by J M Sanford
As she watched, stars rose from the forest, too bright to look at, as the fire found the fruits of the lamb's love, devoured the flesh and touched the precious magical stone within. At each point of unearthly light, a griffin warrior was born from the fire, more and more of them as their mighty wings fanned the flames.
But the magic of the land, stored and ripened in the veins and fruits of the lamb's love, turned wild in the fire and unbound the spirits of the dying trees. Eldritch things with long sharp fingers stalked through the smoke and the flames, reaching thirty, forty, fifty feet into the sky to snatch the newborn griffins from their flight. The bold griffins swooped upon those who slew their brothers and sisters, snapping branches, tearing down those ancient eldritch trees by the strength of their numbers. And through all this, all that the witch could do was look on in horror, her own magic exhausted, and besides, who can fight an entire forest? If the griffins had fled, they could have escaped the reach of the tree spirits, but a griffin's heart is too noble to leave the fallen unavenged. By the time the blackened forest stood still, no more furious life in it, the griffins' numbers had dwindled from thousands down to a dozen. Once the ashes grew cold, no magic ever lived at that node ever again, and those griffins who had survived the battle scattered to the four winds. The witch, filled with grief and remorse over what she'd wrought, never practised magic again 'til her dying day.
Bessie had sat sullen and uneasy in the corner throughout Scarlet's meandering fairy tale, turning her blade over and over so that it flashed in the light. Now she spoke at last. “Did Archmage Morel make you from the thighbone of a lion?”
Scarlet looked wounded. “A lioness, if you don't mind, but that's beside the point. I was cleaning in Mister Morel's workshop when I found…” Scarlet hesitated, “…a Device. I've heard of things like it being used before, back in the days when the great mages went to war against one another. It's always been Mister Morel's weakness that he can't finish a piece of work without someone standing over him, and he leaves all sorts of things about the place that he never gets round to using. But this thing… I smelled at once it was powerful magic – full of lamb's love oil.”
Sable's ears had pricked up at the mention of the Device. The black griffin came over to stand by his sister, laying his head on the tabletop and turning one wild blue eye to stare at Amelia and Bessie. “Burn the node!” he growled.
Scarlet fidgeted in her seat, ill at ease as the rest of them now. “Well, yes. Yes, it could be used to burn out the node, and the City would come down, and…” she glanced worriedly at her brother, placing a hand on the sleek feathers of his neck, “but perhaps if we took the lamb's love oil, we could use it to –”
“Burn the node!” Sable snapped.
“No, Sable! There are better things we can do with that oil!”
Bessie turned to Amelia. “Lamb's love grows at Iletia, too. We cut it back twice a year. Keep it under control and it helps the magic flow, but too much of it and the magic runs like wildfire. You saw what happened at the Keystone – it can be a bit like that.” She glared at the two griffin siblings. “Do you really mean to burn out the node and destroy Ilgrevnia? And if you do, what do you need our help for?”
Scarlet shook her head vehemently while the black griffin chanted “Burn! Burn! Burn!”
“This oil… could we use it to strengthen our own magic?” Amelia asked Bessie.
“Perhaps. Scarlet? You said you didn't want to ruin Sable's plan, but I think you may have a better one.”
Scarlet looked doubtful. “Well… I only ever go into the workshop to clean, and Mister Morel keeps a close eye on every move I make there, now. He locks the place up when he's not there, ever since he noticed some stealing going on, a few months back,” she added, roughly tousling her brother's feathers. “And I thought: you two are clever girls, perhaps you can get in.” She looked at Amelia. “A little bird tells me you're ‘specially clever with locks.”
“And then what?” Bessie looked sceptical, but curious. “We'd take this Device, and…”
“Put it in the Orb!” snapped Sable, his silver-blue eyes gleaming with mad excitement.
“No, don't put it in the Orb,” said Scarlet. “That's far too dangerous.”
“What Orb?” asked Bessie, sparing Amelia from having to admit to her own ignorance on that matter.
