by J M Sanford
Clinging to the surface of the tower, grey scales flecked with sunfire against grey rock, the dragon reared a hundred feet high, its fierce horned head poised on a long and sinuous neck that curved out from the wall like a snake preparing to strike.
Percival muttered a prayer, and Amelia heard the rapid hiss of Harold drawing his sword, but Meg only laughed when she saw the beast.
Amelia flushed: angry, startled and embarrassed all at once. The grey dragon was only a statue.
“Oh my days…” Meg shook her head and laughed again. “If you could only see the looks on your faces! Perce, I had to imagine yours, of course.”
“This is the land of dragons,” Percival reminded her sternly. “Such beasts still roam these forsaken lands, though they may be rarer nowadays.”
“Oh, don’t talk like you’ve ever actually seen a dragon, brave Sir Percival.”
As the Storm Chaser continued to traverse the edges of the tower, Amelia saw more and more draconic forms in the rock. Down in the cool shadowy depths, their slim sinuous forms seemed to come alive in the edges of her vision, although when she looked at them directly in the sunlight, she could see plain enough they were only stone. She pressed her hand to her chest, eyes closed as she listened to the frantic racing of her heart. Only carvings… She opened her eyes, immediately regretting the chance that she’d missed fleeting glances of even more spectacular carvings. What craftsmen had sculpted such huge and magnificent creatures, hundreds of feet above the depths of the abyss? They’d journeyed so many miles from civilisation… or had they? Amelia turned her attention to the darkness deep below the Storm Chaser; to the steep walls of the ravines. The gloom blurred the marked striation of the rocks into grey vagueness – there might be tunnels and carvings for miles around, beneath the hard grey skin of the earth here. There might be whole cities underground: a quiet, private race content to keep apart from the busy, noisy world of men that Amelia and her companions had ventured through.
“There are no tetherings here, Ma’am,” said Captain Dunnager. He was right: for all the stairways and carvings, all the signs of now-deserted habitation, there was no sign of the huge iron rings to tether a skyship.
“Might this place pre-date the modern skyship design?” Percival wondered aloud.
“Don’t be daft,” said Meg. “How else would anybody get to this place but by air?”
“I can set you down here, Ma’am,” said the Captain, his voice strained with concentration as the sides of the Storm Chaser drifted slowly closer to the tower, above a ledge easily wide enough to walk about on. “I’ll have to come down to rest somewhere for a bit, though.”
Meg nodded. “Of course. We might be here a while, so go and get some kip when you’ve put us down. We’ll send you a signal when we’re ready, though, so be on the lookout for a green flame.” And without further ado, she unrolled the ladder over the edge and began to climb down, soon finding the ledge below, sure-footed as a fat little mountain goat prancing on the rocks. Amelia steeled her nerves to follow, unable to suppress a frightened yelp as the rope ladder swayed and jolted in the wind.
“You’re all right, dear,” Meg called up. “I shan’t let you fall. That’s it, just concentrate on one rung at a time.”
Amelia dared not look at anything beside the rungs. In her mind’s eye, the unplumbed depths below waited like the gaping mouth of the underworld. She flinched when she felt Meg’s steadying hands on her waist, guiding her gently down onto solid ground. “Thank you,” she mumbled.
“That’s quite all right,” said Meg. “Can’t have my White Queen falling into the bottomless pit now, can I? Oh dear, gone a bit wobbly in the legs, have you? Sit down out of the way a minute while you get some air in your lungs.” She turned to look up at the Storm Chaser, and scowled. “What are you doing, boy?” she shouted up at Harold, who was climbing down the ladder himself.
Percival leaned over the railings. “We won’t see you two ladies wandering off into mysterious dragon-infested caves by yourselves!”
“How do you know they’re dragon-infested? Unless you’re afraid those statues are going to come to life in the moonlight or something.”
Still feeling weak and wobbly, Amelia moaned, wishing Meg hadn’t come up with such an idea. Or at the very least, that she had kept it to herself.
