The Poisoned Crown

by Amanda Hemingway

  The next morning Hazel had school, and the niggle was pushed even farther back in her thoughts.

  In the evening Nathan came around.

  He asked Lily for another cappuccino, earning himself a glare from Hazel.

  “You’re being charming to my mother,” she accused. “You know I hate it when you’re charming. Anyway, you don’t need to. She’s known you all your life.”

  “I like cappuccino,” Nathan said. “Especially the froth on the top. Your mum remembers the chocolate powder, too. She’s better than Café Nero.” Eade didn’t have one, but there was a Café Nero in Chizzledown, which he and Eric frequented from time to time.

  “Charm!” Hazel reiterated. “You do it much too often. Like chocolate powder on top of everything.”

  “I have to compensate for you,” Nathan said.

  “You should be yourself. Nothing more.”

  “What if my self is charming?” Nathan suggested provocatively. “Sometimes, anyhow.”

  “Nobody’s self is charming,” Hazel declared. “Charm is … is … an acquired virtue. It doesn’t grow by itself.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  At least it was a friendly dispute, Nathan reflected, accepting his cappuccino from a gratified Lily. Franco wasn’t around that night, and she had already appalled her daughter by painting her toenails, an activity only allowable in the summer months to go with sandals. In winter it hinted at decadence, and private orgies.

  “Next she’ll be buying her underwear from Agent Provocator,” Hazel grumbled.

  Nathan thought about correcting her pronunciation but decided she was doing it deliberately.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “How would you feel if Annie bought Provocator underwear?”

  “Why’re we always talking about underwear these days? You’ve got a fixation.” As a retort, Nathan knew it was probably a mistake, but he couldn’t be bothered to be diplomatic with Hazel.

  “Actually,” she said in an arctic voice, “actually, I got you ’round here about something far more important. But if you’re only interested in conversations about knickers—”

  “You started the subject,” he said. “Not me.”

  “You went on with it,” she said unfairly. She had learned long ago that Nathan could always out-argue her, and being unreasonable was her best policy. Especially since—like Nathan’s charm—it came naturally.

  “No, I—never mind. Just tell me what’s so important.”

  “I’ve solved your problem for you, that’s all.”

  “Which problem?” Nathan queried. He could think of a dozen for starters.

  “The Widewater one. I’ve found a spell that will mean you can swim underwater like your mermaid friend, even right down deep where the pressure gets bad. You told me to make myself useful, so I did.” She produced the vial, holding it out to him. “The bottle’s crystal: you should be able to take it with you. You drink the potion when you get there, but keep the bottle on you because of the pearl. I’m not quite sure how it works but it’s a kind of talisman. You could hang it ’round your neck on a piece of string—something like that.” She waited expectantly, enjoying the look on Nathan’s face.

  “Wow,” he said faintly. “That’s—that’s amazing. I didn’t mean … I didn’t think you could do anything like that. The pipe-cleaner trick was brilliant but this—this is the big league. Did … did Uncle Barty help?”

  “No,” Hazel said. “It was just me.”

  “Wow,” Nathan said again. There was a trace element of doubt in his appreciation. “Are you sure … it’s all right? I mean …”

  “I haven’t tested it,” Hazel said. “How could I? Anyway, it took me ages to get the bloody potion right, and there’s just enough for one. I don’t know how long the effects last: I think it’s twelve hours, but it might be twenty-four, the small print wasn’t clear. Swallow it and see.”

  “Drink me,” Nathan quoted, holding the vial rather gingerly. “Like Alice in Wonderland. Maybe I’ll shrink to the size of a plankton … I suppose that would mean it had worked, in a way. Where did you find the spell?”

  “In Great-Grandma’s stuff.” Hazel didn’t mention the blank page that had fallen out of one of the books, and the handwriting that wrote itself. She had a feeling Nathan wouldn’t like that part.

  “It’s not that I don’t have faith in you,” he went on, after a pause. “It’s just… things like this don’t happen. I need a spell to make me swim like a mermaid and hey, presto! one turns up, just in the nick of time. It’s too—too pat. Too good to be true.”