The griffins described a second Device of ancient design, reimagined by the mad old Archmage Morel. Scarlet thought it opened some sort of gateway between this world and another – a world built by the Archmage, to the Prince's specifications, intended as a wedding gift to his bride. When word had got around, the idea of such a Device terrified the servants, and many had run away from Ilgrevnia. But Morel had proven the Device safe by sending all sorts of things into the new world. Not just little things, either. Great big things. Living things, too.
“Nuisances,” Sable hissed with a theatrical shiver, his pale eyes glinting.
“Shush, now,” said Scarlet. “These nice girls don't want to know about that horrible business.”
“I don't think I want to know about any of this,” said Amelia. The City would come down, Scarlet had said. Amelia remembered her naïve assumption that the skyship Storm Chaser without her soul would drift unharmed to the ground, like a feather. Prickling with shame and nausea at the memory, she wasn't going to risk making the same foolish assumption about a Flying City with its supply of magic suddenly cut off. The only silver lining was that there would be no vengeful ghostly forest like the one in Scarlet’s story, although what might come out of the earth in its place, Amelia shuddered to think. “It's all very well for you,” she said to the black griffin. “You've got wings!”
“Even if we did burn out the node, we wouldn't leave you here!” Scarlet promised.
“Do you think the throne room would survive the fall of the City?” Bessie had sat very quiet all through Scarlet's fairy tale and again through her description of the Orb. Now she had a thoughtful look on her face.
“We must do something, poppet,” said Scarlet. “Do you know how many kingdoms the Dragon Lands will cover? I was here when Master took this City from its rulers, and there was more than enough bloodshed then. Get the lamb's love oil, bring it back here, and I'll mix it up into something you can drink to make you the most powerful witches in the world.”
Amelia had been ready enough to trust Scarlet when she'd first appeared as a cheerful servant, but less so now that she recognised the red griffin. At one point, it had almost seemed that Scarlet accepted the destruction of Ilgrevnia, if it meant an end to the prince's plans… Still, whatever the morning might bring, Scarlet insisted that the girls stay overnight in her chimney-shaped room, where they'd be hidden safe from Archalthus' guards. Scarlet slept in griffin form, huge and fluffy, amongst the down-filled cushions of the nook hidden away up above head height. Amelia and Bessie spent a good ten minutes whispering between themselves over what to do, before coming to the conclusion that if they had to trust the griffins not to turn them in, then they might as well take up their offer of hospitality too, and get a decent night's rest in comfort. This decided, Amelia couldn't long resist the temptation to curl up against Scarlet's soft fur and feathers, but she lay awake, rebraiding her hair and wondering if she might sneak away in the night. She could find her way back to the ballroom with the walled-up archway, or perhaps to Prince Archalthus, even though he was a dragon, a beast so discontent with the idea of ruling just one world that he'd allegedly designed a whole new one. Her fairy tales had warned her of dragons' greed, and his was more than she'd ever imagined, but all this talk of destruction frightened her so much more. As the new day crept up on them, Amelia closed her eyes, to contemplate her options if not to sleep. Bessie was dozing in a chair, and at the door of the kitchen, the black griffin snored. Getting past either of them would be difficult…
~
The room shook, and Bessie's eyes flew open. She leapt up from her chair, knife in hand. The black griffin had ju
mped up too, fur and feathers standing on end. The creature gave a low, whining sort of a growl, and settled back down, circling as if the floor was all pin-tips under the pads of his toes. A terrible roar accompanied the next shudder of the room, followed by frantic shouting and a splintering crash somewhere on the floor above.
“What's going on?” Bessie hissed.
The red griffin poked her head out from the nook. “Come up here with us,” she whispered.
Another crash. With another miserable growling noise, the black griffin glanced up at the reverberating ceiling and the string of lanterns rattling. Bessie scrambled up the wall and into the nook. It was crowded with the three of them, and only one way out. Bessie could feel the red griffin shivering, the heart half-eagle and half-lioness beating strong and fast beneath the soft feathers of her chest. “Will we be safe here?” Bessie whispered.
“It's always best to stay right out of Master's way when he's in one of his tempers, poppet. I'm sure he doesn't mean to do the things he does, but still…” the griffin's voice trailed off.
