by C. J. Busby
Olivia looked mutinous. “I can’t do tomorrow morning. I have a very important appointment with the practice dummy.”
“Well, there’s no option, sorry. Lancelot won’t be here till tomorrow afternoon, and there’s no one else – you’ll have to.”
“But it’s my last chance to get my disarming technique perfected before I have to fight Mordred,” wailed Olivia. “And you promised you’d let me fight against you afterwards, so you can’t do it either.”
“I’ll do it!” said Adolphus eagerly, bouncing up to them. “I like being a frog! I’ll watch down the chimney, I know I can be really quiet!”
Olivia and Max exchanged glances. Adolphus? In an important position of trust? Where he had to be really, really secret? Putting the dimmest dragon in the kingdom in charge of spying on Morgana le Fay was probably not the best idea…
“Quack! I’ll do it! Quack! Always glad to be of service!” A small duck flew down from the roof beams where he’d been watching them, and winked one beady black eye at Adolphus. “You can help me, Adolphus, if you like. Good to have a faithful follower.”
“Vortigern!” said Max. “Brilliant! I was wondering where you’d got to.”
The duck bobbed his head at them all in greeting, and they bowed back. They had met him a few weeks ago, when Camelot got iced, and he had been a huge help in saving the castle. He was, strictly speaking, a royal duck, after a favour one of his ancestors had done for a king, but he graciously allowed them to call him by his name rather than Your Royal Highness.
Olivia clapped her hands. “Excellent. Vortigern can keep Adolphus company. They’ll be fine together, and we can all meet back here at lunch time and see what they’ve found out.”
“Nothing, I expect,” said Ferocious cheerfully. “His Royal Duckness will be too busy looking to see if they’ve got any bread, and Adolphus wouldn’t recognise a plot if it jumped out of a bush and bit him on the nose.”
But Ferocious was wrong. By lunchtime next day it had become clear that Morgana’s plot involved a spell so huge that even Adolphus on a bad day couldn’t miss it.
Casting the Swordspell
Sir Richard Hogsbottom was hunched over a flickering fire in the corner of a richly furnished room in the north tower of the castle. A small black cauldron was perched on the fire in front of him, and the spicy smell of magic was filling the chamber.
Sir Richard was trying very hard not to sneeze. He was aware of the dark figure of Lady Morgana le Fay close by, her long white fingers gesturing over the cauldron and her black hair snaking out around her cold pale face. Sir Richard was quite sure that sneezing, at this precise moment of magical creation, would ruin the spell and ensure that he ended his days buried under twenty feet of horse manure. But the spicy magic smell was tickling his nose and throat, and he really thought he might choke to death if he didn’t at least cough. He shifted slightly in his chair, and the third figure in the room turned to him with a frown. It was his son, Adrian, otherwise known as Snotty – a tall boy of about twelve with spiky black hair. He gave his father a stern look, then turned back to the cauldron, passing Morgana a small glass bottle.
“Hair from the head of Arthur Pendragon,” said Morgana with satisfaction, and cast the contents into the pot. The liquid inside bubbled, turned a deep green colour and gave off a smell of newly mown grass. Snotty passed her another bottle, again containing a lock of hair, and she added it with a twisted smile and a comment about the knight it belonged to, but Sir Richard was not paying attention. He was pinching his nose tightly between his finger and thumb and holding his breath, trying desperately not to release the sneeze that was now forcing its way up through his whole body.
Morgana passed her hands over the cauldron and closed her pale blue eyes, concentrating hard. In her low, honey-sweet voice, she chanted the words of the spell, and tendrils of golden yellow steam started to rise up from the surface of the liquid, which was slowly changing colour. Snotty, too, seemed to be holding his breath, but more from awe than the need to keep down any kind of inappropriate snort. Sir Richard thought he really might die if he didn’t sneeze this instant, and for a moment wondered if either of his two companions would actually care.
