The Dragon Queen

by J M Sanford

  And so the three brothers remained locked in conflict for a thousand years or more, for they were too evenly matched. The Queens’ Contest must be resumed, no matter how long it might take. The hunt for the rightful White Queen began; the hunt for her descendants continues to this day.

  “Every educated fellow knows the tale,” said Percival, who had come alive with the chance to argue history with Master Greyfell. “But scholars agree that there was never a real Red Queen.”

  “The way I heard it, the story only ever mentioned two princes,” said Meg.

  “Red Side plays third,” Bessie mused aloud. “So if there’s a Red Queen about somewhere, shouldn’t we have run into her by now?” Then her eyes widened. “Oh! Rose!”

  Amelia kept her mouth shut, though she’d been a step ahead of Bessie that time. Rose Hartwood was no greedy impostor angling for the crown after all, but another innocent victim of the Queens’ Contest. “And Archalthus just has to be the Red Prince,” Amelia said quietly, still reluctant to speak the dragon prince's name. “With that flaming red hair.”

  Bessie made a face at the childish simplicity of this logic, but only said, “If he's the Red Prince, it makes sense that he would prefer Rose over either one of us: she's certainly more beautiful. As mercy would have it,” she added, with feeling. “I wonder if she's really of the right bloodline.”

  “I wonder what became of the other two princes,” Amelia murmured. “You know: our ones,” she said to Bessie.

  “I don't know and I don't care,” said Bessie. “Who needs a husband to be queen, anyway? The important thing is that Rose doesn’t have the crown.” She turned to look pointedly at Amelia, who couldn’t help but shrink behind her mother.

  “The important thing,” said Master Greyfell, “is that I had you play the three player variation against Miss Lamb for a reason, Elizabeth. Or have you forgotten everything you learned from that lesson so soon? And while this young lady Rose may not have the crown, I suspect that we have been brought here to provide it for her.”

  Amelia shrank even smaller in Meg’s shadow. She remembered the game well enough, but she was hardly in the mood to side with Bessie after that look. She really must remember that she was only of any use to Bessie while she still had the crown kept safe and hidden, close to her person.

  “So, to remind the two young ladies of the very simple rules of the Queen’s Contest,” said Master Greyfell, giving Bessie a particularly meaningful look, “Each of the three Princes requires an eligible young lady as his candidate Queen, embodying the virtue her intended Prince most values: compassion for White; wisdom for Black; beauty for Red. Each candidate Queen must be accompanied by an appropriate cohort, to include a Mage, Paladin, Commander and Warship. The White Side must be allowed to make the first move in the attempt to uncover the hidden crown. Miss Lamb,” he nodded politely towards Amelia. “Once a candidate has the crown, the next stage should be for her to approach her relevant Prince – unmolested, Elizabeth – and go with him to the hidden throne room, where the Prince will receive his own crown and become King of the Dragon Lands. And should any of the candidate Queens permanently abandon the Contest,” here he glanced at Meg, who had scandalously spurned the mere thought of princes, leaving the contest in order to marry a near-penniless academic, “her place passes to her nearest unmarried female relative.”

  “If it’s that simple then why’s the rulebook this thick?” said Bessie, holding her palms a good eight inches apart. “And why can’t you always say it as plainly as you did just now?” She obviously didn’t know the rulebook quite as well as she’d thought, but she’d left the cumbersome brick of a book inside Sharvesh.

  As they walked on, discussing what little they knew of the Red Queen and her Prince, Amelia sank into a state of silent contemplation. She had never been destined to marry Archalthus after all. There was another prince out there somewhere waiting for her: Archalthus’ brother, the true White Prince.

  6: THE ICE PALACE

  Deep in thought, Amelia had wandered some distance from the others. Bessie, seizing the opportunity, bounded over to her.

  “Are you sure you didn’t keep that snow globe?” she whispered.

  “Yes I’m sure!” Amelia hissed back. “Do I need to turn out my pockets for you?”

  “Only I think that’s why the griffins gave it to us, so they could use it to bring us here and –”

  “Well if it did, it’s too late to worry about it now, isn’t it?”

  “I mean, that palace –”

  “Go and bother somebody else, why don’t you?”

  “But the princes –”

  “I don’t have the snow globe, Elizabeth. How can I prove –”

  “Miss Castle!” Greyfell shouted, and Bessie ran back to his side.

