The Poisoned Crown

by Amanda Hemingway

  Annie remembered Cerne’s rage and shame when he spoke of his son, but she knew it would be fatal to show pity.

  “I’ve heard of you,” she said.

  He looked at her with a sneer on his mouth and a flame brightening his red, red eyes, but she sensed the pain beneath. You would know the monster by his human side, Bartlemy had said.

  And suddenly she thought she knew why he had wanted to come in.

  “I am Kaliban,” he said, “the witch’s demon child. The sword with the twisted blade—an abortion of both nature and werenature. You have invited me into your home. Isn’t it customary, under these circumstances, to offer me a drink?”

  “Certainly,” Annie said. “I’ve got whiskey, and vodka, and there’s some cheap wine I was using for cooking, but that’s awful, and—”

  “I’ll take whiskey.”

  She poured him the whiskey and one for herself, then sat down, facing him, feeling very slightly more comfortable in his company.

  “Well?” she said by way of a prompt.

  “Well?” he mocked her.

  “You said you knew Josevius Grimthorn.”

  “So I did. May he burn in hell—only he already has. One of fate’s better decisions. I met him … I forget the year. Too many have gone past. It was when I was still young and couldn’t alter my demon form. So they hunted me, the men who called themselves nobles—not that the peasants were any kinder. They hunted me with arrows, they hunted me with dogs, but I plucked the arrows from my flesh and tore out the throat of the leading hound with my teeth. Then I ran into the woods. They were deeper and thicker then, and the Darkwood down in the valley had a bad name: few went in, fewer still came out. But I had no fear of rumors and tales. The pursuit became tangled in briars and frightened of shadows, but I went on into the valley until I came to the house. It was in a clearing, but the trees clustered close behind it, and Grimthorn stood in the doorway calling me in. I didn’t trust him—I trusted no one, noble or villein, wizard or werefolk—but my wounds hurt, and I was tired. He invited me in, gave me water to wash my injuries as well as salves and bandages. He broke bread with me. Do you understand?”

  Annie nodded. She knew that traditionally a guest who has shared food and drink with his host was sacred.

  “We had wine—not much; it must have been drugged. I slept. When I awoke I was shackled hand and foot and half a dozen of my erstwhile hunters were standing beside me, gloating over their captive. Grimthorn was smirking and pocketing gold.” Kal’s mouth twisted at the recollection. “He didn’t smirk for long. He had forgotten my history, if he ever knew it. Iron does not weaken me. And I am … very strong. I burst the bands on wrist and ankle and swung the chains that had weighted me so fast the air thrummed. I took two men’s heads off through steel collars with the force of it. The rest fled—they were lightly armed and had no dogs—but it was Grimthorn I followed. He was only a footstep ahead when he entered the chapel, but I could not cross the threshold. The ward-spells sealed it from me. Once inside, he called on powers I had never heard of—powers from beyond the world—and the air split, and the accursed Cup was there, glowing green as decay. I watched from the door, forgotten, and then I slunk away into the night. Grimthorn I did not fear, but the power he summoned …”

  “The Devil?” Annie asked.

  “Hardly.” Kal laughed. “I have known him for a thousand years. This power was something else—I felt it. Something so much greater— something that might have crushed the most potent werespirit as I would crush an ant. It nudged at the fabric of our world like the fist of a god brushing a spider’s web. The darkness cracked like an eggshell— the ground shook. I had always known when to fight, when to run, when to hide. I ran and hid. I sensed Josevius was doomed, and soon. No man could meddle with such power and live.”

  “It fits with what we know,” Annie said. “Someone—presumably the Grandir—used spells to send the Grail and the other relics across the barrier of the worlds. After that Bartlemy says they became unstable and would travel easily between universes. But … what of the other question? Do you remember—Bartlemy asked for a name? The name of—of Nathan’s father?”

  “I know nothing of his father,” said the demon. “But I saw the boy Nei-thun, and his mother. That was what I came to tell you.”

  “His mother?” Annie stared at him, startled into blankness. For a minute she thought Kal was taunting her, until she saw his gaze lowered, preoccupied with memory.