He contemplated them both through watering eyes. This was the fourth time they had come together in a plot against King Arthur, but so far each of those plots had been foiled by that dratted boy Max Pendragon and his dreadful sister Olivia, along with their ridiculous pet rat and dozy dragon. To say nothing of their utterly ghastly father, Sir Bertram. At the thought of Sir Bertram Pendragon and his ridiculous moustache, Sir Richard sniffed hard. Unfortunately, the sniff met the sneeze somewhere round the back of his throat, and that was that. Sir Richard exploded in a shower of spit, snot and pent-up snort that was so sudden it didn’t even have time to sound like a sneeze, more like the last yell of a dying man. Which it very nearly was.
Luckily for Sir Richard, at exactly the same moment as the sneeze Morgana lifted up her white arms and spoke the final words of the spell. The whole room seemed to shiver, and a burst of light from the cauldron seared Sir Richard’s eyeballs. When he could see again, Morgana was holding a shining sword with a gleaming jewelled hilt, and was shaking the last drops of potion off its length.
“The swordspell,” she breathed. “The final spell. The spell that will bring Arthur Pendragon down.”
She turned her icy stare on Sir Richard, and her expression would have frozen the heart of the bravest knight. Not being the slightest bit brave, Sir Richard quaked, and waited for her to blast him down into the castle duck pond with a swift transference spell. But Morgana had not noticed his sneeze. She had been too intent on the magic in front of her.
“So, Sir Richard,” she said, and smiled at last. “The first part of the plan is in place. A few more easy little spells and then we have him. And I…” she took a deep breath, and raised the sword aloft, “I shall be queen… at last!” Her expression was triumphant, and terrible. Sir Richard could not suppress a shiver, but Snotty smiled, and the expression on his pale face was an almost exact mirror of Morgana’s own.
***
Down in the castle practice yard, Max was flat out on the ground, looking white, and Olivia was hovering over him, wringing her hands.
“Max, I’m really sorry – are you all right? I thought you’d dodge it… I didn’t mean—”
“Well that’s all right then,” said a sarcastic voice. Ferocious slid out of Max’s belt pouch, wincing, and sprawled on the ground next to him. “Didn’t mean to kill us both with your ill-timed thrust to the midriff… So we’ll just die here quietly and you can put flowers on our grave to show how sorry you are. Charmed, I’m sure.”
Max groaned, and Olivia knelt down beside him, looking concerned.
“Max! Are you all right?”
“Uurrghh…” was all he could manage, but there was a little colour coming back into his cheeks, and he seemed to be breathing again. After a few minutes, he opened his eyes, and gingerly sat up.
“Druid’s toenails!” he gasped. “What was that?”
“It was a disarming manoeuvre Dad showed me yesterday,” said Olivia, looking guilty. “I thought you knew it was coming. I thought you’d dodge it.”
“No,” said Max, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Not you. Just before you whacked me – there was something… like a rock fall. The whole castle shook.”
Olivia looked puzzled. “I didn’t notice anything. Are you sure?”
“Ferocious? Did you feel anything?” asked Max.
“Nope,” said Ferocious, shaking his head. “Nothing I could feel. Sure it’s not the knock on the head, Max? Or… well… I know it’s a bit embarrassing to get defeated by your little sister but, you know, she’s getting very good. You don’t need an excuse for going down to her savage disarming technique.”
Max frowned. “Very funny, Ferocious. But I felt something massively powerful hit me. And if none of you noticed it, it makes me wonder if it was some
thing to do with magic.”
“But there’s magic going on all the time, Max,” said Olivia. “All sorts of spells and enchantments all over the castle. They don’t normally affect you.”
“It’s true, they don’t,” said Max, thoughtfully. “But maybe – if it was a really massive spell…”
Olivia frowned. “You think it might be Morgana? You think it might be this swordspell she’s been planning?”
At that moment there was a loud squawk and a clatter, and a small flapping duck crash-landed right in the middle of them and started quacking really loudly. He was followed by Adolphus, who collapsed in a tangle of limbs and wings and tail, snorting fire and gulping in panic.
“Feel that?! Sent my feathers standing on end! Feel like I got struck by lightning! Quack! Shock of my life!”
“Yes!” gulped the dragon. “A big bang! Help! Olivia! Max! It was fire… and lightning and… and… I don’t feel very well.” And Adolphus rolled over and shut his eyes.
