The Pearl of the Soul of the World

by Pierce, Meredith Ann

  "That when a princess-royal's

  to have tasted of the tree…"

  She remembered the taste of a strange golden fruit upon her tongue—sharp, yet so tremendously sweet. The dark girl sang on:

  "Then far from Esternesse's

  city, these things:

  A gathering of gargoyles,

  a feasting on the stone,

  The Witch of Westernesse's

  hag overthrown."

  The gargoyled Ions all assembled at Orm, a dreadful sacrifice upon an Ancient altar, and the Witch's red-eyed harridan falling screaming from the highest ledge…

  Aeriel came to herself with a start, realizing that Erin had reached the end of the second long stanza—the last stanza anyone knew—and had stopped singing. The pale girl shook herself and gazed at her friend, wondering.

  "Where did you hear that song?" she said. "I never knew it had a tune before."

  Erin laughed. "All the camp's singing it. Some bard's doing. Volunteers, when they come, march in singing it. I would not be surprised if it is all over Westernesse by now." She smiled devilishly. "Your notoriety spreads."

  Aeriel looked wryly away for a moment—but her annoyance at Erin's playful needling never lasted.

  She sighed, thinking of the rime. "But what is the rest of it?" she asked. "No one knows. Talb the Mage has no inkling; nor do the Ions, and my maiden-spirits have not spoken to me since Orm."

  She glanced upward at the constellation of pale yellow stars called commonly the Maidens' Dance.

  Elliptical in shape, it floated overhead like a burning crown.

  "How shall I learn the rest of the rime?" Aeriel wondered aloud. "We're preparing to march, and I don't even know Ravenna's plan!"

  Sobering, Erin touched her companion's hand lightly, once. "Take heart. Everything of which the rime speaks so far has come to pass. The Witch must know this. Perhaps she has grown so afraid of you now that she has withdrawn into her palace of cold white stone and will not show herself." The dark girl shrugged. "In all events, it's no use worrying. I am certain that soon you will discover the last of the rime."

  Aeriel could not help smiling, just a little. Erin always cheered her. But her mood quickly darkened.

  She fidgeted, biting her lip.

  "It's Irrylath I am most uneasy for. He is still within her reach—and the dreams she sends him are dire.

  I fear for him."

  "I don't," said Erin sourly. "He is so full of his army and this war—he spends more time in the company of Avarclon and that Sabr than he does in yours. He never speaks to you; he does not send for you. Is he not your husband?"

  "Peace, Erin," Aeriel said wearily. "There will be time for all that, after the war."

  But the dark girl shook her head.

  "I have heard the rumors flying all over camp, all about this enchantment the White Witch still holds on him," she exclaimed, "that he may not lie with you or anyone while the White Witch lives—but I tell you from experience that that is very little of what makes a man, and though he may not lie with you, he might touch you, or talk to you, or even look at you when you are in his company—but no, it is ever 'my troops," and 'the warhost," and 'My steed calls me away!" Sabr, that bedaggered bandit, dotes on him."

  Aeriel tensed. "She is his cousin."

  "So are you. And which of you is his wife?"

  Aeriel felt the knot beneath her breastbone tighten. She gripped a handful of desiccated sand suddenly as though she meant to hurl it at Erin. The near tents sighed in the wind. Aeriel opened her fingers and let the sand trickle away. "I'll not speak of this."

  "No, you never will," snapped Erin. She gazed off across the camp, between the airy pavilions in pale, pale green, ghost blue, and mauve. The set of her jaw told Aeriel that her own refusal to speak had hurt her friend.

  "It is not…" she began, groping. "It is only that we hardly know one another, Irrylath and I."

  Erin looked back at her sidelong. "I have known you far less time than he," she said softly, "and already I love you well."

  A stone rose in Aeriel's throat. She put her arms around the dark girl. For a moment, Erin's cheek rested against her breast. "I am so glad you did not go back to your people after Orm," she whispered.

  "You are my strength. You came on to Esternesse for my sake, didn't you?"

  Looking up, Erin shook her head and patted Aeriel's cheek. Her palm was cool and dry. "No, dear one," she said. "For mine. I never had a friend before."

  She rose.