  “It didn’t just turn up,” Hazel said. “I had to find it—I had to get the ingredients—I had to make it come out right. I burned the midnight oil—at both ends. It was worse than math homework. Now you’re acting like I’m trying to con you—or d’you think I messed up?”

  “No—no, of course not…” You’ve messed up before, he thought. But he didn’t say it.

  “Look,” Hazel said, lapsing unexpectedly into tolerance, “just give it a go. You’ve got nothing to lose. If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t. You’re in the same situation you were before. If it does—then you come back and grovel to me. Deal?”

  “Deal.” Nathan grinned suddenly. “You know, whether it works or not, I really am grateful. It was a wonderful thing to do for me. And you always said you didn’t like witching.”

  “I don’t,” Hazel declared, retreating abruptly into her hair. “It’s a bore. But I do lots of things I don’t like.”

  She cleared some space on the duvet, and they sat down while Nathan finished the cappuccino.

  “You know your trouble?” Hazel said.

  “Mm?”

  “You don’t believe in magic.”

  “I suppose I don’t,” Nathan admitted. “Not the kind that makes everything work out perfectly, anyway.”

  “You were able to pick up the Traitor’s Sword,” Hazel reminded him, “even though no one was meant to touch it. You were the right guy in the right place at the right time. Mr. Destiny.”

  “I know,” Nathan said. “It’s always bothered me. I didn’t chosen by fate or anything. Just scared. I’m scared a lot, in my dreams.”

  “How do people feel when they’re chosen by fate?” Hazel asked.

  “Calm and confident?” Nathan hazarded. “Anyway, you don’t believe in magic, either. You’ve always made a point of it.”

  “No,” she said, “but I believe in science.”

  “In what way is this science?”

  “Probability Theory,” Hazel stated. “Uncle Barty says that as we have infinity and eternity, everything—everything—must happen somewhere. Probably. So maybe, just for once, this is somewhere.”

  “It’s a theory,” Nathan said, “even if it isn’t very probable.”

  Hazel felt that tiny vestige of doubt at the back of her mind, but she saw no need to take it out and look at it. After all, as she had said, if the spell didn’t work Nathan had lost nothing.

  “You could always take an Aqua-Lung as backup,” she suggested.

  NATHAN SAW the war-host in his dreams, camped along the western end of the Dragon’s Reef. There were no tents—they had no need of them— but their banners of fishskins streamed in the current. They had sword-fish lances and spears tipped with narwhal horn, knives and swords of volcanic glass, glinting where the sun penetrated, shields made from the carapace of long-dead turtles, limpet-studded armor, helms decked with teeth and tusks, plumed with colored weeds. Some rode blue sharks, tiger sharks, hammerheads, others huge seahorses with spiny manes or manta rays that glided through the water like stealth bombers. A few came in war-chariots made of giant clams, drawn by teams of dolphins, or reptilian creatures like distant cousins of the icthauryon, with long narrow snouts and snake-thin bodies. Nathan saw Uraki several times, swimming to and fro among the battalions; he always stood out, for Raagu his mount was the only great white, and even the reptiles flinched when he passed. A wi
sp of a dreamer watching from anywhere and nowhere, Nathan could not interfere, merely spectate.

  “We will kill them all,” said a dark-haired merman who wore a coronet of white coral around his helm, like icing on a wedding cake. “We will spill their hot blood into the northern seas until the ocean boils and the Great Ice melts in the steam. We will give them no quarter, no mercy—neither warrior nor seal-woman, neither saber-toothed monster nor puling cub. We will—”

  “You will find it less easy than you think,” Uraki said coldly. “There are brave fighters even among the selkies.”

  Aha, Nathan thought. Nokosha made an impression.

  “Bubbletalk!” said the merking, evidently one of the lesser monarchs. “We will go through them like tuna through a shoal of sardines. They don’t even know we’re coming.”

  “They know,” said Uraki, and his lips flexed in something like a smile. “Believe me, they know.”

