The Wizards of Once Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Cressida Cowell

  Cover art copyright © 2017 by Cressida Cowell

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  Visit us at LBYR.com

  Originally published in 2017 by Hodder Children’s Books in Great Britain

  First U.S. Edition: October 2017

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-50833-9 (hardcover), 978-0-316-47215-9 (ebook), 978-0-316-47668-3 (large print)

  E3-20170915-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One: Disobedience

  1. A Trap to Catch a Witch

  2. A Warrior Called Wish

  3. The Witch Feather Begins to Glow…

  4. The Witch-Trap Catches Something

  5. When Bad Stars Cross and Worlds Collide…

  6. Be Careful What You Wish For

  7. Wizard Encampment

  8. The Spelling Competition

  9. Encanzo the King Enchanter

  10. Fifteen Minutes Earlier, in Xar’s Room

  11. Xar Gets More Than He Wished For

  Part Two: Making Amends

  12. Iron Warrior Fort

  13. The Questioning of Queens

  14. Queen Sychorax ls Disappointed by Her Daughter… Again

  15. Breaking into Queen Sychorax’s Dungeon

  16. A Really Bad Moment for Queen Sychorax to Turn Up

  17. Queen Sychorax’s Chamber of Magic-Removal

  18. Oh Dear… The Story Turns in an Unexpected Direction

  19. Magic Can Never Be Destroyed; It Can Only Be Hidden

  20. The Story Gets Even Twistier

  21. Wishing

  22. Making Amends and Paying the Price

  23. When the Adventure Is Over the Problems Begin

  24. What They Didn’t See

  25. Mother and Daughter

  26. Father and Son

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.

  ALBERT EINSTEIN

  This book is dedicated to my son Xanny, a Hero whose name begins with an “X” (and doesn’t).

  Prologue

  Once there was Magic.

  It was a long, long time ago, in a British Isles so old it did not know it was the British Isles yet, and the Magic lived in the dark forests.

  Perhaps you feel that you know what a dark forest looks like.

  Well, I can tell you right now that you don’t. These were forests darker than you would believe possible, darker than inkspots, darker than midnight, darker than space itself, and as twisted and as tangled as a Witch’s heart. They were what is now known as wildwoods, and they stretched as far in every direction as you can possibly imagine, only stopping when they reached a sea.

  There were many types of humans living in the wildwoods.

  The Wizards, who were Magic.

  And the Warriors, who were not.

  The Wizards had lived in the wildwoods for as long as anyone could remember, and they were intending to live there forever, along with all the other Magic things.

  Until the Warriors came. The Warriors invaded from across the seas, and though they had no Magic, they brought a new weapon that they called IRON, and iron was the only thing that Magic could not work on. The Warriors had iron swords, and iron shields, and iron armor, and even the horrifying Magic of the Witches was powerless against this metal.

  First the Warriors fought the Witches, and drove them into extinction in a long and terrible battle. Nobody cried for the Witches, for Witches were bad Magic, the worst sort of Magic, the kind of Magic that tore wings from larks and killed for fun and could end the world and everyone in it.

  But the Warriors did not stop there. The Warriors thought that just because some Magic was bad, that meant that ALL Magic was bad.

  So now the Warriors were trying to get rid of the Wizards too, and the ogres and the werewolves, and the untidy quarreling mess of good sprites and bad sprites, who burned like little stars through the darkness and cast mischievous spells on each other, and the giants, who moved slow and careful through the undergrowth, larger than mammoths and peaceable as babies.

  The Warriors had sworn that they would not rest until they had destroyed EVERY LAST BIT OF MAGIC in the whole of that dark forest, which they were chopping down as fast as they could with their iron axes to build their forts and their fields and their new modern world.

  This is the story of a young boy Wizard and a young girl Warrior who have been taught since birth to hate each other like poison.

  The story begins with the discovery of A GIGANTIC BLACK FEATHER.

  Could it be that the Wizards and the Warriors have been so busy fighting each other that they have not noticed the return of an ancient evil?

  Could that feather really be the feather of a Witch?

  1. A Trap to Catch a Witch

  It was a warm night for November, too warm a night for Witches, or so the stories said. Witches were supposed to be extinct, of course, but Xar had heard about the way they stank, and he imagined he could smell that now, in the quietness of the dark forest, a faint but definite stink of burning hair mixed with long-dead mice and a little kick of viper’s venom; once smelled, never forgotten.

  Xar was a wild young human boy who belonged to the Wizard tribe. He was riding on the back of a giant snowcat in a part of the forest so dark and mangled and tangled that it was known as the Badwoods.

  He should not have been there, for the Badwoods were Warrior territory, and if the Warriors were to catch him, well, what everyone said was that Xar would be killed on sight. Off with his head! As was the pleasant Warrior custom.

  But Xar did not look even remotely worried.

  He was a cheerful scruff of a boy, with a tremendous quiff of hair shooting upward from his forehead as if it had accidentally come into contact with some invisible vertical hurricane.

