Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded Read online

  And he was snoring so loudly. Also, the waterfall was loud. And the tunnel beside it, down which the stream flowed, seemed like a place fiends might lurk. Things kept rolling over and over in her head. The sorceresses. The king. The patriarchs. Queen Haywith. She felt she had asked the queen the wrong questions. Queen Haywith had had Lightning beside her, under the apple tree. Had he once been her familiar? Had he crawled into her ear?

  18

  A POSITION OF STRENGTH

  She must have fallen asleep eventually. Because later, she awoke to find the room bathed in a deep red glow.

  She sat up. Gradually she took in the cave, the waterfall, and the sleeping dragon, and the woman perched comfortably atop his belly.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake,” said Queen Haywith.

  Chantel blinked and stretched. She gave things plenty of time to resolve themselves into one of those dreams where you only think you’re waking up. But when she climbed out of bed, the stone was warm and solid beneath her feet.

  She looked over at Franklin. He was sound asleep.

  Finally she said, “Good morning?”

  “Good morning,” said the queen. “Is this the second time we’ve met?”

  “Yes,” said Chantel, miffed that the queen didn’t remember.

  “It is for me as well,” said the queen. “So much better when these things happen in order.”

  “Will we—did we—will we meet a third time?” said Chantel.

  “If we do, there will be a price to pay,” said the queen. “Magic is like that. Summonings particularly.”

  “I don’t think I summoned you,” said Chantel.

  “You must have.”

  “I didn’t do any magic!”

  “Let us surmise that you are a person with unusually strong summoning skills.” The queen looked down at the sleeping dragon. “But as this is only our second meeting, we are safe. On what may I advise you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Chantel. “Er, can I trust Lightning?”

  “It depends,” said the queen. “He is a dragon, and so he will always see things differently.”

  “Will he hurt us?” Chantel blurted.

  “These questions are too small, Chantel, girl from the May-Be.”

  Chantel remembered the things she’d been wondering about. “Was . . . Is Lightning your familiar?”

  “Something of that sort,” said the queen. She slid down from the dragon and came over and sat on a rock beside the pool.

  “You’re a sorceress?”

  “A Mage of the Dragon. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  Chantel described her visit to the castle. “Miss Ellicott used to have a snake for a familiar,” she added.

  The queen looked startled. “Are you quite certain?”

  “Miss Flivvers told me so. And Miss Ellicott said she outgrew him.”

  “You don’t grow out of having a familiar. You grow into it,” said the queen. “If Lightning appeared to Miss Ellicott first—”

  “Couldn’t it have been some other snake?” Chantel interrupted. She curtseyed. “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty.”

  “No,” said the queen. “Another dragon would not have tried to manifest in Lightning Pass. That would have led to a dragon battle, which would have destroyed the city.”

  “Oh.” It seemed to Chantel that the queen’s answers only raised more questions. “Are all snakes dragons?”

  “If they appear as familiars, yes. That is, they have the potential to be dragons, just as the people to whom they appear have the potential to be more than they are. From what you describe, though, every step has been taken to prevent that from happening. And if Miss Ellicott never let the snake into her head, then—”

  “I didn’t let Lightning into my head!” Chantel curtseyed again to cover the interruption.

  “Do stop bobbing up and down,” said the queen. “You must have. At least, you had a head into which he could crawl.”

  “Because I wasn’t shamefast and biddable enough?”

  “You?” The queen smiled. “I’m sure you weren’t.”

  Chantel knew she ought to have felt horrible; she had failed at deportment so badly that she had welcomed a snake and caused a dragon. Miss Ellicott had done no such thing. Miss Ellicott had dismissed the snake, and gone from being shamefast and biddable to being proper and correct.

  Chantel failed to feel horrible.

  “He grew in your head,” said the queen. “And this means that until his next incarnation, he is under certain constraints.”

  “Constraints?”

  “He won’t do anything you wouldn’t do,” said the queen.

  “But I wouldn’t fly or breathe fire!”

  The queen made a dismissive gesture. “Of course you would, if you could. And you, of course, have been changed by the dragon. I can see that quite clearly from here.”

  Chantel pressed her lips together to keep from making an angry retort. The queen was talking in riddles when Chantel needed plain answers.

  “You are becoming a Mage of the Dragon,” said Queen Haywith. “But it is a difficult journey, and it is easy to fail along the way, as—”

  As you did, Chantel didn’t say.

  “—as your Miss Ellicott appears to have done.”

  At this point Chantel actually did forget herself so far as to sigh in exasperation.

  The queen smiled. “You are more concerned with your immediate situation.”

  Chantel was immediately embarrassed. Belatedly, she offered the queen a cake.

  “No, thank you,” said the queen. “I am not quite here, you know. Besides, you may need them. Lightning is not a poor host, except that he himself eats only every year or two, and he forgets that humans are different.

  “In fact,” said the queen, “he tends to take a long view, which is often rather useless to us humans.”

  “Like leaving me on a rock and forgetting the tide would come in,” said Chantel.

  “Precisely. So, you will return to the city, and there you feel you must choose between two equally distasteful powers?”

