The Dragon Queen

by J M Sanford

  As Amelia shakily put her match to a candlewick, Harold came running from his room, his fists and jaw clenched, his eyes wild with anger and fear. He relaxed visibly upon finding Amelia safe, but “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know,” said Meg, “but I’m going to find out. Grab those knitting needles.”

  They chased after her, down the corridor, past the empty positions where two golems usually stood night and day. If the dragon prince had made up his mind to slaughter his guests, what could they do to fight him off, with no real magic at their hands?

  But when the source of the commotion came into view, there was no dragon. There was Rose Hartwood, dressed incongruously in nightdress and crown, but most of the screaming came from Bessie, held back by two impassive blond gentlemen as a third wrested a kitchen knife from her grip. Still she kicked and scratched, wishing vilest death on the Red Queen at the top of her voice. The screams and commotion had brought Master Greyfell running too, and he arrived at the scene just in time for Rose to decide it was time to bring someone more heavyweight to her aid.

  “Archalthus!” the girl screamed shrilly, and it seemed almost impossible that such a loud and hideous noise should come out of that dainty swan-like throat, “Archalthus! Archalthus!”

  A heartbeat later a flash of light half-blinded them, and smoke rolled down the corridor, the prince materialising in the midst of it, eyes wide as if he’d expected to find his bride-to-be mauled by a bear. “What is it, my beloved?” he asked as she flung herself into his arms.

  “That horrible sparrow girl came to kill me and steal my crown!” she wailed.

  Archalthus stared at her in disbelief, then at Bessie, who’d fallen silent and still as a doll. “Explain yourself.”

  “She was in my room!” Rose cried. “Hiding under my bed with a knife!”

  Master Greyfell glanced at Bessie, an entire conversation communicated in silence between them, in a matter of moments. Bessie’s guilt was painfully clear to her schoolmaster.

  “Explain yourself,” growled the prince.

  Master Greyfell cleared his throat. “Your Highness, I beg you, Miss Castle is only a child: she is my ward and my responsibility –”

  “She had a knife!” Rose cried again. “A huge sharp knife!”

  Unhelpfully, the golem who had taken the knife from Bessie held it up for the prince to see. Archalthus seized it.

  “– allow me to be punished in her stead,” Greyfell concluded hurriedly, before the prince could turn on Bessie.

  Rose’s anger turned in an instant to excitement. “Oh, yes!” She clapped her hands. “Let’s have him whipped! Daddy used to have thieves whipped. Sometimes he would let me watch, if –”

  “Be quiet!” Prince Archalthus snarled at his bride-to-be, and turned his attention back to Bessie, who flinched in spite of herself and looked at the floor. The prince’s golden eyes were hard as jewels as he stared at her. “You must be taught better manners if you are to remain here,” he growled. He held out a hand, steam curling off the skin of his palm. “First give me those rings, child.”

  At this Bessie hissed and her conjuring rings began to glow dull red, making Amelia step back in alarm at what Bessie might have in mind.

  “Miss Castle, you are in no position to fight,” Master Greyfell warned. “Accept your defeat graciously, as befits a student of the Antwin Academy.”

  Bessie spat at the prince’s feet. “Take them from me if you think you can, you –”

  In a flash of fire, coils of red-gold dragon lashed out like a nest of snakes, smashing shards of ice from the walls, chunks and splinters of black rock from the golems, who’d shielded the guests in deference to earlier orders. “What?” the dragon roared, the word almost indistinguishable at such deafening volume.

  “Miss Castle has been signed over to my care,” Greyfell insisted, increasingly desperate, “I can produce the relevant documents if you wish –”

  But the dragon roared again, rearing up, towering over them. The golems moved emotionlessly to put themselves in harm’s way, but their broken extremities and deep gouges healed too slowly, leaking blood and quicksilver down their smart red uniforms.

  “Stop!” Harold shouted at the top of his voice. “I was the one who put her up to it!”

  The dragon veered dangerously, distracted, “I beg your pardon?” he growled. “You…?”

