Cauldron Spells by C. J. Busby Page B

trying to control them to even think about shooting at the dragon, who was almost immediately too high to reach anyway. With a last roar, she shot off into the sun and was gone.
    “Max! Oliv–er!” came a familiar shout as the first of the horses rushed into the clearing where they were standing. “What on earth are you doing out here in the forest? Didn’t you know there’s a hunt on?”
    “Um, no, sorry,” said Max, as Sir Bertram swept up to them, looking extremely surprised. “We came out looking for – er – mushrooms, and then we sort of… got lost. Can you give us a ride back to the castle?” 

Spying for Merlin
    S ir Bertram told them off most of the way home for wandering around in the middle of a serious dragon hunt like a pair of idiots. When they finally got back to their room, Olivia kissed Adolphus back to his usual dragon form, while Max unpacked his new cauldron. He had thanked Great-Aunt Wilhelmina politely when she gave it to him, but now he wondered if she’d really been that generous. It was dull-lookingwith age, plain pewter with just a very simple decoration around the rim which, now that he rubbed at it, looked like it might be pearls, but they were very small and worn… And he wasn’t entirely sure it was the right shape. It looked almost as lopsided as the one Adolphus had fallen into.
    “Probably be even worse than the one I’ve got,” he observed gloomily to Ferocious that evening.
    But he was wrong. The new cauldron, plain and old as it was, turned out to be rather effective. From that point on, Max was indisputably top of the class. Every spell he made was perfect. He built a spell wall so strong even Aleric couldn’t walk through it. He turned all the water in the moat pink, and then yellow, and then back to sludgy green, with a few sprinkles of colour-changing potion. He grew Aleric’s beard down to his knees in a matter of seconds and then removed it all in an instant, to the acclaim of the entire class. But best of all was when they revisited the ‘lighter than air’ spell and tried it on themselves this time. Max’s potion was so strong the whole class ended up using a few drops of it, and they spent the afternoon bouncing off the ceiling, the walls and each other, cartwheeling happily around the roof like a bunch of apprentice-shaped balloons.
    Meanwhile Olivia had finally had a showdown with Mordred, and managed to punch him so hard on the nose that he had to spend the rest of the day with a poultice attached to his face to stop the swelling, to the general amusement of the other squires. After that, he avoided Olivia, and she found herself thoroughly enjoying the training. She beat all of them at ‘Find Your Way Through the Slimy Swamp Maze’ (mostly because she was smallest and lightest) and also managed to gain the class honours for hitting the archery target right in the bullseye three times in a row. By the end of the week, both Max and Olivia were ‘Most Improved Student of the Week’ and Sir Bertram had taken to walking around the castle with a slight swagger, twirling his huge moustache, and telling anyone who would listen about his son’s and his, erhmm, nephew’s successes. 
    It was Ferocious, as usual, who brought them back to earth.
    “Impressed as I am by your excellent progress in your lessons… you do realise that we have been here two weeks already and we haven’t got the faintest idea what Morgana’s up to?”
    They were lounging around in their room, and Max and Olivia had been swapping stories about just how brilliant they both were. At Ferocious’s words, they both looked slightly put out, but then Max nodded.
    “You’re right. We haven’t even tried… And it’s much more important than lessons, really…” He fingered the swift that had been sitting all this time in his belt pouch and thought of Merlin. He felt hot all over realising that he’d not even tried to do any spying on Morgana. He thought of her pale, icy face and