by J M Sanford
Commander Breaker came down the forbidden stairway shortly after Amelia, but by this point she'd entered the narrow channels between the wooden shacks and weed-filled old vegetable gardens. If she could get away from the Commander and his griffin, she'd at least have some breathing space to think of another way out. The walls closed in around her, stifling her in cold dampness and the smell of rotting vegetation. The boards beneath her feet creaked and sagged alarmingly: she thought the people who had tended these roof gardens must have been very small. With the rain falling heavier, the boards were slippery with wet fallen leaves – she hardly dared run and risk a fall that would end on the street twenty feet below, but she had no time to lose, and it was vital she keep whatever lead she had. She heard heavy footsteps close behind, but at least the white griffin would find it difficult to snatch her up from here. Clambering, scrabbling, she went through the weed-choked alleyways like a mouse through a maze, but as she scurried along, something snagged one of her long braids. Pulled off balance, she crashed to the floor with a shriek, grazing her hands and knees. She turned to try and wrench her hair from where it had snagged, only to find the Commander holding onto her braid. “It's back to the dungeons for you, Rapunzel,” he sneered, “and then you can tell us where you've hidden the crown.”
Amelia scrambled to her feet, grabbing the length of braid between them and trying to yank it back. “You've got bigger things to worry about than finding the crown,” she blurted out, “Ilgrevnia's going to fall!”
“Is that so?”
“I mean it! There's a… a Device in the Archmage's workshop – it has to be stopped!” Then, in desperation: “If you won't listen to me, then maybe the prince will. Archalthus!” she shouted, and the Commander lunged at her, trying to cover her mouth, but Amelia bit him fiercely on the hand, relieved at least to find that he was not made of stone like the others. Her conjuring rings burned hot, a step ahead of her conscious thought. The weather was too wet for a full magical conflagration, but the sparks for one still danced in time with Amelia's will, strong enough that when she shoved a hand in his face, the Commander recoiled; letting her go. While he swiped sparks from his hair, Amelia pulled away, shouting “Archalthus!” at the top of her voice. “Archalthus!” The echoes rang loud and clear through the dark and rain-sodden alleyways, bouncing and proliferating from wall to wall: a hundred voices taunting the dragon with his own name.
The Commander had drawn his sword, but kept his distance from Amelia, remembering that he was dealing with a witch; realising that her conjuring rings made for weapons deadlier than any sword. “What did you have to go and do that for?” he shouted at her. “Master hates being summoned like that!”
“I'm trying to save us all!” Amelia snapped back, irrationally annoyed at his lack of gratitude for it. “Archalthus!” she shouted again. “Come on, you overgrown slowworm!”
And then the dragon appeared, like a thunderclap out of a summer sky. Smoke rolled in, flowing through the alleyways. “Impudence!” the dragon screamed, strings of hot saliva flying from his jaws. “Who has summoned me?” The dragon's claws scrabbled against the walls of the roof gardens and alleyways, but he couldn't pinpoint the origin of the taunting voices, drowned out by the clamouring echoes of his own screams and thunder.
Belatedly, Amelia realised that summoning the dragon might not have been the wisest course of action; that Commander Breaker might know his Master better than she did. She stifled a coughing fit from the smoke, but all that was left for it was to go ahead with her new plan. “Look under the Orb!” she shouted, and the face of the dragon appeared above the alleyway, golden eyes blazing as if lit by a fire within. “There's a Device set to destroy the node, any minute now! Ask the griffins if you don't believe me!”
The dragon roared, and Amelia cowered as the great claws ripped wood and flimsy brickwork apart around her… and then she was falling. Almost before she could scream, she hit the deck and it knocked the wind out of her. She looked up, through the ragged hole in the ceiling, just in time to see the dragon thrashing skyward, clumsy and unmajestic, long unused to flight. He was returning to the palace. Amelia picked herself up and performed a quick inventory of arms and legs. Archalthus might find and stop the Device in time, or he might not – either way, Amelia must take the opportunity to make her own escape from Ilgrevnia. She ran invisible through the grey streets, with one last hope in mind.
~
Amelia’s side ached and her throat was raw. The wind whipped the stinging rain against her face. She began to think she might have to lie down and accept death, in whatever form it might come for her. She'd spent too long trailing around after Bessie in the misguided hope that the girl knew where she was going. She'd paid too little attention to where they'd been… but something in her must have been paying attention, for she found it again: the magic shop; the one open door in a row of boarded up archways. The rack of brooms against the wall immediately caught her eye, but even in such peril she shied away from the thought of flying one of them. Instead, she turned to the wall of fluttering colourful paper charms, half-charred by Bessie's earlier attack. Under the glow of a hastily summoned light spell, Amelia scanned for the particular pale blue of a catsfoot charm, but couldn't find it, and didn't have time to search for anything else there that might help her. In desperation she turned to the rack of brooms, lifting one at random and running out into the street with it. She put on the accompanying goggles from the set. The brooms didn't come with instructions, but she'd seen pictures of witches riding broomsticks in her storybooks, and how complicated could it be?
