The Witch's Daughter (Lamb & Castle Book 1) (11 page)

A scream like a cat being murdered jolted Amelia awake, breathless and with her heart thudding painfully. Ever since the day she’d set the eagle soul free, she’d feared it would return for revenge, its rage at imprisonment blinding it to the difference between friend and foe… but it was only the wyverns again. Dreadful, ugly beasts! Amelia pulled the blankets over her head, but it did her no good. She heard the thud and creak of Percival’s heavy footsteps on deck, but only when she heard Harold shout did she come to full alertness.
Could
it be the wyverns, with the way she’d seen Harold admire the horrible creatures?

Across the room, Meg groaned and stirred. “What is it now?” she muttered, her voice thick with sleep. The wyvern screamed again, and Meg growled. “Couldn’t the boy have taken a fancy to horses, like other boys do?” She got out of bed, throwing on her coat over her nightdress, grumpily ramming her feet into her boots. As she disappeared up on deck, Amelia tumbled out of the hammock, put on her own coat, and followed.

A dreary dawn painted the scene in cool greys, with the rain falling in big heavy drops as Amelia squinted into the low, dark clouds. Meg too shielded her eyes to look up. “Something’s not right…” she muttered.

They waited, watching the skies. Harold had Captain Dunnager’s sword strapped at his hip, and though it looked too big for him, he gripped the hilt in valiant readiness for whatever might come.

Sudden light flashed across the sky, muted by the cloud cover, accompanied by a crackling hiss that made Amelia jump.

“Oh, no,” she heard Meg mutter to herself, “What have you got up there, you horrible beasties?”

Another scream, and small dark shapes drifted down towards them, identifiable as feathers before they settled on the deck or drifted over the railings. Amelia caught one as it floated by – black and shiny as coal, as long as the distance from her elbow to her fingertips.

“Amelia, dear, maybe you should go below deck.”

“I don’t want to,” said Amelia, surprising herself. Fearful as she might be, she found she didn’t want to miss seeing what magnificent bird such a feather belonged to.

Meg said nothing, still watching the sky. This time, Amelia saw the jet of flame that illuminated the clouds, the fleeting silhouette of the big wyvern.

“I didn’t know they could do
that!
” she cried.

“My girl, what you don’t know could fill a dozen libraries.”

Another flash of fire and shadows, another scream. Louder, closer. Amelia stood her ground. Then, suddenly the beasts were out in the open. Wings folded tight, the wyvern fell like a stone, plummeting past the
Storm Chaser
, heart-stoppingly close. The two creatures pursuing couldn’t hope to match the wyvern’s speed. Not foolhardy enough to try, they slowed, circling down towards the skyship. Amelia held her breath, still clutching the long black feather in her sweating fist.

They were almost beautiful, for all that they were so fundamentally wrong in nature. They each had the head, wings and talons of giant birds of prey, the powerful hindquarters and long whip-like tails of great cats. They soared improbably as the skyship itself: one black as coal from beak to tail-tip, the other russet red and gold. With the wyvern gone, they turned their attention to a larger opponent: the
Storm Chaser
. They circled slowly at a careful distance, visibly sizing up the skyship’s defences.

“What do they want?” Amelia whispered.

Meg shook her head. “They’re not even
real
,” she muttered to herself.

Amelia wondered what she meant – the griffins might be magnificent, fantastic, the stuff of dreams or nightmares, but they looked as flesh and blood as the wyvern had. The stench of singed fur, the way the gouges in the black griffin’s flank exposed pink muscle, the feather right in her hand… Her senses couldn’t deny the evidence, for all that her brain protested. As the griffins continued to circle, Meg sidled closer to Amelia, keeping the beasts in sight.

“Do griffins ever hurt people?” Amelia asked.

Meg shook her head again. “I don’t know! Griffins aren’t even supposed to
exist!
How handy are you with that sword by now, boy?” she called across the deck to Harold.

Stunned, Amelia stared at Meg. “What do you mean? Are you going to tell me dragons and unicorns and flying cities are all real, but griffins aren’t?”

