Dragonfire

by Charles Jackson

  “That one over there…!” The princess insisted, electing to point again with a more pronounced jabbing motion, as if that were certain to do the trick. “Just through the trees there, on the beach below the castle…”

  “I’m not sure I see which one you mean, beggin’ your pardon, Miss…” Annabel eventually admitted, not for a moment wanting to disagree with her royal charge but unable to lie about it all the same. “What does it look like?”

  “It looks like a boat…!” Charleroi shot back, starting to become vaguely annoyed now. “A big brown boat…! Can’t really see that much from here, but the stern it sticking out past the trees, half out of the water and lying right near where the beach ends and the rocks come out into that little promontory there… oh, you must see it, surely!” She insisted with exasperation, but as she turned to glare at the serving girl, ready to accuse her of playing tricks, the look of fear she received in return made it quite clear that Annabel was telling the complete truth.

  “I – I’m sorry, Your Highness…” she stammered, well aware now of how annoyed the princess was now and trying to hold back tears.

  Charleroi wasn’t usually the vindictive type, but she was prone to rather savage mood swings at times, and most of her personal staff – save for Griselda of course, who simply didn’t put up with any of it –quickly learned to keep out of her way during certain times of the month. The secret marked calendar the whole staff shared had indicated there was no danger of that for at least another week or more however, and Annabel was going to have a very stern talk to Merry if that girl had somehow marked the dates wrong. Matron Griselda knew about the calendar of course – very little slipped past her without notice – and she tolerated it for the sake of the other staff, although she nevertheless found the whole idea quite unseemly. No one dared let on that they kept another calendar for her too.

  “How can you not see it?” Charleroi demanded plaintively, unable to reconcile the girl’s apparent innocence with the findings of her own two eyes. “It’s right there…”

  Pointing wildly again of course worked about as well as it had the last two times.

  “Is everything alright, Your Highness…?” Griselda inquired with a frown of her own as she stepped out onto the balcony to join them, having overheard Charleroi’s raised voice from out in the hall.

  “I don’t understand, matron,” she moaned plaintively, an almost childish whine creeping faintly into her tone. “There’s a ship out there on the beach – a big, brown ship out past the trees there, near Round Hill – but Annabel says she can’t see it!”

  “Girl, if you’ve been teasing the princess, I swear…” Griselda warned darkly, glaring at Annabel as she pushed past her and took a position at the railing right beside Charleroi. “Now let me have a look my dear, and we’ll sort this all out. Now… where is this ship of yours…” she asked optimistically, squinting her old eyes and staring off in completely the wrong direction to the point that the princess was forced to point again, this time adding an exasperated growl into the mix.

  “Over there…” she explained again in frustration, overemphasising her words as if speaking to simpletons. “Over there behind the trees… the big, brown boat over there behind the trees…!”

  “Well, I’m sorry to say, Milady, that I can’t see anything either… are you sure that you –?”

  But Griselda cut herself short in that moment as something else occurred to her: a dark and terrible idea that she’d never have imagined possible but now felt the need to rule out all the same.

  “Annabel…” she began again slowly, trying to maintain a level tone and thereby show none of the vague concern that was beginning to build in the back of her mind. “Be so kind as to go and fetch a spyglass from one of the sentries on the roof, if you would…”

  “Mistress…?” The girl asked in return, completely bewildered by the request.

  “Now, if you please: there’s a set of stairs directly around the corner to the left that lead up to the nearest watchtower. Be quick about it, would you… and tell them that if they give you any trouble, they’ll answer to me!”

  It took Annabel just five minutes to climb the stairs up to the small, rounded hatchway that led out onto the roof, approach the nearest archers on duty and return to the chambers where the others still waited. There’d been no trouble at all in securing a spyglass from one of them: Griselda was well known throughout the court and no one – save perhaps Randwick – was foolish enough to get on her wrong side.

