by J M Sanford
Amelia sat up. She had to agree, a life without desserts was a poor existence. “Thank you,” she said, her voice still rough and stuffy from crying.
Meg raised an eyebrow when she saw Amelia’s dishevelled appearance: her puffy eyes, red nose and flyaway hair escaping from its braids. “Do you feel any better for that?” she asked.
Amelia nodded. Although her eyes still stung, her head had cleared a little for it, and she remembered something Meg had said to the fierce Black Paladin. Under better circumstances, she would have liked to have hidden herself away in the cabin a while longer while she composed herself, cleaned up, brushed and braided her hair neatly again. But Meg didn’t care and why should she? The questions clustering in her head outweighed her vanity. “What did you mean about golems?” she asked, as Meg sat down and made herself comfortable amongst the rumpled cushions on the bunk.
“Oh, them. The Black Queen may feign ignorance, but I know a golem when I see one.”
“Yes, but what is a golem? Do you mean those strange gentlemen who followed us to Ilamira?”
“A golem… Let’s think, how to put it… A golem is a man-made living creature, built to follow its owner’s instructions. You know a little about written magic by now, so you’ll understand when I tell you that each golem has its instructions written inside it in a magical language – written on paper, generally, or maybe carved in stone or stamped in metal for a more lasting spell. The body is built out of stone or wood or clay, or whatever else the maker sees fit, and the script written. Then a soul’s put into it, and that makes it live.”
Amelia’s eyes narrowed. “More soul magic. More stolen, innocent souls.” She still didn’t entirely approve of the use of captive souls to power skyships. Captain Dunnager’s flagging spirit had only cemented her horror at the concept.
“Amelia, dear,” said Meg sternly, “I’m not fond of the idea of golems myself. It’s a fine line we walk when dealing with soul magic: what’s right and wrong; what can be justified and what’s an unkindness too far. That’s a subject for another day, when we’ve the luxury of being able to sit and discuss philosophy with nobody trying to kill us. Building golems is illegal these days, anyhow. You remember all those jars at the soul forge? Well, the soul forger will tell you they’re meant for skyships and such. Truth is, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if some of them end up in golems.”
Amelia shivered at the unsavoury memory of the soul forger, but she still didn’t really understand what could be so much worse about golems than about the souls captured and enslaved for skyships. But the golems had Meg worried, and that terrified Amelia. “What is it exactly that’s so bad about golems?” she asked, not honestly wanting to hear the answer.
Meg took a deep breath, avoiding Amelia’s anxious gaze. “For one thing,” she said, reluctantly, “building golems takes cleverness and proper book learning and real power. Whoever sent those things after us is either a magic user more powerful than the likes of you and me will ever be, or can afford to hire one at least. I don’t like that idea at all. For another thing, a golem follows its instructions to the end, or to its own destruction.”
Amelia needed no further explanation. If those two men at Ilamira had been golems, their scripts wouldn’t have been written on anything as fragile as parchment, she was sure of that. She hadn’t seen them close when they’d repaired themselves, but Harold had, and he’d described the gleam of polished black stone to her. “So, we could only stop them by destroying them?” She didn’t see how that could possibly be done – fire and cold steel had barely touched the twin assassins. And what was worse, she remembered the peculiar intimacy between the two brothers in the meeting house at Lannersmeet, and recoiled at the thought of destroying such convincingly human constructions. “Do they have any weaknesses?” In fairy tales, all monsters had weaknesses: trolls turned to stone at sunrise; fierce rampaging unicorns knelt at the feet of virgins; dragons often fell victim to their own love of gold and treasure.
“Well…” Meg considered it carefully. “They can never use magic themselves. They can’t channel it like you or I can, so they only use magical artefacts that have their own power source. Like that pistol you saw them use in Ilamira. But other than that, no.” She sighed heavily, “Reach the temple, win your prize, and an honourable opponent would call off the hunt.” Amelia remembered the hidebound Black Paladin from the tower, but Meg’s despondency suggested that they couldn’t necessarily rely on the honourable conduct of their enemy. Meg saw the worried look on Amelia’s face, and forced a smile. “But, you’d be the White Queen, then,” she said. “Your rivals would be fools to continue after that. Let’s see if we can do this by stealth and cleverness and a tiny wee bit of magic, shall we? Leave the swords and violence to the boys. We’ll fight like women, and we’ll win.”