  Amelia, left alone again, didn’t breathe any easier, her heart racing painfully. The spires of the palace were like a mirage on the horizon, appearing and disappearing against changeable skies, as the travellers made slow progress. Amelia almost didn’t mind if they never reached it, for to her mind this could only be the White Prince’s residence, a match for his icy heart. But as the sun rose, the spires of the palace thickened and became frighteningly real, looming closer, white against the sky. The walls – which at the first touch of the sun’s rays had looked clad in glassy ice – revealed themselves to be built entirely from rough slabs of the stuff, towers of it thrust up from the ground. Inside the snow globe, those towers had looked beautifully delicate. In person, they reared imposingly high, spearing the clouds. High white walls guarded the courtyards of the palace, and two sculpted dragons reared up on either side of wrought iron gates that flourished like thorny black trees to guard the way. High up in the walls of the palace, sliver-thin panes of ice in the windows threw out shards of rainbow when the sun flashed through the woolly clouds. As the light glinted off the icy scales and horns of the dragons at the gatepost, Amelia couldn’t help but fear that all of this must be the White Prince’s domain, from here to the distant mountains. Maybe that’s why the griffins had sent her to this place – to unite her with her intended husband… Amelia had doubts about whether she wanted to meet the ice-hearted White Prince from Greyfell’s tale, but then the sleet came in again, and she told herself firmly that she had slightly more chance of reasoning with a prince than with a blizzard. Her face and fingers prickled painfully with the cold, her toes were numb encased in her heavy boots, and still she knew she must be faring better than some of her friends. Bundled up in mismatched and ill-sized furs, bowed under the wind and sleet, Amelia and her companions looked more like a ragged band of beggars than two potential queens and their cohorts. And yet, as Amelia approached, the gates swung open soundlessly as if in recognition of the rightful Queen.

  Meg patted Amelia reassuringly on the shoulder, but Amelia hesitated on the grand drive leading up to the front doors of the palace. The sleet was rapidly turning to thick snow that drove back the dawn, obscuring her companions and even the immense figure of the palace. “Should we…?” Must the guarding doors of the palace, like the iron gates, open up to her? If they did, could she take it as further evidence that this was her future King’s residence and that she was to be welcomed as the destined queen of this domain? Beneath all her layers, her heart was beating fast, but not with the excitement of happy anticipation.

  “What was that?” whispered Bryn. He’d been miserable and bad-tempered since they’d set out on foot. Now he was bristling and crouched ready to fight, his enormous sail-like ears folded flat. At first Amelia could hear nothing, then it came to her: out on the grey path ahead, a disembodied voice, too muffled to hear what it had to say, and the muted crunch of snow underfoot. Through the gloom two bright flashing white lights drew close, and Amelia's first thought was that they must be the enormous blazing eyes of some monster. She clutched at Meg’s arm, but as the twin lights approached, two identical dark figures materialised around them out of the snow, two identical blond gentlemen dressed identic
ally in smart black coats and marching in perfect time, the lights pulsing like bright white hearts in their chests. They stopped still as stone and stared without expression at the intruders, although their right hands had gone simultaneously towards the hilts of their swords.

  Master Greyfell wasted no time in drawing his own blade.

  Harold spat. “Golems,” and he too drew his sword, stepping valiantly in front of Amelia and Meg, although he knew from past experience that Prince Archalthus’ golem guards were impossible to vanquish with simple steel.

  “Stop!” shouted a voice from a high window. Although the old man was near invisible for the snow blowing this way and that, Amelia recognised the voice of Archmage Morel. He shouted something more, but the gusting icy wind stole his voice away before it reached those on the ground. Nevertheless, the two blond gentlemen stood staring up the high wall of the palace, awaiting their next orders. “The blonde girl!” shouted Archmage Morel, when he’d mustered enough voice to battle the icy wind, “She’s the White Queen! Do not harm her! Bring her indoors!” And then he vanished from the window.

  The two blond gentlemen escorted Amelia and her companions up to the great grey doors, each of which was as tall and wide as a house. With a clunking of enormous mechanisms, the doors unlocked and then swung open without another sound. Amelia held her breath as she got her first glimpse of the ice palace’s interior. The atrium was a chamber of dark glistening ice, carved with figures: here the sculptor had captured a stag mid-leap; there a coiling serpent emerged from the columns flanking a broad staircase leading up into oceanic shadows. Even the artful mosaic floor was made of ice, stained in muted shades of blue and green.

