by J M Sanford
She noticed Bryn still hunched over in his heavy fur overcoat, the fluffy collar pulled up close around his chin, and his tail tucked away. “Here, take my seat,” said Amelia, getting up. “It’s nearer the fire.”
Bryn leapt at the offer. “Thank you for your generosity, Miss Amelia.” But he still looked miserable.
‘I’m sorry,’ Amelia nearly blurted out, but that wouldn’t do any good. “Is Sharvesh all right?” she asked, gently.
He kept the wooden puzzle box on his lap, his hands resting lightly upon it as if the contact gave him some comfort. “She is well, thank you. It does you great credit to ask after her. Many people forget that even the simplest of skyships has a soul.”
Amelia winced. “Oh, I understand that,” she said, shoving embarrassing memories to the back of her mind. “Your people built the first skyships, didn’t they?”
“The very first. My elder sister is apprenticed to one of our best shipbuilders, home in the Argea.” He sighed. “I had hoped to visit my family, after returning Miss Castle and Master Greyfell to Iletia. Now I fear our journey must end here.”
Amelia sat in silence, wanting to reassure him, but any light cheerful words she could think of were weighed down with the awful leaden thought that she might never see her own home again. She never should have thrown the snow globe away: perhaps the Archmage could have fixed it. Perhaps she could have traded her crown for his help. Perhaps… but the snow globe was lost in the ruins, buried by now, and she’d never find it again before the spring thaw.
From across the hearth, Meg had been watching the conversation and chewing her lip anxiously. “Amelia, how about stretching our legs a bit?” she suggested, getting up and brushing off her skirts. “Poor thing,” she murmured, as she and Amelia went to the door. “This is no place for an Argean. Cold, landsick and far from home… But we’ll get him and his skyship out of this horrible place safe and sound, you see if we don’t. And you: we’ll get you back home to your father.”
Outside the parlour, at the end of the hall, two identical shadowy figures stood watch, stars burning white in their chests.
“Mind if we go for a stroll about the place?” Meg asked them cheerfully.
The two golems stood staring at each other, their heartlights throwing strange and ominous shadows on their bland faces. One of them opened his silver pocket watch and spoke into it: “Commander Breaker: the Lady Hartwood has decreed that Miss Lamb must see the winter garden at the first opportunity. Is this an opportune time?”
“What?” answered a voice from behind the glass. “Yes. Send them on. Don’t leave your post.” Even if the two witches escaped the palace, ice and snow stretched out all around for half the world or more.
The other golem turned to them with a stiff bow. “The Lady Hartwood has decreed that you must feel free to enjoy the winter garden,” he said. There followed the most thoroughly detailed set of directions a person could wish for, finished off with “However, His Highness anticipates your company in the dining hall at seven o’clock.”
“His Highness can suck my socks,” said Meg under her breath. She and Amelia went on, but at the first junction Meg stopped. “Oh deary me. A person could get so terribly lost in this place. Was it left or right he said?”
“I think he said le– ”
“Right. Right it is,” said Meg determinedly, and strode off in completely the wrong direction.
In the process of getting themselves thoroughly lost, they only occasionally caught glimpses of the inhabitants of the ice palace coming and going: dark shadows thrown by the faint glow of lamps through ice walls. The dark figures blurred and flickered like ghosts, impossible to recognise unless they spoke… or unless they wore heartlights on their chests. Meg and Amelia trod softly, carrying no light. The golem gentlemen wouldn’t take them by surprise, but Archalthus surely had other eyes in his palace.
“Right,” said Meg, when she could be reasonably certain they had some privacy. “I’ve been fiddling about with a few spells since we got here, and I think you’ll find us witches aren’t as helpless as certain mages think we are. I need you to practice your light spell later on, so you can get the hang of this… what would you call this?” She gestured, “This… stripy magic?” she said, as if it had been designed just to offend her.
“I keep thinking of them as Percival’s Planes,” said Amelia.
