The Assassin Princess (Lamb & Castle Book 2) (28 page)

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Dawn broke bright and clear, and it appeared that the skyship had limped well clear of the burnt out node. They'd left behind the desolate rain-drenched hills, and
Sharvesh
flew high
with the morning sun at her back, out over the green patchwork of fields. There had been no sign of Prince Archalthus in the aftermath of the destruction: no strange gentlemen still roaming; no abominable creatures. One last remaining golem stood in
Sharvesh'
s cargo hold, a statue in gleaming black stone. Sir Percival surmised that this was because its connection with its twin had been severed. When at last Meg had opened the silver pocket watch she'd taken from the golem, the glass within it had remained dark, to the relief of all aboard. Meg sensed magical potential in the pocket watch still, but again the link to its others had been severed and there was no communication: Ilgrevnia and her master would never trouble this world again.

By destroying the hidden throne room and ridding the world of the Dragon Prince, Amelia and Bessie had removed the burden of fear that generations of their families had either fled from or prepared against. Neither one of them would be Queen of the Dragon Lands, but the girls had futures of their own, unchained from weighty destinies.
Sharvesh
was travelling towards Iletia so that Bessie could resume her studies at the Antwin Academy, financed by Master Greyfell, who would resume his teaching post at the Academy, and the amiable Captain Bryn had insisted on taking Amelia and her companions safely back to civilisation too. The truce between White Side and Black Side was still an uneasy one, but in the end Meg had decided that a Flying City was the best place to find a mage powerful enough to safely reverse the reduction spell on her poor snail. White Side and Black Side would part ways and put the Queens’ Contest behind them. While everyone on board
Sharvesh
seemed to be busy planning what they would do with their futures, Amelia lingered over thoughts of what she should have done differently in Ilgrevnia. She'd seen no evidence that the griffins Scarlet and Sable had escaped the doomed City before the bells tolled, and she really hadn't meant to leave poor, innocent Rose behind to suffer the same fate as the cursed prince. Meg had been unsympathetic: “She wanted to marry a dragon – let her suffer the consequences.” Disgusted by this callous dismissal, Amelia had retreated below decks to sulk. She’d fetched the satchel the griffins had given her, and taken out the snow globe again. Inside the glass, the image of the palace stood in murky darkness, and if she peered very close, she could just make out the pinprick lights of its windows. The snow globe held the only consolation for Amelia's conscience: in the artificial world, trapped now beyond the reach of the mundane,
somebody
lived. Perhaps Scarlet and Rose had somehow made it safely there before Ilgrevnia’s destruction, but that would still mean they were stranded in the artificial world… Amelia conjured a light spell – an easy gesture now, easy as breathing – and opened one of the ancient books that Scarlet had sent for her. She’d tried to read both books before, but they were mostly written in some dead language that even Percival struggled to understand. Somebody (Scarlet, Amelia thought) had scribbled annotations in the margins, and the ink looked fresh, but the handwriting was atrocious and the writer presumed the reader’s full understanding of the main text. Why had Scarlet wanted them to have this?

At the sound of footsteps, Amelia shoved the glass ball into her pocket, but the ancient book was too big to hide so easily. Amelia had refused to have dinner with the others, and now Meg stood in the doorway with a plate of cheese and an enormous jar of pickled onions under her arm. Meg at least was happier since they’d had a chance to stop off somewhere and replenish their provisions. “I brought you a little something. You must be hungry by now.”

“No thank you,” said Amelia. She
was
hungry, but the mystery of the book gnawed at her more than hunger did.

Meg noticed the book. “Ah. Just can’t resist sticking your nose in, can you?” she said. “Wherever can you have got
that
from, I wonder,” she added, wryly. “How about another magic lesson, then?”

“Why bother?” asked Amelia, still determined to sulk, but she’d missed dinner and that only put a tempting edge to the rich sharp scent of the cheese. “If the prince is gone, what’s the point in me learning any more magic?”

Meg raised her eyebrows. “
What’s the point?
You silly girl: the point is that you’ll never regret learning more magic. A good witch has the world at her fingertips.”

Amelia eyed her mother shrewdly. Master Greyfell had been keeping Bessie busy with daily lessons on anything that happened to pass their way, from the polite way to barter in this part of the country, to how to bag a pigeon for supper from the deck of a skyship. Meg kept a watchful eye on Bessie, disconcerted by the quickness of the young girl’s mind; worried that Amelia’s pace of learning was much slower, her enthusiasm for knowledge not so keen. The Queens’ Contest was over, and Amelia wondered why the truce between the former contestants should remain so strained and fragile. Before she’d even had the chance to celebrate, the fear had settled in her heart that Ilgrevnia might not have been destroyed, merely crippled and banished. Amelia and Bessie’s victory – if you could call it that – had done nothing more than buy them a brief reprieve…

“Come on, Amelia: I’ll show you how to gossip with Missus Blackbird and Mister Starling. Don’t the girls in your fairy tales all know how to talk to woodland creatures?” Meg teased.

