The Chrestomanci Series: Entire Collection Books 1-7

Even the cold lump of dough on the carpet could not damp his spirits. He whistled tying his boots.

Janet came into the room as Cat was shooting out of it, pulling on his jacket and beaming with health. “I don’t know,” Janet said, as Cat shot past her and hammered away down the stairs. “Dying must agree with you, or something.”

“Hurry up!” Cat called from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s on the other side of the Castle from here. Millie says dragon’s blood is dangerous, so don’t you touch it. I can spare a life on it and you can’t.”

Janet wanted to remark that Cat had not spared the last one very easily, but she never caught Cat up sufficiently. Cat whirled through the green corridors and stormed up the winding stairs to Mr Saunders’s room, and Janet only reached him when he was actually inside it. Then there was too much else to take up her attention.

The room was heavy with the scent of stale magic. Though it was much the same as when Cat had seen it before, Mr Saunders had tidied it a little for Sunday. The cresset was out. The torts and limbecks and other vessels were all clean. The books and scrolls had been piled in heaps on the second bench. The five-pointed star was still there, blazoned on the floor, but there was a new set of signs chalked on the third bench, and the mummified animal had been neatly laid at one end of it.

Janet was immensely interested. “It’s like a laboratory,” she said, “except that it isn’t. What weird things! Oh, I see the dragon’s blood. Does he need all that huge jar? He won’t miss a bit out of that lot.”

There was a rustling at the end of the third bench. Janet’s head jerked towards it. The mummified creature was twitching and spreading its filmy little wings.

“It did that before,” said Cat. “I think it’s all right.” He was not so sure, however, when the creature stretched and got to its dog-like feet, yawning. The yawn showed them dozens of small sharp teeth and also let out a cloud of bluish smoke. The creature ran pattering along the bench towards them. The little wings rattled on its back as it came, and two small puffs of smoke streamed behind it from its nostrils. It stopped at the edge of the bench to look up at them inquisitively from a melting glitter of golden eyes. They backed nervously away from it.

“It’s alive!” said Janet. “I think it’s a small dragon.”

“Of course I am,” said the dragon, which made both of them jump violently. Even more alarming, tiny flames played out of its mouth as it spoke, and they could feel the heat from them where they stood.

“I didn’t know you could talk,” said Cat.

“I speak English quite well,” said the dragon, flickering flame. “Why do you want my blood?”

They looked guiltily at the great jar of powder on the shelf. “Is that all yours?” said Cat.

“If Mr Saunders is making it give blood all the time, I think that’s rather cruel,” Janet said.

“Oh, that!” said the dragon. “That’s powdered blood from older dragons. They sell it to people. You can’t have any of that.”

“Why not?” said Cat.

“Because I don’t want you to,” said the dragon, and a regular roll of fire came from its mouth, making them back away again. “How would you like to see me taking human blood and playing games with it?”

Though Cat felt the dragon had a point here, Janet did not. “It doesn’t worry me,” she said. “Where I come from we have blood transfusions and blood banks. Dad once showed me some of my blood under a microscope.”

“It worries me,” said the dragon, uttering another roll of fire. “My mother was killed by unlawful blood-stealers.” It crept to the very end of the bench and stared up at Janet. The flickers in its golden eyes melted and changed and melted again. It was like being looked at by two small golden kaleidoscopes. “I was too small to hold enough blood,” it flickered softly to Janet, “so they left me. I’d have died if Chrestomanci hadn’t found me. So you see why it worries me?”

“Yes,” said Janet. “What do baby dragons feed on? Milk?”

“Michael tried me with milk, but I didn’t like it,” said the dragon. “I have minced steak now, and I’m growing beautifully. When I’m big enough, he’s going to take me back, but meanwhile I’m helping him with his magic. I’m a great help.”

“Are you?” said Janet. “What do you do?”

“I find old things he can’t find himself.” The dragon fell into a flickering croon. “I fetch him animals from the abyss – old golden creatures, things with wings, pearl-eyed monsters from the deep sea, and whispering plants from long ago.”

It stopped and looked at Janet with its head on one side. “That was easy,” it remarked to Cat. “I’ve always wanted to do that, but no one let me before.” It sighed a long blue fume of smoke. “I wish I was bigger. I could eat her now.”

