Excalibur (10 page)

 

Fissure flew out over the lake until he was out of sight of the runaways. He looked down over the islands, without really paying much attention.

Excalibur
, he thought,
boring
.

Then he swung round, making sure he couldn't be seen, and flew back to Morgan le Fey and Lancelot.

‘They're looking for Excalibur,' he said.

‘Who isn't?' said Sir Lancelot.

‘Indeed, my lord,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘People have searched for the Sword of the True King for hundreds of years.'

‘Are you sure?' said the vampire.

‘Absolutely,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘Why do you ask?'

‘Well, all you had to do was ask us vampires. We all know where it is. Always have. For all the good it will do you,' said the vampire.

‘Why do you say that?' said Sir Lancelot.

‘Well, I know of at least eighty-three people who have tried to pull it out of the rock and I've no doubt there are dozens more, but no one has moved it as much as a hair's width.'

‘That is because it is the Sword of the True King,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘Only he can pull it from the stone.'

‘Your father couldn't,' said the vampire, ‘and he was a true King. I mean, they didn't come much truer than Uther Pendragon, good friend to us vampires he was. That's why we showed him where the sword was, but even he failed to move it.'

‘My father tried to remove Excalibur?'

‘He did indeed. He burst several blood vessels trying and put his back out so badly he had to lie down on a plank of wood for a whole month with unguents down his trousers, and even after that, he forever walked with a slight limp and a strange tilt to the south.'

‘So that's how he got that,' said the Princess. ‘He always told me it was an old war wound from a battle with a giant phoenix.'

‘There's no such thing as a giant phoenix,' said the vampire.

‘I know that,' said Morgan le Fey, ‘but I thought that was because my father had killed it.'

‘They asked me to spy for them,' said Fissure.

‘What, the boy Brat?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘No, the one who's in charge,' said Fissure. ‘The girl.'

‘Girl? There isn't a girl…' the Princess began. ‘No! The girl? It has to be that poor King Kasterwheel's daughter that he thought they had kidnapped. Well, well.'

‘Should we send for him?' said Sir Lancelot.

‘Tricky,' said the Princess. ‘He thinks his daughter is an angel. I think the shock would give him a heart attack. On the other hand it would be better he find out from us rather than tittle-tattle gossip from the servants.'

When King Kasterwheel arrived, Morgan le Fey sat him down in a comfy chair, gave him a nice big cup of super-relaxing chamomile tea and broke the news to him that his sweet, innocent daughter was actually a nasty, greedy, selfish little minx.

‘Oh yes,' said the King. ‘I could have told you that.'

‘Oh,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘I thought you would be devastated.'

‘Devastated? Oh no, my dear. I passed devastated years ago. I'm on depressed resignation now,' he said.
‘From the day she was born she has been possessed by wickedness. She hid it behind her great beauty and immense charm and fooled almost everyone.'

‘So what has she done?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Our daughter was five years old and for her birthday party we employed a travelling circus, and that day my wife ran away with a clown,' said the King, ‘All she left me was a short note burnt into the fur of our daughter's teddy bear. It said, “Boodgye”. I knew my wife had no great talent at spelling and so I believed she had deserted me forever. It was not until our daughter's nursemaid came to me and explained that Boodguy was one of the circus clowns that I understood. I was devastated. My wife had deserted us for a short dumpy bald clown with enormous shoes and a huge red nose.'

‘You poor man,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘That is terrible.'

‘Would that that was the whole story,' said the King. ‘There's more?'

‘Indeed. A few years later I discovered that my wife had not run away at all,' the King explained. ‘Our daughter, the angelic Floridian, had killed her.'

‘A five-year-old child?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Indeed. Somehow she got her mother to stand behind one of the circus elephants and then fed it a currant bun, knowing full well that elephants always sit down to eat buns. My wife was squashed flat. Floridian then bribed Boodguy the Clown with an enormous bag of jelly babies to push the body into the moat.'

‘How did you find this out?'

‘The clown confessed on his death bed,' said the King. ‘I have not told my daughter that I know her secret, but nothing she does will surprise me, except perhaps being nice.'

‘You poor man,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Well, actually I am seriously rich,' said King Kasterwheel. ‘I'm just a bit crap in my personal relationships.'

‘We need to make a plan,' said Sir Lancelot. ‘You are sure the girl is the one in charge?'

‘Absolutely,' said Fissure. ‘The others do whatever she tells them, even the big one that looks like a potato.'

‘And she wants to find Excalibur?'

‘Yes, but she pretended she didn't really want to, she was just looking for it as a favour to a friend who
also wasn't that interested,' said Fissure. ‘I just acted dumb, so now I am spying for them.'

‘What are they going to pay you with?' Morgan le Fey asked. ‘More rats?'

‘A sausage.'

‘A sausage?' said the Princess. ‘Do you know that they've got a ruby worth ten million gold crowns?'

‘Wow,' said Sir Lancelot, Susan and Fissure.

‘Wow indeed,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘You know what? I reckon if the Princess Floridian is that keen to get Excalibur, you could get her to give you the ruby.'

‘But what about the sausage?' said Fissure. ‘It's a blood sausage.'

‘Are you crazy?' said Sir Lancelot. ‘You would rather have a sausage instead of a priceless ruby?'

‘It is a blood sausage,' said Fissure.

‘I can see his point,' said Fenestra.

‘Maybe you could get her to give you both,' Morgan le Fey suggested.

‘I'd rather have another sausage,' said Fissure.

