by Anne Forbes
Samantha looked dumbfounded. It couldn’t be him, she thought wildly. How could it be him? She stepped forward sharply but was a second too late; he’d disappeared, pinned down under a crawling pile of scaly bodies and leathery wings.
It was then that Clara spoke the final word of the spell.
In an instant, the surprised daemons disappeared in a crack of sound and as the rippling cloud of darkness that swirled round the stage gradually faded to nothing, Samantha, too, muttered a spell, grabbed Clara round the waist and promptly vanished, taking her witches with her.
Gasping for breath, Maritza ran to the side of the stage and pressed the button that released the curtain. As it swung down she leant exhaustedly against the wall and thought at a rate of knots as the roar of applause from the other side of the curtain reached her ears. Another hex floated through the theatre and as Clara’s class found itself assembling beside her with no memory of what had happened, she forced a delighted smile, lined them all up hastily, told them they’d been fabulous and took them in front of the curtain to take their bows.
The headmaster then made a speech of appreciation, remarking dryly and with some justification, that he’d never before seen such an exciting concert. Maritza, nodding and smiling at the side of the stage, agreed with him and bringing her forward, he stepped back and started to clap. So it was that with a twitch of her skirt and a tantalizing glimpse of striped stocking, Maritza took her bow to roar upon roar of delighted applause.
With all eyes concentrated on Maritza, Neil thought it a good time to disappear. Switching his magic ring to his left hand, he vanished unobtrusively and looked round. No one, he reckoned, had noticed that he’d gone and no one would miss him. Classes had finished for the day and all he had to do was wait until his form had filed out of the theatre. As rumours from the kitchen had been drifting round the Senior School all day, this happened remarkably quickly for everyone was anxious to get their helping of pumpkin pie and nobody hung around.
Even as the last class filed out, Neil was halfway up the flight of steps that led onto the stage. He’d seen the old man fall down covered in daemons and had heard what he’d said to the Queen of the Snow Witches. Had Clara been quick enough to save him, though?
Creeping behind the curtain, he reached the wings and looked onto the stage. Apart from Herr von Grozny who was leaning over the old man’s body, it was completely empty. Thank goodness, Neil thought, maybe this time I’ll be able to find out who he is. Walking very quietly, he could see the concern on von Grozny’s face as he treated the old man’s wounds. Funny, he thought, fleetingly, his mind winging back to the night they’d faced one another up in the library, I could have sworn they were enemies.
“You’ll be all right,” von Grozny was saying reassuringly. “I think I’ve neutralized the poison. You’ll be up and about in minutes.”
The old man smiled weakly. “Thanks, Vassili,” he whispered. “I owe you …”
Von Grozny looked serious. “Will you tell me how you come to be … like this?” He lifted one of the magician’s thin, withered hands and looked at him questioningly.
The old man closed his eyes, his lips twisting in a sour smile. “I call it Malfior’s Curse,” he whispered.
“Malfior?” Vassili looked and sounded startled.
“Another story,” the old man breathed, feeling slightly better now that the pain was easing. His eyes had been closed as he spoke and he missed the look of complete surprise that had crossed Vassili’s face.
Neil didn’t miss it, however, and his eyes sharpened as he watched the wolf man interestedly. Malfior! His attention was well and truly caught at the mention of the name, his mind immediately sweeping back to the previous year when he’d been involved with the Cri’achan, the great giants of the Highlands. How on earth did von Grozny know of Malfior?
“It was a spell,” the magician continued, raising himself on one elbow, the colour coming back into his face, “an ageing spell that has nearly run its course.” His wrinkled lips twisted. “I doubt if I have very much longer to live.”
Footsteps suddenly sounded in the wings and as Neil swung round, he glimpsed Maritza, still in her witch’s costume, heading towards them. By the time she reached the stage, however, it was empty. The two magicians had vanished.
Neil, however, was still there, his mind racing frantically. He barely noticed her for, just before the old man disappeared, he had seen beyond the lines of age.
Recognition had dawned and with it came shock, horror and disbelief. He knew now who the old man was.