  Another time—another dream—Nathan saw him talking with the High King. Though their features were humanoid, neither face wore much expression, perhaps because of their piscine genetics. In that they resembled the selkies, whose animal heritage also gave them a certain impassivity, less from the desire to hide their feelings, Nathan thought, than the inability to reveal them. Expression was a human trait, and their humanity was still only half formed. Adequate for killing, Nathan reflected bitterly, but not for showing laughter or compassion.

  “The men grow restless,” Uraki was saying. “We must move soon.”

  “Do you think I don’t know?” said the king. “Already they begin to eat the reef bare. But I must wait on the shamans—they are harvesting the fireflowers from along the wall, and it will take very many to ensure that every rider and his mount is supplied. The fireflowers must be enspelled so they release their core of heat into the blood. I infer the charms are complex and slow to mature. I dislike the delay—but privily, I am not eager for the battle. Many will die, on both sides.”

  “Must we kill them all?” Uraki asked reluctantly—almost as if the question was wrenched from his tongue.

  “You are less battle-hungry than of yore,” said Rhadamu. “Is this the advent of fear?”

  “I fear nothing,” Uraki insisted. “But—”

  “You are fortunate. I fear all the time. I fear for my people—for all peoples—though not for myself. I have few feelings left anymore. Since you executed my last commission …”

  Nathan sensed Uraki faltering on the verge of speech.

  “You did well,” Rhadamu continued heavily. “Now there is nothing left to hold me back.” Except the fear.

  “She did not suffer.” Uraki spoke as if with difficulty.

  “It is well,” Rhadamu reiterated. “Soon, we will have suffering enough. I hope to go with the next new moon. The tides then will be with us. Perhaps we may yet take them by surprise.”

  “No, sire,” said Uraki, giving him a very direct look. “They are waiting for us.”

  “I see,” said the king. He did not ask his captain where he had obtained the information. “Ah well. At least it will be a fair fight.”

  “We have the advantage of numbers,” Uraki reminded him. “The odds are many times in our favor.”

  “That is the kind of fair fight all generals wish for,” said the king.

  The dream shifted—for a brief moment Nathan glimpsed the shamans, no longer wound together in a single entity but strung out along the wall, plucking the red-tentacled flowers, like living chrysanthemums, that flourished in the sulfurous water. Then they were back in their cave, poured into a huddle by the light of a solitary sea star, whispering together. In their midst on a flat-topped rock was a mirror made from a solid disc of mother-of-pearl. Dim shapes moved in its depths, not reflections but visions. But they were hazy and ill defined; Nathan thought it would be difficult to identify an individual or do more than guess at their activities. The priestesses spread their choppy fingers above the mirror as if trying to draw out the magic, muttering incantations, but the pictures grew no clearer.

  One said: “It is Denaero. She is not dead—”

  “How can you be sure? The image is blurred.”

  “I am sure. It must be her. Look! She is somewhere on the reef, hiding, waiting to betray us.”

  “You were sure last time. It could be another.”

  “If she had been devoured there would be signs. Leftovers.”

  “The warrior said there were icthauryon hunting, close by the Dragon’s Bridge. They leave nothing. One was slain …”

  “Slain! By whom? Nefanu’s pets must not be slain.”

  Nefanu … Nefanu …

  “We cannot see what happened. Maybe the monster died. All things die in the end.”

  “Except the Goddess …”

  Nefanu … NEFANU…

  One said: “Denaero is dead. She had the king’s heart. Now it is ours.”

  “The king’s heart should belong only to the queen—the Queen of the Sea!”

  NEFANU…

  “The All-Seeing Mirror cannot lie. Show us the traitors! Show us the ones we must seek out and punish!”

  “Mirror mirror undersea

  in shadows whence the demons flee

  who is the traitor? who the spy?

  Whence the Sight can fill thine Eye?

  Mirror mirror of the night

  who is Evil in thy Sight?”

  In the sheet of pearl the images melted—changed. For an instant Nathan saw his own face, clear as truth, gasping for air, drowning— bubbles burst from his mouth. It could have been a vision from the future, or almost anytime in the recent past. The priestesses cried out, pulling back in horror, then clustering forward—“Lungbreather!— Legwalker!—Human, all human—” But the phantom slipped between their fingers, and the mirror blurred, and the merwomen muttered their charms in vain.