“And that’ll work, will it?” asked Amelia, doubtful. The history books in her father’s library were full of bloody histories – kings and knights and epic battles – and not a great many women.
“It’s worked more times throughout history than you can imagine,” Meg assured her. “Most of the time, the boys are too busy with their swords and ponies to even notice it happening. Now, how about we take a look at that almanac, and you can work out when this Dragon’s Moon comes around.”
~
With the Black Queen’s skyship still out there somewhere in the Stacks, Amelia and her companions took it in turns to keep watch from the crow’s nest of the Storm Chaser. In the earlier days of their voyage, before the unfortunate incident with the eagle soul, Amelia had seen Captain Dunnager climb up and down from that perch a dozen times or more. He’d made it look so effortless: after all, what was the modest height of the mast to someone who sailed thousands of feet above the ground? Amelia, on the other hand, still felt queasy crouching up there by herself. Harold had helped her up there each time, as she still wobbled and yelped from time to time, either going up or coming down. He’d even gallantly offered to take her shift for her, but Amelia wanted to do her bit. Luckily they’d seen neither hide nor hair of the Black Queen since the encounter on the tower, and there was very little to see as the Storm Chaser sailed the ravines around the tower, even from the height of the crow’s nest. Much of the fog had dispersed, although it still obscured the depths. Captain Dunnager kept the skyship moving, sluggishly, below the tops of the rocky walls, but the Black Queen seemed to have more pressing plans than the hunting of the White Queen. For the last three days, Amelia had taken her turn at twilight, volunteering to do so if only to watch the moon rise, bigger and rounder every night. Judging by Captain Dunnager’s almanac, she’d seen the Lion’s Moon come and go, although she found it hard to judge the exact proportion of the moon that was illuminated each night. The Dragon’s Moon would come soon: unmistakeable, perfect and whole.
On the deck, Harold practised his sword-fighting moves against his shadow, while Meg and Percival huddled over a stack of old books together in the fading light. In the distance, Amelia could see the wyverns hunting swifts, the two younger ones squabbling playfully as the baby tested the limits of its growing wings. They still hadn’t seen the mother, despite the wyverns following the journey of the Storm Chaser. Amelia had asked about it once or twice, and Meg had changed the subject, apparently deeming it inappropriate for sensitive types. Amelia hoped nobody had taken the wyvern mother for a skyship soul…
Something pale flashed in the blue. Amelia almost missed it, and when she turned her head to look more closely, couldn’t find anything. She didn’t wait to see it again, putting her faith in instinct. She didn’t shout, but clambered down from her perch, holding in any fearful noises.
“Meg, there’s something out there,” she whispered. As if on cue, a wyvern shrieked, terse and territorial. As they looked on, Amelia thought she could make out the form of a ghostly grey apparition winging its way towards the Storm Chaser in unearthly silence.
Meg saw it too. “More damned griffins,” she muttered. The dark scat
tered shapes of the wyverns regathered, wheeling and crying uncertainly in the wake of the speeding griffin. “Captain Dunnager…”
“I know, Ma’am.” The Storm Chaser would never outrun a griffin, not with the exhausted Captain in the soulchamber. Instead, it sank like a stone, into the remnants of the fog, so fast it made Amelia’s stomach lurch queasily.
Percival reached for the lamp to snuff out its light, but Meg grabbed it first. “I somehow ‘spect griffins can see in the dark,” she whispered, “and I know we can’t.”
“It could be dangerous,” Percival protested.
The griffin had followed the Storm Chaser into the murky confines of the ravine, and from time to time Amelia could make out the figure moving silent through the fog like a ghost, catching it in in half glimpses of wing shadow and sinuous lines that ended in the flick of long whip-like tail. With velvety soft white owl wings, the griffin had the wyverns at a clear disadvantage, evading the noisy dark shadows easily as they shrieked to each other in the suffocating grey of the fog. Intermittently, fire flared in the boundless grey, to no avail.