Meg rolled her eyes. “Oh, he’ll like that. That’ll go right to his head, that will. Anyway, after dinner, see if you can work out how to run a proper light spell on these Percival’s Planes. We won’t learn how to use the magic here by shying away from it. As for the bodily spells I warned you about, we’ll have to see about them later.” Unless you have no other choice, she didn’t have to add.
Little daylight penetrated the icy heart of the palace. So perfectly crafted in its atrium, dining hall, guest chambers – all the places a guest had any right to see – it turned out to be rougher cut in other parts. Attempting to navigate spiral staircases in the dark resulted in more than a few frightening slips on sloping icy stairs, and the day only grew darker as they descended. Several times they had to double back purely because they couldn’t see well enough to find their way, and for the time being, nothing would persuade Amelia to risk using her cat’s eye spell. Having found the lower levels of the palace too dark to explore, they headed higher – to the spires, where the ice glowed softly all around, silver and blue.
Meg found a balcony where the wind whipped ferociously around the towers and the ice crystals in the air stung like a swarm of tiny wasps. She leaned out over the balustrade, scanning the grounds of the palace with the fierceness of an eagle seeking prey. “Look, that must be the winter garden they were talking about,” she said, pointing it out, but Amelia had already taken one look down at how far away the ground was, and didn’t dare look again. Then Meg stiffened and hissed. “Amelia!” she whispered. “Come and see!”
Reluctantly, Amelia shuffled out along the balcony to join her. In the grey distance, two stars danced across the ice: two golems practicing fencing moves. “I’m no expert,” said Meg, “but I reckon they’ve picked up a couple of new moves from our friend Greyfell. Though the ones we fought then were dark-haired, I’d stake my life on it.”
Amelia gritted her teeth and focused on the sparring golems. They wore red coats, and even from this height she could see that their hair was as fair as her own. She didn’t know much about sword fighting, but “They’re learning?”
“We must tell the boys to be careful if they have any attempts at heroism in mind,” said Meg. “For the time being I’d say it’s best they don’t have swords easily to hand, and let’s not push our luck, either. We ought to take a closer look at this garden, while we’re out and about. Now, where are we?”
They’d strayed horribly far off the proscribed path, and making their way swiftly towards the winter garden meant sneaking through working parts of the ice palace where the prince would no doubt be furious to find his ‘guests’ nosing about. To her relief, Amelia noted abundant piles of firewood: the ice palace had been prepared for long visits by its master and mistress, and there were some practical provisions along with the ice statues and the magically prepared food. She tried to imagine how long the wood stores would last at home in Springhaven, but the modest tower there didn’t compare in scale. She couldn’t even make out how they kept the place liveably warm without melting the walls and floors – well, it was magic, wasn’t it, but far beyond her abilities – so she gave up on her rough calculations and left the subject alone. She had a reassuring inkling that they could weather a harsh winter here, given no other choice.
Eventually, they found the winter garden.
Amelia hadn’t known what to expect. Her only garden at home had been the tower’s roof garden: small, exposed to the sea wind, and nobody bothered to pull up the weeds any more. In contrast, the winter garden was more of a park enclosed by the towers of the ice palace, sheltered from the weather by high
walls. Though it was early yet, the sun had sunk from view, and it was under the light of the round moon that a path of glimmering white stepping-stones wound its way beneath a wrought-iron arch, losing itself swiftly in a stand of snow-clad firs. Crystals of ice rimed the umbrella heads of cow parsley and fennel, and the tall blades of grass that whispered gently when shaken by the faintest breeze. Where the path between the firs forked, Meg went off to investigate one way, Amelia the other. Tall slender structures of iron reared up alongside the path at intervals, their tops curling like new ferns. They must have been intended as lampposts, but nobody had put up any lights yet. Clockwork birds, gleaming enamel in the twilight, twittered and whistled prettily on the lower branches of these iron ferns as Amelia passed them by. She paused to whistle a simple greeting, as Meg had taught her, but the clockwork bird either didn’t understand or didn’t deign to converse with humans. The song, pretty as it was, had no meaning that Amelia could decipher. She’d just given up on the bird and crouched to marvel at a host of ice-speckled pansies, when she heard the sound of a gate. She looked up in time to see a griffin appear from behind the fir trees: Scarlet, judging by the hooked eagle’s beak so carefully carrying a basket of herbs, and if that coat which looked dull brown in the moonlight would be russet red by day… At the sight of Amelia, the griffin leapt in the air, squawking in alarm and dropping her basket.