  Nathan’s dream darkened, and he moved on.

  He was on another part of the reef, far from the assembled war-hosts. Ahead was a rocky overhang bearded with swaying weeds, jowled with sea anemones; the darkness beneath might hide the lair of a moray eel or giant octopus. As he approached he saw something moving in the sea gloam—something pale, something dark, shade welling from the shadows like squid ink, spilling out in a cloud. For a second, bodiless though he was, he felt afraid—until he had identified it. Not ink but silk, a million threads unfurling through the water. Mermaid’s hair—Denaero’s hair. Her hands followed, parting her own tresses to gaze cautiously around her, then the white shape of her face with its questing eyes. Presently, her attention was caught—Nathan turned and saw another mermaid finning toward her, slipping around a shoulder of rock.

  “Miyara!”

  “Little sister! I knew you were not dead, even before you sent the crab to tell me. I felt it here.” She touched her stomach. “I taxed Uraki with it: he said the icthauryon took you, but I didn’t believe him. He’s a very bad liar. How did you get away?”

  “My friends saved me—my friend the albatross, and a boy from another world. There was a selkie there, too, but I didn’t like him.”

  “A boy from another world? What are you talking about? Mixing with northfolk is bad enough. Denaero, are you in more trouble?”

  “I’m dead,” Denaero pointed out. “How can I be in worse trouble than dead? What’s happening at home? Does Father grieve for me?”

  “You know Father. He won’t allow any of us to mention your name.”

  “Good,” said Denaero. “He grieves. I hope the pain eats his heart.”

  “He acts like he has no heart,” Miyara said. “I am to marry Seppopo, in spite of everything. The wedding is three days from now. I told Father I couldn’t do it—I love Jaino—but he said his children were all willful and disobedient, and I could choose between doing my duty or being fed to the sharks. So you see—”

  “He’s ridiculous!” Denaero declared passionately. “Does he plan to chain all his daughters to the Dragon’s Bridge until some monster shows up to d
evour them? Why does everything have to be about killing?”

  “Men are like that,” Miyara said fatalistically.

  “All except Ezroc,” said Denaero, “and Nathan. But Ezroc’s a bird, and Nathan’s from another world, so I don’t suppose they count.”

  “What is this otherworld nonsense?”

  “Nathan’s a legwalker,” Denaero said. “A real one. Human. He comes from a world with lots of land, where people walk about on legs all the time.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Miyara. “They’d get tired. You need sea to support you. Anyway, how does he get to Widewater?”

  “He dreams himself here,” Denaero answered. “The shamans can do it—their spirits travel in dreams, or so they claim. Well, Nathan can travel not just in spirit but sometimes with his whole body. He’ll come back soon, I know he will.”

  “He must be a very powerful magician,” Miyara said doubtfully.

  In a pig’s eye, Nathan thought.

  “He is,” Denaero asserted with conviction. “Except he calls it something else. Physics. He’s really clever. He’s got a plan to stop the war.”

  “Stop the war? You’re mad. You always had your head in the foam. The war can’t be stopped—the killing can’t be stopped—and you have to live in hiding, and I have to marry fat old Seppopo, and Jaino will be killed in the battle, and in the end I’ll probably die of a broken heart—”

  “Don’t be so dry!” Denaero retorted. “You’re as useless as a fish out of water. It would serve you right if you did have to marry Seppopo. You know what happens with people like you? You say: It can’t be done, it can’t be done, so you don’t try to do it—whatever it is—and then of course it doesn’t get done. At least I’m trying. I might get eaten by icthauryon or—or blasted in the wrath of the Goddess, but that’s better than just wringing my hands and moaning It can’t be done all the time. And I’d rather be eaten by icthauryon than married to Seppopo any day.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes I do,” Denaero said. “I’ve looked into the mouth of an icthauryon. Have you?”

  “I’ve looked into the mouth of Seppopo,” Miyara said gloomily.