  “Wait!” Morel’s breathless voice echoed through the chambers of the palace, his slippered feet pattering unevenly on icy tiles. He appeared from some obscure archway, hobbling towards them at great speed for such an old man, his long white beard and red robes flying. He must have run all the way downstairs from his high window, and the two blond gentlemen stood still and silent as they watched the Archmage catch his breath. Smoothing out his robes and beard, he turned to smile at Amelia in a sickly sweet way that she didn’t like at all. She remembered seeing a look like that on his face before, when he’d been preparing to summon an angry dragon pretty much right on top of her and her companions. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “And now, my dear, I believe you have something that doesn’t belong to you. Be a good girl and hand it over.”

  Amelia could have sworn her heart stopped just then. The snow globe. Did he mean the snow globe? He did, didn’t he, and she’d left it in the ruins of Ilgrevnia…

  “She won that crown fair and square,” said Meg, before Amelia could say or do anything at all.

  “Yes,” said Amelia, seizing on this diversion with a quickness that she was becoming quite proud of, secretly. “I won the crown fair and square, and I shan’t hand it over to you.” She watched the old Archmage’s eyes flicker from one person to another in the small group – scheming, she didn’t doubt – and then to the two waiting golems. He wanted the snow globe, but for now it seemed he was content to share her secret. She shivered.

  “How long do you think you’ll survive the harsh climate of this world?” said Morel. “Do the sensible thing, young lady, and come indoors. Here we have food and wine, hot baths and feather beds where you can rest safe and warm. You need only turn over what you’ve taken.”

  “I won’t,” said Amelia stubbornly. “You can go ahead and leave me out in the cold.” Whether he was talking of the snow globe or the crown, it didn’t really matter. She didn’t like to think what Prince Archalthus might do to her and her friends once she no longer had the bargaining chip of the crown, still strapped to her leg. “We’ll think of something, won’t we?” she whispered to Meg. “We’ll find another way?”

  Meg looked doubtfully at Sir Percival, swaying with exhaustion, and at the miserable Bryn, and said nothing.

  Morel squinted at Meg. “Ah, the witch,” he said, looking rather sour. “Do you think you’ll reach into your bag of piffling party tricks and pull out something to save yourselves? Your Argean won’t survive a day out in the open, and the rest of you wouldn’t outlive him by long.”

  Amelia looked again at her shivering companions, their hair and fur powdered with snow. “Oh, fine,” and she hitched up her skirt to untie the crown. All that trouble they’d gone to in order to reach the jade temple first; all that danger; all for nothing. She shoved the glittering tiara ungraciously into Archmage Morel’s shaking hands.

  “And your rings, I think,” said the Archmage.

  “No!” Amelia, Meg and Bessie all cried with equal vehemence. Amelia might have surrendered the crown, but Prince Archalthus and his men would have a fight on their hands if they wanted to take her conjuring rings, and as for –

  “Look, you’re a powerful mage,” said Meg, calming herself with an effort. “I caught you out once before, when you were weakened and you weren’t expecting it. I’m not so feather-brained as I may look, not enough to test my luck a second time.”

  “Hmm. Your spells may be weak, but they’re fiendishly quick…”

  “We’ll give you no trouble if you give us no reason,” said Meg, so solemnly you could almost believe it.

  “And I’m to trust a witch’s honour?” said Morel with a wry smile. He cast another sly glance at Amelia. “Very well.”

  Master Greyfell and Sir Percival gave up their swords at the door without complaint; Harold with just a little grousing. Bessie gave a thin smile as she surprised the Archmage by handing over her knife.

  This done, the two golems opened up a large door to one side of the grand staircase, and ushered the new guests deeper into the ice palace. Amelia wrung her hands, reassured by the hard knots of the rings beneath her gloves. Steel could slow a golem down, but a witch’s fire even more so. If only Meg hadn’t said what she’d said about her aim…

  “We will speak later, you and I,” said Morel quietly, as Amelia passed him by.

