by J M Sanford
Amelia took a wobbly step back from the table – trying to watch the moving scene had given her some kind of horrible seasickness and she had to steady herself against it before she could even think of what must happen next. She stumbled when the dragon roared again and the ice palace groaned and shuddered beneath her feet.
Greyfell was the first to come up with any sort of plan. “Elizabeth, Miss Lamb: keep close to Miss Spinner. You three will take the staircase on the right and get as far away as you can, before this place collapses and buries us all. Bryn: find a sword!”
Bryn’s fingers flew as he unfolded his puzzle box to the size of a large piece of luggage, searching for the hidden compartment where he’d stashed their weapons.
Meg grabbed hold of him before he could find anything remotely useful. “You can’t fight a dragon!” she shouted at Greyfell. “We keep Sharvesh out of sight for when we need her most! We can’t afford to lose her.”
“When are we going to need her more than now?” asked Bryn, dithering this way and that in hopes of suddenly discovering a window with a balcony large enough from which to launch an unfolding skyship, although he must know full well that there simply wasn’t one in the guest rooms.
“Stop panicking and find me a sword!” bellowed Greyfell.
Meanwhile, Bryn had gone to a window. “The dragon is out of the palace!” he shouted above the brewing panic. In the courtyard below, close to the main gates, the white dragon writhed and rolled in the snow, battling red-coated golems. Its long tail lashed, smashing through a row of stables – Amelia felt the impact reverberate through the palace.
“Right: everybody out,” Meg ordered, one hand each on the shoulders of Bessie and Amelia, and pushing firmly towards the staircase Greyfell had indicated. “I don’t trust these spindly towers, under the circumstances. I’ll grab Harold and the fire sprite.”
With Bessie in the lead, the whole lot of them rushed down the stairs. The only way they knew out of the palace was through the main doors, open wide but blocked by turbulent silver coils of dragon, gleaming white in the weak winter sun, as golems fought to drive the beast out. More came running, a dozen of them swarming over the dragon, their heartlights blinking in and out as the dragon crushed and tore its attackers, only for them to recover themselves a heartbeat later and begin again. The dragon flung itself against them in a furious effort to reach the prince and mage who had held him prisoner, but neither Archalthus nor Morel were anywhere to be seen. A small army of assorted ice sculptures lurched from their pedestals to join the golems in throwing themselves at the dragon, and those that weren’t vaporised before reaching their target exploded violently on contact with the gleaming scales.
“Magic,” Meg kept saying, “Never use magic on a dragon…”
Still the mage conducted the army of ice creatures from his hiding place. A huge serpent of ice wrenched itself away from the carving over the door – tearing at the structure of the palace – and struck out at the white dragon. The serpent shattered into a million pieces, glassy shards sending the watchers ducking for cover, and Stupid jigged in his cage in such agitation that Meg almost dropped him. No more enchanted warriors came forth. Amelia feared what spell the Archmage must be preparing. The dragon was beginning to falter – slower, weaker, no more earth-shaking roar as it saved its breath for the fight – and it would surely not take much to finish the beast, losing ground under the deathless onslaught of the golems, bleeding from a hundred cuts, bright hot blood splashing and steaming in the snow. With a shriek from above, the griffins joined the battle, all three of them wheeling high above the dragon’s head, darting in with claws extended, striking for the eyes, dodging flames and fangs. The dragon leapt skyward, scattering the griffins like so many pestering crows, but its wings wouldn’t hold its weight. It crashed down, shaking the earth, and rose again. Twice more the strange currents caught it and ploughed it into the snow, and each time it recovered, tried again. Soon it was diminishing in the distance, flying low, lumbering through the air on powerful but clumsy wings.
“Regeltheus!” shouted Prince Archalthus, appearing in the ruined portico of his ice palace. “Regeltheus! Come back, you coward!”