“There you are, you wicked creature!” Amelia shouted, after her initial relief at seeing Scarlet alive. “You traitor, you turncoat! You…”
“What are you doing here?” Scarlet wailed, while Amelia floundered for more synonyms. The griffin's wide round eyes and her voice – that astonishingly human voice coming from the giant eagle’s beak – betrayed her pure horror at finding Amelia in the ice palace.
“What am I doing here? Why don't you tell me?” Amelia demanded. “Your wretched snow globe brought us here and now we can’t get back!” Just for a moment, she was righteously angry enough to forget that nobody had forced her to use the snow globe in the first place. Then she realised that this was decidedly not the kind of argument she wanted to be having when Meg could come back any minute.
“But… but I told you not to use the snow globe unless either of you couldn't get out of Ilgrevnia in time,” said Scarlet. “In case one of you girls needed to come back and rescue the other!”
“No you didn't!” whispered Amelia fiercely, forgetting also that she had planned a rescue mission. “And you’d better not tell anybody you gave me the snow globe, or you’ll be in terrible trouble. This is all your fault!”
“I told Sable to give you the instructions on how to use the Device if you needed it, that’s all. Why are you here?”
Amelia stomped her foot. “Sable, that awful beast! You were lying to us all along, both of you, and look at you now, not even pretending to be a person anymore! To think that I thought you were our friend!”
“Master says I must be a proper griffin!” Scarlet protested, shrinking as small as a griffin could, cut to the heart by Amelia’s words. “I must be what I was created to be and not dress up as anything else.”
At the sound of raised voices, Meg had come rushing back, the beginnings of a fireball spitting and smouldering haphazardly around her fist, scorching her gloves. “What’s going on?” The flames flared up at sight of the griffin, and it was only Amelia shouting “no!” and putting herself hastily between Meg and the griffin that stopped the witch. Traitor or not, Amelia had no desire to see Scarlet hurt.
“I tried to keep you away from the jade temple!” said Scarlet, turning to Meg with a pleading look. “I tried to keep you away from the throne room! What have you come here for?”
Time for Amelia to either own up to her foolish action with the snow globe, or quickly change the subject… “Ah! That’s the truth, isn’t it?” she shouted. “You really were sent by the prince to attack the Storm Chaser! You’re a wicked, bad griffin, Scarlet! Now go back to your master!”
The griffin cringed under Amelia’s outstretched finger. If she had been in human form, she quite plainly would have been in tears. “I only tried to help! You got me in trouble like I knew you would! Mister Breaker said I’d better keep to the kitchen from now on if I know what’s good for me, and not to speak to Master’s guests and… and…”
Meg dropped the remnants of her fireball onto the path, where they sizzled briefly before going out. “Now wait a minute,” she said. Until recently, she’d thought griffins were creatures of fable, and ever since her first encounter with them, she’d wanted to know more. Now that she was face to face with one of them, her curiosity was obviously bullying common sense out of the way. “This is the griffin who helped you escape from Ilgrevnia, is it? Scarlet? She didn’t have to do that. And she might help us again, yet.” Meg noticed the basket lying on the path, the strewn herbs, and she bent to gather them up.
Scarlet had been watching the exchange nervously, back and forth, her fox-like ears flat, her leonine tail wrapped around her hind legs. “Where’s the bag that I sent you?” she asked Amelia. And the snow globe in it, she avoided adding.
