Mice of the Round Table #3 Read online

  DEDICATION

  For Brian Jacques

  Eulalia!

  EPIGRAPH

  Looking back on it, when they were old,

  they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen.

  The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them.

  —T.H. White, The Once and Future King

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Julie Leung

  Back Ads

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Horatio Eavesdrip, twelfth of his name, was an excellent listener. With ears twice the size of his head, and as delicate as fairy wings, very little escaped the long-eared bat’s keen hearing. Sometimes, if he hung at a certain angle and swiveled his ears just so, the mountains had much to tell him. Voices could travel long distances through the vast echoing caves—carrying their secrets.

  This was especially true when those voices were raised in anger.

  The mountains had become crowded as of late, with strangely dressed creatures roaming the upper chambers at all hours. Already, Horatio had gleaned that a witch of great power had moved in, making her lair in the abandoned Two-Legger mines. When the bat perched in his usual position, hanging by his toes in a crevice, it did not take long for her words to trickle down from high above.

  “My spies tell me your plots have unraveled fast, contrary to what you’ve reported in your larks home,” she chastised. “Camelot is weakened, but not enough. We need more magic. It’s time for you to come back.”

  Another voice answered, this one more muddled, as if someone was trying to speak through water. “I think . . . found something . . . may help. Merlin’s . . .”

  Horatio tried to twist his ear closer to the walls as the words faded in and out.

  “Forget Excalibur for now. The boy must come to us on his own terms. I have something bigger and more powerful in my sights. Bring me Merlin’s scrolls.”

  The other voice became indistinct. As he strained to catch the next words, a sharp, high-pitched ringing started, and Horatio clamped his ears down in pain. Somewhere high above, a trumpet had sounded in the witch’s room.

  “We will discuss when you return, Red. Someone is listening in.”

  Horatio had been discovered! If the witch was using black magic to protect her conversation, it must be worth something.

  The king should know.

  Horatio unfurled to fly away deeper into the cave, back to his colony. But as he took off, something caught his wing tip, yanking him back. Black, smoky tendrils had clamped down on his thumb like pincers. He flapped helplessly in place.

  “I know you’re there.” The witch’s singsongy voice came from right next to Horatio’s ear, wily and cruel. “Tell me, little spy, where are you?”

  Horatio could feel the witch’s magic worm its way into his mind, eating away at his thoughts. If she found out what he knew, all that he knew, it would endanger his entire colony—perhaps even all of Britain. He couldn’t let that happen.

  He wrenched out of the spell’s grasp at the last moment. The bat flew away as fast as he could, through dark passages only a small creature could navigate.

  Horatio was out of breath by the time he made it back to his colony’s cave. He flew straight for the king’s fine hanging stone. King Mir was settling in for his sleep, already upside down with his wings wrapped around him. Dawn was just around the corner.

  “Flee! We must flee!” Horatio’s words came out in alarmed hiccups. He flitted back and forth, waking much of the rest of the colony.

  “Slow down, Horatio, quit flapping around. It’s nearly bedtime.” King Mir yawned and waved a dismissive wing at his chief listener.

  “My liege, the situation is more dire than we’d thought.” Horatio panted as his feet scraped against a crag. Flipping himself upside down, he was now eye to eye with his king. “We must wake the dragon from its slumber!”

  CHAPTER

  1

  Raindrops lashed mouse-squire Calib Christopher’s face, stinging like sharp nettles against his fur. Bolts of lightning ripped across the sky, illuminating the trees in stark black-and-white silhouettes.

  “It’s no use!” Valentina Stormbeak yelled over the accompanying thunder. “We can’t fly on in this storm.”

  Calib clutched Valentina’s wings tighter as a gust of wind threatened to throw him off the crow’s back. He squinted into the dark, seeking any sign of Cecily von Mandrake and her kidnapper, Sir Percival Vole. What muddy tracks Calib had detected earlier were now washed away.

  “We’ll never find them if we stop now!” Calib shouted back. “They’ve had at least an hour’s head start!”

  His chest squeezed together like a tightening noose. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for his own outstanding stupidity. His mistakes buzzed inside his head, stinging like hornets.

  He, Calib Christopher, last of a line of brave knights and leaders, had unwittingly allowed Camelot’s most dangerous traitor back into the castle when it was most vulnerable.

  Not only had Calib let the enemy infiltrate the castle, he had also accidentally divulged Camelot’s greatest secret to him: what the mice knew as the Goldenwood Throne was actually a legendary treasure called the Grail.

  It had been entrusted to his family by Merlin all these years, its secret hidden in the designs of the Christopher crest. And now the Grail had fallen into the clutches of a Saxon betrayer, along with Calib’s best friend, Cecily. Calib’s stomach soured at the very thought.

  He had to make things right again.

  He had to defeat Sir Percival Vole, take back the Grail, and rescue Cecily.

  If only this storm would let them catch up to the villain.

