Her Majesty's Wizard

CHAPTER 3

For all the darkness and the ominous scurryings, the dungeon felt safe, though it was as chill and dank as any dungeon should be. How they could store food down here, Matt couldn't see; but he'd definitely noticed the smell of salt pork in the cell next door. And why else would those small, clawed paws be running around in the darkness? Actually, he had a notion he'd been filed between the salt meats and the extra arrows. If that was an indication of his importance here, Matt was willing to accept it. He felt as if he belonged.

It was really a relief to have a place of peaceful solitude where he could think things over. There was a lot that needed thinking! He let his head loll back against the slickness of the wall, closing his eyes and deliberately emptying his mind for a few minutes.

When he finally lifted his head, he felt better, though he still had to deal with the realities of the moment, if he could only find them.

Well, he wasn't in his own world any more; matter of fact, he probably wasn't even in his own universe. The parchment had done it, of course, with its line about "Cross the void of time and space." He had a momentary vision of thousands of universes, stretching away in a serried rank, each leaving its own bright streak of elapsed time across the lightless, primordial void, each with its own history, its own natural laws. He'd read once that it was entirely possible that an alternate universe could have a completely different set of laws, and that what was superstition in his own universe could be science there.

Well, magic did seem to work. But how about science? Thoughtfully, Matt pulled out a matchbook, tore out a paper match, and struck it by feel. It made a satisfactory rasp, but shed no light on the subject. So... science didn't work.

But wait-the soldiers' swords had looked like steel, not plain forged iron. So science did have to work here, after a fashion, the way the medieval smiths had fashioned iron-or maybe the pagan smiths; Matt seemed to remember that they'd been regarded as specialized wizards who sang spells to the iron as they worked it.

Matt fumbled out another match and struck it, intoning:

A twelve-inch flame roared up from the match-head with the fury of William Blake. Matt dropped it in stark terror. Then he saw the heap of damp straw it had fallen into and leaped to his feet, stamping furiously. The light ebbed, faded-and was gone.

Matt breathed a sigh of relief and slumped down against the wall again in the blessed darkness. So science would work, but only by magic.

And there was something else.

He'd felt it before, been aware of it, in the street just before the beggars appeared. Now that he looked back, it had been there every time he'd worked a spell - that feeling of great forces gathering around him, modulating and fitting themselves to his words. But it couldn't be very important, if he had barely noticed it when he was under pressure.

What was important was figuring out some quick rules for the maintenance and operation of magic. In spite of Malingo's poise, Matt had sensed a definite undercurrent of anxiety; the sorcerer wasn't quite as much in control of the situation as he wished to appear. Which meant, since he was easily Astaulf's master, that there were forces in the land opposing him. Malingo claimed to be an agent of Darkness, so his opposition would be agents of Light.

Matt had a notion he'd like to meet them.

Well, no man ever got anywhere by wishing. Though in this universe ... No. Even here, he'd have to know how to wish properly. And he'd better learn fast; Malingo might get impatient.

How do you cast a spell?

So far, from all indications, it was done by poetry - or verse, anyway. And Malingo's gestures seemed to have a place in it, too. Would Matt's beggar summons have worked if he hadn't adopted a Statue of Liberty pose?

Matt took a deep breath. The next move was to experiment, validate the theory. Okay, he'd conjure up something - something safe, such as light. Only without a match at all, this time; he didn't need a bonfire.

Then a happy thought struck him; instead of fire, why not call for a fire-lighter? Or a lamplighter, at least ... No, the way things worked here, he might wind up with a Victorian streetboy with a match on the end of along pole. He wanted a local; might as well get some information, as well as company.

He felt the familiar gathering of force as he began to recite, but stronger now; much stronger.

There was a shattering roar, and light seared Matt's eyes. He fell back against the wall, covering his face, while something huge and scaly rasped and grated against the stone walls. Fool! Matt's monitor-mind gibbered. When will you learn to be specific?

The roaring slurred into words; heat seared Matt with syllables. "Who? Who hath done zhish to me? ... Thou!"

Matt jerked his head up, staring. The light winked out, but the afterimage showed two burning eyes...

