Icespell (5 page)

The Lady of the Island

T
he Lady, when they met her, was planting cabbages, and looked almost as unmagical as it is possible for a person to look. She was plump, with a kind brown face and long frizzy brown hair that was scattered with grey. As she reached up to brush her hair out of her eyes she left streaks of mud across her forehead and under her grey-blue eyes. There was something about her expression, however, that
reminded Max very strongly of Merlin.

They had left the cave in darkness with all of them piled on Great-Aunt Wilhelmina’s back, even Adolphus.

“You wouldn’t be able to get there on your own, A-doll’s-house,” she had rumbled. “Not magic enough yet.”

As the sky gradually lightened they had flown out to sea due south, and then, as the tip of the sun started to show over the eastern horizon, Great-Aunt Wilhelmina had gathered her strength and flown straight and fast into the light of the sunrise. One moment they were being dazzled by the dawn, the next moment a great island was rising up in front of them, and the huge dragon was coasting to an elegant landing just next to a small vegetable patch. And there was the Lady, looking up to greet them. She showed no surprise at their sudden appearance.

“I’m afraid I am in the middle of the cabbages,” apologised the Lady, smiling. “I did get some food and drink ready for you all when I realised you’d be
coming – but I can’t remember where I left it…” She considered for a moment, then brightened. “Try the woodshed, while I just get these planted in…”

She waved a muddy hand vaguely at an old shed further down the garden, and then went back to her planting. Great-Aunt Wilhelmina motioned them to follow, and they all headed after her with a respectful nod at the back of the Lady, who was now absorbed in tucking little plants into the soil.

The woodshed was full of logs, various garden implements and rusty bits of what looked like an old plough. But on an upturned wooden box in one corner was a bowl of red apples and a jug of water. Max realised he’d had no breakfast at exactly the same time as Olivia and they both dived for the bowl. The apples tasted better than anything he’d ever eaten, and the water was cold, clear, and like drinking the most perfect mead. In among the apples, Max noticed, were nuts for Ferocious, while small morsels that looked suspiciously like roasted woodlice were rapidly disappearing down Adolphus’s throat.

“So glad you could drop by,” said the Lady, entering the shed and settling herself on an old wheelbarrow while she wiped her hands clean on her skirt. When they were only very slightly less muddy, she pushed back her frizzy hair with both hands, wound it round into a loose knot behind her head, and tucked the ends down the back of her blouse.

“That’s better,” she said, smiling. “I can see you all properly now. Right – it’s a spell you need, is it? Something big, I gather, that needs unravelling?”

Max took a deep breath and nodded.

“It’s my fault. I did an icespell on a stone.” He fished the grey flint, still encased in ice, out of his belt pouch, and showed it to the Lady. “It was magically connected to Camelot by Lady Morgana le Fay, and so I accidentally iced the whole castle. And Merlin’s trapped in there, along with King Arthur, and, well… a lot of other people.”

The Lady raised her eyebrows.

“Indeed. That’s quite a spell, young man.”

She took the stone from Max gingerly and held
it up to her right eye. She hummed a little, then threw the stone up in the air and caught it. Then she stuck her tongue out and tasted it.

“Uuurghh!” she said, and made a face. “Yes – definitely Morgana’s magic. I’d know it anywhere. And poor dear Merlin is trapped inside it?” She peered at the rock as if she expected to see the tiny figure of Merlin inside the ice, and then pursed her lips.

“Dear me. What a tangle. We’ll have to see what we can do. It might take a while. In the meantime, I’ve got a job for you all!”

She stood up quickly and ushered them out of the shed, then she set off at a rapid stride round the back of a little stone house, towards what looked like a small orchard. As they followed the Lady, they saw that the stone wall around the orchard had been knocked down in one place and the stones were scattered around on the grass.

“The island’s bull,” she explained, gesturing to the wall. “He likes the apples, and he’s forever destroying the wall to get to them. If you could just
build it back up like sweet children, I’ll go with Wilhelmina and prepare your spell.”

And she hurried off, unknotting her hair as she went so it flew out around her shoulders, and stooping to gather a few herbs on her way back to the house.

“Well,” said Max. “This seems simple enough. Just pile all the stones back into the wall.”

“Hmm,” said Ferocious thoughtfully. “I’ve got a feeling it might be a bit trickier than it seems.”

Ferocious was right. They carefully gathered up the scattered stones and started slotting them back into the gap, with Adolphus doing a lot of the fetching and carrying and Ferocious doing most of the directing from a perch on top of the nearest bit of unbroken wall. But after an hour of sweaty work the gap seemed no smaller, and the number of scattered stones in the grass looked exactly the same.

