hair tinged with hellion red? No more than ten, maybe twelve, sun cycles old.”

“No! Let go of it!” he yelled again.

This time the horse, his eyes flaring brighter red, stepped toward the witch. She dropped the fabric, her mouth moving. Moire Ain knew what the witch was doing. Hedge-Witch was casting a curse on the knight. If he was lucky, it wouldn't kill him, but if he wasn't lucky ….

Moire Ain held her breath, trying to think of how to help. But her skin turned to a coat of ice butterflies when the old witch stopped muttering and said, “You will regret this disrespect.” Hedge-Witch skulked down the road, turning again and again to stare at the horse and rider. Something was very wrong. Hedge-Witch never just walked away.

It wasn't until the old crone had hobbled so far down the road that she was nothing but a bobbing shadow that Moire Ain was able to slow her pounding heart. She turned her attention to the knight. Who was he that Hedge-Witch didn't try to kill him after he was rude? He was as tall as the shadowy visitor who had made the deal to kill a king.

Moire Ain had not seen more than the back of the stranger who had bargained with Hedge-Witch. Even if she had seen his face, the knight below her was covered in haphazard bits of armor, including his face. She tried to think if she had heard the clank of armor from the stranger. But she was sure she had not.

She was certain the knight and the stranger couldn't be the same person. Hedge-Witch would have acted like she knew the knight if they were the same. Even if the knight was not the evil stranger, there was something about him. The prickling that broke out on her neck around things magick was going strong.

But maybe the bad feeling was left over from Hedge-Witch. Morie Ain tried to clear away all the frightening thoughts crowding her head. She hated it when her excellent imagination made her worry that the world was full of dark things like Hedge-Witch instead of good ones like Goodwife Greenfield.

But sometimes she was right. Like the time she'd read Hedge-Witch's intention to feed poison to a sick pig to get even with a villager who had not bowed to her. Moire Ain had gasped at the dark aura over Hedge-Witch and her potion. Hedge-Witch had turned on Moire Ain in a flash. Hate and punishment shone out of her eyes when Hedge-Witch said, “What is it, girl?”

Moire Ain had made up an excuse about pinching her fingers in the mortar she was using to grind herbs. Hedge-Witch seemed to believe her, but Moire Ain was so panicked she'd used fennel seeds in the pig's potion instead of the monkshood. The neighbor's animal had thrown up bulbous plants for an hour, burped, and promptly went back to eating normally. Hedge-Witch had beaten Moire Ain when they got home and refused to feed her for three days.

Moire Ain reminded herself that those days were gone. She had
Magicks Mysteries,
and she had escaped. But she hadn't learned its magick yet, and she didn't feel good about the knight.

Moire Ain stared at him. Did he have a murderer's
aura? She watched the knight slashing his sword at the fabric that trailed his horse. Finally he grabbed the material and sawed and tugged; at the same time, the horse whirled. The cloth twisted around the knight's feet and on up to his knees. With an angry oath, the knight let go of the fabric but kept a tight grip on the horse's reins.

He hopped up, eye to eye with the blood-eyed beast. “Remember your place. Goblin steed or not, you are under my command. Stand still.”

The horse froze like a statue. The knight shoved off the material wrapped around his legs and walked to the horse's rear. With both hands curled around his sword's hilt, he slashed off the cloth, along with half the horse's tail. The knight kicked the pale fabric out of the road and pulled himself up on his goblin horse's back. “You need no padding under your saddle. Find the dr'gon,” he ordered.

Moire Ain had heard that only knights with a great deal of magick hunted dr'gons. If a knight had magick, even if he didn't seem to be a wizard, he had to be someone she would like to know. But something stopped her from calling out to him. She couldn't bring herself to feel good about asking him for help. What if Hedge-Witch came back and did something horrible to the knight?

Moire Ain leaned a little out of the cave shadows to look harder. “I never saw a goblin horse,” she whispered.

For a second, she thought the steed stared straight at her. His eyes flared so hot a red, Moire Ain was afraid any
second he'd burst into flames and set the whole forest on fire. She shrank back.

Before the horse's eyes could explode, the sky filled with squawking so loud the trees' leaves shook. The goblin horse galloped off, with the knight barely holding onto his saddle's pommel. Behind them they left the pile of cloth and the hunk of horse tail.

Overhead, Raspberries soared out of a flock of ravens. The birds called so loudly, Moire Ain no longer heard the horse's metal hooves. The ravens circled above the woods. Raspberries cawed to them, and the other ravens flew off in the same direction the knight and Hedge-Witch had gone.

