Dragon Seeker Read online

  It was then that a voice spoke to him.

  He spun round, his eyes darting into every nook and cranny, but it was only when the voice spoke again that he realized that it came from the sword in his hand.

  “Who are you?” the sword demanded. “What is your name?”

  Lord Jezail froze. Hurriedly, he changed his grasp and held the blade of the sword flat across the palms of both hands and bowed to it, his mind in turmoil. It had never entered his head that Dragonslayer might have this kind of magic and he wasn’t at all sure if he was happy about it.

  “My name is Lord Jezail … Lord Jezail of Ashgar,” he stammered.

  “Ashgar?” The sword slowly changed colour and glowed with a golden hue as the information registered. “Ashgar …” it repeated in a different tone. “Where there is a valley of dragons?”

  “Yes,” Lord Jezail answered, breathing a sigh of relief.

  He had sensed the sword’s initial hesitation but mention of the Valley of the Dragons had done much to allay its fears.

  Excitement flared through the sword at the very thought of the valley that had been famous even in the days of Sir Pendar. “We will go there,” it announced. “But not yet! First of all, I would like to bid farewell to my knight, Sir Pendar. Please hold me over his body, if you will!”

  Lord Jezail raised his eyebrows. An order, he thought. Nicely put, but an order nevertheless.

  Obediently, he moved forward and, as he held Dragonslayer over the body of the knight, felt a beam of magic shiver from the blade of the sword. Gasping in surprise, he looked down to see that, once again, Sir Pendar clasped a sword between his bony fingers. A sword that was identical to the one he held in his hand.

  “We cannot leave a knight without his sword,” Dragonslayer pointed out, sensing the magician’s surprise. “Sir Pendar was a good man and served me well. He deserves no less.”

  Lord Jezail bowed in agreement but his mind was racing frantically. This wasn’t at all what he had expected. A magic sword, yes; a magic sword whose blade could pierce the scales of dragons, yes; but a sword that could talk, give orders and throw spells … this wasn’t what he’d had in mind at all!

  3. Secret Tunnels

  “For goodness sake, don’t take any risks, Johnson,” Colonel Jamieson spoke briskly as the first of the two soldiers who’d volunteered to suss out the earthquake damage, dangled his legs over the wide split that had opened in the floor of one of the castle’s dungeons. “And that goes for you, too, Mason,” he added, turning to the other man who was still being roped up.

  It was the deepest of all the dungeons and, until then, everyone had assumed that the bedrock of the castle lay underneath it. The opening in the rock, however, had caused more than a few raised eyebrows among the team of engineers, for the strong current of fresh air that blew from it, indicated that there was a lot more than rock under their feet.

  Ian Johnson looked into the hole in the ground, assessing the possibilities. The opening, fortunately, was wide enough to give him plenty of room to manoeuvre but sloped steeply sideways into the depths.

  “We’ll watch out, Sir. Don’t worry!” Stuart Mason grinned confidently, as he made a final adjustment to his harness.

  Ian lowered himself carefully into the hole and, hanging on to the rope with one hand, shone his torch downwards, hoping to see how deep the shaft actually was. The incline made it impossible to judge, however, and as the voices from above grew fainter, he was grateful for the comforting sense of security the rope provided. Eventually, he came to the bottom of the shaft and, feet now planted firmly on solid ground, he relaxed and took stock of his surroundings. Shining the beam of the torch this way and that, he was surprised to discover that this was no crack caused by the earthquake; he was in a tunnel … a tunnel that had been cut out of solid rock.

  Ian frowned. Like every other soldier in the regiment, he knew about the underground tunnels that ran from the castle to the High Street and beyond. They were well documented, appearing on many of the old maps in the archives. He’d peered into a few of them himself but hadn’t fancied exploring them, knowing that over the years they’d become unstable; rockfalls making many of them actively dangerous. However, none of them, to his knowledge, had been cut out of solid rock — nor were they anywhere near as deep as this.

  The silence around him was deathly and his torch, although powerful, only lit up part of the tunnel before the beam petered out into the darkness. The air, however, was fresh and turning the beam up the shaft, he pulled three times on the rope; the signal for Stuart to join him.

