The Dragon Queen

by J M Sanford

  The fire in the hearth had gone out, and Meg knelt to rekindle it, with Master Greyfell swiftly moving to assist.

  “Reckon you can put all that reading on military history to good use?” whispered Meg to Greyfell, as the fire began to pop and spark, “and think up a way to get us out of here? I don’t fancy being a subject of the Red King, do you?”

  “We must do something,” he agreed, speaking low. “Before the Red Queen can unlock the throne room and her prince gain ultimate power.”

  9: MEN OF STONE AND STARLIGHT

  Morning found Archmage Morel sitting as still as an ice statue in his private study, staring out of the window into the wintry sky, numbers flying through his head faster than he could write them down, until he feared he would go entirely mad from their taunting. Not for the first time in the past century, he worried that he’d made a mistake in failing to take on a new apprentice. He’d never become paternally fond of any of his apprentices, as so many Archmages did with theirs, but he couldn’t deny they had their uses… Of course, the Wintergard fellow had turned out to be nothing more than an enthusiastic amateur (entirely self-taught, unusual) but Morel had enjoyed the chance for conversation much more than he would have expected. In spite of everything, he was immensely proud of the new system of solar magic he’d devised to power the new world, and had much enjoyed explaining it to someone who could appreciate it. He only hoped he’d done a good enough job of steering the conversation away from the current problem with it. No sense in upsetting the ladies, and certainly no sense in upsetting the prince. Bad enough that he had to upset himself with the problem. And now, of course, his attention turned inevitably back to the current source of all his sleeplessness and nervous stomach upsets… Behind a thin fleece of cloud, the sun was small and cheerless, and it was getting away from him. He’d originally planned on setting it far out enough that its warmth would be no threat to the less magically-reinforced parts of the ice palace, but the balance was wrong somewhere and the infernal thing spiralled further out with every passing day. Though it might yet be beyond the notice of the human eye, the path of the sun had been erring gradually lower and lower, towards the horizon. Dawn came later and later in the day, in deceptively small increments, but the numbers on paper were stark and undeniable. The symptoms of this world’s sickness would only become more and more apparent in the coming months, and Morel knew he couldn't hide it from Archalthus forever. If nothing else, eventually the sun would slip below the level of the horizon one night, never to return. The new world, so full of promise beneath its mantle of ice and snow, would be plunged into an eternal icy night, returning in time to the barren rocky state in which the Archmage had originally found it.

  The thought had been nagging at him for some time that if he couldn’t save the sun, then at the very least he ought to create a new mechanism for controlling the worldshifting Orb of Helemneum, so that they needn’t all freeze to death. Even now, it was cold enough that Morel had had to put on two sets of robes just to take the edge off it. The new red robes that the ever-resourceful Scarlet had sewn for him draped weightily from his shoulders, stately and dignified, but he felt certain he recognised the pattern of a spare tablecloth that had gone into the making of them. Morel, too, must be resourceful – there could be no sending off golems to other Cities to pick up materials and odd Devices, not any more. Magic itself would be limited, even more so as the sun retreated. The Wintergard boy might provide an extra pair of hands, but only if he could prove himself sensible and trustworthy…

  Rain ran in fat hasty rivulets down the windowpanes. The windows, like the walls, were fashioned solely from ice, their iridescent colours created by the different ways the light filtered through them. Magic kept them from melting away under the persistent busy patter of raindrops. The ice tiles that lined each floor had been enchanted so that nobody would slip; so that the floor would feel dry and not unbearably cold under a thinly slippered foot. A hundred other small enchantments, set up and then forgotten, contributed to the comfortable smooth running of the Red Queen’s winter palace. Not so long ago Archalthus and his young lady had been thrilled with the delicate crystalline windows and the spindle spires, taller than any palace before, yet able to stand up to all extremes of weather. But without the power of the sun, the ice palace would become inhospitable at first, as the small spells for comfort dissipated; then dangerous, as the spires began to crumble under their own weight. There were other places in the world to seek refuge, but moving everybody out would first require Morel to confess his failure to Archalthus…

