Igraine the Brave Read online

  28

  They all went to Rowan Heartless’s tent: Igraine and the Sorrowful Knight, Albert and their parents, but they left Osmund and his champion the Spiky Knight where they were, dangling up in the air with Sisyphus guarding them. The cat wasn’t very pleased, until Melisande conjured up a bucket full of fat fish that persuaded him to stay put.

  It was dark in the Hedgehog’s red tent, pitch-dark, but Albert, Sir Lamorak, and the Fair Melisande were still covered with sparks from the magic lightning, and in their soft light the falcons on their perch were clearly visible. They were sitting hunched up with their heads under their wings. Once again the smallest falcon was the first to be on the alert, spreading its wings as it had when Igraine slipped past it before, and it uttered such a raucous cry that the other three brought their heads out from under their feathers, too.

  “You see?” said Igraine. “Four falcons! Perhaps the one that keeps getting so worked up is the only real bird!”

  “Perhaps.” The Sorrowful Knight went over to the birds and took the leather hoods off their heads. Bewildered, they blinked in the strange light that filled the tent.

  “Noble knight,” said the Fair Melisande, putting her hand on his armed shoulder, “your courage gave us the time we needed to return to our former shape. Now let us help you.”

  Incredulously, the Sorrowful Knight turned to her. “You think that you could break Osmund’s spell?”

  “Definitely,” replied Sir Lamorak. “Ordinary magic is considerably easier to reverse than magical mistakes, you know.”

  The Fair Melisande gently moved the knight aside, stood in front of the perch with the birds on it, and took the smaller of the Books of Magic off her shoulder. As soon as she sat it on her left hand, it began humming quietly.

  The falcons jerked their heads, alarmed, and listened to the strange sound.

  “Page 4,” said Melisande, and the book opened at a page that was covered all over with illustrations of tiny, colorful animals, birds, and insects. They were crawling, leaping, and fluttering over the letters on the page as if they were alive.

  Melisande closed her eyes, raised the book a little higher in the air, and said in a voice that was hardly any louder than the whispering of the wind:

  Be what once you were, you birds,

  What you were so long ago.

  Let me help you to remember,

  You wore no feathers, well you know.

  The thin golden perch broke like a rotten twig under the weight of the four ladies who were suddenly sitting on it. Yes, four. They landed with a bump on the carpet that Rowan Heartless had spread on the floor of his tent. When the confusion of skirts and veils had died down, the Sorrowful Knight helped his three lost ladies to their feet, with a happy smile on his face. But Igraine put out her hand to the fourth.

  “My word, Baroness!” she said, helping the old lady up from the carpet. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  With a deep sigh, the old Baroness of Darkrock pushed her tangled gray hair back from her forehead and looked down at herself.

  “All present and correct!” she said, relieved. “Thank goodness. No more feathers, no claws on my toes.” She felt her face a little anxiously, and sighed happily again on discovering that she had a nose there instead of a hooked beak.

  “My dear Igraine,” she said, tapping her smartly on the helmet and looking stern. “Couldn’t you have broken that horrible spell on me this morning? Didn’t I flap those wretched wings hard enough when you were stumbling around me?”

  “But how was I to know it was you?” asked Igraine. “How come you let your own nephew enchant you?”

  Embarrassed, the old lady picked a feather off her dress. “I thought he was quite nice,” she murmured. “I have to admit I was wrong.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Sir Lamorak. “According to Bertram, Osmund poured all your stock of spicy mead into the moat at Darkrock. Granted, that will be good for your teeth, but —”

  “He did what?” the Baroness interrupted. “Where is he?”

  But Sir Lamorak had turned his back to her, for the other three ladies were shyly plucking his sleeve.

  They looked very like each other. All three had golden hair and were almost the same size, they wore beautiful but very impractical dresses, and they had tiny feet that would not be much use for running away from Spiky Knights.

  “Noble sir!” said the tallest of the ladies as the other two smiled very sweetly. “We owe you and your wife our infinite gratitude. If you wish, my sisters and I will serve you to the end of our days. Perhaps you need child-minders for your son and daughter, or …”

  Albert and Igraine looked at each other in dismay.