23. Ice Palace
Samantha sat back on the rose-coloured cushions and velvet drapes of her high, glittering throne of sparkling ice and triumphantly stroked the silver talisman that clasped her wrist. Her jet black eyes gleamed in the flare of the torches as she savoured the fruits of victory. She could hardly believe it. The talisman was hers at last. Its power, she knew, was breathtaking and as she pondered what she might do with it, her mind wandered from the prisoner who stood in front of her, to more pleasant things.
The prisoner was, of course, Clara, and as the queen’s attention strayed, Clara looked discreetly round the Great Hall of her palace, wondering how on earth she was going to escape. It wouldn’t be easy, she knew, but she definitely had a chance for although Samantha had immediately wrested the talisman forcefully from her grasp she hadn’t taken her firestone and, more importantly, didn’t seem to have noticed her magic ring.
Now she stood, waiting to hear what the queen had to say as the Snow Witches, once more dressed in their elaborate gowns of shredded chiffon, crowded around her, casting evil, venomous looks in her direction, whispering angrily amongst themselves. Many of their friends had been seriously injured as a result of her spell and they couldn’t understand why Samantha hadn’t finished this human child off the minute they’d got back. Clara shivered, she was pretty sure that had the queen not been there, they would have hexed her ages ago.
Ignoring the witches as best she could, Clara glanced round covertly, trying to memorize the layout of the ice palace in case she managed to escape. There were too many witches around at the moment, she decided, but maybe when there were just a few, she could use her ring. Once invisible, she could hide somewhere until Neil arrived with reinforcements. Her spirits rose at the thought. He was probably on his way to Arthur’s Seat right now, she reckoned.
Looking around, she saw that the palace was remarkably light and bright. As well as the flaring torches that glowed from sconces in the walls, the vast room shone with a weird, unearthly blue glow that seemed to come from within the ice itself. High walls of carved ice rose to a ceiling of fretted domes; ice statues stood in niches round the walls; ornate arches gave a glimpse of pillared corridors and, dotted here and there throughout the length and breadth of the hall, were seating arrangements of delicately carved ice-furniture that decorated a floor as smooth as glass.
Clara shifted on her feet, shivering as the cold penetrated the soles of her shoes and the thin stuff of her costume. The movement brought Samantha back from her wonderful dreams of power and glory. She straightened and looked icily down on the fool of a child who had caused so much trouble. Well, she wouldn’t be around long enough to cause any more harm, that was for sure.
A snow witch entered through one of the delicately carved arches and bowed low to the queen. “If it please you, your majesty, you are needed,” her voice was concerned. “There are so many wounded …”
The queen rose to her feet, her face mirroring her anger. Clara wilted under the look of fury in her eyes and knew that the witch would have hexed her there and then had it not been for the old man. The question again hovered in her mind. Who was he? How did he know her?
The queen waved her hand angrily at Clara. “Imprison her, Matilda,” she snarled, “in the deepest dungeon you can find!”
One of the Snow Witches rose importantly to her feet and moved forward. Like all the Snow Witches, she was incredibly beautiful,
the plaited ribbons of her headdress framing a face spoiled only by the protruding pieces of black stone that were her eyes. She grasped Clara’s arm, none too gently. “Bow to the queen,” she instructed, twisting her arm behind her to make sure she obeyed.
Clara gasped in pain as the witch forced her to bow.
“We hope you enjoy your stay with us,” Samantha remarked evilly, as she made to leave. The rest of the witches smiled at this and looked at one another knowingly; leaving Clara to wonder exactly what was in store for her.
“This way,” Matilda ordered brusquely, leading her through a high, curved arch that led into a long corridor of pillars interspersed with panels of gloriously fretted trellis-work. Idly, Clara wondered who had made the palace and all its wonderful decorations. Somehow she couldn’t imagine the elegant, beautiful witches carving out the ice into all those fantastic shapes and designs. Maybe they’d used magic, she thought.
