The Immortal Crown

by Kieth Merrill

  Kadesh-Cor and his boys left Stókenhold Fortress the next day.

  Some few days after that, Meesha and Valnor stole away to their secret place. Meesha was only half teasing when she said that after being around Sargon she needed to spend time with a sword in her hand.

  The abandoned hall was glorious by morning light. “You were as brave as you were charming yesterday.” Valnor smiled and kissed her on the dark side of her face. “You are remarkable! Where did you find such courage?”

  “It wasn’t courage,” she said. “This is courage.” With an exuberant burst of energy, she whirled her blade in a mock thrust. He parried, but just barely.

  They laughed, then Meesha became reflective. Valnor knew his sister well and set his sword aside. He sat cross-legged on the window shelf, where he often listened to her.

  “It didn’t come from courage. It came from calm acceptance,” she said. Without intending it, her fingers touched her face. She recited the archaic platitude she learned as a little girl from her governess. “Of awful fears, both great and small, the things that never happen are the greatest of them all.” She didn’t know where such tidbits of wisdom came from. Like so many precious things in life, the things that mattered most seemed always to have been there.

  “When I was five, I stood in front of my mirror and cried.” She pulled her hair back to reveal the birthmark as if Valnor had never noticed it before. She wore her hair long in a way that shrouded some of the discolored blotch. “It is embarrassing. It is ugly.”

  “You have never been ugly,” Valnor protested, but she shook her head and waved his words away.

  “And when people see me for the first time, it is always the same. They just stand there with their eyes wide and their mouths open with no idea what they should say or do. I have wished a hundred times for a hole to open beneath my feet and swallow me up.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Valnor said, but Meesha only smiled.

  “Knowing I had to face that awful boy again kept me awake the night before. I climbed to the abandoned bower of the west parapet. The light of a half moon shimmered across the black waters of the fjord of Dragon Deep. I kept thinking about how much I didn’t want to meet the bully of Blackthorn again. And then . . .” She raised her fingers to the dark side of her face.

  “You were on the west parapet all night?” Valnor asked.

  She nodded. “I had a curious impression. It was as if a sunbeam came right through the top of my head and left an idea there in a flash of light. I felt more confidence than I’ve ever felt before.”

  “An epiphany from the gods.”

  “The gods have no interest in me.” She smiled. “I don’t know what it was, and I can’t explain it, but . . .” Meesha let her hair fall back, but her fingers lingered on the side of her face. “I realized my fear and humiliation are not here.” The tips of her fingers moved lightly over her discolored skin. “They are here.” She touched her forehead.

  “All of my dark feelings have come from my fear of what others would think of me, but the inkling in the light was that others are not thinking about me at all. Oh, they are shocked by what they see, but their first thought is not about me or the birthmark or even a flicker of sympathy. They are not thinking about me; they are thinking about themselves. They do not know what they should say or do. They feel awkward and uncomfortable. The moment a stranger is face-to-face with me, they are in greater turmoil than I am ever in. When I saw the look on poor Sargon’s face, I knew that it was true.”

  Valnor leaped from the windowsill and hugged his sister.

  “Seeing the reaction of that arrogant bully of Blackthorn affirmed what the flash of inspiration said to me. I need not fear the pity of those troubled by my face. I’ve decided to make a game of it,” she said. “I’ve seen enough reactions that I can put them into three categories. They are, first, ‘Completely Blind,’ and second, ‘Oh, Look, There’s a Bird,’ and third, the ‘Flycatchers.’”

  Valnor knew Meesha’s wit and waited with expectation.

  “‘Completely Blind’ are people who act as if my face is normal,” she explained. “Sometimes they are so convincing in their expressions I have to look in the mirror to see if the fairies came after all.” She laughed, and Valnor joined in.

  “‘Oh, Look, There’s a Bird’ are people whose eyes get this big.” She used the fingers of both hands to make a circle the size of a grapefruit. “Then they catch themselves staring and quickly look away as if a royal peacock had suddenly flown into a tree just over my head.”

  “Let me guess,” Valnor said with a grin, “‘Flycatchers’ are the ones who just stare at you with their mouths hanging open.” He mimed the description, and Meesha laughed with delight.

  “And stand there with a gaping mouth so long a fly lays eggs on their tongue.”

  “And what of those who make rude comments?” Valnor asked.

  “Oh, Father puts them in prison.” Meesha laughed until she cried.

  Years had passed since “The Hilarious Humiliation of the Pompous Princeling Sargon,” which was how Valnor referred to it.

  And now he was coming again. Meesha rarely greeted visitors who came to Stókenhold Fortress. She still found strangers fascinating and enjoyed watching them from a distance, but she had little interest in meeting them. Since her epiphany on the west parapet so many years ago, she felt it a courtesy to spare them the awkward moment of seeing her face.

  Tomorrow would be different. Meesha knew her father would never allow her to escape a formal greeting of the visitors arriving at Stókenhold Fortress. He would expect her to welcome them with gracious hospitality.

  The Princeling Sargon would surely remember his humiliation. Meesha crossed her fingers and hoped her father’s oldest son might change his mind about visiting. Or drown with his sons in the Isthmus River. She should feel a barb of self-reproach with such an evil thought, but it was lost in the flutter of moon moths in her stomach.

