The Dragon Prince

by Patty Jansen

  “Yes.”

  He nodded.

  “You’re not even asking where I’m going?”

  “I trust it’s some place where you can do important things for the country. You’re big enough to look after yourself now. I trust you won’t get into trouble.”

  This made Johanna hesitate. Why was she in such a hurry to see Li Fai?

  Yes, she didn’t want to give his father reason to pull up anchor and go to Anglia.

  Yes, she had never met anyone who’d been willing to teach her anything about magic.

  Why did Father’s question made her feel guilty, as if she was doing something untoward?

  Father spread his hands. “But mostly, I’ve learned that whenever you’re going somewhere or doing something, when you have it in your head that you want this, I can yell at the Moon for all I like, but you don’t listen. And you know, it used to scare me, but I’ve also learned that whatever you do, you might not do in a way that I would have done it, but it turns out all right just the same.”

  Johanna laughed. “Well, that’s a profound bit of wisdom on such a nice sunny day.” Yet, the conversation chilled her.

  She was far too keen to see Li Fai, and if she wasn’t careful, it would lead to rumours. That wouldn’t be so bad if only the rumours were true.

  She continued into the foyer and down the steps, where the driver waited seated atop the coach holding the reins to the two white horses.

  Johanna climbed in, assisted by a guard, and the coach set off.

  Inside the luxuriously-appointed cabin, Johanna stared at the empty bench opposite her. Li Fai had sat there when he explained about his magic box. The little dragon had gambolled over her knees while she sat in the same spot as she sat in now. She could still see Li Fai sitting opposite her, with his very serious face.

  No one else had ever talked to her about teaching magic. She had spent so much time in Florisheim looking for someone. The books in the monastery, her visit to Magda, none of them had ever told her what to do with magic.

  As soon as she saw Li Fai’s dragon box, she had wanted a box with a tree.

  That was the crux of the matter. Nothing else.

  Of course Johanna arrived at Father’s office early. The coach dropped her off at the steps. She pulled her cloak about her shoulders while climbing to the front door.

  It didn’t look like anyone had been here since her fumbling with the ripped dress. Father did most of his work from the palace these days.

  The first door on the left led to the official reception room. It contained two couches and a chair, a low table and, around the walls, bookcases with glass doors. The room looked tidy, but so much dust had collected on the seats of the couches and the table that she it would be embarrassed to use it. Father never used the reception room much, even when he still came here every day. It was too formal, he would say. The room had a window that looked out over the street, which made it unsuitable for holding this meeting. If Li Fai was going to do magic, she didn’t want to take the chance that people might see it.

  Father’s office was at the back of the building and more suitable. She opened the door to air the room, but realised that if she wanted a fire in here, she should have come earlier.

  It was not to be helped. She went back to the reception room. The coach had gone. As per her instructions, it would wait around the corner.

  She eyed the people on the quay. Couldn’t see Li Fai.

  If, a year ago, someone had told Johanna how she would be looking at the quayside activities, she would have laughed. As queen? With child? The Lady Davida burned? An iron ship in the harbour?

  Had there ever been a time, back then, when mooring spots at the quay were unoccupied? When you could see substantial stretches of water in between the ships?

  The wreck of the Lady Davida was somewhere on the bottom of the harbour, Adrian’s watery grave. Father was still talking about building a new ship, but everyone wanted new ships. The shipyard had trouble getting wood, because people had a greater need for houses. It would be a while before the harbour filled up again.

  Now she spotted Li Fai. He was coming down the quay in the company of one of his mountainous guards. Workers unloading ships and fixing fishing nets barely glanced at him. So much for a hostile reception. He even greeted one or two of the workers.

  He came up the steps to the front door. The knocker fell on the wood.

  Johanna went to the hallway to open the door. Li Fai bowed.

  “Do come in.” She wasn’t sure what to say to the guard, but he seemed to assume that he’d wait outside.

  Johanna closed the door, shutting off the sounds from the street. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”

  “You are well?”

  “I was not the problem. Someone . . . close to me was . . . unwell.” It seemed inappropriate to go into too much detail. Johanna could still hear Greetje’s screams and they still made her shudder. “Let’s go to a more comfortable room.”

  She preceded him to the office. Coming here with a visitor would of course mean that she should sit in Father’s chair. The tall, heavy chair with the leather-covered seat almost swallowed her. But the velvet of the dress had as much grip on the shiny leather as shoes on ice.

  She straightened her back. “Well, uhm . . .” This was awkward. All of a sudden, she realised the wide variety of political rumours that might start if people knew she was here with him. Planning behind the King’s Council’s back, consorting with the enemy, using evil magic.

  He dug in his pocket and placed two boxes on the table. One was the octagonal dragon box she had seen before. The other was plain. The wooden polished surface gave no indication of its contents.

  He didn’t need to say that the box was hers. The wood sang out to her.

  “Can I touch it?” She held up her hand.