Light came again, a five-foot gout of glaring flame, showing a mail-scaled snout with flaring nostrils over pointed teeth and huge, scaly-ridged eyes. "Thou! Vile dung-heaped hunter of hatchlings! What! Dursht summon a grown dragon to ambush? Temeritoush idiot! If thou dosht hope to drain Shtegoman's blood to shell to a shorsherer, thou'rt a fool, and will shoon be a dead one!"

A gout of flame seared out again. Matt yelped and leaped aside just in time. The dragon took a breath like a bellows and lurched against the wall with a clash. "Where art thou, worm of a man? Thinkesht thou to hide from Shteo ... Shtegoman ... in sho shmall a shpace? Thou'lt ... thou'lt..."

The flame suddenly seared out again, and Matt leaped. But he needn't have worried; the fire missed him by five feet as the dragon lurched to the side. The great eyes were filmed and bleary in the firelight.

Then light snapped out like a strobe and, in the darkness, Matt realized. The fool beast is drunk! And getting drunker.

But apparently he was the unpleasant type of boozer, the kind that gets mean in its cups; and he was taking another blast-furnace breath.

"Hold it!" Matt snapped up a hand, palm out. "I'm innocent!"

"Indeed?" the behemoth sneered. "Then thou art the firsht man to be sho, shince Adam. Wherefore didsht thou shummon me here, if not to drain dragon'zh blood?" The glowing eyes seemed to wince slightly.

"Well ... curiosity! I was just doing research!"

"Belike," Stegoman sneered. "And what wazh thish 'reshearch?' Didsht thou sheek to dishcover the limitsh of a dragon'zh enduranshe? How mach pain I might withshtand? Nay!" The blowtorch spat again -- but it wavered this time, inscribing a zigzag of soot on the wall; and in the light, Matt definitely saw the dragon wince again, eyes almost squeezing shut with pain.

Then it was dark once more, but Stegoman was inhaling. Delay! Matt thought frantically and called out, "What's the matter?"

There was a moment of silence; then the slurred voice asked suspiciously, "Matter? What dosht thou shpeak of?"

"Your pain!" It was an opening. Get him talking! Keep his mouth too busy to use for afire thrower! "I saw you wince. Does it hurt much?"

"What conshem izh it of thine?"

"Well, gee ... I just hate to see a fellow being in pain." Matt crossed his fingers in the dark and added, "I'm a doctor." Well, not yet, and the wrong kind-but it's not too much of a lie.

"Doctor?" The dragon fairly leaped at the idea, and Matt sighed with relief. "Mmm ... indeed?" Now the beast was trying to sound casual. "And what conshern izh that of mine?"

"Well, I know pain when I see it and I hate seeing it. What's bothering you? Maybe I can do something about it."

The dragon rumbled deep in his belly, and his voice was surly. "I have a tooth in my jaw that cauzheth me pain, if thou musht know; but it will not keep me from roashting vile hunterzh who prey upon hatchlingzh!"

"Toothache, huh?" Matt commiserated. "Yeah, that can really get you down. But, if you don't mind my saying so, you seem a bit young to be having trouble with your teeth." Wild guess; all he'd seen so far was flashes of a huge, scaly head.

But Stegoman bought it. "A dragon is young for a century or two, ignorant mortal! The first hundred years are, I assure thee, quite long enough for teeth to begin to rot and to pain us."

"Really?" Matt frowned. "I should think you'd grow new ones every few decades."

"Thou art indeed ignorant of our ways," the dragon snorted. He seemed to be sobering up already, Matt noted. Strange, very strange. "We are born with the teeth we must keep all our lives; they are in our mouths when we hatch; they grow as we grow,,. like our skins."

"Your skins grow? I mean, you don't have to shed them once a year?"

The dragon gave a metallic rattle that might have been its equivalent of a superior chuckle. "Nay, certainly not! We are not snakes or lizards, man, though related to them, I doubt not, as thou are related to the kobolds and snow-apes. But dost thou scurry about in tunnels beneath the earth, or swing by long arms from a mountain peak?"

"Well, no - at least, not in most cases. Although I've heard of... Well, never mind. As you see, I don't know much about dragons."

