“I wouldn’t have had to lie there very long,” the stone prince said. “That king’s youngest son is going to arrive any day now, I just know it. Anyway, if I were a slab of stone, I wouldn’t know about it until it was all over and I’d been turned back into a prince again.”

“How do you know?” Cimorene demanded. “Have you ever been a stone slab?”

The stone prince looked startled. “No, I haven’t. I never thought of that.”

“Well, start thinking now,” Cimorene said tartly. “Here’s the service room. Wait here for me, and don’t go wandering off if I’m late getting back. I don’t know how long this errand is going to take, and it would be very awkward for me if the dragons found you roaming through their tunnels.”

“I’ll remember,” the stone prince promised. “But what do I do if someone comes in?”

“Duck into the banquet area,” Cimorene said, showing him. “And if someone comes in there, too, curl up in the corner and pretend you’re a rock.”

“All right,” the prince said doubtfully.

Cimorene did not like leaving him, but she was even less enthusiastic about taking him to see Roxim. Roxim probably wouldn’t object to the prince himself, though Cimorene suspected that there might have been some difficulty over his proposed theft of the Water of Healing. But explaining everything to the gray-green dragon would take hours. Roxim was nice, but he tended to take a simple view of things, and the prince’s situation was anything but simple. So Cimorene gave the prince one more warning, just to make sure he understood, and started off toward Roxim’s cave to finish her errand.

12

In Which Cimorene Calls on a Dragon, and the Stone Prince Discovers a Plot

THE SHORTCUT TO ROXIM’S WORKED JUST AS WELL as Cimorene had hoped, and she even made up some of the time she had lost earlier. Roxim was in, too. She could hear the scraping of his scales as he moved around inside. She stepped up to the entrance of the cave and called, “Dragon Roxim!”

Something round and shiny flew through the air, missing Cimorene by inches. It hit the wall of the tunnel with a loud clang and slid rattling to the floor. Cimorene jumped.

“Roxim!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

“What’s this?” the dragon said, poking his nose out of the cave entrance.

“I am Cimorene, princess to the dragon Kazul, and I offer you greetings and good fortune in all your endeavors.” Cimorene thought it best to be particularly polite, in case Roxim were in a bad mood. She suspected he might be. In her experience, someone in a good mood did not throw things at visitors.

“Very good,” Roxim said. “Nice to see you again and all that, but I haven’t got time for visitors at the moment. Sorry.”