“Unicorns don’t exist either – they died out hundreds of years ago.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake! Why can’t –” and then Meg shoved her roughly to the deck, just as the black griffin whooshed past overhead, wicked sharp claws raking Amelia’s shoulder. Harold swung his sword wildly, missing the griffin by a good six feet. “Where can they be coming from?” Meg muttered, still curious even in the face of murderous monsters.

Amelia clutched at her shoulder, shocked at the amount of blood she found there. “I don’t
care
where they come from!” she wailed. “Just make them go away!”

The red griffin skimmed the boards, a screaming wyvern in pursuit, and the gilded cage with the clockwork dragonette went flying off its hook. Amelia just managed to grab it before the poor thing could tumble away overboard between the railings. She held the cage tight to her chest, barely hearing the squawking and clattering of the rattled dragonette.

Suddenly, Captain Dunnager’s voice boomed out of the woodwork, the voice of the ship itself: “Everyone below deck and I’ll shake them off!”

Amelia, still holding on tight to the dragonette’s cage, didn’t protest this time when Meg dragged her by the arm, down the stairs and into the cabin. The initial shock of the griffin’s attack was beginning to wear off and the pain set in, vicious and relentless. The
Storm Chaser
rocked and swayed as if buffeted by tempestuous seas, while it was all Amelia could do to hold on. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she squeezed her eyes tight shut until lights and colours danced in the blackness.

It felt an age before the
Storm Chaser
settled, the cabin becoming as still and unassuming as her own bedroom back home again.

“Oh, you’re bleeding!” Suddenly Meg was at Amelia’s side, rummaging in her satchel and coming up with a little glass vial. “Didn’t I tell you to get below decks?”

Amelia turned to look at her shoulder, immediately regretting it. “Oh dear,” she said, faintly.

“Come on, out of that blouse while I find a bandage. Here we go…”

Amelia hissed through her teeth and flinched away when Meg took some cold salve from the jar and dabbed it on her wounds, but the pain dissipated almost at once. Meg bandaged Amelia’s shoulder quickly and efficiently, and Amelia wondered how often the witch had tended to such wounds before – how often she’d cheerfully led her companions into mortal danger.

“Have they gone?” Amelia asked, putting on a clean blouse. “The griffins?”

Meg squinted out of the porthole. “Can’t see hide nor hair of them, nor the wyverns. Good job, Captain,” she announced to the room.

Amelia joined her at the porthole. The sky outside was bright blue and cloudless, incongruous in the aftermath of what had felt like the greatest storm she’d ever known. “Why didn’t you just use magic to see them off?” she asked Meg. It had been so unlike the witch to let someone else take charge, without even putting up a fight.

Meg looked irritated. “You’re better off not using magic when you’re angry, and I can see I’d best tell you why, so that maybe you’ll pay attention to me this time. Magic is a living thing. It feeds on your feelings. It’ll take you over if you let it – it’ll clamp onto your soul and not let go ‘til you’ve nothing left to give. I’ve seen it happen to better witches than you or I, girl, so don’t go thinking you know better.”

“Oh.” Amelia hung her head. “You’re still angry with me, aren’t you?”

“Too right I am! You’re a sentimental fool, and you’re clever but not nearly so clever as you think you are.” She paused, and admitted, grudgingly, “but I was no better at your age, so I dare say you’ll grow out of it eventually.”

Amelia didn’t know quite what to say to that. She’d been walking on eggshells ever since the incident with the eagle soul, afraid of whatever unimaginably awful punishment the witch might be dreaming up.

Meg took a deep breath, and looked up at the ceiling. “Captain Dunnager? How far off course are we?”

“Ten, fifteen miles,” his voice reverberated in the air above their heads. “I got a sense we were intruding in birdies’ magistracy.”

“I agree. More like they wanted to scare us off than really hurt us.”

“Maybe we flew too close to their nest?” Amelia ventured timidly. To her surprise, she felt anxious to prove herself to Meg.

Meg ignored her, continuing to address the ceiling. “You seen griffins before, Captain?”

“Never in all my days, Ma’am.”

“Hmm. Nor me. Suspicious that such things should just come out of nowhere at a time like this… Can you find us a Flying City close by? Perhaps I can find out more there.”

“Certainly, Ma’am.”

“Good.” Meg stood at the porthole, gazing out into the empty sky, deep in thought. “Go away now; I need some time to myself.”