  “No, no, that won’t be necessary, really it won’t!” Albert interrupted the lady hastily. “My little sister does need supervision, it’s true, but I can take care of that myself. And as for being rescued, you owe that almost entirely to this noble knight. Word of a magician’s honor!”

  Looking embarrassed, the Sorrowful Knight bowed his head. “I allowed Heartless to steal you away,” he said, without looking at the ladies. “I hope you will forgive me. I was not worthy to be your knight.”

  “Oh, no, there he goes talking nonsense again!” muttered Igraine, but her mother gave her a warning look and put a finger to her lips.

  “Of course you’re worthy!” cried the three ladies. “You defended us most chivalrously! What could you do against such deceitful magic?”

  “Learn a little magic himself, maybe,” Albert whispered to Igraine.

  However, the three ladies went up to the Sorrowful Knight, and one by one they kissed his dusty cheek.

  Igraine suppressed a groan.

  “Escort us back to our castle,” said one of the ladies. “Be our protector again.”

  The Sorrowful Knight bowed very, very deeply to her.

  “I will be happy to escort you back,” he replied. “But I won’t stay, for my skill in arms is not enough to protect you from magic and treachery. So I have decided to learn some new arts, and to study, if they will allow me,” he said, turning around, “with the noble Sir Lamorak and the Fair Melisande, and not least with their extremely clever son, Albert. In return, I offer to instruct your noble and very brave daughter, Igraine, in all the skills that a chivalrous knight must learn.”

  All at once Igraine’s heart felt so light that she almost floated up to the top of the tent.

  “An excellent idea, er, Sorrowful Knight,” said Sir Lamorak. “And we offer you our services with the greatest pleasure, don’t we, my love?”

  “Oh, yes.” The Fair Melisande nodded. “But on one condition. Now that you are no longer a Sorrowful but, I hope, a Happy Knight, you must tell us your real name.”

  “I was once known as Sir Urban of Wintergreen,” said the Sorrowful Knight, “and I will go by that name again.” And with these words he turned to Igraine. “What do you say, squire?” he asked. “Will you come with me when I escort these three noble ladies back to their castle? After all, I am a knight with honor again, so I need a squire now.”

  Igraine looked at her parents. “Of course. I’d love to!” she said, and the Fair Melisande and Sir Lamorak the Wily sighed — and nodded.

  “Well, it would be a bit boring for you with just those three ladies, wouldn’t it?” Igraine whispered to the Sorrowful Knight.

  “What did your noble squire say?” asked one of the ladies.

  Luckily, Sisyphus came in at that moment, with a half-eaten fish in his mouth.

  “Sisyphus!” cried Albert, astonished. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be guarding the prisoners!”

  “Flown away,” purred Sisyphus, settling down comfortably on the carpet with his fish.

  “What do you mean?” asked Albert in alarm, as the cat greedily smacked his lips.

  “The wind blew them away,” replied Sisyphus. “What did you expect me to do? Fly after them?”

  Igraine’s parents looked at each other in disma
y.

  “The wind — my word,” murmured Sir Lamorak. “Never thought of that, did we?”

  “Who flew away?” asked the Baroness, who was just reviving herself by sampling the Spiky Knight’s provisions of spicy mead.

  “Your nephew,” replied Melisande, “and his castellan.”

  “Oh, were those two turned into birds as well?” asked the Baroness.

  “No, no,” said Igraine, taking her hand. “You see, it’s rather a complicated story.”

  So they all went back to Pimpernel Castle. Albert ordered the drawbridge to lower itself, which after some hesitation it did, and the Fair Melisande broke the spell on the moat. No sooner had she lowered her hands than twenty-five dazed men emerged from the water lilies. The snakes carried them to the bank, where Sir Lamorak and the Sorrowful Knight pulled them out of the water.

  “The wind has blown your masters away,” said Melisande as they stood before her, dripping wet. “The tents you see still standing there are empty. The siege is over. You can go home.”

