The Dragon Queen

by J M Sanford

  Amelia chewed her lip as she thought it over. Whatever the old argument had been, it slipped away from her as she ruminated on the more immediate problem. “In a great big jar, like those enormous ones in the soul forge in Ilamira. Somewhere out of sight. But I’ve been all over and I haven’t seen anything remotely like that.”

  “All over?” Meg scoffed. “I’d be surprised if you have.”

  The Archmage’s domain extended throughout the cellars of the ice palace, quite a few of the rooms guarded by locks that thwarted both the witches’ efforts to pick them by magic, and Bessie’s more conventional methods. No doubt the soul for the dragon golem, whatever the Archmage had chosen, lurked behind one of those doors. But Meg didn’t even have her makeshift lantern to illuminate stray souls, all the sage green leaves for it burned up in her confrontation with Sir Percival. Bessie lagged behind, nudging books and other detritus with the toe of her boot, sighing heavily, thinking that there had to be a better use of the short time they had left before the wedding.

  Still Meg kept hurrying onward as if she had some idea of where she was going. “This way,” her voice came from up ahead, undaunted by the hours of searching. Amelia was quicker to catch up – Bessie heard her gasp in shock, and that spurred Bessie to pick up her feet.

  The chamber was a large oval void, as if an enormous air bubble had formed beneath the splendid white towers of ice. The floor was a vast flat slab of ice from wall to wall, and Bessie’s first thought was that it must have been intended as a skating rink. There were more frivolous diversions than that built into the palace, according to Amelia. But the ceiling looked unfinished, arching high above their heads, dripping from time to time, the splashes echoing in the vast cathedral space. Amelia took a step back just as Bessie ventured onto the ice to test her footing, nearly knocking both girls down, much to Bessie’s irritation. Why didn’t Amelia go forward and make some space? The chamber must be as big as the one where the white dragon had been held prisoner, Bessie noted, just before she pushed past Amelia and realised exactly why that should be. The still black shape beneath the surface of the ice was huge and unmistakeable. It curled around its centre, the curve of its neck and tail almost brushing the edges of the chamber. Bessie knelt down on the ice above the creature’s massive head, determined to look closer. With none of the glamour and sparkle of a living dragon, the thing looked utterly dead: dull pewter scales flaking off into layers of clouded fluid deep below the ice; the rot eating into its faded, sodden flesh. Parallel slashes, too deep and too widely spaced to have come from any talons other than those of another dragon, striped its flanks pale grey-pink.

  “It’s horrible,” Amelia mumbled, almost inaudible with her hands pressed to her mouth. “So horrible.”

  Bessie said nothing, looking into the dead eye of the beast. She wasn’t the type of girl to weep over a dead dragon, but she couldn’t bring herself to rejoice over it either.

  “They cut his heart out,” said Amelia. Her voice sounded funny, and when Bessie looked round, she saw the tears running down Amelia’s face. Oh, no, not again… Meg had put her arm around her daughter and was patting her absently as she stared at the dragon. Heaving in great sobbing breaths, Amelia continued, “He said he didn’t care much for his family, but I didn’t realise… I didn’t realise he could do something like this. What hope do any of the rest of us have, if that’s what he’s done to his own brother? Sorry. I’m sorry. Where’s my hanky…”

  Bessie made her way carefully across the ice, to stand above the place where the black dragon’s heart would have been. The scales of its chest had been pulled apart, the flesh of its chest hacked open, bloodless now like a pickled medical specimen. Archmage Morel had probably drained it for use in spells. How much would a pint of dragon’s blood sell for, back home in one of the magic shops? “So this is what became of the Black Prince,” she said, quietly. She didn’t even know his name.

  “I thought you didn’t care?” said Amelia.

  Staring at the dragon’s empty chest, Bessie felt strangely hollow herself. “I thought he was just lazy or a coward, and didn’t want to fight his brothers any more.” Having not run into the Black Prince in her travels, she’d imagined him to be out there somewhere in the wild lands where men and Flying Cities dared not venture, rebuilding his vast library, disinterested in the world outside unless it had first been filtered through ink and ordered on a page. Somewhere along the way she’d fallen into the trap of thinking of all the princes as creatures of hot air and nonsense.

