Read Online Excalibur by Colin Thompson - Free Book Online

her left leg and finding two little puncture marks in her big toe. At the time she had told herself that it had probably just been her nanny, who did have two very pointy teeth and liked to sleep hanging upside down from a wooden beam. She had only been seven and it was ten more years before she found out that all nannies weren’t like that.
    â€˜So do either of you know a way we can get in and out of the castle undetected?’ she said.
    â€˜No,’ said Brat.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Bloat.
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜The tunnel,’ said Bloat.
    â€˜Tunnel?’
    â€˜The one in the back of the old cave where my granny lives,’ said Bloat. ‘It goes into the sewers under the castle.’
    â€˜Yes, of course,’ said Brat.
    â€˜So you’re saying we can get into the deserted towers,’ said the Princess, ‘but we have to go up through the lavatory?’
    â€˜Yes, brilliant, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Not so brilliant, actually,’ said the Princess.
    â€˜Hey,’ said Brat, ‘it would be the last place anyone would look.’
    â€˜That is most definitely true.’
    â€˜And besides, no one ever goes there to go there,’ said Brat. ‘It won’t be all gunky and horrible.’
    â€˜OK,’ said the Princess. ‘We’ll give it a go. We’ll send potato boy up first to clean the pipes with a mop.’
    â€˜And my bukkit!’ Scraper beamed. ‘Yes, let me, let me.’
    â€˜Oh, all right,’ everyone else agreed.
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    Morgan le Fey and Sir Lancelot were in the planning room doing planning. They had a huge map of Avalon spread out on the table and were working out the best way to capture the two mini-rebels and potato boy and rescue the lovely Princess.
    Actually, it was Morgan le Fey who was doing all the planning. Sir Lancelot was just nodding and looking all gooey-eyed at her and trying to rehearse the whole troth-plighting thing in his head. All he had was the first verse and he wasn’t too pleased with that:
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    Which he had to admit was pretty terrible and made no sense. He decided he would ask Grimethorpe to write something for him.
    â€˜You know what?’ said Morgan le Fey. ‘This Princess must be really dumb to have let herself be kidnapped by a couple of children.’
    â€˜They must have caught her off guard or threatened her with a dangerous weapon,’ said Sir Lancelot.
    â€˜Maybe,’ said Morgan le Fey, though she had her doubts.
    â€˜What? Think you that she may have gone with them of her own free will?’
    â€˜Who knows?’ said the Princess. ‘I think we’ll just keep an open mind on that one.’
    Neither of them had ever met Princess Floridian, but it was common knowledge that she was a bit of a handful so it did seem unlikely that she would have been overpowered by Brat and his friends.
    â€˜Well, everyone knows they were hiding in the old highwayman’s cave up the mountain across the valley,’ said Morgan le Fey. ‘And my spies tell me they were seen leaving there a short while ago. So now we have to try and guess where they’re going.’
    â€˜I think somewhere near here,’ said Sir Lancelot, who actually hadn’t the faintest idea where they mightbe headed, but put his finger on the map next to Morgan le Fey’s.
    The gentle touch of fabric as his cuff slid over the back of her hand set her heart fluttering. The map looked all blurry and the Princess felt her knees go all wobbly and uncontrollable. She sat down in a chair and pretended to look out of the window.
    â€˜Yes, well,’ she said, followed by several large bits of silence.
    Gradually her heart regained control of itself and she said, ‘We need to work out if they are planning to go to the first place we would look because they think that would be the last place we would look, or if they are planning to go to the last place we would look because they think