  Morel took a deep breath to calm himself from that thought, and turned his attention back to the pages upon pages of calculations before him. His hands were cold and stiff from spending the whole night at his desk: he might not appear a day over eighty, but he could see his eight hundredth birthday creeping up on him with alarming speed, and even strong magic could only do so much to stave off old age. Never since his days as a young Undermage, when he’d been learning how to balance transfigurational equations, had his hands been so ink-stained and pained, day after miserable day. Worse than that, he couldn’t keep his thoughts straight, and his whims led him down odd paths. Stupidly, he’d lied to Archalthus about the visitors, saying that he’d drawn them into the new world by his own magic and skill. He’d bragged about it, even. He’d wanted to take credit for the retrieval of the crown, putting himself in good standing with the prince and Miss Hartwood. He’d wanted everybody to think he’d regained some measure of control over the Orb, that they weren’t trapped here, but it had been a vain and foolish lie, and it kept threatening to float to the surface of any given conversation, as the worst lies always do. There was no time to train up an apprentice to aid him: the first and most important thing was to regain control of the Orb.

  Abandoning his papers on the sun for the time being, Morel headed down to his makeshift workshop. First he would need to take stock. What materials did he have to hand? What remained in the ruins of Ilgrevnia, and could he afford the time it would take to scour the place thoroughly? What resources might lie beneath the ice and snow, further afield? The ambient light faded as the staircase corkscrewed deep into the ice, forcing Morel to stop and locate a lantern. He chafed at the inconvenience of it, after centuries of summoning light at the point of his staff whenever he wanted it, the exact brightness he required and whatever colour he could imagine. Nevertheless, he had better learn to be more economical with magic, if the sun continued on its current course. Magical light must be one of the first luxuries to go. In the corridors and on the stairways, he tottered back and forth between haphazard piles of things reclaimed from the wreckage so far, mumbling to himself. Of the potion to stop his shaking fits, he had plenty – he never went anywhere without it. But for how long could the stocks of firewood, lamp oil and candles last? If used sensibly, sparingly? Or if Archalthus were allowed to continue his profligate displays of wealth? And with new mouths to feed, as well… Had the visitors brought any useful supplies with them, either practical or magical? An answer leapt out of the whirlstorm of questions and struck him right between the eyes. Of course! How could he have forgotten? The visitors had arrived virtually empty-handed, like a band of beggars seeking sanctuary… all apart from the blonde girl. His age must be catching up with him at long last – how could he have forgotten she had that Device? But the girl wasn’t a complete fool, so how could he convince her to hand it over? Could he do so at all without alerting Archalthus to its existence? Could he, Archmage Morel, use that Device to escape alone to the old world, leaving all his problems behind? He knew himself to be the most talented Archmage who had never ascended to the Mage Council, but he was in his eighth century, with a weak heart and bad knees. The wreck of Ilgrevnia was a long walk away for such an old man, in the snow, alone.

  Arriving at his workshop, he opened the door and was greeted by the sight of a dozen or so dark stone figures propped up in a line against one wall, the component parts of their less fortu
nate brethren huddled into separate piles. Shortly after the fall of Ilgrevnia, Morel had easily enough devised his method to adapt the stone golems to this world’s solar magic, restoring the lucky few who’d escaped without serious injury, and sending them off on their errands. The rest, however, had all lost arms or legs or fingers, and in a couple of cases they’d been uncovered from the wreckage broken in half. Morel inspected each one in turn. Retrieving them at all was no easy task, still in progress, but since the suspicious arrival of both White Queen and Black Queen, Archalthus had demanded the full complement of golem gentlemen to be restored as bodyguard. The prince’s intended bride must be protected above all other things, by guards who needed neither sleep nor food, whose loyalty could never be tested… Which was all very well in theory, but what had once been a company of proud soldiers was now a sad-looking assortment of broken statuary. He’d found his poor clockwork dragonette half-crushed in the wreckage, too. It would take a fairy craftsman’s tiny hands to repair that, and there were no fairies in the artificial world. He’d considered stocking the new forests with fairies, but even then it would have been some ornamental breed –

  The slamming of a door disturbed Morel from his thoughts, and it was followed by the breathless growl of something heavy being dragged along the ground by some determined creature. A light appeared in the corridor, the ice walls taking on a strong shade of pink that darkened to bloody red – all that magic pouring through the palace, from spires to roots – and the remains of the stone figures glittered with red threads of magic.

