by J M Sanford
Somewhere in the City a bell tolled, soon joined by others until the dolorous music of them drowned the chatter and noise of the busy streets. The boards beneath their feet began to hum loudly.
“There we go,” said Meg. “We'll be on our way in a minute or two. Don't cling onto the furniture like that, dear: there's really no need for it.”
Amelia, having grabbed hold of the arm of the couch at the first shiver of the floorboards, didn't want to let go. She certainly didn't see the harm in steadying herself in case of any sudden jolts. “Will the journey take long?” she asked, remembering the early days of her voyage in Meg’s peculiar snailcastletank, and the first rapid ascent of the skyship Storm Chaser. She didn't hold out much hope, when the world was clearly such a big place that traversing it took days, weeks, months.
“Hours,” said Meg. “Don't look so frightened, Amelia!” The bells ceased, and she smiled reassuringly. “Listen close and you might hear the machinery that runs this place.”
Amelia didn't want to do that, either. By this stage she understood that Flying Cities only stopped at what Meg called ‘nodes’ of magic, where they hovered for days or weeks while merchants swapped goods and gold. She'd hoped that the Flying Cities, being so grand and impossible, would be powered by some unimaginably high magic, so that they might just blink out of existence at one node, reappearing instantaneously at the next. She'd prayed that it would be something she could close her eyes and grit her teeth for, knowing that it would all be over soon enough. “Machinery? I had a horrible feeling it would be more soul magic.” A sickening thought: she’d seen first-hand how enormously taxing the power requirements for a skyship could be on the soul that powered it. While they’d been travelling on the Storm Chaser, she’d been sentimentally foolish enough to free the skyship’s soul, and Captain Dunnager had been forced to take its place in a hurry. Their escape from the jade temple had half killed him. Here in one of the Flying Cities, what would be worse: one gargantuan inhuman soul chained in the depths of the City, or an army of damned souls striving in unison to shift the countless tons of earth and masonry and people?
“No soul magic here,” said Meg, her expression mild. “I'll confess I don't know a lot about how a Flying City works, just that the Keystone keeps the City up in the air, and some other gubbins in the basements shunts it from one node to another.”
“And it's safe to practice magic while the City's moving, is it?” Amelia asked. Meg had been right, she couldn't feel the City moving at all, and the view out the window gave no indication of their speed. The dark clouds moved steadily on their own course, with Harold peering after them.
“Of course it is. You don't think the little scrap of magic you have is going to make any difference to something so big, do you?” Meg teased.
Amelia ignored that. “I meant this Archmage.” They'd only come to an Archmage at all because the magic they needed was beyond Meg's own abilities. Meg might be a powerful witch under the unassuming guise of a small middle-aged woman, but she had something of a tendency to wield her power in a slapdash way, whereas this spell would require sensitivity and absolute precision.
“It'll be no trouble at all,” said Meg. “A drop in the ocean. Ah, this looks like him now.”
A tall man with white hair and piercingly blue eyes came down the hall and into the parlour, his long robes swishing, hands encrusted in jewels glittering at his sides. He raised an eyebrow at the giant snail, stepping neatly around it, keeping a careful distance. “Most intriguing…” he muttered to himself, appraising his visitors. He looked shrewdly at Harold's armour, but said nothing. When he turned to Amelia, he gave her a disarming smile. “Do my eyes deceive me, or am I in the presence of the White Queen?”
Amelia had spent most of her life in seclusion, and still wasn’t used to the way men stared at her. Lost for words under the Archmage’s intensely blue gaze, she looked to Meg.
“If you're asking that question, you already know the answer to it,” said Meg to the Archmage.
“And the White… Mage?” he said, with a sour twitch of a smile as he looked down at Meg. “Or is it a White Witch? Either way, the Paladin's armour is unmistakeable,” he added, referring to Harold's breastplate with its design of a white lamb. “Although the insignia is… not in keeping with the tradition as I understand it.”
“It is what it is,” said Meg, gruffly.
