The Dragons 3 (7 page)

• It will end in tears.
  
• There will be tears before bedtime.
  
• Don't say I didn't warn you.
  

But she knew no one was listening.

So she made her own quiet little plans to make sure that when they did finally set sail, she at least would survive.

FAMOUS DRAGONS OF THE WORLD
LAPLAND
SANTA CLAWS

Back in Camelot, Merlin was trying to keep an eye on everything. On the one hand there were the dragons, who his spies told him were planning an uprising. On the other hand there was King Arthur's revolting cousin Mordred, who his other spies told him was planning an uprising. On the other, other hand there was the deposed fake King Arthur/Brat/Ruthra, who his other, other spies told him was planning an uprising.

It's a good thing I've got more than two hands,
Merlin said to himself.

He did not tell anyone about the three uprisings and he certainly didn't tell them about his extra hands, most of which he kept in a box under his bed.

The old wizard had always known that it was unwise to trust anyone, so he hardly ever talked to Arthur or Morgan le Fey or anyone about important things unless it was absolutely necessary. It wasn't that he didn't trust them personally, but he knew that walls had ears, indeed many of the ears the walls of Camelot had were Merlin's and some of the walls had noses too. He knew, for example, that the young King and his
sister might be discussing the threat of invasion while there was a spy sitting outside on the windowsill, so it was best to say nothing.

There was also nothing much they could do to help, otherwise he definitely would have told them. Obviously when it came to it, Sir Lancelot and the other Knights of Camelot would charge about, hacking their enemies to bits with their swords, but they would only need a few minutes' notice to get ready for that.

In fact, Merlin was so worried about people listening in that he was even cautious about talking to himself. For quite a few years he'd had the nagging feeling that there was a presence inside his own head eavesdropping on his every thought. This, of course, was a ridiculous idea, which only showed how paranoid the old wizard had become.

It was also completely true.

So he decided it would be best if no one knew anything, at least not until the last minute. He also made sure that his spies never spoke to each other. Everything was under control. The fact that all three uprisings were planned for the same night – the longest and darkest night of the year – would make things easier.

After all,
he thought,
we will then, as they say, have all our eggs in one basket. And the easiest way to crack eggs is to bang them against each other.

Note to self,
he added,
make sure the sky is covered with thick, black, heavy clouds that night. We do not want any moonlight to guide the invaders.

And let's make the clouds into massive thunderstorms with ferocious flashes of lightning so that they may see what lies before them for a mere flick of a second before the lightning finally strikes their swords and pikestaffs. And let there be rain, the likes of which the world has never seen.

‘That should do it,' he said softly.

‘I'll teach them to try and play with grown-ups,' he  added, just loud enough for the spy inside his chimney to hear.

Think you have heard and know my plans?'
Merlin thought, and he lit the fireplace his manservant had laid earlier.

‘Like I said …' He laughed as the fire sent flames up the chimney that crackled and hissed not quite loudly enough to drown out a faint scream. ‘I'll teach them to try and play with grown-ups.'

Though he was a bit annoyed at not knowing who had sent the spy, it would have been good to capture them and find out. It didn't really matter, but Merlin was the sort of person who liked to have all the facts and file them neatly away in his brain for future use, because you just never knew when the tiniest bit of information might suddenly become extremely important. There were three spy options: the dragons, Mordred's lot or Princess Floridian's group. He realised, of course, that all three of them would be spying on him or at least trying to.

Merlin knew the dragons had a spy in the kitchens. His own spies had told him so and it was proving to be very useful. Rather than kill the spy, he used her to feed misinformation back to the dragons to confuse and unsettle them.

This included:

• Top scientists have revealed that there will be no longest night of the year this year in order to conserve the supply of darkness.
  
• If they are wrong and there is a longest night, every single person living in Castle Camelot will be away on holiday that night at a mystery
  location down the end of the River Stycks called Shoeburyness, where they will be having a very big beach party where there will be Beach Volley-Jousting.
  
• And cake.
  ³⁵
  
• Chocolate cake with burnt bits.
  ³⁶
  
• A secret, evil tyrant from the north called Mordred is gathering an army and plans to attack and kill all the dragons on the night before the longest night of the year.
  
• Roses are blue. Violets are red. King Arthur wants the dragons all dead.
  
• The castle's top cook is compiling a cookery book of dragon recipes, including a giant dragon egg omelette with a crispy baby dragon's skin garnish.
  