  “It was long after,” he said. “Three, four hundred years, maybe more. By then I had learned to live secretly; I was the hunter, not the hunted, killing in the dark. There was a witch in these parts, some descendant of Josevius—she had a lust for a demon lover, and she summoned me to the circle, and stepped within the perimeter, thinking to lie with me there. But I remembered the witch who was my mother, and I broke her neck. The spell failed, and the circle was open, and I walked away into the night. It was Halloween, or Beltane, or Lammas—one of those nights when witches are abroad and there is magic in the air. The priest hid in his chapel, the peasant in his cottage. In the churchyard, the Whistlers were out, whistling the dead from their graves. That sort of night.”

  Annie started to ask Who are the Whistlers? but she didn’t want to slow down the story. “What happened?” she said.

  “The woman was on the road through the woods. There was a road by then, though not such as you see now; this was just a track cleared of trees, so farm carts and wains could pass through. The woman had a dozen servants with her, all dressed like princes, and a boy of about sixteen. That was why I watched—because of the boy. He was deformed, his legs so twisted he could barely walk, or so I guessed— he and his mother rode in a phaeton drawn by two white llamas. The servants were on foot. I heard the woman call him Nei-thun, though what language they spoke I didn’t know. I told myself if opportunity offered I would spook both the servants and the llamas, and when the phaeton broke on the rough ground I would take the cripple, because he could not run away.”

  “You don’t mean—you would have eaten him?” Annie demanded, horrified.

  He flashed her a smile without humor, his assorted teeth gleaming in the lamplight.

  “They came from the East, I knew that,” he went on. “They smelled of the spices they ate, and the hot dust of the Eastern deserts. She must have been a queen, a sorceress—either or both. You could tell by her jewels and her pride. Her skin was golden and her hair crimson and her eyes were those of a cat. Oh, she was mortal enough, but the mark of the Gift was on her. I knew I would be hard-pressed to take the boy when she was near. Still, I watched her. I’ve always hated witches. All save one.”

  “Which one?” Annie queried, but he didn’t answer.

  “After the woods she turned aside and made her way to the Scar-barrow. She couldn’t have known the country but she must have had directions, or maybe she’d seen her way in a spell. On Scarbarrow she stood in the circle, and the symbols flamed around her, and her servants hid their faces in terror. I might have taken any one of them, they were so unwary, but I wanted to see what she did. There was a storm on the hill, a witch’s storm, with lightning that crackled from sky to circle and the clouds sucked into a vortex of power. In the woods below, small things crept under the leaves and stayed there, trembling.”

  “How do you know?” Annie said.

  Kal flashed her a scorching look from narrowed eyes. “Because I’m telling the story. Had I been small enough, I would have crept under a leaf, and I do not scare easily. Are you answered?”

  “Sorry.”

  “It was a night like no other. The woman stood in the circle with her arms raised and her face to the lightning, and the boy sat at her feet, hugging her legs. He did not seem to be afraid, not while she was there. Not till the end. Then I heard her call on the powers of another world— the powers Grim thorn had summoned to the chapel centuries before— and the grass died on the hill, and the servants fled, and there was a stillness at the heart of
the spell like the eye of a hurricane. She took a jeweled knife from her belt and brandished it, and the edge of the curved blade shone like balefire. Then the boy was afraid, weeping and calling her Mother, but she seized him by the hair and cut his throat, and his lifeblood ran down her legs into the dead grass.”

  “No,” Annie whispered. “You’re making it up. No mother could do that to her child. You’re making it up.”

  “She killed him,” Kal said, “as the priest kills the prize bull, the pick of the herd, to please the gods. Thus the burden of tradition. Even the sickly Christians have such tales. My mother might have killed me, if she had valued me more highly.”