  He covered the lid of the box with his hand until she withdrew. “We give a box like this to a child to store their art. The box itself can be either just a pretty thing or very significant. If it can be made from the same material that the gives the child their art, then it makes the art more powerful. The art of wood is much-coveted around the known lands. It might not be spectacular and might take a long time to master properly, but its power is infinite.”

  Johanna looked at the other box with the little dragon on the lid. She felt like protesting. But . . . Dragons! Yet every single person who knew more about magic than she did always told her the same thing. Wood is stronger than fire. Without wood, there cannot be a fire. Even Loesie had said this.

  “I don’t have the art of wood and I don’t know how this box would work for you. It is not exactly the type of box we would use for children, but we have no children on board and have no reason to take those boxes. This is a simple box of the same wood. My father had it in his cabin.”

  “This isn’t just normal wood, is it?” None of the type she was familiar with anyway. Most of the lid was straw-coloured, mottled through with flecks of brown and red. Yet the surface was polished smooth as glass. The wood’s fibres shone like silk when the light fell on it at a certain angle. In the surface of the lid, the direction of the wood’s grain changed in two places, giving the impression that the lid was twisted while it was perfectly flat. It was a curious thing.

  Li Fai continued. “Wood artists tell me that different types of wood have different strengths.”

  Johanna nodded. Willow wood was best of the wood types she knew.

  But she also knew without touching the box that it was made from a type of wood much stronger than that.

  “This wood is from a pine tree that grows on top of the world in mountains so high that the slopes are a wasteland of broken rocks and snow. The trunks are usually split and stunted, and instead of growing straight like normal trees, they twist over the ground, sometimes trying to rise, like a creature rolling on the ground in a terrible sickness. The trees fight the icy winds that come to its home from all over the world. They drink the rain and snow that fall from
the clouds that float over all the lands. The trees are ancient because they grow very slowly.”

  “That sounds like a very wise type of tree.”

  He nodded. “People with the art of wood do not touch it lightly. This wood has a very long memory.”

  She understood, and shuddered at the thought of the stories such an old and wise tree would have to tell.

  “But you must touch it, if the box is to become yours.”

  She reached out again, but he grabbed her wrist. “No, not yet.” His expression was serious, and made her feel like she had almost done something extremely dumb.

  Johanna withdrew her hand, still feeling the warmth of his touch on her wrist.

  He rose from his chair.

  In the corner of the office was a table where Father tended to put things that came from the warehouse. It contained a messy stack of bags and lengths of rope to tie them. He pulled out a couple of the ropes.

  “I’m sorry I have to do this, but it’s for your own protection.”

  He crouched next to her and tied a rope around her leg and the leg of the chair. He tied a knot in the rope.

  “Hey, what does this mean?”

  “Again, my apologies. People can have very strong reactions to the wood. There are stories of people having jumped up and injured themselves. With young children, a parent usually holds the child on their lap, but if I did that, you would not find that appropriate.” He glanced at her while tying up her other leg.

  She was trying to decide if he’d meant it as a joke. His face remained completely serious.

  Then he knotted two lengths of rope together. He looped this around the backrest and to the front.

  “Not too tight. I’m with child.”

  “I know.”

  His fingers were soft-skinned and gentle. The rope was rough. The words were on her tongue, Look, I’d prefer if you held me.

  Appropriate it was not, but some part of her didn’t care about what some stuffy noblemen considered appropriate. She wanted to feel the dragon magic and see the little dragon again.

  He rose. “I’m leaving your arms free. You can wave them around, but I’ll stand far enough back so that you can’t reach me.”

  Johanna felt chilled. “This is not going to harm the child, is it?”

  He inserted his fingers between the rope and her dress. “It’s not too tight.” The back of his hand brushed her dress.

  Johanna took in a sharp breath. She was going to say, “Hey!” but a stream of magic went through her that made her entire body tingle. Whatever magic that was, she didn’t see any images, but she could feel them.

  The call of the wooden box on the table.

  The sighing of the wind around the building.

  The slapping of the water against the quay.

  The straining of the little dragon inside the other box, butting its head against the lid to get out.

  The keening of Alexandre’s spirit trapped inside the tree.

  The cramped struggle of the child inside her.

  All those things combined into a big throbbing vein of magic that coursed through her body.

  Li Fai’s dark eyes met hers. “The child has the art and it’s at least as strong as yours.”

  That’s because the child is Kylian’s. Sweat broke out on her back.

  He withdrew his hand.

  Then he turned to the desk and picked up the plain wooden box. Johanna held her hands up, her heart thudding.

  He held the box a hand’s width above her palms. “Understand that the great power of this wood is not that it shows the past. It is that it shows possible futures.”

  He lowered the box in her hands.

  Johanna’s vision went dark.

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  GHOSTLIKE FIGURES emerged from the darkness, hazy at first. Johanna had to blink her eyes a few times before she could see properly.

  She was in the church, in a pew about halfway down the back, a place she might once have occupied when she was simply Johanna Brouwer.

  It must be night, because the little windows near the ceiling were dark. The only light came from the candles that burned in sconces along the walls and on the pillars that supported the roof.