  7: SOULSHINE

  Archmage Morel’s timely intervention at the door might have saved the party from a fight they couldn’t win against the golems, but it was through the Dragon Prince’s magnanimosity that they were treated as guests. Real guests, not like Bessie and Amelia’s time in Ilgrevnia. The ‘gift’ of the crown appeased the prince greatly: so much so that he’d even invited them to a celebratory banquet that evening. Bessie couldn’t see any cause for celebration, but assumed Archalthus was thinking of his imminent victory, now that he had the crown, and Rose Hartwood to be his queen.

  Bessie forced herself to at least try to relax, concentrating on the steady flow of air in and out of her lungs. She and her companions had spent most of the day high up in one of the towers, in an ice-walled parlour reserved for guests. She was warming her hands on a mug of hot chocolate. All was quiet, but for the creaks and groans of the great mass of ice around them – if Bessie hadn’t known there was magic at work here, she wasn’t sure she would have trusted the enormous ice palace to hold its own weight. But it did, and it was almost beautiful. The parlour with its fine furniture hardly resembled a prison cell at all. The door wasn’t even locked, although a short distance down the corridor, the two blond gentlemen stood watch. Or rather, they stood perfectly still and staring directly at each other across the corridor, as if staring at their reflections in the black mirrors of each other’s eyes, who knew what thoughts passing silently between them. They would no doubt stand there until the end of time if so ordered, and only when someone approached them did they turn as one to address the interruption. Prince Archalthus had officially lifted the orders that the golems should kill the Black Queen and White Queen on sight, and Bessie was curious about the star-bright lights in their chests, but still their ceaseless staring was eerie enough to keep her away from them. There was hardly any need for them to maintain such a guard, though, when the inhospitable ice world offered nowhere for any escapee to hide.

&nb
sp; A pair of the twin gentlemen had offered her older companions brandy to warm them after the long trek through the snow, (although with the way the golems looked at Bryn, he was lucky not to have got a saucer of milk) and continued to wait on the guests throughout the day. Sir Percival’s glass sat untouched on the table, as Bessie would have expected. Amelia, sitting by the fireplace and staring fixedly into space, gripped her glass tightly but drank none. Bessie did like Amelia, but the girl could be such a twit. If only she’d got rid of that bag of rubbish the griffins had given her when Bessie had told her… But Bessie knew she must focus on what to do next. She’d explored every inch of the parlour and the few chambers leading off it; there was no means of escape but for a few narrow windows, and the icy walls of the tower were too steep and slippery for Bessie to ever dream of climbing them. She shuddered at the thought. The walls were semi-transparent, so that the rooms close to the periphery of the structure had taken on a strange bright glow as the sun arced across the sky and the clouds cleared. Fragile appearance aside, Bessie had already discovered that the ice walls withstood the heat of a candle’s flame held to them, with not so much as a drip. Meg had said that they shouldn’t be surprised, given that a hearty fire was dancing in a hearth closely surrounded by ice, but Bessie couldn’t bear to do nothing as a prisoner. If she’d still had her knife (she should have kept it hidden… well, she’d find some way to get it back soon) she’d have been chipping at the walls or the tiles underfoot even now, making what she suspected would be a distressingly slow escape. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece, measuring out the seconds before the banquet, and Bessie sighed. It was all pleasant enough, on the surface, and Archalthus was hardly likely to invite them to share a meal only to kill them at his dinner table. Naturally the thought had crossed her mind: either classical deadly poisons, or some subtle enchanting ingredient mixed into the food, something worse than arsenic or strychnine in its effect… But only an unspeakably rude host would ever resort to such a thing. Not that she liked to rely on the dragon prince's manners too much, when he flouted convention by kidnapping young girls, but according to Amelia, this was a classically dragonish thing to do. Bessie guessed she must be dealing with the etiquette of dragons, and only hoped she wouldn't make any fatal faux pas or error of judgement when the hour of the banquet arrived. She should ask Amelia if she knew any more about the reputed behaviour of dragons, but Meg had warned them for the time being not to say anything that they wouldn’t say to Prince Archalthus’ face, because how could they tell who or what might be listening in? Bessie could think of plenty of things she’d like to say to the dragon prince’s face… but the witch was right, of course: best to remember one’s manners when dealing with dragons. Speaking of the witch, what was she doing, away from the fireside, in that shadowy corner seat? She was determinedly rooting around in her bag, where she’d stashed her salvaged items from the Archmage’s ruined workshop. Bessie watched her pointedly, trying to catch her attention. Not only might there be unseen ears around, there might be unseen eyes, too.