“So, you too seek the lost City of Ildorria?” asked the Archmage, with a sly look.
Meg seemed genuinely puzzled. “Ildorria? Why?”
“That's where you'll find the throne room, of course. I spoke to the candidate Black Queen about the matter very recently.”
Meg shook her head. “The throne room's not at Ildorria. It's…” she stopped, looking sharply up at the Archmage. “Black Queen, did you say?”
“So she claimed.”
“And you sent her chasing off after Ildorria? Well there's a piece of luck… for us, at least. Now, getting back to the point of this visit: we have a little problem with our Warship.” She indicated Tallulah.
The Archmage just failed at stifling laughter. “The snail? Madam, are you trying to make a fool of me? If not, I'd hardly call what you have a little problem.”
“You can't reduce her?” asked Meg, cutting to the chase and apparently prepared to walk out, although Amelia couldn't guess who else they might turn to. They'd won the White Queen's crown and armour with Tallulah as their Warship, binding the snail to them for the remainder of the quest, win or lose.
“What a singular cohort you have here, young lady,” said the Archmage to Amelia, clearly much amused. He contemplated the snail again. “I can reduce it considerably, and at a very reasonable price, too. Bring it through to my workroom, then.”
~
Despite the Archmage's quick recognition of the White Queen and her Paladin, Amelia and Harold had to wait in the parlour. The rainclouds had cleared and the sky turned a pinkish shade of violet before Meg reappeared by herself, a sour look on her face. “Men's magic,” she muttered, looking into her cupped palms. “I don't like it. Fancy educations and showing off with all their squiggly words and flashy Devices…” Then she looked up as if she'd quite forgotten about the two young people she'd left waiting in the parlour. “Amelia: come here and put your hand out.”
Amelia obeyed, reluctant. She'd grown accustomed to the pair of giant snails at their proper size, and still felt an odd squeamishness at the idea of the ordinary garden snails that Tallulah now closely resembled, apart from the spikes. Amelia had ridden atop the curve of Tallulah's shell before, but didn't really want to hold the reduced snail in her bare hands.
“Hold her properly, now,” said Meg, putting the tiny snail in Amelia's hand. The shell rocked slightly, its tiny spikes prickling her palm as the snail found her balance. “Don't worry, she won't bite.”
Amelia's eyes widened, her hand frozen stiff and flat. “Do snails bite?” she whispered, shivering as the soft wet foot of the snail oozed out onto her palm, one eye stalk venturing into the air to look around, followed presently by the second.
“Not so long as you're gentle with her, she won't. I can't speak for less well-behaved snails, mind.”
Amelia nodded, gently so as not to risk upsetting Tallulah in the slightest. She had no intention of getting so close to any other snails, well-behaved or not. Meanwhile, Tallulah seemed to be taking the sudden change in the scale of things with a certain calm grace. In miniature, she looked somehow rather lovely, her shell with that faint pearl sheen and its dark spirals now so dainty.
“You are a darling little thing now, aren't you?” said Amelia softly to the snail.
“She's a bit on the delicate side like this,” Meg warned. “Do you want me to keep her safe for the time being?”
There was only one possible answer to this question. “Oh, yes please.” Amelia knew she'd never be able to look Meg in the face again if the newly fragile and miniaturised snail came to any harm.
F
rom the front of her dress Meg pulled out a pendant – an elegant silver filigree ball that opened up on the tiniest of hinges. She removed the sachet of herbs within, gently replacing it with the miniaturised snail. Then the quiet young man shepherded the three of them out onto the street, where Meg rounded on Harold the moment the Archmage's door closed.
“You!” she barked, making him flinch. “Take off that armour at once! You might as well be shouting our names and business all over the street.”
Amelia wondered why it bothered Meg so much all of a sudden, but then she remembered the look on the Archmage's face when he'd seen the armour: a look Amelia had seen on her stepmother's face from time to time. A high-ranking mage, with too little to occupy his quick mind, might easily become fond of gossip.
