I didn't try to chase the lizard. For one thing, there wasn't much point in it.

Suz was small enough to hide practically anywhere. For another, I didn't want to go running through the Enchanted Forest. People get killed that way, or enchanted, or other unpleasant things. Besides, I wanted to think.

I settled back against the tree and looked down at the sword, a little unhappily. "Follow the sword," Suz had said. But Mother had told me not to draw it unless I meant to use it, and I didn't think "following" it was the kind of use she meant. Besides, I wasn't sure I wanted to draw a magic sword in the middle of the Enchanted Forest, especially one I didn't know anything about. I decided to try something else.

I stood up and looked around. Over on my right there was a little gap in the trees, not enough to call a clearing, just a place where the trees were farther apart than usual. I went over to the middle of it and stood there while I tried to unfasten the sheath. That was a lot more complicated than it looked, and in the end I had to take the whole belt off. I wrapped the belt around the sheath and set it down in the middle of the open space. I backed up a couple of steps and sat down on the ground with the hilt of the sword close to me and the end of the sheath pointing away from me.

The woods had gone very, very quiet. I didn't like that, but after all the trouble I'd had getting out of the belt, I would have felt stupid if I'd just picked up the sword again without doing anything. Besides, I'd started setting up for a spell, and leaving things like that half-finished can be awfully dangerous.

I took a deep breath and spoke as steadily as I could:

"Sword of the Sleeping King I conjure thee: By stream and starlight, By sun and shadow, By song and storm wind, Show me thy tail!"

It was the simplest spell I knew-almost the only one, in fact. It's supposed to let the spell caster know more about the nature of whatever object is named in the first line of the chant. I didn't think the spell would work quite the usual way on a magic sword, but it wouldn't do any harm, and I was hoping to find out something useful.