  She was standing and all the people around her were standing, too. Johanna didn’t recognise any of them.

  At the sound of a bell, a procession of people started making its way down the aisle to the front of the church. They wore long dark robes that covered their heads and hid their faces.

  No one in the regular church services wore those robes. Not even at funerals. And what were they all doing here? The service usually only involved the shepherd and a few altar boys.

  The person at the front could be the shepherd. Maybe, maybe not. He was tall enough to be a man, but walked with a limp, like an old man. As he passed Johanna’s position, he turned to her, but she still couldn’t make out a face inside the shadow of the cowl, only the faint glint of an eye.

  A draft of wind tore through the church, ruffling bonnets and hair.

  It chilled her to the core of her body, but no one around her reacted.

  “Hey!” she said to the woman next to her. She just sat passively staring into nothingness. Her face was pale and her eyes didn’t move. For a moment, Johanna thought that she was surrounded by dead people, but then the woman blinked.

  “Hey!” she said again, but the woman didn’t react.

  The procession slowly made its way to the front of the church. The first man climbed the steps. From within his robes, he withdrew a bundle of red cloth and laid it on the altar.

  The cloth crumpled to the table, except for one lump about the size of a man’s fist.

  All the members of the procession now stood in a half-circle behind the altar, except the man who had carried the parcel, who leaned on the altar as if his back pained him. His hands were pale, the fingers thin. Some of his fingertips looked strangely dark.

  He lifted his hands and pushed back the hood. The man’s head was bald, his eyes deep within their sockets. His nose was thin, his lips dark and his cheeks sunken and scabbed.

  But even if he resembled a walking skeleton, Johanna recognised the shepherd, Master Willems.

  With trembling hands, he pulled back the red cloth. A gust of wind almost tore the cloth from his hands. It buffeted the windows, rattled the doors. A tiny door to the side of the altar that led to the bell tower creaked open and then slammed shut.

  The blackened skull underneath looked even eviler than when Greetje had described it. The two rubies in the eyeholes glowed with ghostly red light.

  “Behold the evil that attempts to invade our city!” The shepherd’s voice was shrill. “It has taken many of us already. It has taken three altar boys, it has taken my housekeeper, my wife and son. I have tried in vain to protect you from it, but I cannot do this alone. We must sit on our knees and pray. Oh holy god, I place this terrible thing before you so that you can smite it before the eyes of the people, before it destroys all that is dear to you.”

  At the front of the church, a woman started crying. Johanna leaned sideways so that she could see who this was. To her great discomfort, she recognised herself.

  Alone, no longer with child.

  A cold feeling took hold of her. What terrible thing would happen that made her wail like this? What would happen that made the people of Saardam sit quietly and watch their queen cry without a single sign of emotion? That would allow her to walk up to the altar in the middle of a service to face the skeleton-like men in their long robes? To accept a hammer from one of them?

  She turned to the altar.

  That child’s skull? That was the child she carried. Conceived in that place of dark magic. Resurrected. Imbued with Celine’s ghost. The necromancer’s child.

  Johanna in the pew watched herself stand over the altar, hefting the hammer above her head. The glow from the skull’s ruby eyes turned her face red.

  The shepherd faced the congregation, rai
sing his arms. His sleeves fell back, revealing just how skeletal he had become. His forearms were thin as sticks, his elbows swollen. A red rash covered his skin, with ugly sores and scabs.

  “Believers of Saardam, today we bring to you the destruction of the evil that has plagued us for months. We have brought into our midst a former member of the church who went on to betray us, but who is the only person who can destroy this thing of evil: the mother of the necromancer’s daughter. Go now, smash this evil and let us live in peace without magic.”

  Johanna at the altar brought the hammer down.

  The black skull shattered. Fragments flew off the dais, some landing on the steps. One of the rubies bounced to the shepherd’s feet.

  A deep male voice laughed.

  And laughed.

  For a few terrible seconds the congregation was as quiet as death. Everyone stared at the fragments of the shattered skull. Johanna was just beginning to think that it was over, when the fragments started to crumble, and crumble, and turn into fine black dust that oozed over the red velvet like slime. The trails joined to form blobs and bigger blobs.

  The shepherd gave a strangled noise. The ruby that had landed at his feet had melted into a red jelly. The glob crept towards him like a headless slug.

  A woman at the back of the church screamed, “There, there!”

  She was pointing out the open church door.

  A white ghost drifted in, followed by another and another. People screamed, trying to push away from the aisle, even if the ghosts paid no attention to them. They made for the shattered relic. Johanna near the altar could feel the icy air as they passed, and melted into the ever-growing blob of slime.

  More ghosts came in a frantic rush. The shepherd’s cup and staff, standing on a shelf behind the altar, were yanked from their places and absorbed.

  And then a man close to Johanna in the pew bellowed an incoherent shout. As he opened his mouth, a cloud of mist flew out, over the heads of the congregation, and joined the blob. The man fell face down on the bench.

  A woman—his wife probably—rolled him over. His eyes were wide open. The irises had gone white.