The Assassin Princess (Lamb & Castle Book 2) (27 page)

As darkness fell across the moor, the gorse made a black thicket of thorns, almost impassable. Bessie resisted the temptation to stop and look back at the black figure of the Flying City overhead. It would do her no good. Instead she headed determinedly for the dark figure of the ship in the distance, the unmistakeable silhouette of masts and sails against the indigo sky, miles from the ocean. Panting for breath, Bessie staggered and stumbled onward, through the tangles and thorns that scratched her shins and snared her unwary feet. She'd tried at first to blast a clear course through with fireballs, but they'd only fizzled in the wet vegetation, leaving a trail of smouldering wilted greenery in her wake. In what she hoped was judicious use of the dregs of her magical reserves, she cast a spell that sent bright red stars dancing and glittering above her head: the well-practised signal of an Antwin girl in distress. The Masters and Mistresses of the Academy said there was no shame in using the distress spell when out of one's depth, although the girls all agreed there was a
certain
degree of shame in having to be rescued. But Bessie needed that skyship to see her and come closer – she was afraid she'd never make it through the thorns before the clock struck seven. Up in the City above, she'd been counting in her head, trying to keep track of the time they had left, but the long fall had put any thought of numbers entirely out of her head. She couldn't stop thinking about it: how she'd panicked and slashed at the attacking griffin, thinking that she'd only fall a couple of feet back onto the pathway, and by the time she realised she'd been dropped over the edge, she'd barely had time to tear the catsfoot charm… She glanced up to check her distress spell, only to find that it had drifted some way behind her. Bessie spat and swore – she wasn't doing it right! But somebody had seen her signal. A hill stood up, and turned its head this way and that, sniffing the air. Gargantuan footsteps shook the earth as it began to move ponderously towards Bessie, and she cringed in spite of herself. On the brink of exhaustion, she had no magic left for defence, and her knife would be less than a pinprick to the giant. The giant put down its great hands and walked across the moor with its head low to the ground, like a dog following a scent. It passed Bessie by, seeming not to even see her, intent on something much more interesting. Again, Bessie had to resist the temptation to stop and watch: both the giant and the glittering cloud of red stars were heading for what she could only guess was the centre of the local node. The bright seeds of lamb's love swarmed like fireflies after them. Bessie hadn't heard the bells of the City clocks overhead, but it was beginning…

She turned, driving herself harder in the opposite direction, towards the distant masts. Was it her imagination, or had the skyship lifted enough to drift closer? A moment of watching it confirmed the truth, as the vessel loomed close, only a few feet above head height.

“Who goes there?” shouted a voice from the deck of the skyship, and Bessie pulled up sharp. She didn't know that voice: it had a strange metallic ring to it. In the encroaching dark, had she mistaken some enemy vessel for
Sharvesh
? She drew her knife. Of course, if the enemy was armed with bows or magic then she was a sitting target, out in the open – she hadn't yet mastered the simplest shielding spell, but she might have to draw whatever strength she could and make a last ditch effort… Somebody moved on deck, and she could just about make out a dark figure, heavily armoured. “Harold!” he called to one of his companions, “what do you see?”

“It's just a girl,” a young man’s voice answered from the crow’s nest.

Bessie drew herself up to her full height despite her exhaustion. “I am Elizabeth Castle of the Antwin Academy!”
A little more than 'just a girl', thank you very much…

“Miss Castle!” a third voice rang out, and this one she knew at once: Master Greyfell. He threw a rope ladder over the side at once, and he and two of the White Queen's men helped Bessie aboard while her legs shook so badly she could hardly hold her own weight.

“What's going on here?” A woman had appeared on deck: short and broad with curly fair hair, illuminated by the flames of an animated fireball, whose light gleamed blue and purple off her spectacles and her many rings and bangles.

“You're the witch,” Bessie guessed. “The White Mage?”

“The same. And you're the Black Queen, I know, dear.” The witch had none of her fierceness about her now. “Where’s Amelia? Is she far behind you? I can't get a scrap of sense out of this stupid creature, the state he's in…” she indicated the dancing fire sprite with a wave of her bejewelled hand. “Here, you're shivering; let's get you a cup of tea and a blanket.”

Bessie brushed her off. “There's no time for that.” She had to warn them of the danger… she recounted her tale as briefly as she could, ending with her fall from the Walls of Ilgrevnia.

“What? So Amelia's still up there?” said the witch, fear plain in her eyes.

“I'm so sorry, ma'am, I was going to give her the other one of my catsfoot charms but I –”

“You left her behind!” Harold shouted, red-faced.

“
I fell!
” Bessie screamed at him, her voice cracking as tears sprang to her eyes. A thousand feet straight down, and she'd been lucky to have the catsfoot charm in her other hand.