Cat took an alarmed look at Janet and found her staring like a sleep-walker, with a silly smile on her face. “Of all the mean tricks!” he said.

“I think I’ll just have a nibble,” said the dragon.

Cat realised it was being playful. “I’ll wring your neck if you do,” he said. “Haven’t you got anything else to play with?”

“You sound just like Michael,” said the dragon in a sulky roll of smoke. “I’m bored with mice.”

“Tell him to take you for walks.” Cat took Janet’s arm and shook her. Janet came to herself with a little jump and seemed quite unaware that anything had happened to her. “And I can’t help the way you feel,” said Cat to the dragon. “I need some dragon’s blood.” He pulled Janet well out of range, just to be on the safe side, and picked up a little china crucible from the next bench.

The dragon hunched up irritably and scratched itself like a dog under the chin until its wings rattled. “Michael says dragon’s blood always does harm somewhere,” it said, “even when an adept uses it. If you’re not careful, it costs a life.”

Cat and Janet looked at one another through the smoke it had made with its speech. “Well, I can spare one,” said Cat. He took the glass stopper off the big jar and scooped up some brown powder in the crucible. It had a strong, strange smell.

“I suppose Chrestomanci manages all right with two lives,” Janet said nervously.

“But he’s rather special,” said the dragon. It was standing on the very edge of the bench, rattling with anxiety. Its golden eyes followed Cat’s hands as he wrapped the crucible in his handkerchief and pushed the bundle cautiously into his pocket. It seemed so worried that Cat went over to it and, a little nervously, rubbed it under the chin where it had been scratching. The dragon stretched its neck and pressed against his fingers. The smoke came out of its nostrils in purring puffs.

“Don’t worry,” Cat said. “I’ve got three lives left, you see.”

“That explains why I like you,” said the dragon, and almost fell off the bench in its effort to follow Cat’s fingers. “Don’t go yet!”

“We’ve got to.” Cat pushed the dragon back on the bench and patted its head. Once he was used to it, he found he did not mind touching its warm horny hide a bit. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” said the dragon.

They left it staring after them like a dog whose master has gone for a walk without it.

“I think it’s bored,” Cat said when he had shut the door.

“It’s a shame! It’s only a baby,” said Janet. She stopped on the first turn of the stair. “Let’s go back and take it for a walk. It was sweet!”

Cat was sure that if Janet did any such thing, she would come to herself to find the dragon browsing on her legs. “It wasn’t that sweet,” he said. “And we’ll have to go to the garden straight away now. It’s going to tell Mr Saunders we took some dragon’s blood as soon as it sees him.”

“Yes, I suppose it does make a difference that it can talk.” Janet agreed. “We’d better hurry then.”

Cat walked very carefully through the Castle, down and out of doors, and kept a hand on his pocket in case of accidents. He was afraid he might arrive at the forbidden garden with one life less. He seemed to have lost three of his lives so easily.

That kept puzzling him. From the look of those matches, losing life number five ought to have been as much of a disaster as losing the sixth one last night. But he had not noticed it go at all. He could not understand it. His lives did not seem to be properly attached to him, like ordinary people’s. But at least he knew there were no other Cat Chants to be dragged into trouble in this world, when he left it.

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It was a glorious start-of-autumn day, with everything green and gold, hot and still. There was not a soul around, and very little sound except the lonely crunch of Cat’s and Janet’s feet as they hurried through the formal garden.

Halfway through the orchard, Janet said, “If the garden we want looks like a ruined castle, we’re going away from it now.”

Cat could have sworn they were heading straight for it, but, sure enough, when he stopped and looked round, the high sun-soaked old wall was right behind them. And now he came to think of it, he could not remember how he and Gwendolen had got to it before.

They turned back and walked towards the high wall. All they found was the long, low wall of the orchard. There was no gate in it, and the forbidden garden was beyond it. They went along the orchard wall to the nearest gate. Whereupon they were in the rose garden, and the ruined wall was behind them again, towering above the orchard.

“This couldn’t be an enchantment to stop people getting into it, could it?” said Janet, as they plodded through the orchard again.