  The snowcat he was riding was called Kingcat, a noble creature who was a giant form of lynx, far too dignified for his cheeky master. Kingcat had shining paws so round they looked unreal, fur so deep it was like powder snow and such a rich silver-gray color that it was almost blue. The snowcat ran swiftly but softly through the forest, his black-tipped ears swiveling from side to side as he ran, for he was scared, although too proud to show it.

  Only that very morning, Xar’s father, Encanzo the Enchanter, King of Wizards, had reminded everyone that it was forbidden for any Wizard to dare set one toe in the Badwoods.

  But Xar was the most disobedient boy in the Wizard kingdom in about four generations, and forbidding things only encouraged him.

  In the past week:

  Xar had tied the beards of two of the eldest and most respectable Wizards together when they were sleeping at a banquet. He had poured a love potion into the pigs’ feeding trough, so the pigs developed mad, passionate crushes on Xar’s least favorite teacher and followed him around wherever he went, making loud, enthusiastic squealing and kissing noises.

  He had accidentally burned down the western trees in Wizard camp.

  Most of these things hadn’t been entirely intentional, exactly. Xar had just gotten carried away in the heat of the moment.

  And yet none of these disobedient things was half as bad as what Xar was doing right now.

  There was a large black raven flying above Xar’s head.

  “This is a very bad idea indeed, Xar,” said the raven. The talking raven was called Caliburn, and he would have been a handsome bird, but unfortunately it was his job to keep Xar out of trouble, and the worry of this impossible mission meant his feathers kept falling out. “It isn’t really fair to lead your animals and sprites and young fellow Wizards into all this danger…”

  As the son of the King Enchanter, and a boy with a great deal of personal charisma, Xar had a lot of followers: a pack of five wolves, three snowcats, a bear, eight sprites, an enormous giant called Crusher, and a small crowd of other Wizard youngsters, all following Xar as if hypnotized, all shivering and scared and pretending not to be.

  “Oh, you worry too much, Caliburn,” said Xar, pulling Kingcat to a halt and jumping off his back. “Look at this lovely, pretty little glade here… you see… PERFECTLY safe and exactly the same as the rest of the forest.”

  Xar
looked around with breezy satisfaction, as if they had stopped in a delightful woodland dell filled with frolicking bunnies and baby deer, rather than a cold, eerie little clearing where the yews leaned in threateningly and the mistletoe dripped like warlocks’ tears.

  The other Wizards drew their swords, and the growling snowcats’ fur stood up with fear to such an extent that they looked like furry puffballs. The wolves padded restlessly, trying to form a protective circle around their humans.

  Only the smaller sprites shared Xar’s enthusiasm, but that was because they were too young to know any better.

  I don’t know if you have ever seen a sprite, so I’d better describe these ones to you.

  There were five larger sprites, all faintly resembling a human crossed with a fierce, elegant insect. When irritated, or bored (which was often), they blinked on and off like stars, and purple smoke drifted out of their ears. They were so see-through you could watch their hearts beating.

  Then there were three smaller, younger ones, who because they were not yet adult were known as “hairy fairies.” Xar’s favorite was an eager, slightly stupid little thing called Squeezjoos.

  “Ooh, it’s lovely! It’s lovely!” squeaked Squeezjoos. “It’s the tremunglousistly loveliest clearing I’s ever seen! What’s this fascintresting flower? Let me guess! It’s a buttercup! It’s a daisy! It’s a gerangulum! It’s a cauliflower!”

  He flew into the upper branches of a particularly gloomy and sinister tree and perched on the edge of one of its fleshy flowers, which had ominous spikes on the ends of its leaves, and was in fact called a sprite-eating hobtrap. The flower snapped shut with the briskness of a mousetrap, capturing poor little Squeezjoos inside.

  Caliburn landed on Xar’s shoulder and gave a heavy sigh.

  “I don’t like to say ‘I told you so,’” said Caliburn. “But we’ve only been in this perfectly safe little clearing in the Badwoods for one and a half minutes and you’ve already lost one of your followers to a carnivorous flower.”

  “Nonsense,” scolded Xar good-naturedly, “I haven’t lost him. That’s the whole point about being a leader. Whenever my followers get into trouble, I rescue them, because that’s what a leader does.”

  Xar climbed the tree, and two hundred feet up, swaying precariously on a couple of creaking twiglike boughs, he took out his dagger and popped open the sprite-eating hobtrap to release a panting little Squeezjoos in the nick of time.

  “I’s fine!” squeaked Squeezjoos. “I’s FINE! I can’t feel my left leg, but I’s fine!”

  “Don’t worry, Squeezjoos! That’s just the hobtrap’s digestive juices—the feeling will return in a couple of hours!” Xar called out as he dropped down from the tree. “You see? I’m a great leader! Stick with me and you’ll be fine.”