"Thou art indeed a strange mortal," the dragon huffed. "What manner of man art thou, to be so ignorant of our race? Or dost thou not know our importance to thee?"

"Not really," Matt confessed. "A dragon's a pretty rare sight, where I come from."

"Scandalous!" The dragon snorted. "Are all men of thy land so unlearned?"

"You might say so. In fact, there are a lot of us who don't even believe in magic."

The dragon was silent, dumfounded; and Matt had that sinking feeling that, as usual, he'd said the wrong thing. "What manner of man art thou?" the dragon exploded.

Matt shrank back against the wall, but he managed to shrug his shoulders. "Well, the usual kind. You've seen me."

"Not well," the dragon rumbled. "Art thou afeared to show thyself?"

He had a nasty, suspicious tone to him. "Of course not!" Matt said quickly. "You want some light? I mean, something a little smaller and more constant than your house specialty?"

"That might be advisable."

"Oh, sure, sure! Right away." Matt yanked out his matchbook and tried to remember what spell he'd used.

"What dost thou wait for?" Stegoman growled.

"Uh, it takes a little time." Matt recited the skewed Blake quotation under his breath while he struck a match, remembering to hold it at arm's length. A twelve-inch flame gushed, and he ad-libbed quickly:

The matchstick seemed to slam against his fingers as it thickened abruptly, and Matt found himself holding a six-foot candle, two inches thick, with a foot-long flame like a spearhead on top. He'd overdone things a bit, but that was the hazard of improvisation.

The dragon's eyes were fixed on the point of light. "Most interesting," he murmured.

Matt stared back at him, seeing a thirty-foot Chinese-style dragon, with short, clawed legs, a slender, serpentine body, and a saw-toothed crest running along his backbone. There was an added European element, though - huge batwings were folded along his body. But the leathery skin hung from them in rags, with yard-long rents from edge to bone. The edges of the tears were heavy with scar tissue.

Stegoman turned his huge head toward Matt. Matt stood very still, aware that he was on trial.

Slowly, the dragon nodded. "Thou hast not the look of an evil man-though it is known that a fair face may hide a lying heart."

"Oh, I'm a lousy liar! Every time I try, I can't even fool myself!"

"That is somewhat necessary to effective lying, aye." The dragon nodded. "Still, mortals are not so forthright as dragons. If we dislike someone, or are angered by his conduct, we are quite quick and open in saying so."

"Mm." Matt pursed his lips. "I expect that leads to a lot of fights."

"Not so many, no. We each know our fellows are quick to anger; and we know their power as we know our own. There can never truly be a winner when two dragons fight; he who's left alive will be so sorely wounded that he'll need months to heal. Thus we respect even those we do not like."

"I see." Matt chewed at his lower lip. "There are ways of telling someone what you think of him without making it really an insult."

"Quite right." Stegoman looked faintly surprised. "Few mortals are so quick to see it."

Neither did Matt, really; but he'd had a smattering of anthropology in his undergraduate days and could recognize a highly individualistic society when he heard about one. The pride that underlay Stegoman's words, the outspokenness, coupled with relatively little fighting, meant a very stringent set of social conventions; without them, Stegoman's people would be at each other's throats constantly. They might be ornery, but these dragons must be painfully polite to one another.

Matt cleared his throat. "But doesn't that make it difficult to get any kind of united action going? I mean, discipline..."

"The discipline is within each dragon," Stegoman said tartly. "When we organize for battle, each dragon's honor is respected; he whom we choose to lead us knows we've chosen to follow his commands, so when he gives them, he's careful to avoid insult. We do as he directs, for we've chosen him for wisdom."

Their commanders must be diplomats as much as generals. Nice society to belong to-if you didn't mind the constant risk of getting killed in a duel. "One dragon to a hill, eh?"

"Mountain," Stegoman snapped. "Our homeland is the eastern mountains - the range that divides this land of Merovence from the sink of sorcery called Allustria. Ever and anon, Allustria wars on Merovence or, less often, Merovence attacks Allustria; and to pass through our mountains, both attack the dragons. We are born and bred to war; each dragon will defend his mountain with his life, but all of us together must defend our land."