“I’ve no doubt it’s dangerous,” said Meg. “Let’s keep close together, now,” she warned Harold, who was at the bow, trying to get a closer look. He came back to them reluctantly.
“I thought you said griffins didn’t exist,” whispered Amelia. “That’s the third one I’ve seen so far.”
“Shh. I told you before,” Meg whispered back, even quieter, “I don’t know where they keep coming from, but they’re here, and I don’t like it.”
“I like it even less,” said Percival. “We should take cover and let the wyverns see them off again.”
“What’s it doing?” asked Amelia, who had lost track of the white griffin’s whereabouts entirely. “Has it gone away?” The youngest wyvern was nowhere to be seen, and Amelia’s prayed that it had the sense to keep clear.
Meg shook her head, reluctant to speak at all. They all heard the thud at the far end of the deck, where Harold had stood not a few moments before. Through the haze, the white griffin came padding softly towards them. Ghostly as the feathered white paws might appear, Amelia feared the shock of very real talons rending her flesh.
“All right Perce, take Amelia below deck,” Meg hissed urgently.
But Amelia shook his gauntleted hand off her arm. “No, I don’t want to!” She saw the glow of blue fire gathering between Meg’s palms, and put her hands together to strike blue-green sparks of her own. “I can look after myself!”
“Amelia, don’t be a fool,” Meg muttered. “We don’t know yet if magic will even touch these beasts. And besides, you’ve never killed so much as a mouse.”
The sight of the magical flames had given the white griffin pause, at least. It growled low and quiet, the ruff of white feathers about its neck and shoulders rising, its fox-like ears flattened against its skull so that the streamlined bulk of its head all led to the wicked point of its heavy iron-grey beak. It looked from Meg to Amelia, and behind those silver-blue eyes might have been a mind as sharp and clever as a man’s, or nothing more than basic predatory instinct. Either way, Amelia saw the instant it chose her: the bunching of muscles under its glossy white fur, the fidgeting of its great paws. Fire flared through the gaps in her fists, burning the skin between her fingers, but Meg had been right: she couldn’t aim it at a living creature. She heard the hiss of a sword drawn, and was surprised to hear Harold’s voice, surprisingly loud and commanding:
“Stay away from her!” He inched forward, holding the sword low and poised. Amelia prayed that all those lessons with Captain Dunnager and Percival had paid off…
The white griffin opened its beak, hissing and rearing back – and then a flash of darkness struck it with a loud thud, white griffin and dark wyvern tumbling across the deck together, shrieking and yowling like angry cats. The pair of them crashed against the base of the mast, with the wyvern taking the brunt of it, giving the griffin a chance to disentangle itself. It launched itself straight up into the sky on powerful hind legs. The young wyvern, shaking itself off, staggered a little, and raising its head it spat a jet of fire into the sky. It missed the griffin by a country mile, and its fire temporarily spent – wasted – the wyvern instead leapt up after his adversary. The griffin, having evaded the wildly erroneous arc of fire with ease, didn’t take action soon enough to miss the hooked claws that caught its flanks. The white griffin struggled against the weight of the adolescent wyvern pulling it back down, and then the wyvern’s beak snapped closed on its long white tail feathers, and with a wrench it pulled. The white griffin screamed in pain and indignation as the wyvern tossed aside a mouthful of long white feathers, clawing to get a better grip on his opponent, while the griffin screamed and twisted, its own wickedly sharp talons raking at its assailant. It grabbed the wyvern, kicking out with its hind legs, swift and brutal. The wyvern cried out piteously, panicked at the sudden violence of this onslaught, struggling in vain to protect its head and neck. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the two fell apart. The white griffin shot away, into the fog, soon lost from view, and the wyvern fell back to the deck with a crash.
23: THE BRAVE WYVERN’S FATE
A barely perceptible murmur started up underneath Amelia’s feet: a low vibration; a grumbling unhappy sigh. The wyvern tried to move, feebly. “There’s a crossbow in the cabin,” said Dunnager. “Be quick, before he tries to flame.”
Amelia looked shocked. “What?” she whispered. “Surely you can’t mean…” Unappealing as the wyverns had appeared at first, this one had just saved her life – they couldn’t repay the creature’s valiant act with death.
