Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded Read online

  Chantel could think of no spell to fix this problem.

  Men in boats were hammering and prying at the sealed city gates. They even tried to bore a hole in one of them, but their auger broke.

  At least the Sunbiters with the battering ram had given up.

  The sorceresses attempted the Buttoning several more times over the course of the next few days. Chantel could tell, because things got worse and worse. The ground trembled, and one of the towers of the castle collapsed, raining blocks of stone down on the city. Several entire houses in Donkeyfall Close sealed up, their doors and windows becoming solid stone, and men pounded vainly at the walls with sledgehammers. Finally the people inside were rescued by pulling apart the roofs.

  The message was clear: the sorceresses could seal everything but Seven Buttons.

  The attackers were at work on the walls with pickaxes and levers. The sentinels and boys of Lightning Pass rained arrows, rocks, and boiling water down on them. The Sunbiters responded with crossbow bolts and catapult missiles. There were many casualties, and Chantel couldn’t find Bowser anywhere.

  The sorceresses kept trying to do the spell. And more strange things happened.

  Sinkholes opened at random places, dropping people suddenly twenty feet down. Then a thick hoar-frost formed over everything, and ice coated the trees and the potato plants and melon vines in the Green Terraces.

  Meanwhile, Chantel and Anna had figured out that the book with the flowery language was a sort of chart for making spells. There were different signs, and magical ingredients, and times of day that worked for doing magic in certain places, and on certain objects. For example, any spell that had to do with stone required a thorn from a rose that had bloomed at the full moon. A spell related to water required hair from a mouse’s tail.

  “We need ingredients,” said Anna.

  “I’ll get them from the school,” said Chantel.

  “I’ll go with you,” said Franklin.

  “And see if you can find out what happened to Bowser,” Anna called after them.

  But they couldn’t. They never could.

  They knocked on the door of Miss Ellicott’s School for Magical Maidens.

  Miss Flivvers opened the door a crack, then threw it wide when she saw who it was. “Oh, Chantel! The most wonderful news!”

  “What?” said Chantel warily, as she and Franklin came in and wiped their feet.

  “Miss Ellicott was here! She’s safe!”

  Chantel clenched her teeth in exasperation. “Of course she’s safe. She’s in control of the city, Miss Flivvers.”

  “What a dreadful thing to suggest about a lady like Miss Ellicott!” Miss Flivvers said. “The king is in control.”

  And that, Chantel reflected, was probably more or less the truth. “What did—”

  “Miss Ellicott was very concerned at finding the students missing,” said Miss Flivvers.

  “Because she wanted them for hostages. We talked about all this. . . .” A sudden thought struck Chantel. “Miss Flivvers, you didn’t tell Miss Ellicott where they were, did you?”

  Two pink spots appeared on Miss Flivvers’s cheeks.

  “Um, she might’ve figured it out for herself,” said Franklin.

  Miss Flivvers shot him a grateful glance.

  Well, the damage was done, Chantel thought. No time to worry about it. The king might know the girls were in the dragon’s lair, but the dragon was, after all, a dragon. Meanwhile Chantel and Franklin had to hurry in case Miss Ellicott came back.

  “I need some things from Miss Ellicott’s supply cupboard, please,” said Chantel.

  She had a list of ingredients in the pocket of the purple dragon robe. When she reached for it, the gold circlet from the dragon’s storeroom fell out and rolled. Franklin caught it as it went wuppa-wuppa-wuppa on the floor.

  He looked at it thoughtfully, then handed it to Chantel. She stuck it back in her pocket and unfolded the list.

  “Can you help me find everything please, Miss Flivvers? I’m in kind of a hurry.”

  “I hardly think—”

  “Please, Miss Flivvers. It’s an emergency. You don’t need to think.”

  And to Chantel’s relief Miss Flivvers didn’t. She led the way upstairs, rattling her keys, and opened the supply cupboard. Chantel handed her the list, and together they gathered . . .