  Then, like a good Academy girl, she pushed the discomforting thoughts away and focused on what this revelation really meant for her future. Danger, for sure, but then that had always been there. She’d always known in her heart that Archalthus wouldn’t draw the line at murder. So, thinking more practically… If this was her Black Prince, might she still become Queen without him? She tried to think if the tedious rulebook had anything to say on a situation like this. Naturally she’d checked to make sure she could still be Queen if her Prince just so happened to die the day after the wedding, but she wasn’t so impatient as to have ever considered killing the Prince before the wedding. Still, it would be a blessing if she could be Queen without a King interfering with her business even for one day. Could a different Black Prince be chosen? One who would suit her better than a dragon? It was hardly in the spirit of the Queen’s Contest, but why should the Black Queen miss out on her chance just because her prince had been stupid enough to get himself killed? Greyfell would be able to tell her if the rules permitted it under any circumstances. Who would aid her? Harold would have been no use to her even if he’d still been around: he’d been completely dippy about his Amelia, with her pretty looks and her long blonde hair. Sir Percival, on the other hand… Meg had embarrassed him by forcing him to reveal himself like that in front of everybody, something that surely couldn’t be forgiven and forgotten so easily, so no doubt that was a crack in their friendship that a cunning person could exploit. Ah, but she was still missing her conjuring rings, which put her at a serious disadvantage. She’d meant to get them back somehow, but –

  Meg was the one to interrupt Bessie’s train of thought. “This only makes your trip tonight all the more important,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”

  ~

  Amelia and Meg had wanted to continue their exploration of the cellars, determined to find the black dragon’s stolen soul and thwart the completion of the new golem, but they couldn’t be gone from the guest chambers too long without drawing suspicion. What’s more, Bessie had needed to prepare for her own task, as agreed upon before the discovery of the Black Prince. She sat on the window ledge past midnight, her back against one side of the frame. She was fully dressed in coat and boots, hugging her knees as she watched the moon-flooded snowfields. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have chosen to sit there looking down from such a height for any length of time, but the drop was almost preferable to the sight of a sky bereft of stars and looming black above her. Both prospects were dizzying. She missed the constellations of home, the ones her brothers had drawn out and named for her when she’d been so small. The stories they’d told her of the heroes and monsters, painted with the broad shimmering sweep of stars, all across the ink-black arena that stretched beyond the boundaries of the land. In the dark hours when the streetlights were extinguished, the sky above a Flying City was clear as glass, the stars so close it felt as if you could touch them if only you had a ladder.

  The sweep of black wings against the dim bluish glow of snow made her heart leap, thudding painfully in her chest. She couldn’t help herself, she hopped back down from the window ledge, back into the parlour, as the swoop of the black griffin’s wings buffeted her, making her hair fly around her face. He landed awkwardly, claws scrabbling on hard glossy ice before biting like ice picks. The angle was difficult even for him, and he held his wings wide to steady himself, flapping uncertainly once or twice when he thought he might fall.

  “D
id you get it?” Bessie whispered, reaching for the satchel he carried.

  One wild blue eye glared directly at her as the griffin reared back out of her reach. “No.”

  Bessie glared back just as fiercely. “We don’t have long, you know?” How had Sable been able to sneak away the key to Archmage Morel’s workshop when it had been what he’d wanted, and was yet unable to get his thieving claws on the snow globe in the same manner? If you want a job done properly, do it yourself. Probably best that the crow griffin not have the snow globe, anyway.

