The Princess and the Firedrake Read online

  “Well…” said the queen.

  But the king trampled her doubts. “Hubert, my son, are you up for this?”

  Prince Hubert sucked in a deep breath. “Whatever you say, Poppa.” Hubert’s voice sounded fainter than normal.

  Grogelbert didn’t notice. “That’s my boy; that’s my true son; that’s what I expect from the Crown Prince!”

  Hubert said desperately, “I’ve been meaning to talk about that, Poppa…”

  “Not now, son; time’s a-wasting and you have a dragon to slay.” He turned to the Major Domo and added triumphantly, “Just like the old days, hey?”

  “Alas, yes.”

  “What did you say?” asked the king sharply.

  “I said, ‘Ah yes, yes!’” the Major Domo said quickly, “it is indeed just like the old days.”

  Chapter 4

  Prince Hubert Sallies Forth

  If the kingdom was hot, the Royal Armory was brutal, with its great noxious forge belching gasses and flames. It was painfully noisy too, as armorers hammered on burgonets, barbutes, gorgets, cuirasses, spaulders, greaves and all the other fiddly bits that made up suits of armor. Prince Hubert resembled a boiled lobster, with his sunburned face and his body covered in overlapped plates. His squire Hans was fitting new gardbraces over his pauldrons as the king supervised. Princess Alix stayed off to one side, observing and keeping out of her father’s sight.

  “Ecco!” cried a dramatic Italian voice.

  “I didn’t hear one,” the King said absently.

  “No, no, Signore - how you say? Ah: Behold!” And none other than the genius Galileo Galilei appeared, pushing a wooden wheeled cart with a tank on it. He was a short, energetic man with red hair and a long beard, wearing a robe and a close-fitting cap. He picked up a short leather hose, aimed the brass nozzle, and beckoned to Hans. The squire dutifully pumped a handle attached to the tank and a thin stream of water arced out of the nozzle and piddled feebly on the king’s shoe. “Scusi,” said Galileo.

  “Is that thing your new secret weapon?” the king asked doubtfully, wiping the shoe on the calf of his opposite stocking. “That’s pathetic.”

  “Ah no, Maiestí; Firedrake’s skin is red-hot iron, no? Spray joost-a one spot wid dis cold water and crrrack! Da whole ting shatters!” The great scientist shrugged at this obvious insight: “Temperature differential!”

  The king looked confused, but Princess Alix knew exactly what Galileo meant. She said, “Assuming different coefficients of expansion among different plates.”

  Galileo lit up like a harvest moon. “Ah, Principessa! he cried, turning toward Alix, “atsa, good; molto bravo!”

  “Grazie, Maestro; non è nulla,” Alix replied smoothly, and curtsied to the eminent scientist.

  “Never mind her; just get on with it, man,” the king shouted.

  Hubert and his squire were not big on technical analysis, but their expressions plainly said what they thought of this sorry squirter.

  * * * *

  The secret weapon project proceeded Code Red - or something like that; the king never could keep his code colors straight - so it was just a few days until the court trooped down the hill and out to the City’s north gate to send Hubert and Hans off on their mission. A few sweaty burghers saw them off, but the punishing heat reduced the overall turnout to an unhappy few.

  The king made a speech that was as impressive as anyone could make in his undershirt, and the palace servants and six or eight citizens attempted a cheer; but it was just too hot, so they only waved a little, keeping their elbows down to conceal the sweat stains on their doublets. With this limp encouragement, Prince Hubert and squire Hans chk-chk’d at their horses and plodded off, with the secret weapon bumping forlornly behind them.

  Up at the palace, Princess Alix and her mother shared a high north window in a handy tower, taking turns with Galileo's telescope. The queen watched the great scientist's water cannon joggle off toward Mount Sulfur. “It can’t possibly protect Hubert,” she said, “what was the Maestro thinking?”

  Princess Alix sighed. “He was thinking that Poppa pays a lot for his inventions. That’s how defense contracting works.”

  “I have the horrible fear that I will never see Hubert again,” the queen said sadly.

  “I didn’t know you were that fond of him, mother.”

