by C. J. Busby
A huge dragon lay in the centre of the cavern, surrounded by piles of shimmering gold and silver, all lit by strange glowing globes attached to the rocky walls. Adolphus was bouncing happily in front of the dragon, who was regarding him with one rather baleful eye.
“No, no, not ‘A-doll’s-house’… Adolphus… Your great-nephew. I came to visit you before, remember? With Mum – er – Belissaria.”
The dragon opened the other eye and rumbled deeply.
“Belissaria? Well, why didn’t you say so? Instead of all this nonsense about doll’s houses. Belissaria’s boy. Well. Pleased to meet you!” She raised her great head and looked across the cavern at Max and Olivia.
“And these two young dragons are your friends, are they?”
Max and Olivia approached cautiously, lowering their heads in a kind of dragon bow. Adolphus’s Great-Aunt Wilhelmina looked extremely large and forbidding, her great gleaming green body stretching out behind her into the depths of the cavern, and her head alone twice the size of Adolphus. She looked at them for a moment and then sniffed.
“Hmm. Humans, I see. Long time since I’ve seen any humans in dragon form. Someone’s got some powerful magic.”
“That’s Max,” said Adolphus eagerly. “He’s brilliant. He turned everyone into frogs and then I kissed them and whoosh! they were dragons! He’s really clever!”
The great dragon turned her head and looked hard at Max with her bright golden eyes. He coughed, and tried to return her gaze.
“It was… well… the frogspell was an accident, really, to start with, and then…” He trailed off into silence as her golden eyes continued to drill through him.
“Ah, yes… I see that you are a Pendragon,” said Great-Aunt Wilhelmina at last, with satisfaction, and nodded her head slowly. “Well, that would explain it. Very good. I’m glad you’ve found a magical friend, A-dormouse.”
“Adolphus,” said the small dragon with exasperation. “Adolphus! And please – we were wondering – the reason we came – could Max have one of your cauldrons? His got a bit… um… battered, when I… er… fell in it.”
Great-Aunt Wilhelmina drew herself up.
“One of my cauldrons? One of my collection?” she said, in an exceedingly shocked voice. “What an impertinence! I have never given a single cauldron to anyone before! They’re MINE!” And her voice turned into a roar, and the roar turned into a gout of fire that lit the whole cavern with crackling blue-white flames.
Adolphus retreated rapidly, along with Max and Olivia.
“Er… sorry… sorry… It was just… well, it was my fault, and I thought… er… um…”
Great-Aunt Wilhelmina looked down at them from the forbidding height she had raised herself to and appeared to soften slightly. She considered.
“Well, A-dog-nose. Maybe I might consider… a small cauldron. But I require payment in return. A favour.”
“Of course,” said Max, quickly. “Anything we can do. Just ask.”
The great dragon twisted her head, and looked at them with a calculating expression.
“A rockfall blocked my cave entrance a few years ago. I’m stuck here. I spent quite a few happy months rearranging my collection and composing my memoirs and suchlike… but I’ve been getting rather bored lately. I’ll give you a cauldron… if you can get me out of here.”
There was silence while Max looked at all the others, and they looked back.
“Could you… make her smaller?” said Olivia at last.
Max made a face. “Maybe. If I had the spell ingredients. And a cauldron that worked. Neither of which are in my pack.”
And then he yelled as Ferocious came up behind him, and nipped his ankle.
“Hey! What was that for?”
“For being as thick as a carrot,” replied Ferocious. “Must be being a dragon. Affected your brain. What have you got in the pack, Max? Remind me again.”
Max stared at him, and then his face brightened. “Of course! The frogspell! Well done, Ferocious!” He turned to Great-Aunt Wilhelmina.
“We can turn you into a frog. Or a rat, if you prefer – if Ferocious can transform you once you’re a frog…”
The rat looked rather alarmed at the thought of kissing Great-Aunt Wilhelmina, even in frog form, but he swallowed hard, and nodded.
“Excellent!” said Max. “Well then, er… Lady Wilhelmina… Are you ready?”
He uncorked the blue frogspell bottle and, having considered the enormous size of the dragon, threw most of the contents at her head.
