It'll handle most things, but all it can produce in the way of dessert is burned mint custard and sour-cream-and-onion ice cream."

"Ugh!" said Cimorene. "I see your problem."

"Exactly. Can you manage?"

"Not if you want cherries jubilee," Cimorene said, frowning. "I haven't got a pot large enough to make seven dragons' worth of cherries jubilee.

Would chocolate mousse do? I can make two or three batches, and there should be time for all of them to chill if you're not starting until eight "Chocolate mousse will be fine," Kazul assured her. "Come along and I'll show you where to bring it."

Cimorene picked up a lamp and followed Kazul into the public tunnels that surrounded Kazul's private caves. She was a little surprised, but when she saw the size of the banquet cave, she understood. It was enormous. Fifty or sixty dragons, perhaps even a hundred of them, would fit into it quite comfortably. Obviously it had to be a public room; there simply wasn't enough space under the Mountains of Morning for every dragon to have a cave this size.

Kazul made sure Cimorene could find her way to the banquet cave without help and then left her in the kitchen to melt slabs of chocolate and whip gallons of cream for the mousse. By the time she finished, she was hot and tired, and all she really wanted to do was to take a nap.

But Kazul was expecting her to serve the mousse, and Cimorene wasn't about to appear before all those dragons in her old clothes with sweaty straggles of hair sticking to her neck and a smear of chocolate across her nose, so instead of napping, she pumped a cauldron of water, heated it on the kitchen fire, and took a bath.

Once she was clean she felt much better. She checked to make sure the mousse was setting properly, then went into her own rooms to decide what she should wear. Unfortunately, she was afraid she didn't have much choice. The wardrobe in her bedroom was full of neat, serviceable dresses suitable for cooking in or rummaging through treasure, but the only dressy clothes she had were the ones she had arrived in. She got them out of the back of the wardrobe and found to her dismay that the hem of the gown was badly stained with mud from her long walk. There was no time to clean it; she would have to wear one of the everyday dresses.