  Morel looked on these threads with dismay: the leaves that burned to illuminate the flow of magic were rare enough, and Morel had no access to any more besides what he’d been able to salvage from his old workshop, which had been a tricky business for an old man, with the floor at that angle. “If you’d be a good fellow and put out that light now?” he called anxiously, as Mister Breaker appeared, dragging one of the stricken golems. He wore a new red uniform, and even the white griffin carrying the magic lantern in its beak had a smart red leather collar.

  “The last but one,” Breaker announced, propping the golem against the wall beside the others. “Damned if I can find his twin, though.”

  “Won’t you please put out that light!” Morel gestured sharply in the direction of the lantern, but the spell went astray, making the white griffin hiss, and the red light went out by chance when the griffin dropped it. Morel scurried over to pick up the lantern, dismayed to find that nothing more than a scattering of ashy powder remained of the rare leaves. “I have precious few resources in this world,” he grumbled.

  In the meantime, Breaker had picked up a chisel from the workbench. “What are you going to do?” he asked, indicating the damaged golems. “Scrap them and start again?”

  “Why can’t you leave my things alone?” Morel cried, making a feeble swipe at the back of Breaker’s hand with his staff, missing easily. His gaze flickered along the line of stone figures. “Scrap them?” he echoed querulously. He could barely look their stone faces in the eye when he thought about it. They were so much more than stone: he’d made them live. He’d written scripts into their stone hearts that made them walk and talk, and he’d taught them bits and pieces of trivia and old stories, things the world might forget when Morel was dead and gone. If he couldn’t successfully reanimate them… “Yes… Yes, it might come to that, for the rest of them…”

  “I should’ve known. Butcher. Ghoul.”

  “Failure!” Morel snapped back, surprising them both. He grabbed a suitably sharp knife from the table. His hands were shaking awfully, but he might improve Archalthus’ Red Commander yet…

  Breaker growled and showed his sharp teeth like a bad-tempered dog. “Put that down, you old fool. Master said to make my men a priority and send them to me as soon as you’ve finished.” Ungrateful so-and-so. After everything Morel had done for him… But if nothing else, Breaker was on his way out of the door, taking the white griffin with him. “Can’t find that last one without the red lamp,” he warned. “You’ll have to hope we can make do with what we’ve got, or you’ll answer to his Highness.”

  Alone, Morel sat a long time waiting for his shaking to cease. In the end he had to take some of his potion, and as it slowly began to work, he said aloud to himself, “I will be free soon.” One way or another, he thought, although he dared not voice that sentiment. “The good Prince Archalthus has promised it,” he said instead to the ceiling, banking on these words being heard. “As soon as the happy couple are wed and crowned, my obligations will have been discharged, and I will be a free man.” Charged with the sense of purpose that his potion lent him, and the happy thought of his impending freedom, he went to the place where he’d hidden the stars. He’d taken them down from the sky some nights back. Such a shame, when he’d designed some beautiful constellations, and now his drawings for them lay ruined and buried in the snow somewhere at the crash site, but he’d been afraid to even calculate how much power they used in the hours they shone down on the new world. Hundreds of them. Thousands. In a wine cellar full of snow, Morel scraped back the icy crust with his staff to reveal the dim glow of the stars, kept dormant here below the palace. At a word from him, they began to come to life, globes of white-blue light that flickered and pulsed, so that it looked as if the nest of them was alive with movement, and they set the shadows dancing nervously. They weren’t quite real stars, of course – infinitely smaller and closer than the real thing – but it had taken hours of work to retrieve them all. Morel selected an armful of the brightest glowing orbs to take back to his workbench, where he would use each star to bring another golem back to life. A sky full of twinkling constellations, each pinned in place with magic, had been an extravagance they could ill afford right now, but his experiment with the golems had worked well, so if nothing else he’d found a way to set the stars to a less frivolous purpose… and with the arrival of the ‘guests’, Archalthus might well be right in thinking that he needed all the men he had available. Another word from Morel and the stars dimmed again, plunging the cellar into crepuscular gloom.

