Dragonfire (18 page)

Clara and Neil visited the hill once or twice after their return but somehow it just wasn’t the same without Arthur and Archie. They went back to school at the end of August and were soon laden with homework, book reports and project work. One cold morning, when they were sitting on a low wall in the playground, eating their sandwiches, Neil saw old MacGregor walking towards the gate.

“Congratulations, Mr MacGregor,” he called.

The janny smiled and walked over to them. “Aye! Did ye hear about it, then?”

“Dad told us last night,” Clara said. “You won the darts final for the East of Scotland!”

“I did that! And now I’m entered for the Scottish Open Championships!” He looked suddenly worried, for he had not yet come to terms with his quite phenomenal rise to fame in the darts’ world. “I’ll be up against the big boys then! I hope my luck holds out!”

Neil and Clara exchanged a look that spoke volumes. “Mr MacGregor,” said Clara solemnly, “from the way my dad said you played last night — cool as a cucumber and totally sure of yourself — well, we think you’re destined to go right to the top. Don’t you agree, Neil?”

Neil nodded. “I’m absolutely certain, Mr MacGregor. Believe me; you’ll have magic in your fingers! There’s no doubt about it! You’ll win!”

When the janny had left them to attend to some parents by the gate, Neil and Clara looked at one another. “The MacArthur really has been busy, hasn’t he,” Neil remarked.

“Definitely!” nodded Clara.

“I think he’s thrown some magic my way as well, you know. I really find school work easy this year.”

“So do I. But most of all, I’ve stopped being afraid of the dark. You’ve no idea what it was like! At night, even though I knew for sure that there was no one else in the house, I used to be scared to go downstairs for a glass of water. Now I can even see in the dark in a funny kind of way. Like the negative of a photograph.”

Two pigeons flew down and hopped over to them. Clara and Neil paid them no attention and went on talking.

“Hi!” said one. “I’m Jaikie!”

“I’m Hamish!” said the other.

“Jaikie! Hamish!” said Neil, his eyes darting round the playground to see who was near, “how wonderful to see you again! Has anything happened?”

“Archie and Arthur are coming back from Jarishan tonight and we’re having a big party for them. You’re all invited and the MacArthur would like you to pass on the invitation to your father, Sir James, Mr MacLeod and Mr Todd at the distillery. Oh, and Lady Ellan sends her regards and says to please bring your mother as well.”

“Brilliant!” said Neil, who had not really appreciated how dull life had become without the MacArthurs, “Mum will be delighted!”

It proved a tremendous party. Magic was in the air as they met old friends and talked of their adventures. Arthur and Archie brought news of Jarishan and the best wishes of Lord Rothlan and Amgarad. Lady Ellan hugged Neil and Clara warmly and apologized profusely to Dougal MacLeod for the incident at the Tattoo when he had been so roughly deprived of the firestones.

Everyone made a fuss over Mrs MacLean and although she was a bit apprehensive of Arthur at first, she soon relaxed as she watched her children rush over to the dragon, hug him warmly and pelt him with questions.

The MacArthur beamed happily throughout the evening and, looking round at the assembled gathering, Sir James was very much aware that a little magic had touched all of their lives. The Ranger’s work with the police force had earned him well-deserved recognition, and Dougal MacLeod had shed his old personality and become something of a wit. Old MacGregor (who had got on very well with the MacArthurs during their stay at the school) had become a star in the world of darts, Clara was no longer afraid of the dark, and both she and Neil were making excellent progress at school. As for himself, Sir James smiled as he nursed a wonderful feeling of deep content. Never, in all his days, had he tasted a whisky to equal it. Smooth, rich and utterly glorious, the whisky that he had retrieved from Arthur’s lake inside the hill had proved a veritable connoisseur’s dream — all twenty thousand gallons of it!

Although he tut-tutted at Sir James’s assertion that they all had good cause to be grateful to him the MacArthur was nevertheless pleased that they appreciated his efforts on their behalf. “Ocht, I didn’t really do much,” he murmured defensively. “Sharpened Neil and Clara’s memory a wee bit, and MacGregor’s eyesight!”

Dinner was a feast of mammoth proportions and it was only when they could eat no more and reached gratefully for their coffee that the MacArthur told them what had happened after they’d left Jarishan.

“You’ll be pleased to hear,” he said, sitting back in his chair and looking round at them all, “that Lord Rothlan has been accepted back into the world of magic and is again one of the Lords of the North.”

An excited murmur of pleasure rippled round the table and Clara clapped her hands. “Fantastic,” Sir James smiled. “I’m sure we wish him every success!”