  Valentina, the brave Darkling crow who had volunteered to fly Calib in his pursuit, was losing her battle against the gusting wind.

  “It’s getting dangerous,” she warned again. “We need to fly back to Camelot and wait out the storm!”

  “Let’s keep going!” he insisted. As long as he drew breath, he would hunt Sir Percival down. “I don’t want to lose any more time than—”

  Calib’s world turned a blinding white.

  Excruciating pain from the
hottest heat he’d ever felt surged through his body. An acrid smell filled his sensitive nose— His fur was burning! But there was nothing to be done. Mouse and crow tumbled from the sky, plummeting out of control.

  The wind screamed in Calib’s ears, or perhaps it was him who was screaming.

  Then suddenly, it didn’t matter, for there was no sound at all.

  Calib’s eyes blinked open. A chandelier twinkled above him, the tiny candle nubs melted by flame into strange shapes.

  Flame. Burning. Falling!

  Calib sat straight up, jolted by the rush of painful memories. How had he managed to make it back to Camelot?

  “Whoa, there, Calib!” Two sets of firm paws held him back down. “Steady there!”

  His breath came in short jabs, and fellow mouse-squires Devrin Savortooth and Warren Clipping pushed him back toward his pillow—but not before Calib caught a glimpse of empty beds lined up in rows against the wall.

  He was in the castle infirmary. Most animals had recovered from the white fever that had ravaged the castle weeks ago. The air felt stuffy with the promise of an early summer day. It made his head throb, as though one of Sister Ysabel’s fluttery wimples had been wrapped around his head.

  “What happened? How long have I been out?” Calib croaked. The concerned faces of Warren and Devrin swam into his vision. Devrin was dressed in a green tunic that denoted her new rank of squire. Warren wore a white tunic from the infirmary and had a bandage wrapped around his forehead from when Sir Percival had knocked him out.

  “When you set off with Valentina, Commander Kensington sent scouts after you,” Devrin said. The brown mouse spoke in the gentle tone of an older sister. And in many ways, she was the closest thing Calib had to family since his grandfather had died. “She was worried you were acting reckless, out of panic. And—”

  “Then you were struck by lightning,” Warren interrupted, waving his paws in a mimic of an explosion. “Kablow! You’ve been out cold for two whole nights. I thought you were dead for sure!”

  Devrin elbowed the gray mouse in the ribs. “Can you stop being a cheesehead for two whole seconds?”

  “Is Valentina all right?” Calib asked. The messenger crow was nowhere to be seen.

  Devrin’s jaw tightened, and Warren became somber.

  “Valentina was badly burned. It seems her wings shielded you from the lightning,” Devrin said. “Her clan came to bring her home to their crow healer.”

  Calib buried his head in his paws, the throbbing at his temples turning into a pounding. He was the one who’d insisted they keep flying in the storm. He couldn’t let Valentina’s injuries have happened for nothing. Calib tried to get up, but his friends held him back again.

  “I have to,” Calib protested. “Cecily is still out there!”

  “You’re not going anywhere.” Devrin pushed a walnut shell filled with a steaming broth into Calib’s paws. “Macie is leading another search party in the woods.”

  “You’re on strict orders from Madame von Mandrake to rest and recover,” Warren said. “And she said you had to drink this.”

  “What is it?” Calib asked as he sniffed the soup. It was odorless, even though he saw chunks of garlic floating in the broth.

  “Er, there’s one more thing we should mention. . . .” Devrin trailed off, and Warren looked down at his footpaws.

  An awful dread loomed in Calib’s mind. Tentatively, he reached a paw to his snout. Where he should have felt long whiskers, there were only bristly stubs. Calib’s paws trembled, spilling a bit of the soup. His whiskers! They were gone!

  “They were singed pretty badly from where the lightning struck you,” Devrin explained, her brown eyes apologetic. “We had to snip them off.”

  He gulped a few deep breaths, trying to keep calm. But it was impossible. What was a mouse without his whiskers? They were key to his sense of smell, balance, and direction.

  “Are they going to grow back?” Calib asked, his snout twitching despondently.

  “That’s what the soup is for,” Devrin said, nudging the bowl in his paws. “Witchbark is supposed to help with whisker growth.”

  Calib looked at the walnut shell suspiciously and then took a sip. His sense of taste was also dulled without his whiskers, but even so, the bitterness of the soup made him wince.

  Footpaws pounded down the hall, and a moment later, a first-year named Dandelion burst into the infirmary.

  “Macie is back!” the little mouse squeaked breathlessly. “The entire search party is in Goldenwood Hall! The knights are— Oh, Calib!” She stopped short and looked down at him in dismay. “Your whiskers!”

  “Aren’t so bad,” Devrin said forcefully as Calib pulled a sheet over his snout, mortified.