“Come on, come on,” she muttered to the broom, “I know you want to fly!” It had the same unearthly lightness she remembered from before, but it didn't seem to want to go anywhere in particular. She remembered Bessie's advice on the rooftops. “Take a run at it?” It couldn't hurt to try. With the broom between her knees and both hands on the leather grip, she charged down the street, thinking light thoughts as hard as she could.
Then, all of a sudden, her feet were barely scuffing the cobblestones, and a moment later she was two or three feet above the street: she'd done it! She'd got airborne! She dodged a hanging shop sign, leaning hard right… and then found that she couldn't stop leaning right, soon hanging upside down from the speeding broom, gripping with her white-knuckled hands and her legs. She wrestled the thing under control more by luck than judgement, and pulled the handle of the broom up so that it climbed higher, above the perilous obstacle course of the rooftops. From this height, she could see the clock above the main gates – the time she had remaining really was coming down to minutes now…
Something huge and white swept out of the rain, barrelling past her and throwing her off course. Lucky for Amelia the broom flew more by intuition than anything – she righted herself quickly, let go the leather grip with one hand and (the broom rolled again, but she'd half-expected that) she still managed to fire off a fistful of sparks in the general direction of the white griffin. She fired a better shot, and the griffin screeched, but in the rain the fireball had fizzled to almost nothing before it could reach its target. Amelia would have to either outfly the griffin, or hold her nerve and let it close enough for her to hit it.
28: AN ASSASSIN’S PROMISE
As darkness fell across the moor, the gorse made a black thicket of thorns, almost impassable. Bessie resisted the temptation to stop and look back at the black figure of the Flying City overhead. It would do her no good. Instead she headed determinedly for the dark figure of the ship in the distance, the unmistakeable silhouette of masts and sails against the indigo sky, miles from the ocean. Panting for breath, Bessie staggered and stumbled onward, through the tangles and thorns that scratched her shins and snared her unwary feet. She'd tried at first to blast a clear course through with fireballs, but they'd only fizzled in the wet vegetation, leaving a trail of smouldering wilted greenery in her wake. In what she hoped was judicious use of the dregs of her magical reserves, she cast a spell
that sent bright red stars dancing and glittering above her head: the well-practised signal of an Antwin girl in distress. The Masters and Mistresses of the Academy said there was no shame in using the distress spell when out of one's depth, although the girls all agreed there was a certain degree of shame in having to be rescued. But Bessie needed that skyship to see her and come closer – she was afraid she'd never make it through the thorns before the clock struck seven. Up in the City above, she'd been counting in her head, trying to keep track of the time they had left, but the long fall had put any thought of numbers entirely out of her head. She couldn't stop thinking about it: how she'd panicked and slashed at the attacking griffin, thinking that she'd only fall a couple of feet back onto the pathway, and by the time she realised she'd been dropped over the edge, she'd barely had time to tear the catsfoot charm… She glanced up to check her distress spell, only to find that it had drifted some way behind her. Bessie spat and swore – she wasn't doing it right! But somebody had seen her signal. A hill stood up, and turned its head this way and that, sniffing the air. Gargantuan footsteps shook the earth as it began to move ponderously towards Bessie, and she cringed in spite of herself. On the brink of exhaustion, she had no magic left for defence, and her knife would be less than a pinprick to the giant. The giant put down its great hands and walked across the moor with its head low to the ground, like a dog following a scent. It passed Bessie by, seeming not to even see her, intent on something much more interesting. Again, Bessie had to resist the temptation to stop and watch: both the giant and the glittering cloud of red stars were heading for what she could only guess was the centre of the local node. The bright seeds of lamb's love swarmed like fireflies after them. Bessie hadn't heard the bells of the City clocks overhead, but it was beginning…
She turned, driving herself harder in the opposite direction, towards the distant masts. Was it her imagination, or had the skyship lifted enough to drift closer? A moment of watching it confirmed the truth, as the vessel loomed close, only a few feet above head height.
“Who goes there?” shouted a voice from the deck of the skyship, and Bessie pulled up sharp. She didn't know that voice: it had a strange metallic ring to it. In the encroaching dark, had she mistaken some enemy vessel for Sharvesh? She drew her knife. Of course, if the enemy was armed with bows or magic then she was a sitting target, out in the open – she hadn't yet mastered the simplest shielding spell, but she might have to draw whatever strength she could and make a last ditch effort… Somebody moved on deck, and she could just about make out a dark figure, heavily armoured. “Harold!” he called to one of his companions, “what do you see?”
“It's just a girl,” a young man’s voice answered from the crow’s nest.
Bessie drew herself up to her full height despite her exhaustion. “I am Elizabeth Castle of the Antwin Academy!” A little more than 'just a girl', thank you very much…
“Miss Castle!” a third voice rang out, and this one she knew at once: Master Greyfell. He threw a rope ladder over the side at once, and he and two of the White Queen's men helped Bessie aboard while her legs shook so badly she could hardly hold her own weight.