Amelia gritted her teeth. A third shout of the dragon’s name would wrench it back to the courtyard with a flash and a bang, more furious than ever. Harold held her tightly. He had no sword, but he’d sworn to defend her down to the last breath…
Then, at the last moment, Prince Archalthus seemed to think better of hauling the dragon back by its name. He stood and stared after it, though the white figure had long disappeared into the snow. “Archmage Morel!” he shouted instead. “Bring me Archmage Morel!”
The crumpled mage moaned pathetically as a pair of golems half-carried him towards the prince. He hadn’t been preparing one last killing blow against the dragon after all – he had no strength left with which to fight.
“Where will my brother go?” Archalthus demanded, heedless of the old man’s fear and suffering.
“I don’t know, I don’t know…” whispered the Archmage. “I built a world…” A world full of caverns, ravines, forests, where even the enormous white dragon could disappear.
“You predicted the future before! What will he do?”
The Archmage’s head fell forward onto his chest. Then: “He brings death!” the Archmage cried, and sucked in a deep breath. “Revenge! Revenge!”
Harold held Amelia even tighter as they both stared in horror at the raving prophet.
“Enough!” the prince ordered, white-faced with shock himself.
But the Archmage never heard him, lost in his terrible visions of the future that Archalthus had sent him to. “The monster should have been destroyed; never chained! He escaped the Circle, and he will bring death!”
17: THE HUNT RIDES OUT
They had to go after the white dragon. It was far too dangerous to leave out there, with time to recover from its confusion and its injuries; to plot its revenge. Harold had volunteered himself at once to join the party that would hunt the beast to its hiding place, and Master Greyfell had gone with him to the stables to find him a horse. And that is where a problem arose for Harold…
He’d ridden his Uncle Isaac’s donkey a few times as a young boy, but getting on and (here’s the important part) staying on a full-sized horse was harder than it looked. For that matter, he hadn’t been expecting Master Greyfell to somehow lay hands on one of the horse golems used by the stone gentlemen. With help, he climbed on, clumsy in his armour, getting tangled up in his long cloak. He felt the horsehair and muscle under his hands, knowing the core of stone that lay beneath. Then Master Greyfell had him slowly walk a circuit of the courtyard. The stoic stone horse responded to every command given it, and ignored everything else, but Harold couldn’t quite manage the same. Each minute spent in preparation felt like another mile under the dragon’s great white wings, and the beast could be half the world away by now, far too far to drag it back by its name. Harold wanted to kick his heels into the horse’s ribs and have it charge off, but he’d be no good as a dragonslayer if he fell off his mount and cracked his head open before they were even out of the gate. They had less than an hour to make a horseman out of him, and he’d better pay attention to any lessons he could get, but his pounding heart wouldn’t listen to reason.
To make matters worse, Master Greyfell was in a mood to have found fault with even the most apt pupil. “The reins are for guidance, boy, not holding on for dear life! Count yourself lucky this is no ordinary horse. Sit up straight! Do you have a backbone, or are you composed entirely of pudding?” That comment was particularly unfair, because after the long journey and its attending adventures, Harold was significantly more muscle than pudding – muscle tensed in readiness for a fight that might be many leagues away. It was hard to concentrate on sitting up straight when his belly was knotted with fear and anger and frustrated excitement. It was hard to sit up straight on a horse anyway, with the tendency to crouch over its bac
k in fear of falling off, a tendency that (according to Master Greyfell) only increased the chances of falling. You could even do a sort of roly-poly right over the horse’s shoulder, and it was for the best that Harold still had a bit of padding about him. He forced his spine straight as it would go, but didn’t loosen his grip on the reins. He could hold onto the reins for the reassurance they gave, because he’d already discovered by accident that if you shouted ‘left, Horse!’ while pulling hard right, the horse golem would bear left anyway. He’d be just fine as long as he didn’t mix up his left and right, like his brother always did.
The arrival of Harold’s mentor, bowed under the weight of a large, off-white shield, did nothing to improve Harold’s own mood. Reaching horse and rider, Sir Percival propped the shield in the snow and leaned on it. “We should have had you on a horse at the first opportunity,” he said. “A year’s worth of training wouldn’t have been enough to prepare you for this ride, I suspect. Remember that I advised you against it.”