Though the White Paladin was the kind of boy who’d been raised never to hit a girl, Bryn was between the two of them in an instant. “Never fear, Miss Castle: we will rescue Miss Lamb,” he assured her.

“It’s too late for that!” Bessie swiped at her tear-blurry eyes. “The node's going to burn out and I think it's already started!”
Sharvesh
must be able to feel it, surely, and either the peculiar skyship had moved to rescue Bessie, or was under the same spell of attraction that drew the other magical beings to their destruction. The girls had dallied too long talking to those treacherous griffins, and now there was nothing Bessie could think of that might save Amelia. She turned to Greyfell, who must surely know what to do…

“No skyship could make it to Ilgrevnia and be safely away in such a short space of time,” he told her.
Sharvesh
might well be one of the best and fastest skyships in the world, but nothing at all that ran on magic would survive for long once the node burnt out. Greyfell turned to the captain. “Bryn,
Sharvesh
must get as far away from here as she can.”

“Wait!” shouted the witch, her face white. “You can set me down right here if you plan on running away!”

“Madam,” said Greyfell, uncharacteristically gentle, “you will accomplish nothing by dying here. There is nothing –”

“I don’t plan on dying yet,” said the witch, fiercely. She bustled across the deck and returned a moment later with a large and battered old bag slung over her shoulder. She paused, her breathing ragged with nerves, to look the knight in full armour up and down, eyeing the gleaming plate from helm to sabatons. “Perce, can you do without magic? I've never known for sure…”

A second's hesitation betrayed the knight's fears even though his expression was hidden. “I will do my duty for my Queen,” he said, bowing stiffly, but even in her distress Bessie recognised a non-answer when she heard one.

So did the witch. “You'll do nothing of the sort, Percival Wintergard. And I dread to think what a node burnout will do to that troublesome fire sprite…” She handed her spectacles to the knight, and rolled her sleeves back from her many jangling bracelets. “You, skysailor,” she said, pointing imperiously at Bryn. “Take all this lot to safety. I'm going to fetch my daughter.”

Fire blazed through the dragon prince's veins, wings screaming with effort as he surged through the dusk, headed directly for the lights of the palace. He crashed down onto the terrace outside the high windows of Archmage Morel's workshop, seizing the handle of a window in clumsy claws, only to find it locked. He wrenched at it, but even dragon strength couldn't easily overcome the new spells securing the windows, and Archalthus had languished too long in his weak human form. The dragon bellowed in incoherent rage. Behind the glass, the Orb glowed with the captured light of a moon's full turn from waxing to waning. What was the Mage playing at? Archalthus hadn't authorised anything to be moved to the new world for months. This was no time for more of Morel's games and trickery.

Archmage Morel appeared, distraught and distracted with a long-handled brush in one hand, only throwing open the windows to keep the dragon from shattering every pane of glass, and Archalthus squeezed in through the window, snarling and spitting sparks.

“Ah, Archalthus. Now really isn't the best of times,” the Archmage protested, making futile gestures towards the exit. “Perhaps you could come back when… um…” he peered closely at the Orb, which was alive and singing, the sound like a thousand knives to the brain, “…when I’m not so busy…”

“Where are the griffins?” Archalthus demanded. “Where is this Device?
What is this mess?
” Archalthus had caught the Archmage in the midst of painting sloppy, splattery runes all over the floorboards around the glowing Orb, but the dragon couldn't make any sense of them. He thrashed around, knocking jars to the floor where they shattered and gave up their contents. Hearts and spleens flopped onto the floorboards, small souls floated around wondering what to do with their new freedom. “What are you
doing?
” Archalthus demanded. He snapped at the floating souls, which evaporated into tattered wisps and loose threads of memory.

“What's that? Griffin? Device? I'm afraid you're not making any sense,” said the Archmage, still half-heartedly trying to shepherd the mighty red-gold coils of dragon out of his workspace, his attention divided between that and the Orb, as its piercing siren song turned to deranged jabbering. The water below the Orb began to bubble noisily, steam rolling up out over the edges of the well. “I must contain the excess magicks, and if you can't watch where you're stepping, I insist you leave!”

“Don't tell me what to do!” shouted Archalthus, treading inky clawprints across the floor.
What had the impudent little witch said…? Ah, yes:
“Turn off the Orb at once!”

