by Adam Wallace
Syra longed to meet Pete McGee. He did not wish to meet and greet, he wished to meet and defeat! Only by defeating the greatest warrior could he become the greatest villain; it would be his first step on the way to getting the Wilderene Flower. He wanted that flower. He wanted power. He wanted flower power. That was why he needed a partner. Not an equal partner though, more a sidekick. Actually, a minion. Sort of a slave to do his bidding. But it needed to be someone or something as evil as Syra himself.
Syra had researched evil of all kinds, scouring books, scrolls and interviewing those ‘in the know’; the evil below the surface was as evil as they came. It had been asleep, dormant, for hundreds of years, banished underground by the parents of the children it had slain. They had wanted to burn it, but had been forbidden by the King of the time, King Arnold the Forgiving-Old-Softie. So it had been banished and put to sleep.
Until now.
Now that Syra Tanooth had found the evil, it would be his perfect partner in crime. But he had to be patient. All too often, evil was impatient, rushing into things too quickly and being made to look foolish by those of virtue. Not Syra. He had vowed to be patient, ever since the fifth time he had rushed into something too quickly and had been made to look foolish by those of virtue.
Once he had an evil sidekick though, ooooh yeah, the entire world would be the one learning the lesson, and he would be the one teaching it, and it would be geography so it would be boring and everyone would get detention and he may even bring back the strap and then they would all be expelled and never let back into school! Syra Tanooth laughed his evilest laugh.
Pete McGee rode his horse, Lightning, home from training. It had been a long, tiring day, broken only by the fun he’d had play-fighting with Smithers. Overall though, Pete felt dejected. The thoughts that had consumed him at training continued as he rode home. Luckily Lightning knew the way, and Pete could basically be taken along for the ride.
‘What am I going to do, Lightning?’ Pete asked. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Lightning whinnied in response. It was all he could do. He was a horse.
‘I know, I know,’ Pete said, pretending he had understood the whinny. ‘It is good to be in a group. It is good to learn the ways of knights. It’s just that, I don’t know, I feel squashed, and I am just starting to have a growth spurt. It’s really bad timing.’
Lightning snorted. Pete agreed.
‘Yeah, I know, bad joke. Still, it’s true. I have wanted to be a knight forever, you know. Now it seems like what it actually is to be a knight is not what Sir Loinsteak and Sir Mountable taught me.’
Lightning snorted again. Pete nodded in response.
‘True. True. You do make a good point. The thing is though, Sir Mountable taught me that you don’t need the title to be a knight. It’s how you act, the deeds you perform that are important. The title is all well and good, and means you get invited to the finest hootenannies and all, but I can still be a knight, my type of knight, without having to get the title.’
‘Whinny snort.’
‘I know, right? Mum would be so proud if I saw it through. She’s always proud when I stick things out, see them through to the end, even if they’re hard. But she wants me to be happy too. I don’t know, Lightning. My brain’s spinning.’
Lightning didn’t say anything. A tricky section of the path was coming up and he needed to concentrate, especially as his rider wasn’t being much help. Pete continued talking.
‘The good thing is that the wedding’s coming up. The new married couple, Ashlyn and Marloynne … hey, I don’t even know their surnames! I’ll have to ask one of these days. But the best thing is that I get to go to Bandragon again. I get to take the Wilderene Flower to their healers, and I get to hang out with Tahnee, Molloy and Mortone on the way back! I miss them so much.’
‘Snort.’
‘Don’t be jealous. I know I talk about Tahnee a bit, but you want a fair maiden? She is surely the fairest of them all, and cool as anything on top of it. She is …’
‘Whinny.’
‘Yes, you concentrate on the path, Lightning!
One of us needs to. Anyway, three days from now knight training takes a break and I take a trip to Bandragon.’
‘Neigh?’
‘Sorry. We take a trip to Bandragon. Of course you’re coming with me! I’ve done the journey on foot, and by myself, and I would never go there without you now. You are my closest ally, Lightning; you are the finest horse in the land.’