  Harold’s right hand had gone for a sword that wasn’t there, and as he braced himself for the dragon’s strike –

  “No, it’s my fault!” Amelia shouted, her heart racing wildly. Her knitting needles weren’t going to do her any good, but she could probably phase through a wall if it was that or be dashed to pieces by an angry dragon, “I taught her a spell to get through locked doors!”

  “Punish me,” Bryn interjected, bristling to near twice his normal size, “if you must punish anybody!”

  “She couldn’t have done it without my help!”

  Even the dragon’s earth-shaking growl couldn’t quite drown out the chorus of protests, and the golems maintained their guard, ready to be smashed to gravel and dust in service of the prince’s esteemed guests. Confused and exhausted, Archalthus dropped back to human form, staggering from the exertion and falling into the strong stone arms of the nearest golem. “Stop, stop!” the prince shouted, both hands pressed to his ears, his eyes squeezed tight shut. The transformation had taken every ounce of his strength and he was breathing hard, looking rather ill. “You will return to your rooms, while I consider an appropriate punishment,” he conceded.

  “But she made my rubies all ugly and black!” Rose protested.

  The prince, his chest still heaving, looked sceptically at the crown on Rose’s head: its rubies shone as bloody amongst her jet-black hair as they had in the candlelight of the welcome feast. “Those rubies are as red and perfect as your lips, my dear,” he said, testily. Then he glared at Bessie. “You, however… You… Whatever punishment I decide, you have proved yourself untrustworthy with articles of magical power. Hand over those rings.”

  Bessie stuck out her hands, the rings still dimly glowing as she let one of the blond gentlemen slide them from her finger. She scowled at him like a gargoyle, tears running down her face.

  “What kind of punishment is that?” Rose demanded of her prince, but he ignored her.

  Apparently unmoved by what had just transpired, the blond gentleman turned next to Amelia, who took an involuntary step back, clenching her fists to protect her own conjuring rings. Not that she regretted her outburst if it had saved Bessie, but still… “I didn’t do anything wrong here,” she protested. “Yes I taught Bessie the spell, but that was ages ago and I didn’t know she would…”

  Meg stepped in. “Amelia isn't a child,” she told Prince Archalthus. “She got her pranks and tantrums out of her system a while back.”

  Amelia stared fixedly at her feet. She couldn’t bear the thought of surrendering her conjuring rings, leaving herself utterly helpless, and what Meg said was true (she hoped) but her tantrums hadn't been so long ago as her mother implied.

  “She’s been nothing but friendly to your good lady ever since we got here,” said Meg. “Handed over the crown without a fight, didn’t she?”

  The prince, beginning to recover his composure if not his strength, nodded. “Very well. Keep your rings, witch. For now.”

  Two blond golems marched Bessie back to the guest chambers, and in the aftermath of the excitement, Amelia and the others made their way back there too.

  “Well,” said Meg, flopping back into the armchair. “You can’t fault that girl’s nerve, can you?”

  “Who, Bessie?” Amelia couldn’t sit and relax, instead pacing up and down the length of the parlour.

  “Fighting those golems like a little wildcat. Although where she planned to go with the crown once she had it, I can’t imagine.”

  Staring into space, Amelia chewed her thumbnail, the many-coloured flash of jewels on her knuckles catching her eye. �
�They took her conjuring rings.”

  “Yes, dear. I was there.”

  “Do you think she’ll ever get them back?” Amelia could hardly blame Prince Archalthus for taking conjuring rings away from the guest who had been sneaking invisibly about his palace in the middle of the night with a big knife, but she knew she would feel naked and defenceless without her own set.

  “Would you let her have them back?”

  Amelia continued to pace. “I’m going to see if she’s all right.”

  She knocked timidly on the door to Bessie’s room, and when she got no answer, a host of terrible possibilities flocked through her brain. Not least amongst them, the idea that Bessie had slipped out to pick up her plan where she’d been forced to leave off before…

  “Bessie?” she whispered, and knocked again, louder, “Bessie?”

  “Go away!” shouted Bessie from within, in the wild way of someone who still hasn’t got their crying under control.

