Lord Arsey Bumstrangler strode across his great hall towards the tower. He climbed the narrow winding stairs to the room at the top of the tower. He opened the door to see his wizards as they struggled futilely with the magical device. One of them appeared, at least to Lord Arsey, to be doing something distasteful with the entrails of a frog… or what used to be a frog.
‘Does it work yet?’ Bumstrangler looked down at the magical device, split open on the wizard’s cluttered workbench.
The head wizard bowed, the tip of his obligatory beard weaving a short trail in the dust on the floor. ‘No, sire.’ The Master wizard held up a yellowing sheet of paper, surprisingly small for the vital importance of the magical device. ‘The runes,’ the wizard muttered, ‘are somewhat ambiguous.’
‘Really?’ The Lord sighed with all the enthusiasm he could muster for the workings of magic.
‘Yes,’ the wizard fumbled under his beard and brought out a pair of eye-lenses. He wiped a layer of dust off them and settled them on as much of his nose as was visible between the rim of his obligatory wizarding hat and the beginnings of his official wizarding beard. ‘It is – to the untrained eye – written in the language of the magical runes, but not really in a way that makes any sense.’
The Lord harrumphed and turned to leave. ‘Hurry,’ he said. ‘I need the magical device soon. He glanced up at the hourglass above the workbench. ‘It is almost time for kick-off and the telly is stuck on one of the wife’s channels. If you don’t get the magical device working in time then I won’t be able to change the channel in time for the footy.’ He turned, glaring, to face the wizards as they cowered in front of him. ‘And you know what that will mean for you!’
He turned and left the wizard’s room, slamming the door behind him, wondering what the point of being the Lord of all he surveyed was if he couldn’t even change the channel on the telly in time for the footy.
[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]
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