‘By the way,' said Sir Lancelot, ‘what exactly is a sausage?'

‘Well,' said the young vampire, ‘they are a brilliant
new invention where they get a bit of a dead animal's stomach and stuff it with chopped-up bits of another dead animal mixed up with stuff like fat and blood and then they boil them.'

‘And what do they do with them then?' said Sir Lancelot. ‘Are they some sort of weapon?'

‘No, they eat them.'

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

‘It's true, my lord,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘I have eaten them myself. My brother, the King, adores them and has a sausage banquet on the first Saturday of every month.'

Sir Lancelot looked green. He wondered if the fly-blown giblet curries he eaten on his crusades in strange far-off lands hadn't been so bad after all. He had seen the stomachs of dead animals. They were not the sort of thing you'd want to put into your own stomach. It had made him wonder if it was possible to exist by eating no more than fruit and vegetables and tofu, but had tasted tofu and decided against it.

The brave knight was an old-fashioned sort of person. Sausages might be all right for young people, but he would stick to the traditional dead cow and
boiled vegetables. Besides, he was sure sausages were just a passing fad like donkey painting and underwater jousting. A year from now they'd be forgotten like the other new fad of boiling up dried leaves and drinking them. All these trendy new food fads were simply ridiculous.

‘Before you know it,' he said, ‘people will be roasting beans and grinding them into dust and drinking that.'

‘Umm, I think they already do that in far-off lands,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Thank goodness they're far off,' said Sir Lancelot. ‘So what is your plan? Shall we gather some guards and go up and arrest them?'

‘We could,' said Morgan le Fey, ‘but I think they would know we were on our way before we get there, and don't forget they have the young dragon with them. They could simply climb on its back and fly out of the window.'

‘The boy and the girl could,' said Fissure. ‘If potato boy climbed on the dragon's back it wouldn't get off the ground, and anyway, he's too fat to get out of the window.'

‘Oh, they'd just leave him behind,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘No, we need to be subtler than that. We need to lure them to one of the islands and trap them there.'

‘I could tell them where the island with Excalibur is and take them there,' said Fissure.

‘That's not as simple as it sounds,' said Fenestra.

‘I thought you said you knew which island the sword is on?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Well, sort of. You see, there are quite a few islands with swords on, in particular the famous Island of Swords,' the vampire explained. ‘Then there's the Island of More Swords and the Island of Some Different Swords and the…'
⁴⁹

‘So isn't there an island called the Island of Excalibur?'

‘Yes, of course there is, but all the names are a bit pointless really. I mean, it's not like there's a sign on each island saying, “This is the Island of So and So”, ' said Fenestra. ‘Even the Island of So and So hasn't got a sign saying that. In fact there is only one island with a sign on it and that is the Island With No Name.

‘And of course,' the vampire continued, ‘as you know most of the islands move around a lot.'

‘So you don't know which island has Excalibur on it?'

‘Oh yes, we all know which one it is.'

‘So how do you find it?'

‘It's a process of elimination.'

‘Elimination?'

‘Yes. For example the Island of Excalibur has a tree on it.'

‘Oh that's really helpful,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘There are over three hundred islands and they've all got trees on them.'

‘Except for the treeless islands,' said the vampire.

‘And how many of them are there?'

‘One.'

‘Brilliant.'

‘There are no castles on the island.'

‘And how many are there that do have a castle?'

‘Fourteen.'

‘Wonderful,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘So we know there are more than three hundred islands, but not how many more, but we do know that Excalibur is
not on fifteen of them.'

‘Exactly,' said the vampire. ‘And you can discount the underwater islands.'

‘I think if they're underwater, they are not exactly islands.'

‘Right. Well, there is a family of donkeys living there.'

‘Ah, now that must cut it down quite a bit,' said Sir Lancelot.

‘Indeed it does. There are only eighty-five islands that are inhabited by donkeys, though the number does change.'

‘How?'

‘Well, donkeys can be quite bad-tempered, so they are forever arguing and swimming off to other islands that may or may not already have donkeys on them,' said the vampire.

‘OK, so we've cut the number of possible islands down to eighty-five, give or take an unknown and constantly changing number?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Exactly!'

‘Anything else special that will eliminate some more?'

‘Oh yes,' said the vampire. ‘The Island of Excalibur is home to a very rare flower that only grows in one other place.'

‘So the list is down to two?'

‘It is,' said the vampire. ‘The Island of Excalibur and The Spare Island of Excalibur.'

‘Spare?'

‘Well, surely you don't think something as important and priceless as Excalibur, The Sword That Conquers All Other Swords And Kicks Dirt In Their Faces, wouldn't have a backup in case the original got broken?'

‘But if it is the sword that conquers all other swords, how can it get broken?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘I hadn't thought of that,' said the vampire.

‘OK. We'll worry about that later. In the meantime, what does this flower look like?'

‘It is incredibly beautiful,' said the vampire, ‘a shade of blue so perfect that it can bring grown men to their knees with a big wet patch in their tights. It only flowers for fifteen minutes at midnight on midsummer's eve and then it sleeps until the next midsummer's eve. Or so I've been told.'

‘So you haven't actually seen it?'

‘No.'

‘Right.'

‘But I do know someone who says they know someone who has.'

‘What a bit of luck,' said Sir Lancelot. ‘For is not tonight midsummer's eve?'

It was.

Fenestra agreed to go back and get all her relatives to fly out across the lake as night fell to search for the two islands with their brilliant blue flowers. When they found them, they were to land and send a message back by sonar with its location.