BANG!!
The dragon disappeared and there, perched on the top of the huge pile of silver, gold and cauldrons, was a knobbly gold and green frog.
“Thank you,” she croaked, “but I think on the whole a rat would be easier…” She looked at Ferocious expectantly. Closing his eyes, he planted a whiskery kiss on her head and there she was, in a haze of purple stars, a rather large and elderly rat, peering around at them all.
“Good,” she said. “Well, then… I think I owe you a cauldron, Max.”
She scampered off down the huge pile and started to poke around at the edges, further down into the cavern.
“Aha! This is the one!”
She rolled a small, dull-looking pewter cauldron out of the pile and looked up at Max.
“There you are. Not too ostentatious. Perfect for a young apprentice,” she said, with an odd gleam in her eyes.
Max looked at all the wonderful silver and golden cauldrons, encrusted with jewels or decorated with fine carvings, piled on top of each other in the cavern, and then at the small, dull black one she was pointing at.
“Thank you,” he said, trying hard not to sound too disappointed. He put it carefully in his pack, along with what was left of the frogspell, and slung the bag round his scaly neck. “I suppose we’d better head off, then.”
Getting back up the steep slope was a lot harder than coming down, but eventually Max poked his dragon snout out of the hole into the open air and looked carefully around. There didn’t seem to be anyone there. He eased himself out and then helped the others, one by one, as they squeezed out and fell on the rocky ground by the pool. None of them noticed the bushes on the other side of the pool rustling, or caught a glimpse of Snotty Hogsbottom’s pale face peeping out from behind the crooked hawthorn tree, as they flopped down among the rocks to recover from the climb.
***
Great-Aunt Wilhelmina was overjoyed to be out in the fresh air after three years in the darkness of the cavern. Adolphus did his duty as a great-nephew and kissed her back to her dragon form, and she stretched her magnificent wings out and shook her great head happily.
“Well, well, A-doleful. So good of you to drop by with your friends… And thank you, Max, for getting me out of there. I really feel like a good holiday. Visit a few friends down south, maybe scout out a few new cauldrons for my collection. It should all be quite safe here in the mountain till I get back.”
“Umm, how will you get back in?” asked Olivia, looking at the huge dragon, and the very small hole they’d just crawled out of.
Great-Aunt Wilhelmina laughed, a rumbling, fiery sort of laugh. “Oh, don’t worry about that, little Pendragon!” she said. “From this side I’ve got a nice clear run at it. I can blast my way back into the cavern with a few good kicks.” She flexed her great back legs, and Max scrambled back out of the way. She was undoubtedly right. In fact she could probably flatten the entire mountain with a few good kicks. He was glad she seemed to be relatively friendly.
“I suppose we’d better be getting back to the castle,” he said. But at that moment, they heard a huge commotion further into the forest, and the crashing and neighing of horses, and then a great hunting horn, answered by another, and another, from all around.
They looked at each other, eyes wide.
“It’s a hunt!” said Olivia.
“That’s not a normal hunting horn,” said Max.
“It’s a dragon hunt!” said Adolphus, with a high-
pitched squeal. “It’s a wild dragon hunt! Help, help! Murder! Run! Fly!” He flapped his wings in panic, took off – and crashed straight into a low-hanging branch.
Max and Olivia felt equally terrified. It sounded as if the hunt were closing in – someone had realised there were dragons in this corner of the wood, and surrounded them. They were pinned against the mountain, and there was nowhere to go but up and out into the open, where they could be shot at with arrows. It didn’t look good.
Ferocious scampered up Max’s neck and bit his dragon ear. “Max!” he hissed. “Change back! Quickly!”
Of course! Max had the antidote in his pack! He slid it off his neck and reached for the antidote bottle. Rapidly he pulled the stopper off with his teeth and shook the bottle at Olivia and then over himself. Within seconds they were standing, looking slightly shaken, but definitely human. Now for Adolphus. Max grabbed the frogspell bottle, hurled a drop onto the still dazed Adolphus and watched in relief as he shrank to a rather knobbly blueish frog with green spots. He turned to Great-Aunt Wilhelmina, who’d been watching with interest, one ear twitching at the sound of the hunt coming nearer. She looked down her long dragon nose at him.
