Her Majesty's Wizard

Matt also frowned. "What's the matter? Prefer bouillon?"

"Nay, the dish is fine, sir, and so's that which is in it, but... Well, I had in mind your perchance hunting a hare."

Matt's lips thinned. "You shouldn't eat anything solid, if you're nearly starved. Maybe you'd like me to dig up a silver service, too!"

"Nay, nay!" She waved impatiently. "I fault not your efforts, Master Wizard. But, little though I know of magic, I have heard one should be chary of its use. It must not be tossed about at every whim or small desire. If it's not treated with respect, it may treat its user with contempt and cause much trouble."

"Isn't that a bit much?" Matt demanded. "It isn't a person, with emotions and a personality; magic's just a force, a kind of energy, impersonal and--"

A cloud of yellow smoke erupted with a whoosh! twenty feet away, in the meadow.

Matt swiveled to face it, his back hair standing on end. Then the first whiff of smoke hit. Sulfur! What was in that cloud, anyway?

It tattered in the breeze and blew away, revealing an ancient crone in a black, hooded robe, with a nose and chin that hooked to meet each other below yellowed, rheumy eyes. A few warts completed the effect.

"And what have we here?" she whined. "Surely it would be nothing less than another Bright Young Wizard! I said to myself, as soon as I felt two piddling spells in the half of an hour, 'Molestam, who else would be tossing magic about as if it were cracklings?' So I came for a look and, sure enough, there he is, fairly burning with ambition to oust poor old Molestam and have her lands for his own, to terrorize and bleed! If there's aught I despise, 'tis a pushy new magician!"

"Madam!" Matt straightened, trying to look the soul of offended righteousness. "I assure you, I have no-"

"As if there weren't enough competition in the magic business as it is!" Molestam wheezed. "Just when you think you're secure and can settle down to lord it over your own terrified peasants in peace, there's another cheeky young challenger to be put in his place. Not like the old days, it isn't, when a person could mind her own business and milk her own peasants, and no one to trouble her a bit about it. But now, a body can't do the first thing she wants in her own country, no she can't, especially not since that upstart Malingo started throwing his weight around. But not in my district! Let any young wonder-worker try his hand here and he'll not have a hand left - nor his life!" Her arms sliced down in an arc, fingers writhing into an intricate symbol while she shrieked,

"Murrain and jaundice now all betide ye,
May Hell's devils and demons all leap a--

"Nay!" Stegoman roared, leaping forward, and a ten-foot tongue of flame slashed out before him.

Molestam looked up, startled and horrified; then her eyes narrowed, and her symbol-hand darted out at Stegoman.

"By all the foul gargoyles that ever did plate it,
Turn this fool monster to basalt and granite!"

Stegoman froze as if he'd been dropped into a block of quick-setting plastic. Slowly, his scales darkened into dull, black stone.

"Get down!" Matt shoved the princess into a dip in the ground and threw himself in after her. With that much carbon-based compound suddenly transmuted into silicon, there might be a hellish lot of loose radiation in the air, and he wasn't taking any chances. At least now they were out of the line of sight.

Above them he heard Molestam's voice screeching closer. "Ye'll not hide from me, audacious youth! I'll seek ye and find ye, and then woe betide ye!"

"Can you not stop her?" Alisande demanded.

"I'll try," Matt said grimly. He whirled a finger about as if he were spinning a top and chanted:

"Now the crone begins turning, just like a corkscrew,
And her rash revolution I think she'll soon rue.
For her conduct was such that she's long overdue
To be drilled down to bedrock and vanish from view!"

With a startled screech, Molestam began to turn on her pointed toes. She howled with despair as she reached dervish speed. Her toes bit into the earth, and her whole body began to sink into the ground.

Then Matt began to regret the extremity of the fate he'd decreed. She was an evil witch, but he had no proof she deserved the death penalty. He set his jaw and added lines:

"She is drilling through rock, but she'll come out alive,
Where it's lightless and damp, down at full fathom five.
She will spend her last days driving Pluto's pale kine,
Where it's dark as a dungeon and deep as a mine!"

With one last tearing shriek of rage, the witch sank out of sight.

The princess sank against Matt with a sigh, limp with relief. He took hold of her elbows, holding her up. "All right. It's all right now. She's gone, and we're alive."

"Aye.. We live." Alisande seemed to recollect her royalty. Her body moved a little from him. Matt was staring at what had been Stegoman, and she followed his gaze. "Oh, the dragon! The poor beast!"

Matt stepped toward the unwilling statue. "Well, he can't feel pain, at least. Let's see if we can do something about that. Uh, I mean"

"Aye, I know." The princess caught up her skirts and came after him. "But what's to be done, Wizard?"

"I don't know," Matt admitted, coming to the statue. He laid a hand on the neck. "It's warn - but not hot. Look at the detail! If this were sculpture, I'd say it was the greatest piece of kitsch I ever saw!"

"'Tis your friend, not a statue," Alisande reminded him with a touch of apserity. "How will you thaw him?"

"Thaw? No, your Highness, I don't think it's so much a matter of thawing as of ontogeny recapitulating philogony."

"Of what?"

"The development of the individual summarizing the history of the species." Danger from new spells or not, the dragon was his friend, and he had to make an effort. "Some people claim all life began as chemicals leached out of rock by rain."

"What nonsense is this?" Alisande demanded. "All know God created life."

"Yes, but the accounts don't say much about how He went about it. Better get far away, your Highness. This might be dangerous."

The princess started to speak, then turned away, murmuring, "I prithee, take care. Your welfare concerns me."

"Me, too," Matt said absently, his mind on the problem. He decided that he'd need both vocal and physical symbols-rhymes and gestures. He should probably make allusions to evolution and God, and reinforce them by holding out a hand, totally stiff, then having it move a little and then more, like a statue coming to life.

He took a deep breath, stepped back, and began:

"When at first the Lord all life was giving,
Stone was leached to make a broth of living.
Stone thus helped to turn the seas vermilion;
Thing of stone, become once more reptilian!"

His hand undulated like a snake in a high breeze. He held his breath and hoped.

With a crackle like a thousand shards of ice breaking, Stegoman slowly turned his head. The dull gray eyes became milky; black pinpoints appeared in their centers and expanded into pupils and irises. The whole great-length of body shivered, turning slowly to dark green. The dragon closed his eyes and stretched his jaw in a yawn. "What has happened, Wizard? Each separate muscle within me is leaden and sore."

Matt heaved a sigh of relief. "You were stoned, Stegoman. The real, authentic condition."