“Keep moving, lad,” said Percival to Harold. “If we’ve come to the temple, Amelia will need her Commander and Paladin,” he insisted.
“All right,” Meg grumbled, “let’s get moving, then.” And she stomped off towards the rocky steps, the others following after her. “Well, Amelia, do you have any clever ideas as to where we should look?”
Amelia hesitated, unsure if she should venture an answer or not. From the deck of the Storm Chaser, she’d seen one particular carving that had looked promising: a grand ornate arch heavily shadowed by rocky outcroppings. “Up the tower,” she said. “I think I may have seen the entrance to a tunnel.” Travelling upwards in the sunshine was at least preferable to a descent into darkness.
Across the ravine, the Storm Chaser touched down gently, leaning onto one side, where it lay as if the sea had drained away to leave all the ships stranded on the sea bed.
~
The sun climbed, the day growing bright and warm, so that the travellers sweated and panted their way up the immense spiral stairway, wearying long before they reached Amelia’s arch. She had been right – other tunnels pitted the surface of the column, but when the archway she’d spied from the deck of the Storm Chaser finally came into view along the path ahead of them, Amelia’s heart sank. She’d feared from the beginning that her tunnel might be no more than a trick of light and shadow in the dim light of first dawn.
Meg swore. “So much for a way in!”
“It looked like a tunnel from a distance,” Amelia said, meekly. Up close, she could see that the grand archway, thirty feet high and carved with dragons and fruit trees, enclosed only a shallow alcove. The other tunnels they’d investigated along the way hadn’t led far, either, all turning out to be dead ends or looping back on themselves to come back out on the peripheral stairway. Amelia looked up the path ahead of them, not holding out much hope for any other tunnels they might find along the way.
Percival, meanwhile, was investigating a pillar of stone at the side of the arch. It looked something like a lectern, with an open book carved on the top of it, and a matching pillar stood opposite. While Percival was not a short man, he struggled to look over the open pages. “Meg, you must see this,” he said. He had to lift her up like a child for her to read the words inscribed there.
Amelia jumped up and down trying to see the pages of the opposite book, but to no avail.
Harold rushed to help her up. “What’s it say?”
Amelia sighed. “Oh dear. Let me down, I can’t read a word of it.” She’d never seen such a language before, not even in her spell book. It might be some magic she hadn’t encountered yet, or might merely be some ancient language, long forgotten by ordinary folk.
Meg had pulled a small, dog-eared book from her satchel, and muttered to herself as she compared the pages of the stone book against it. Percival made the task all the more awkward because he couldn’t control his own curiosity, trying to translate instead of letting Meg get on with it.
Suddenly, Meg smacked the book against the rock in consternation. “Oh, for pity’s sake!”
“Will this trail of breadcrumbs never end?” Percival grumbled.
Meg was still busy muttering to herself, fists clenched atop the stone pages. Amelia listened carefully, thinking for a moment that Meg was preparing a new spell; that perhaps the ancient glyphs had given her some clue as to how to magically unlock the stone gateway. She blushed when she caught a few words and recognised decidedly unmagical language.
“What’s the book say?” asked Harold, despairing of ever getting an answer out of anyone.
Percival sighed, gently setting Meg down again. “The way will be revealed at
the turning of the Dragon’s Moon,” he said, utterly failing to enlighten his young squire. “That is to say –”
“I’ve heard of that before,” Amelia interrupted, excited to think that she knew something without having to be told, for a change. “It’s one of the old names for the phases of the moon, isn’t it?”
“Quite right,” said Percival, sounding pleasantly surprised. “You’ve become quite studious, of late.”
Amelia blushed. She didn’t mention she’d learnt the old names for the moon at her stepmother’s knee, before she’d even learnt to read. Back when her stepmother had gladly told her fairy tales, before Amelia should have grown out of such childish things, they’d read ‘The Hunting of the Moon’ together. It might not have been her favourite tale, but Amelia thought she remembered it well enough… “The Dragon’s Moon is after the Lion’s Moon but before the Rabbit’s Moon. If you have a diary I can –”
“A diary?” Meg scoffed. “What kind of woman keeps a diary in this day and age?”
