by C. J. Busby
Contents
Title Page
Cauldrons and Promises
Secrets and Plans
A Traveller in Disguise
Kissing a Frog
A Fight!
Spell School and Squire Training
Meeting Great-Aunt Wilhelmina
Spying for Merlin
The Treasure of Annwn
Spells and Cauldrons
Morgana’s Magic
To the Rescue!
Max’s Task
Songs and Celebrations
About the Author
Copyright
Cauldrons and Promises
If Adolphus the dragon had not fallen through the trapdoor and landed head first in Max’s cauldron, then the cauldron would not have ended up severely bent out of shape, and maybe Max’s spells wouldn’t have gone quite so spectacularly wrong. He certainly wouldn’t have needed to go looking for a new cauldron, and that was really what saved them all.
Max was down in the cellar of Castle Perilous, packing, and he was as nervous as a cat at a rally of wolfhounds. Tomorrow he was leaving for the castle of the icy sorceress, Morgana le Fay, to study at her summer Spell School, and he wasn’t at all sure he’d survive the experience. Last time he’d seen Morgana, it was just after he’d turned her into a frog and helped foil her wicked plot to overthrow King Arthur. Max didn’t think he was exactly her favourite person at the moment, and he couldn’t stop thinking about what might be waiting for him at her castle in Gore. So when Adolphus catapulted through the cellar ceiling, he nearly died of fright on the spot.
“Aaaarrghh! Help! Fire! Thunder! Sorcery!” he shrieked, scrambling to the furthest corner of the cellar, before stopping and peering through the gloom at the struggle going on in front of him. Max’s spell books and carefully packed bags had been knocked in all directions, and his cauldron was rocking wildly back and forth while two large clawed feet and a blue-green scaly tail waved frantically from the top of it.
“Adolphus!” shouted Max, his fright turning to a mixture of anger and exasperation. “You dozy dragon! Look what you’ve done to my packing!”
“Aarrhh… mmphh… blurgh,” came a muffled voice from the depths of the cauldron. Having once been turned into a frog, Max could now understand animals’ speech – but he didn’t need any special ability to guess that Adolphus was saying something like, “Help! Get me out!”
Just as he started to pull at the dragon’s back legs, a small head appeared above him, peering through the splintered wood of the trapdoor. A small head with long dark plaits and a worried expression. It was Max’s younger sister Olivia, Adolphus’s owner.
“Is he all right?” she asked, trying to see into the gloom.
“Mmmphh!” said Adolphus loudly, at the sound of her voice, and swished his tail enthusiastically, whacking Max across the head and sending him flying.
“Oops!” said Olivia, as she saw Max sprawling on the straw next to a pile of upturned boxes. “I’d better come down.”
A few minutes later they had managed to haul Adolphus out of the cauldron. He bounded around the cellar thanking them while Max examined his cauldron anxiously.
“What on earth were you doing?” he asked, looking up at the hole in the trapdoor.
“Um – Adolphus was hanging upside down on a roof beam, pretending to be a bat – but he fell off and went right through the trapdoor.”
Max raised his eyebrows with a sigh.
“I’m really sorry about the cauldron. Is it all right?”
“Shouldn’t think so,” said a voice. It was Max’s pet rat, Ferocious, who had poked his head out of Max’s tunic and was casting a professional eye over the cauldron. “Nope. Definitely got a list to the left. And a bulge. And a few dents. Never do a decent spell again, if you ask me.”
“Do you really think so?” said Max in despair. “Mum’s going to kill me. I only got it last month after I burned the bottom out of my last one.”
“It’s not you she’s going to kill, it’s me,” said Olivia. “Or rather… it’s Adolphus.”
They looked at the dragon, who was happily sniffing around the cellar looking for woodlice to eat. Lady Griselda Pendragon was quite mild-tempered most of the time, but Adolphus had been trying her patience lately.
“He broke her best broomstick last week,” said Olivia. “And he ruined her sunshine spell for the haymaking. It rained all afternoon. We can’t tell her, Max – she said he’d have to go if he broke anything else!”