“He’s still worried about the crown, of course, and one of the first things he did, was to trace Agnes, the carpet-mender.
He found her near Lochinver and brought her back to Jarishan with him. Although she’s still afraid of Kalman, he eventually managed to wheedle the whole story out of her. Ellan, as it turned out, was right all along. Kalman had more or less kept Agnes prisoner until she’d finished piecing together the shreds of his father’s carpet.”

“It must have been an enormous job,” said Lady Ellan. “It was in tatters! I don’t know how she did it!”

Her father nodded. “Joining threads in some places, I should imagine. But when she finally finished stitching it together and the carpet was whole again, it was able to talk. Kalman, Agnes said, was ruthless. He said he’d burn it if it didn’t tell him what had happened to his father on the night of the storm. At that threat, the carpet, needless to say broke down and told him everything he wanted to know. Prince Casimir, it said, had been terrified, but refused to give the crown up. As the storm carriers homed in on him he used the crown’s own magic to tie it to the Meriden family for ever. The carpet didn’t know whether or not the spell actually ‘took’ for Casimir’s magic was flawed as he’d cheated to get the crown. Magic can be a funny thing, sometimes.”

“I think the carpet was right,” Ellan said. “The crown must have had remnants of its own magic left for it didn’t fall into Meriden territory, did it? It fell instead into Jarishan.”

“So that’s how Kalman knew the crown was there,” said Neil breathlessly. “And he had to break the shield to get in to find it!”

The MacArthur nodded. “I think it is more than likely that Kalman has the crown although there are no signs yet that he’s using it.”

“If what Alasdair told us this morning is true, then he might well have started,” objected Lady Ellan. “Lord Rothlan told us this morning that Kalman seems to have disappeared. None of the crystals can pick him up and no one seems to know where he is.”

“Or what he’s up to!” added the MacArthur.

There was a silence. The knowledge that Kalman probably
had the crown threw something of a cloud over the festivities and as they climbed onto their carpets at the end of the evening, their goodbyes were quiet and subdued.

“We’ll keep in touch,” the MacArthur promised, shaking hands with them all. “Rothlan plans to visit us in the near future and I’m sure he’ll want to see you all again. Your carpets will always be ready for you, you know that, don’t you?”

As they all got ready for bed, Neil went into the garden to call Mischief in for the night and looked up as he heard the distant sound of an aeroplane as it started to lose height over the city. Watching its lights, he smiled to himself as he remembered Arthur’s adventure and wondered what the pilots’ reactions had been when they’d seen a dragon flying towards them.

Had Neil been in the cockpit of the aircraft, however, he would have been even more amused for, by sheer coincidence, the same two pilots sat at the controls. Neither of them, as it happened, had been in Edinburgh when the MacArthur had used his memory spell and, as a result, it hadn’t quite worked as it should have done. They still, therefore, had vague memories of Arthur and as they approached the city, both pilots became noticeably restless and edgy. One leant forward and did his best to look unobtrusively out of the cockpit window while the other scanned the night sky.

“Anything the matter, Jim?”

The co-pilot looked rather shamefaced and shook his head. “I don’t know what it is but every time we come in to land at Edinburgh, I get the totally stupid notion that there might be … dragons around,” he admitted.

“Dragons!” echoed the pilot, “did you say dragons?” He shook his head in relief. “Then it isn’t only me! Thank the Lord! I honestly thought I was going round the bend! Tell me I wasn’t imagining it all! There
was
a dragon, wasn’t there!”

“Scarlet and gold,” confirmed the other.

“That’s right! With the most amazing eyes!”

“Down there! Over Arthur’s Seat! I reckon that’s where he came from!”

“Arthur’s Seat?”

“You know! That hill down there. The one that’s shaped like … like a sleeping dragon!”

They looked at one another in wondering disbelief and some apprehension as the black bulk of the hill loomed darkly against the scatter of bright lights that marked the city.

Nothing, however, was to mar their steady descent that evening. Below the wings of their aircraft, the hill that was shaped like a sleeping dragon lay dark and silent. And in its depths, Arthur slept.

Read on for a sneak preview of Neil and Clara’s next adventure in
The Wings of Ruksh
…

It was a dark night and raining hard. Although the street lamps threw streaks of flickering light over the wet pavements of the High Street, Neil felt a shiver of apprehension at a subtle darkening of the atmosphere that seemed to make the street narrower and the surrounding buildings taller, shabbier and more forbidding, as though they’d moved a hundred years back in time. He moved closer to Sir James and saw that Clara, walking under her mother’s umbrella, was also looking apprehensive; her hand clutching at the firestone pendant she was wearing round her neck.