“Vortigern!” said Max. “What happened?”
“We were at the top of the north tower,” said the duck, shaking his wings and waggling his head as if he were trying to get water out of his ears. “Watching down the hole. Couldn’t see much – she was brewing a spell. And then… Hit me like a boulder to the head. Can’t stand up straight.” And indeed, he was weaving slightly from side to side as he tried to get all his feathers back in order.
“You can feel magic, can’t you?” said Max thoughtfully. “You’ve always says it makes your feathers go tingly.”
“Hah!” said the duck, his beady eyes looking slightly crossed. “Tingly feathers! More like my insides got skewered by a red-hot poker! And the blast of it took the frogspell off us both in a second. I tell you, after all that I really need a bit of bread. Quack!”
Max reached into his belt pouch, where there was always a stray bit of breakfast, and handed Vortigern a crust of bread, which he started to gobble happily. After a couple of minutes, the duck looked up.
“The thing is,” he said, “just after the blast, before we scarpered, we saw what she was holding up. It was a sword.”
“Yes, yes,” said Adolphus, raising his head slightly and thumping his tail. “She had a big sword. A really shiny big sword.”
“Max!” said Olivia. “That sounds like…”
He nodded. They must have done the swordspell. The spell that Morgana had said would sort out King Arthur once and for all.
“It’s obviously something really big,” said Max, with a shiver. “I need to send a swift to Merlin, right now.”
Max is Stuck
Ten minutes later, back in his chamber, Max finished writing his message to Merlin. Carefully, he spoke the words that turned the creamy white parchment into a small fluttering white bird, ready to fly to wherever Merlin was to be found. But as he let the swift go out of his window he spotted Snotty Hogsbottom, looking furtive, entering the castle at a small side door near the eastern wing. As quickly as he could Max hurried after him, and was soon tiptoeing quietly along one of the darker and more remote corridors in the eastern part of Castle Camelot. He was almost close enough to sense the faint buzz of magic that always accompanied Snotty, who never went anywhere without a belt pouch full of potions and spell powders, when suddenly there was a clatter ahead and a curse.
“Dragon’s breath, Jerome! You’re such a clumsy oaf!”
Dungballs. Snotty obviously had Jerome Stodmarsh with him. Jerome was Sir Richard Hogsbottom’s ward and Snotty’s faithful sidekick, a large meaty boy with red hair and a nose like a pig. Max slipped into an alcove. He had no great desire to be caught following Snotty, and he was even less keen to have to face Snotty and Jerome together.
There was a scuffle further along the corridor and then Jerome’s voice, whining.
“Why do we always have to do the dirty work? We’ve spent hours trying to get into his chambers without being seen. I’m meant to be practising for the archery contest. Why can’t your father slip it into his wine?’
“Do try not to be as stupid as you look, Jerome,” came Snotty’s drawl. “A potion isn’t strong enough. It’s got to be in his clothes. Father can’t get near enough, anyway. They don’t exactly get on, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Max wondered who they were talking about. They were going to enchant a knight, that was clear, slipping the spell into his rooms, which must be near here. The trouble was, most of the knights here for the tournament had been given chambers in the east wing. Unless Max could get closer, and actually see which room they went into, he would be none the wiser. He had just started to creep towards the edge of the alcove, when there was a sudden yelp from Jerome, and a hiss from Snotty.
Max froze. Heavy footsteps were coming up the corridor from the other end, and he could hear the clang of armour, and raised voices. He strained to make out who it was from the voices, but the knights were all talking at once, great gusts of laughter mingling with shouts and claps on the back. After a while they clearly turned down another corridor and the noises faded away.
“Now!” Snotty hissed. “His chamber’s free. Come on, Jerome, you great slug. It’s our best chance!”
Max carefully peered round the edge of the alcove, just in time to see Jerome disappearing into a knight’s chamber. He crept quietly towards the door, hoping to see whose rooms they were sneaking into, but before he got within twenty feet there was a nasty laugh from behind him. Max’s heart sank.