Amelia went along with it. After Meg had given her an introduction to the secret language of birds, they practiced a simple spell for blocking an opponent’s magic. Amelia really
didn’t
see the point of that one – she could only block someone who was her equal or less in the first place – but she stayed up late that night practicing all the spells she could. Eventually, when everybody else had retired for the night, Amelia used her new cat’s eye spell to creep down to the galley in darkness.

Sharvesh
’s furniture wasn’t bolted in place like that in Meg’s snailcastletank, instead appearing to grow from her main structure like branches from a tree trunk. The skyship was elegant inside and out, but Amelia was in no mood to enjoy her surroundings – the satchel with the books had disappeared while she’d been at her magic lessons. She’d guessed that either Percival or Bessie’s Black Paladin must have taken it, and she was right: she found Master Greyfell asleep at the galley table with the books and some other papers from the satchel strewn out in front of him. Scowling, Amelia edged closer. She disliked the scarred and stern Black Paladin, and was glad she had no lessons with
him
. She couldn’t even concentrate when he watched her lessons with Meg, judging her performance – measuring her against Bessie, no doubt. She turned invisible, just in case, and slowly edged the book into her bag. Then Master Greyfell grumbled something in his sleep, and Amelia fled, still invisible.

Seeking refuge in a shadowy corner, Amelia studied the snow globe. It looked just like the Orb, so it might be used as transport between worlds. However, it was much smaller, so Amelia thought it would probably transport less… She thought the Orb had taken the entire Flying City; might the snow globe be enough for one person? Two or three, maybe? Just enough for one person to slip into the other world and carry out a daring rescue. She opened the book and looked again at one passage which Scarlet had circled. It was a spell. Amelia could read it (phonetically, at least) and the diagrams for the gestures were clearer than some of those in her own spell book. If she could get it right then she could be in the other world, rescue Scarlet and Rose, and return safely to
Sharvesh
before anybody even realised she was gone. She’d just have to pick her moment carefully.

The story concludes in

Lamb & Castle

Volume III:

The Dragon Queen

J.M. SANFORD

1: THE NEW WORLD

The Flying City of Ilgrevnia, ripped from her native world and displaced from the network of magic that had borne her aloft for centuries, fell slowly, breaking apart under her own weight as her streets burned.
The new world’s magic was all wrong: as a new sky choked with deep purple storm clouds unfurled above Ilgrevnia's rooftops, the worldshifting Orb of Helemneum shrieked in protest at it. Below, the ground was far out of sight, lost in a sea of churning silver mist, and Ilgrevnia headed with slow inevitability down into the hidden depths, where who knew what rocks she might ground herself on.

Archmage Morel, grappling awkwardly with the new world’s magic himself, still hadn’t the slightest idea what had happened. He stood in his workshop in the palace of Ilgrevnia, mumbling an endless string of prayers, charms and invocations while the floor shuddered beneath his feet and his master the dragon prince Archalthus screamed at him to save the City. Perhaps Morel could have managed it somehow in his younger days, but the elderly mage had been working far too hard. The City was a monster almost a mile wide, and in its death throes it couldn't feel the human hands on its reins. Abandoning Ilgrevnia's safety, Morel instead transported the dragon’s bride-to-be, Miss Hartwood, and her maidservant Scarlet to the workshop, knowing they'd have little chance of fending for themselves in the chaos, but he had to wonder if they'd be any safer with the furious rampaging dragon. Miss Hartwood clung to her servant, who pulled her into the comparative safety of a corner while Prince Archalthus raged and screamed incoherently. The dragon threw himself at the worldshifting Orb as if it was an enemy he could vanquish through brute force, but it was too late to undo what had been done. The Orb's restraints buckled, twisted and tore with shrill screams and growls, and then Orb and dragon went rolling towards the windows, gaining momentum as what remained of the City began to tilt. They crashed through the glass, the Orb leaping off the balcony. If it was glass it would have shattered into billions of pieces there and then, but the Orb was not made of common glass, and instead it rolled with unstoppable and momentous grandeur down Ilgrevnia's smoking and blackened Main Street, out into the silvery gloom. The brilliant blue moonfire of its light dimmed as curtains of mist folded gently around it. It slowed, shoring up against rocks, a dim and eerie glow in the dark below the Flying City.

The Orb might have survived the fall, but Ilgrevnia would not. As the brink of the City struck the hidden crags, throwing Archmage Morel into the air, he shouted a spell which made the air crackle and crystallise into something as slow-yielding as treacle. The Archmage sank slowly to the ground, waving off the books and boxes and trinkets falling slowly around him as he waded towards the two women. “Are you hurt, my dear?” he asked.

Miss Hartwood gulped the treacly air like a goldfish in a bowl, but it would do her no harm. She shook her head, mute with fear and quite unable to comprehend anything that was going on around her.

“She's fine,” said Scarlet, patting her charge's lustrous black hair. “You'll be all right, won't you, pet?”