  “Please can I come in?”

  “No!”

  Amelia pushed the door open anyway. With the two guards standing again at the entrance to the guest chambers, there was no need to lock the miscreant in her room.

  Bessie sat cross-legged on the bed, picking at her fingernails, her face red and shiny wet from crying. As Amelia took a tentative step towards her, Bessie stopped her with a glare, her dark eyes red-rimmed and her eyelashes glittering with tears. “Go away! You’re all idiots: you could have got yourselves killed trying to stick up for me like that! Don’t give me that look! I wish they had whipped me, or tortured me, or whatever! I’d rather have pins stuck under my fingernails than be treated like a stupid helpless child!” She seemed to have run out of steam temporarily, and started pulling tufts out of the silky fur of the bedcover.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, remember where you are and be careful what you wish for!” Prince Archalthus had left the scene looking suspicious and unmollified; heavy punishment might yet await the culprit. Amelia took another step closer. “Were you really going to kill Rose?” she whispered.

  “Of course I was! The only reason I didn’t is that you gave me a shoddy invisibility spell, and she saw me!”

  Amelia was taken aback. “You mean your spell went wrong too?”

  Despite her tears, Bessie was ever alert and instantly suspicious. “What do you mean, ‘too’?” she said.

  “Um… just, I…” After what had just happened, Amelia didn’t know why she was hesitating to confess her own experience with the rotten magic here, except that it made her miserable to recall that encounter with Archmage Morel and the golems. She perched on the edge of the bed, looking down at her hands in her lap. “I sloped off the other night to practice some spells in secret, but I got tired much sooner than I thought I would. Just doing light spells, nothing special, but then I had to hide from some of those awful golems, and… I couldn’t. And I’d got so good at being invisible… Do you think that’s more than a coincidence? Do you think maybe Archmage Morel has put some kind of limit on the magic here? Like when your father says you mustn’t go out on the roof after sundown. Something like that.”

  “You can’t put a curfew on magic,” said Bessie, wiping her nose on the handkerchief Amelia offered. “Ugh. Thank you. Do you remember what the Archmage said about the magic here? When Sir Percival was grilling him about it, the day we arrived? You might not be so far off with your idea of a curfew after all. I wish I could remember more of what he said…” Even with tears still wet on her cheeks, her face had taken on a more familiar serious cast. “Oh, and another thing: when I was hiding under Rose’s bed, there was this mechanical spider thing, big as my fist and with an eye on its back, a real eye that blinked and everything. Look, it bit me,” she showed Amelia the two dots of dried blood on her hand. “It must have been some sort of spying device, and it got away from me.” She stopped to think, screwing up her face in concentration. “But now I’m not sure it went to get help, considering when the golems turned up. I think it’s more likely they heard Rose screaming.” Everyone in the palace had probably heard Rose screaming. Bessie was staring intently at the two dots of blood. “I don’t think it was poisonous or anything like that. Unless that’s what’s making me cry like a baby… Anyway, if it’s a spying device, it won’t be just the one. We need to watch out for them next time we go after the crown.”

  Amelia drew up her knees so that her feet and the hem of her skirt were off the floor. Yes, she would certainly be watching out for fist-sized mechanical spiders from now on. “Next time?”

  Bessie sighed. “Well, next time you go after the crown, I suppose.” She flexed her bare fingers. “I’m not going to be much use now, am I? At this rate, I’ll never even graduate, let alone become Queen of the Dragon Lands.”

  “Oh, don’t say that. I’m sure if you…” Amelia hesitated, wishing she hadn’t started a sentence she had no idea how to end. “I feel awful,” she said instead.

  “You feel awful? You’re not the one who just made a perfect fool of herself in front of everyone.”

  “Please don’t feel bad. It’s all my fault, really.”

  Bessie blew her nose. “Don’t be stupid. I brought it on myself. Panicked like a bloody idiot.”

  “No, it’s…” Amelia dropped her gaze to her hands again. “I’m the idiot. It’s my fault we’re here,” she confessed. “You were right. I found a spell to travel by the snow globe, but it brought the whole skyship with it instead of just me.”

