Talking to Dragons

Talking to Dragons is a comic fantasy novel by the American writer Patricia C. Wrede. It appeared in 1985 and later became the fourth and closing volume of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, told in the first person by a boy of sixteen called Daystar.

Daystar lives with his mother Cimorene at the edge of the Enchanted Forest, where she raises him on legends of the forest, lessons in swordplay, spells and the careful manners that magic demands. The wizard Antorell, who carries an old grievance against Cimorene, comes to attack them. She answers him with a spell that melts him into a puddle, refuses to explain where such magic came from, walks into the forest and returns with a sword, which she gives to Daystar along with instructions not to come home until he can tell her why he had to go.

In the forest the boy meets Suz, a talking golden lizard, who says the sword is the Sword of the Sleeping King and tells him to follow it. That errand leads him to a ring of hedges where a young fire witch named Shiara is hiding, a girl whose magic fires only when it chooses and who has already been abducted once by wizards because she cannot govern it. The pair travel on into a countryside where dragons, kings and the Society of Wizards all have a claim on the sword and on the boy who is carrying it.