Lightning gave a proud whinny and started to prance. Unfortunately, they had just reached the tricky bridge part of the ride. Lightning slipped, tripped, and both horse and rider fell into the river. Pete quickly scrambled to the waist-deep water at the river’s edge and sat there, laughing. He laughed even more when Lightning kicked and spluttered his way to the surface with a lump of mud on his head.
Pete waded in, took the reins and led his horse to dry land. They were both soaked, and Lightning, being a proud and noble steed, was desperately embarrassed to have mud all over his head and wouldn’t look at Pete the whole way home.
Chapter Three
Bandragon
'I’m going to Bandragon! I’m going to Bandragon!’
Pete danced around the room, a wiggle here, a butt-shake there. His mother kept cooking, trying to ignore him … well, pretending to ignore him at least. She was actually watching his reflection in the kitchen window. She smiled to herself. He was a ball of life, her son, and she was glad to see him happy and smiling and dancing. She knew he was finding the knight training hard. He had mentioned a couple of times that he felt restricted by it, that he wasn’t allowed to be himself, that he wasn’t sure if it was what he wanted any more.
She had told him to stick at it, as she knew he knew she knew he knew she would. She smiled at the memory. He had rolled his eyes and said he would do it for her, but she knew that it was partly for himself as well. You can’t have a dream for that long and then just drop it.
Pete kept dancing and singing.
‘I’ll see Molloy-oy, and I’ll see Tah-nee, and we’ll have fu-un, and we’ll be funny, and other stuff too, and it will be good.’
Mrs McGee started laughing and almost chopped her finger instead of the turnips. She turned to Pete and waved the knife at him.
‘Enough, young Sir. Thy antics distract me from the task at hand. I must chop, and thou should be setting the table for the evening meal. Marloynne and Ashlyn shall return from work presently, and ’twould be good to have the meal ready upon their arrival. After the table is set, would thou please gather the firewood Arnold the Small has chopped?’
Pete smiled at the thought of Marloynne coming home. The two were like brothers, always teasing and stirring each other, but always watching each other’s backs at the same time. Pete realised he hadn’t answered his mother. He swung into knight-speak as well.
‘Verily, fair maiden, thy wish is my command. However, Arnold the Small is surely the most incompetent woodcutter in the land. His axe is blunter than his mind. Why is it we have him chop our—’
He was cut off by a glare from his mother. She used Arnold the Small to chop the wood because he enjoyed using his axe so much, and Pete knew that. To avoid getting in trouble, he quickly changed the subject.
‘Henceforth, I shall begin to set the table, with the finest silver we possess, and with the finest drinkware also. I shall set thee the table of thy dreams, a table so fine it should warrant the company of Kings. A table so—’
‘Good Sir!’
The knife waved again. Pete smiled and bowed low.
‘A table, fair maiden, that shall be set post-haste.’
He stood up straight, danced a little jig that made his mum laugh again, and then set the table, singing to himself as he did so. Mrs McGee smiled to herself. She loved that boy so much and yet … she shook her head and smiled again. No. It was nothing to worry about.
The evil rolled over and sleepily rubbed its back against a wa
ll. Its underground cell was made up of rock walls, a rock roof, and a hard, pointy rock floor. The evil didn’t mind. It was a blobby, gooey type of creature, so it sort of just blobbed over things and didn’t get hurt. It did find the sharp rock edges good for scratching itches though.
It winked three of its four eyes, blinked the fourth, and stood up straight (for the evil, standing up straight actually meant that it went into a slightly stiffer blob rather than a floppy blobby blob).
The evil looked around. It had resigned itself to sleeping for the rest of its life, because there wasn’t really anything else to do in a small rocky cell. Oh sure, it had tried playing noughts and crosses with itself for a while on the walls, but it always ended in a stalemate. Then it had played games with the little insects that roamed around the cave, but that got boring once it had eaten them.