  “No mother could…”

  “She stood in the circle with the body at her feet, and drank the blood from a cup of obsidian, and the storm hung over Scarbarrow like a black crown spiked with lightnings. But the Other Powers made no answer, and the fabric of the world did not stir. The woman screamed in the language of the Stone, as though mere fury would open the forbidden Gate—screamed until her voice failed, and she sank to the ground, weeping for her son, or herself, or the end of her hopes. I had no hunger anymore; I left her to her wretchedness. In the dawn I saw the servants creeping back, and later in the day there was nothing left but the blood, already grown cold. And that was the end of it.”

  “Is that all true?” Annie demanded. “I still think no mother could … Is it really true?”

  “I’ve drunk your drink, and warmed myself at your hearth,” the demon said. “I could lie to you, but for what purpose?”

  “Why did you come to me—not Bartlemy?”

  “I like wizards no more than witches. And you were the one who wanted to know. I did not hear the name of either mother or father, but the boy was Nei-thun, and he is dead. Does that answer your questions?”

  “No,” Annie said frankly. “It just makes things more complicated.” She found she was shaking, perhaps from the proximity of the demon, more likely from the impact of the story. She believed him, whether she wanted to or not, and the horror of it seemed to taint her life, like a bloodstain in a familiar room.

  She glanced at the clock and saw it was midnight precisely; it would be. “N—my son will be coming home soon,” she said. “I don’t want to be unfriendly, but please would you go now? I don’t think he should meet you.”

  The ruby eyes darkened. “You love your son,” Kal said. “Still, mortal love is a fragile thing, the emotion of the moment. Only werefolk know what it is to love forever.”

  “You’re wrong,” Annie said. “Our lives may be short, but they are not empty. Werefolk endure; they do not know what it is to truly live, or truly love.”

  The demon rose, and looked down at her, his alien features enigmatic. “I am werefolk,” he reminded her. “Do you think I cannot feel? If I bit your throat out and drank your blood, do you think I would not taste your pain?”

  Annie made herself breathe slow and deep.

  “You have a mortal soul,” she said with sudden certainty, “though I don’t know where you keep it.”

  Kal drew back a little, and the corner of a smile came and went. “I am growing one,” he said. “In a pot of basil.”

  He stepped into the kitchen, heading for the garden door, though she hadn’t told him where it was. “Thank you for your hospitality. I will not forget it.” For a second, watching him go, she thought she saw lion’s paws below the hem of his jeans, and the twitch of a tail that protruded somehow, flickering across the floor. As he went into the garden she heard him singing a ballad she knew well, though one word sounded wrong. His voice was deep and unexpectedly musical.

  “Are you going to Scarbarrow Fayr?

  Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.

  Remember me to one who died there

  He once was a true love of mine.”

  And then the shop door clanged, and she knew Nathan was back.

  THAT NIGHT, the little house was full of dreams. Annie saw the Eastern witch standing in a circle far larger than the one Bartlemy had made. Flames played along the perimeter. Her hennaed hair hung down to her knees, and at her feet sat the boy, his arms clasped around her legs, his head bent. She raised the knife; the curve of the blade gleamed with wicked light. Then the boy looked up with Nathan’s face, Nathan’s eyes, and Annie was the witch, and the knife was in her hand, and she couldn’t help it, she couldn’t stop, though the tears ran down her cheek she was pulling back his head and drawing the blade across his neck …

  She woke up screaming.

  She got up and trod lightly into Nathan’s room to tell him it was all right, she had had a nightmare, that was all, nothing to fear. But he still slept, and when she laid a hand on his shoulder he didn’t stir, and she knew he wasn’t there.

  NATHAN WAS in Widewater, no longer solid, a thought drifting in a submarine world. Through the blue dimness he saw tall chimneys of rock bubbling with noxious gases; the surrounding water was cloudy with nutrients and flickered with tiny creatures that had come there to feed, ghost-shrimps and spiny stars and gulping mouths that swam without tentacle or fin. Nathan could make out little through the mist of plankton, but gradually he realized it was growing darker, the darkness not of night but of depth. He knew he was descending farther than ever before, and panic set in at the idea of it—the weight of water above him, the terrible pressure that would crush his lungs if he should materialize. He didn’t know how the merfolk survived it, magic perhaps, but he remembered that even in our world there are many fish and other marine animals that can endure such pressures, though scientists still do not fully understand how. He had left the stone chimneys behind now; ahead of him there was a wall of utter blackness. As he drew nearer he realized it was a vast cliff, the roots of the reef. Things wriggled past him in the dark; he was aware of their passage as a trembling in the water and was glad he could not really feel or see them.

