The Dragon Queen

by J M Sanford

  Meg looked up. “Just checking to see if I had any of those ginger nuts left. Getting a bit peckish… Oh well, don’t want to spoil my appetite for the big dinner, do I?” she said, with a broad guileless smile, but Bessie’s sharp young eyes were quick enough to see that the witch had palmed something before closing up her bag.

  Footsteps approached, two pairs of feet walking as one, and the two blond golems arrived to escort the guests to the dining hall. Bessie was doing her best to build a map of the palace in her head, but it was hard work, even for a girl who’d grown up in the muddled labyrinthine streets of the Flying City of Iletia. The vast dining hall they came to struck Bessie as being oddly familiar, and she realised it was a faithful replica in ice of a chamber from the Ilgrevnian palace. Her memory of it wasn’t perfect (she’d been face to face with a dragon at the time) but she thought the original stonework had been copied over arch for arch, flourish for flourish. The dais and throne in the centre of the room were missing, that was all, and in their place stood a grand highly-polished dining table, set for fifteen, with plates and silverware shining in the light of a constellation of candles running down its length, and overhead an enormous sparkling chandelier. Everyone stared at the chandelier, speculating on whether those were a thousand diamonds twinkling like stars, or (more likely) that it too was made of the ubiquitous ice. Bessie, wasting no time in admiring such opulence, quickly moved on from the chandelier and noted that the table was barer than she would have expected a royal table to be. Such a table should display artfully constructed sculptures of sugar, or more likely for this place, yet more ice. She hadn’t seen many servants about, though, and she stored that thought for later. The walls were hung with the fine tapestries Bessie had come to expect from the dragon prince’s residence, with the largest and finest of them behind the head of the dining table, depicting a red stag with golden leaves sprouting from the branches of its antlers. Still the room had an unfinished quality.

  The twin golems stood expressionless, evidently caring not a bit whether the guests were suitably impressed with the great hall. “His Highness Prince Archalthus and the esteemed Lady Hartwood will join you on the stroke of six,” said one of them, and then they left the guests alone.

  Bessie eyed the knives gleaming at the place settings. The way the silverware flashed in the candlelight, it would be nigh impossible to slip one of them unseen into her sleeve or pocket once the banquet was underway, and the table was set with such care and precision that a single missing steak knife would stand out like a missing tooth from the smile of a fairy tale princess. Bessie walked slowly around the table, her eyes skimming the cards propped at each setting, each with a title written in copperplate handwriting so elegant as to be almost illegible. She and Amelia would be sitting opposite each other halfway down the long table, flanked on either side by their respective Paladins and Commanders. Bessie was interested to note that the household staff had the impression Bryn of all people was her Black Commander. She pointed this out to him, but he was too landsick and miserable to think much of it. There was no seat for a Black Mage: Bessie had never been able to find one for herself, and she doubted Archalthus’ new generosity would stretch to providing one.

  She caught Harold looking nervously at the vast array of knives, forks and spoons at each setting, and it came as a nasty shock to Bessie when she realised she didn’t know what half those spoons were for either. She’d only been introduced to proper dinner table etiquette a couple of years ago, her first supper at the Antwin Academy. In an effort to distract herself from that embarrassing memory, she checked the rest of the place settings. The White Paladin’s place was directly across from where the Black Paladin would sit. “Follow Greyfell’s lead,” she advised Harold, surprised at herself for actually acting on her pang of sympathy. “He knows how to behave at table.” She ran a smoothing hand over her hair and stiffened her spine. If the prince would be with them in less than half an hour, she needed to stop thinking of escape for a while and start thinking of her presentation. The golems hadn’t actually mentioned Archalthus’ brothers yet, but she wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they were guests at this meal too. The Black Prince… She took a deep breath, smoothing any creases that might mar her dress. She wouldn’t marry the Black Prince, but she might use his help to win back the crown.

  “Miss Castle.” Greyfell approached her. “The crown is surrendered, the Queens’ Contest is over. I’m sure you realise that now is the time to use other skills taught to you at the Academy.”

  “Think of the status I might win if I can befriend the Red Queen,” said Bessie, bristling at the thought. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  His steely grey eyes bored into her. “Do not place yourself in unnecessary danger, Elizabeth.” And that was all he would say on the matter.

  Meanwhile, Meg was acting odd again, fiddling with a candle that she’d taken from the table. Next she picked up a small water bowl, emptying it out onto the floor under the table.

  Bessie hurried over to the witch, who was drying the small bowl off with the hem of her skirt. “Miss Spinner?” said Bessie, not so loud as to draw everybody else’s attention. “What are you doing?”