Morel cast a puzzled glance at the large switch beside the Orb. “I rather thought it
was
. Should’ve marked the positions, really…”

Strange sprite things twisted and writhed across the floorboards, born blazing bright one second; gone the next. Things long dead in jars still on their shelves stirred and lived and changed. This was nothing the Orb had done before… Archalthus lunged at the switch, meaning to kill it but only slamming the worldshifter into fully open position – the Orb howled, its crystal surface beginning to ripple and jump as a building storm raged in its depths. Lightning crackling within it, whipping at the boundary between worlds…

~

… and as the node gave up all of its magic in one furious swan song, a blast of hot air caught Amelia on her broomstick, throwing her far up into the sky. She grappled with the broom. It still wanted to fly – oh so very much – but she'd lost what little control she had. It bucked like an unbroken stallion, going where it wanted and dragging Amelia along only because she refused to loosen her grip. Something wet and heavy slapped her sharply around the ear, making her yelp. She forced herself to open her eyes – she'd instinctively squeezed them tight shut when the blast of magic had hit – and it took her a minute to make sense of what she saw. Her broom was racing upwards through a rain of fish. Up and up she went, light as a feather on the overcharged broom, until she found herself amongst strange things spawned from storms and wildly surging magic, huge serpents half in and half out of the world, twisting and changing instant by instant, with ferocious spines and luminous eyes the size of cartwheels. Amelia passed among them, too small for them to see. Her heart thundered in her ears and her vision swam, but as she began to fall, she saw every sigil street in Ilgrevnia burning: rivers of flame blazing in the twilight. She saw the palace – still intact – but with something that looked like sea foam rushing out of the grand front doors and into the square, turning into a raging torrent down Main Street and cascading over the edge of the City. In its fury it vanished into spray and mist long before it reached the earth below. She saw the white griffin tossed about helplessly by the unnatural storm, fighting for purchase on wild and unpredictable winds that must soon dash it against some outcropping of the City. Amelia tore her eyes away from the white griffin's plight, refocusing on her broom. Its wild burst of energy over, she knew for sure now that it was failing, sinking. She crossed the boundaries of the disintegrating City, out over the empty moors, but she could feel the magic beginning to fade from the land. All Amelia could do was to angle the broom as level as she could and pray that she had enough magic in her own reserves to manage something more like a landing than a fall. She scanned the landscape of rough rocks and thorn bushes. Darkness was blossoming beneath Ilgrevnia like the maw of a leviathan rising from the depths of the ocean to swallow some hapless prey creature. Without magic to hold it together, chunks of Ilgrevnia's baserock began to fall away, disappearing into the darkness. For a moment she could have sworn she saw the figure of a giant fighting to cling to the ragged edges of the world, before it vanished.
With the last dregs of magic she could summon, Amelia hauled the broom round, aiming for the glimmer of what she could only hope was a lake. Just as she was about to close her eyes and pray, she heard heavy wingbeats approaching.
Archalthus!
She willed the broom on faster, but the wingbeats drew closer, and a wyvern came barrelling in alongside her.

As the wyvern matched pace with the broom, its rider yelled “Amelia! Let go!” It was Meg, clinging to the wyvern's makeshift harness, her fair hair streaming back in the wind.

Amelia shook her head, clinging to the broom despite its uselessness.

“Let go!” Meg shouted. “I'll catch you!”

“No!” Amelia shouted back. The wyvern, big as it had grown, surely wasn't strong enough to take two riders.

Meg urged the wyvern closer, close as she dared, holding it in position beneath the faltering broom. The twilight-grey grass raced past below them: too fast, too close. “Just trust me, you stupid girl! You can't land that thing in these conditions!”

Meg was right: the broom had all but lost its buoyancy… Amelia threw it aside and tumbled towards the wyvern, grabbing desperately and getting a handful of feathers and Meg's skirts. Rudely pulled off balance, the wyvern shrieked and tilted sharply, almost pitching both women off. Meg tried her best to pull Amelia up behind her, but there was no time. As the dark placid surface of the lake rushed up to meet them, Amelia took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes tight shut.

They struck the surface of the water with a crash that knocked the breath from their lungs, and immediately Amelia thrashed her way back into the air, claws scratching at her as the panicked wyvern did the same. Meg pulled her to shore, where the two of them lay in the mud. The wyvern managed to right himself and climb up to a rocky perch, where he shook out his feathers, spread out his wings in the air that had grown suddenly, unnaturally still, and sat there dripping, making noises of grumbling dissatisfaction.

“I don't know,” Meg muttered, when she'd recovered enough breath to speak, “first I couldn't get you on a broom, then I couldn't get you
off
a broom.”

Shocked to find herself alive and in one piece, Amelia began first to laugh hysterically, then to sob. She tried to stand, but found she hadn't the strength.

Meg stroked her daughter's muddy hair. “Oh, Amelia, my poor girl. I was afraid I'd lost you for good. And then to see you flying that broom like that… You're a better witch than I realised.”

Amelia looked up at the sky. Where the impossible rock of Ilgrevnia had floated, she could see nothing but open sky and the evening's first sprinkling of stars. She bit her lip, trying to smudge the tears from her eyes with the heel of her hand.