  Meesha moved the mirror slightly and turned her head to the dark side of her face. A glint of sun on burnished brass danced on her face like the memories dancing in her head. Meesha suddenly longed to be with Valnor and wondered if he would return from hunting in time to stand beside her.

  The knock at the door was gentle. She knew the sound of her governess well. “Yes?” she said.

  The woman’s voice was muffled by the heavy oak door of the chamber. “Your father wishes your company, dear one. He awaits your presence in the solarium.”

  “Kindly tell him I will come to him shortly,” she said and took a last look in the mirror.

  The cloud had passed, and the sun had come again.

  CHAPTER 24

  “It troubles me greatly!” The door to the chamber at the far end of the hall was open, and Meesha could hear the sound of her mother’s voice. Meesha had obeyed her father’s request to come to the solarium, but etiquette required she not interrupt what was surely intended as a private conversation.

  “I understand you must open the gates to receive them in accord with the custom of the King’s Road, but nothing more is required than water and provender for their company and beasts!”

  The anger in her mother’s voice was evident. Meesha was rarely privy to conversations between her parents, and it was even more unusual for Katasha to challenge her husband. Meesha knew eavesdropping ranked higher on the scale of bad etiquette than interrupting a conversation. Still . . .

  Rather than retreating a respectable distance, Meesha hurried into the alcove of a mural chamber near the door to listen. She ignored the flush of guilt she felt.

  “I’ve been down to the kitchen,” her mother continued. “I must say in all our years at this dismal place, I do not recall a more elaborate feast. The steward is overwrought by the preparations you have requested. It is quite chaotic, and he came to me for my help.”

  “And are you
helping him, sweet flower?” Meesha heard the smile in her father’s voice. She knew her father so well. She loved him as an adult, even more than she had when she was as a little girl.

  “You prepare for this congregation of highborns as if it were the gods themselves coming day after tomorrow rather than—”

  “My son?” Tolak interrupted.

  “Your son! How can you persist in calling him that after . . .” Meesha could hear the exasperation in her mother’s voice. “When he is the one who—” Her voice broke.

  “He is flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood.”

  “But he is not my flesh or my blood!” Her voice was as cold as the wind from the frozen wasteland of Icenesses.

  “I understand.”

  “Do you? This son of your other life does not honor you as the good and compassionate man that you are. This son does not bring distinction to your name. It is not your traitor of a son who stands with you in the disgrace of exile. Valnor and Meesha and I do. And yet you call upon us to receive him and his sons as guests—as honored guests.”

  “I know it is a burden that I ask you to bear. But I hope that . . .”

  There was a long silence. Meesha held her breath lest her spying be discovered.

  The voice of her mother came again. It was quiet and resolute. “You call him your son, but he does not call you father. How many times have you sent a missive in the spirit of reconciliation, and yet he has refused? In all these years, he’s never sought to correct the evil brought upon us by the king. You utter no curse nor wish either of them ill.”

  “Uttering a curse is the foolishness of village hags.”

  Meesha heard a stiffness enter her mother’s voice. “You are a prisoner of exile by their hands, and together they have robbed you of your right to the throne.”

  “Dear flower of my heart, you know I have no wish to be king or sit upon the throne. Not then, not now. How often must we speak of it before you understand? I loathe the rule of kings. What they call their ‘divine right to rule’ by the will of the gods is a spurious creation to sanction their vain imaginations. It is a heresy of reason and blasphemy against the true cause of the universe.” He paused, then added quietly, “Whatever that great cause may be.”

  Tolak’s outspoken rejection of the gods of the tower worried Meesha. She wasn’t sure why. She gave such things little thought, but the gods were woven into the fabric of existence. They were blamed or blessed for almost everything, by almost everyone.

  Meesha had adopted her father’s belief in a cause, in some power greater than humankind from whence all things came and to which all things returned. It was a grand departure from the worship of the old gods of the tower. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder when her father spoke this way, as he often did, whether it was wise to spit in the eye of the old gods . . . just in case.

  “The one great truth affirmed in every age is this.” Tolak’s voice floated from the chamber and into the hall where Meesha was hiding. “The rule of kings ultimately leads to tyranny, and tyranny to captivity, and captivity to destruction.”

  “Then why humiliate us by honoring this pretender to the throne as if he were already a king?”

  “A man cannot un-plant the seed of his loins. From the first sprig to the blossoms of the endless vine that winds through time, the fruits of it, whether good or evil, are forever a part of him.” The silence that followed seemed an eternity to Meesha. “As long as there is life in this body, I will not abandon hope that we may right the wrongs between us. I hope I may embrace him again.”

  “As you will,” her mother said, her voice contrite.

  “Katasha, please, sweet flower, do not . . .”

  “Though you are exiled from your rightful place and made a prisoner by evil men whom you now wish to honor, I will obey. You are my sovereign lord and my first love, and I will honor you until I am no more.” Given the tremor in her mother’s voice, Meesha could imagine the tears on her cheeks.

  “Katasha. Please. Dear Katasha.”