  “Right, then…” the old woman declared, trying to sound confident once more as she opened up the collapsible telescope to its full length of half a metre and raised it to her right eye, the other one shut tight as she cast her magnified gaze down toward the section of beach Charleroi was talking about.

  She saw nothing at first. Away to the east, the bright sands of the beach stretched calmly away in a wide, shallow curve before ending in the small, rocky promontory the princess had mentioned earlier. She could see no large ship of any kind, anywhere along that pristine strip of sand. There weren’t even any smaller vessels – dinghies, rowboats and the like – that one might expect to be out and about on such a lovely, lightly-overcast morning, although the complete lack of anything on the water in that area did begin to strike her as unusual.

  It was then that Griselda noticed a strange indentation in the sand, positioned roughly in the same area Charleroi had insisted the ‘boat’ had run aground. It was difficult to pick out at first at such a distance and on such a sharp angle, but as she watched for a little longer, the uneven shape of it began to appear out of the background. It looked to be wide and quite shallow, like something flat and heavy had pushed down the sand there, and there were the hint of drag marks a little further up.

  She also noticed that waves that were otherwise coming in gently everywhere else just never seemed to reach land in that particular section, instead prematurely spraying upward into the air for no apparent reason at all perhaps ten metres or so out from shore. The water there shimmered, giving off strange reflections, and as she moved the spyglass back to the beach she noticed for the first time that three men had appeared from behind the trees and were walking slowly out toward that strange mark on the sand.

  They all appeared to be carrying something, but it was only as one of them raised one of the long, narrow poles he held in his hands and positioned it point-down into the sand that fear truly found Matron Griselda of Westerland, stabbing at her heart as a dark, creeping horror oozed slowly into her mind.

  “Oh… oh, no…” she breathed softly, barely managing to speak at all as she lowered the telescope for just a moment and glanced at Charleroi with a mixture of fear and sorrow. “It can’t be… it just can’t…!”

  “What is it, matron?” The princess asked urgently, also suddenly terrified by the old woman’s unexpected reaction. “You see it, don’t you? What’s wrong…?”

  “It’s not possible…!” Griselda continued to mutter, lifting the glass to her eye once more and taking another desperate look, hoping beyond hope that she’d somehow imagined the whole thing. “It just can’t be!”

  “Matron, you’re scaring me!”

  There was no mistaking what she was seeing or, more importantly, what she wasn’t. Out into the water as far as knee height, the trio were hammering long, iron stakes into the sand at intervals of roughly two metres. She didn’t need to guess about the distance… she already knew all too well what they were doing. As two placed the posts and hammered them deep into the ground, the third proceeded to tie off a thin, white rope to the first and follow them as they went, extending the thick coils he was carrying and tying it off at the top of each post in turn as his colleagues moved on. She couldn’t see the colour of the posts from that distance, but Griselda already knew that each one would be painted white at the very tip to the thickness of a hand’s breadth.

  “Annabel…” She croaked softly, her throat suddenly dry and rasping. “Go and fetch Master
Randwick if you would… go now, please, and tell him he must come urgently!”

  “Matron…?”

  “Now, girl… and don’t take ‘no’ for an answer! Tell him it’s me who’s askin’ him, and tell him I ain’t asking!”

  “Griselda, you need to tell me what’s going on right now!” Princess Charleroi Namur of Huon demanded with as much regal anger and severity as she could muster, her attempt at the use of authority the only thing she could think of to combat the unknowing dread building within her, threatening to reduce her to tears at any moment. “You must tell me exactly what’s happening! What did you see…?”

  “It’ll be alright, my girl…” Griselda offered, the hollowness of her voice not really doing anything to convince the princess of anything of the sort. “Let’s go inside my little love, and we’ll have a sit down…”

  Griselda, please…” She pleaded, unable to maintain her façade of anger as tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Without having any clue as to what was actually going on, something in her matron’s tone and expression had convinced Charleroi that whatever was wrong must somehow be her fault. “What is it…? What have I done…?”