  Most of the men didn’t wait to be told twice. They made off on their unsteady legs. But five men still stood there.

  “What are you waiting for?” asked Albert impatiently. “You can go.”

  But the five just looked gloomily at the feet they had got back. “We liked it down there,” one of them muttered.

  “What?” said Sir Lamorak.

  “We want to be fish again,” said a second man. “It’s a better life. Enough to eat, no one ordering you around …”

  He looked longingly into the moat.

  “I have a cat who eats fish,” said Igraine.

  But that didn’t seem to bother the men.

  So Sir Lamorak granted their wish. He turned the five of them back into fish, and then, with the help of the Books of Magic, he and the Fair Melisande conjured up such a banquet as Pimpernel Castle had never seen before, with not a crumb of biscuit or a blue egg in sight. Albert entertained the three ladies until late into the night, getting his mice to do tricks for them, and Igraine finally had her chance to tell the Baroness all that had happened since her twelfth birthday.

  The only part of the story she wasn’t telling yet was how she had stolen the Baroness’s favorite horse….

  Also by CORNELIA FUNKE

  Dragon Rider

  The Thief Lord

  Inkheart

  Inkspell

  When Santa Fell to Earth

  About the Author

  CORNELIA FUNKE is the author of the bestselling, internationally acclaimed novels The Thief Lord, Dragon Rider, Inkheart, and Inkspell, the Ghosthunters series, and several popular picture books. She lives in Los Angeles, California, with her family.

  Copyright

  First published in Germany as Igraine Ohnefurcht

  Original text copyright © 1998 by Cecilie Dressler Verlag, Hamburg, Germany

  English translation by Anthea Bell copyright © 2007 by Cornelia Funke

  Inside illustrations copyright © 1998 by Cornelia Funke

  www.CorneliaFunkeFans.com

  Published in the United Kingdom in 2007 by Chicken House,

  2 Palmer Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DS.

  www.doublecluck.com

  All rights reserved. Published by Chicken House, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.,

  Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, CHICKEN HOUSE, and associated logos

  are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  www.scholastic.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Funke, Cornelia Caroline. [Igraine Ohnefurcht. English]

  Igraine the brave / by Cornelia Funke; with illustrations by the author; translated from the German by Anthea Bell. – 1st American ed. p. cm.

  Summary: The daughter of two magicians, twelve-year-old Igraine wants nothing more than to be a knight, and when their castle is attacked by a treacherous neighbor bent on stealing their singing magic books, Igraine has an opportunity to demonstrate her bravery.

  [1. Knights and knighthood–Fiction. 2. Magic–Fiction. 3. Fantasy.] I. Bell, Anthea. II. Title.

  PZ7.F96624Ig 2007 [Fic]–dc22 2006032672

  First American edition, October 2007

  Cover art © 2007 by Greg Call

  Cover design by Leyah Jensen

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-40618-5

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Who’s Who in Igraine the Brave

  The Sorrowful Knight’s Rules of Chivalry

  1 The Castle in the Woods

  2 Water Snakes and Fencing Practice

  3 An Unexpected Visitor

  4 Bad News

  5 A Little Magic Mistake

  6 Birthday Breakfast on the Carpet

  7 Osmund the Greedy

  8 Igraine’s Plan

  9 At Darkrock Castle

  10 A Friend in the Dungeon of Despair

  11 Escape from Darkrock

  12 The Giant Garleff

  13 The Sorrowful Knight

  14 The Rules of Chivalry

  15 The One-Eyed Duke

  16 The Castle Under Siege

  17 The Mouth of the Stone Lion

  18 Egg Yolks and Apple Crumbs

  19 The Battle of the Magicians

  20 A Noble Offer

  21 Albert’s Plan

  22 In the Spiky Knight’s Tent

  23 The Challenge

  24 A Squire for the Sorrowful Knight

  25 Final Preparations

  26 The Knights in Single Combat

  27 All Is Revealed

  28 The Three Ladies from the Mount of Tears

  Also by CORNELIA FUNKE

  About the Author

  Copyright