  “Er, that’s right,” Dandelion quickly corrected. “What I mean to say is, the knights are meeting in Goldenwood Hall right now to hear the scouting report.”

  As Dandelion bounded away to tell the rest of the castle, Calib looked at Devrin and Warren expectantly.

  “No,” Devrin said, already knowing what Calib was going to ask. “You are not going. You only just woke up. Madame von Mandrake still needs to check you for internal injuries.”

  “Other than losing my most important body part, I’m the picture of health.” Calib kicked his blanket off to demonstrate. He tried to stand, but without his whiskers, the floor felt like it was moving out from under him. Devrin and Warren caught him and lay him back down onto the bed.

  “Don’t feel too bad. Maybe you’ll grow noncrooked whiskers this time,” Warren said.

  “Aren’t you curious to know what they found?” Calib asked. “Don’t you want to know what happened to Cecily?”

  “Yes,” Warren said, “but Commander Kensington said we had to keep a watch on you from now on.”

  “You can watch me go to Goldenwood Hall, and we’ll all learn what the scouts found.”

  Warren and Devrin looked at each other.

  “He has a point. . . .” Devrin said.

  With his friends’ help, Calib gingerly dressed and clambered into a mouse-sized wheelchair made of empty spindles. Devrin and Warren then rolled Calib through the underground mole tunnels that led from the Two-Legger chapel to the throne room, carefully avoiding pebbles and potholes. The spindle-wheels squeaked loudly as they rolled, drawing other creatures’ attention.

  Calib felt his ears turn pink. He knew he must look ridiculous without his whiskers, but he pushed his embarrassment aside. All that mattered was that Macie was back from her search. She was the best tracker in all of Camelot, both inside the castle and out. Maybe she had already found Cecily and the Grail, and both were back.

  But as soon as Calib entered the grand hall, he knew his hope had been foolish. The empty space where the throne had stood for generations yawned like a missing tooth.

  A dozen mouse-knights had gathered on the stage at the far side of the arena, looking solemn in their gray armor—armor that had not been needed since the Battle of the Bear last fall. They were joined by Camelot’s many ambassadors and advisers—General Fletcher from the bell-tower larks and Ergo Throgg from the moat otters.

  And in the center of the creatures stood Macie Cornwall, still wearing the green leaf cloak that allowed her to blend into the forest. All of Camelot’s leaders seemed to be focused on something she held in her paws, but from where the squires stood, Calib couldn’t make out what it was or hear what they were saying.

  “This was a mistake,” Devrin hissed. “You should have stayed in the infirmary.”

  “No,” Calib whispered back hotly. “We need to get closer so we can hear!”

  Before they could finish their argument, there was the loud scrabbling of claws on floor as Madame von Mandrake burst into the room, her apron flying behind her.

  “What news? Did you find her?” Cecily’s mother asked. Her fur was disheveled, and her eyes rimmed red. The sash of herbs she normally wore was missing.

  None of the knights would look Madame von Mandrak
e in the eyes. Slowly, they shuffled back to clear a path to Macie. And for the first time, Calib could see what the squirrel held in her paws: Cecily’s sword.

  Calib was glad he was already in a wheelchair; otherwise, he was sure his knees would have buckled under him. Cecily would never willingly give up her beloved sword! She had saved up for months to have Quills, the porcupine weapons master, make it for her. The nimble rapier was perfect for Cecily’s preferred style of fencing—fast and unrelenting. She had dubbed it Whirler.

  “I’m so sorry, Viviana,” Macie said quietly. “We found this in the woods.”

  There was a pause while Cecily’s mother took in the abandoned sword. Then high-pitched wails filled the hall, the sound clawing its way into Calib’s heart like a wild beast and tearing it in two.

  CHAPTER

  2

  “There, there, Viviana,” Commander Kensington said, placing a comforting paw on Madame von Mandrake’s heaving shoulders. It was a show of affection Calib had never seen the commander display before. “We don’t know for sure what happened. There is no need to assume the worst.”

  A few of the cooking assistants hurried to Madame von Mandrake and carefully led her to a corner chair. Slowly, her wails turned to stifled sobs, and finally, to silent, weeping tears. Sir Alric poured her a thimble of tea, which she accepted gratefully. Only then did the meeting continue.

  “We have more news,” Macie said. Her ear tufts twitched. “During our search, we found signs of doused campfires and berry bushes stripped from foraging. We think these are signs of a Saxon retreat and movement back toward the Iron Mountains in the west.”

  “Sounds like more Saxon trickery,” a stout hare named Thropper observed. He was an ambassador from the Darkling Woods, sent on behalf of their leader, a fearsome lynx named Leftie Wildfang. The hare shook his head, and the many hoops on his ears jangled. “They only want us to think they are leaving.”

  General Fletcher ruffled his feathers. “And what does Leftie say?” he squawked. “We haven’t heard a word from your leader these past few months—since the white fever hit. Could it be that he’s turned tail on us?”