One of the trailing sphinxes took a lunge at us. It fell well short, its tail snapping off when it smashed onto the ground. The dragon swiveled its long, snakelike neck and unleashed a gout of flame at our pursuers. Heat seared my arm as its fiery breath narrowly missed its own passengers. I tried to shift out of the way and nearly fell off.
The fire engulfed the tailless sphinx while I struggled to find my balance again on the shifting scales. Dead, crisped wasps dropped from the air around it. Calla made a noise of distress inthe back of her throat. I wasn’t sure how I should feel. They had defended us valiantly, but…wasps.
The sphinx seemed little affected, its stone face merely blackened a bit. “You will escape our wrath!” it roared after us. “We will not chase you to the ends of the earth and beyond!”
“Maybe that’s the truthful one,” Calla suggested optimistically.
“Thanks,” I said to Jonquil, more grudgingly than she deserved. “For coming to save us.”
Jonquil shrugged.
Unlike both Calla’s garments and my own, her clothing was immaculate in spite of whatever adventures had brought her here on dragonback. There wasn’t a speck of dirt on her highly impractical gown; she was riding the dragon sidesaddle, and I’ve got no idea why she didn’t slide right off.
Of course, you could drop her in a mud pit, and she’d come out spotless. I was certain she used some kind of magic for it. I’d always thought it pointless, wasting a spell that way, but as the oldest, she felt that there were standards she needed to uphold.
“I’m glad to be of help,” she said, “but that’s not why I’m here.”
My brow furrowed. “You didn’t come to rescue us?”
“No. You’ve been summoned to Skalla. The queen wants to see you immediately.”
“Seriously? Now?” My stepmother’s sense of timing was as maddening as ever.
Very few people could send lifesaving assistance in my direction, whether intentionally or by accident, and somehow leave me feeling miffed about it. Only my immediate family, really.
I finally managed to get a solid grip on the dragon and peered over the side to see if the sphinxes were still trying to follow us. In the field below, babies were beginning to grow out of the ground where the teeth had been planted. Weird.
“So what does she want with us?” I asked. “Did she come up with another quest before this one was even finished?”
“She doesn’t want to see all three of us,” Jonquil said. “Just you.”
“Oh,” I said, my throat going dry. “Crap.” A private audience was never, ever a good sign.
Being devoured by a sphinx would have been safer.
Chapter Two
A Modest Proposal
The palace of the sorceress-queen of Skalla has walls of stone with neither mortar nor join, rising smooth and unbroken to the sky. The whole thing was hewn out of the living rock of a mountain by giants, who carved the chambers and corridors over the course of a single day in exchange for whatever it is that giants like. Magical geese? Golden apples? That’s what they prefer in the stories, but plus-plus-plus-size socks sound more practical.
The interior of the palace is a maze of twisty hallways and irregular rooms. The passages lead up to dizzying heights in towers that used to be crags or peaks and down to suffocating depths in dungeons that were once vast natural caverns. Outside, at the base of the mountain, the queen’s expansive gardens flourish, and beyond those, spreading out in all directions in an almost perfect circle, lies the town that lives under the sway of Skalla’s dread ruler. From a distance, it looks like a small wooden ring that’s been tossed onto a stone peg.
The town-that-lives-under-the-sway, etc., is a remarkablyprosperous and happy one. As I trudged toward the palace, I passed well-kept homes with brightly painted doors and hordes of small children playing games that mostly involved running around and shrieking. A town protected by the sorceress-queen is a well-protected town, indeed; the last princeling looking to wage war here left with his army dispersed by dragon flame. His eyeballs remained behind, impaled on the shrubbery. Invading Skalla is unwise.
So is stealing anything from the queen’s gardens. The penalty for filching her flowers is death. Well, all right, it’s technically death; the sentence can be reduced by plea-bargaining. The last person to fall afoul of the law, a merchant who stole a rose, only had to send his youngest daughter to board with us for the summer. Nice girl, very popular with the furnishings—always willing to stop for a chat with a lamp or a clock. Jonquil flirted with her shamelessly (this was before my sister was engaged to Gnoflwhogir), but I think the girl ended up marrying a bear? So don’t steal any plants, lest you be saddled with a bear for a son-in-law. Or some other disagreeable fate.
The gardens are beautiful, though. Even on an early autumn day, the beds were a riot of bright colors, abloom with crocuses and dahlias, cyclamen and begonias. I inhaled the delicately scented air as I meandered through. When I was a child, I lived right outside the gardens, in a little cottage. Before my mother died. Before my father remarried.
The gardens were the reason I’d asked Jonquil to drop me off outside the town instead of flying me up to the turrets on the dragon. I felt in need of calming before I met with my stepmother.
I climbed up the thousand steps that led from the base of the mountain to the entry of the palace. Tired and rather sweaty, I passed through the antechambers with their winding staircases leading to all parts of the interior. At last, I stood before thegreat bronze doors. Beyond them, the queen was lying in wait for me, perched on her obsidian throne.
The pair of ogres standing on guard screamed, “HALT!” Ogres are noisy in general, every footfall a stomp and every word a bellow. “WHO DARES,” they thundered in unison, “TO BEG FOR AN AUDIENCE WITH THE MIGHTY QUEEN, THE FELL SORCERESS OF SKALLA, THE—”
“Hi, guys,” I said. “How’s it going?”
Femus crouched down—both of the ogres were a good twelve feet tall and bulging with muscles in unlikely places—and squinted the single bloodshot eye above the bridge of his nose. “MELILOT? OH, GOOD, YOU’RE HERE. SHE’S WAITING FOR YOU.”
