Lily and the Traitors` Spell

by Webb, Holly

  ‘Is that what I look like?’ Argent muttered. ‘Except not that ugly black, obviously.’

  ‘Can a water dragon still breathe fire, do we think?’ Henrietta asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

  Lily glanced down at the swaying mass of people below them. ‘I should think it can do anything. It must be made of so much magic. Look how many people there are joined into the spell.’ She frowned at the barges, the dancing children, and their parents watching behind. ‘Look... It’s even catching them, the magicians.’ She could see Jonathan Dysart, alone at the front of the barge, spinning in a slow pirouette, his face tipped up to the sky. ‘They can’t have meant for that to happen. If their magic goes into the spell, it’ll make the dragon even stronger,’ Lily murmured anxiously. ‘Maybe Georgie’s stronger than they thought she would be.’

  ‘Your mother put everything she could into her,’ Henrietta agreed grimly. ‘She didn’t hold anything back. And now the spell’s taken over everything. That creature’s the size of a house. Lots of houses...’

  ‘It doesn’t have hundreds of years of experience with those wings though,’ Argent said, spiralling down closer to the black dragon. ‘I can still outfly it.’

  ‘I don’t think it will care about that,’ Lily said slowly, as the black dragon opened out its huge, bat-like wings and began to swish them through the air, gaining height incredibly quickly. ‘They don’t want a flying competition. They just want to destroy the barge. They’re going to dive on it!’

  ‘Hold on,’ Argent roared, soaring up into the air, underneath the black dragon. The huge creature pulled out of its dive, shooting past them sideways, and as it went by it glared at Lily with sulky, reddish eyes. She could see Georgie, perched tiny and fragile on its back, and she was sure, as they shot by, that her sister was staring out at her in panic.

  ‘It’s finished with her,’ Lily whispered. ‘She’s used up.’ But her words were whirled away on the wind as Argent flapped fiercely after the black dragon.

  ‘It’s turning!’ Henrietta howled. ‘It’s coming after us!’

  She was right. The black dragon seemed to have worked out that it would have to get rid of Lily and Argent to attack the barge. It surged towards them, night-black wings tearing at the sky, and Georgie clinging white-faced around its neck.

  ‘Now it’s used up all her magic, it isn’t bothered about Georgie any more!’ Lily screamed to Argent. ‘It doesn’t care if she falls off. We might have to catch her.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’ Henrietta growled. ‘He has to hold onto us – and catch her too?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Argent agreed in a muttery growl, somehow standing on his back legs in the air, and flailing his claws at the larger dragon. But his claws only skidded away, as if the black creature was armour-plated, and it swung its massive tail around, hitting Argent broadside and sending them tumbling over and over towards the water.

  Lily dug her nails into the cracks between his scales and closed her eyes, frantically mouthing a spell that she was making up on the spot, a stupid nonsense of a spell about towels and flatirons and fires and tea that was meant to stop them all drowning. She could feel Henrietta joining in, sending her images of dry fur toasting in the sun, and hot buttered toast, and Great-Aunt Arabel’s waterproof raincloak. Lily wove them together in the rushing wind, trying to build a bubble of magic that that would keep them all out of the water.

  ‘Lily, stop it. All I can smell is tea and toast, and it does not help!’ Argent howled, pulling out of his dive with his silvery belly skimming the water. Lily wasn’t sure if he had done it by himself or if her spell had helped at all.

  Still, the sharpness of Argent’s talons had scared the dark dragon away, and they had a moment’s breathing space while it circled thoughtfully around.

  ‘What do we do?’ Lily screamed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Argent growled back angrily. ‘The spell that made it is so strong – it’s enormous, and I don’t think it’s even worked out that it can flame yet.’

  ‘Let’s not tell it!’ Henrietta wailed.

  Lily shuddered. She couldn’t imagine the flames that a dragon that size could produce. It could simply burn the queen’s barge. ‘I know it’s big,’ she shouted. ‘But you can fly better, like you said. Can’t we trick it somehow? Can we tempt it to fly along the surface of the water and make it sink, or something like that?’