  Meg shook her head, smiling rather grimly as she sprinkled dead leaves from her pocket into the bowl, and set the stuff alight with the candle’s flame. “Soulshine,” she whispered. “Or something like it, anyway. Have a sniff and tell me I’m wrong.” The leathery leaves burned slowly, giving off curls of white smoke. By the light of this improvised lantern, a strange light flashed in Meg’s eyes, making her look quite inhuman. Bessie took a smart step out of the way as the witch strode over to the window where Percival stood looking out across the ice field. As she approached, lines of something as red as blood began to crawl across his armour in strange designs: the circles and curls that Bessie could recognise as ancient magic. It pulsed sluggishly, shining like rubies in the light of the makeshift lantern, and the ice walls close by had taken on a pinkish tinge as if suffused with blood. Percival turned around, starting visibly as he first noticed the red lines that had spread to cover almost every inch of his armour.

  “Might as well take off the helmet, Wintergard,” said Meg, in the discomforting manner of a schoolmistress who has caught somebody up to no good. “I know half the truth about you now, and you’d better tell me the other half if you want to put my mind at ease.”

  The knight braced himself against the window casing. “And what half, of what truth, do you think you know?” he said stiffly.

  “I know your soul’s bound to that armour by those fancy spells we’re looking at. Or somebody’s soul is, anyway. After submitting myself to your lectures on related subjects, I should hope it’s your own. What I don’t know is why you’d want to do such a thing.”

  Bessie couldn’t resist peering closer: there were threads of forget-me-not blue entwined with the red. Everyone in the room had forgotten what manners they had and stared at Sir Percival, holding their breath as they waited. Amelia had both hands pressed to her mouth and had turned so white that she must faint dead away any minute now.

  “A long time ago,” the knight began, “I was a young boy in —”

  “I don’t care what you were. I care what you are now, Sir Percival. You’ve been travelling with me and my daughter some time, and you owe us the truth. I could force you, but I’m asking nicely.”

  Percival nodded, resigned to his fate. He raised his gauntleted hands to deal with the fastenings, and then the helmet came off with a noise distressingly like clicking bones.

  Bessie had to admit that she’d been just as curious about Percival's appearance as Amelia had, although she never would have admitted to her own occasional flights of fancy on that subject. She was almost disappointed to see that he was decidedly human in appearance, around thirty-five years of age, with dark springy hair, slightly sweaty from the interior of the helmet. His thin face was naturally made for haughtiness just as much as his voice, and his eyes were fixe
d on Meg in challenge, glowing cold in the strange light of her lantern. When he spoke, his words had lost none of their usual metallic ring, and Bessie noted with fascination that his voice still emanated from the helm that he held tucked under his arm. “I’ll tell you precisely what I am, if you’ll permit me,” he said. “First and foremost, I am the eldest son of Lord Wintergard the Fourteenth. Secondly, I’ll confess I’m a fool…”

  Percival had been a sickly child, but ferociously determined from an early age not to let his younger brother take the lion’s share of the family’s glory. At the age of thirteen, confined to the family’s well-stocked library so that he might not risk catching a cold in the bitter winter, his attention wandered again and again to a locked and dusty cabinet. Behind the diamond panes of glass stood the ranks of his grandfather’s forbidden books, filled with arcane secrets and calling out to the curious youth. It took some doing to bribe an unscrupulous servant to acquire the key for that lock, to press the key into a cake of soap, to then persuade another servant to have a duplicate key made from that mould… but when it was done, Percival held in his hand a counterfeit key to all that forbidden knowledge. How disappointed he’d been to discover that he could read barely a word of the ancient tomes, and by then the winter was almost over and his mother talked of how he might soon take turns around the walled garden, if he liked. Nevertheless he kept the key hidden in his room. Frantically he brushed up on dead languages, and one by one the ancient tomes began to divulge their secrets. The young Percival might have become a mage, if his parents had allowed it, but they feared the dangers of it, the strain it might put on his weak heart. It might yet have been a safer path for him.

  As the cruel winter winds gave way to the soft breezes of spring, Percival refused to leave the library. Amongst the leaves of those books he’d learned of a legendary suit of armour: one that would imbue its wearer with the strength of a god. Percival made it his only goal in life to discover the whereabouts of that suit of armour and gain it for himself, by whatever means necessary…

  The flow of words that had been coming from the helm strong and candid, faltered. “Suffice to say I discovered it, after some ten or more years of searching, and if it didn’t provide me with the strength of a god, per se, it still made me more than a match for most mortal opponents.”