“Maybe we need to do it more quickly,” suggested Olivia, so they redoubled their efforts. But after another half hour, Max thought he was going to expire, and Adolphus had given up and rolled over
onto his back with his tongue out. The wall looked exactly as it had at the beginning.

“We need to think about this,” said Ferocious. “There’s obviously a trick to it.”

“No trick!” came a voice from the trees on the other side of the wall. “Quite easy really. Quack!”

“Vortigern!” said Max. “I wondered where you’d gone!”

“Went with the Lady,” said the duck, emerging from the orchard. “She had some bread… Anyway, I heard her talking to Lady Wilhelmina about the wall. It’s a people wall. You have to say the name of a person your spell will help, and the stone stays put.”

“Oh, well, why didn’t we think of that before? How incredibly
obvious
,” said Ferocious grumpily. “Right, then. Better get going before it’s midnight. Come on, Max. A stone for Merlin.”

Max heaved a large, flat stone into position and said, “Merlin.” Then he stood and watched the stone carefully. It seemed to stay – but then again, he hadn’t actually noticed any of the other stones disappearing,
either. They just somehow didn’t manage to amount to a wall, however many you put there.

Olivia dragged up another, placed it next to Max’s, and declared theatrically. “For King Arthur!” Again, it seemed like the stone was going to stay, but it was hard to tell.

“Come on,” said Max. “We’ll just have to carry on and see what happens in the end.”

They dragged up more stones – for their father, for Lancelot, for Sir Lionel, for Sir Gareth, for Sir Boris… The wall was definitely getting higher, but not as quickly as it should have been. By the time they had run through every knight and lady in Camelot, it was half built, and they had to start on the squires.

“For Mordred,” said Olivia through gritted teeth. “For Peredur… for Percival… for Roderick…”

After that, it was the castle servants, the soldiers, the cooks, the stable lads.

Finally, the wall was almost completely built. There was only one stone left, but try as they might, no one could think of a single other person in the castle.

“The hawk boy,” said Max. “Richard.”

“No – done him,” said Olivia.

“Oh – I know!” said Adolphus. “King Arthur!”

They all rolled their eyes.

“Sir Lionel?” said Ferocious.

“No – he was outside the castle, remember?” said Max.

There was a silence. The Max clicked his fingers.

“Fred!” he said triumphantly. “Fred the kitchen boy!”

They lifted the stone into place and together they all shouted, “Fred!”

The stone stayed. The wall was perfect.

As they stood back to admire it, Great-Aunt Wilhelmina appeared. The Lady was beside her, and when she saw the wall, she clapped her hands.

“Oh thank you, my dears!” she cried. “That wall’s been waiting years for a really good emergency! So nice to see it whole again. Come along up to the house and have some cake, and I’ll show you the spell I’ve made.”

A Spell and a Chase

I
t was dark inside Great-Aunt Wilhelmina’s cave. Without the dragon, the globe lights dotted around the walls gave out only a faint glow, and the two figures creeping around kept bumping into each other or tripping up.

“Ow, Jerome! Druid’s toenails, keep your
clodhopping
feet off my toes!” hissed one of the figures.

“Sorry Adrian,” said the other, sounding
utterly fed up. Jerome Stodmarsh had often wished he was not Sir Richard Hogsbottom’s ward, but at that precise moment, creeping around the cave of an enormous and powerful dragon who might come back at any moment and decide to eat them, he really,
really
wished he wasn’t. He even wished he’d taken his chances with Sir Garth the Grumpy, in his tiny hovel of a castle in the dull backwater of Avonmouth, instead. Then he wouldn’t have been dragged on any of these dangerous and unpleasant missions with Adrian, who bossed him around like he was a servant. He could just have got on with the business of learning to be a knight, and spent his spare time with his collection of pet snails. Jerome sighed, and tiptoed after the shadowy figure ahead.

“Here,” hissed Snotty, as Jerome caught up with him. “There’s a small gap in the rock. I think it’s wide enough for both of us to hide inside… and I’ll sprinkle darkness powder just in front, should keep us fairly invisible. It must be nearly sunset
by now – they’ll be here any minute.”

Almost as he spoke, the cave started to get lighter and voices floated in from the entrance.

“…No, no, no, A-dog’s-nose, it’s only at sunset. You can’t see the island at all from this side… Have to know
exactly
where to fly. Anyway, come along in, it’s late, we should get some sleep.”

A vast green dragon lumbered past them, accompanied by a small bouncy dragon, a girl, a boy, and a duck. A rat was poking his head out of the boy’s tunic, twitching his whiskers and making a chittering sound.