The witch kept a firm grip on her arm as she marched her down a sweeping staircase of ice steps and along yet another corridor, giving her no chance to use her magic ring. Whenever she stops to unlock the door to my cell, Clara thought, I’ll use it then.
They walked on and Clara soon noticed that the further they went from the Great Hall, the more ordinary the decoration became. Gone now were the delicate arches and swirling curves of pillars and pediments. They’d reached a part of the palace that was no more than a low-roofed tunnel cut through roughly hewn blocks of ice. There were no doors anywhere and Clara was just wondering where they were going to imprison her when Matilda gave her a vicious push in the back that sent her hurtling forward.
She screamed and, as her scream echoed and re-echoed throughout the palace, Matilda smiled sourly. That’d teach her to interfere in the affairs of witches. Turning swiftly from the hole in the floor, she walked quickly back the way she had come. It wasn’t a part of the palace that she liked and the sooner she was back in the Great Hall, the better.
The hefty push had been totally unexpected but it, in itself, wasn’t what had made Clara scream. She hadn’t noticed the hidden hole in the ice and when she found herself falling, she’d been taken completely by surprise. No wonder she’d yelled. Now she found herself sliding down a kind of snow-chute and her heart sank as she realized that it was going to be very, very difficult to escape from such a prison.
She landed in a slither of snow in what was not much more than an oblong-shaped chamber of ice. It glowed with the same cold, blue light that illuminated the rest of the palace and, looking round, she saw that apart from a tatty-looking old blanket that lay on a raised shelf of ice, there was nothing else in the room.
She sat down feeling scared and hopeless. How long were they going to keep her in this awful prison?
24. Rescue Plans
“The magician that hexed Clara, it … it was Prince Kalman,” Neil said, later that evening when he arrived, cold and tired inside Arthur’s Seat on an exhausted broomstick. He was still amazed at his discovery. “I heard the wolf man talking to him … Herr von Grozny,” he whispered, looking from the MacArthur to Lord Rothlan and Lady Ellan, “and Prince Kalman said he was dying …”
There was a long silence. Kitor and Cassia, who had flown beside Neil on his journey north, looked frightened. Both had, at one time, belonged to the prince and he hadn’t treated them with kindness. Amgarad, too, squawked and flapped his wings strongly from his perch on the back of Lord Rothlan’s chair. The prince had never been one of his favourite people, either. He had spent years locked in the body of a monstrous bird as a result of Kalman’s scheming. It was no surprise that he loathed him. Even Arthur, the great dragon, didn’t seem unduly upset at the news of Kalman’s plight. His death would be no great loss to the world of magic. He blew a cloud of smoke down his long nose and then looked apologetic as Archie and Hamish started to cough. The sight of the sparkling smoke, however, reminded the MacArthur of his pipe and, fishing out his favourite briar, he avoided his daughter’s stern gaze and started to fill it with tobacco.
Although the MacArthur had looked thoughtful and glanced at Lord Rothlan when he heard Neil’s words, he hadn’t seemed particularly surprised. It was Archie, Hamish and Jaikie who’d sat up in amazement, every bit as startled as Neil had expected.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Neil said suddenly, looking accusingly at the MacArthur. “You knew that the old man was the prince!”
“Actually, I told him,” Lord Rothlan confessed, with an uneasy smile. “I saw Hughie a few months back when I was visiting the Lords of the North in Morven and … well, he told me that Kalman was ageing fast and that he was afraid he was going to die. Hughie and Kalman always got on together, you know.”
Neil’s eyes dropped. Hughie, whose cottage lay on the slopes of the mountain, was a great guy and he’d never been able to understand how he could like someone as nasty and arrogant as the prince. He shrugged. “The other thing Prince Kalman talked about was Malfior,” he continued, meeting Lord Rothlan’s gaze. “He said it was Malfior’s fault that he was dying.” Jaikie and Hamish looked at one another with raised eyebrows as Neil finished slowly. “He called it Malfior’s Curse.”