  Athena was silent a while; then she said in a small funny voice, “I am, you know, very much; perhaps I don’t show it though.” Another pause, then, “I must think about that.”

  As they carried the tripod and telescope back to the queen’s study, the Princess thought about it too. Clearly, her mother was more comfortable with books than with people. Was she shy or was she just incapable of understanding them? Could Alix be like that too? No; no; there was no logical reason to believe that. She wasn’t like her mother; not at all.

  * * * *

  Uncountable eons of lava flow had banked the sides of Mount Sulfur up to a gentle slope, but that was the only gentle thing about the scene. Prince Hubert and Squire Hans led their horses up a path blasted free of trees and grasses and strewn with tricky little rocks that made the horses stumble and forced the men to walk. In all the charred debris that lay around them, the frequent piles of ashes by the path did not stand out - that is, not until they passed one with the twisted remnant of a helmet on top. Five or six mounds uphill, a sword hilt protruded from a blackened pile.

  “I wonder what that’s all about,” said Hans, as they struggled upward past half a shield with its paint scorched off.

  “Seems a funny place to leave your trash,” Hubert answered. “Maybe there’s, like, some kind of incinerator.”

  Hans looked around fearfully in the harsh yellow twilight, but kept further thoughts to himself.

  Another hundred paces closer to the volcano mouth they came to a much bigger boulder and brave Hubert motioned Hans to hold the horses in its shelter. Scared but determined, Hubert hauled the little water cart, single-handed, onward and upward, past one mound after another of ashes and melted armor scraps. Then, without warning, the sky turned blood red and a deafening sound like the roar of a giant furnace rolled down the slope. Startled into looking for what caused this blast, Hans peeped around the boulder in time to see a great fireball rumble toward Hubert and swallow him in flames. Though Hans jumped back instantly, his face looked parboiled and his eyebrows and front hair were burnt off. By the time his pain had subsided enough to let him think of anything but his own agony, the roar had subsided and the sky returned to its regular sickly yellow. Cautiously, he poked his head around the boulder. All he could make out up the hill was a new pile of still-smoking ashes beside the skeletons of four wheels with a burst water tank between them.

  * * * *

  Squire Hans brought the horses home to Gdink, with the sorrowful news of Hubert’s fate. Nurse Hildegard spread salve on his burns, mixed with tears that fell as she worked on his poor crimson face. Mandolyn half-carried Gwendolyn to a far bed chamber where her sobs would not add to the general uproar. This left the rest of the royal family alone, except for the Major Domo and the scientist Galileo, who was looking distinctly uneasy.

  This terrible business had shocked Queen Athena out of her scientific cocoon. She recalled that she did love her children - loved all of them, dim Hubert and Filbert as much as her brilliant daughter. Now Hubert was dead because of her pigheaded husband, and the queen’s grief was transformed into wrath at the king.

  “You idiot,” she said in a poisonous tone, “you sent your son to put out a volcano with a squirt gun!”

  “Galileo said it would work,” the king protested faintly. In fact, his grief was as deep as the queen’s, but kings don’t react well to evidence that they have been stupid.

  “She was joost a prototype,” Galileo protested, “we never even got to test ‘er.”

  The king shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Galileo said anxiously, “Next time, I got a mooch better idea.”


  “Good,” the king sighed; because Filbert’s going to need all the help he can get.”

  “What?!?” the queen shouted, “You’re not sending Filbert out to die too!”

  The king snarled, “The country’s still burning up. People’re still starving. They expect me to do something. I can’t send Miss Smartypants here, she’s a girl!”

  Suddenly, Alix too was furious: there was that mere girl thing again! Goaded past her weak command of tact, she shouted, “Re-using tactics that failed the first time is typical military thinking! Male thinking, of course!”

  King Grogelbert too turned his sorrow into rage, and he aimed it straight at his too-clever daughter. “That’s it!” he screamed, “I can’t take any more of you! I hereby banish you - yes, banish you forever from Schloss Schlaffschstein!!” The king ran to a nearby table, wiping the spit off his chin. “Permanently!” He picked up an ink pot and threw it. “Perpetually!!” He smashed a glass vase on the marble floor. “Endlessly!!!” He grabbed the table edge and heaved it onto its side, dumping its contents all over.