Harold scowled and hefted the shield. He’d been allowed a spear for the hunt, and he’d seen Amelia poke a dragon with a spear before, so it probably wasn’t difficult, exactly. It just took nerve.
“Wish my wyvern was ‘ere,” Harold grumbled, slipping out of the nice way of talking that Sir Percival had been trying to teach him.
“Your wyvern? Well, it may be for the best that he isn’t here,” said the knight, making a point of enunciating the ‘h’. “I doubt he would have adapted to such a harsh climate.”
Alright, maybe. If the wyvern would’ve been as sluggish and moody as Bryn, or Sir Percival himself… “Yeah,” said Harold, sounding more like his Uncle Isaac with every word, “but then I wouldn’t need a stupid stone ‘orse, would I?”
“These horses are exceptionally well made,” said Master Greyfell. “The stone gentlemen are passably well carved, but whoever made these horses had a much better eye for the proportions and details of animals. Now, show Sir Percival what you’ve learned.”
So far, Harold had learned three or four distinct ways that a beginner might fall off his horse, even at a slow walk, but somehow he didn’t think that was what Master Greyfell meant. Blowing out a sigh, he tapped his mount’s sides with his heels, and urged it into a trot around the perimeter of the courtyard. This was as fast as he’d been able to brave so far. Sir Percival watched; Master Greyfell watched; even the great black griffin watched from a high wall, waiting for the inevitable. Still, it went well enough, until about halfway round when the horse unexpectedly made a few smart sidesteps to avoid the arrival of six gentlemen on horseback, and Harold almost fell off again.
“For goodness’ sake!” Master Greyfell’s voice rang out across the courtyard. “We should send the witch instead,” he said, as he watched Harold trot the horse back to his side. “She must surely know how to sit a horse.”
“What, our Amelia?” Harold had seen the girl ride a giant battlesnail, but never a horse.
“I was referring to Miss Spinner!” Master Greyfell snapped. “That woman is…” any number of words might have ended the sentence nicely, but he couldn’t pick just one. Judging by his blustery sigh, ‘infuriating’ might have been a good starting place.
“Yep. Our Amelia, too,” said Harold, then immediately wished he hadn’t said anything. There she was, across the courtyard, as if she too was a strange supernatural creature who could be summoned by careless use of her name. He blushed, and couldn’t stop it. She was only coming out with the other women to see the hunting party off. He’d known a few silly girls back home, and one or two of them pretty enough to get away with causing no end of trouble, but Amelia… Beautiful, mad Amelia was shaping up to be downright dangerous, worse than her mother. Out of habit he went to run a hand through his hair before remembering that he was wearing his borrowed fur hat, but he managed to straighten his back just a bit more in an effort to make himself like a proper knight, puffing out his chest to show off the blindingly white emblem of the lamb on his breastplate. It had only been returned to him an hour ago, but he’d been glad to see Miss Hartwood hadn’t got her grasping hands on that as well as Amelia’s crown.
Amelia came up to him, shy of the stone horse. “You don’t have to go,” she said, quietly.
“Yes, he does,” said Meg, close on her heels.
“This is madness!” hissed Amelia, whirling to face her mother, her fists clenched white-knuckled. “It took an Archmage to capture the dragon in the first place, and even he couldn’t stop it escaping again! How are half a dozen men going to fight it?” The six golems were all that Prince Archalthus would spare for the hunt. The remainder, aided by Master Greyfell and Sir Percival, would stay behind to defend the women. None of the golems had the fancy lightning pistols they’d used back in Ilamira, or anything like them, so they’d have to make do with what weapons they’d brought with them to the new world.
“One:” said Meg, counting off her first argument on her thumb, “the dragon’s wounded. Two: he can hardly fly here. Three: he probably sees by now that there’s nowhere for him to go, and he won’t want to be out in this infernal weather for long. ‘Sides, six golems should be enough to wear him down if they can keep him in one place. You know how it is with golems.”