"I take it that when Allustria and Merovence attack you, they both lose?"

Stegoman nodded; dragons could look smug! "Since Hardishane first taught us order, we never have been conquered."

"Wait a second - who was Hardishane?"

Stegoman stared, scandalized. "Whence comest thou, ignorant mortal, that thou knowest not of Hardishane?"

Matt sidestepped. "It's a long story. Let's just say I haven't studied history. Who was he?"

"Why, the Emperor, thou unlearned one! The first Emperor he who came, eight hundred years agone, to band together all these Christian lands against the force of evil! For that cause, he made alliance with us, and showed us the manner of fighting as an army - and thus, at last, we prevailed against the giants!"

Matt started to speak, then hesitated.

"Close thy mouth," the dragon growled, "and do not say, for I can see, thou knowest naught of giants."

Matt nodded weakly.

Stegoman sighed and curled his tail around his claws, settling down for a session. "The giants came nine hundred years agone, when great Reme fell. Reme, unlearned one, was the southern town that made an empire out of all the lands around the Middle Sea fifteen centuries agone, before the coming of the Christ."

So there was a Rome. But the name was Reme. Apparently, here, Remus rather than Romulus won the fight. Was that when this universe had split off from Matt's?

But still - the Christ; that Name was the same.

Why not? Athens was a going concern while Romulus and Remus were sucking wolf milk; Greek should be the same language in both universes, and Christ was a Greek word.

"So. Rome - uh, Reme - fell. But where did the giants come from?"

Stegoman shrugged impatiently. "Out of the earth, the rocks, or the mouth of Hell for all I know. They came; it is enough. They attacked us, and each dragon fought against them with fire, tooth, and claw. We died, till few of us were left. Great ugly brutes they were, tall as the highest pine but broad as any dwarf, covered with matted hair and filth. For an hundred years we fought to cleanse our mountains of them, sought to burn them out, and died.

"Then Hardishane came riding from the North, and with him came Moncaire, the mighty wizard. Moncaire waked up a hill into human form and gave it the name Colmain -- a giant with the power of right behind him. He killed an evil giant, and we hailed him for a hero. Then Hardishane brought armies to garrison what few free mountains we had left; and he told us how all dragons could fight in unison, by one single plan, with no one dragon's head lower than the leader's. And he taught our elders tricks of battle.

"Thus, when the giants came, massed in a foul horde, shaking mountains with their bellows, they met an army fifty times their number, with an Emperor and a wizard at its head and a giant, greater than the largest of them. Giant bodies walled our valleys. Then we hunted out the last behemoths left, burned them from their hidings, and drove them to Colmain. Thus we cleansed our mountains, and Hardishane passed through with all his army. Colmain strode out behind him, to aid him in the purging of Allustria. Thus they passed beyond our ken; but we never have forgot them."

Matt closed his eyes, gave his head a quick shake, and looked up at Stegoman. "An age of heroes..."

The dragon nodded. "We were born too late, thou and I, into a shrunken, latter world, with kingdoms in the place of empire, and barons where there once were giants."

"And from these heroes came your nation?"

The dragon nodded again. "Our nation and our law and lore; for only then did we begin to chant our history and our names, to hail our heroes and decry our weaklings, as a people."

He shuddered and looked away.

Matt's mental ears pricked up. Something painful, there. Now, if he had any sense, he'd leave it alone - but being himself, he had to pry. "So with your songs and sagas, you wrapped words around your customs and traditions and forged them into law."

"Aye." The dragon's gaze snapped back, eyes burning. "Our law, that says each dragon's pride is sacred, each dragon's life beyond the bounds of price - yet that both must stand within the shadow of the people."

"Ambiguous." Matt frowned. "Do you mean any one dragon has to be sacrificed if he endangers the society?"

Stegoman hunkered down, glowering. "You lay strange words against the thought - but, aye. A dragon's soul and person are inviolate - but so are every other dragon's. If he endangers another, then let them fight, or resolve it with sweet words, whiche'er they choose! But if a dragon, by his conduct or his mere existence, threatens three or more..."