“No, thank you, young Pendragon. Once as a frog is quite enough. And I’m not the slightest bit worried by this little collection of horses and humans – when you’ve got to the ripe old age of four hundred and forty-three, you no longer have to fear such things as dragon hunts. Since it looks as if you and my great-nephew are quite safe, I think I’ll be off.” She stretched out her great wings, and raised her head up into the sky. The sound of horns and neighing suddenly redoubled, and she grinned, and then looked back down at Max with her piercing golden eyes. “Something tells me I’ll be seeing you again, Max… Farewell till we meet again. And good luck with your spells!”
She took off, straight up into the sky. Suddenly the horns stopped, and Max could sense the entire hunt looking up in wonder at the huge dragon circling above them. She roared, and gouts of flame came scorching across the sky and burnt the tops of the tallest forest trees. The horses cried out in terror, and their riders were too busy trying to control them to even think about shooting at the dragon, who was almost immediately too high to reach anyway. With a last roar, she shot off into the sun and was gone.
“Max! Oliv–er!” came a familiar shout as the first of the horses rushed into the clearing where they were standing. “What on earth are you doing out here in the forest? Didn’t you know there’s a hunt on?”
“Um, no, sorry,” said Max, as Sir Bertram swept up to them, looking extremely surprised. “We came out looking for – er – mushrooms, and then we sort of… got lost. Can you give us a ride back to the castle?”
Spying for Merlin
Sir Bertram told them off most of the way home for wandering around in the middle of a serious dragon hunt like a pair of idiots. When they finally got back to their room, Olivia kissed Adolphus back to his usual dragon form, while Max unpacked his new cauldron. He had thanked Great-Aunt Wilhelmina politely when she gave it to him, but now he wondered if she’d really been that generous. It was dull-looking with age, plain pewter with just a very simple decoration around the rim which, now that he rubbed at it, looked like it might be pearls, but they were very small and worn… And he wasn’t entirely sure it was the right shape. It looked almost as lopsided as the one Adolphus had fallen into.
“Probably be even worse than the one I’ve got,” he observed gloomily to Ferocious that evening.
But he was wrong. The new cauldron, plain and old as it was, turned out to be rather effective. From that point on, Max was indisputably top of the class. Every spell he made was perfect. He built a spell wall so strong even Aleric couldn’t walk through it. He turned all the water in the moat pink, and then yellow, and then back to sludgy green, with a few sprinkles of colour-changing potion. He grew Aleric’s beard down to his knees in a matter of seconds and then removed it all in an instant, to the acclaim of the entire class. But best of all was when they revisited the ‘lighter than air’ spell and tried it on themselves this time. Max’s potion was so strong the whole class ended up using a few drops of it, and they spent the afternoon bouncing off the ceiling, the walls and each other, cartwheeling happily around the roof like a bunch of apprentice-shaped balloons.
Meanwhile Olivia had finally had a showdown with Mordred, and managed to punch him so hard on the nose that he had to spend the rest of the day with a poultice attached to his face to stop the swelling, to the general amusement of the other squires. After that, he avoided Olivia, and she found herself thoroughly enjoying the training. She beat all of them at ‘Find Your Way Through the Slimy Swamp Maze’ (mostly because she was smallest and lightest) and also managed to gain the class honours for hitting the archery target right in the bullseye three times in a row. By the end of the week, both Max and Olivia were ‘Most Improved Student of the Week’ and Sir Bertram had taken to walking around the castle with a slight swagger, twirling his huge moustache, and telling anyone who would listen about his son’s and his, erhmm, nephew’s successes.
It was Ferocious, as usual, who brought them back to earth.
“Impressed as I am by your excellent progress in your lessons… you do realise that we have been here two weeks already and we haven’t got the faintest idea what Morgana’s up to?”
They were lounging around in their room, and Max and Olivia had been swapping stories about just how brilliant they both were. At Ferocious’s words, they both looked slightly put out, but then Max nodded.