  Everyone stood frozen a moment while black ink soaked the best unicorn tapestry, King Grogelbert panted with effort, and spilled candles lit little fires in the carpet.

  The Major Domo stamped on the flames to extinguish them. “I’m afraid you can’t banish her, Sire,” he said. The king’s eyes bugged out and his face turned purple, but before he could turn his sputter into speech the Major Domo continued quietly, “Because you never publicly proclaimed that the Princess was disinherited, she is technically still the Crown Princess - still heir to the throne of Sulphronia.” He started rounding up glass shards with one careful foot.

  “Well, that’s easily fixed,” said the King grimly, rummaging for a blank parchment in the mess on the floor. “Where’s my ink?”

  “You used it to improve the tapestry,” said Athena coldly. “Now, Groggy, you listen to me.” The queen almost never spoke like that - perhaps because she had little to say in general - so when she uttered those words, he stared at her with his mouth hanging open. Queen Athena continued in slow, measured tones, “You will not, repeat, not disinherit the Crown Princess.” Without mercy, she stared back at her husband. “Will you?” Their eyes remained locked. “I said, will you?”

  King Grogelbert blinked and squirmed helplessly. Finally he muttered defiantly, “All right, all right; but that doesn’t mean I can’t exile her.” He turned to the Major Domo. “What’s a good desert island?”

  Athena said, “The people will never stand for that. The royal line has not been broken since the Romans gave up and left. They’ll exile you instead.”

  The king was practically fizzing with rage. Shaking, he looked again at the Major Domo, whose nod and raised eyebrows signaled, she’s right, you know.

  Suddenly, the king’s face showed that cunning look that dull people get when they think they’ve had an idea. “All right then,” he said triumphantly, “I banish me, I mean us, I mean everybody!!” He thrust the parchment into the Major Domo’s hand. “Take a proclamation!”

  Without missing a beat, the Major Domo pulled out a charcoal stick wrapped in a hanky. “Very good, Sire.”

  The king started pacing as he dictated. “To every single person in this palace - uh, wait, uh, except for her - you are ordered to leave Schloss Schlaffshtein,” slurp, “at once. Move all your junk down the hill to Gdink. Leave nothing behind! You got that?”

  “…Nothing behind,” read the Major Domo.

  “Right! The court, the government, the… the… everything is moving to, ah, to…”

  “City Hall is the only large building, Sire.”

  “Fine; everyone but that smart-Alix knowitall. She stays locked up here in Schloss Schlaffschstein…” slurp, “forever!!” The king continued to pace the room, still gathering steam. “She may never go through the door of this palace again, on pain of…” he stopped as he caught the queen’s eyes boring into his. “On pain of, well, something really, really bad!”

  So it had come to this. Princess Alix watched her father with a dull, aching feeling, so distant from him now that even her sorrow seemed small and far away. She had thought the king had wounded her as badly he could, but she’d been wrong. However angry he became, however much he stormed and ranted, he had never quite abandoned her completely.

  Until now. Now her Poppa was leaving her forever.

  The very next morning a long sullen line of courtiers, servants, and donkeys groaning under loads of household goods, slipped and scrabbled down the steep hill to Gdink. They had stripped the great palace bare and left the place echoing as a hundred doors slammed shut one by one. The last to depart was the Major Domo, who sorrowfully snuffed the last candles and locked the great door behind him, leaving Princess Alix alone in the dark.

  Chapter 5

  Abandoned

  Schloss Schlaffschstein was called a palace because nowadays palaces were what up-to-date royalty built; but it was really your basic ancient castle: a disorderly jumble of drafty buildings, rickety towers, and endless crenellated walls that rambled all over the hilltop. It was a musty relic of dangerous times, though by now all the Vandals and Goths and suchlike had long-since given up and gone off to start countries of their own. The outer wall had only one door, the great front one, because the first King Grogelbert had wanted no cowards sneaking out the back way. Of course, Alix’s father the king had been too cheap to replace this moldy old castle built by his distant ancestor.

