Free Magic Parcel by Frank English

shrank away from her, immediately deciding that talking to her must be a trap. Realising from their reactions what they must be thinking, she launched in to her explanation.
    â€œI understand what you must be thinking,” she went on, “but I am linked by blood alone, and I am as much a prisoner in many ways, in this eternally mobile fortress, as you are at the moment. Seth has not always been evil you know,” she continued after a moment’s pause, looking at Jimmy for the first time, “but from meagre beginnings with my father, who was great in the arts of wizardry, he desired power for its own sake, and that’s when he began to turn towards evil ways.
    â€œLong years it took him to learn his art, but he had a good teacher in father, who simply poured out his knowledge into Seth, filling him almost to overflowing with his experience. When he had taken his fill, father was discarded like an empty bottle. As his knowledge, by this time, was of little use to him, father disappeared mysteriously. Some say to eternal enslavement to the will of his brother; others, including Seth himself, say he simply wandered into the wild, half-crazed by his loss of power ...”
    An ominous rattle of keys somewhere in the bowels of the dungeons heralded the return of their unwelcome keeper, warning them that they ought to fly.
    â€œI have talked overlong I fear,” the girl whispered. “Come, you must be gone. They will not think to look for you until the next feeding in about an hour, and by that time you must not be around to taste their concoctions.”
    She closed the door behind them as they drifted silently into the outer keep outside their prison. Jimmy covered his ears expecting the door to signal their departure, but noiselessly it swung shut, securing itself with the least resistance. Their plight was simple; how to get out of a sorcerer’s stronghold even with the help of the sorcerer’s niece.
    The journey was short in distance but long in duration, flitting as they were from pillar to pillar and dark doorway to alcove, like three grey shapes in a land of shadows. A stubbed toe or clumsy movement were all they needed to bring down a whole army of watchers onto their backs.
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    Although it hadn’t taken them too long, Jimmy was beginning to feel the pace a little, with his joints taking most of the hammering. Sprinting, bobbing and weaving, and the sudden diving behind some enormous wooden chest, which smelled of old attics, began to take its toll. Not looking where he was going, he cast a glance over his shoulder, when he ran into the corner of a heavy, solid oak casket, half-hidden in the gloom of a deepish alcove. The air gasped and hissed out of his body like a deflated football as he sank slowly to his knees, clutching his unfortunate midriff. Away to his right, came the urgent chatter of feet on the stone floor followed swiftly by several harsh shouting voices.
    â€œThey must be down this way,” one croaked. “I heard a noise.”
    â€œYes!” shouted another. “Follow! Follow! We have them! We have them!”
    Jimmy was about to open his mouth to shout for help when a huge hand clasped itself firmly over the lower half of his face, shutting out all possibility of any sound escaping from his lips. A strong arm lifted him from the cold floor, and whisked his helpless body behind the chest into the total darkness of a close musty sort he had never experienced before; except for ... in that old cupboard under the stairs at home! That was the place daylight hardly ever saw and fresh air never sweetened; musty, dank and old, piled high with interesting and exciting rubbish. Yes, that was the smell, but it was with a different, heart-thumping excitement he faced his present situation; the excitement and fear of the unknown.
    A few minutes elapsed before he was set down, gently, the right way up, and he was about to protest through a deep gasp, when he heard