“Oh dear, Pendragon. Not very clever. Did you really think I wouldn’t stay back and keep a look out for any nosy spies happening to stroll past? Not much brighter than your sister’s dozy dragon, eh?”
Before Max could even turn round, Snotty flicked a few drops of liquid at him from a bottle he was carrying, and Max fell to the ground like a marble statue. Snotty pulled a rough, smelly sack over Max’s head, and a few minutes later Max felt himself being hauled painfully along a twisting, turning route, up some narrow stairs, and out onto the castle battlements.
“Now, Pendragon,” came Snotty’s sneering voice, as they dropped him roughly on the ground. “Much as I’d love to dump you over the battlements into the moat, Lady Morgana doesn’t want any kind of trouble to disrupt the festival, and finding your immobilised body floating face up in the moat might cause a few awkward questions. So I’ll just leave you here where you’ll be nice and cold and hungry for a few hours. Teach you to stick your nose in where it’s not wanted!”
He pulled the sack off, and Max could see that he was at the furthest corner of the most remote part of the castle battlements, stuck behind a pile of old stones and beams that had been used to repair one of the turrets. The spell on him wouldn’t wear off for hours, and meanwhile he couldn’t move or utter a word. He couldn’t even make a face at Snotty, who was grinning down at him with one eyebrow raised.
“Nothing to say, Pendragon? Ah well. Enjoy your afternoon!” And he and Jerome sauntered off, leaving Max fuming.
***
It was nearly nightfall before the others managed to find Max. He had spent hours trying to undo the immobility spell that Snotty had cast on him. He could tell it was Morgana’s magic – it felt like cold iron bands were wrapped around him, holding him tight. Every attempt that Max made to unravel or throw the magic off just seemed to pull it tighter around him. In fact, he was pretty sure that the spell would have worn off much quicker if he’d just left it alone.
By the time Ferocious came scampering out onto the battlements, Max could just about raise one eyebrow and make a soft whistling noise.
“Ah,” said Ferocious, when he’d tracked down the strange noise to the pile of stones in the corner. “Here you are. I’m guessing you ran into our old friend Snotty?”
Max tried to nod, but didn’t succeed. He rolled one eye instead.
“Right then,” said the rat, nudging his ear in a friendly fashion. “I’ll just go and get the others.”
When the rest of them came clattering up the winding stair
s a few minutes later, Max was half glad, half dismayed to see that Merlin was with them. Merlin seemed weary, and his clothes were spattered with mud. He looked as if he’d been travelling hard, and in his hand was Max’s swift. Lancelot bounded up the stairs behind him, and when he saw Max his long crooked face broke into a grin.
“Dear, dear. Caught by one of Morgana’s special little immobility spells, eh? Happens to the best of us. I spent a few hours propped up in the corner of her chambers, once. She used me as a hat stand.”
Olivia stifled a laugh, then tried to look solemn and concerned, while Merlin reached over and wafted the spell off Max with a wave of his hand. Max sat up stiffly, and rubbed his elbow where a stone had been digging into it.
“I tried to take it off,” he said, defensively. “I really did. It just seemed to bind it tighter.”
“Really?” said Merlin, raising his eyebrows and looking pleased. “That’s actually a good sign. You were getting hold of the magic, at least. But Morgana’s magic is tricky. It can get you turned around if you’re not careful, not paying attention. You can end up adding your magic to hers, rather than undoing it. But you’ve done well – it’s the first stage. You just need to practise more.”
He threw Max a small grey stone, and Max fumbled, dropped it and then scrabbled around on the ground. Olivia sighed, and picked it up for him.
“It’s bespelled,” said Merlin. “Morgana had an argument with Sir Peverell at a feast a few years back and stormed out after turning the entire banquet into a small pebble.”
Max looked at the stone in his hand. He could feel the iron touch of Morgana’s magic – but a whole feast? In one small pebble?
Merlin smiled. “Keep it, Max. See if you can take it off. Your reward will be roast boar’s head and more cinnamon pastries than you could eat in a month. But more than that,” he added, more seriously. “I feel we are coming to the end, with Morgana. And I need you to help me, Max, to defeat her. Which means you must be able to overcome her spells. So – practise!”