“Do you think we’ll find the restaurant?” Neil whispered to Sir James. “Old MacGregor might have been exaggerating the whole thing. I mean, restaurants don’t just disappear, do they?”

Sir James smiled at him, his eyes alert. “I wasn’t sure when we started out but now …” he scanned a street that seemed strangely deserted, “now I’m pretty sure we’ll find it. There’s magic abroad tonight, Neil! Can’t you feel the change in the atmosphere? I’m not sure if your mother shouldn’t take you both home and leave your dad and me to deal with this.”

“No way!” Neil and Clara chorused. “We’re in this together. Even Mum doesn’t want to back out! Do you, Mum?”

Mrs MacLean shook her head, not quite knowing what all the fuss was about. “Of course not,” she said. “I think it was a lovely idea to come here. Angus and Maggie said the food was excellent.”

Neil looked at his mother sharply. Although she had been
inside Arthur’s Seat and had met the MacArthurs, the magic people who live in the hill, she hadn’t been directly involved in their adventures and had never been given a firestone. Indeed, she had never needed one, but without a stone of her own she had no access to the world of magic that they enjoyed as a matter of course; for with their firestones they could call up magic carpets, become invisible and merge with people, birds and animals at will.

“Mum is the only one of us that isn’t wearing a firestone,” Neil said, meeting his father’s eyes. “I think it makes a difference. She doesn’t seem to feel what we’re feeling.”

Clara stopped suddenly beside a tall, narrow archway. Above their heads, an ornate, oriental lantern cast a dim light, illuminating a wooden plaque set in the stone wall.

“This must be it!” she whispered excitedly. “The restaurant
does
exist! What does the writing say, Neil?”

Her brother moved forward and looked at the flowing red script. “The Sultan’s Palace,” he whispered.

“Shall … shall we go down?” Clara questioned nervously, glancing down the alley that ran between high walls. At a nod from Sir James, she walked under the arch and even as she did so, she knew beyond doubt that this was a magic place. Excitement coursed through her veins and she felt the firestone hang suddenly heavy round her neck. Neil, too, drew in his breath with a gasp as he followed her through the arched way that gave onto a dank, narrow passage that sloped steeply before them. It was very quiet; the only sound being the steady drip of the rain. Wet cobbles gleamed dully and the high walls that seemed to meet overhead in the gloom, gave the place an air of mystery and romance. Gripped by a strange exhilaration, they felt as though they had stepped suddenly from the ordinary world into the pages of an exotic adventure story.

In the distance, lit by a sudden shaft of light that streamed from an open door, they saw that the passage opened out
into a sizeable courtyard and, as they watched, the figure of a man clad in a turban and flowing silk robes appeared in the doorway. He saw them immediately and paused, still as a statue.

Sir James eyed the Ranger. “What do you think?” he asked. “Shall we go on?”

It was Mrs MacLean who made the decision for them. Completely unaware of their misgivings, she sailed blithely down the alley, disturbing some pigeons that rose into the air, flapping in alarm, as she made her way towards the restaurant where the still, watchful figure of the Turk awaited them.

“Hang on, Mum!” Clara called, running after her. “Wait for us!”

As Mrs MacLean stopped and turned towards her, the Turk moved forward solicitously.

“Please be careful, Miss,” he warned Clara. “The cobbles are a wee bit slippery with the rain. We don’t want any broken legs, do we?”

All thoughts of magic promptly fled. The man was no more Turkish than they were. His accent was pure Edinburgh and now that they were nearer they could see that the silken robes that had looked so splendid and romantic from a distance, were actually creased and rather tawdry. Indeed, the restaurant now looked disappointingly ordinary, despite the whiff of incense that drifted from the ornate brass burners that lay inside the curtained doorway.

The waiter stepped forward, grinning at them cheerfully and with a polite bow, he gestured towards the entrance. “Welcome,” he intoned, “to the
Sultan’s Palace
!” And ushering them through a deeply-carpeted, dimly-lit foyer, led them into the restaurant itself.

As the restaurant doors closed behind the little party with a decisive click, the two pigeons that Mrs MacLean had disturbed, sailed down to the cobbles.

“That’s torn it,” snapped one. “They’ve gone in!”

“We couldn’t have stopped them, Jaikie! Not without showing the Turks that we were watching the place.”

“I know, I know, but this is serious, for goodness sake!” Jaikie flapped his wings in frustration. “Look, you’d better fly back to the hill and tell the MacArthur what’s happened. I’ll hang on here, just in case. Go on! Get moving!”