  Uncomfortable silence stretched out, the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece reminding Bessie that she had little time to carry out her tasks, whether as part of Meg’s plan or her own. Three days – well, more like two and a bit now – to either stop this wedding or escape the artificial world, and the incarcerated guests deemed the latter plan more likely to succeed. Still Bessie hesitated. The window was too narrow for a griffin to squeeze through. With no alternative, she had to climb up onto the window ledge and reach out, grabbing the leather straps of the griffin’s harness. Her gloves were too thin for this weather, her hands already cold. Sable growled as she pulled feathers or fur somewhere in her clumsy attempt to get into the saddle. After a couple of false starts, she managed to haul herself into position, hastily strapping herself in. She could feel the griffin’s muscles shift beneath her as he bunched up and then launched into the night sky. She gritted her teeth, eyes narrowed against the ferocious winds, and gripped the reins tightly, though she’d been warned not to use them. Sable knew where he was going and would resent any implication to the contrary. He couldn’t throw her, not with the way she was strapped in, but he could still try, and that wouldn’t be fun. How many people ever got to ride a griffin? She supposed she ought to be glad. Honoured, even, given the way Scarlet had talked. Bessie didn’t feel it.

  The black griffin sped through the night. As they approached the ruins of Ilgrevnia, Bessie caught sight of the unmistakeable glass dome of the Orb, almost a twin to the moon above. It had been a matter of days, but the Orb looked as bright now as it had on that fateful day they’d destroyed Ilgrevnia. She could only hope that she was appropriately compensating for the fact that she’d seen it in daylight then, and now it was the middle of the night. If she and her companions managed to steal the snow globe and escape to the ruins, only to discover that the Orb was not ready to take them back to the real world… Archalthus would kill them all. She knew she’d been lucky in the aftermath of that horrendous mess she’d made trying to assassinate Rose, but if they’d run so short of other resources as to be relying on luck, then they were all in terrible trouble.

  She stretched forward as far as she could, until the griffin’s right ear flicked irritably against her cheek, and the wind couldn’t whip her words away. “The Orb is ready,” she said. “Don’t you think so?”

  “Strong magic,” the griffin agreed. “A window will open.”

  That would have to be good enough. “In that case, we’d better…” she trailed off. She’d been so focused on her mission that she almost missed the lanterns staked into the ground about half a mile from the shining Orb. She hadn’t noticed those before, and she’d been here recently. The lights marked out a rectangular space as large as a city block. “What’s that?” she whispered in the griffin’s ear, pointing. But by then they’d closed the distance enough that she could see figures moving amongst the ruins, starlights in their chests. Those and the light of the lanterns glowed through the translucent bricks of ice the golems carried in their arms. From above, Bessie could just about make out the beginnings of new walls of ice. What are they doing? There might not be many of them, but she imagined they’d work all throughout the night, cutting the ice to shape, placing the blocks neatly and perfectly, with no need to stop for food or sleep. Then they would work through the following day, and the next, and the next, until the new building was complete, but to what purpose? She didn’t voice her question aloud, not wanting to alert the golems below to her presence. Bad enough if anything caused them to notice Sable. Despite the discomfort, she held her position pressed close against the black griffin’s neck so that nobody looking up would see by the silhouette that he had a rider. Or so she hoped.

  The griffin circled around, indulging his own curiosity, but in doing so he allowed Bessie to judge the height of the walls so far, and more importantly to place the new building in the context of what she knew of Ilgrevnia. Sable swooped low, and if the builders had been mortal men they would surely have looked up, but the golems cared only for the task at hand. Bessie saw a huge intact cube of grey stone facing the ice construction – a place where the golems had cleared away debris to show the bricked up doorway with the woman’s face carved into the lintel, her stone locks curling around and down the frame. The throne room. Bessie Castle’s destiny, the one that she’d fought Amelia for in the race to the crown, waited within that enormous stone box. The destiny that Archalthus had tried to tear away from her by murdering his own brother. The destiny that the people she’d come to think of as her friends wanted her to walk away from forever. While she’d been waiting for Sable that night, she’d had plenty of time to conjure up last-ditch plans to steal the crown, assemble a proper cohort, and make herself Black Queen without a King. It was all horribly risky. She stubbornly hung on to the belief that it could work, but somebody was bound to get hurt. She’d calculated the probabilities, then weighed against her conscience the idea that Greyfell might be killed, or Bryn, or Amelia… There was no such thing as a bloodless war; no such thing as a crown that weighed lightly. And she wanted it as much as ever.