  “But you must know that I cannot abide doing this thing you ask of me without numbing a part of my heart.”

  Katasha stepped from the chamber into the hall.

  Meesha flattened her back against the wall of the alcove and wished she were somewhere else. Tolak followed his wife into the passage.

  Katasha turned and held his eyes. Sunlight from the high windows encircled her in a pool of light. From where Meesha watched, it was as if her mother glowed. Her eyes were dark gray tending toward blue. She remained slender in spite of the softness that came with bearing children.

  She is beautiful, Meesha thought, a catch in her heart.

  Katasha graciously bowed her head in a slight nod and left her husband with a guarded smile. Her footsteps were light on the stone floor, the echo of them soft in the vaulted passage, then lost in the swishing of her brocaded skirt.

  Tolak stood by the door and watched her walk away. He took a deep breath, then tilted his head back and slowly released the air. He stood as if the silence held him captive—which, Meesha ­realized—he was. Though free to roam from Stókenhold Fortress as he would, he was an outcast of the kingdom and a prisoner of exile.

  Meesha wondered what her father must be thinking. Unhappy as she and her mother were about Kadesh-Cor’s arrival, it was surely worse for him.

  Tolak turned and looked at Meesha who stood as still as a hanging tapestry. She blushed and shrugged and smiled all at the same time. “You called for me,” she said, “and I . . .” She finished her excuse for eavesdropping with a weak shrug of her hands.

  Tolak breathed a gentle laugh and shook his head.

  Meesha knew her disregard for decorum no longer surprised him. When she was twelve, she had put on her brother’s clothes, stolen a horse, and disappeared for a day. She’d returned after dark and wondered why everyone was so upset. There was scolding and laughing at the same time. That was the day she realized her father loved her no matter what. The day she knew the stain on her face was invisible to him.

  “Will Mor be all right?” Meesha asked.

  Tolak looked to where Katasha had disappeared. “She will be her gracious self in spite of her true feelings,” he said. “There are few in all the dominions of Kandelaar who are as fine a woman as your mother.” He kissed Meesha on the forehead, and she followed him into his private chamber.

  CHAPTER 25

  The scream came again—a cry of agony from the edge of death. Orsis-Kublan was hardened to suffering, but the pain of that cry pierced his conscience like a rusty spike. It was the scream of a woman. Surely not . . . A dreadful thought shuddered through him.

  He was on his way to the interrogation of a traitor. Kublan was increasingly suspect of those masquerading as loyal members of his household in the light of day while trading traitorous secrets in the dark of night.

  He stopped on the landing of the north parapet to catch his breath. With a wave of his fingers he assured the valet helping him that he was fine. He raised his face to where the scream came from and inhaled deeply to prepare for the final ascent.

  Triangular stones were stacked in a spiral staircase that rose seven levels from the main hall to the north tower. His heart thudded so loudly he feared it might crack through his frail ribs.

  Kublan needed to retch. Whether from the climb or the nasty green elixir he’d been drinking for two days, he wasn’t sure. A “preparatory potion,” the alchemist had called it, to enable him to endure the seven days and seven nights without sleep and to prepare him to ingest the pulp of the plant of endless life.

  As the king’s breathing slowed, the boy offered his arm for the rest of the climb. He gripped the lad’s arm, the crumpled vellum still in his hand. It said simply:

  Omnipotent king who rules by the will of the gods,

  I urge you to come at once to the Tower of the Dead. The ­trai
tor is found out.

  Raven to the King

  When they reached the highest landing, the king left the valet and passed through the iron gate secured by guardsmen of the kingswatch.

  The Tower of the Dead was an ominous black pinnacle rising from the top of the cliffs on the western-most side of the fortress. The blackness came from the lava rock used to build it. It had earned its name from a grizzly history as the place where traitors were tortured, tried, and put to death. It was more feared than the dungeons that lay in the catacombs of the old Akeshen fortress in the cliffs below the castle.

  The condemned who entered the tower were kept alive as long as a skilled punisher could manage it. Torture and sleep deprivation were the means of getting information, names of accomplices, and most importantly, ensuring a confession, lest any be put to death without just cause. Some were tortured many days before they finally confessed and were thrown to their death.

  The torture chamber was a circular room in the uppermost level of the tower. The girders of the peaked roof were exposed and tangled with a hang of ropes and chains. Besides the brazier and irons, there was a clutter of devices accumulated over time by the fraternity of men who found pleasure in plying their sadistic arts with the blessing of the king.

  A portal opened to a sizable porch, from where a narrow wooden bridge was suspended by chains and rusted iron rings. It was seven strides long and extended over the edge of the cliff with nothing below but the waves of Akeshen fjord pounding onto the rocks.

  Men of the kingswatch who worked the tower joked that the distance from the end of the bridge to the rocks was hardly a stone’s throw. “Nothin’ but a gentle toss for even the weakest of arms,” the quip went. The pull of the earth did not require a stone, or a person, to be thrown.

  “No! Please, no!” The woman screamed again. The air was pungent with the stench of burning flesh.

  As the king entered the chamber, his worst fear was realized. The woman crying out in agony was Maharí, his cherished concubine.