Amelia sighed heavily. “How do you make such a stupid plan sound so reasonable?”
“I don’t know, dear, but judging by your recent actions, I ‘spect you’ve got the knack for it yourself.”
“And why does Harold need to go?” Amelia demanded, her face turning bright pink.
“Because he’s the White Paladin,” Meg hissed, “so if he gets the chance he might be able to talk to the White Prince, man to man, so to speak. A dragon isn’t going to listen to a rabble of no-name servants, and we want that thing on our side, or back under lock and key.”
“’He brings death!’ In case you didn’t hear.”
Meg shook her head. “Pfft. Nothing like a prophecy to make you feel helpless, and then they’re wrong half the time anyway.”
“Fine. Then I should go. If the White Prince is going to listen to anyone, then it would be the White Queen. Right? Let me go out and talk to him instead.”
Harold kept quiet. It runs in the blood, he thought. They’re both mad. Looking at Amelia, he saw the fear in her eyes despite her efforts to look fierce and stern. She wore her golden braids pinned back, and he knew she hid her conjuring rings beneath her gloves. He couldn’t bear the thought of her confronting the white dragon, not when it had half-killed the Archmage.
“You’re not chasing after that dragon, my girl,” said Meg, in a decidedly final manner. “Not after everything that’s gone on. Who knows what you’d do? Oh, and speaking of the golems…” She turned to Harold, ignoring her daughter stewing beside her, “if they turn on you, don’t fight them, just run. They can learn your technique.” She hesitated. “Lucky for you that you don’t really have any, I’d say.”
Ignoring the jibe, Harold leaned down to speak more quietly to Amelia. “I want to go. I’m your Paladin, I’m here to protect you.” He’d sworn that on more than one occasion, and what greater way to protect a lady than to go out and fight a dragon for her?
“Well then, you’d better have this,” she said, shoving a parcel of soft grey wool up towards him – the scarf she’d been knitting. “Don’t you dare freeze to death out there,” she ordered, scowling and teary-eyed at once.
Close by, the six horsemen had been waiting and watching all this without reaction, twelve heartlights ranged unmoving as a constellation. The economy of their horses’ movements alone would have given them away as stone rather than flesh and blood. When they stood, patient as eternity under their burdens of weapons, shields, grappling hooks and other supplies, they might as well have been statues. Other than that, though, it was entirely believable that their sculptor had a particular love of horses: the sensitivity with which their faces had been carved put those of their riders’ to shame, and the strange gentlemen looked uglier and les
s symmetrical than Harold had noticed before.
The white griffin walked out, saddled and carrying Commander Breaker. The griffin, unused to having a rider and apparently impatient to be off, paced and tossed its head irritably, hissing at nothing. Lucky for Harold that the horse golem didn’t startle easily, just stood there watching the bad-tempered griffin. The Commander pulled the reins tight to stop the griffin’s antics, forcing the fierce ghost-grey head back with an indignant screech. “Slow us down and we’ll leave you for dead,” he shouted at Harold, and then the griffin charged off, vast white wings pounding the air.
Master Greyfell shook his head. “I’m reliably informed that the horse will home if necessary. You need not fear becoming lost.”
“I’m not scared,” said Harold. “An’ I won’t get left behind.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Master Greyfell.
Harold watched the white griffin and its rider, envy crawling up from the part of his heart that loved what little he knew of adventuring. Why shouldn’t he get a griffin, too? He knew there were more of the beasts about, Scarlet and Sable to name just two, and probably others stabled somewhere nearby. But no, here he was, stuck with a stupid stone horse that didn’t kick its heels up or whinny or do any of the properly horsey things he’d have expected. The six golems on horseback began to file out of the gates, and Harold’s last chance to quietly back out of this adventure vanished with them. He looked up at the towers that bore the scars of claws and dragon’s fire… But he had his armour and his shield, his sword and spear. Going after the white dragon was a million times better than sitting cooped up in the palace waiting for it to return and do its worst to him and Amelia and the others.
“Good luck,” said Bessie sincerely, bringing him back from those thoughts.