And so it slept.
But now it was awake, and it didn’t know why. It found out soon enough.
‘Good morning,’ a voice said in a strange accent. It was the sort of accent mad scientists have, or evil geniuses, or evil-mad-genius scientists. The voice continued.
‘Nice of you to wake up. Would you like some breakfast?’
The evil blob nodded. It wasn’t prepared to talk just yet, after years of not speaking. It was hungry though.
‘Well too bad!’ the voice shouted, a hint of laughter behind the words. ‘You do not eat until I say you eat.’
The evil roared an evil roar.
‘Of course,’ the strange voice said in response, a little scared now, ‘if you really are hungry I could cook you up some eggs, maybe a little bacon on the side. First though, my evil minion—I mean partner, we shall SET YOU FREE!’
There was a mighty crash, an incredible bash, and a slightly disappointing flash. When the smoke cleared a giant tunnel could now be seen leading from the cave.
‘Follow the tunnel, my blobby friend. Breakfast awaits you at the end … hey, that was a rhyming sentence! I am a poet and I was not even aware of it. Walk on, my friend, or slide, or slither, or whatever it is you do. When you get to my place though, please stick to the plastic on the floor to avoid making my carpets slimy. I just had them steam cleaned.’
The blob couldn’t believe it. It was free, free at last! It was so happy it waved its blobby bits in the air as it slid out of the cave, slobbering and roaring with excitement.
Syra Tanooth, watching through his crystal ball, rubbed his hands together with glee. It was happening. It really was. He almost had a sidekick.
Hi again, I’m baaaaaaack! So, what do you think so far hey? Pretty exciting? Thrilling stuff? I know, I know, there hasn’t been much action yet, but Pete’s going through a quandary, a dilemma, a conundrum. So he has to sort through that. And the stuff with Syra Tanooth, that’s setting up some action. Huh? HUH?
Anyway, Pete’s fifteen, almost sixteen, so he’s going to need some action soon. It’ll pick up. Trust me.
Chapter Four
Bandragon … this time for sure
The three days of training seemed to take forever, but they were finally done and Pete was free to ride to Bandragon
… after he had helped his mum clean the house, of course.
When Mrs McGee had been sick, it had been Pete’s job to do all the housework. Now they did it together. Mrs McGee had been so glad to see Pete dancing around the house the other day. She had feared he was drifting away from her. He was growing older, finding other things, other friends, and she understood that maybe teenage boys didn’t want to spend all their time with their mothers.
Although she enjoyed their time together, there were other little things that concerned her; Pete not wanting to be a knight, as much as he’d used to, was the main one. He would also sit out in Lightning’s yard for hours on end, talking to the horse but not to her. Oh, he confided in her a bit, but it was usually superficial.
As Pete left for Bandragon on Lightning, Mrs McGee waved goodbye and went back inside. To her dismay, she found the note she had written him when he was seven, still sitting on his bedroom table.
With an aching heart, she picked up the note and read it, although she knew it word for word.
You are Sir Pete McGee, a brave and noble young man, slayer of evil monsters and righter of wrongs. You are so strong in so many ways. Believe in yourself, and one day the world will see how great a man with one arm can be.
He had already shown the world how great he was. Twice now. With tears starting to well up in her eyes she folded up the note. She was about to put it back on the bedside table when her son, her brave Pete McGee, burst into the house. He raced into his room, grabbed the note out of his mum’s hand, put it into his jacket pocket, kissed her cheek, smiled, said he loved her, and raced out again. Now Mrs McGee did cry, but they were tears of happiness. Maybe she wasn’t losing her son after all.
Pete rode Lightning as fast as the horse could go. The wind whipped against his face, making his eyes water. He loved it. The faster the better. He urged the horse on and Lightning responded.
‘WOOOOOOOOOO!’ Pete wooooed, leaning low against the horse’s back. He felt as though he was free again, free to be himself, not restricted by the knightly rules and regulations. He heard a cry from behind and brought Lightning to a skidding halt. As he turned, he saw someone quickly approaching on a horse. Pete knew who it was.