Amelia wasn’t entirely sure if Meg was talking to her, the Captain, or both. Nevertheless, she nodded and slipped quietly out of the cabin, where she stood on the deck and wondered what to do. The
Storm Chaser
might be bigger than the snailcastletank, but it still didn’t give her very far to get away from Meg. She was curious where their wild flight from the marauding griffins might have taken them, but didn’t much fancy staying out in the open, just in case. Instead, she headed for the soulchamber once more.

There she stood at the heavy double doors in silence, uncertain. “Thank you,” she said at last. “For being so brave and getting us safely away from those terrible creatures.” Then, tentatively, “how are you feeling?”

“Sick as a dog. We’re finally stopping at a proper City and I can’t even get out there to trade.”

“Oh. I’m sorry…”

“But I’ve got to hand it to you, Amelia – I’ve never had a run like
that
before. Gives me a whole new appreciation for the old
Storm Chaser
.”

“Really?” Since her first ill-fated lesson on skyships, Amelia had grown much more curious about how they worked. “I would have thought the skyship needed a soul with wings.” Her cheeks coloured at once: the idea made a certain sort of sense, but she understood so little about how magic in general actually worked…

“Very sharp of you,” said the Captain. “A soul with wings is better, but one stubborn enough to stay airborne against all odds will do in a pinch.”

“I’m still sorry about what I did,” said Amelia, feeling that no matter how many times she apologised, it would never be enough. “It was so stupid of me. Is there nothing I can do to make up for it?”

“Hmm.” The noise rattled the floorboards under her feet, low and tingling in her toes. “Tell Madam Meg she’s to find me a new soul. But you’re to go along with her into the Flying City, and pick out one that doesn’t upset you.”

Meg and Amelia had time for a few more lessons before they arrived at the node where the Flying City of Ilamira was docked. Amelia had become quite proficient in a basic fireball spell, if nothing else. Meg had taught her a spell to protect her hands from the worst of the heat, and she found it enticingly therapeutic to stand at the stern of the
Storm Chaser
and fling fireballs
,
while Stupid helped out with her aim. At first she’d worried she might hurt him, but the fire sprite thought it a wonderful game to dodge and chase Amelia’s projectiles. They practised it daily until her soft hands were completely inured to the heat, and she could throw fireballs far and fast and in any colour she so desired. Her shoulder still throbbed now and then beneath the bandages, but she was determined to be brave. One day, though, Meg bade her stop and focus on less disruptive magic.

“We’re coming close to Ilamira now,” said the witch, leaning out over the railing to peer into the hazy far distance. Amelia could see nothing but wide open sky, a sight she had become accustomed to lately. “We’ll be in a heavy traffic area soon,” Meg continued, “and you can’t go chucking fireballs around willy nilly where other people are trying to go about their daily lives.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Amelia took off the conjuring rings and offered them back, surprised when Meg didn’t take them straight away.

“Put those back on – I’m not giving you an excuse to shirk your studies. The spells you should be practising day and night are the ones you find most difficult, so next time I come up here, I expect to not see you practising invisibility.” Her face might be stern, but her eyes sparkled and the corner of her mouth twitched at her own joke.

Amelia nodded meekly, putting the rings back on. “Yes, Meg.” She hated the invisibility spell: it took all her concentration to maintain, and she could never be entirely certain when it was working. Meg always seemed to know exactly where she was anyway, and shouted at her for treading too heavily, or breathing too noisily. As Meg retreated to the cabin for an afternoon nap, Amelia sighed and dutifully faded out of sight.

~

Amelia spent the rest of the afternoon invisible. Having lived in seclusion all her life, watching the world pass by from the window of her tall tower, she couldn’t fully appreciate the opportunity it gave her: to watch without being watched. Sir Percival and Harold, practising sword fighting again, either forgot or didn’t realise that she was there. Without the (visible) company of ladies, Harold used some shocking language that Amelia found most intriguing, and which Sir Percival reprimanded him for. That bad habit aside, Sir Percival seemed to think Harold had the makings of an excellent Paladin.

“You’re a fine strong lad,” the knight mused, at the end of the lesson, “although I doubt you’ll get any taller. In the old days, you’d have been made to eat lemons until you cleaned up your language, though. Consider yourself lucky we don’t have any.”