  Presently, he made out a kind of glow somewhere in front, and as his vision improved he saw there were phosphorescent growths adhering to the rock like deep-sea fungus, quivering in the current. Beyond was something that looked like a garden, a garden on the ocean floor in the endless midnight of the deep, with sea shrubs whose every stem was tipped with a lidless eye, and writhing clumps of spaghetti-grass, and flowers like a frill of lip sucking at the water. He floated above it, invisible and intangible, but a bush of glittering eyes swayed toward him as though half aware of his presence, and tentacles of spaghetti groped at his nothingness, and flower-mouths gaped as he passed. He remembered Denaero saying something about the gardens of the shaman-priestesses, and assumed that was where he must be. Then in front there was a break in the wall, and the cliff opened to engulf him.

  Nathan’s dream carried him along the tunnel—he tried not to think of being trapped there, solid, with air and sunlight hundreds, perhaps thousands, of yards above—until it widened out into a huge cavern. It was roughly circular, ribbed and vaulted like a natural cathedral, lit with the pale mauve radiance of sea stars and the reflected glimmer of quartz and crystal veining the rock. In the center around a species of altar a group of merwomen were chanting. Their tails and bodies undulated with fluorescent stripes; their fins were barbed and their faces skull-thin, shrunken-cheeked, and lipless like beings halfway to starvation or decay. Their closed eyes bulged in hollow sockets as though straining to split their lids.

  The chant climaxed; the eyes opened. They were not whiteless like those of most werefolk but all white save for the elongated pupils, glowing with a luminescence of their own. They spoke in voices blended and distorted by the water, lilting without music, moaning without the wind.

  “The Goddess calls to her people. The time has come.”

  Come … come … Watery echoes rippled around the cave.

  For the first time Nathan noticed the listeners—they must have been waiting in a shallow chamber in the cavern wall, and now they moved forward, approaching the altar. The foremost was a merman whose massive torso was laden with chai
ns of coral chips and pearl shells; he wore a coronet of uncut quartz on his head, surely too heavy to sustain without the support of water. Mermen are beardless, smooth-skinned, and virtually unwrinkled unless they live to extreme old age, their bodies kept moist by the element in which they live, their faces slightly androgynous, but this one looked unmistakably masculine, older by his build and a certain authority in his carriage. His mouth was a stern line, his rather flattened nose—typical of his kind—very broad, his sharp-cut nostrils flaring and shrinking visibly as he drew in the water that was filtered out through the gill slits in his neck. In the glow of the sea stars, his long hair looked more purple than Denaero’s, and his skin had a sullen tinge that might in another light have been subtly green. Nathan guessed this must be Rhadamu.

  Two others flanked him, both with the sea dragon tattoo on their chests, one clearly a warrior, with spiked shoulder plates and armbands, and an assortment of knives on a belt at his hip. Possibly Uraki, the sharkrider Denaero had spoken of. The other had the slender muscles of youth and wore a small circlet of red coral that suggested he might be the king’s eldest son.

  “We are the chosen of Nefanu, the children of the Sea.”

  Sea … Sea …, murmured the echoes.

  “The time has come. You must destroy the lungbreathers, the monsters who live on the northern ice. They are traitors who dream of the land and live half their lives in the air, eating our fish to stoke the heat of their blood—the fish that Nefanu gave us to protect and to feed on. If they are not stopped, they will eat all the fish in the sea to perpetuate their unnatural warmth. They despise us, calling us coldkin, wormkind, mackerel to be hunted and slain. They have dreadful weapons hidden on the ice: swordfish lances that can travel for miles, and poisons to befoul our water. You must attack first and destroy them ere they destroy us. Unite the merkings! Summon an army! Purify the ocean for the true children of the Sea!”