The Archmage's air-thickening spell wore off quickly. The artificial world had no network of magic beneath its skin: no nodes or leylines.
This
world's magic came from its small artificial sun, and at night there wasn't much magic to sustain any spell for long. The air-thickening spell had protected a section of the palace, although how long that would stand without the buildings around it Morel wouldn't like to say, and it had taken up a considerable portion of his personal reserves of magic. As the snow quenched the last of the fires that had burned through Ilgrevnia's streets, Morel lit a lamp. The floor of the Archmage’s workshop – or what remained of it – tilted sharply downwards, waves of fog rolling in to cover it. The three of them picked their way carefully down, with Miss Hartwood still clinging to her protector Scarlet, and made their way towards the glow of the Orb. Their breath clouded in the cold air; fresh snow crunched under their feet. Some way from the wreckage of the City, smoke rolled in drifts away from the fallen Orb, clearing to reveal Prince Archalthus' human form lying in the snow.

“Oh!” Miss Hartwood pushed Scarlet away and ran towards her fallen prince.

Embarrassed, Prince Archalthus stood up, brushing snow from his fine clothes. Other than a severe injury to his dignity, it appeared he'd sustained nothing more than a few cuts and bruises. The snow seemed to have quenched his ire, too, even if it frustrated him that he’d been unable to maintain his dragon form for more than a few minutes.

Archmage Morel was more concerned with the Orb than with his master, and climbed up to run his hands gently over the smooth, rapidly cooling surface of the glass, inspecting it for any cracks or fractures. The Orb had not only shifted the failing Flying City from the old world to the new, but brought along several hundred tons of mud from the surrounding area with it – far more than it had ever moved before. Still, the Orb had held up to the strain, and between the dragon and the snow, it had been cushioned from any serious impact.

Miss Hartwood turned to Archalthus. “Where are we? Is this the new world?” Under the dark purple sky, the fog and snow shone white as far as the eye could see.

Prince Archalthus had intended for the new world to be his wedding gift to Miss Hartwood – she shouldn’t have seen it until it was completed in all its glory. “It should be so much more than this,” he said. “I’m so sorry to disappoint you, my dear.”

“No, no! It's beautiful as it is!” said Miss Hartwood, her ocean blue eyes shining. “I do so love the snow! Look how it sparkles!”

The prince had no answer to this. His intended bride might not be able to see anything wrong with this world, but
he
could. In the old world, his wingless human body had still resonated with the ebb and flow of the magical currents that he had once flown on so easily. The feeling of the magic of the leylines curling and swirling and eddying around him had remained a part of his life even after the curse that had trapped him in human form, taunting him in his flightlessness. But all that was gone, and the air of the new world smelled foreign to those who had magic in their veins. Strange forces blanketed this untouched landscape, deep layer after layer, so different from the old world.

Archmage Morel, however, had built the new world himself, and become relatively well-accustomed to the strangeness of its magic some time ago, “If you love the snow,” he said to Miss Hartwood, “then you'll surely love the palace, too.” He pointed it out to her with his staff: the tall spires distant but standing clear of the silver mist. Pinprick lights twinkled in the windows of the towers. “I fashioned it entirely out of ice, and I think you'll find it most exciting. Surprisingly warm, too, out of this chilly breeze.” The Archmage was most pleased to see a delighted smile on the girl’s beautiful face at the prospect of exploring an ice palace.

Prince Archalthus took his Mage gently but firmly by the elbow. “Archmage Morel,” he said, softly, “the Orb… is there any way to use it and return to the old world?”

Of course Archmage Morel had already considered this. Proud as he was of what he’d achieved in the creation of the new world, he had no desire to be trapped in it forever. He glanced at the remains of the Ilgrevnian palace standing precariously atop the rubble. The switch and the mechanism that had controlled the Orb before had been destroyed in the crash, but there was another way to activate the Orb. “There is one hope,” he said. “That is, if it wasn't destroyed in the fall…” He threw his long white beard over his shoulder and began prodding around in the snow and debris with his staff. Half the contents of his workshop had spilled out into the fog and snow; much of it had been destroyed before his eyes, first by the rampaging furious dragon and then by the disintegration of the City. He winced as he realised that some of his painstakingly created golems would doubtless have been smashed to pieces in the fall. Resilient as the stone gentlemen were, they still had their limits. And without the normal network of magic, those remaining would be standing around in the fog; useless but well-dressed statues. He'd meant to make some alterations so that they'd function in the new world, but with a 'to do' list as long as his arm, he simply hadn't gotten around to it. He must try to remember that his own personal reserves of magic would run low much sooner in the new world, too.

“We must all search for it,” he told the others. “A spherical crystal Device, about the size of an apple.” With it, they could easily return to the real world, once the Orb had been given some time to replenish its energy. He was pleased at his own foresight in designing an alternative way to activate the enormous worldshifting Orb. “A simple thing. A child could use it.” But where could it have vanished to? He closed his eyes, probing the future gently. He just needed to find the few seconds in which he saw the thing glinting in the snow and cried out ‘aha!’, or the servant Scarlet held the crystal aloft saying ‘is this it, Mister Morel?’. Just enough of a premonition to point the search party in the right direction… Instead, what Morel saw filled his heart with dread: an image of the smooth round crystal cupped in the hands of the young White Queen, as she peered curiously into it. Did the girl have the slightest idea of the power she held over them all? Glancing over her shoulder, she began to speak the spell…