Bessie huddled in the dark with Scarlet and Amelia, listening to the dragon prince rage above them. Amelia wouldn't understand, because she hadn't been trained at the Antwin Academy, but they'd be doing a great service in ridding the world of such a beast, and crashing the rebel Flying City with him in it was the surest way of doing it that Bessie could imagine. There wouldn't be much in the way of unintended harm, either: most of the servants seemed to be golems, the griffins could quite easily get away under their own steam, and there was no town built on the node below the City. If a Flying City must fall to ensure Archalthus' defeat, then let it be this City, in this place. The Orb worried Bessie far more. Archalthus really must be insane, to fool around with such dangerous magic. Who knew what powerful forces he might foolishly interfere with next? He had a mage who could create worlds, and could presumably just as easily destroy this world… She had to get rid of Archalthus, no matter the cost. And even if it meant she'd never be Queen, what a reputation she'd have! Her assassination of a dragon prince, particularly by such a legendary method, would set her up for life amongst her peers at the Academy. Of course, she'd have to share the credit with Sable, but the inclusion of the griffin would only serve to make her story even more legendary. None of the stuck up girls who'd made fun of her rings and her misspellings would ever dare to do so again…
19: THE BLACK PALADIN
Master Greyfell faced a crisis in his code of honour: whether to fight alone, or to forge an alliance with the ancient enemy. He'd spent the whole night mulling over what to do. Alone, he would most likely die a noble death in battle with the deathless golems. He could accept his own death in the service of the Black Queen – to die as the Black Paladin would be to live forever in legends – but in all honesty what good would it do Elizabeth for him to die in such a way?
“Why don't you use your skyship to rescue your queen?” asked Harold, who'd pledged to die for Amelia if need be, but secretly hoped to avoid it if he could do so without acting like a coward and a cad.
“Yes, I was wondering where that had disappeared to,” said Meg, who hoped to avoid anybody having to die for anybody else. “Hard to lose a thing like that,” she said, remembering the beautiful Argean skyship, “with those bonny buttercup yellow sails an' all.”
Distracted from his dilemma, Master Greyfell looked around the desolate rocky landscape, as if only just realising that something was missing. “Where has the infernal creature disappeared to now?” he grumbled. “I wanted no business with his kind from the beginning…” He stalked off across the grass, with Meg and the others following. It seemed ridiculous that the great swift skyship with its bright sails could be hidden in any of the cracks and crevices where the Black Paladin was searching, but they did eventually find the skyship's captain. He was crouched behind a rock, looking miserable and frightened with his ears laid flat against his skull; his quilted coat and his long tail wrapped tightly around himself. At sight of Sir Percival and Harold, he bared his long fangs in a half-hearted snarl.
Harold stared in amazement, cautious but not afraid. “Well I'll be… It's an Argean, right? I heard they're maneaters.”
“There are many stories told of the Argeans, but Captain Bryn has proven himself a loyal companion,” the Black Paladin admitted grudgingly.
Harold took a step closer, his hand on the hilt of his sword but making no move to draw it, and Bryn growled.
“Pull yourself together, man,” the Black Paladin barked. “We have a truce with the White Side, for the time being.” He turned to Meg. “I must apologise on his behalf – he's suffering from some peculiar Argean malaise. Landsickness?”
Meg nodded. She'd certainly heard of it before. Skysailors who'd spent their lives thousands of feet in the air sometimes couldn't adjust to life on the ground. Too much sky above their heads. They said it was stifling, and that walking on solid ground had a certain distressing something about it, too. Meg, who had divided her own life between land, sky and sea quite nicely, had never had such a problem, and suspected it was all in their heads. “But you still have a skyship, don't you?” she asked the Black Paladin. “You're not just dragging this poor fellow around the moors for the sheer evil joy of it?”
To Meg's surprise, the Black Paladin smiled, his scars pulling his face into strange new shapes. “Of course not. Captain Bryn: show the good lady our skyship.”