Meg said nothing, although she hesitated. Meanwhile, the wyvern managed to get its wings untangled, spreading and testing them gently. It looked dazed, the many cuts on its head and neck bleeding freely, its feathers matted black. Meg looked guiltily at Amelia, as if she had called the white griffin down on the poor unfortunate beast herself. “I saw a wyvern hurt like that once before…” she said. “A couple of them fighting amongst themselves and the injured one came begging sanctuary on this Argean ship. The Argeans, they’re not a cruel people by nature, but it was the only sensible thing to do, what with the wyvern putting their whole ship in danger like that…”
“Ma’am, you mustn’t delay!” Captain Dunnager warned, keeping his voice low. The injured wyvern’s lower jaw twitched as it whined, and gleaming fluid the consistency of egg whites oozed from a deep cut in its neck. “See how he’s leaking: one stray spark from his teeth and he’ll go up like a bonfire.”
“Oh, do something, please, Meg!” Amelia begged, tears in her eyes. “They followed us all the way here; they saved us from that dreadful griffin!”
“Ma’am, it’s only a matter of time before he panics and tries to flame,” the Captain warned. “If anybody’s anywhere nearby when he goes up…”
Meg had become uncharacteristically indecisive. Then, gripping her satchel, she set down the lamp and inched towards the wounded wyvern. “All right, Amelia,” she muttered, keeping her eyes fixed on the whining creature drooling volatile fuel, “But you’ll have to keep the big one out of my way.”
Amelia looked up, her heart leaping into her throat at the sight of the big wyvern crouched on the crow’s nest, looking down on them. “But how?” The beast was coming hesitantly down the rigging, fearsome claws feeling their way down the ropes and spars as it watched its injured offspring and the surrounding humans intently.
“I don’t know. Keep him calm. Sing to him, for all I care – it might do the trick. Tell him one of your stories and put him to sleep.”
“All right, I will.” She turned to the big wyvern, and wasting no time, she began: “Once upon a time, there was a naiad. Do you… do you know what a naiad is, dear?” she asked him, nervously. The creature had stopped a few feet away from her, its attention now on her. Listening, or at least appearing to do so.
The naiad was the soul of a river, but she was a sad and lonely creature.
She’d seen how, in all the villages along her banks, the people paired off, two by two. She saw how happy they were, and she envied them. One day, she met a boy. There was a place in the river where you could leave a piece of broken glass and the water might circle it forever amongst the round river rocks, slowly grinding it away to nothing, or might spit it out eventually, polished and transformed, further downstream. The boy stood in her river, with his shoes and socks on the bank and his trousers rolled up, while he looked for river glass.
Amelia hesitated, glancing over at Meg, who had reached the stricken wyvern and from her satchel taken the same bottle of salve she had used to soothe Amelia’s wounds. Ever so tenderly, she began to stroke the poor creature’s head and neck with the powerful numbing agent. The wyvern flinched and squirmed once or twice, but the predicted explosion didn’t come.
“Go on, dear,” said Meg, her voice calm and quiet, though her face was white with fear. “I don’t think he knows this one.”
Amelia looked back at the big wyvern, who was watching her, apparently transfixed. “Oh? Well, then…”
Well, the naiad thought the boy very handsome, so she appeared to him in the form of a lovely maiden, with eyes as green as the river glass, and long black hair like wet ink against her flawless paper-white skin. He offered her a handful of his glass pebbles in exchange for a kiss, and she smiled shyly at him, beckoning him to join her. But as he waded towards her, somebody pulled him roughly back, and he was surprised to see the local witchwoman. She was young, and pretty enough to have married if she had wanted too, but she was too proud to speak to anybody but the jackdaws and the crows. ‘You stupid boy!’ she snarled, her voice rough and unused to human speech. ‘Don’t you know she only wants to drown you and take your soul?’ The naiad saw the look of horror on the boy’s face. She became afraid that had they not been interrupted, she might have drowned her mortal love by accident, for rivers are powerful, their passions wild and dangerous, and men are as fragile as glass to them. ‘Leave him be, rivermaid!’ the witchwoman shouted. ‘He’s not for you.’ And the naiad, knowing that she and the boy were all too different, fled in dismay.