“Right, I’m off!” nodded the other and with a clap of wings, the pigeon soared skywards, heading towards the dark, misty bulk of Arthur’s Seat; the hill set in the middle of Edinburgh that looks for all the world like a sleeping dragon.

Jaikie watched him go and then turned once again to the restaurant. He eyed it anxiously, his mind taken up by the sudden, totally unexpected, appearance of Sir James and the Park Ranger. How they had got wind of the Turks he had no idea, but to take Clara and Neil into such danger defied belief. He groaned inwardly as he realized just how much they had complicated matters; the MacArthur was going to have a fit when he heard the news!

While Jaikie sat outside the restaurant, trying hard not to panic, Sir James and the Ranger were looking round the inside with interest as they made their way through chattering groups of diners, to their table. The decor was opulently rich; a dazzle of ornate gold wallpaper, red velvet curtains and crystal chandeliers. By far the most striking feature of the room, however, was an assortment of tall mirrors. Set in heavy, iron frames decorated with birds and flowers, they stretched along the walls from floor to ceiling, reflecting the white table linen and the sparkling glitter of candles and crystal.

At one end of the room, a band of musicians played on a raised stage, while a tall woman, dressed in flowing purple satin, sang into a microphone. Behind her, a backcloth depicted a rather garishly-painted country scene, so crudely
done that it looked like the work of children. Its bright, blue sky framed a road overhung by trees that seemed to lead to a distant castle while, in the foreground, a village of thatched, peasant cottages lay in lush, green meadows dotted with improbably-coloured flowers.

Neil looked at the band with interest as many of the instruments were unfamiliar to him. Violins and flutes, he recognized, but they were mixed with strange hand drums, long penny whistles and what he thought might be zithers. Clara, however, more interested in the musicians than their instruments, thought them a decidedly fearsome lot.

“They look more like bandits than musicians,” she confided to Sir James as he unfolded his napkin and reached for the menu.

Sir James was inclined to agree. They were certainly colourful. The men wore baggy trousers, flowing red tunics and jewelled turbans, but it didn’t take any great flight of the imagination to visualize them clutching rifles or even barbaric scimitars. However, they certainly knew how to play and the music, although strangely discordant, had a haunting charm of its own.

Sir James did the ordering and the table was soon overflowing with a variety of dishes that tasted delicious. The waiters hovered attentively, helping them to spicy kebabs, stuffed vine leaves and roasted aubergine dips.

Finally, they could eat no more. “That was a truly delicious meal,” Mrs MacLean said, patting her lips with the napkin as the waiters removed their plates.

“Mmm,” agreed her husband, “I ate far too much!”

They sat back in their chairs, relaxed and happy. Clara sighed as a feeling of complete contentment stole over her. The music seemed to be sending her into a gentle dream, or perhaps, she thought, it was the drift of incense that wafted over their table from the smouldering coals in the iron braziers that now burned with peculiar, greenish flames.

Idly she looked at the garish backcloth at the back of the little stage and wondered how she could ever have thought
it tacky. It now seemed incredibly beautiful and even as she gazed at it, a strange longing rose within her. The blue sky and green trees behind the cottage spoke of lazy summer days, and the road that led to the castle promised a new world of adventure, magic and excitement.

Suddenly, the restaurant’s lights darkened, spotlights blazed on the stage and the music shrieked to a piercing crescendo as, into their dazzling brightness, leapt a group of strangely-clad young men wearing the red fez of the Turk. Their baggy trousers were covered by long white dresses whose finely-pleated skirts started to billow out as they circled the stage, whirling like spinning tops. As the music quickened, so the dancers whirled faster and faster until they became a moving blur of white that held the audience dazzled and enthralled.

How long the dance lasted they never knew but as the incense in the braziers flared fiery red and its magic seeped insidiously through the room, the dancers beckoned them forward. Lured by the unseen forces that now captivated them, the Ranger and Sir James rose from their chairs and started to walk, as though in a dream, towards the stage. Clara followed and found herself pulling at Neil’s hand in her eagerness to reach the painted village that promised such untold delights. Mrs MacLean, startled at their sudden departure, picked up her handbag and tripped anxiously behind, not quite sure what was happening.

The music rose to an eerie climax as, on reaching the painted doorway of the rustic peasant’s hut, Sir James and the Ranger bent their heads and followed the dancers unhesitatingly into the gloom beyond. Neil and Clara followed them in but Mrs MacLean hung back in sudden horror as she realized that the door to the cottage was not really a door at all. It was a huge mirror similar to those that lined the walls of the restaurant and even as Clara walked through it, the dim interior of the cottage vanished abruptly, leaving Mrs MacLean staring horrified at her own reflection.