Reluctantly, the Argean reached into his coat, pulling out something the size of a tea caddy: a puzzle box carved in dark wood, inlaid with brass and ivory, everywhere smooth and polished so that you could see all its maker's care and attention in the glossy sheen. Meg peered closer at the puzzle box. There was something about the seams, so close that she couldn't have forced a razor's edge in between them at any point. No Argean construction, that. Nor anything else she could recognise… She looked up to see amusement flashing in the Black Paladin's steely eyes. If they'd had more time to spare, he probably would have let her puzzle over the strange artefact for hours.
“This is our skyship,” he said. “Conveniently somewhat smaller this way. But, as her captain was so keen to point out to me, this skyship is special. No, don't unfold her again now,” said the Black Paladin, gripping the Argean's wrist.
“Why not?” asked the skysailor sulkily, wiping beads of rain from his whiskers. “If Miss Castle is in trouble, we must help her.”
“Ilgrevnia was always meant to be a fighting City. Hard enough for one person to slip in unnoticed, let alone two, and most certainly she has defences against skyships. While Miss Castle may have been delayed, I still have hope that she's resourceful enough to find her own way out of trouble.”
Sir Percival snorted. “How very like a Greyfell,” he muttered. “All in the name of building character, I'm sure.”
“No, Perce!” Meg snapped. “Stealth! Do you want to survive this, or do you want us all to die by the rules?” She cast a glance at the Black Paladin. “I think even he can see the sensible answer to that question, so why can't you? Our Amelia's just as clever as the Black Queen, and a better witch, to boot, so I'm sure they'll manage if we take a bit more time before we all go charging in like a bull at a gate.”
~
In the dank cave on the moor below Ilgrevnia, Meg boiled a pot of water for tea, and sat down with Sir Percival, Harold and Master Greyfell. It had taken long enough to convince the Black Paladin that he was doing the right thing by putting aside the rulebook for a moment and thinking instead of the safety of his young charge. The Black and the White Side should not be working together, but then who was this interloper Prince Archalthus, arrogantly intruding on the ancient contest where he had no place? Once the problem of the Prince was solved, the Queens' Contest could resume. Now, they argued over how to manage that…
Could Meg perhaps cast a veil of invisibility over the yellow-sailed skyship? She'd done the same with the Storm Chaser, after all. However, that had been with help, and a slip of concentr
ation at the wrong moment could put them right in the line of fire of the Flying City's flamethrowers, and what good would the skyship be to anybody then? Had the Black Side no army to call on? No: as much as it galled Master Greyfell to admit it, they didn't even have a Commander for their Side. Couldn't Meg summon any of the creatures or spirits of the local land to fight for them? But there was nothing here, unless hairy red cows could somehow be transformed into warriors or winged steeds. Harold wondered if that was so far outside the realms of possibility, and Meg informed him in no uncertain terms that it was. So the argument went, round and round, getting nowhere. Meanwhile, Bryn lay outside the cave staring wistfully up at the sky, his flanks heaving, drizzling rain glittering on the fur of his face. He whined and whimpered, clutching his magical puzzle box to his chest.
Tired of talking, Meg swirled the dregs of her tea, trying to make up her mind if the black leaves formed the shape of a skyship or a lion. The distraction of the landsick Argean's whining irritated her, but she'd begun to think his complaint might be a genuine one, and not a ploy for sympathy after all. A shame it was too late in the year to find some chamomile for him, even if anything grew here besides prickly gorse and tangles of thorny lamb's love. She stifled the last glow of the fire, stood up and stretched. Too dangerous to go roaming about picking flowers anyway, with that enormous construct still on the loose. She heard it thundering about even now, shaking the earth, distressing the beetles and earthworms for miles around. As long as it kept its distance, they'd have no quarrel… But at the sound of approaching hoofbeats, Meg's heart froze. She pushed back her sleeves and crept to the mouth of the cave, careful to keep out of sight. Hardly having to think about it, she stuck out her arm, blocking the overeager White Paladin who was coming up past her. “Don't get any bright ideas, boy,” she muttered, before glancing over and realising it was Master Greyfell she was holding back. Well he certainly ought to know better, after last time…