  “Come, dear…” the old woman urged gently instead, shaking her head sadly and reaching out an arm to guide her toward the door back into her room. “We just need to wait for Randwick, then we’ll have a chat…” But it was what the matron said next that truly frightened Charleroi more than anything she’d heard or seen so far: eight words formed into a sentence she’d never before heard from the old woman’s lips, nor ever believed she could possibly utter. “Master Randwick…” Griselda repeated, nodding slowly to herself as if lost in a trance. “Yes… he’ll know what to do…”

  It quickly became apparent ten minutes later however that Master Randwick had absolutely no idea what to do as Griselda explained everything and he too went through the process of scanning the beach with the spyglass, grimacing and frowning and trying to hide the awful, sinking feeling in his gut as his eyes took in dozen or so Holding Staves that had been positioned around the huge thing on the beach that they simply couldn’t see… the thing that could only be a Keepsake.

  “What does it look like, girl?” He asked quietly, still staring through the lens of the telescope as Charleroi stood meekly beside him, her cheeks stained by the tracks of tears that still trickled occasionally from the corner of her eyes.

  “I – I couldn’t see much…” she began haltingly, trying to remember the details she’d picked up before all the drama had begun. “It was big and mostly brown, with a little green on top…”

  “And it was a boat…?” He confirmed, releasing a soft grunt of displeasure as his magnified view picked out the point where the staves and the white Rope of Warding they supported became fuzzy and indistinct, partially obscured by the otherwise invisible object they’d been placed around. That he could still somehow see the beach beyond it was an anomaly that was common to all Keepsake sites, and it was one Randwick had given up trying to figure out years ago… although it still irked him that it couldn’t be explained.

  “I – I think so…”

  “Here, girl…!’ He snapped with frustration, thrusting the spyglass into her hands. “Take a proper look and tell me what you see!” He was angry at the situation rather than at her, but was unable to keep his temper completely in check, so shocked had he been when the old woman had first revealed the truth.

  I – I see a boat…” she began nervously, lifting the telescope to her eye with shaking hands and seeing the thing right up close for the first time. “A ship, really…” She corrected, considering the vessel’s size. “It’s run aground and looks like its lying on its side a bit, with at least a quarter of it is still in water. The bottom – the hull, is it? – is all brown… like it’s rusty!” She exclaimed with realisation, smiling for a moment then sinking back down into the funk of fear once more as she remembered what was happening. “There’s… it looks like there are things growing on the deck… it looks all green and leafy…”

  “How big is it?” He asked carefully, watching her now for her reactions rather than staring out across the water. “As big as a war galley…? Bigger…? Smaller…? How big…?”

  “Um…” she began thoughtfully, lowering the scope for a moment and turning her head to glance over at the warships moored down at the docks. “Bigger…” she determined eventually, after repeating the exercise a few more times. “Not by much, but definitely bigger. Randwick, what is it…?” Charleroi demanded again, anger once more rising with her fear and frustration. “No one will tell me anything. I’m the princess!” She added, moving to stand directly in front of him and stomping her foot. “I order you to tell me!”

  “Did you learn nothing as a child… from all those Endweek classes at the chapel?” He asked tiredly, the sad light of resignation in his eyes as he took a step back and turned away.

  “Don’t you dare turn your back on me, sir…!” She snarled, finally determined to get some kind of clear answer and drawing on every ounce of her sixteen summers of privileged upbringing and royal lineage. “Answer the question!”

  “It’s a Keepsake, you young fool…!” He fired back sharply in return, whirling to face her once more and making her flinch in the process. “You saw the staves, yes? The rope…?”

  “But… but…” It didn’t register: even after everything she’d seen, and all they’d said – albeit indirectly – she simply found it impossible to accept the ramifications of what he was saying.