  ‘It can probably swim,’ Argent muttered bitterly. ‘But it is worth a try, I suppose.’ He ducked down low, skimming over the surface of the river again, diving close to the barge in what looked cleverly like a protective loop. They were so low to the water that Lily was sure she could trail her fingertips in it.

  On the barge, the magician children were still dancing, but they were staggering, and several of them had already fallen. Queen Sophia had collapsed half in, half out of her chair. Lily couldn’t even see if she was alive. The rest of the procession of boats had come in range of the spell by now, and they were floating unmanned, their crews dancing and dipping in a strange enchanted hornpipe. As Lily watched, the royal barge, where the rest of the court were gathered, foundered slowly on the muddy bank, and started to tip sideways into the barge of magicians.

  ‘Were they part of the spell?’ Lily yelled, leaning down sideways and trying to see. ‘Look, their barge is going under! If they haven’t broken free from the spell, they’ll drown!’

  ‘Good riddance. I can’t save them and the queen, Lily, who do you want?’ Argent snarled, turning his head to watch the black dragon, making sure it was following him down close to the surface.

  Lily twisted round, glancing anxiously between the black dragon and the barges. Ladies-in-waiting were starting to slide into the water, still trying to dance. Lily caught her breath as she saw the old queen, the Dowager who so hated magic, waltz delicately into the water, her stiff silk skirts buoying her up for a moment before she began to sink.

  ‘It isn’t deep,’ Lily murmured. ‘They’re nearly at the bank, if only they’d wake up!’

  ‘Help me, Lily!’ Argent gasped. He jolted suddenly, almost shaking Lily loose, his wings stalling in mid-air.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Lily screamed, clutching frantically at his scales.

  He shook his massive head. ‘I don’t know. Ah! A message...from your father.’

  A surge of magic shivered through Lily’s fingers where they were pressed into his scales, and she heard the message too. A faint voice, speaking through their ancient family connection to the dragons.

  Argent! Lily! The spell! Rose is scrying and we can see the creature, I can see him! He’s Georgie’s magic. Remember, we pulled away part of the spell!

  And after him a sweeter, older voice as Rose joined in. The loose thread! Find the loose thread!

  Lily turned round to stare at the black dragon, close behind them now. A loose thread, where they had yanked the stitching out of Georgie’s magic... Really? The dragon looked horribly whole.

  ‘He must have a weak spot,’ Argent roared. ‘And let us hope he does not know where it is!’ The knowledge seemed to have given him a new strength, and he doubled back on himself in a sudden swift turn that took the black dragon unawares. Argent came clawing and spitting and flaming up underneath him, trailing his tail in the water as he dragged at the dark creature above.

  ‘There! There! It’s there!’ Henrietta was dancing up and down with excitement, so much so that Lily had to clutch her collar to stop her falling off. ‘Under the wing, look! A hole! I can see it!’

  Lily leaned out to the side, peering up under the huge creature to see. It seemed so solid, even though she knew it had been made only out of mud and spells. Its wings cracked and thundered above her, and its long neck coiled down, bringing its snaky, wedge-shaped head horribly close. Its eyes burned, and wisps of greenish-black smoke were starting to seep between its jaws
.

  Then Argent screamed in triumphant rage and lashed his claws at the black dragon’s side, scoring down underneath the leathery wing and pulling.

  Lily gasped at the sudden stench of raw, angry magic that came tumbling out as the black dragon seemed to suddenly deflate. It sagged like the broken hot air balloon that Daniel had shown them once, caught in the trees in the park. The great black creature folded in on itself and broke apart, just so many scraps of silk.

  ‘Georgie! Catch her!’ Lily screamed.

  But Argent let out a great, laughing, triumphant roar. ‘Look, Lily! We don’t need to catch her.’

  Lily stared up into the sky, watching the ragged pieces of black silk flutter down and float upon the oily water.

  Floating down among them was a girl, a girl that Lily knew was her sister, although she looked so different. Her hair was golden, instead of sickly white, and she was wrapped in a ragged black silk cloak that fluttered around her, bearing her up against the air. And she was smiling, smiling as she stepped down out of the sky onto the dragon’s back, and crouched to put her arms around her little sister.