  Back in his workroom, he selected the nearest stone man standing against the wall, snow crystals still packed in his eyes and ears. With a few fingers broken off but no more serious harm done, this one was the most complete of those remaining, so Morel wasted no time in getting to work. Now that he had the method, it was the work of less than an hour to set the star into to the golem’s chest, close to the script module. Before finishing up, he gave the golem a quick coat of red paint. On the day the visitors had arrived, first thing upon hearing of the retrieval of the Queen’s Crown, Archalthus had ordered a whole new set of golems, all in red uniforms to pay tribute to their master, now that his becoming King was a certainty. What a waste of time and effort, to make the gentlemen anew, simply because their coats were the wrong colour! A few tins of paint would soon fix that. Scarcely able to wait for the paint to dry, Morel set the flow of magic in motion.

  “Speak,” he said.

  Stone bloomed into flesh and hair and fabric in an instant, although the figure stood still and silent as a statue, black eyes staring fixedly ahead, unseeing. The star in his chest dimmed and then flashed.

  “Speak,” said the Archmage again, as if to a shy child who needed encouragement.

  The dark-haired figure inclined his head jerkily and stuttered “G-good morning, Archmage Morel.” His star had settled into a steady pulse, not like the constant light of the more successfully renovated golems.

  “Oh dear,” said Morel. “Not quite right, are you? Hmm. Show me your hands.”

  Twitchily, the golem obliged, showing several missing fingers that ended in smooth pink nubs. He should have been able to regrow them from memory.

  Morel sighed. “Well, you’ll just have to do for now… Find your twin amongst that lot there,” he said, indicating the row awaiting repairs and modification. Morel suspected the golem’s twin must be in pieces, for him to be unable to recover suc
h minor damage as a few missing fingers. Stiffly, the newly activated golem walked along the row, stopping at each one to investigate. At the end of the row, he looked forlornly back at Morel.

  “Go on,” Morel shooed him off, “find your twin… wherever he’s got to.” Something could be done with that one, once he had his twin. In the meantime, Morel had others to attend to: he picked up a chisel to begin the reanimation process anew. The newly painted red golems might prove an easy way to please the prince, buying Morel more time to find a solution to the problem of the sun… or otherwise to plan his escape.

  10: IN THE WINTER GARDEN

  Judging by the lavish meals and the beautifully appointed guest rooms, Prince Archalthus meant to treat Amelia and her companions as befitted the new nobility of the world christened ‘Archalthia’. Their spacious private chambers all converged on the parlour where the White Queen and her cohort were positively encouraged to mingle with the Black Queen and her company. Lady Hartwood herself had threatened to visit as soon as she wasn’t run off her feet with all the preparations an engaged lady must busy herself with, but she hadn’t yet appeared. In the meantime, the guests’ basic needs were attended to swiftly at the first ring of a bell. Never mind the guards stationed at the door…

  By early afternoon, a cold blue light dispersed through the semi-translucent outer walls of the palace, pitching itself against the orange of firelight. Statues of fantastical beasts inhabited corners and shadowy alcoves everywhere, outnumbering by far all living things in the palace, and catching every spark of light so that they looked like they might jump to life any minute. Amelia would have liked them a lot better if not for what Meg had said about hidden eyes and ears. She’d spent much of the new day regarding the statues with great suspicion, examining the hard, pale blue eyes of carved nymphs, wyrms and centaurs. Even without the constant itchy sensation of being watched by some unseen observer, there’s only so much time one can spend admiring one’s surroundings before time starts to drag and patience wear thin. The prince’s captive guests shared the hearth in gloomy silence. Somebody must come up with a plan soon, Amelia thought, but how will we know, if we’re all too afraid to speak?