  Stuart arrived several minutes later in a scatter of small stones, and was equally impressed. He looked at Ian and whistled in amazement. “Well, well,” he said, his eyebrows raised, “somebody’s taken a lot of trouble to carve out this tunnel — a whole lot of trouble!”

  “That’s what I thought,” Ian nodded, unhooking his rope from his harness. “Let’s see where it leads! There’s plenty of fresh air coming through.”

  Pulses racing, they shone the torch round the walls and set off, moving along swiftly and easily. They hadn’t, however, gone all that far when the tunnel stopped abruptly, blocked by a mass of earth and shards of rock. Not only that, a wide crack split the wall of the tunnel on one side.

  “The wall seems to have opened up here,” Ian breathed, shining his torch into the wide cleft that stretched from floor to ceiling. Cautiously, he stuck his head inside. “Hey, hang on a minute,” he whispered, “this is where the fresh air’s coming from. It’s blowing through here!” He edged further in. “And I can see daylight!” he added. “Come on,” he gestured, “there’s plenty of room. It gets wide enough to walk through. Might as well have a look!”

  Stuart switched off his torch as daylight streamed in and then cannoned into Ian who’d come to an abrupt halt in front of him. “What’s up?” he muttered, before falling silent as they both took in the fantastic sight that lay before them. The cleft opened out into a small room that, like the tunnel, seemed to have been carved out of the rock itself. Lit by the stream of sunlight that poured through a gash in its outer wall, they saw a scene that took them straight back in time. Dimly remembered childhood stories of knights in armour and romantic castles flew through their minds as they gaped in wonder at the huge black flag with the golden sword in its centre that hung, lopsidedly, above a coffin; a stone coffin. Its lid had obviously come off during the earthquake as its shattered remains were scattered across the floor, but that wasn’t what held their attention for, from where they were standing, they could see that the coffin contained a body.

  “Wow!” Ian breathed, excitement flowing through him like a river. “What’s this, then?”

  “A knight by the look of things,” Stuart answered as they picked their way over the rock-strewn floor to peer inside, for the coffin contained the skeleton of a man in armour.

  Ian frowned and looked round. It seemed a strange sort of burial.

  “Whoever put him here, laid his sword and his horn beside him,” Stuart muttered, moving closer, his eyes taking in the grinning skull that looked pathetically small inside the crumbling helmet. He took a step backwards. “That must be his standard!” he muttered, looking up at the black flag that hung on the wall above the alcove. “The sword on it looks like the one he was buried with. Look at the detail on the hilt. There’s a dragon curving round it. And see here, the same design’s on the mouthpiece of the horn.”

  Ian nodded. “What a find!” he whispered, turning to examine the rest of the stone chamber. “We’re going to hit the headlines with this! Can you imagine the excitement it’s going to cause! Archaeologists are going to have a field day!”

  “You can say that again,” Stuart agreed, and as Ian peered at Princes Street through the massive crack in the wall, he reached out to pick up the horn gingerly. “The horn seems solid enough,” he remarked, turning it over in his hands. Ian looked round at his words and before he could do anything to stop him, Stuart wiped t
he mouthpiece of the horn on his sleeve and blew with all his might.

  Ian put his hands over his ears at the sound and even Stuart looked shaken.

  “You shouldn’t have touched it,” Ian snapped in exasperation. “Honestly, Stuart, with a find like this, it’s really important that everything is left as it was found!”

  As they stared at one another angrily there was a sharp crack of sound and a sudden flash of light that made them cower.

  “What was that?” Ian gazed round apprehensively.

  “I don’t know but I suggest we get out of here,” Stuart’s voice was urgent. “We don’t want the roof falling in on us!”

  Ian nodded. “Put the horn back first, for goodness sake,” he said, his mouth stern. “I still can’t believe you actually blew it!”

  Stuart stepped forward and placed the horn carefully beside the knight. “There,” he said, totally unrepentant. “I’ve put it back exactly where it was. No one will ever know that I touched it!”