“What's going on here?” A woman had appeared on deck: short and broad with curly fair hair, illuminated by the flames of an animated fireball, whose light gleamed blue and purple off her spectacles and her many rings and bangles.
“You're the witch,” Bessie guessed. “The White Mage?”
“The same. And you're the Black Queen, I know, dear.” The witch had none of her fierceness about her now. “Where’s Amelia? Is she far behind you? I can't get a scrap of sense out of this stupid creature, the state he's in…” she indicated the dancing fire sprite with a wave of her bejewelled hand. “Here, you're shivering; let's get you a cup of tea and a blanket.”
Bessie brushed her off. “There's no time for that.” She had to warn them of the danger… she recounted her tale as briefly as she could, ending with her fall from the Walls of Ilgrevnia.
“What? So Amelia's still up there?” said the witch, fear plain in her eyes.
“I'm so sorry, ma'am, I was going to give her the other one of my catsfoot charms but I –”
“You left her behind!” Harold shouted, red-faced.
“I fell!” Bessie screamed at him, her voice cracking as tears sprang to her eyes. A thousand feet straight down, and she'd been lucky to have the catsfoot charm in her other hand.
Though the White Paladin was the kind of boy who’d been raised never to hit a girl, Bryn was between the two of them in an instant. “Never fear, Miss Castle: we will rescue Miss Lamb,” he assured her.
“It’s too late for that!” Bessie swiped at her tear-blurry eyes. “The node's going to burn out and I think it's already started!” Sharvesh must be able to feel it, surely, and either the peculiar skyship had moved to rescue Bessie, or was under the same spell of attraction that drew the other magical beings to their destruction. The girls had dallied too long talking to those treacherous griffins, and now there was nothing Bessie could think of that might save Amelia. She turned to Greyfell, who must surely know what to do…
“No skyship could make it to Ilgrevnia and be safely away in such a short space of time,” he told her. Sharvesh might well be one of the best and fastest skyships in the world, but nothing at all that ran on magic would survive for long once the node burnt out. Greyfell turned to the captain. “Bryn, Sharvesh must get as far away from here as she can.”
“Wait!” shouted the witch, her face white. “You can set me down right here if you plan on running away!”
“Madam,” said Greyfell, uncharacteristically gentle, “you will accomplish nothing by dying here. There is nothing –”
“I don’t plan on dying yet,” said the witch, fiercely. She bustled across the deck and returned a moment later with a large and battered old bag slung over her shoulder. She paused, her breathing ragged with nerves, to look the knight in full armour up and down, eyeing the gleaming plate from helm to sabatons. “Perce, can you do without magic? I've never known for sure…”
A second's hesitation betrayed the knight's fears even though his expression was hidden. “I will do my duty for my Queen,” he said, bowing stiffly, but even in her distress Bessie recognised a non-answer when she heard one.
So did the witch. “You'll do nothing of the sort, Percival Wintergard. And I dread to think what a node burnout will do to that troublesome fire sprite…” She handed her spectacles to the knight, and rolled her sleeves back from her many jangling bracelets. “You, skysailor,” she said, pointing imperiously at Bryn. “Take all this lot to safety. I'm going to fetch my daughter.”
29: TEN MILLION TONS OF LOST CITY
Fire blazed through the dragon prince's veins, wings screaming with effort as he surged through the dusk, headed directly for the lights of the palace. He crashed down onto the terrace outside the high windows of Archmage Morel's workshop, seizing the handle of a window in clumsy claws, only to find it locked. He wrenched at it, but even dragon strength couldn't easily overcome the new spells securing the windows, and Archalthus had languished too long in his weak human form. The dragon bellowed in incoherent rage. Behind the glass, the Orb glowed with the captured light of a moon's full turn from waxing to waning. What was the Mage playing at? Archalthus hadn't authorised anything to be moved to the new world for months. This was no time for more of Morel's games and trickery.
Archmage Morel appeared, distraught and distracted with a long-handled brush in one hand, only throwing open the windows to keep the dragon from shattering every pane of glass, and Archalthus squeezed in through the window, snarling and spitting sparks.
“Ah, Archalthus. Now really isn't the best of times,” the Archmage protested, making futile gestures towards the exit. “Perhaps you could come back when… um…” he peered closely at the Orb, which was alive and singing, the sound like a thousand knives to the brain, “…when I’m not so busy…”
“Where are the grif
fins?” Archalthus demanded. “Where is this Device? What is this mess?” Archalthus had caught the Archmage in the midst of painting sloppy, splattery runes all over the floorboards around the glowing Orb, but the dragon couldn't make any sense of them. He thrashed around, knocking jars to the floor where they shattered and gave up their contents. Hearts and spleens flopped onto the floorboards, small souls floated around wondering what to do with their new freedom. “What are you doing?” Archalthus demanded. He snapped at the floating souls, which evaporated into tattered wisps and loose threads of memory.
