The Accidental sorcerer

As Reg exclaimed in the background Melissande dropped to her knees beside him. 'Monkl Are you all right?' i think I'm going to be sick,' he groaned. 'Not in my foyer you're not!' He heaved himself upright.'Okay'

'Good!' said Reg, hovering now between the splintered remains of the foyer doors. 'Now come on, you two. Let's find Gerald!'

She helped Markham to his feet. 'Give him a moment, you nagging old hag! He was practically knocked unconscious!'

'Gerald's running out of moments!' Reg shouted, flapping madly. 'How long will your brother keep him around, do you think, now that he's got his precious dragon?'

'Reg is right,' said Markham, still looking sick. 'We have to go.'

'Go where? I've no idea where Gerald is. Have you?'

'No. But if we're lucky I can find him with a locator incant. I'll need something to guide me.'

'Then what are waiting for?' demanded Reg, still haphazardly hovering. 'Let's get to our suite!'

They raced through deserted corridors and up and down empty staircases to the palace's official wizard's residence. Gasping for air, Reg landed on a foyer chair and pointed a wing.

'The bedroom's that way. Fetch a used sock, Markham. That should have a good strong scent.'

As Markham fetched, Melissande frowned. 'Something strange is going on. The place is deserted, we didn't see anybody between here and my apartments. Where's everyone got to? There are always servants scurrying around here, it's like a damned anthill.'

Before Reg could comment Markham returned with a limp red sock. 'This should do it. Now I need a map of the kingdom.'

'There's one in the Guide to New Ottosland I left here for Gerald.'

Reg jerked her beak. 'It's in, the dresser, underneath that painting of the constipated cow on the wall there.'

'He shoved it in a drawer?' said Melissande, offended, as Markham found the pink folder. 'Did he even read it? I'll bet he didn't. I spent hours putting that guide together, you know!'

'And now it's come in very useful,' said Reg, 'which only goes to show there's a first time for everything. Now be quiet and let Markham focus.'

Melissande swallowed.'Will the incant still work if the person you're trying to find is — you know — '

Markham glanced up from spreading the guide's map on the foyer table. 'Dead?' he said. 'No. It won't.'

'Anyway, he can't be dead,' she added, desperate for a bright side. 'You said Lional couldn't kill him.' 'Not with magic, apparently. No.' She didn't need him to elaborate. 'Oh.'

Reg flapped from her chair to the table and glared. 'Any more clever questions, ducky?' 'Not for the moment.'

'That's a relief. Now come on, Markham. Let's get cracking.'

Markham nodded curtly, his face pale and serious. He wrapped Gerald's sock around his left hand, extended the index finger of his right hand and held it over the map of New Ottosland. 'Seekati. Kevelati. Demonstrate.'

Almost before the words had left his lips the tip of his pointing index finger flared into life as though a light had been switched on under the skin.

He laughed. 'We've got him, Reg! He's still alive!' 'Yes, but where?' Reg demanded.

His pointing finger started zigzagging across the map.'Hang on, it's trying to home in on him now.' Another zig and two more zags and his finger jabbed itself to a standstill.'There.' He peered at the map. 'Tolepootle Valley. Melissande?' 'That's miles from here. It'll take hours to — '

'No, it won't. The Stealth Stone's fine with miles. What can we expect when we get there?'

Before she could answer they heard a thundering of feet in the corridor outside the suite and a cacophony of alarmed cries.

'Now what?' said Reg, and rattled all her feathers. 'Quick, madam, see what's making the natives restless!'

Melissande flung open the foyer doors and accosted the first running servant she recognised. 'Hamish! What in the name of Saint Snodgrass is going on?'

Hamish was too panicked to be polite. 'Bloody hell, miss! Haven't you heard? There's a bloody great fire-breathing dragon on the loose! It's already killed people down in the city and now it's flying over the palace!'

She stepped back, shut the doors on all the fleeing servants and turned to Reg and Markham. Instead of gibbering incoherently, she felt unnaturally calm. It's already killed people down in the city. 'Hamish says there's a fire-breathing dragon flying over the palace.'

'He's right,' said Markham, staring at the foyer's skylight. 'There is.' She looked up.

On the other side of the skylight's glass, floating lazily on an updraft like an enormous crimson and emerald striped seagull — with teeth and talons — was Lional's dragon. As they watched, it opened its massive jaws and belched a fearsome plume of fire.

She felt her heart shrivel to ash. It's already killed people down in the city.

'Come on,' said Reg grimly. 'Let's go. We have to stop that damned thing before it really gets started.'

Melissande nodded. For once she wasn't inclined to argue. When Gerald eventually roused from his exhausted, nightmare-ridden stupor there was still no light in the cave. So he sat with his back to the wall and waited. There wasn't anything else to do. A few feet away in the dirt and the dark was Reg.

He didn't want to think about her. Reg was a bruised and bloody mark in his heart, an absence he was only just beginning to realise. Another failure he wasn't sure he could live with. She was dead, she was dead… and it was all his fault. Everything was his fault. All those people, hunted to a crisp or soaked in poison. The terror. The destruction. He pulled his knees to his aching chest and held on tight.

If only I'd been braver. If only I'd defied him. If only I'd never been born.

There was no food or drink in the cold dark cave. If Lional changed his mind about wanting more dragons or lost what little was left of his sanity and forgot about him, which seemed more likely, then he was doomed to die in this place. Oh God. I hope so. Time dragged on, sodden with regrets. Later, in the unrelenting black, he thought he saw a pinpoint of light.

He stirred. Stared, blinking. What new torment was this? Lional, returning at last to dispose of his tool? Or demand more damned dragons… or something worse… I can't. I can't.

Ten feet away and six feet in the air, the pinpoint of light grew. Intensified. Glowing, it expanded to the size of a firefly. Against his skin, a sudden tingling crackle of power. Heedless of scrapes and bruises he hauled himself to his feet and leaned against the rough rock of the cave wall, his gaze not leaving the ball of light pulsing before him.

With a flash and a ripping sound the air tore open and three briefly silhouetted figures fell through the hole to land shouting on the cave's dirt floor. 'Owl That's my face]'

'Sorry Melissande. Gerald, are you in here? Um, Your Highness, not to complain or anything but your elbow's in a very precarious part of my anato-'

I'm dreaming. I must be. 'Monk?' he said tentatively, is that you?'

'Oh, yes, fine, ask about Markham first why don't you?' demanded an impossible voice. 'When I'm the one sitting here faded to a mere shadow of my former glory after flying and hitching from here to Ottosland, then convincing Markham and his idiot colleagues that your life was in danger and then risking my life again to get back to this ether-forsaken kingdom using Markham's highly illegal and practically untested portable portal! And why is it so dark in here? Why doesn't somebody turn on the lights?'

For a moment Gerald thought he'd finally gone mad. Because that was Reg's voice, being Reg, in the Reggiest way it knew how.

And then somebody snapped their fingers and said illuminate and he was blinking, half-blinded by the sudden light, and there on the cave floor shaking dirt out of her feathers was -

'RegV he cried, and fell to his knees. 'Oh my God, Reg, you're aliveV