  In this, however, Stuart was as wrong as it is possible to be; for the blast of the horn had rung out loud and clear, in every corner of the world of magic. It was heard by magicians, hobgoblins, trolls, giants and dragons … and they all knew what it meant!

  4. Voice of the Horn

  “Thank goodness there wasn’t much damage, Father,” Lady Ellan said, settling comfortably in her chair as she glanced round the cavernous heights of the Great Hall that lay in the depths of Arthur’s Seat.

  Her husband, Lord Rothlan, nodded. “We thought it might be a lot worse,” he admitted.

  “It’s just as well that earthquakes don’t happen often in this part of the world,” the MacArthur observed sourly from the cushioned depths of his throne-like chair. “Gave us quite a shock, I can tell you.”

  The great, red dragon that lay curled by his side, looked at him affectionately and stretched lazily. He was very fond of the MacArthurs, the magic people who lived inside Arthur’s Seat, especially Archie, who sat comfortably in the crook of his arm.

  “Some of the passages that lead down to the store rooms have collapsed,” Archie said, “but Hamish and Jaikie say that they won’t take long to clear.”

  Arthur blew a tiny puff of smoke and Archie turned to look at him warningly. He knew the signs. Arthur, delighted to see the MacArthur’s daughter, Lady Ellan, and her husband Lord Rothlan, who had just arrived through the magic mirror from their estate at Jarishan, was just itching to breathe a few welcoming clouds to show how pleased he was to see them. As this generally set everyone coughing and spluttering, it wasn’t exactly a popular pastime, however, and Archie was just about to say “no” very firmly indeed, when the dreadful, eerie blast of a horn rang through the Great Hall.

  Everyone froze in their chairs. Arthur gave a terrible dragon scream. His body convulsed as he buried his head in his wings, desperately trying to shut out the sound. Never again had he thought to hear that piercing blast. Its memory had gradually faded with the passing of the years and it no longer sounded in his dreams but now the old fear swept over him again; Sir Pendar’s horn!

  Archie threw his arms round the trembling dragon, trying to comfort him while the MacArthur and Lord Rothlan looked at one another in horror and amazement.

  “Pendar’s horn!”Lord Rothlan snapped. “How on earth …?”

  Hamish and Jaikie rushed into the hall and, like Archie, went to comfort the dragon who was still shivering violently as old memories clouded his mind. Sir Pendar’s horn …

  The hobgoblins in Morven looked at one another in disbelief as the sound of the horn swept through the mountain. It was so long since they’d last heard it that at first they hardly recognized it. Then, as memories returned, the tiny nodules on their heads started to sprout long, anxious tendrils and their goat-like little faces puckered anxiously. Sir Pendar’s horn!

  With one accord they headed for the curving flight of steps that led to the blue and silver halls of their masters, the Lords of the North. Creeping upwards on tiny hooves, they peered at the curve of silver thrones that dominated the Great Hall. The lords would surely know what was going on.

  In this, they were not mistaken. The Lords of the North, old and wizened with age, had been dozing comfortably in their chairs after a good lunch. Now wide awake, they knew exactly what the blast signified.

  Lord Dorian blinked irritably and looked at Lord Alarid, his eyebrows raised. “I thought you hexed that wretched tomb ages ago, Alarid,” he remarked sourly.

  “I did,” Lord Alarid snapped, an anxious frown creasing his forehead.

  “The earthquake?” Lord Alban suggested, glancing round the semi-circle of gorgeously robed magicians. “It hit Edinburgh pretty hard and I understand there was some damage to the castle. You never know, it might have opened the tomb …”

  The Lords of the North exchanged thoughtful glances and, rising to their feet, moved instinctively towards an oval table of beaten silver where a shining crystal ball rested on an ebony stand. Lord Alarid passed a hand over it and, as the lords crowded round, breathed in sharply as he saw two soldiers standing in the ruins of Pendar’s tomb. One of them was holding the horn!

  As the eye of the crystal moved over Sir Pendar’s coffin, Lord Dorian stiffened. “Never mind the horn, Alarid,” he said, grasping the velvet sleeve of his robe, “hex the sword! Hex it now! Now!” he repeated, as Lord Alarid wavered. “For goodness sake, Alarid, stop dithering! We won’t be the only ones to have heard the horn!”