His voice trailed off into a brooding silence. Matt had the picture. Stegoman had somehow turned out to be a menace to dragon society; so they'd clipped his wings and sent him into exile.

For what? Stegoman seemed a nice enough guy, allowing for a prickly disposition that probably went with being a member of a highly individualistic and very military culture. Matt somehow read him as the kind who'd never hurt another being, unless he were attacked. So what could he have done?

Gotten drunk.

It made sense. The dragon had appeared with a blast of fire; right after it, he'd been slightly tipsy. The more he'd breathed fire, the more drunken he'd become, till he was staggering and missing his aim. Then, when he'd quit breathing fire, he'd sobered up. The inference was that breathing fire made him drunk.

The thought made Matt a little giddy: all that dragon, cavorting around in the air, getting filled with the joy of flight till he just had to let it out, in a five-foot lance of flame. Then getting tipsy, which meant even more euphoric, which meant more fire, which meant a drunker dragon, and on and on.

If Matt was to judge by Stegoman, the dragons were a pretty realistic, practical sort; they must have been able to see that Stegoman was a menace to aerial navigation fairly quickly - or at least when he'd caused another dragon trouble the third time.

So he'd been grounded for drunk flying. And just to make sure it couldn't happen again, they'd put a few rips in his wings and exiled him.

Stegoman sighed heavily and resumed his tale. "For five hundred years peace held; no man came against us, till Hardishane's Empire had dissolved. By then, we'd grown accustomed to our own army ordering, even though we lived in peace. It had proved too useful; we had built our dragon city and we'd done away with blood feuds. More dragons lived than e'er before, and the living was richer, safer. Then, when the Empire fell, the first men's army marched into our land."

"You chased them home, of course."

"Certes. But ever and anon, they try again - though it takes them near an hundred years to screw their daring up again."

"And you don't have any trouble with men in the intervals?"

"None dare attack - save vile hatchling hunters, seeking blood to sell to sorcerers." Stegoman shut his jaws with a snap, holding Matt with a fixed and glittering eye.

Matt swallowed. He thought he'd gotten Stegoman off that topic.

The dragon stretched and came to his feet with a rattling clatter. "Which brings to mind thyself. Art thou a hunter, a sorcerer - or both?"

"Neither," Matt said quickly. "I'm a wizard." He heard his own words and felt like a fool.

But Stegoman looked at him sidewise and slowly nodded. "Methinks there is some credit in that claim."

Matt heaved a sigh of relief that hollowed his backbone. "What convinced you? My native goodness glimmering through?"

"Nay, thine ignorance. Since thou knowest so little, thou hast only newly discovered thy Power and art still a wizard. Yet thou'lt surely find temptation yet! Be assured - I trust men to be treacherous."

"Comforting thought, I'm sure," Matt mused. "It was just research, you see - I was trying to find out if I really could work a spell, and the first thing I thought of conjuring up turned out to be you."

"And thus we are acquainted," Steogman said drily. "Tell me, whence comest thou, from what benighted land, that thou couldst know so little of our dragon lore?"

Matt started to give an honest answer, then caught himself. "Uh, I don't think you're going to believe this."

"Art thou so rare?" Stegoman demanded. "Tell thy tale; if there be truth in it, be sure that I've heard stranger."

"Okay, you asked for it." Matt took a deep breath. "I'm from out of this world. Not just this land - this world. Totally. I'm not even from this universe."

Stegoman lowered his snout onto his foreclaws, watching Matt with glittering eyes. "So thou art from another universe and world? How came this?"

"I couldn't rightly say," Matt admitted. "One minute I was reading an old scrap of parchment in my neighborhood coffee shop and the next I was standing in a street in downtown Bordestang."

"No doubt some magus, here wished thy presence."

"You think so, too?" Matt leaped at it. "That's the only explanation I can think of. But who'd want me here? I scarcely know a soul."

"What soul knows thee? That's more in question." The dragon's tail-tip twitched. "Malingo, perchance - the King's vile sorcerer. Couldst thou serve him in any way?" He said it casually, but he was eyeing Matt as if Matt were a marshmallow ready for toasting.

"Well, no," Matt said carefully. "That is, I suppose I could be useful to him - but I don't think I'd want to be."