  The Wizard youngsters looked very thoughtful indeed.

  At that moment, Xar’s older brother, Looter, came out of the shadows behind them, sitting astride a great gray wolf and followed by even more sprites and animals and young Wizard followers than Xar himself.

  Xar stiffened, because he hated his older brother, Looter.

  Looter was a lot bigger than Xar. He was nearly as tall as their father, he was brilliant at Magic, he was good-looking and clever, and my goodness didn’t he know it. He was the smuggest smug Wizard you could possibly imagine, and he often snitched on Xar to get Xar into trouble.

  “What are you doing here, Looter?” stormed Xar suspiciously.

  “Oh, I just followed you to see what unbelievably stupid and pointless thing my little baby brother was doing this time,” drawled Looter.

  “Great leaders like me don’t do pointless expeditions!” fumed Xar. “We’re here for a REASON. It’s none of your business, but…”

  Xar considered telling Looter some elaborate lie about what he was doing—but he couldn’t resist showing off.

  “… we’re going to catch ourselves a Witch,” boasted Xar proudly.

  Ohhhhhhhh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

  This was the first time that Xar had mentioned to his followers the purpose of their expedition, and it was very unwelcome news indeed.

  A Witch!

  The bear, the snowcats, and the wolves went very still and began to shake. Even Ariel, the wildest and most unafraid of Xar’s sprites, shot up into the air and momentarily disappeared.

  “There are Witches in this part of the Badwoods now—I know it,” whispered Xar excitedly, as if a Witch were a delightful sort of present that he was offering everyone.

  There was a long silence, and then Looter and his Wizard followers began to laugh.

  They laughed and they laughed and they laughed.

  “Oh, come on, Xar,” Looter said at last, once he’d gotten his breath back. “Even you must know that Witches have been extinct for centuries.”

  “Ah yes,” said Xar, “but what if some of them survived and have been hiding all this time? Look! Here’s what I found in this very clearing only yesterday!”

  Out of his rucksack he carefully took an absolutely gigantic black feather.

  It was huge, like the feather of a crow but much, much larger. A soft black, fading at the end to a glowing, shiny, dark green, the color of a mallard’s head.

  “It’s a Witch feather…” whispered Xar.

  Looter smiled his most superior smile.

  “That’s just the feather of some big old bird,” scoffed Looter. “Some giant crow—you get some weird things living in the Badwoods.”

  Xar frowned and hung the feather from his belt.

  “I’ve never seen a bird as big as this one must be,” said Xar grumpily.

  “It’s all nonsense,” smiled Looter. “Only a brainless fool like you wouldn’t know that. Witches were destroyed forever.”

  Caliburn flapped downward and landed on Kingcat’s head.

  “‘Forever’ is a long word,” said the raven.

  “You see!” said Xar triumphantly. “Caliburn is a bird of omen, who can see into the future and into the past, and he doesn’t think that Witches are gone forever!”

  “All I know is, if Witches were not to be extinct for some reason, you wouldn’t want to go meeting one in a dark place,” said Caliburn, shivering. “What do you want a Witch for, Xar?”

  “I’m going to catch the Witch,” said Xar, “and remove its Magic and use it for myself.”

  There was another horrified silence.

  Eventually, Looter spoke. “That, little brother, is the worst plan I have ever heard in the whole history of plan-making.”

  “You’re just jealous YOU didn’t think of it,” said Xar.

  “I have a few questions,” said Looter. “How are you going to catch the Witch in the first place?”

  “That’s what the net’s for,” said Xar, taking a net out of his rucksack and holding it up. You couldn’t fault his enthusiasm, at least. “One of us will volunteer to be wounded ever so slightly, and then the blood will attract the Witch…”

  “Oh great,” smiled Looter. “Now you’re going to wound one of your sad little followers? In a forest stuffed with raving werewolves and Blood-Sniffing Ogrebreaths? Come on, you’re completely crazy… This plan is as pathetic as you are…”

  Xar ignored him. “And then I’ll entangle the Witch in this net when it attacks. Next question.”

  “Okay. Question two,” said Looter. “No living Wizard has ever seen a Witch, so how do you know what one looks like?”

  Xar opened his rucksack and took out a book the size of a large atlas entitled The Spelling Book.

  Every Wizard is equipped with a Spelling Book, given to them at birth. Xar’s was looking extremely worse for wear. One part of it was invisible (it accidentally got dropped in invisibility potion). Another bit was burned so black you could barely read it (this happened when Xar set Wizard camp on fire), and many of the pages were loose and dropping out all over the place (too many adventures to go into here).

  Xar opened the book to the contents page, which had the twenty-six letters of the alphabet written on it in very large gold script. Xar spelled out “Witches” by tapping on each letter in turn, and whirrrrrrrrr, the book turned its own pages, which seemed to go on forever and ever and ever, the chapters in front turning invisible as the book riffled through the rest of them like an endless pack of cards, until eventually they stopped at the right place.