“But I'm the White Paladin,” Harold protested. “I've got to defend my fair lady.”
“Off!”
“We could be under attack any moment!”
“Then you can ward off the enemy with your horrible stench! You smell worse than a wet dog! Take that armour off, before I throw you over the City Wall and see if it can save you from a fall of five thousand feet.”
Amelia thought Meg's comments were somewhat uncalled for, but was relieved to see Harold unbuckling the straps of his armour. Even as light as the enchanted armour was, the extra layer contributed to a manly musk that became overwhelming after a long day's travelling.
“Why was the Archmage talking about Ildorria?” Amelia asked, keen to change the subject and save Harold any further embarrassment.
“Because he's a pompous old fool who thinks himself a lot more clever than he really is,” said Meg, and then added more quietly, “I know better, though. Yes, we're looking for a Flying City that's been lost a long time, but it's called Ilgrevnia. About five hundred years ago, someone they call the Dragon Prince murdered Ilgrevnia's ruling council, and took off with the City.”
“The Dragon Prince?”
“A terrible wicked creature; a man cursed with the greedy heart of a dragon.” Meg grinned. “Sound like anyone you know?”
Amelia's stomach knotted. Prince Archalthus. “Oh, no… We won't see him again, will we?” Last time they'd met, she'd stabbed him with a spear. She doubted he'd remember her kindly.
Meg grinned – she too remembered the last meeting between dragon and White Queen. “If he's got any sense at all, he'll run from you with his tail tucked between his legs,” she teased.
Amelia couldn't force a smile. Ever since the jade temple, she'd had nightmares of endless coils of red-gold scales that filled the room, the house, the world… leaving nowhere to run as those coils tightened around her like a noose.
~
Back at their temporary lodgings in the City, Amelia and Meg cleared a space in the bedroom to work on Amelia's magic despite her misgivings. They pushed the beds as far out of the way as they could, then rolled up the rug and stashed it in a corner. Amelia, like any young witch with little experience, gravitated towards fire spells at the best of times, and was quite capable of fireworks and conflagrations. This time, however, all her spells fizzled and sputtered pitifully. Meg, looking disappointed, urged her to keep trying, but each further failure only served to make Amelia more miserable. Danger lay ahead in the form of the dragon, and might yet snap at their heels in the form of the Black Queen. Amelia's safety and that of her companions might depend on her proficient use of magic, and all the while, the Flying City ploughed on towards their destination, arcane machinery grinding beneath the floors of the narrow townhouses.
Meg took the lesson down to the level of reading tea leaves, but Amelia couldn't even concentrate on that. “How long will it be before we reach the next node?”
“An hour or two yet,” said Meg, munching a slice of cake as she swirled her tea leaves. “Still got the jitters about flying, have you? You wait 'til we get you on a broomstick for the first time. Kill or cure.”
Amelia's stomach flipped at the very thought of it. “I don't think I want to do that, thank you.”
“Why not? You won't know how much fun it is 'til you try.” She sat back. “Look at you: it's not all that long since I saw you chucking fireballs at indestructible golems who wanted you dead, but now you can't even read tea leaves for fear of flying?” She shook her head. “You're an odd girl, Amelia.”
Amelia bridled at this. Despite her love of fairy tales and her tendency to daydream extravagantly, she'd always thought herself normal enough, at home in Springhaven. A bit of a late bloomer, perhaps, but a good girl who would someday make somebody a good wife. Meg the witch, who kept giant snails and grinned like a lioness in the face of danger, had no right to call anyone else 'odd'. “Why me?” Amelia asked, and winced at how self-pitying that sounded. “The jade temple and the gardens were prepared hundreds of years ago for the arrival of the Queen. Hundreds of years before I got there… What happened to all the other White Queens who might have taken up the quest?”
“You weren't exactly the first White Queen to spend your life in hiding,” Meg admitted, not very much to Amelia's surprise. “It's a big responsibility, being told you've to make the first move in a lethal game.”