“Has anyone been in here while we’ve been gone?” said the boy. “Ferocious thinks he can smell something, and there’s definitely a sense of… I don’t know
what
exactly, but it’s definitely familiar…”

Jerome held his breath. Snotty frowned and scattered another small sprinkling of powder in front of them, just as Great-Aunt Wilhelmina raised her head and sniffed.

“No, I can’t smell anything strange,” the dragon rumbled. “There’s a reek of magic, of course, coming
off that potion you’re carrying. It might be that you’re sensing, Max.”

“Maybe,” said Max, doubtfully, but there didn’t seem to be any other explanation.

“So will it de-ice the castle?” asked Olivia. “What did she say when she gave it to you?”

The Lady had taken Max off to one side to give him the potion, and then there’d been barely enough time for everyone to throw themselves on Great-Aunt Wilhelmina’s back before they had to fly hard into the setting sun.

Max looked at the small carved crystal bottle in his hand. It seemed to almost glow with magic. There was only a small amount of potion inside, but then the Lady had said that five or six drops would be enough to do it. Her spell only had to disable Morgana’s magic, then Max himself could unravel his own icespell.

“She said it would work,” said Max. “I’ve got some words to say as well, to get it started. But have we got time to sleep? Don’t we need to head off
straight away to get there before Morgana?”

“I can’t fly when it’s dark,” boomed
Great-Aunt
Wilhelmina. “I’ve got terrible night vision. Ever since I got caught in a thunderstorm a couple of hundred years ago, took a lightning bolt straight to the head.”

“Are you coming with us?” asked Olivia, thinking that if it came to a showdown with Morgana, it would be rather wonderful to have Great-Aunt Wilhelmina on their side.

“Of course!” said the dragon. “Can’t let A-drip-nose be the only representative of the family at such an important moment. Besides, I can fly much faster than any of you. If we leave at first light, I’ll have you there before midday.”

“That should do it,” said Max, thinking. “Morgana must have set out at twilight two days ago, so she’ll arrive at twilight tomorrow. We should have plenty of time.”

In the corner, Jerome and Snotty exchanged glances. Snotty eased a small square piece of folded
parchment out of his tunic, and passed it to Jerome.

“I’m going to see if I can get the spell once Max is asleep,” he whispered. “But if I get caught, send this swift to Lady Morgana. She’ll have to do the last few miles by broomstick. She needs to get to Camelot before midday!”

Max woke with a start. The far end of the cave was just visible in the pale light of dawn, but the others were still sleeping. Great-Aunt Wilhelmina let out a rattling snore and Max wondered if that was what had woken him. Then he saw a dark shadow flit across the narrow cave entrance and disappear out into the morning.

Max sat up. He felt around on the blankets. Then he scrambled up and shouted.

“Hey! Wake up! The potion’s gone! Someone’s been in and they’ve stolen the spell! It’s gone! Quick – we’ve got to get after them!”

He ran for the cave entrance, barely registering the others as they leaped up to follow him. He sprinted down the narrow passageway and out onto the beach.

There was no one there.

He pelted along the sand and up onto the path that ran from the cove to the nearest road. There was no one to be seen, but there in the centre of the muddy path were the prints of at least two horses, and they led off towards the road, looking like whoever was riding them had galloped off in an extreme hurry.

As Max stood there, Adolphus came galumphing up behind him and the others soon followed. Max turned to Great-Aunt Wilhelmina, who was looking rather cross-eyed after her rapid transition from deep sleep to broad daylight.

“It’s Snotty Hogsbottom,” he groaned. “I should have known. I thought I’d put him off the trail but he must have found us – and now he’s got the potion.”

“Well, we must follow him, then, and get it back,” said Great-Aunt Wilhelmina. “And since he seems to have disappeared rather rapidly, we’d better do a direction spell, and then fly.”

“Umm… I’m not sure I can,” said Max.

“Of course you can, dear boy,” said the great
dragon impatiently. “Just try. You have more magic in your fingertips than most people manage to acquire in a lifetime. Get on with it, and then we’ll catch up with this Hoggy Snotbottom, and all will be well.”

“Snotty Hogsbottom,” said Olivia. “Not Hoggy Snotbottom.”

“Well, Hotty Bogsnottom, then, or Botty Hotsnoggom or whatever his name is,” said
Great-Aunt
Wilhelmina crossly. “Let’s just get after him before it’s too late!”

Max thought about a direction spell. He picked up a pointed stone from the ground and held it on the palm of his hand, and tried to direct the right magic at it.

The stone whizzed around in circles for a few seconds and then turned into an apple pie.

