Maze Running and other Magical Missions

by Lari Don

The dragon snorted. “The child centaur could stop the Master?”

  “Yes. That’s why the Master injured him. He’s afraid of Yann’s strength, his bravery, his skills. The Master could have injured any one of us, and the rest of us would have searched for the tokens he wants, to heal our friend.”

  The dragon nodded. “That is your weakness. I don’t need magical vision to see that. Your weakness is that you can’t bear to see your friends hurt.”

  “That’s not a weakness,” said Helen. “That’s a strength.”

  She kept building her case for saving Yann. “Even though Yann would have been the best one to lead the quests, the Master didn’t injure me or Catesby or Lavender or Rona. He injured Yann, because he’s afraid Yann could defeat him. He’s trying to get rid of a serious opponent and get his healing at the same time. It makes sense, doesn’t…” She paused before that became a question.

  “So if we heal Yann, he can stop the Master, which will end the problem permanently, unlike your plan. There must be other healing tokens in other places, and other good people the Master can force to collect them. It’s not enough to deny him this last Scottish token. We should stop him completely. Send him back to his maze.”

  “Go on,” said the dragon.

  “So my second question is this: will you please ask your dragons to stop hindering us in our search for the tokens?”

  The Great Dragon clicked her claws once more, and shook her head. “If I call off Jewel, Crag and the others, then the Master will seize the token from you, the moment you have it. That’s the flaw in your argument. The Master won’t permit you to heal your friend if he is afraid of him. If you collect a token, you are helping the minotaur, not the centaur.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Helen. “Yann is our strength and our bravery, but my other friends have skills and experience too. Lee is his king’s champion.” The dragon huffed a noise which even Helen’s new hearing didn’t understand, so she kept talking. “Lavender has great wisdom, Sylvie already leads a pack, Tangaroa is the best rhyme gatherer among the blue men of the Minch, Rona is a true Storm Singer and Catesby is the one who blinded the Master a year ago.

  “All my friends have talents. That’s why the Master chose us to get these tokens for him. Now that we know what he wants, we won’t be easily fooled or overcome. But we can’t fight him and your dragons. I’m not asking you to help us. I’m just asking you not to hinder us. And if you leave us alone, I promise the Master won’t get the token from us.”

  The Great Dragon stared at her. “You genuinely believe you can better the Master?”

  Helen said confidently, “We’ve done it before.”

  “But you don’t understand what he is capable of. You are too young and naïve to understand the depths of darkness in the world.”

  “I’d rather be young and naïve, than too old and cynical to remember why good should stand against evil.”

  The dragon roared so loud that echoes crashed back down from the domed ceiling hundreds of metres above. “You dare speak to me like that?”

  Helen looked steadily into the fiery red eyes.

  “You do dare! Perhaps that’s a good sign. If you can speak to me like that, perhaps you can challenge the Master.”

  The Great Dragon stretched, her massive scales rattling like a rockfall. Then she nodded. “I want a guarantee from you. If I ask my dragons not to hinder you, I want your personal guarantee that you will destroy the final token rather than let the Master take it. You must not let him have it, even if that means denying it to your friend.

  “As with any guarantee, there must be a penalty. A penalty that you must pay if the Master does gain the token, gain his healing and gain his power. Because of an arrangement I’ve made with your over-confident faery friend, it is not your life that will be forfeit. It is the life of one of your friends. The flower fairy, the selkie, the wolf, the blue loon or the phoenix. If you let the Master enhance his sight, I will eat one of those fabled beasts for breakfast tomorrow. Do you understand?”

  Helen didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer.

  “Are you prepared to risk their lives on the bet that your centaur is worth saving? On your faith that you have a team which can outwit the Master?”

  Helen knew that every one of her friends would risk their life for Yann in the heat of a fight. But could she make a cold-blooded promise of deliberate sacrifice on their behalf?

  If she left without persuading the Great Dragon to call off her pupils, Yann would die. She couldn’t do that to him, and she didn’t think her friends would want her to.