  . . . dried powder made from the first red oak leaves of spring

  . . . a small phial of dew gathered on May morning

  . . . silver scales from a fish that had been caught by a left-handed fisherman with seven sons and seven daughters

  . . . six hairs from the tail of a cat named Herman

  . . . and a few other things that Anna thought could be turned into useful spells.

  Chantel tucked these things into the pockets of her dragon robe. Then she and Franklin left hurriedly, in case Miss Ellicott came back.

  Anna and Chantel worked on inventing a new Buttoning, matching up magical elements. The new spell was going to have to be different from what the sorceresses did. For one thing, Chantel didn’t think girls could be stationed at each of the six buttons to do the spell. Not in the middle of a war. It wasn’t safe.

  “I wish the king would just give in to the Sunbiters’ demands,” said Chantel.

  “He can’t,” said Franklin. “You can’t give in to force. Not if you want to rule.”

  He watched Chantel carefully as he said this.

  “It’s not giving in to force if you just offer what you should’ve offered in the first place,” said Chantel.

  Anna looked uncomfortable. “The king must know better than we do.”

  The streets will run with blood, Chantel thought. They didn’t have much time to come up with a new spell. Maybe she should ask the sorceresses for help.

  They wouldn’t help, though. They wouldn’t approve. They’d say making new spells was dangerous. And they’d put Chantel in a cage.

  So Anna and Chantel worked into the night, matching ingredients to spell elements, trying out new signs, trying to invent spells of fortification.

  They coudn’t make anything stronger, though. They tried to make a spare octopus tentacle as strong as an iron cable. Instead, it merely shattered, sending tiny bits of octopus everywhere.

  “I just don’t think we can do it,” said Chantel, as she crawled around under the table picking up the shards.

  Anna seemed to be thinking the same thing. “You should at least go talk to the sorceresses. If you just explained to them . . . and didn’t get close enough for them to put you in a cage . . . I mean, they have to help, it’s their city too . . .”

  Chantel sighed. “All right.”

  Lightning had been asleep all this time. Chantel supposed he was tired from having breathed so much fire.

  The next day, Chantel set out to talk to the sorceresses. She was on her way up to Bannister Square—in fact, she was almost at the top of the tunnel—when she saw a light floating toward her through the murk. A smell of soap and magic came with it.

  The light resolved itself into a globe borne by Miss Ellicott herself.

  “Miss Ellicott. I was just coming to see you.” Chantel stood in such a way as to block the passage.

  Miss Ellicott held up her light-globe and tried to see past Chantel. “Is this where you have secreted my kidnapped pupils?”

  “I didn’t kidnap them, Miss Ellicott. I brought them here to keep them safe.” The sorceress tried to sidestep, and Chantel put out a hand to stop her. “Miss Ellicott, no. I beg your pardon, but no. There’s a dragon down there, and he’s dangerous.”

  “And this you call keeping them safe? The king intended to keep them safe. Do you think you know better than the king?”

  From above, a grating sound echoed and rang down the tunnel.

  “They’re safer than anyone else in Lightning Pass right now,” said Chantel.

  Miss Ellicott peered over Chantel’s shoulder. “To ascertain that, I require to see the dragon.” />
  “I—I’m sorry, Miss Ellicott. You can see him if he comes out.”

  “I have every right to see him. He was mine once,” said Miss Ellicott.

  “The snake was your familiar. You had your chance, and you didn’t take it.” Chantel felt a twinge of sympathy. It must be awful to look back and feel you had made the wrong choice, when it was too late. “I’m the dragonbound sorceress now.”

  Miss Ellicott looked down her nose sharply at Chantel, and Chantel thought she was going to tell Chantel that she was not a sorceress, she was just a child. Miss Ellicott did not do this.

  “You can’t do the spell on Seven Buttons without me,” said Chantel. “Any great working is going to require my help.”

  “Then you will help us,” said Miss Ellicott.

  “On one condition,” said Chantel.

  “You make conditions? The city could fall at any moment.”

  “That’s why I’m making conditions,” said Chantel. “What are the Sunbiters asking for, Miss Ellicott?”