‘Smithers!’ he cried. ‘What are you doing here?’
Smithers rode up to Pete’s side, both he and his horse panting from the effort.
‘You ride that horse so fast,’ he gasped. ‘I don’t know how Lightning does it.’
Pete smiled and patted Lightning’s neck.
‘Just because he’s the BEST HORSE EVER!’
Smithers laughed, his breath almost returning to normal.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I figured you might like a bit of company on the ride. And besides, I’ve never been away from home before. I thought it might be nice to see Bandragon, seeing as you’ve talked it up so much.’
Pete looked at him, knowingly, one eyebrow raised. When he spoke it was only half in jest.
‘Is this about Tahnee? Are you coming so you can meet her and impress her and fall in love and get married?’
Smithers laughed.
‘Don’t worry, McGee, I know how you feel about her, even more so after what you just said. I would never cut your lunch like that. Okay, so maybe a couple of years ago I would have, but not now. I do want to meet her, but only because she makes you so happy.’
Pete looked at Smithers again, feeling lucky to have people like him and Marloynne in his life. Smithers sure had changed from the bullying mean-pants stupid-head he used to be. Pete smiled. He decided to take Smithers at his word on Tahnee. He swung Lightning around.
‘Alright then, as long as you know the rules,’ he said, wagging his finger like a teacher. ‘Now, you ready to ride?’
Smithers groaned.
‘Okay, just be sure to take it easy on me—GO!’
He kicked his horse into action and they were off. Pete laughed. The race was on.
The evil slid and slithered its way along the tunnel towards Syra Tanooth’s house. Syra had been preparing for the evil’s arrival, messing up the place, putting out some fresh maggots in a bowl, you know, the usual things you do when an evil being is coming to visit.
Syra was excited and nervous at the same time. This evil blob was the finishing touch, the final turn in the maze, the last piece of the puzzle that, once complete, would create a picture of him as the true King of evil.
Master of Darkness. That was what Syra liked to be known as: the Master of Darkness. He had given himself the name. It had come down to a choice between Nasty Evil Mean Guy and Master of Darkness. He went for Master of Darkness for two reasons. The first was that Nasty Evil Mean Guy was already taken, and the second was that Master of Darkness just seemed to fit more comfortably. After all, he lived in medieval times. He needed a name that would reflect this. There was also the fact t
hat he enjoyed the night more than the day. Oh, and of course he was able to use magic to suck the light out of things.
So there was that.
He checked his crystal ball one more time. The evil was having a rest.
‘Oh, come on now!’ Syra groaned. ‘That tunnel is only 20,000 steps long. And you don’t even have feet; you slide. It’s just one slide. You have taken half a day already. The maggots are turning brown. I am going to have to put them back in the cold box if you do not arrive soon.’
He clapped his hands and the picture faded from the crystal ball. Syra sat at the table and munched absent-mindedly on a couple of maggots before remembering that the maggots were for the evil, and that he was a human, and he found maggots quite disgusting, and certainly not something he wanted to eat! If someone had a crystal ball and was watching Syra Tanooth, they would have seen him spitting out the maggots he was chewing, then trying to clean his tongue with hot soapy water.
Pete McGee and Larson Smithers sat by the river. In the distance, Pete could see the Plains of Obon. He had crossed the plains on his first journey, and he had no desire to do so again. The Plains of Obon were inhabited by fearsome creatures known as the Mantrils, and it was, Pete thought, pure luck he had survived getting through there at all. Well, luck and the help of Sir Loinsteak, the magical knight Pete’s aunty had created to help him.
Pete often wondered about Sir Loinsteak. What happened to magical knights when their job was done? Where did they go? Was there a magical knight heaven or something? Pete smiled. He missed the knight, but he had so many memories to carry with him.
He turned to Smithers.