  “You’re a witch…!” Randwick hissed angrily, forcing his voice lower out of fear of spies or eavesdroppers as he took her firmly by the arm and dragged her back into the relative safety of her chambers, the telescope slipping from her grasp and clattering to the floor with the clink of broken glass. “You can see a Keepsake... which part of that do you not understand?”

  “But, I can’t be! I don’t know any Majik… I’m not evil…” She wailed, tears again streaming down her face as the reality of it finally sunk in. “I’m the princess…!” She moaned, almost collapsing into a seated position on her bed as Randwick stood over her and the two other women present cowered back against one wall. “I’m not evil…!”

  “I know you’re not, lass…” He agreed with a sad, knowing smile, kneeling down before her and laying a comforting hand on hers. “You’re the furthest thing from evil I’ve seen in this world in a long time, but that’s not gonna make a lick ‘o difference to the Inquisition.”

  “Inquisition…? By The Crystal, no!” She almost shrieked, forcing him to gesture quickly for her to lower her voice. “They can’t do that… I’m the princess…!”

  “You keep saying that like it means somethin’,” he observed sadly, “and aye, it does: it’s because you’re a princess – because you’re the king’s own flesh and blood – that they’ll have to do it… they’ll have no choice. Every witch must be dealt with evenly: De Lisle could never allow any suggestion that there’d been special treatment for the daughter of a king…”

  “Oh, Randwick: the cardinal…!” She exclaimed, remembering for the first time the conversation she’d heard the night before on that stairwell, and she proceeded to recount all that she could remember, fearing suddenly that perhaps the witch De Lisle had been referring to had somehow been her.

  “It’s a strange tale, alright,” he agreed, not doubting her for a moment, “but I canna see how he could’a been talkin’ about you when you’re right here at Burnii rather than running wild somewhere in the Blacklands.” Both were a little calmer now that the conversation had shifted to other matters. “Damned weird coincidence though, I’ll grant ye. You’d not credit the mention of a witch in the Osterlands, only to discover this the next morning. Steady yerself and keep your courage, lass…” he assured quickly, seeing the tears well in her eyes once more. “I’ll not see you locked in a dungeon or standin’ atop any bonfire while I still draw breath. There’s hope yet – we just need to find a solution. Either way,
” he decided suddenly, seeing no other option, “we need to tell the king before anything else happens.”

  Her father…! Her stomach lurched then, and she feared she might be sick. How could she possibly tell him; the man who’d been her hero and whole world for her entire life?

  “There’s no other way, lass…” Randwick confirmed, reading her expression perfectly. “I’ve an idea of what might be done, but there’s nothin’ can happen without the king’s order. Well take a private audience and talk it through. Trust in your father, and trust in me: we’ll see this fixed, all right…?”

  “All – All right…” she surrendered meekly.

  “Good mother,” Randwick called out, rising to his feet once more and turning to address Griselda. “Can I trust you to say nothing if this?”

  “I’d speak never a word!” She answered steadfastly, her pride at stake. I’ve raised this one from birth, and I’ll not see a hair on her head harmed.”

  “Aye, I guessed as much,” he nodded with an appreciative smile, both of them in complete accord over something for possibly the first time ever. “I thank y’ for that: I’ll handle everything from here. What about you, girl…?” He then asked with a far more serious expression, fixing Annabel with a sharp glare as he took a step in her direction and caused her to flinch. “You have anythin’ you wanna tell me at this point?”

  “I swear, I’d never tell a soul… swear on my life, Master Randwick!”

  “Aye, you’re swearin’ on yer life alright!” He warned softly, taking another step forward purely to intimidate. “The torturers o’ the Inquisition will be nothin’ compared to what I’ll do to y’ if any loose talk gets about!” Griselda was someone he knew, respected and trusted regardless of the verbal sparring they sometimes engaged in, but the handmaiden – one of a number who worked on and off looking after the princess – was another thing entirely. Randwick knew how easy it was for even the most virtuous servant to be tempted by the lure of reward or favour, particularly if those seeking information were able to argue that information provided was for the ‘good of the people’.