Castle Chansany, Volume 2 by Charlotte E. English

Author:Charlotte E. English [Charlotte E. English]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2022-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

Baldringa’s Blunder

‘I think,’ said the Wizard Baldringa, ‘I may have made a mistake.’

She spoke for the benefit of her familiar, Dragonfly, who lay curled in a tight spiral upon her lap. His forked tongue flickered, tasting the pungent roseleaf smoke unfurling from the bowl of the wizard’s clear-glass pipe.

Drifting as he was between slumber and leaf-induced bliss, Dragonfly made no immediate reply. Several moments passed, pregnant with meaning, before the spine-chilling words penetrated the rosy fog wreathing his smiling brain, and wiped his contentment away.

‘A mistake?’ he echoed, his emerald eyes opening upon a world gone mad. A mistake? The Court Wizard did not make mistakes. If, by some unlucky happenstance, she did, then the last thing she would ever do was own it (that duty being among the eclectic mix that fell to Dragonfly’s unenvied lot).

Perhaps he had misheard. His burnished silver talons tightened upon the wizard’s knee, and he waited, breath suspended, for her to tell him that the roseleaf had addled his wits. Or hers.

‘Mm,’ said the Wizard Baldringa, meditatively.

Another cloud of rosy smoke wafted over his head, thick and fragrant. He coughed.

A sense of inescapable dread settled over him like a miasma.

‘You’d better make a clean breast of it,’ he said, gathering what passed for his courage. ‘What is it you’ve done?’

‘I’ve broken the Castle,’ said Baldringa.

As if in answer, the walls shuddered.

‘Yes,’ decisively said now, no lingering note of doubt to soothe a dragon’s fears. The Court Wizard lurched suddenly out of her chair, her comfortable bulk moving at a hitherto unknown speed, and spilled the curled and recumbent form of Dragonfly onto the cold flagstone floor.

He lay there a moment, dazed and blinking. Baldringa sat, by habit, in a corner of the cavernous kitchens, a nook tucked out of the way of the bustle and scurry of the harried cooks (mostly). They were used to her down there, scarcely noticed her large, dreaming form as she rocked her creaking chair back and forth, eyes fixed and intent upon unknowable things unfathomably distant.

They noticed now, though. If it were not the indignant sneezing of Dragonfly as he picked himself up off the floor, then the sight of the large and (typically) slumbrous Wizard hurling her ample form at the soot-scarred wall by the fireplace, and vanishing into it – well, that would get anyone’s attention, even were you a hassled and hurried scullery maid passing by with a teetering tower of besmeared pots.

Or Chef, intent upon a barrow’s worth of marchpane and pastry, weaving up fragrant confections for Their Majesties’ table. ‘What’s got into the Wizard?’ said he, staring in awe or perhaps horror at where Baldringa had been, marchpane all forgotten.

Dragonfly snarled something too smoky to be intelligible.

Chef nodded, and returned to his confectionery.

I’ve broken the Castle. No one had heard that save Dragonfly, it seemed, and a good thing, too. The last thing anybody wanted was a panic, not while the Wizard was being so odd.

‘Perhaps she exaggerates,’ mused Dragonfly to himself, without much heart.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.