  ‘Has it gone?’ Lily gasped hopefully, and Georgie stretched out her arms, flicking her fingertips and grinning.

  ‘All gone. It’s only me. No black thread, Lily. No black thread.’

  The bell above the door jingled, and a white-haired gentleman in a lavishly embroidered waistcoat hurried in from a room behind the counter. His hair had fluffed up like a dandelion clock, and it was sparkling slightly, just a faint green shimmer.

  ‘Lily! Sweetheart, you didn’t tell me you were coming!’ He glanced behind him a little anxiously, back into the storeroom behind the shop.

  ‘Rose sent me with a list.’ Lily pulled it out of her cloak pocket. ‘She says we need all this, she’s doing some special spell for the princess – the queen, I mean.’ She still found it difficult to remember. They had spent months living at the theatre with Princess Jane, with her mending their dresses, and fussing because Lily had gone out without a hat, or lost one of her gloves. It was tricky to think of her as the queen now, even though it was a year since the jubilee, and the great fight over the river.

  Argent had set Georgie and Lily down on the barge where the children had been dancing round the queen, and they had tried to save as many as they could. But these children had grown up with the spells inside them, weaving in and out of their bones and blood. When the spells had taken over, they had given themselves up to the magic, and only a few had survived the dance. The girls had searched frantically among the little piles, but the brightly coloured tunics hid wasted, withered children, all their life used up.

  ‘Why didn’t this happen to you?’ Lily whispered to her sister, her tears falling onto a small girl’s white cheek.

  Georgie wiped the tears away and closed the child’s mouth, stroking her hair so it fell prettily around her thin, white face. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because all their strength came into me. And I was riding the dragon once the spell grew stronger, I suppose. I didn’t keep on dancing. That’s what happened, isn’t it? They just went on and on until they wore out.’ She glanced behind her at the three children they had found alive, now wrapped in the black scraps of silken dragon-fabric, with Henrietta watching over them. ‘I hope those three will be all right. They must have held back against the spells, somehow.’

  ‘What about her?’ Lily asked, nodding towards the throne, where Queen Sophia lay slumped. ‘The dragon didn’t sink the barge, and that was how she was meant to die. But she was in the middle of the spell, right at the heart of the dance, and she was ill before...’

  She took Georgie’s hand, and they walked towards the old lady half falling from the golden chair, the delicate tiara twisted in her white hair. They knelt down in front of her, and Lily felt more tears pressing behind her eyes. They had defeated the dragon, and Georgie was free, but they hadn’t won. Sadly, she touched the pale hand, with some idea of sitting her upright. It seemed so undignified for her to be slumped like that. And then the old lady sighed and opened her eyes.

  ‘You aren’t dead!’ Lily yelped, and the queen almost smiled.

  ‘Not yet,’ she whispered thinly. ‘That music... Has it gone?’

  ‘It was a spell,’ Lily told her, twisting her fingers together miserably. ‘A plot. We stopped it, but a lot of people are dead.’

  The queen struggled upright, her hand on Lily’s shoulder, and looked around the pretty piles of children and then out across the water. The other barges were back under control now, and the crews were rescuing people from the water. As the queen stood up, a ragged cheer floated across the water, and the crowds on the banks of the river began to wave their hats and clap.

  The queen looked thoughtfully down at Lily, her eyes blue and bright and hard. ‘You’re magicians too, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lily swallowed. She saw no point in trying to hide. And beside her Georgie nodded proudly.

  ‘Good. Can you make my voice heard across to the banks of the river?’

  Lily blinked, and nodded, summoning up the dregs of her magic, and pouring them into the heavy diamond ring on the queen’s right hand. ‘Hold it up to the light,’ she murmured. ‘And speak towards it.’ The stone glittered as the sunlight caught it, sending rainbow streaks across the silken water of the river.