• Starting next Friday there will be no more Fridays.
  
• Dragons are an endangered species.
  
• Correction
  – that should read: Dragons will
  very soon be an endangered species.
  
• Correction
  correction – that should read: Dragons will very soon be an extinct species.
  

The toasted spy in the chimney had probably come from the dragons too, as they were the most likely to have actually managed to get spies into Camelot. After all, they were only five minutes away across the valley. Not only that, they were cleverer than the other two lots.

Merlin made a list of everyone he thought was probably, hopefully, perhaps, not spying on him:

• King Arthur – definitely not.
  
• Morgan le Fey – probably was, but not necessarily for reasons he need worry about.
  
• Sir Lancelot – no, too stupid.
  
• Himself – though he wasn't 100 per cent sure he could trust his subconsciousness.
  
• He did not make a list of who might be spying on him. Actually, he did, and it consisted of: Everyone.
  

And all the time, awake or asleep, there was something nagging in the back of Merlin's brain. This something
didn't have a name or any reason to exist. Yet it did. Merlin knew he was the most powerful wizard on Earth. He had made sure of that over the centuries, by eliminating any other wizards who looked as though they might be a threat. Of course, there were other wizards and witches – lots of them – but none of them had powers that came anywhere near Merlin's. He had eliminated any threat of competition in subtle ways that made all of them look as though they were accidents or acts of nature, like an earthquake right underneath their bedroom when they were fast asleep, or a volcano bursting through their kitchen floor. Any person who said they thought it looked suspicious moved instantly to the top of Merlin's extermination list. Anyone who did have doubts soon learned to keep this to themselves.

Yet there was something hiding inside his head. It was as vague as an old dream, but Merlin knew six things for certain:

• It had not always been there.
  
• It was not an old memory.
  
• It was not an old dream.
  
• It was not indigestion.
  
• It was put there by someone else and it was watching him.
  
• There seemed to be nothing he could do about it.
  

He had tried spring-cleaning his brain, and he had gone through every part of it and thrown out stuff he didn't need anymore, but it was still there.

It was as if the inside of his head was a house with hundreds of rooms and the uninvited visitor was always in the next room. When Merlin went into the next room, the visitor would go into the next, next room. It was the same as the famous saying ‘tomorrow never comes'.

The old wizard sat down to make a list of all his old and new enemies, right back from before he was born. Not piddling little annoyances like Brat or Ruthra or whatever his latest name was, but serious enemies who might attack him.

The list was empty.

Merlin had eliminated every one of them. This meant that while he had no enemies, he also had no friends and no one to talk to.

So this visitor was new and maybe not even from planet Earth and maybe not even an enemy.

It wasn't and it was, though not necessarily in that order.

The trouble was that right now Merlin had three potential rebellions to deal with, so he put it to the back of his mind, where, of course, it was already.

But he could not put it
out
of his mind.

‘What do you mean, there will be no longest night of the year?' said Spikeweed. ‘That's ridiculous.'

‘No sir, it's true,' said the spy. ‘Apparently they are running out of darkness, so they decided to cancel the longest night of the year to save some.'

‘But then that will mean the second longest night of the year would then be the longest night,' said Primrose.

‘And there would be two of them,' said Spikeweed, ‘the one that used to be before the old longest night and the one that was after it because they are the same length.'

‘Yes,' Primrose agreed, ‘except one is getting shorter and one is getting longer.'

‘Yes, but …' Spikeweed began.

‘That would be twice as much darkness,' said Primrose. ‘So I suppose they'd cancel them too.'

‘I think my brain is going to explode,' said Spikeweed.

‘Are you sure about the chocolate cake with burnt bits?' said Bloat as the spy told them all the other things she had ‘discovered'.

‘Yes,' said the spy. ‘I was allowed to lick the mixing bowl. Actually, I lick lots of mixing bowls clean. It's my job. Though, of course, the cake bowl was a special treat because I'm only an under-apprentice assistant bowl licker, so I'm usually only allowed to lick the cabbage-water bowls.'

‘But you saw the cake?' said Bloat.

‘Oh yes, and I smelled it cooking,' said the spy. ‘If you have a big sniff of my shirt you can probably catch the smell of the roasting smoke.'

Bloat did and a faraway-stupid-dragon grin spread across his face just before he passed out.

