Wrede, Patricia C - Enchanted Forest 02 by Searching for Dragons

Author:Searching for Dragons [Dragons, Searching for]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

In Which Mendanbar

and Cimorene Are Very Busy

Something was wrong. Mendanbar could feel it, even before he was fully awake. The magic of the Enchanted Forest floated all around him, but it seemed tenuous and tottery, almost disconnected. He thought he had better get up and fix it. He opened his eyes.

Cimorene’s concerned face hovered a foot above him. Her braids had come loose from their tight crown and there was a worry line between her eyebrows. He didn’t want her to be worried. He tried to say so, but all he managed was a coughing fit. Cimorene bit her lip, and her troubled expression intensified.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said unhappily. “Don’t try to do anything yet. Your sword is safe, and I’m all right, and everything else can wait for a few minutes. Just lie there and breathe slowly.”

It occurred to Mendanbar that Cimorene was anxious about him. That was nice, in a way, but he still didn’t want her to be unhappy. In fact, it was suddenly very important to him that Cimorene should not be worried or unhappy in the slightest. He closed his eyes to consider how best to convey this and fell asleep at once.

When he woke, the sky was the pale blue of late afternoon. Rubbing his eyes, he sat up carefully, remembering what had happened earlier when he’d tried to talk. Cimorene was at his side at once.

“Are you sure you should do that?” she said.

“It hasn’t hurt so far,” Mendanbar replied. “What happened?”

Cimorene studied him for a moment, then relaxed visibly. “I’m not sure,” she said. “One minute we were going somewhere, and the next minute we weren’t. When I picked myself up, you were lying there looking three-quarters dead and as white as cracked ice, and you’ve been that way for over four hours. If that’s your transportation spell, I think I would have preferred the carpet.”

“At least it got us to the forest.”

“Not exactly.”

Mendanbar blinked at her, then looked around. The carpet, on which he and Cimorene were sitting, lay in the center of a twenty-foot circle of thin green fuzz. Seven saplings, pencil-thick and none more than waist high, poked randomly upward through the fuzz. Beyond the circle, patches of short, brownish-green grass alternated with mottled gray rock that rose quickly into cliffs and ridges and the sudden, sharp heights of mountains that shadowed them all. None of it looked familiar, though it still felt vaguely like the Enchanted Forest to him.

“Well, at least we went somewhere,” Mendanbar said after a moment.

“Yes, but where? Those are the Mountains of Morning, but this bit”—Cimorene waved at the green fuzz and the saplings—”looks as if it belongs in the Enchanted Forest. So what’s it doing here?”

“It feels like the Enchanted Forest, too,” Mendanbar said. He shifted, and his hand touched cool metal. Even without looking, he knew it was his sword. He picked it up and looked at it thoughtfully. “Cimorene, is this still ‘leaking magic’ the way you said it was earlier?”

“No,” Cimorene said.

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