  The queen nodded, and drew herself up proudly, although Lily could feel that she was shaking and exhausted. ‘My dear friends,’ she began. ‘This was a day to celebrate, and it has been cruelly stolen from us. I ask you to be calm, and to be brave. Look after each other. Go home, and try not to be afraid. Do not let anyone tell you to cast blame, or take revenge.’ She looked down at Lily and Georgie again. ‘Be grateful to these brave children, and feel only pity for these other little ones, whose lives have been stolen for some dreadful purpose. All will be known, in good time. For now I beg you, if you love me, to do as I ask.’

  Murmuring voices shivered back to them across the water, and Lily could see that the crowds were nodding and whispering to each other, picking up their fallen belongings and starting to look towards the roads.

  ‘They’re going,’ she murmured to the queen, and then she felt her shudder, and she wrapped her arm around the old woman’s waist. Quickly, she drew the magic out of the ring, so that the queen’s sigh of pain would not be broadcast over the water. ‘Can you get back to the palace?’ she asked. ‘We could take you – our dragon could, he would love it, but it’s not a comfortable sort of journey.’

  ‘The barge is coming,’ Georgie said, ‘that big golden one.’

  ‘Good,’ the old queen murmured. ‘You girls will come back with me. I want to talk to you.’

  Lily nodded, and stared up at the dark figure high in the sky. Argent was floating on the thermals, recovering his strength. We had better bring the princess to her, she told him silently. And Father too. He can explain the plot better than we can, don’t you think?

  She felt Argent laughing, far above. I will go now, Lily. Are you sure they will want me in that pretty palace?

  ‘Can the dragon land in the palace gardens, Your Majesty?’ she asked, and felt the old lady tense.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said, her voice strictly controlled. ‘We will be most glad to receive him.’

  When she had discovered that her younger sister was alive, after all these years, Queen Sophia had abdicated almost at once. She had been terribly ill for so long, she had explained, and she was exhausted. She had wished to abdicate before, but there had been no one to rule after her. Since she had no children, Queen Sophia’s heir would naturally have been her sister, Princess Lucasta. But Lucasta had no interest in ruling, and spent most of her time travelling abroad.

  ‘Whenever she does come back, we argue,’ Queen Sophia had explained wearily to Princess Jane as they stared out across the palace gardens, watching
the silvery dragon stretched across the bank of the lake. ‘I try to get her to come with me to meetings with my advisors, or a foreign ambassador, and she refuses, and then we fight. She hates the thought of being queen.’ The tired old woman looked hopefully sideways at her sister, and Princess Jane sighed, and nodded.

  ‘Someone has to, after all,’ she said to Lily and Georgie, as they watched her wander around her old suite of rooms, stroking the little china ornaments on the mantelpiece and running a finger over the face of a tiny, rather battered china doll. ‘I shall dissolve the Decree, and bring magic back to our country. Perhaps Rose will consent to be one of my advisors, again. She was my protector once, did I ever tell you that?’ She sighed. ‘I expect I shall need her. Not everyone will want the magicians here again.’

  It had been surprisingly peaceful, though, for such a great change. It had helped, of course, that the Dowager Queen Adelaide had succumbed to pneumonia after her near-drowning. The violence and cruelty of the Queen’s Men had made so many people nostalgic for the old times, and without Queen Adelaide’s fury, most of the opposition to magic seemed to ebb away.

  Now, magic was a part of court life, and it appeared here and there in the streets, like a surprising secret. On her way to her father’s shop, Lily had seen a small boy crying over a kite stuck in a tree. It had taken only a moment to send it swooping back to him, its torn tail now whole again, and decorated with small, twittering birds. It was the kind of silly, pretty magic that she had always longed to do.

  Lily blinked, and scanned her list again. ‘Anyway, I need quite a lot of things. Some very grand person from Talis or somewhere is coming to the palace, and Queen Jane wants them to see that we use magic again now. But nothing too obvious, she says she doesn’t want anything flashy. Rose says she’s fussing, but then she says that she always did, even when she was a little girl. She liked things just so. We’re going to cast the most wonderful spell, Rose explained it all to me over breakfast. Tasteful, but grand, she says. It’ll be perfect. So please can I have all this?’