‘Never mind the wretched cake,' said Spikeweed. ‘What are we going to do?'

The only suggestion anyone could come up with was – just sort of do nothing.

‘NOTHING!' roared Primrose, singeing the five nearest dragons.

‘No, I mean, I didn't mean do nothing never ever,' said one of the burnt dragons. ‘I just meant do nothing when we were planning to do it.'

‘Yes, exactly,' said another. ‘We meant do nothing then, but do all the rebellion stuff a bit later
when things have settled down.'

‘You're all useless,' said Primrose. ‘We will not do nothing. We will do something and we will do it when we were planning to.'

‘But our spy said King Arthur and everyone would be away at the seaside,' said Spikeweed.

‘And you believed her, did you?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's what I was told,' said the under-apprentice assistant bowl licker.

‘And you believed it too, didn't you?'

‘Of course I did,' said the girl. ‘My mother told me to always tell the truth.'

‘Yes, but that doesn't mean everyone else is,' said Primrose. ‘Now you go back to Camelot and tell the person who told you about them all being away that you've heard a rumour that every single dragon is going off to live in Italy just before the shortest night of the year. Tell them we're fed up with the cold weather here, so we're going to live somewhere nice and warm.'

‘Gosh,' said the girl. ‘It sounds wonderful. Can I come?'

‘Of course you can,' said Primrose, looking up
at the stars and shaking her head in annoyance. She wondered if they had had a competition to find the stupidest girl in Camelot and then chosen her to be their spy.

‘You could suggest they make us a big chocolate cake with burnt bits as a going-away present,' said Bloat, who had just woken up again.

‘Forget about the cake,' Primrose snapped and added to the kitchen girl, ‘and make sure you don't tell them you heard that story, I mean, not story, I mean news. Make sure you don't tell them you heard that news. Just say someone told you, but don't say who.'

‘So no cake then?' said the girl.

‘No, no cake.'

‘I can still come with you, though, can't I?'

‘Definitely.'

Primrose realised that if they did have a competition to find the stupidest person in Camelot, that the girl would be way too stupid to even find the room you had to go to to enter the competition, even if it was held in her own bedroom.

‘It's a miracle that girl can stand up and say her name at the same time,' said Primrose as the under-
apprentice assistant bowl licker was leaving.

‘It's umm, er, Pickle,' said the girl and fell flat on her face.

‘So what
are
we going to do?' Spikeweed asked

‘First we must do a bit of tidying up,' said Primrose.

She spun round and shot a flame at the top of the cave, where two crows were hiding in the shadows. One turned into crispy, fried crow. The other one fell to the floor squawking loudly. Primrose considered interrogating it, but she knew it was one of Merlin's spies and so she just gave it another fiery blast.

She beckoned the other dragons to come close in case there were any more crows and whispered, ‘We are going to play double bluff. We are going to feed the stupid Pickle girl a different story every day, like Merlin is using her to feed us rubbish. So by the time we've finished, he won't know what we're planning to do. In the meantime, we'll act all innocent and deny any knowledge of rebellion.'

‘I don't want to be made into crispy bits and put on top of an omelette,' one of the baby dragons cried. ‘I might fall off.'

Even when it was explained to her that omelettes were not tall enough to fall from and that no one was going to make her crispy, there was still no consoling her.

‘But I might get endangered,' she wept.

‘No you won't, my dear,' said Primrose. ‘Do you know what endangered is?'

‘Yes. It's like having a tummy ache and umm, er, no, but I don't want it.'

And although no one talked about the story of Mordred and his soldiers coming to kill all the dragons, they all knew that he was the nastiest and cruellest of the Pendragon family, so it could be true, and on top of everything, the name Pendragon sounded threatening.

‘If we had a dictionary that we could look stuff up in,' said Spikeweed, ‘and thumbs to turn the pages, I bet we'd find that “pen” is another word for “kill”. I bet their real name in Killdragon.'

‘And to be able to read,' said Primrose.

‘What?'

‘A dictionary, thumbs and to be able to read.'

‘Yeah, well, that's another reason to attack the humans,' said Spikeweed. ‘I bet they did something to
stop us learning to read, like put some spell on us or something.'

‘Oh, for goodness sake,' Primrose snapped, and they had an argument followed by another argument and another, until the only gaps between the arguments involved going outside to pee on a thistle.

So, all in all, Merlin's false stories certainly unsettled the dragons.