“My stepmother does,” said Amelia. Mrs. Lamb always bought a prettily-bound new diary at the turn of the year so that she could keep up with social engagements, and feel important, and the like.
Meg sniffed. “She would.”
“Most skyships carry an almanac of sorts,” said Percival, keen to get the subject back on track. “We can ask Captain Dunnager when we return to the Storm Chaser.”
“All right,” said Meg. “You stay here and see if you can glean anything more from these books, I want a better look round before we retreat.” She set off along the path, Amelia hurrying after and Harold in tow, gallantly accompanying the two ladies into the unknown.
~
“What is this place?” Amelia asked as they passed through a roomy colonnade, a cool respite from the sun. “Did people live here once upon a time?”
Meg chewed the question over a long while. There was undoubtedly something quite deliberate about the terraces and passageways, but it just didn’t look workable. Even coming from the isolated tower off the coast of Springhaven, Amelia couldn’t imagine actually living in this lonely place. Perhaps more tellingly, there were no things left behind – no knives or forks, no barrels, no bracelets or trinkets or coins. Daily life left behind a certain type of debris, even when the people had long gone. Yes, wood rotted and iron rusted and magpies would steal silver, but for people to leave nothing behind? Not even in the far corners and crevices of the place? Unlikely.
“They must’ve worn their legs down to nothing, going up and down those stairs all day,” said Harold, red-faced and puffing even though the incline of the walkway had become very shallow since they’d left Percival to his translations.
“It’s more like a folly,” said Meg, at last. “It’s to give travellers something fancy to look at.” She said it with conviction, but Amelia doubted the truth of it. If nothing else, the view from so high up was spectacular enough all by itself. She paused a moment to take it all in. Why, from their vantage point on the tower, she could see for miles around: infinite blue skies with clouds chasing one another across the firmament; a horizon like nothing she had ever seen in her life; land so big she felt like an ant crawling on the stem of a nettle. And…
“Oh no!”
“Are you all right, dear?” Meg stopped, followed Amelia’s line of sight, and found what she had seen. Across the great hungry expanse of grey rock, bright as a speck of gold in the dirt, the unmistakeable yellow sails of the Black Queen’s skyship shone in the sunlight. “Damn!” said Meg. “On the bright side, they’re a good long way off yet.” She turned and bustled off back the way they’d come. “Hurry up, slowcoaches! Let’s grab Perce and get back to the Storm Chaser!”
“But what about the gateway?” said Amelia, chasing after her. “And the Dragon’s Moon, and, and –”
“We’ll take the Storm Chaser down into the ravine,” said Meg. “It’s more than big enough to take a skyship, and we can play cat and mouse with the Black Queen for at least a few days I’m sure, until this Dragon’s Moon of yours.”
The thought of the Storm Chaser where they had left her, apparently beached on the endless rocky shore, did little to reassure Amelia. “I’m not sure Captain Dunnager will be able to manage that,” she said. He’d sounded so very tired when he’d left them. “This journey has been very hard on him.”
“Tough luck,” said Meg. “I’m paying him well enough for his discomfort.” But she was at least kind enough not to point out that the worst of the Captain’s troubles were of Amelia’s doing. “Besides, do you think the Black Queen will be so considerate of the Captain’s delicate health when she catches up to us?”
“Can’t we make the Storm Chaser invisible again?” Amelia knew she asked in vain: that spell took unwavering concentration, and on such a large scale it exhausted both of them to sustain such mental effort for more than minutes at a time. The slightest distraction could leave them exposed at the worst possible moment. “Or hide it some other way, perhaps?” She looked out across the wide expanse of iron grey rock, like the sea stood still. The Storm Chaser, with its striped blue and white sails less striking against the landscape, might not have caught the Black Queen’s attention just yet, but if the yellow-sailed skyship should pass close by… Oh, for a pouring rainstorm or a good rolling fog to obscure the endless vista. “The wind spirits helped us before,” she said. “Are there such things as fog spirits?” She immediately felt foolish – she’d never heard of fog spirits, not even in her fairy tales.