"Wherefore not? Malingo rides the wave's crest now; his tide still rises, carrying him up to glory. Thou couldst rise, too, to wealth and power."

"And the damnation of my soul." When in Rome, speak Latin. If they wanted to deal in medieval concepts, Matt pretty much had to, too. "Malingo strikes me as the kind of boss I couldn't trust. He might decide to put me down - six feet deep. Besides, I met the man already; he did some rather unpleasant things to me."

Stegoman frowned. "Thou dost not show it. Why did he mend the things he'd done to thee?"

"Oh, he didn't. But I couldn't walk around all day without my giblets, could I?"

Stegoman was very still suddenly, and Matt wondered, with a touch of panic, if he'd said the wrong thing. Then the dragon spoke and he almost sounded respectful. "Thou hast countered spells Malingo cast on thee?"

"Well, sure! I have this quirky thing about living - it's a nice pastime."

"Assuredly, it is," the dragon breathed. "Thou art, then, no weakling as a wizard, art thou?"

"Oh, now, wait a minute? Don't go making me out to be what I'm not! I'm sure Malingo wasn't really trying."

"Even so: thou dost live, and that doth show power. Too much, he should have made a servant of thee, or a corpse."

It was one of those very unfortunate situations where the only thing Matt could say that wouldn't get him into trouble was the truth - and even that was a little uncertain. He braced himself for the worst. "Well, I didn't exactly tell him no. I said I needed time to think it over."

"And hast thou thought?"

Matt took a deep breath. "Pretty much. I still need a few more facts."

"Such as?" there was a dangerous rumble under Stegoman's words.

Matt tried to ignore it. "Well, Malingo is rotten, and Astaulf's his patsy. But who's on the other side? And are they any better?"

The silence stretched out so long that Stegoman's glowing eyes seemed to be permanently burning themselves into Matt's retinas. At last the dragon spoke.

"Thou must, indeed, be new-come to this land, if thou knowest naught of those Astaulf opposes."

"Right. But I happened to be there when Malingo and Astaulf squared off, and--"

"Oh, did they?" Stegoman's eyes glinted. "A point of interest, I assure thee. And what didst thou glean from this confrontation?"

Matt took a deep breath and launched himself. "That Astaulf usurped the throne about six months ago, with Malingo's help. And the population isn't all that happy about it, or Astaulf wouldn't still have soldiers in the streets. And there's a bunch of loyalist barons fighting what amounts to a guerilla action, trying to bring Astaulf and Malingo down."

Stegoman nodded. "Thou hast caught the nubbin of it squarely. But who seek these loyal barons to place upon the throne?"

"Ah, there's the rub in the nubbin," Matt said with regret. "I didn't hear a word about the other side. Who are -- I mean, were they?"

"Thou hadst it more aright with 'are','' the dragon mused, "but as for 'were,' 'twas the fourth King Kaprin. His wizard, full of years, had died; and ere he could seek out another, Malingo leaped, with Astaulf and his soldiers, upon this town of Bordestang. The fight was brief but bloody, and King Kaprin died."

"How about 'are'? That's the loyalist barons, I take it. Who do they have with them? A powerful wizard? If they do, he might be the one who pulled me here."

"Throe estimates are accurate." Stegoman eyed him warily. "Malingo cannot progress against the barons, nor can they gain an ell of land toward Bordestang. Thou riddlest well from tiny rhymes."

Matt almost blushed. "So the situation isn't a total conquest, it's a precarious balance. Astaulf and Malingo have the throne, but the barons have the people and a sizable chunk of the land. And I'd guess they're pretty evenly matched. So if you don't want that balance, introduce a random factor - me - to upset the apple cart. "

"Aye," the dragon rumbled suspiciously, "but who would wish that most?"

"The barons," Matt said promptly. "Malingo has the upper hand, right now. For the barons, anything that breaks the stalemate is welcome, provided it doesn't come from Malingo."

"A fascinating theory." Stegoman nodded. "But it trips and stumbles on one point: the barons have no wizard."

"None?" Matt's eyebrows shot up.