Adolphus looked up from his search and waved his forked tail.
“Go?” he said happily. “Go where? Are we going somewhere? Can I come? What fun! Whoopee!”
Max sighed. Adolphus was totally brainless, but, along with Ferocious, he had been through quite an adventure with them. He’d helped them when Max first discovered his unusual frogspell and accidentally turned himself, Olivia and Ferocious into frogs; he’d helped them escape from Camelot when they were trapped there by Max’s worst enemy, Snotty Hogsbottom; and he’d helped defeat King Arthur’s scheming half-sister, Morgana le Fay, who wanted the throne for herself. Max couldn’t let Lady Griselda banish him. He would just have to take a bent cauldron to the Spell School in Gore.
“All right,” he said. “I won’t tell. We’d better clear up the mess and mend the trapdoor.”
“Bad decision, you mark my words,” said Ferocious darkly from the depths of Max’s tunic.
But he was wrong. It was Max’s decision to take the bent cauldron that probably saved his life. That, and Olivia’s ongoing campaign to train as a knight.
***
Olivia’s campaign had not been going well lately, as her father was still adamant that girls could not be knights. However, Sir Bertram Pendragon was feeling more than usually benevolent that morning. The previous day he’d had a marvellous time hunting (caught nothing, as usual, but he’d been the last knight standing at the celebratory mead-drinking contest afterwards, and that always put him in a good mood). A brief glance in the mirror had told him that his moustache was now officially the most magnificent in Castle Perilous and quite possibly bushier than that of Sir Lionel of Leogrance, who held the current record for the kingdom. And to top it all, his favourite horse, Daisy, was now fit as a fiddle and prancing round the meadow, having recovered from a sad bout of knee strain after their last jousting competition.
So when Olivia caught him in the Great Hall and begged, yet again, for the chance to train as a knight, he didn’t immediately bellow “Over my dead body!” and storm out of the castle. He sighed, sat down in the great chair by the fireplace and gestured for her to sit beside him.
“Olivia, my dear,” he said. “You are my favourite daughter—”
“Your only daughter,” put in Olivia.
“Well, yes, indeed. My only favourite daughter, whom I love dearly. But I’m afraid it’s simply not possible. Girls are not knights. They can’t fight.”
“I can fight better than Max.”
Sir Bertram sighed again. It was true that his son Max was a bit of a disappointment as a squire. And it was true, too, that Olivia, though two years younger, was already almost as tall, quite as strong and a lot more fierce. If she ever got any serious training, Sir Bertram thought, she’d be a total menace. But he couldn’t really tell her so or there’d be no stopping her.
He put on his most serious expression and said sternly, “You are supposed to be a lady. Ladies don’t fight. Nor do they push people in the duck pond. Nor do they steal a horse and win the squire’s gallop in disguise.” He tried to sound disapproving about that particular escapade, but couldn’t stop a note of pride entering his voice. She really was a fearless rider, he thought. It was a pity she hadn’t been a boy. But still. The rules were clear. Girls
could not be knights.
“But Father,” said Olivia, in her best wheedling voice, “you could be the first knight to break the rules. You could be the knight with the biggest moustache, the knight who can quaff the most ale in a single swallow and the only knight whose daughter is a squire.”
Sir Bertram frowned at her. It was true; he rather liked breaking rules. And it was also true that it would be rather wonderful to have a magnificent moustache and a daughter who was training to be a knight. Should he let her have a go?
Olivia sensed his hesitation. It was the moment she’d been waiting for. It was her best chance to strike a deal.
“Father. If I can win the Squires’ Challenge in September, will you promise to let me train to be a knight?”
Sir Bertram blinked. What? The Squires’ Challenge? The most prestigious competition for novice squires in the kingdom? He couldn’t help it; he burst out laughing so hard he nearly choked on his moustache.
“Olivia! My dear child! What an idea! You wouldn’t even be allowed to enter…”
“Yes I would,” said Olivia, ignoring the display of mirth. “I could disguise myself as a boy. All you have to do is sign to say I haven’t been training for longer than a year. Which I won’t have.”