  "But I will leave you now," she said, "for I see you want to be alone. I will be at the campfires of my folk, trying to remember their— our—tongue."

  Aeriel mustered a smile and let her go. No less confounded than before by the White Witch and by Irrylath, she nonetheless felt easier now for having spoken with Erin. The dark girl bent and kissed her brow.

  "But you will forgive me if I think your prince of Avaric a great fool for not loving you," Erin said very gently. "And you an even greater one for wanting him to."

  6

  Black Bird

  Aeriel arose and wandered through the close-staked pavilions, encountering no one. Those who glimpsed her in the distance gave her a wide berth: all seemed in awe of her. She sighed, lonely suddenly for someone who did not know her, someone who would not recognize her instantly and draw away.

  She was sorry now to have let Erin leave her, and was just turning to find her way out of the jumble of tentbacks and supply pavilions that surrounded her when a snatch of conversation reached her ear. She paused, frowning, seeing no one else about.

  A great green silk tent loomed before her, billowing in the light desert breeze. She felt the air's coolness against her cheek and the touch of the sandy grit it bore. The slapping of the open tent flap only deepened the stillness. Puzzled, she found herself listening, straining, but for long moments, she heard only wind and silk. Then it came again, a low muffle of voices—one of them unmistakably Irrylath's.

  "If you positioned your horse-troops like so, my mother's bowwomen could be stationed here…"

  Aeriel froze, hearing the faint rasp of metal against metal. Another spoke.

  "Then our foot could be divided here and here."

  Sabr's voice. She recognized it now, imagined the bandit queen unsheathing and pointing with her dagger. The rasp of metal again: the dagger sheathed.

  "You never did tell me what happened to that fine Bernean blade I once gave you."

  A teasing tone had stolen into Sabr's voice. Aeriel blinked. Banter from the bandit queen was rare. A rattling of parchment.

  "I broke it," came Irrylath's short reply.

  Their voices did not come from within, Aeriel realized suddenly, drawing nearer the dark pavilion. Its back stood close behind the backs of a rose and a saffron tent, cutting off a kind of courtyard from the open space around.

  "How, pray?" the prince's cousin was asking. "The blade was Bernean steel."

  Aeriel stood very still beside the green pavilion, listening. Silence from Irrylath. Cautiously, she peered around the green silk edge. Sabr and Irrylath stood in the courtyard beyond. They were alone, without the usual swarm of aides and attendants. Half-turned from his cousin, the prince of Avaric bent over a scroll. Sabr toyed with her own Bernean blade.

  "I'll give you another," she told him softly.

  "Don't," he said abruptly, straightening and rolling the parchment up.

  He moved away from Sabr, but only a step. She followed, and boldly laid one hand—just so—across the scars that threaded his cheek. Astonishment gripped Aeriel. She clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. She expected Irrylath to pull instantly away from Sabr, but instead he turned, slowly, as if unwilling, to look at her.

  "Can't you love me, cousin," she asked him, "even a little?"

  Aeriel felt a surge of outrage, then blinding jealousy. Irrylath would never have permitted her such a touch. She bit her tongue, half hoping he would strike Sabr, push her roughly aside, revile her, but
he only shook his head, and the look in his eyes was a desperate sadness, not anger.

  "I can love no woman while the Witch's enchantment is on me," he answered. "I have told you that."

  He had told her! Incomprehension filled Aeriel. Her fingers on the pole beneath the pavilion silk tightened. She had thought only she and perhaps the Lady Syllva privy to that secret. All Erin and the camp could know were rumors. Yet he had told Sabr. Why? She whom many still called the queen of Avaric dropped her hand from him, her face falling.

  "Yes," she said quietly. "And the only satisfaction it gives me is that you cannot love her either."

  "Don't speak of her so," whispered Irrylath. Sabr turned abruptly away.

  "She frightens you, doesn't she?" the prince's cousin snapped. "Almost as much as the Witch. You fear her sorcerous green eyes see everything." Sabr snorted. "Do they? Do they see us now?"

  Only half hidden by the corner of the tent, Aeriel stood riveted, too stunned to move. She felt powerless, exposed, standing in plain view. Yet neither her husband nor the so-called queen of Avaric took note of her, their eyes on one another.