With their lessons ended for dinner, they left Amelia by herself. She lay down on her front on the deserted deck, with the clockwork dragonette’s cage set before her. She’d lost all fear of the thing, confident in the security of the magical amaranthine cage, and become simply fascinated by it instead. Such a lovely little thing. She lay with her chin resting on her hands, staring at it for hours on end, wishing she’d brought along her rarely-used set of watercolours. As if she could do justice to the delicate intricacy of it, the shimmer of its jewel eyes, or the stainless sheen of its wings as it preened in the sunlight…

“Amelia! Pay attention, I can see your shadow!”

Amelia jumped, her concentration entirely broken. She looked up to find Meg standing over her and grinning for some reason in spite of her student’s failings. On intuition, Amelia looked over her shoulder, and gasped. There, where she had come to expect nothing but sky, stood a host of towers and spires, tall crenelated walls and red-tiled roofs. She rushed to the railings and looked down, reeling back at the dizzy shock – yes, they were still sailing hundreds of feet above the ground. The city that had appeared slightly to their port side stood on a level with them, on a chunk of rock that looked as if it had been ripped from the side of a mountain. A wall surrounded the city: judging by the tiny flecks of windows in it, it had to be at least fifty feet high and thick as a townhouse. A few pine trees grew close to the outer wall, some of their roots reaching out into the sky. At the place Amelia irrationally wanted to call the front of the City, its footprint stretched out into the sky, narrowing almost to a point, the wall opening up in a grand main gate. There was yet quite a gap between the
Storm Chaser
and the Flying City, but it closed visibly even as Amelia watched.

“Oh my word!” she dashed into the deckhouse at once, quite overcome. “Harold! Harold! You simply must come and see!”

~

At the edge of the floating island, a wooden platform stuck out into the sky, half a dozen skyships as big as the
Storm Chaser
tethered and bobbing in the air currents. As the
Storm Chaser
came to roost amongst them, Amelia watched the busy dock that skirted a mile or more around Ilamira’s walls.

As they drew level with the dock, Harold hefted one of the skyship’s enormous tetherhooks over his shoulder. Under the Captain’s patient instruction, the boy climbed out over the railings to attach the hook to one of the great iron rings that lined the City’s dock, and let out a chain as thick as his arm. Amelia could hardly bear to watch.

Harold came back, shivering and grinning, greatly pleased with himself.

“Let’s get a move on, then,” said Meg, swinging her satchel over her shoulder. “You too, boy. And fetch your blade. If you’re to be Amelia’s Paladin, you’d better start acting like it.”

“What’s a paladin?”

“A bodyguard. To keep your Queen from coming to harm.”

“Like a knight?” Harold bowed deeply to Amelia. “My lady. I swear I’ll protect you however I can.”

“Oh, stop it,” Amelia giggled, turning beet red.

“I’ll lay down my life for you if need be,” Harold persisted, earnestly.

Meg huffed. “Nice and pretty as the sentiment is, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, shall we? And get a move on! I can’t be the only one feels like she’s fading away for the lack of a decent pastry. Worst thing about sailing’s the food,” she grumbled, and kept on at the matter even as they climbed down the rope ladder, onto the wooden platform below. Percival pulled the ladder back up behind them, and waved them goodbye as they struck off towards the city wall. The dock’s builders had at least thought to enclose it with a handrail, but had given little thought to obscuring the dreadful view, hundreds of feet down to the town below. Amelia stayed well away from the edges, close to Harold. She had recently learned how to levitate a little, until with practice she could float along with the tips of her toes just barely bumping against the boards. The lessons still exhausted her, and she knew she had a long way to go before she would be able to fly safely, but every time the drop at the edge of the City caught her eye, it was the thought of her progress so far that comforted her.

The three of them entered the City of Ilamira through a gateway large enough that the
Storm Chaser
herself could almost have scraped through, were it not for her masts and sails, and immediately Amelia wished she’d stayed on board with Percival. So many people! Noisy crowds filled the broad street, a constant stream of people moving in and out of the many shops that lined the thoroughfare. Their dress was strange and varied: amongst the crowd she could see merchants and mages, priests and princes, travellers from scattered lands both near and far. Guardsmen in handsome blue uniforms patrolled the streets, keeping order, or at least the last illusion of it. The chatter of a dozen or more languages she didn’t know filled her ears, and the enticing smells of strange spices and new foods came from all directions, mingling and intoxicating. A crowd of impossibly tall figures with their faces hidden behind masks stalked downhill against the stream. As they passed, Amelia clung close to her bodyguard, who puffed up his chest in pride at his new responsibility.