“But you haven’t been training at all!” said Sir Bertram, still hiccupping and spluttering. “You’ll end up in the manure heap after the first bout…”
“Well then – you won’t have to worry about me training as a knight, will you? And I promise, if you give me a chance and I fail, I’ll never ever mention it again!”
This was her trump card. Olivia had been pestering Sir Bertram for three whole months, and it had all been for this moment. The moment she held out the possibility of peace and quiet – in exchange for one chance of getting what she wanted. It was a master plan. Sir Bertram saw a future of blessed peace, of a new, demure and ladylike Olivia, and he took the bait instantly. After all, there was less likelihood of Olivia winning the Squires’ Challenge than there was of the castle duck pond freezing over in August. And if by some miracle she did it – well, she really would deserve to be trained.
“Done!” he said, and they shook hands on it. Olivia was almost fizzing with excitement. The first stage of her plan was complete. Now she only had to get the second stage sorted and she was on her way to being a knight!
Secrets and Plans
The morning Max was to set off for Castle Gore was grey, cold and rainy. Max looked out of his window and shrugged. The weather looked as dismal as he felt. He had three days of hard riding with Sir Boris the Most Boring Knight in Christendom, and then he would be stuck in the cold misty lakeland of Gore, in the forbidding castle of Lady Morgana le Fay, for six whole weeks, trying not to get himself turned into anything unpleasant. Sir Bertram had made it clear that if he wanted to learn magic when he came back, he would have to get his Certificate of Spell Mastery at the end of the course. But getting that would be almost as difficult as coming home in one piece. Lady Morgana had been sweet as honey when she awarded Max the prize of a place at her Spell School, but he wasn’t fooled. The kingdom’s most powerful sorceress had a definite grudge against him, and just thinking about her hard pale blue eyes and her tinkling icicle laugh made him want to hide under the bedclothes and miss the trip north altogether.
He trudged to the stable to get his horse, Arnold, saddled up ready to go, wishing that Olivia and Adolphus were coming with him. But Sir Bertram had flatly refused to let her go, and Max didn’t think even Olivia was going to be able to get round him.
“Hey, Arnold,” he said gloomily as he opened the stable door.
Arnold blew a friendly horsey sort of greeting that sounded a bit like, “Aha, oats on their way then?” and shook his mane. As Max emptied a few buckets of oats into the trough, Olivia poked her head round the corner.
“All packed then, Max? Got everything?”
“Yeah, I think so…” said Max, looking around at his assorted bags.
Olivia sidled in and asked nonchalantly, “So, did you ever get round to brewing up any more frogspell antidote?”
Max frowned at her. She was clearly trying to make her enquiry look totally innocent, but had failed utterly. “Why would I want frogspell antidote?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Olivia airily. “Just, well, you never know. What if you meet an enchanted frog you don’t fancy kissing? Or turn yourself into a frog and then can’t turn back?”
Max narrowed his eyes. What was Olivia up to? She wasn’t planning anything silly, was she? He glanced at his small pack of spell stuff and saw the two potion bottles poking out of one side. Just to be on the safe side, he took them out and checked. Yes – there was the frogspell, nearly a full bottle of blue gunk he’d brewed up just last month, and the newly brewed green antidote. None was missing and he knew Olivia couldn’t make it herself, so it looked like she was just playing some game or other. He shrugged.
“Yes, I’ve got them both. So I guess if things get too bad in Gore I can always turn myself into a frog and hop home. Should only take me – oh – about three hundred years to get back. But I suppose at least I’d be alive.”
Olivia looked sympathetic. “It’ll be all right, Max,” she said. “You’ll be fine. You’ll get the certificate; you’re really good at spells. And then we only have to get me through the Squires’ Challenge and we’ll both be doing what we want!”
Max laughed. Olivia had told him the previous day about the promise she’d extracted from Sir Bertram. “Olivia,” he said. “You do know that you’ve got less chance of winning than Adolphus has of being awarded the prize for Brainiest Dragon in the Kingdom? You’re very good, for a girl, but you’ve only trained with me, and I’m not exactly the world’s best sword master.”