  So Helen nodded.

  Then, her mind on whether she should tell her friends exactly what she had just agreed, or not quite lie by not quite telling them everything, she said, “May I ask my final question now?”

  Helen suddenly realised she’d asked a third question. She hoped the dragon hadn’t noticed, then saw the long claw click down.

  “Yes. You may. And you just have!” The dragon laughed. “You may ask me another question, but I do not have to answer it, because I have already answered three questions. Foolish child, letting your emotions overcome your caution.”

  Helen said quickly, “I’ll answer another riddle to get another question.”

  “No, there are only ever three riddles. But do tell me, just out of interest, what else you wanted to ask me. I will listen, but I probably won’t answer. Not unless I feel the answer will help, when I take the long view.” The Great Dragon smiled.

  Helen tried to be polite, though she was angry with herself and with this obstructive, self-satisfied creature. “With your long knowledge of this land, Great Dragon, I wondered if you know where we can find the footprint of a king?”

  “What a shame, child. I do know where that footprint is, but I have no obligation to tell you. So, you can try to save your friend and we will not hinder you. But you have only this one afternoon to find the footprint, so I’m confident that the world is safe from the minotaur and that you will have to get used to the loss of your friend. Goodbye.”

  Helen hesitated. The dragon lifted one massive foot, pointed to the exit, then roared.

  Helen couldn’t hear any words in the rattling roar. She could no longer understand the dragon’s speech. Their conversation was over.

  She bowed and walked towards the arch where she had last seen her friends.

  She knew the clever red eyes of the Great Dragon were watching her, so she walked with her back straight and her steps steady.

  She was leaving with what she’d come for: the dragons wouldn’t interfere with the final quest. But she hadn’t got the information she needed: she had no idea where to get the final healing token. And she’d promised the life of one of her friends to the Great Dragon if the Master won the token.

  After what felt like a very long walk, she stepped into a smaller hall with blurred daylight coming through arches at the other end.

  Her friends were there, but so were Jewel and two other young dragons. The white dragon and the green dragons were prodding Sapphire’s bandage. Helen didn’t have to hear their words to know they were being rude about her short tail.

  “What happened?” Lavender asked.

  Rona said, “What happened is that Helen’s still alive. She can tell us everything else when we’re safely away. Sapphire, don’t listen to them. They don’t know whether tails grow back, they’re just tormenting you. Let’s get out of here. Up on Sapphire, everyone, then blindfold the person in front of you.”

  Helen clambered up behind Sylvie. As she tied a blue scarf round the wolf-girl’s face, she heard Lee behind her. “Is a red scarf alright for you, Helen? Your cheeks are so pale after your chat with the dragon, I’m not sure bright colours will suit you.”

  “Don’t be daft,” she answered. “Any colour will do.”

  As the faery wrapped the cool silk round her face and pulled it tight, Helen whispered, “Lee, what did you say to the Great Dragon?”

  “I told her you were
under my protection. I said you were my bard and therefore valuable to me, so if she harmed your fingers or your ears or your ability to play music for my people, then I would hunt her down with all the pent-up power of the faery army.”

  “Did she believe you?” Helen asked from the darkness of the blindfold.

  “She didn’t eat you.”

  “But Lee, can you order the whole faery army to fight for you?”

  “Not yet. But perhaps I will eventually. In the Great Dragon’s long view, ‘eventually’ is the blink of an eye. She wouldn’t risk me taking revenge even in hundreds of your years’ time.”

  Rona called from the end of the line on dragonback, “We’re all blindfolded, Sapphire, you can go.”

  As Helen felt the dragon lurch upwards, she asked, slightly louder, “So Lee, if it would help Yann, could you threaten the Master in the same way?”

  “No, the minotaur is working to a mortal timetable. He wants power now, and I don’t yet have the power to oppose him.”

  Helen nodded. But she still had more questions. “When you spoke to the dragon, did you turn into something else?”