  “Some nonsense,” said Miss Ellicott. “It’s no affair of mine. Or yours, I might add.”

  “Are they still asking to have the tolls and port fees lowered? Because I think it would be better to give them that than to have them invade.”

  “You know nothing of statecraft,” said Miss Ellicott.

  “Of course not. I didn’t learn it in school,” Chantel said. “But that’s still what I think. They’re much stronger than us, and they can lay siege to the city and starve us. Would you please be so good as to tell the king that I’ll help strengthen the wall when he agrees to give the Sunbiters what they want. And not before.”

  From up the tunnel came a metallic clang.

  “I will ask you one last time, Chantel, to do your duty.”

  “I’m doing it, Miss Ellicott.”

  Miss Ellicott’s mouth became a thin, hard line. “You will regret this, Chantel Goldenrod. You will come to wish you had done as the king asked. You will come to wish it very much indeed.”

  And she turned, her robes sweeping the rock floor, and marched away into the darkness.

  Chantel wasn’t entirely sure she’d done right.

  She would talk it over with Anna. But first, having come so far, she might as well go into the city.

  It was only a hundred yards or so, and a couple of turns in the passage, before Chantel reached a point where sunlight filtered in. The light threw a yellow beam onto the rough rock wall. The beam was crisscrossed into neat squares.

  Her heart in her mouth, Chantel ran to the end of the passage.

  A metal grid covered the mouth of the tunnel. The grid was padlocked on the outside. And it was so tightly guarded with wards that Chantel couldn’t even touch the bars.

  23

  THE FINER POINTS OF CRYSTALLIZED RAT URINE

  Chantel screamed. She yelled. She hollered. She would have banged on the copper bars had the wards not been in the way. The people going about their business in Bannister Square seemed not to hear her.

  Then she remembered the abnegation spell hiding the cave entrance. She undid the spell, and shouted some more.

  A man stopped and looked at her.

  “It’s no good your yelling,” he said. “You’re imprisoned by order of the king. It says so right here.”

  He pointed to a wooden sign wired to the outside of the grate.

  “I need to get out so I can save the city,” said Chantel urgently. “Without me the sorceresses can’t protect the city, and I’ve got to get the king to—”

  “It says you’ll say that,” said the man, squinting at the sign. “It says there’s treasonous magic in your voice, too, and that we’re not to listen.”

  And he clapped his hands over his ears and hurried away.

  They had run out of octopus. Finally. Lightning was still sleeping off the effects of having fused the walls and burned the siege engines. Breathing fire seemed to take a lot out of a dragon.

  Once he woke up, Chantel figured he’d be able to melt the grate . . . Miss Ellicott couldn’t have put an anti-dragon spell on it, could she?

  If she had, they’d still be able to escape through the underwater passage.

  Just in case that was necessary, Franklin taught the girls to swim.

  And Holly, who had a knack for such things, put together a makeshift fishing rod and caught some peculiar-looking fish.

  After they had eaten the fish, Chantel went to dispose of the guts. She carried the bundle far away from the dragon’s lair because fish guts don’t make very good company.

  She wandered through passages, glad to be away from everyone for a bit, even if she did have her hands full of dripping fish entrails. She wasn’t particularly worried about getting lost. Long ago, someone had marked out routes through the caves with colored stones at every turning. She was following a route marked by glittering green stones now.

  She reached a deep shaft and dropped the guts down it, hearing them sploosh far below. She wiped her hands on a dripping stalactite, and then on the hem of her school robe. Then she sat down on a mushroom-shaped rock and thought.

  Maybe Miss Ellicott was right, and she should do what the king said. After all, someone had to know best. That was what kings were for, wasn’t it? To know best. Even if they did usually become king by killing the old king. That was just human nature, wasn’t it? Didn’t kings really know best? Well, granted, this particular king seemed rather foolhardy. But kings in general?

  She got up and strolled further along the passage.

  She came to an odd little cave, almost perfectly round and domed, with stone benches in a circle. There was a painting on the wall. Chantel held her light-globe close and studied it.

