The Familiars: Secrets of the Crown Read Free Page A

trapping the birds inside.
    Just then from above, Aldwyn heard Gilbert, whose tongue was still wrapped round the wand, shouting, “Looooo ouuuu!” Although his friend was difficult to understand, Aldwyn knew enough to get out of his way.
    Gilbert was coming in for a landing, and if he had any ambition to do it gracefully, he was failing miserably. The wand jerked him left and right, up and down. The tree frog smacked against shrubs and branches before hitting the ground, bouncing along the dirt as the wand magically dragged him to a stop.
    Gilbert coughed up a mouthful of mud and dust as his tongue let go of the wand. Then he looked around dizzily. “Whoa. My life just flashed before my eyes. I’ve spent a surprising amount of time picking flies out of my teeth.”
    Sorceress Edna and the children came out from behind the topiary and rejoined the familiars. The tremor hawks remained tied up in the canopy cover.
    Aldwyn could see by the look on Edna’s face that she was deeply unsettled. She stared blankly at the garden fountain, which was no longer flowing. Dalton was watching the topiaries, which were now motionless, standing as still as any common shrub. Jack’s attention was on the sky.
    “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a pillar of grey smoke that was rising into the blue in the distance.
    Curious and with a growing sense of dread, Aldwyn hurried to the hedge wall and scaled it. From the top, he surveyed the Vastian countryside. It was worse than he had feared: the enchanted dam that stood beyond Black Ivy Manor was gone, and water from the lake above had flooded the grazing fields. Cows and horse carts drifted aimlessly, while fish swam in and around stalks of corn. Further in the distance, the floating torches of Bronzhaven, which were always magically held aloft as a symbol of Queen Loranella’s great power, had fallen, igniting the palace walls. And lightning storms and thunderclouds, normally held at bay by the queen’s weather-binding spells, were forming over the lush green hills to the south, moving in on the great expanse of plains west of the Yennep Mountains and east of the Ebs River. This stretch of grassland, once known for its tranquillity and peacefulness, was in ruins.
    Aldwyn felt his stomach do a somersault for the second time today. But unlike before, it wasn’t adrenalin or gravity that was twisting his insides. It was the realisation that something terrible had befallen Vastia: all the spells and enchantments that wizards had cast upon the land had vanished. Human magic was gone.

 
    “Have there been any reports of humans casting magic since the green flash ?” Queen Loranella enquired of the council and the concerned citizens who had gathered in the grand hall of the New Palace of Bronzhaven. Not a single voice called back from the room – the only response was a shaking of heads and anxious murmurings.
    Aldwyn sat in Jack’s lap in the back row of the high-ceilinged chamber, alongside Dalton, Marianne, Skylar and Gilbert. The six of them had travelled here with Sorceress Edna, who had received word of the emergency meeting from one of the queen’s courier eagles shortly after the disenchantment. By the time they had taken to the roads, most of the water released by the dam had sunk into the earth, so at least the group was spared having to swim to the palace. Instead, they made the short trip on foot, witnessing some of the profound effects already being felt by the loss of magic: the enchanted scythes that were responsible for chopping down the wheat and corn crops lay lifeless on the ground, awaiting human hands to manually use them; healing wizards were turning away sick patients from their doorsteps, unable to help them; and rock beetles were pouring out from the ground now that the bug plugs were broken – an unpleasant nuisance to everyone but Gilbert. While their old teacher, Kalstaff, would have surely kept his concern and worry hidden from his young pupils,