“No, you’re pretty much the world’s worst,” agreed Olivia happily. “But that’s okay, Max, because I have a plan…” and she tapped the side of her nose with her finger and looked mysterious.
Max wondered what the plan was. Did it have anything to do with her strange interest in the frogspell? He was just about to ask, when they were both distracted by the sudden appearance of a small white fluttering bird, which swooped through the stable door and hovered in front of him expectantly. Ferocious poked his head out of Max’s tunic, impressed.
“Well, well, Max, it’s a swift, for you. You’re going up in the world!”
Olivia’s eyes widened. A swift was a magical note. Neither she nor Max had ever received one before, although they had seen a few – Lady Griselda occasionally used them for really important messages. Max reached out, and the swift fluttered down and crumpled into a small folded piece of creamy white parchment in his hand. He opened it. The message was addressed to him and written in a clear, firm hand. Max read it aloud.
Dear Max,
I am sure you are feeling a little apprehensive about your forthcoming visit to the castle of a certain lady. Please do not be. I have a good friend who will be at the castle keeping a close eye out for you, and besides, I shall be there myself for the final week. King Arthur is making an official visit to his northern borders and will be staying at Gore. The lady will be anxious that nothing should happen to prevent this visit, certainly not any mysterious or suspicious accidents to one of her young novices. So be of good heart! And, if you can, keep your eyes and ears open. I fear she is plotting something for Arthur’s visit but I cannot find out what, and the king, as usual, will hear nothing against his half-sister. If you need me urgently, this swift has one more journey in it, and will find me wherever I am.
Merlin
As Max read, the message faded, and he was left with a blank piece of parchment, quivering slightly as if ready to leave immediately. Max knew that, thrown into the air with a few simple words, it would turn back into the white bird and soar off to wherever Merlin was to be found. He folded it carefully, stowed it in his belt pouch and then looked up at Olivia.
“Well!” she said, solemnly. “Merlin!”
Max felt rather similar. Merlin! He thought of his bright, hawk-like eyes and his lean brown face. With his dark clothes and long sword, Merlin looked like any other hardened knight, one of King Arthur’s many battle-weary fighting men. But he was the most powerful magician the kingdom had ever known. And he had sent a magical message to Max! Not only that, but he had asked him to keep an eye on Morgana le Fay, and given him the means to contact him if he needed to. Max suddenly felt considerably less small and scared about the trip to Gore. He was actually starting to feel a trickle of excitement.
“Well, that’s all very well, I’m sure,” said Ferocious, cleaning his whiskers, apparently unimpressed. “Good to have Merlin on our side, of course. But who is this friend, exactly? And Merlin’s not coming till the final week, is he? Still have to make sure we don’t get chopped into small pieces before then.”
Max grinned. “Oh come on, Ferocious. He seems pretty sure she won’t try anything. She wants Arthur to come and visit. She doesn’t want anyone suspecting she’s an evil old hag, does she?”
“Well, that’s what he says,” sniffed Ferocious. “We’ll just have to hope he’s right.”
“Ferocious, it’s Merlin we’re talking about here. He probably knows more about her than we do,” said Olivia, exasperated.
“Hmm, well, that’s all right then, obviously,” said Ferocious. “I’ll just go back to sleep. Wake me when you’re in danger of being zapped into a dung beetle, Max, and I’ll try and make sure the other dung beetles don’t eat you.” And he buried himself back in Max’s tunic.
But Max refused to be downcast. Not with Merlin keeping an eye out for him. He felt as if a particularly indigestible and stodgy lump of pudding in his stomach had been dissolved with a cool bubbling drink of pure spring water. Max patted Arnold and started to saddle him up. Whatever happened, he was determined that he would discover what Morgana was up to. He was so busy thinking of how he would foil Morgana’s plot, and reveal all to Merlin when he saw him again, that he didn’t notice Olivia gently remove the potion bottles from his saddlebags and replace them with two identical ones.