  “Yeah.” Chantel sat down at the table, put an elbow on it, and leaned on her hand, then remembered herself hastily and folded her hands in her lap. “Yes. The patriarchs are power-hungry and deceitful, and the king is just the same. I’m sorry,” she added hastily. “I didn’t mean to speak ill of your family.”

  “My family? The king? It’s possible.” The queen shrugged. “After five hundred years, it’s equally possible that you are my family. You must realize I have no idea who this king is.”

  “King Rathfest the Restless,” said Chantel.

  “Indeed?” said the queen, without much interest. “And is he?”

  “Is he . . . oh, restless, you mean? I’m not sure. Maybe. He seems to actually want to be king,” said Chantel. “And I guess he might have killed his cousins who were kings before him. No one really dies of lettuce, do they?”

  “Only in the most unusual circumstances.”

  “Hm.”

  “Well, I can’t advise you about the king, except in a general way. I can advise you to set little store by what men say, and much by what they do. Women too. What do you think you should do, Chantel?”

  “What’s best for the city,” said Chantel. “I said that to the dragon, and it seemed like he thought that was the right answer. But you said that was too small.”

  “The city cannot survive alone. And even if it could, mere survival is not enough to offer to the world.”

  “Oh,” said Chantel.

  “Now, what are you fighting against?”

  “The Sunbiters,” said Chantel promptly.

  The queen dabbled a hand in the water. “I would have expected you to say, ‘Anything that can hurt my people.’”

  Chantel looked down at her hands, as she always did when she got a question wrong. “Yeah. I mean yes. I mean that is what I meant.”

  The queen looked at her impassively, not answering. The dragon let
out a loud snore, and two orange-pink puffs rose from his nostrils.

  “Which I guess . . .” Chantel stopped, and thought.

  Still the queen said nothing.

  “The patriarchs are hurting the people,” Chantel explained. “Just to make money and have power. And the king doesn’t really intend to help. He just wants money and power himself.”

  “That is so often the case,” said Queen Haywith unhelpfully.

  “That question that I asked you before . . .” Chantel trailed off uncertainly.

  “What question was that?”

  “Um, well, the one you didn’t like very much.”

  “You’ll have to remind me.” The queen was clearly not going to make this any easier.

  “Um, about breaking a vow.”

  The queen’s dark eyes sparked. “I have taken only one vow in my life.”

  “Would—would you mind telling me what the exact words were?”

  “‘By the power of the dragon, I swear to protect the city of Lightning Pass and its people from any force, within or without, that may harm it,’” said the queen.

  Obviously the queen had broken the vow, but it wouldn’t do to rub it in. “So. I . . . I think I should go and check on the girls and Bowser. And Miss Flivvers,” said Chantel.

  “You may be arrested.”

  “Well, what would you do?” said Chantel.

  “I would establish a position of strength. And then I would try to gather as much information as possible,” said the queen. “Does that help?”

  Chantel thought about it. She was in a position of strength. And the books in the library were information. It was possible that— “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Not a problem,” said the queen graciously. “And now I really think I’d better be going.”

  She skirted the edge of the pool and stepped into the stream. Then she sloshed away down the dark tunnel.

  “Oh, and Chantel.” The queen’s voice echoed weirdly from the tunnel. “Don’t forget—at the third summoning a price will be exacted. Good luck.”

  Then she was gone.

  Chantel did not go back to sleep. She paced around the library and thought. She took books down from the shelves and piled them on a table. She paced some more.

  There was no escaping it: if Queen Haywith was telling the truth, then having had a snake in her head made Chantel more like Queen Haywith than like Miss Ellicott.

  Well, Chantel could still make choices. And she could be more like Chantel than either of them.

  She went back to the dragon’s chamber and found that Franklin was just waking up and the dragon had opened one orange eye.

  “Good morning,” she said. “I’m going to go back to the school and check on the girls, and Bowser.”

  “King,” said the dragon drowsily.

  “I’ll try not to get caught by him,” said Chantel. “Franklin, there’s something I’d like you to do, please.”

  She took him into the library and showed him her stacks of books. “Can you read through these, please, and see if there’s anything about Queen Haywith? I especially want to know how she opened a breach in the walls, and what happened to her afterward. How she”—Chantel hesitated, because it seemed a strange thing to say about someone she’d just been talking to—“died.”

  “I—” Franklin began, then stopped.

  “Thank you,” said Chantel. “And the other thing I need to find is anything at all about how the spell that strengthens Seven Buttons is done.”

  “Why do you need spells to strengthen a wall like that?” said Franklin.

  “Don’t you think your father could knock a hole in it if he tried?” said Chantel.

  “I don’t know,” said Franklin. “I know that if he decided to try, he wouldn’t give up till the wall was down, or he was dead.”

  “So look for the spell, please,” said Chantel. “And if there were some famous words that Queen Haywith spoke . . . well, if you run across anything she said at all, actually, write it down. I found paper and pencils here.” She opened a drawer at the bottom of a bookshelf.

  Franklin didn’t respond. He was sulking, Chantel thought, because he had to stay behind. Well, at least she was showing him how to do something useful. “Over here,” she said. “On the wall, there’s a list of all the books. Do you see how it works?”