“You’re right. We haven’t even tried… And it’s much more important than lessons, really…” He fingered the swift that had been sitting all this time in his belt pouch and thought of Merlin. He felt hot all over realising that he’d not even tried to do any spying on Morgana. He thought of her pale, icy face and those hard blue eyes and shivered. Was it because he was too scared of her? But Merlin was relying on him. He couldn't let him down.
Max took a deep breath.
“All right. We need to make an effort to get close to her. Any plotting is going to happen in secret, in her chambers. Any ideas?”
“Well, it would probably make sense not to be human,” said Olivia. “Can we turn ourselves into ants or earwigs or something?”
“Um, not really,” said Max. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to find an insect willing to kiss a couple of frogs.”
“Rats,” said Olivia.
“Yes, I know it’s annoying, but we could think of something else,” replied Max.
“No, stupid! I meant, we can be rats,” she said. “Ferocious will kiss us. Oh – and Max! – I’ve just remembered! I saw Caradoc the other day and he told me he’s been invited to sing in Lady Morgana’s chambers this evening. Private party. He was ever so excited; it’s a real honour for him. Do you think, if it’s a private gathering, there might be something fishy going on?”
“Probably a gathering of the Castle Ladies’ Weaving Circle,” said Ferocious. “But you never know. At least we’d be doing something. And I have to say, from my explorations so far, the walls of this castle have got more holes in than a piece of your mother’s knitting. We can go anywhere we want, not even lose a whisker.”
“Excellent,” said Max, happily. “Then we’re set. Frogs to rats to intrepid spies. Transformation coming right up!”
***
The private chambers of Lady Morgana le Fay were dark and luxurious, hung around with velvet and lit by glowing candles and deep red firelight. The lady herself was draped elegantly across an ornately carved and richly upholstered bench seat, and looked completely at home. Sir Richard Hogsbottom, perched next to her on a low footstool, looked less relaxed. The heat was making him sweat slightly, and his ample frame was balanced uncomfortably on the stool like a large toad sitting on a pointy mushroom. Across from them, Snotty was standing with his back to the fire, looking quite at ease. His pale face was totally focused on the fourth figure in the room, Caradoc the
Bard.
Caradoc was leaning forward on a low seat, tracing shapes on the floor of the chamber, shapes that glimmered slightly silver before fading away as he drew new ones. He seemed to be in the middle of explaining something, and the others were all watching him intently.
“The song is not always clear,” he said, gesturing to the shapes in front of him. “But there are seven challenges, and they must all be overcome. The Fortress of Mead Drunkenness,” – and as he spoke he swirled another silvery shape on the floor – “the Flaming Door, the Nine Maidens,” – the silvery trail took nine dancing shapes – “the Stream of Jet, the Fortress of Glass, protected by a silent sentinel, the Brindled Ox, and the Hounds of Annwn. Seven only can return – and only if they have payment.” He drew his hand across in front of him and the silvery shapes disappeared.
“Payment,” said Morgana with a smile. “Oh yes, they will have the necessary payment.” She laughed, a sharp sliver of laughter that cut through the warmth of the room like a blade.
“The Treasure of Annwn,” said Caradoc softly, and he looked up at Morgana with a strange expression. “You mean… you have it?”
She smiled sweetly. “I believe it is in our possession. Is it not, Adrian?”
“Yes, my lady. I’ve found it.”
“Ah,” put in Sir Richard, not wanting to be left out. “But we’re not sure which one it is, eh? Are we, Adrian?”
Snotty looked annoyed, but continued confidently. “Not exactly sure. But I’m working on it. A bit of… sorting… to do, before we find the exact one.”
Morgana gave him a hard stare, but he returned it without flinching. She nodded, satisfied.
“So,” she said. “We are prepared. Arthur will take the bait; it is just the sort of idiotically chivalrous quest he specialises in. And then he will be lost, by his own actions, and we shall be seen to have had no part in it. He is doomed, and we shall get rid of that fool Merlin at the same time. And then I – I shall be Queen!” And she raised her white arms and smiled in triumph and her expression was quite terrible.