  Bessie stared at Amelia as if she’d just peeled off her face to reveal that she was a hideous snake monster. “The snow globe? The one the griffins gave you? I told you to get rid of that thing!” she shouted.

  Amelia cringed. “But I thought –”

  “You didn’t think at all, or you would have at least talked to one of the grownups before you tried out a Device when you didn’t even know what it was!” Bessie lurched off the bed and yanked open the door, turning only to shoot Amelia one last poisonous stare. “I knew you were hiding something! You wait ‘til the others hear about this!”

  15: ALONE IN THE PALACE OF THE RED QUEEN

  “I knew it!” Meg echoed Bessie’s cry of betrayal. “I just didn’t want to believe it… All we’ve been through and you haven’t learned a thing! What were you thinking?” she demanded. “Running off a spell you found in some old book given to you by some strange griffin? It could have taken us anywhere, to any world! We could have been stranded in a world with no magic at all. Count yourself lucky it only delivered us to the dragon’s doorstep, or we might all be dead by now!”

  Amelia had shrunk in on herself as small as she possibly could while still standing: spine and shoulders hunched inwards, hands knotted tight together, head down as she stared at the toes of her boots. She was glad that Greyfell had taken Bessie out of the room, but Percival and Harold had wanted to know what was going on. For the first time in her life, Amelia was trying hard not to turn invisible involuntarily and risk angering Meg further. “It was only a little snow globe. I thought it would only take a couple of people… So it was only me I was risking anyway,” she said stubbornly, although she barely dared raise her eyes to meet Meg’s.

  “But using it aboard a skyship in flight? If it had transported only you, then you would have fallen thousands of feet! Didn’t you think of that?”

  Amelia felt her face burning with shame. Of course she hadn’t thought of that. She never did think of things like that. She must be the worst rescuer in two worlds. “It was only a little snow globe,” she mumbled again.

  Sir Percival had been watching from the sidelines, his expression hidden by his helmet, his body rigid and still. “Even in the smallest of Devices, stored magic can be highly concentrated, dangerous beyond imagining,” he said stiffly. “You could have been killed. We all could have been killed.” And it was true, if the circumstances had been just slightly different: a more typical skyship unable to navigate the strange new skies, or a skysailor less able than Captain Bryn…
Tears pricked at Amelia’s eyes as she remembered that although they’d survived the first danger of the crash, and might still fight Prince Archalthus and his men, she’d all but destroyed Percival’s only protection against everything. She’d thought his armour was… Oh! everything she’d ever thought was wrong! The tears burst through.

  “You can stop up that nonsense!” Meg shouted. “I can’t take you anywhere! It’s that business with the Storm Chaser all over again! Did you really not learn anything from that? What’s Bryn going to make of this? You do know Captain Dunnager wanted to kick us off the Storm Chaser at first sign of land, after your stunt with the soulchamber there? Until I talked him round and offered to replace the lost soul with one twice its worth.”

  Amelia hadn’t known that – not all of it – and it certainly didn’t make her feel any better about their current predicament. Stranded in this horrible artificial world, she knew they had nothing to offer Sharvesh’s captain in terms of compensation.

  “Right,” said Meg, snapping her fingers. “What else have you been hiding from me?”

  “I was only trying to do the right thing!” Amelia shouted. “You know, rescue the poor girl we’d left stranded in this awful place? And if you weren’t such a mean old hag then perhaps I wouldn’t have been so scared to tell you when I’d messed up!” She stormed for the door – any door – but Harold grabbed her by the arm.

  “Wait,” he said, holding her firmly in place. “Don’t –”

  “Leave me alone!” she howled, pushing him away, stamping on his foot when he didn’t let her go at once.

  “Ow! Amelia! Stop here a minute –”

  “No!” Managing to wrestle herself out of his grip, she charged for the door, ghosting right through it with barely a thought. She was invisible, quite by instinct, but the twin guards both twitched round to look in her direction. Amelia held her breath…