  It was almost like a book itself, composed of hinged wooden panels. But she couldn’t get Franklin interested in it. He just leaned against the bookshelves and sulked.

  “Well, you’ll figure it out,” she said, trying not to sound exasperated. “And I’ll be back as soon as I can. And we’ll figure out what to do with you.”

  “I don’t want you to figure out what to do with me,” said Franklin, scowling.

  “I meant you and me would figure it out,” said Chantel. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Franklin looked disagreeable.

  “So if you could help me by—”

  “Enough already!” said Franklin. “I’m coming with you. There’s going to be people looking for you, and I know a lot more about evading the enemy than you do.” He cast a hostile look at the books. “Even if I can’t read.”

  “Oh,” said Chantel.

  19

  MISS FLIVVERS MISSES THE POINT

  Lightning led them to a passage that went to the surface. Chantel had changed back into her school robe, although it was torn and pocketless and stiff with salt. The purple dragon robe seemed altogether too grand for Miss Ellicott’s School.

  The passage decanted into a narrow cleft between two buildings in Bannister Square. There was an abnegation spell concealing it—Chantel had noticed the spell a few days before, when she’d been searching for the sorceresses.

  “Now, you need to stay here,” said Chantel.

  Franklin smiled in a very annoying and supercilious way. “Don’t give me orders.”

  “I’m not giving you orders,” said Chantel firmly. “But if you come out into the city you’ll be in grave danger.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “You’ll be in grave danger from me,” said Chantel. “Because I’ll cast a horrible spell on you. And if you’re not afraid of that, you’re st—” Chantel’s deportment caught up with her. “Unwise.”

  Franklin stayed, grumbling.

  The wind chased curtains of rain across Bannister Square, turning the buildings gray and indistinct. Chantel made her way upward, fighting the water that gushed down the hill.

  It was always like this in Lightning Pass when the rain came. The streets became rivers, the bridges became aqueducts, the alleys became rushing torrents. When it rained it seemed the only direction in Lightning Pass was down.

  Chantel lost her bearings. She felt her way along until she came to an arched doorway, where she stood until the rain cleared enough for her to recognize something. Then she started on again, up streets and across bridges, with some brief rainfree interludes in which she squelched along arched alleyways, until at last she was splashing up the stairs of Fate’s Turning.

  When she arrived, dripping, in the hallway of Miss Ellicott’s School for Magical Maidens, everyone came running, cascading down the stairs.

  “It’s Chantel!” said Holly.

  “Chantel!” Anna came out of the kitchen, then stopped and stared. “We thought—are you all right?”

  Miss Flivvers folded her hands and stared at Chantel in dismay. “Goodness, you look a fright. We were dreadfully worried.”

  “Chantel, there was a dragon!” said Daisy, jumping up and down.

  Holly grabbed Chantel’s soggy sleeve. “A big green dragon in the sky!”

  “Now, girls.” Miss Flivvers frowned. “The patriarchs have decreed that there was not a dragon. Daisy, go find Chantel a dry robe.”

  But Anna was already bringing one.

  “But we saw—” Holly quailed under Miss Flivvers’s frown. “I mean, I beg your pardon, we saw a dragon.”

  “What yo
u saw,” said Miss Flivvers, “was a symbolic expression of the city’s power and destiny. The image of a dragon was a sign that the city will triumph over her enemies.”

  “Why is the city a her?” asked Holly. “When all the patriarchs and the king are hims?”

  “Do not ask silly questions,” said Miss Flivvers. “Go and fetch a mop.”

  Soon Chantel had changed into the dry robe, and the other was dripping on the kitchen hearth, making a puddle that ran down the hearthstone and hissed in the fireplace.

  Miss Flivvers poured Chantel a cup of hot oniony broth. Chantel wrapped her hands around it to warm them. Holly and Daisy set about fixing Chantel’s hair, and Chantel tried hard not to wince at each tug. They meant well.

  Anna sat and looked at Chantel with a concern that was equally uncomfortable. The other girls crowded around. There was definitely something missing from the kitchen—

  “Where’s Bowser?” Chantel asked.

  “He was called up,” said Miss Flivvers.

  “Called up?” Chantel said, bewildered.

  “To serve in the army,” Anna said, looking down at the brick floor. “To defend the city.”

  “What does Bowser know about defending cities?” Chantel demanded.

  “All of the boys over the age of nine have been called up,” said Miss Flivvers. “The situation is—is desperate. No, I shouldn’t say that. We should not despair, because the patriarchs have told us we have the dragon on our side. Even if he is metaphorical.”

  “How—” How desperate could it have gotten, in the time that Chantel had been underground? “What happened?”

  “There was a terrible attack on the patriarchs when they were up on the city wall. A treacherous volley of Marauder arrows, under a flag of truce. Lord Rudolph was killed, along with several other patriarchs. Sir Wolfgang is now in charge,” said Miss Flivvers.

  Chantel stared at her in dismay. “Lord Rudolph? Killed? But—”

  “It is most unfortunate,” said Miss Flivvers. “He had a certain leadership quality that it would be disloyal to suggest the other patriarchs lack.”