  “Home,” she ordered the griffin, the word feeling like a lead weight. Remembering Scarlet’s instructions, she tried again, speaking as brightly as she could: “Home, and you shall have some lovely kippers.” Stupid griffin.

  Sable circled once more and headed for the ice palace.

  25: WHITE PRINCE

  In the grandest hall of the palace, the prince had called for celebratory drinks and (as usual) his guests had no option to refuse. Amelia sat by the fireplace, a glass of wine forgotten in her hands. Even at home she’d never been good at joining in, always preferring to hear what Father had to say. She certainly had no idea what to say in a gathering like this – a long evening social with certain people she didn’t like at all. Like Meg, she didn’t give a – what was it? – a tinker’s whizz for the imminent wedding. There were only so many ways to congratulate the bride-to-be, and nothing at all that she wished to say to Archalthus, for whenever she looked at the prince, she remembered how he’d looked as a dragon. Her imagination vividly conjured a battle between the Red Prince and the Black, the moment when Archalthus had struck his own brother dead. Now he stood there in his fine clothes, handsome and smiling with Rose on his arm, conversing with Master Greyfell. Rose wore the crown as if she was already the Dragon Queen, draped in sweeps of blood-red silk and strings of rubies. All that was missing was the golden ring that would bind her to the Dragon Prince forever. Amelia couldn’t help but stare at him. I know what you did. She looked away sharply.

  ‘I should have been there,’ he’d said. Should have been there so that he could have taken the glory of killing the second of his brothers, apparently.

  Meg was uncharacteristically quiet, too, lost in her own thoughts. Bessie had insisted that with the Orb ready, they should focus on finding the wretched snow globe. They couldn’t waste any time, and they would have to sneak out of their rooms at night. It would be hard work: they all agreed that the magic here was harder to use at night, and they’d risk running into sluggish golems or the restless Archmage, but if they could get the snow globe, they would have a way to escape. Not that Amelia was in a hurry to use it again. What about Harold? They couldn’t leave him behind. A vivid image intruded on her thoughts, of the brave White Paladin fighting his way through blizzards and three feet of snow, maybe even with some clever plan in mind, returning to the ice palace only to find his lady
and his friends absconded…

  “Are you well, Miss Lamb?” asked a smooth voice, making Amelia jump awake. She hadn’t even heard Archalthus approach.

  “Thank you, yes, I’m…” She felt like running from the grand hall, down the stairs and out those enormous doors, into the snow and far, far away from him. “I’m…”

  “She’s ever so excited about the wedding, aren’t you, dear?” Meg prompted, “All us girls are. Couldn’t hardly sleep a wink for thinking about it, could you?”

  Amelia nodded, staring down into the dark red of her half-empty wine glass.

  “Ah, yes.” This explanation satisfied the bachelor. “I gather such occasions are a great source of excitement for ladies, and much thought goes into the business of picking out clothes and gifts.”

  Gifts. Goodness, Amelia hadn’t even thought of wedding presents. Just as well they didn’t plan on staying for the ceremony.

  “Yes,” Archalthus mused, “if your anticipation of the day is even a hundredth of that experienced by the bride-to-be, it would be no surprise if you were completely exhausted by emotion.”

  Amelia offered a feeble smile, wishing fervently that he would go away.

  “Where do you plan to honeymoon?” Meg asked him. It was strange to see her playing nicely in a situation like this. “In this world, or another?”

  “It had been my intention for us to honeymoon here, in the ice palace, but –” he broke off suddenly, eyes wide as he stared past Amelia, into the far distance.

  ‘Archalthus!’

  Amelia heard his name called for a second time, saw his golden eyes turn fierce and fiery, and she shrank back from him. Those around him ceased their own conversations, just in time to hear the voice boom out again, and for the prince to vanish in a flash of red fire, smoke rolling in his wake.

  Commander Breaker was the first of the others to move, dashing from the room and hurtling down the broad icy staircase, shouting orders to the golems who had been serving the drinks. Rose, abandoned by her prince, rushed after him in a rustle of silk skirts.