“Keep your hand on your sword, boy,” Meg advised him.

Harold obeyed. “Is there danger?”

“Always,” said Meg. “Of thieves, mainly, and that’s a good blade the Captain’s lent you, so you’d best keep it safe.”

Cacophonous music approached – heavy drums and shrill pipes – Amelia shrank out of the way of a troupe of dancers who seemed oblivious to the crowds. She remembered a time she’d gone ashore with her father to attend a wedding in Springhaven. The whole village had been there, dressed up in their finest clothes, but they would have looked very shabby compared with some of the people strolling the streets of Ilamira. Amelia gazed in awe at the beautiful ladies in their finery – their dresses and jewellery that would have made even her stepmother look dowdy by comparison.

Meg took them to a haberdasher’s first. Amongst the rolls of wonderful silks, velvets and brocades stood elegant mannequins as exquisitely dressed as any of the ladies on the streets of Ilamira. Amelia gawped in unashamed wonder and want for such pretty things, but Meg picked out two nondescript blue hooded cloaks, paid for them in gold, and then back out into the jostling crowds they went.

“Chilly, isn’t it?” said Meg, meaningfully, as she handed Amelia one of the cloaks. “Put up your hood, dear, I smell rain.”

Amelia squinted at the few faint white smudges of cloud marring the blue sky. It looked like a fine sunny day, and what did rain smell like, anyway? Still, she did as she was told, and didn’t complain when Meg helped to tuck her long neat braids into her cloak.

Ilamira’s Main Street climbed steeply up from the gate, flanked on either side by grand buildings of a rich golden stone. Oh, the merchants and princes who must own such buildings… Still, opulent as they might be, they were nothing but a prelude to the pinnacle of the hill. There, a great white obelisk stood, taller than trees, so pristine and bright that it hurt the eyes to look too long when the sun shone on it. Delicate lines of gold flashed all the way up its impossible height.

“What’s that?” Amelia asked.

“The City’s Keystone – it’s what keeps Ilamira up in the air. Just thank your lucky stars Perce isn’t here to bore you with the details.”

“So that gold writing on it…”

“High magic. Well beyond what the likes of you and me can do.”

Amelia squinted up at it, curious despite her previous disastrous experience with written magic, back in the
Storm Chaser’
s soulchamber. She might only have learnt a little magic so far, but already she’d achieved feats which would have been beyond her wildest dreams not so long ago. Perhaps she could convince Meg to take her for a closer look at the Keystone, once more pressing matters had been dealt with…

~

Back aboard the
Storm Chaser
, Stupid the fire sprite cowered in the cabin where Amelia had left him, a barely visible sickly haze of yellow. She’d left the porthole window open for him to go out if he wanted, on the condition that he behaved himself, but after a too-close encounter with an angry and very fast creature the size of an albatross, he’d fled back to the refuge of the
Storm Chaser.
Like Amelia, he’d never seen so many people before: he’d always belonged to the lonely tower. He bounced listlessly off the wall, pining for his mistress. She had left behind the clockwork dragonette as well; its cage hung on a hook so that the sunlight shone in and gleamed off its primly folded wings. Stupid wanted to burn the thing. Stupid had managed to burn metal things before. Burn hot enough and it would melt like candle wax… People got angry when he burned things, though, and metal things seemed especially precious to people. Look at it there: pretty and smug and glinting with reflected sunlight. Stupid bumped up against the bottom of the cage, and to his satisfaction the clockwork thing squawked in alarm. He did it again, shaking and giggling to himself at the dragonette’s helpless indignant scolding, its wings flapping as it tried to steady itself in the wildly swaying cage. And then the handle of the cage slipped off the hook, and the cage fell to the floor with a crash. Stupid dived into the darkness under the bunk, disappearing from view entirely. When he dared look out, the cage lay open on the floor, the clockwork dragonette nowhere to be seen.