  Lee laughed. “My glamour works on different beings in different ways. For you, I glamour a human boy, which is almost the same as my own true form. For a dragon, I glamour something else. Something she can understand. Something she has reason to fear.”

  “That Great Dragon was afraid of you?”

  “Of course,” Lee said calmly. And Helen wondered whether she should be grateful for, or wary of, the faery’s protection.

  Chapter 23

  It wasn’t possible to talk to everyone on Sapphire’s back as they flew away from the Great Hall through cold wet clouds, so Helen stayed quiet during the flight.

  When the dragon landed at Cauldhame Moor, they pulled off their blindfolds and leapt down, then all turned to look at Helen.

  She took a deep breath. “The good news is that the dragons won’t get in our way again. I persuaded the Great Dragon to call off Crag, Jewel and the rest. The bad news is more complicated…”

  Helen paused. On the flight, she’d decided not to tell her friends all the bad news. She didn’t want to admit that one of them might be eaten for breakfast tomorrow if they let the Master get a token, because she didn’t think that knowing the danger they were in would help anyone save Yann.

  “The bad news is I know why Yann was injured. The Master injured Yann so that we would search for the tokens. Presumably, if Yann had agreed to work for him, the Master would have asked Yann to find the tokens. But when Yann refused, the Master injured him so we would collect them.”

  Lavender shook her head. “No, he must have intended to injure Yann all along, because the healing tokens wouldn’t give themselves to someone working to help evil.”

  Lee nodded. “I thought that injury was too perfect. So it was a trap to injure Yann, to force us to do the Master’s bidding.” He frowned. “I don’t like being manipulated.”

  Sylvie muttered, “You manipulate everyone else…”

  Helen broke in before the wolf-girl and the faery, who had a temporary truce rather than a friendship, started to argue. “I also discovered that the Three are playing both sides. They’re happy to heal Yann and the Master, hoping both of them will cause more injuries and pain. But there’s worse news than that. The Master doesn’t just want to heal the blind eye and scars you gave him, Catesby. With the Three’s help at the equinox, a healing token can give him the power to see everyone’s weaknesses.”

  Her friends looked concerned, even frightened. They understood how dangerous that power could be.

  “So we can’t let him get the token. Agreed?”

  She looked round at everyone whose life had been threatened by the Great Dragon. No one disagreed.

  Helen sighed, then kept talking to cover her relief. “The other bad news is that I’d planned to ask about the king’s footprint, but I made a mess of the last question, so the Great Dragon didn’t tell me where it is. However she did confirm it exists.” Helen looked up at the sun, already well past noon. “We only have a few hours left. And we still don’t know where the king’s footprint is…”

  “Yes, we do,” said Lee. “I’ve studied places and objects which confer royal power. Long ago the Kings of Dalriada were crowned by standing in a carved stone footprint in Argyll. The new king placed his foot in the carving to connect with the land. Perhaps that connection to the land’s power gives the footprint healing force too.”

  “Where is it?” Helen asked.

  “On Dunadd, a hill fort in Kilmartin.” Lee grinned.

  Helen smiled back. “Excellent! But why didn’t you tell us this yesterday?”

  “Lavender was right, with no rain it was an unnecessary distraction. But we flew through rain clouds on the way here, so now the footprint might contain genuine rainwater.”

  “Let’s go to Argyll then,” said Tangaroa, clambering up Sapphire, his blue skin almost camouflaged against her scales.

  “But there’s no point getting a fourth token,” Rona said, “because the Master’s minions will just take it. It’s impossible to get a token to Yann if the Master wants it first.”

  “Of course it’s possible,” said Helen. “We just need something else to give the Master. It doesn’t have to be the true token he takes. What would we put the water in?”

  “A small glass vial,” said Lavender.

  Lee smiled. “I’ll see what Mallow has in her kitchen. But I think you want me to get more than one vial, don’t you, Helen?”

  “Yes. We’ll take one empty vial and one filled with fountain water.”

  So, ten minutes later, with a half-discussed plan, and a full vial of water hidden in Lee’s cloak, they flew to Dunadd.