  The armour had been dull when he acquired it, shunned and neglected, but Percival wasted no time in donning it to test its powers. With the armour, he discovered that he needed neither food nor drink nor sleep. He could ride a horse or practice with a sword as long as he wished. He had reason to believe it would even protect him from disease. He polished the enchanted armour until it shone like the sun, and then, as you might expect, he wore it at every opportunity. He never lost at jousting, he won the favour of many noble and beautiful ladies. His mother and father were thrilled with the changes in their son; his brother grew unbearably jealous. Percival, young and overcome with the joy of his newfound strength, ignored the cost of it. The more he wore the armour, the weaker he grew without it, until he had little choice but to wear it constantly or risk terrible bouts of sickness and exhaustion. When he could no longer hide this from his family, they called in a mage, who took one look at the armour and shook his head. He warned that Percival’s soul had grown intertwined with the magic of the armour. It needed him, and he needed it. If ever he were to remove it again, he would soon die.

  Silence stretched out. Even the telling of the tale had wearied Percival. The flames of Meg’s lamp had begun to die down, and as they did so the lines of red light thinned into faint threads and then nothing at all. Meg put down the lamp, and reached up to put her hands on either side of Percival’s thin face. Without the light of the soulshine, his eyes were a light brown, and her anger had melted away. “So that’s the truth, is it?” she said. “I always had this fear that you were something undead, rotting away under all that plate metal.”

  “Well, thank you for that charming thought,” said Percival, gently taking Meg’s hands by the wrists to stop her pawing at his face. “But as you can see, I am quite as alive as anybody else here. For now.”

  “Being dead for a time never did anybody any good, so I’m just glad to see you haven’t been,” said Meg rather defensively. It appeared she was beginning to regret confronting him so publicly. His soul might be all tangled up in the magical armour but it was still with him, and that was the important thing. It was well known that those who came back from the dead, their souls departed for uncharted regions but their bodies back to roam the earth, came back changed. “Look,” said Meg, quietly. “It’ll be bad enough for me and Amelia, having to relearn even the most piddling simple spells from scratch, but this magic’s forged right into the metal, isn’t it? Which means – not to put too fine a point on it – you’re stuffed.” She sighed. “So you’re not the one who brought us here.”

  “Certainly not. Archmage Morel, on the other hand –”

  “– was ‘expecting us’,” Meg finished. “Yes, I noticed that.”

  “As the topic of my armour has been broached,” said Percival, “the ambient magic in this world may sustain it for a while, if I conserve my energy, but for how long…”

  Bessie cleared her throat, uncomfortable with the subject matter herself and doubting that anybody would say anything that would actually help the stricken knight. “You will eat something at this banquet, won’t you?” she said. “I know you don’t usually, and I beg your pardon, but I think you ought to.”

  Percival looked surprised, and though he’d met Meg’s stare strongly enough, he didn’t look Bessie in the eye when he answered her. “I… After all these years, I hadn’t really considered it. I have a delicate constitution, but it may help to stave off the inevitable.”

  “Yes, and we don’t want to risk offending our gracious host, do we?”

  “I’m a little afraid that he might plan to poison us,” said Amelia, so quietly that Bessie barely heard her.

  “I doubt it,” said Bessie, doing her best to sound confident. “It would be the height of bad manners for a host to poison his guests at his own dinner table.” Looking around the dining hall, it was clear that the denizens of the ice palace had put considerable effort into the welcoming feast, and that Prince Archalthus would not respond well to any snub of his generous hospitality. They didn’t have much time to argue about it, either. The minute hand of the clock was closing in on the appointed hour: the slice of time that had so recently been a generous wedge had narrowed rapidly to a sliver, and the dragon must be approaching his dining hall by now.

  8: QUEEN OF ROSES

  That conversation had ended not a moment too soon: the door opened, making Amelia jump guiltily, and a golem escorted Archmage Morel into the dining hall. The old man kept casting about as if he was looking for something missing. He flinched and stumbled back at the sight of Bryn, then skirted well around the edge of the room to avoid coming too close to the Argean. Belatedly he nodded an acknowledgment of the existence of the other guests, before appearing to decide that since he was in the dining hall anyway, he might as well make the best of it by taking his seat at the grand table. Meg hurried over to the Archmage and wasted no time on pleasantries, opening the conversation with “I need a word with you. One of our companions, he…” and there she had to hesitate, waiting for the golem to leave on his next errand, and not willing to say too much anyway.

  Amelia was sticking close to her mother. “He has a delicate constitution,” she supplied Percival’s own words.

  “Oh, the nervous knight?” said the Archmage, with another sly smile.

  “That’s right,” said Meg. “So I need to know what diseases there are in this world, and what precautions he might need to take against them.”

  The elderly Archmage’s smile collapsed into a look of pure horror. “None!” he cried. “I created this world in the minutest detail, to be a beauty and a treasure, fit for a Queen! Why would I unleash vile contagions here, of all places?”
<
br />   Meg remained sceptical. “Just what we’ve brought with us, then. The usual coughs, colds, and fleas.”

  “Excuse me?” said Bryn, who was hanging onto the back of a chair looking like a man about to be appallingly seasick, but had nevertheless been earwigging on their conversation from halfway across the room. “I beg your pardon?”