Stegoman shrugged impatiently. "Oh, they have a few of minor power - holy men, monastery abbots and the like. But no great wizard."

"Hmm." Matt bit his lip. "You sure?"

"I am. Their strongest asset is the princess, and she's imprisoned."

"Princess?" Matt's head snapped up. "What princess?"

Stegoman sighed. "I forget how newly thou art come. Still, 'tis strange thou hast not heard of her."

"I've been a little busy. Who is she?"

"King Kaprin's daughter. Rightful heir to Merovence's crown."

"I'm surprised she's still alive."

"Be not. She is a lass of beauty. And Astaulf bums to have her."

"What's stopping him?"

"Malingo. He plans further ahead than Astaulf. To marry her would give the usurper legitimacy - but only if she comes unsullied to him, so that the marriage may be duly solemnized. And she'll not wed him."

"I don't blame her. And come to think of it, I did hear Astaulf say something about an idiot girl in the dungeons. I gather he's getting impatient."

"Quite," Stegoman said grimly. "Six months agone he moved her to the dungeons with the rats. Rumor says he speaks now of torture. But she will have none of his plan."

Matt nodded approval. "A girl with guts." He turned away, stroking his chin. "A real, live princess in durance vile!"

Stegoman regarded him with jaundiced eyes. "Thou hast a scheme in mind, man?"

"Matt," Matt said absently. "We ought to be on a first-name basis by now."

"Matt," the dragon conceded. "Thy scheme?"

Matt shrugged. "It's not really a scheme. I'm just wondering which is better - to wait here for Malingo to come and pull the plug on me, or to go looking for trouble when I have a good excuse."

Stegoman was quiet for a moment, chewing that one over. Then he sighed and rattled his spinal plates. "Thou hast the right of it, I fear; there's nothing to be looked for here. But how dost thou mean to leave this cell?"

"By going from bad to verse. Poetry got me into this fix; poetry should get me out."

He was silent, thinking for a moment. The dragon eyed him warily.

Then Matt began to recite:

He took a breath to go on to the second verse-just in time, for the dragon to blast out, "Hold!"

Matt leaped aside from the gout of flame, deciding Stegoman was a bit perturbed. "Yeek! Uh-was it something I said?"

"Nay, what thou wast about to say." Stegoman's eyes glowed in the candlelight. "Thou wast about to leave this cell!"

"Well, sure. I mean, we talked it over, didn't we? And decided -"

"That challenging blind fate would better suit thy taste than awaiting certain doom within this chamber. Aye, 'tis so! Yet didst thou think that dragons are more partial to such cramped and noisome quarters than are men?"

"Oh." Matt bit his cheek in consternation. "Sorry. I was in a little bit of a rush, wasn't I?"

"Aye, and thou wast near to making waste - of thee."

"I see your point." Matt eyed the dragon's cocked and loaded snout. "Well, suppose I get you out of here first? Any particular place you'd like to be?"

"Anywhere, so it be wide and free and open."

"The plains, then." Matt rolled up his sleeves. "How about next to a stream?"

"Stream, flood, or bog, I care not one whit! Only put me there!"

Matt nodded and began,

Air imploded with a padded thud, and the cell was empty, except for Matt and the giant candle, flame streaming in the wind. He drew a long, shaky breath; he'd felt forces gathering around him again and was more certain than ever that they had been molding themselves to his words, somehow.

Idly, he wondered why there should be weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in, right after the line about enameled skin. It hadn't made that much more sense in the original, really - but Shakespeare had put it in, so who was he to turn it down?

Back to the matter of the moment - how had that prisoner verse gone again?

He felt it beginning again - a gathering of forces, like static electricity around a lightning rod, before the faint spark flew.

The feeling was much stronger now, with something slightly ominous about it. He wondered, fleetingly, what would happen if he built up a field as strong as this, then couldn't think of an imperative, a directing phrase, a route for the magic field's discharge.

Come to think of it, what was he going to use for an imperative to this verse? Umm.

A silent, invisible explosion blasted him; the floor seemed to slide sideways beneath his feet, and a huge hand squeezed him, then let him go. He looked up, panting, amazed to find himself dripping with sweat, and saw the princess.