  Hastily, Lord Alarid spoke the words of a powerful hex and as he watched the soldiers swing round at the sudden crack of sound, breathed more easily. The hex was in place.

  “Someone else is watching through a crystal,” Lord Alban pointed out as the crystal registered the presence of magic.

  “The MacArthurs, perhaps, or Lord Rothlan?” Lord Alarid hazarded a guess.

  Lord Dorian’s eyes narrowed as he bit back a sharp retort. “Possibly,” he said icily, “but personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if we haven’t just stopped Lord Jezail in his tracks. He must have heard the horn and now he’s seen the sword!”

  There was a moment’s silence as his words registered. They all knew that Lord Jezail craved power. And Dragonslayer was enormously powerful!

  “One way or another,” Lord Dorian continued, “there’s going to be trouble over this! Think about it, Alarid! He managed to get the talisman last year and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he isn’t working on some sort of scheme to steal the Book of Spells! He flung out his hand dramatically towards the crystal where the startled soldiers were looking fearfully round the tomb. “And now, this!”

  Lord Alarid frowned in annoyance. “Relax, Dorian,” he said shortly. “Dragonslayer will never again slay a dragon. Not with that particular hex in place!”

  Lord Dorian, however, wasn’t convinced. “That’s all very well,” he stated firmly, “but Jezail doesn’t know that, does he? Believe me; he’ll move heaven and earth to get his hands on that sword! Don’t forget that he was a Dragon Seeker of old!”

  There was a long silence as the magicians considered the matter.

  “You know, I think I agree with Dorian,” Lord Alban said thoughtfully. “Jezail was always ambitious, remember, and if he sees half a chance of getting his hands on Dragonslayer, he’ll take it! And you never know, Alarid … his magic is such that he might well be able to reverse your spell!”

  The Lords frowned worriedly and Lord Alarid’s face grew stern at the thought of the terrible power of the sword that had killed many of the world of magic’s most precious creatures.

  5. Dragon Tears

  The minute their magic carpets soared into the MacArthur’s Great Hall in the depths of Arthur’s Seat, Neil and Clara knew that they had been right to come. They’d been at home playing Nintendo when they’d heard the dreadful sound of the horn and had known instinctively that something had happened in the world of magic. Something dreadful!

  Neil, peering over the edge of his magic carpet,
looked across at Clara and pointed at Arthur, for the huge red dragon was curled in a huddled heap, his wings covering his head. Everyone, it seemed, was trying to comfort him for he was surrounded on all sides by a crowd of MacArthurs.

  Indeed, so concerned were the MacArthurs about their dragon that it was only Amgarad, Lord Rothlan’s great eagle, who noticed the carpets soaring in across the vastness of the cavern. He flapped into the air as they lost height and Clara waved to him delightedly as he circled round them. It was only when they landed, however, that Lady Ellan, the MacArthur’s daughter, turned to see what was happening. She came across swiftly and hugged them tightly. “It’s so nice to see you,” she said, “but you’ve chosen a bad time to visit, I’m afraid!”

  Amgarad, his great wings beating the air, swooped down to land on Clara’s shoulder and she winced slightly as his claws dug deep into her jacket. Neil looked on admiringly as the bird settled its wings and started to pull gently at Clara’s long brown hair with its frighteningly curved beak.

  “What’s the matter with Arthur, Lady Ellan?” Neil asked. “He’s not ill, is he?”

  Several heads turned at the sound of his voice. The MacArthur, himself, looked up as did Lady Ellan’s husband, Lord Rothlan, who was deep in conversation with Sir James Erskine, the owner of a local distillery. After several adventures involving a variety of goblins, monsters and magicians, he too had become familiar with the MacArthur’s world, wore a firestone and had his own magic carpet.

  The eagle answered, shifting on his claws. “The voice of the horn frightened him,” he said. “Did you hear it too?”

  Clara nodded, her eyes apprehensive. “We thought it was a horn,” she said. “It sounded … I can’t describe it … it made my blood freeze!”