“Yes…” Amelia looked down at the tea leaves in her cup, swishing them about inexpertly, avoiding looking Meg in the eye. “I thought you were angry with me for wanting to stay in Springhaven, but what about you? When you were a girl, shouldn't you have gone off looking for the temple, the crown, the White King to marry?” Even as she spoke, she wished she could undo the whole conversation, but the words kept coming. “You didn't want to be the White Queen either, did you? What were you doing all that time? Were you hiding too?”
Meg coughed, sounding uncomfortable and embarrassed enough with the discussion for Amelia to risk a glance up. Her mother's face had turned as pink as a sunset. “Me? Well… The thought of being a queen might have been exciting to some girls, but there was all this talk of dragons and curses flying about, and what I really wanted to do was learn a bit of practical magic and potter around the countryside. So, I ran off and found myself a husband, soon as I could.”
“You don't mean to say I could have got out of this just by marrying some boy from the village?”
“Oh, yes, and been out of the frying pan and into the fire.” Meg sighed, and took a sip of her own tea, staring out of the window at the passing clouds. “Being married to your father turned out not to be a barrel of laughs. Not that he’s a bad man,” she reassured Amelia hastily, “but I'm just not the wifely type, and never have been. By the time he realised that, it was too late, what with you already on your way.”
Amelia put aside her tea leaves, to begin the task of untwining and brushing out her long honey-blonde braids. “So, you didn't love my father?” she asked. Amelia had missed her father terribly since leaving their home in Springhaven: missed the ink and paper smell of him, and all the quiet afternoons she'd spent with him, browsing through his library.
“Your father is sweet, gentle, and dull as ditch water. I loved him, but I couldn't stay tied to one place, not for all the love in the world.”
“Not for me,” said Amelia, but the wounded look on Meg's face made her regret her comment at once.
“For you? For my beautiful baby girl, with her daddy's eyes and her hair like golden silk floss? No, Amelia, I couldn't stay for you. Only a handful of people even knew you existed, and I wanted to keep it that way ‘til you were old enough to look after yourself, so I left. I knew Jonathan and Sincerity would hide you and keep you safe. Wasn't wrong there, was I?” she demanded, defensively.
It was true, but Amelia couldn't help but feel a nasty pinching twinge of anger towards her overprotective father. If he'd ever let her have a life outside of the tower, she might have fallen in love with some nice young man and been married years ago. Then she'd never have had to worry about cursed princes and dragons and magical crowns… “Well then, why do I have to go looking for this White King? If you didn't want to marry him, why should I?”
>
“I told you before: you don't have to marry him!” Meg snapped. “But it occurred to me that if I ever have granddaughters then I don't want them to spend their lives running and hiding, so we have to do something, don't we?” She stood up, brushing dust off her skirts. “Enough. Let's see how the boys are getting along with those line charts,” she muttered to herself, bustling off down the hall. “Come along, Amelia! We must be close to the next node town by now, and we need to know if this is our stop.”
By ‘boys’, Meg meant Harold and Sir Percival, Amelia’s White Paladin and White Commander respectively, although Harold was old enough to bristle at being called ‘boy’, and what Sir Percival was underneath his full plate armour was anybody’s guess. Meg found them in the kitchen. Harold had fallen asleep curled up in the chair at the fireside, or was at least feigning sleep after another attempt by Sir Percival to give him elocution lessons. Amelia hadn't yet seen the knight's face: she still didn't know why he hid, but she'd grown rather tired of coming up with wild stories that never satisfied her curiosity.
Percival had an enormous map spread out on the kitchen table, the curling edges of the scroll weighted down with inkpots and teacups, and he beckoned the two women over to have a look at it. Amelia had never seen the likes of it, not even in her father's library: every inch of it was criss-crossed with a fine net of black ink like a spider's web, annotated in cramped writing almost too small to read.
Meg surveyed the map, hands on her hips. “This is it, then?” she said. “You've got friends in some odd places, Percival Wintergard.”