“How should I know?” Amelia snapped. “It must have got lost when…” – she had a moment of quick thinking – “when Morel somehow dragged us here and our skyship crashed.” And she stared hard at Scarlet as if she could enforce the griffin’s cooperation by the power of her mind.
“Look,” said Meg, reasonably, “If it was on board Sharvesh, it’s probably still there somewhere. The bag with those old spell books in?” she asked Scarlet. “If we find it, is there anything in it that we can use to go back again?”
“I don’t know,” the griffin fretted. “We’re miles from the Orb, here. It might be too far, I don’t know about these things, I can’t be sure…”
“Let’s leave it for now, then.” It would be risky to start unfolding the skyship inside the ice palace, not knowing what spies might be about, and Sharvesh was undoubtedly a critical part of any gestating escape plan. “Here, don’t be afraid,” Meg stroked the feathers of the griffin’s forehead, bold now that she could see the griffin was far more frightened of her than she had ever been of the griffin. “Are there any other ways we might get out of here, if we can’t find those spell books?”
Scarlet glanced up at the spires of the ice palace crowding in, far above the pines and riddled with narrow window slots. “I don’t know, I just don’t know…” she said, distractedly. “Oh, what you’re doing to my poor nerves… Come back to my kitchen, and let me have a cup of tea. We can talk there.”
As the three of them left the winter garden, something high on the walls spread its white wings to glide silently over the fir trees.
11: THE GRIFFIN TAMED
Amelia was suffering from deja vu, but she’d been safe enough in Scarlet’s kitchen before, back in Ilgrevnia, and that thought reassured her. Nothing could calm the red griffin, though. She hurried through a maze of small kitchens and stores, rooms for laundry, ranks of looms and sewing machines. “When I heard the Master had visitors, I prayed it wasn’t you. Though I can’t say who else it would have been… Curse me for a fool!”
When they came to the hub of it, Scarlet’s new kitchen turned out to be far grander than her old one: more than twice the size of Amelia’s kitchen at home. The walls and floor were ice like all the other rooms in the palace, but an enormous black range stretched all along one wall, radiating heat. The wooden table in the middle was big enough to seat everyone Amelia knew. At the far end of the room a golem stood piling potatoes into a large mechanical device that steamed and thumped. Amelia guessed at once that this machine and half a dozen like it ran on magic: she could almost taste that peculiar aftertaste just looking at them.
The golem hesitated as Scarlet trotted into the room, but the steaming, chuntering contraption continued to spew out diced potato into a large bowl.
“Yes, thank you,” said Scarlet, suddenly officious. “Go away now, I can manage by myself. Come back when dinner’s read
y to take through.”
Amelia kept her distance from the golem, watching him anxiously until he was gone.
Scarlet – still in griffin form – looked over the array of ingredients scattered across the table, and checked on a couple of enormous pots simmering over the fire. “I’ll be with you in a tick,” she said to the witches, as she vanished through a creaky door into another room off the kitchen. “I just need to change,” she called out. “Don’t go away!”
Amelia stood and stared at the fire behind its black bars. She would have sworn she could feel some unfamiliar spell tingling right through the soles of her boots, keeping fire and ice apart from one another.
Meanwhile, Meg made herself comfortable at the head of the kitchen table. “Now, what’s gotten into you?” she said.
But Amelia couldn’t tell Meg about Scarlet’s share of the blame for their current predicament, not without confessing the whole awful truth. “Nothing. I’m glad Scarlet’s all right, really I am.”
“Then try acting like it. We’ve few enough friends here.”
The creaking of the door announced Scarlet’s return: a red-haired, round-faced woman poked her head into the kitchen. Self-consciously she stepped into full view, gripping the skirts of her red dress. “What do you think?” she asked, timidly. “Master wanted new outfits, all in red, and at the end I had some offcuts and a bit of time to myself, so…”