Great-Aunt Wilhelmina snorted, but Olivia took the pie happily.

“Breakfast!” she said, and started to divide it between them.

“Try again, Max,” said the dragon.

He picked up another stone, and focused. This time he was almost sure he’d got it right, but then the stone flew up into the air and hit him on the nose, before dissolving into a thousand sparkling pieces of dust.

“Urrghh,” said Max, trying not to breath any of them in. “Dungballs! Why can’t I get it right? We’ve got to catch up with them. We’ve got to!”

“Calm down, dear boy,” said Great-Aunt Wilhelmina. “I can fly a lot faster than a horse can gallop. We should be able to catch up with them. But we
must
know where they are going.”

Max took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He pictured Snotty on his horse, just as he had seen him a couple of days ago. He pictured the crystal potion bottle, humming with the Lady’s magic. He picked up a small stick, placed it in his palm, and let the magic flow into it.

The stick quivered, and shifted, and pointed south-west.

“There!” said Olivia. “Come on! Let’s get after him!”

They scrambled on to Great-Aunt Wilhelmina’s back and she rose into the air on her powerful dragon wings. They started to hurtle the way the stick was pointing – away from the sea, as well as in exactly the wrong direction for Camelot.

Snotty Hogsbottom was galloping hard, throwing out misdirection spells behind him every few minutes while keeping a sharp eye on the road ahead. He had sent Jerome off in the opposite direction, with strict instructions to send the swift to Lady Morgana. Meanwhile Snotty wanted to make sure he drew Max and the others as far away from the castle as possible, to give Morgana the best chance of beating them to Camelot.

He splashed though a small stream, and dived into a copse of trees, then doubled back and planted a misdirection spell just next to a low stone wall. Following the wall took him to another cart track, and then a wider road. As he looked back, he could just see a faint speck in the sky heading in his direction.
Snotty put his head down and urged his horse on to an even more furious gallop.

“Hotty Botsnoggums! Stay exactly where you are!”

Great-Aunt Wilhelmina’s booming dragon voice rang out across the clearing where Snotty was standing, panting, next to his exhausted horse. Max and Olivia slipped off the dragon’s back and moved out either side of her, slowly approaching Snotty, who was clutching the crystal potion bottle in his right hand. Amazingly, Adolphus had already positioned himself at the other end of the clearing to cut off Snotty’s retreat, although it was probably because Ferocious was perched on his head whispering instructions into his ear.

“Come on Snotty, hand it over,” said Max, as he approached. “You can’t get away, and if you hand it over now, we
won’t
tell King Arthur about you.”

Snotty laughed, scornfully.

“Won’t tell King Arthur? Big deal! He’s going to be dead, very soon, and if by some miracle he
survives, you won’t be telling him anything because otherwise you’d have to tell him exactly who
did
the spell that iced his entire castle and all his knights!”

Max stopped still. It was a very good point. What
was
he going to tell King Arthur, assuming they got him defrosted?

Snotty saw Max’s hesitation and laughed again.

“Well, Pendragon, realised just how genius my lady’s plan was now? Even if you do save the castle, which you won’t, you can’t tell anyone about how it happened.”

“Oh shut up, Hogsbottom, and hand over the potion!” shouted Olivia, as she launched herself at him. Snotty twisted away, and as he did so, he pulled the stopper out of the potion bottle and upturned it. Before Olivia could grab it, all the golden liquid inside had splashed out onto the grass.

There was an awful silence as everyone looked at each other, Max and Olivia in horror, Snotty with a smile of triumph as he threw down the empty bottle. Then Max hurled himself at Snotty with both fists out
and the two boys tumbled to the ground, rolling over and over across the clearing. Snotty nearly landed a punch on Max’s right ear, but Max managed to dodge it, grabbing a fistful of Snotty’s hair.

“Ow!” yelled Snotty as Max pulled his head sideways, but the next second he’d got Max in a headlock and was squeezing his throat.

“Urrgh,” gurgled Max as he tried to prise Snotty’s arm away from his neck, and then with a huge effort he wrenched himself around and kneed Snotty in the stomach. But the fight would still have gone against Max if Olivia had not taken a hand. She’d been standing over the struggling boys, trying to get a clear angle on Snotty, and Max’s blow was just what she needed. Snotty’s head went up, and Olivia’s fist connected with his ear.

Thud!

For the second time in a few months Snotty Hogsbottom fell back heavily, knocked out cold by a Pendragon.

“Hurrah! Hurrah! You’ve won!” shouted
Adolphus as he bounded up.

But there was no cheering from anyone else. They were all looking at the empty crystal bottle lying on the ground, and wondering what they were going to do now the potion was gone.