“Cry if you need to, dear,” said Meg, her voice tear-choked despite her broad smile. “Let it all out. It’s over and we’re safe.”

~

“Amelia!” The familiar and loved voice rang out across the empty moor. “Amelia!”

Amelia sat up, still shaking and weak, to see two lanterns jouncing in the gloom. “Harold! We're over here!”

Harold came running, slipping and stumbling across the muddy shore to Amelia, who threw her arms around his neck and hung on for dear life. “What happened?” he asked. “We saw you come down. Did you find your White King?”

Amelia nodded, swallowing her tears. “He's a dragon!” she wailed. “And he's
awful
!”

“But he’s
gone
now,” added Meg, grinning fiercely, “thanks to Amelia and Bessie.”

Harold put his shoulders under Amelia's arm, helping her rise up on trembling legs. The second lantern belonged to Bessie's Black Paladin, who pulled Meg up from the mud. “I haven't seen such bravery in many years,” he said. “To fly a wyvern with such primitive harness, in such conditions… Madam, you are a jewel amongst women.”

“Too right I am,” said Meg, attempting to wring out her sopping curls. “Harold, put that girl down!” she ordered, “She's soaked to the skin and covered in pondweed. As am I. Let's get back to the 'ship before we catch our deaths.”

The Black Paladin lingered on the shore, gazing into the huge emptiness of the evening sky. “Is Ilgrevnia really destroyed? I see no remains…”

“Well, I saw it blasted to smithereens,” said Meg, “and I was closer to the danger than you were. I shouldn’t think there’s any part left that’s big enough to use as a paperweight.” She spoke with conviction, but Amelia didn’t believe her. The world had thought Ilgrevnia gone once before… “Ouch!” Meg shouted, reaching into the front of her dress and pulling out her miniaturised battlesnail, which had grown to the size of a horse chestnut and was obviously just as prickly. Meg scowled at her snail. With the spell upon her failing in the barren atmosphere, Tallulah was returning slowly but surely to her natural size, and had burst the delicate filigree cage Meg had put her in for carrying. “Right, that settles it: no more time for hanging around. We need to get out of here.”

Slowly, drained but still alive, they began to walk.

~

Where Ilgrevnia had been, nothing remained. Beneath it, tons of earth and rock had vanished, leaving a raw crater, a hundred feet deep. Amelia didn't like to look at it, not after her close escape, but she couldn't resist glancing over her shoulder from time to time, and shivering at the thought. Perhaps no-one would mourn for Ilgrevnia, but ten million tons of city had vanished into thin air and the world felt the sudden absence like a newly missing tooth. Here on the borders of the devastation the land felt colder and duller, and Amelia felt strangely subdued. Meg said that was because the node had burned out, and it was only natural a witch should be sensitive to such things. Though Harold and Greyfell had stayed behind,
Sharvesh
had retreated to a safe distance: the skyship, with its marvellous and hitherto overlooked luxuries of tea and dry blankets, would be miles away. Amelia shivered as night fell, her soaking wet skirts clinging cold and heavy to her legs, weighing her down. She'd seen Meg make the gesture for some spell or other, something so habitual that she hadn't even known she was doing it until it didn't work. Amelia suspected it had been some warming spell or other, but for now they would just have to shiver and keep moving. The four of them headed west, with Meg drawn by her well-honed sense for magic, knowing that would be where
Sharvesh
waited, beyond the reach of the destruction.

The sky was black and shimmering with stars before
Sharvesh
came to meet the tiny light of their lanterns and set down to let the weary survivors aboard. Amelia could barely move her feet another step, but her mind raced with everything that had happened, and she couldn't sleep. Even beyond the crater, the emptiness – the
wrongness
– could be felt for miles around.
Sharvesh
flew low and cautious in the depleted air, as the
Storm Chaser
had with her soul reaching the point of exhaustion, and Amelia sagged against the railings, watching the crater slowly disappear into the night behind them. Even out of the realm of devastation, the winds that bore the skyship seemed unsettlingly listless in the aftermath. Captain Bryn – Amelia's very first Argean – murmured softly to his skyship, tending to her as gently as if she were an orphaned lamb or a child with a fever.

Amelia was relieved to see Bessie safe and sound, and to find that Stupid had returned to his cage, apparently without putting up much of a fight. The fire sprite burned only dimly, much smaller than Amelia could remember ever having seen him before – no more than a little yellow candle flame without a wick. Sir Percival moved sluggishly too, his armour obviously weighing much heavier without a normal healthy supply of magic in the environment. Amelia wished she knew what she could do to make either one of them feel better, but feared that all there was for it was to take them to more magically imbued lands.