The question certainly made Meg stop and stare at her strangely. “No, there’s no such thing as fog spirits,” said the witch, looking peevish. She sighed, rolling back her sleeves to free her jangling bracelets. “But I think I have it in me to conjure up a decent fog. Give me a hand with this, Amelia.”
Amelia learned then what Meg had meant when she called water one of the ‘heavy elements’. Meg pulled the bulk of it, drawing in great rolling bales of thick white fog, but in each gesture Amelia strained her muscles against the resistance of the stuff. Gradually, the Storm Chaser disappeared from view, and Amelia heaved a sigh of relief, leaning back against the rock wall.
“Don’t stop there,” said Meg, damp curls clinging to her red face. “If we can hide the tower from them too…” The Storm Chaser might be hidden, but that still left Amelia and her companions stuck out on the high exposed path, in plain view of the oncoming yellow-sailed skyship.
But Amelia shook her head, almost too breathless to speak. “I can’t do any more. I just can’t.”
Hurrying back down to the walled-up gateway, they fetched Percival, keen to make their way back to the ledge where Captain Dunnager had dropped them off.
“Will he be able to see our signal?” Amelia asked. Down on the lower terraces and stairways they had to tread carefully, the fog obscuring treacherous drops over the side, slowing their pace to a snail’s crawl.
“Worry about that when the time comes,” said Meg.
“I don’t want to move the fog again.”
“Might have to. Sorry about that, but it was your idea.”
~
The four of them had almost reached the landing ledge when Meg stopped. “Quiet,” she whispered, “I have a bad feeling.” Taking Amelia by the hand, she tiptoed into one of the shady alcoves for travellers to rest in, beckoning Harold to follow suit. Percival stood stock still, the only way he could silence his clanking armour. Just as Amelia was about to ask what they were doing, she heard footsteps striking the rock on the path up ahead, sharp and echoing. Two people, walking briskly, still invisible in the haze. Amelia reached for Harold’s hand, careful not to jingle her bracelets.
“No, I can’t hear it anymore,” said a girl’s voice out of the fog. “It just made me think of that wretched clockwork spying device, only bigger.”
“A horrible thought indeed,” said a second disembodied voice – a man’s voice, clipped and educated. “Much as I admire your spirit, Elizabeth, we’ll never find i
t in this. More importantly, I’d rather you not hand victory to the White Queen by breaking your neck on this wretched rock. We should conserve our resources and return when the fog lifts.”
“What if it never lifts?” said the girl, “It came down so suddenly that it could be one of the tower’s defences.”
“The Black Side,” Amelia whispered, scarcely raising her voice above a breath, “they found us!”
Meg shook her head and murmured “No. Looking for the temple.” She had more to say, but the footsteps grew closer. Then she vanished. At Amelia’s side, Harold blinked out of view, disconcerting when she could still feel the clammy pressure of his palm against hers. Quickly, she averted her eyes from where she ought to be able to see him, and concentrated on willing that nobody should see her or her companions.
Two dark figures, indistinct through the fog, passed them by. Amelia stared, not daring to blink, not daring to breathe. Her heart beat too loud, but somehow the Black Queen didn’t hear it.
“Besides,” said the girl, her voice fading as the smudge of her silhouette disappeared back into the grey, “I’d heard you were an assassin in your youth. A fearless climber, cat-footed and –”
“That was a very long time ago,” said her companion, sounding faintly embarrassed. And of the rest of their conversation, Amelia could make out no more.
She turned to Meg, just coming back into view, as if she too had stepped out of the veils of mist. “I don’t think they know we’re here,” Amelia whispered, although the Black Queen and her companion were out of earshot by then. Her heart lifted at surviving the close call, but she still couldn’t wait to get back to the Storm Chaser, to see with her own eyes that Captain Dunnager was safe, too.