  And this was where the princess was locked up alone. Her chest felt thick with grief and her eyes were long past leaking tears. She had groped her way across the black antechamber and through the inner door. As daylight crept reluctantly through stingy windows, Alix surveyed her new prison. The throne room was utterly bare, with a great square of dust where the threadbare carpet had been and eight squares of lighter stone on the wall where portraits of Grogelberts I through VIII had hung behind the spot where the thrones had once stood.

  The kitchen was equally naked. Every pot, pan, ladle, and bowl was gone and all the food stores had been taken. The fire was dead in the great kitchen hearth and the firewood pile by the door had gone missing. There was nothing whatever to eat.

  The family rooms had been stripped bare as well. The furniture had departed and the space where the her majesty’s work table stood was now empty. The brass telescope and its tripod were absent. Alix wandered into her own bed chamber to find that all her clothes and belongings had been carried off and even her bed had been stolen from her.

  Her own room stripped; her personal things stolen! Somehow this empty, echoing chamber hit her as no other room had done. The high walls and locked door of the palace marooned her as thoroughly as any desert island. She was cut off from everyone, everywhere, everything; condemned to solitary confinement for life.

  Alone. Alix stood very still and thought about that.

  Over the years she had grown used to loneliness, as the court had withdrawn from her for reasons she never could fathom. Lost in her studies of Aristotle and Boethius, she had not realized that these dead companions were no substitute for live ones. Sinking to the dusty floor where her carpet had once lain, she sat without moving, unable to go on. Why had her father done this to her? Why had people rejected her? Why had the whole court excluded her? How was she different from everyone else? Her brilliant mind and astonishing memory offered no answers.

  Alix was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't notice the limping clicks of paws with toenails across the flagstone floor. The sound approached with painful slowness, and was soon joined by painful wheezing, and then at last a muffled whump! as a weight like a heavy sack landed on her foot.

  The princess looked down. "Max!" she positively yelled with joy. Her ancient mutt tried to look up at her but the effort was too great. He uttered a martyr's groan instead and dropped his old head on the floor. His goofy ears, the only soft, flexible parts he still had, flopped out around his head. "Ohhh, Max, you stayed for me!
"

  In fact, Max had stayed because he was too tired to leave the coolness of the princess' antechamber and face the trek down to Gdinsk. He did love her though, because, not being human, he'd escaped the despicable warlock's curse. Nurse Hildegard had found him for the princess when she was only three, a cheerful puppy with bright eyes and huge feet and a tongue that would not stay in his mouth. Combining the unfortunate traits of six different dog breeds, Max had then been an ugly duckling, though he would eventually grow up to be an ugly swan. Seventeen years later he was just as homely and desperately old, but Alix still loved him and Max loved her back with the uncritical devotion that only dogs can bestow.

  They might have sat there forever - or until their dust had mingled with the other dust - but after a long patient time, old Max made a faint, inquiring whimper. She turned and her vacant expression cleared as she looked at her ancient companion. Max had lasted far longer than most dogs; why? He didn’t question things; he just endured.

  And so would she! Alix shook her head, took a deep breath, and stood up again. She would not be defeated. This huge palace must offer her something, somewhere, and she would find it, however long it took.

  * * * *

  By late afternoon she’d inspected storerooms and stables, chambers and parlors, hallways and turrets; all empty, abandoned, and echoing. She was now carrying Max. The poor ancient dog was too weak to walk the whole length and breadth of the endless castle. Alix was tired now too, so it was doubly hard work to haul her old friend up the last six flights of steps to the last, highest room in the last, farthest tower. Setting the dog down gently, she tried the door. The handle turned so it wasn’t locked, but the ancient latch had rusted solid. Alix moved back as far as she could and then ran at the door and hit it with a mighty blow that she’d learned from her kick boxing self-study course. The old hinges snapped, the door fell in, and Alix rebounded and crashed to the hard stone floor.

  Rubbing her backside, she picked herself up - after all, she’d only finished half the course - and brushed at the cobwebs and dirt on her gown. Then she entered the room beyond, too engrossed in trying to clean herself up to note that a wall torch was somehow burning, although there was no one to light it.