  They passed through a band of rain on the way, which Tangaroa confirmed was moving east from Argyll. When they landed on the almost flat summit of Dunadd, it was no longer raining, but the ground was wet and low cloud clung to the hill.

  “This weather should keep human tourists away,” Helen said, as they all slid down.

  “We don’t need long,” said Sylvie. “Let’s get the token and go.” She flickered into her wolf form.

  “Not so fast,” said Tangaroa. “We can’t be sure we’re here alone.”

  “And the footprint won’t be easy to find.” Rona peered through the mist.

  Lee said, “I think it’s just down the slope to the northeast. But Tangaroa’s right, we must be careful.”

  Helen nodded. “The Three must have told the Master where the tokens are, so his goats might already be here.” She was whispering, as they huddled together near Sapphire’s head.

  Lee drew his sword. “We don’t have time for debate. I’m my king’s champion and a senior officer in his army. Many of you are skilled hunters, but I’m the only soldier here.” He spoke brusquely, as if he was giving orders to troops. “You will all do as I say, so we can get away as fast as possible.”

  Sylvie growled, but Helen said, “Let Lee suggest his plan, Sylvie, and unless you see any flaws, let’s just do it. We don’t have time to argue. Yann doesn’t have time.”

  The wolf nodded.

  So Lee stood in front of them, back straight, sword in hand, speaking clearly and sharply. “The dragon will remain here, as there is no room down by the footprint. Helen will fill the vial and I will go with her to watch her back.”

  Sylvie snarled something sarcastic, which no one translated for Helen. Lee raised his eyebrows at the wolf and repeated, “I’ll watch her back and you will all cover our exit route. If our enemies are planning an ambush, it will be after we have the token. Therefore I will station each of you at a different section of the path from the footprint back to the dragon and you will stand sentry. Once we have the vial, you will cover our exit, follow us back up to the dragon, then we will all leave. Understood?”

  Almost everyone nodded.

  “But what if the Master attacks the sentries first…?” Tangaora said slowly.
<
br />   Lee flicked his cloak, which was suddenly a duller green, almost khaki. “Trust me. I’m trained in defensive tactics. Are you all ready?”

  This time everyone nodded.

  Lee stationed Sapphire at the far edge of the plateau, looking southeast, and Catesby behind her looking northwest. He placed Lavender and Sylvie near the centre of the plateau, and Rona and Tangaroa at the northeast, beside a curved wall of ancient stones.

  Then he led Helen down the steep slippy path off the summit. As they walked carefully through the soft grey mist, she said, “The sentries won’t be able to see a thing.”

  “They’ll see a minotaur right in front of them, if he’s here.”

  “And what can they do if he is here?”

  “Don’t worry, Helen. Do your job; let the sentries do theirs. And that looks like your job.”

  Lee pointed at a flat grey rock with a geometrical pattern scored across it. As Helen got closer she realised the straight lines were natural cracks, framing a deep footprint carved at the front of the rock. A right footprint, pointing off the hill towards the misty expanse of Scotland below.

  Lee said, “That must be it. The footprint of Scotland’s earliest kings.”

  Helen knelt down on the slippery wet rock. There wasn’t as much rainwater in the footprint as she’d hoped.

  As she pulled the empty vial from her pocket, she heard a squawk from Catesby.

  She looked towards the summit, hidden in mist, then turned to Lee. “What did he say?”

  Lee said sharply, “Just a sentry checking in. All clear. Get the water.”

  Helen eased the cork out of the vial and lowered the glass vessel into the thin layer of water. She chased the water around the footprint, looking for tiny dips in the stone, catching as much liquid as she could.

  She was aware of the cloud getting heavier and darker, of cold silence all around her. Soon she was spilling as much from the vial as she was collecting, so she lifted the vial up and waggled it. It was half full. That would have to do.

  As she pushed the cork back, Lee whispered, “I’m going to help you up. When I grab your hand, I’ll swap the vials. Don’t react, in case we’re being watched.”