Again there was silence and Neil looked round in surprise. There was obviously something going on that he didn’t know about and it didn’t look as though they were going to tell him, either. He flushed, feeling angry and embarrassed. They’d never kept anything from him before and it was more than a bit hurtful. Knowing that they must have a reason, however, he kept his voice level. “What about Prince Casimir?” he asked. “I mean, does he know? Can’t he do anything to help him?”
“Prince Casimir is with the Sultan in Turkey,” the MacArthur said. “He knows nothing of his son’s condition and we haven’t told him.”
“You haven’t told him?” Neil’s voice rose incredulously. “But … but he’s his father! It’s his right to know!”
“It’s like this, Neil,” Lord Rothlan sighed, “before he left Morven, Kalman made Hughie swear that he wouldn’t tell anyone, especially his father, what was happening to him.”
“So Kalman’s going to let himself die rather than go to his own father?” Neil looked incredulous. “That’s just … plain stupid!”
“The truth is, we just don’t know what to do about Kalman,” the MacArthur admitted. “He and his father … well, it’s what you might call a difficult relationship.”
“If he’d ask us for help, we’d give it,” Lady Ellan sighed, “but you know how arrogant he is, Neil — and if we were to offer it, I think he would reject it.”
“He’s too proud for his own good, that’s his trouble,” Neil said in exasperation. “You weren’t in Hughie’s cottage when he told us about going into the Halls of the Giants and the yellow light that shone from Cri’achan Mor’s eyes. Malfior’s Curse, he called it. It took his magic power from him.”
“And left him with something evil …” the MacArthur mused. “But why …”
Lord Rothlan’s eyes sharpened at his words. “That’s a point,” he nodded, “and yet there was no reason for Malfior to single him out, was there? I mean …” he shook his head, his brain sifting through a variety of possibilities.
“Maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye,” the MacArthur said, making a great palaver of lighting his pipe and then drawing deeply until it started to belch out clouds of foul-smelling smoke.
“What I’d really like to know is why you didn’t tell us that the magician was Prince Kalman?” queried Neil. “Why didn’t you?” he repeated, looking serious and more than slightly offended. “Prince Kalman, of all people! He hates us, you know he does. And he could have hexed us or anything. He was inside the school. I thought he was the janitor.”
“But he didn’t hex you, did he?” the MacArthur pointed out. “On the contrary, he made sure that you escaped from von Grozny in the library.”
“Yes, well … but …” Neil stopped and frowned. The MacArthur was right. He had saved them from von Grozny. He
looked little short of flabbergasted. The very thought of Prince Kalman saving them from harm was so novel that he couldn’t quite take it in.
“You said that he told the Queen of the Snow Witches to take care of Clara, too,” Lady Ellan said quickly.
“Well, not take care of her exactly,” Neil frowned, trying to remember the shouted words, “but Samantha grabbed her before they all disappeared. Clara and the talisman,” he added.
The MacArthur sighed. “I’ll be honest with you, Neil,” he said, adjusting his cushions until he was comfortable. “The reason we didn’t tell you that Kalman was the old man was that we knew he wanted the talisman himself. As long as he didn’t have it, we knew he would keep you safe from the witches and von Grozny.”
“But he didn’t,” Neil pointed out shortly. “The witches nearly hexed me in the Black Bull and he hexed Clara when she was in the middle of the river. If she hadn’t been wearing the talisman, he’d have taken it.”
“In that case, I think he must be more desperate than we thought,” Lady Ellan said, frowning.
“And when he told the Queen of the Snow Witches to take Clara with her, I don’t think he had her safety in mind!” added an aggrieved Neil.
“Oh, I think he did,” Lord Rothlan objected. “Kalman has a lot of influence with the Snow Witches and very little with the Wind Witches or the Earth Witches. He wouldn’t want Wanda or Maritza to capture Clara; that’s why he deliberately gave her into Samantha’s care. Despite what happened on the stage, she won’t dare harm Clara, you can be sure of that. He’s still a powerful magician.”
As this very thought had been worrying Neil all the way north from the Borders, his spirits rose as he followed Rothlan’s reasoning. “So what’s the next step?” he asked. “How do we get Clara back?”