“You killed me?” the bird said incredulously. “But you’re a maiden.”

“Actually, she’s a princess,” Kazul’s voice said from behind Cimorene. “My princess, so you’d have been in even bigger trouble if you’d succeeded in carrying her off.”

“I don’t think I could have done it if I hadn’t had a magic sword,” said Cimorene, who was beginning to wish she hadn’t. She had never hurt anyone before, and she didn’t like it.

“Just my luck,” the bird said disgustedly. “Oh, well, fair’s fair. You killed me, so you get my forfeit.”

“You’re not dead yet,” Cimorene said. “If you’ll let me near, I can try to stop the bleeding—”

“Not a chance,” the bird said. It was beginning to sound rather faint. “Do you want the forfeit or don’t you?”

“Take it,” Kazul advised.

Cimorene said nothing, and after a moment the bird said, “All right, then. Under my left wing, you’ll find three black feathers. If you drop one and wish to be somewhere else, you’ll find yourself there in the twinkling of an eye. Any questions?”

“Can I take anyone else with me?” Cimorene asked, thinking that if the bird was so determined to give her the feathers, she might as well cooperate with it.

The bird looked at her with respect. “Will wonders never cease. For once a human with sense is getting the forfeit. Yes, you can take someone with you, as long as you’re touching him. Same for objects; if you can carry it, you can take it with you. You get one trip per feather. That’s all.”

“But—” said Cimorene, and stopped. The bird’s head had fallen back, and it was clearly quite dead.

“Don’t feel too bad,” Kazul said perceptively. “If it had succeeded in carrying you off, it would have fed you to its nestlings.”

“Fed me to its nestlings?” Cimorene discovered that she had lost her sympathy for the dead bird. “What a horrid thing to do!” She hesitated. “Won’t the nestlings starve, now that the bird is dead?”

“No, one of the other birds will take over the chore of feeding them for a few weeks until they’re big enough to catch their own food,” Kazul said. “Now, clean that sword and take your feathers, and let’s get going. I want to have a look at that book of Morwen’s.”

Cimorene nodded and did as she was told. The three black feathers were right where the bird had said they would be, and she put them in her pocket with Morwen’s book and the black pebble from the Caves of Fire and Night. She wiped the sword on the grass several times, then finished cleaning it with her handkerchief. When she finished, she left the handkerchief beside the dead bird and followed Kazul into the Caves of Fire and Night.

9