His wings extended like a shining feather sail, Raspberries glided until he hovered over the cave's entrance. In his talons, he carried a small pail that sloshed something green. Carefully, he placed it on their ledge, then landed and cocked his head down at the clearing. He turned back and eyed Moire Ain. “Rssspppbbb,” he said, nudging the pot toward her.

Until a year ago, Raspberries had been no more than a pet raven she'd raised from an abandoned baby bird. At the same time Moire Ain started reading the dark intentions of Hedge-Witch, the bird had begun to do things that were exceptional. Sometimes he'd brought Moire Ain a bowl or an herb before she asked. Moire Ain kept his specialness from Hedge-Witch.

She peered into the pot, then followed Raspberries's gaze to the clearing and the fabric sticking to the bushes. She touched the rim of the pot and came away with a thick green liquid on her fingers. “Cloth and paint. We have everything to make those banners to find a wizard to help me learn. Thank you!”

Moire Ain climbed down the low cliff face, careful to keep the pot from sloshing out its contents. Raspberries flew ahead. He was pulling the cloth free of the bushes before she got to flat ground. The raven tugged and stretched the cloth flat while Moire Ain gathered up the horsetail strands.

Raspberries, head cocked to one side, stared at her as she stood with the horse hair gripped in one hand. He flew to her shoulder and cawed his approval when she said, “A paintbrush, I think.” Then she said more surely, “Definitely a paint brush!”

Raspberries snorted. Sometimes the raven treated Moire Ain like she was not the smartest of the two of them. She thought sometimes he was right. An old suspicion flew off her tongue, and she blurted out, “Are you an enchanted prince?” He occasionally acted so humanlike, she thought it was possible. But as usual, he gave her a hard look, snorted, and flew up to a creeper vine climbing a tree. He tugged it loose and dragged it over to Moire Ain.

“No one talks to me. Just like my book. You know it
talked to me once, but now, nothing.” Moire Ain snapped off pieces of the vine and wrapped them around one end of a bunch of horse hair to make a brush.

Raspberries paced across the cloth, cocking his head one way and then the other. Moire Ain studied it too. “I was thinking. We have enough for only one great banner, so we have to make it really stand out. Different. The king uses long wide banners.” She spread her arms out side to side. “But we'll be special. We'll make ours tall and narrow.”

She tapped a foot and stared some more. “The trick is to think of the right words to get me a teacher.” She paced around.

Since they only had a small bucket of paint and the one piece of cloth, she had to paint the right words the first time. No mistakes.

“How about this:
Wizard for Hire Wanted. Parsimonious Rates.”

She stared at Raspberries, who stared back. “I like
parsimonious
, don't you? We haven't actually got anything to pay a teacher with, so we need one who won't ask for much, and who will barter down for even less.” She decided to worry about paying a teacher later. Right now she had to find one, impress him, and get him to take her on as a pupil. And teach her before Hedge-Witch caught up.

Once she could use the book and do bigger magick,
she decided the first thing she could do to prove she was a good wizard was to stop Hedge-Witch. She'd use her new magick to figure out which of the five kings of Albion Hedge-Witch meant to assassinate. Moire Ain would warn him.

She scratched practice words in the dirt beside the poster cloth. “If I make the letters big enough for people to read from the ground once we've hung the banner in the trees, I won't have room for a lot of words. I really can't fit more than
Wizard for Hire Wanted Parsimonious Rates
. That will have to suffice.” She nodded.

Raspberries landed on her shoulder and stared at the words. He grumbled but did nothing more.

“Good. Then we're agreed.” Moire Ain took up one of the brushes she'd fashioned and dipped it in the pot of green paint. “Where'd you get this paint anyway? It kind of smells funny.” While she stroked on the words, she tried not to think of how the paint reminded her of the smell of raven poop after Raspberries had eaten mulberries.
Wizard
was painted out before she realized that to fit the big letters, she would have to put her words in three lines instead of two. Since this still let her use the words she wanted, it would be okay.

Raspberries launched off her shoulder and hovered over the paint pot. He dunked his tail in and added some decorations along the long edges of the banner. His painting wasn't as precise as hers, but he was definitely
creative, if you squinted your eyes and tried hard to believe the splotchy bits didn't look a lot like raven poop. When he'd finished, he squawked and perched on a branch. Before Moire Ain finished the next word, she heard snoring and looked up to see his head tucked into his shoulder.