  The picture showed men and women, standing in a circle. A few of them were wearing purple robes with dragons on them. Lying behind them, half-encircling them, was a dragon.

  Chantel looked at it for a while, then she walked on. She’d seen several pictures of people standing in circles, and she didn’t know what it meant. She wanted answers. She didn’t understand a lot of things. If only someone—

  She saw a person coming toward her through the gloom.

  Her heart jumped. She had an awful feeling she’d just done a summoning by accident. That seemed to be a danger of being good at something. Queen Haywith had warned her that if she summoned her a third time, there would be a price to pay.

  The person coming toward Chantel wore a long red robe. And a circlet of gold around his head . . . a crown, Chantel realized.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “And why don’t you curtsey?”

  Chantel did a quick curtsey. Not a court curtsey, because there wasn’t room. “I’m Chantel. Who are you?”

  “People don’t ask me who I am. I am the king, of course.”

  “Which one, please, Your Majesty?” asked Chantel politely.

  The king blinked. “Oh, so it’s that way, is it? Is this a summoning? Are you a sorceress? I am King Beaufort.”

  “King Beaufort the Basically Benign?” said Chantel.

  “Is that what they call me?” The king smiled. “This must be a summoning, then. Certainly nobody would dare call me such a thing while I am still alive. How long have I been dead?”

  Why did people always ask that? “About three hundred years, I think,” said Chantel.

  The king sighed. “Well, it comes to us all, I suppose. How did I . . . never mind. What do you want to ask me, sorceress?”

  Chantel thought fast. She hadn’t been aware of wanting to ask him anything. “Um, well, it’s like this. We’re underground—”

  “Yes, I can see that. We’re between the subterranean royal chambers and the draconic lair.”

  “I’ve just been trapped here by the sorceresses—”

  “But you are yourself a sorceress,” said the king, surprised.

  “I beg your pardon, no. I’m just training to be one,” said Chantel. “But the sorceresses have locked me underground—”

  “
How can they possibly have done that?” said the king.

  “They sealed the cave in Bannister Square.”

  “And the dragon is party to your imprisonment?” said King Beaufort.

  “He’s asleep,” said Chantel. “When he wakes up, I’ll ask him to—”

  “You speak to the dragon?” said the king. “You’re a dragonbound sorceress?”

  “I guess so,” said Chantel.

  “Hm.” The king frowned. “I’m not sure whether I ought to help you or not. Who has imprisoned you?”

  “The—” Chantel stopped herself from saying the king had done it. Kings probably stuck together. “The sorceress Miss Ellicott.”

  “She ought to obey you, as you’re the dragonbound sorceress,” said the king. “Isn’t that how you girls organize things? I suppose you’re rather young, though. Well, if she’s used copper smelted under the full moon, the dragon’s flames may rebound into the tunnel and that would be disastrous.”

  “Oh,” said Chantel. “Then—”

  “But there is still egress through the castle,” said King Beaufort. “Or the underwater tunnel, if it comes to that.”

  “The castle?” said Chantel.

  “Of course. The green stone trail goes to the castle,” said the king. “As for the sorceresses, they shouldn’t be messing about sealing caves. They should be guarding the seven gates.”

  “Seven gates of what?” said Chantel.

  “Of the city,” said the king, giving her an odd look. “Are we not beneath the great walled city of Lightning Pass?”

  “Yes,” said Chantel. “But there’s only one—”

  “The sorceresses,” said the king, “are the keepers of the seven gates. But they are too trusting. They allow too many people in. They lack discernment. They would do better to be guided by wise men.” He looked up suddenly. “I hear something. You’d better go. It would be terribly unlucky if my courtiers were to waken me during a summoning.”

  Chantel curtseyed, and watched the king leave.

  Then she followed the way he had gone.

  She passed through marvelous caverns, great halls bedecked with glistening stalactites and columns. Human hands had been at work here, fashioning seats hidden away in alcoves, and walks beside dark streams, and a long, curved bench that Chantel was sure must be intended for a dragon to recline on.