  "She stood in the temple fire at Orm," continued Sabr bitterly. "It has burned her shadow away. She wears a pearl on her breast that is full of light. What sort of mortal creature is that?"

  The bandit queen turned back to Irrylath, seizing his arm. This time he did not move away.

  "I tell you, she is no mortal woman! She is some unworldly thing, Ravenna's sorceress. How could you love her? Surely the Witch's spell is simply what you have told her to keep her at bay."

  The prince shook his head. His voice was hoarse. "Would that it were."

  His cousin did not seem to be listening. Her knuckles were pale where she clenched his arm. "But I am a mortal woman. I would be content with just your heart. Truly—"

  At last, at last he pulled free of her. Watching, Aeriel held her breath. Her knees felt shaky, weak.

  She clung to the pavilion pole.

  "I am not free to give it," said Irrylath. "My heart is not my own."

  " She took it, didn't she?" Sabr snapped.

  The prince bowed his head, looking away from her. He touched his breast. "And gilded it with lead."

  "I wasn't speaking of the Witch," the bandit queen replied. "When she rescued you and took the Witch's gilding off, she didn't give you back your own heart, did she? She kept that for herself."

  Sabr strode around to face him and laid her hand upon his breast.

  "The heart that beats here is not yours, is it?" she pressed. He would not look at her. "How then can you say," Sabr insisted lowly, "that she did not seek to make you hers, exactly as did the Witch?"

  Aeriel felt rage surge in her again, dangerously. Not true, not true! She had only wanted to save him, by putting her own living heart in his breast. It had been Talb the Mage who had taken the enchanted darkangel's heart, purged it of the Witch's lead, and placed it into the dying Aeriel's breast.

  "I love you," said Sabr.

  "Don't say it."" The prince's voice was ragged.

  Sabr's hand remained upon his heart. She answered, "I don't care whether you can lie with me or not.

  I only want you to love me in return."

  He looked up, then hard away. Aeriel saw the despair in his eyes. "I can't," he whispered to Sabr. "I don't know how. The Witch has got her talons in me still. I can't love you, or her, or anyone while the White Witch lives."

  The sky seemed to spin over Aeriel. There, he had used it, Sabr's word, that nameless her. Sabr reached to cup the prince's face in her hands, but Aeriel hardly saw.

  "I'll show you," she told him. "I'll help you." Again he shook his head.

  Jealousy consumed Aeriel. How dared the bandit queen? How could Sabr, who had known Irrylath only a few short daymonths, become so close to him? Surely she, Aeriel, had tried every whit as hard to touch him, to lend comfort, to know his heart—only to be repeatedly rebuffed. You cannot help me, he had told her once by starlight. No one can help me. But she did not hear him say so to Sabr now.

  "Whether you love me or not," she told him, "whether you can lie with me or not, I love you. And I only wish that your heart were your own to give as you choose, not some scrap to be tugged to pieces between the teeth of the White Witch and a green-eyed sorceress."

  "Oh, cousin," Irrylath told her, "if only that were so."

  Sick, silently raging, Aeriel stumbled away from camp. The red sand's dry crust broke and crumbled underfoot. She met no one—No one hindered her. The pavilions fell away behind. The night all around stretched dark and still—but she could not escape the hateful words still ringing in her mind, or the memory of what had passed between Irrylath and Sabr.

  "Thief!" she gasped, shuddering, scarcely able to draw breath. "Queen of thieves!" Erin had been right. Ducking, Aeriel fought back tears. "Irrylath belongs to me."

  Something stirred in the darkness ahead of her. Abruptly, Aeriel stumbled to a stop. Hand at her breast, she peered through the pale glimmer of stars and Oceanuslight. Her palm hid the faint glow of the pearl. The creature before her cawed and flexed its wings. As tall as her forearm was long it stood: completely black. Its feathers threw back no sheen at all, depthless as shadow. Aeriel froze. The black bird cawed again and looked at her. In its beak it held a silver pin.

  "Greetings, little sorceress," it said, taking the pin in one of its claws to speak.

  Aeriel felt her skin prickle. "You are one of the Witch's rhuks."

  "Yes," it laughed.

  "What do you want of me?" she demanded, casting about her, wondering how she could have been so blind as to leave the camp alone, unarmed. The empty dunes stretched all around.

  "Our lady has a proposition for you," chuckled the rhuk. It played with the silver pin in its toes.

  "Do not call her my lady," Aeriel spat. "Your mistress was never mine."

  "My lady wishes to confer with you," the bird replied. "There is no need for war. Surely this matter can be settled amicably between the two of you, face-to-face."

  "I mean to face her," Aeriel returned hotly, "as soon as may be, and with an army at my back."

  The black bird hissed. "Relinquish Irrylath. My mistress has a prior claim." It hopped toward her, one-footed, across the sand, its other claw clutching the pin.

  "My mistress will reward you with any lover you wish. She will kill Sabr, if you wish."

  Aeriel fell back before the Witch's messenger.

  "My mistress will make you immortal, like herself, if you so desire," the black bird rasped. "She has always longed for a daughter, an heir…"

  "She is not immortal," cried Aeriel, sick with loathing at the sight of the bird: the lorelei made her darkangels' wings from the feathers of such as these. "If she were deathless, she would not fear me."

  The rhuk laughed. "Do it for Irrylath's sake," it crooned. "Things will go worse for him if you force my lady to take him from you."

  "No!" shouted Aeriel, nearly losing her footing in the soft, treacherous sand.

  "Yield!" the bird exclaimed. "Ravenna's luck has deserted you. You don't even know the last stanza of the rime. My mistress is prepared to be generous if you will surrender now."

  Aeriel felt the ground sloping sharply upward beneath her feet. The rhuk had backed her against the steep of a dune. For a moment, panic rose in her as she realized she had nowhere left to retreat.

  "Your mistress is in mortal terror of me," she answered suddenly, remembering Erin's words. "If the Witch thought she could win, she would have sent her army against us by now."

  "My mistress has let your army come this far because it amuses her," the rhuk replied, "to watch children playing at war." The silver pin gleamed in its grasp. "And because you have done her the invaluable service of assembling all her enemies in one place."

  Aeriel clenched her teeth. Her hand at her breast made a fist of the fabric of her gown. How dared this creature corner her and issue its demands? How dared it urge her to surrender Irryla
th and the war?

  As she left the dune and strode toward it, the black rhuk fluttered hastily back, raising a fine, dry rain of sand. Aeriel quickened her stride.

  "Why has your mistress sent the likes of you against me?" she inquired evenly. "I have killed your kind before."

  "My mistress has no intention of killing you," the black bird hissed, "for then the magic locked in you would escape and be loose in the world. One of her enemies might gather it up, as you did the magic of the starhorse. Better to pin you!"

  With a raucous cry, the black bird took wing. For an instant Aeriel thought she had put it to flight.

  Too late she realized it was flying at her. She felt its wings clap against her face and batted them desperately away. Again it swooped, struck, and this time as she swung and turned, the loose sand shifted beneath her heel, and she fell.

  The ground came up hard against her ribs. She felt the black bird's claws upon her back—both sets of talons. It must have dropped the pin, or have it in its mouth again. Gasping, each breath a painful bite, she struggled to raise herself on one elbow and dash the rhuk away. The vile creature clinging to her shoulder made her shake with revulsion.

  All at once she felt a stabbing behind her ear, sharp as a little sword. Agony overwhelmed her, too intense even to let her scream. Aeriel rolled and struck wildly at the bird with both hands. To her astonishment, the light of the pearl, no longer hidden, had become a blaze. What had caused it to do so?

  It had never done so before. The claws of the rhuk abruptly released her. She felt its wings stroke stiffly across her cheek.

  "The light, the light!" it crowed.

  Dimly, she became aware of the rhuk thrashing on the ground beside her, writhing as though burned.

  The light of the pearl was already dimming. A horrifying cold had begun to consume her. She groped, putting one hand behind her ear. Her fingers brushed the little knob of silver jutting from the bone. A piercing chill shot through her limbs. She felt as though something were being drawn from her, like the strand yanked from a string of beads. Memory scattered. She thought that she might die of the pain. It was the last thought she had before oblivion blotted out the stars.