The Immortal Crown

by Kieth Merrill

  He straightened his shoulders under the weight of the responsibility he now had for this girl. His instinct to help and protect those in need surged through him, but he knew it was more than that. “We must find a way off the mountain,” he said. “I think we should hide in the vineyard until dark, then try to get to the road without being seen.” He held out his hand, and she took it. The shiver he remembered rippled through him again. “There used to be a trail along the bottom of the old wall on the east side of the court.”

  He held her hand as they climbed to the first of the terraces. The path followed the undulating contour of the mountain and passed by vines heavy with grapes, the first blush of color kissing the tips of the leaves.

  Ashar pulled a cluster of grapes from the vine and offered them to her. “Are you hungry?” The grapes were plump and purple and forbidden. Grapes were for wine, and wine was for rituals, and none but the votaries assigned to the task were allowed to pluck a single grape.

  She looked at him as if he had suggested she steal the coins donated to the temple by the pilgrims. Her eyes revealed her hunger, and her finger twitched, but that was all.

  “You will need your strength,” Ashar said, then opened her hand and filled it with grapes. “The existence we have known has been ripped away. The expectations we have lived with all our lives have changed. Nothing will ever be the same for us again.”

  Celestine stared at the grapes, and Ashar could sense the conflicts of her conscience.

  “The rules and rituals of discipline we have been taught are gone. We must pray to hear the whisperings of the God of gods. We must listen and do what we are told.” Looking to the monolith of stone, he added in a whisper, “If the kingdom of light is to come again, we must survive.”

  Ashar plucked a grape and put it in his mouth. He picked another and held it to her lips.

  She opened her mouth slowly, and he placed the grape on her tongue. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the sunlight turned her eyes to the color of bluestone. Her smudged face and disheveled hair made her all the more beautiful.

  Ashar could not help himself and, for a fleeting instance, failed to avert his eyes from the rest of her beauty.

  Four men came down the trail as the sun was going down.

  Ashar and Celestine had climbed to the ninth terrace and found a good place to hide among the grapevines.

  They watched through the thicket of leaves as the men came closer. If there were kings­riders among Drakkor’s men, these were not they.

  Each of the brigands carried a yoke with leather buckets. The rattling of iron made it difficult to understand what they were saying, but the tone of their voices made it clear. They were warriors on kitchen duty and not happy about it.

  Ashar and Celestine crouched in the tangled shroud of vines as the men reached the ninth terrace. Ashar wondered if the men could hear the thumping of his heart. He held his breath.

  “Hold up!” The largest of the brigands said as he flung the buckets from his shoulders. “I need’a stop for a misher.” He unbuttoned his breeches, and took a few steps toward where Ashar and Celestine were hiding.

  Celestine trembled under Ashar’s arm, her face buried in her hands. Ashar stared at the man who stopped in a place where, with the slightest bob of his head, he would see them for sure.

  It seemed like hours but was surely only moments before the man finished with a deep sigh and buttoned up his breeches. He stepped into the vines and plucked a handful of grapes.

  “Well, would ya look at this!” he said.

  CHAPTER 58

  The stallion erupted from the darkness in an explosion of light and flames blew from his nostrils and the sky was on fire and his hooves shattered the rock into a splattering of shining pebbles that were the stars of heaven and his mane and tail were billows of silk that rippled in the wind unfolding as great wings from the stallion’s side and the prince was astride and was lifted into the air and he felt the surge of power that rippled from his loins to his head and great crowds of peasants below him cried his name “Kadesh-Cor! Kadesh-Cor!” and their voices were music and he soared above their heads and was lifted into the burning sky and the fire consumed him and he twisted to escape the searing heat on his face and they cried m’lord, m’lord, m’lord—

  “M’lord?”

  Kadesh-Cor’s hand spasmed as he returned to consciousness. His pain pushed through the dulling cloud of cannabis. The prince looked about, his eyes finally coming to rest on the girl who knelt beside him and held his hand, and his agony rushed out in a gasping moan.

  The older courtesan hurried from the basin with a freshly moistened cloth.

  “Praise be the gods, m’lord,” Nimra said, who knelt on his other side.

  Kadesh-Cor struggled to sit up. The courtesans moved quickly to arrange large pillows as a backrest. As he settled, Nimra offered him a goblet.

  “This will take the pain, m’lord,” the squire said. It was red wine heavily laced with cannabis and juice of the poppy.

  The prince touched the wad of wool that dressed the wound on his face. Vanity triumphed over pain. “Is it . . .” he began, his expression a pleading question.

  “It’ll be fine, m’lord,” Nimra said with an optimistic smile.

  Perhaps he lied. Royal persons did not always want the truth.

  “I want to see!” The prince said it in a way that made Nimra and the girls responsible for what had happened to his face. “Fetch me the glass!” He spoke to the older courtesan.

  She sprang immediately to action and returned with a looking glass in a hand-carved wooden frame.

  The prince moved it closer for a full scrutiny of his wounded face. Once again, he touched the woolen bandage that was wrapped around his ruined face. He pushed gently and winced. The infusion of alcohol and opiates had not had time to work their soothing magic.

  “Take the swaddling away,” he demanded, but his voice was diminished by uncertainty.

  “As you wish, m’lord, but best you let the sewn skin fasten lest it be ripped loose,” Nimra said. “Perhaps it would be wise to wait?”

  The prince studied Nimra’s face. He reached out as if to stroke the squire’s face, but his hand faltered and turned into a fist. He thumped the boy’s shoulder and moved away.

  “It’ll be all right, m’lord. The greater your patience the smaller the scar.” The squire offered the prince a reassuring smile.

  Kadesh-Cor clenched his jaw and discarded the mirror facedown. “Help me up,” he said. Nimra and the girls helped him to the opening of the tent. He opened the flap to a narrow crack and peered out. His men were gathered around the fire in excited conversation.

  “It was Equus!” Horsemaster Raahud’s rasping voice burst from the purr of conversations like an explosion of sparks. The name of the mythical horse hung in the air in a void of silence.

  “Equus is a legend,” Sargon said with a scornful guffaw, “a myth.” He tipped his leather flask and let the last swallow fall into his open mouth. He threw the empty flask to a camp gillie. “Bring me another,” he demanded.

  “Where there is history, there is myth, m’lord, and where there is myth, there is history. It is an old saying, but always proven to be true,” Raahud said.

  “It’s an old wives’ tale, and you’re an old fool!”

  The wine had loosened Sargon’s good sense—what little there was of it—and Raahud shook his head. The boisterous antics of a noble were always awkward and discomforting.

  “What is Equus?” Baaly asked.

  A wave of laughter rippled through the company at his question. Baaly flushed. The gillie returned and gave Sargon a full flask of wine.

  “The immortal horse created by the gods. He sired every horse on earth. Don’t you know anything?” Sargon mocked. “Of course, there are no gods, so . . .” He raised the flask but missed his mout
h, and wine dribbled over his chin.

  Raahud had more questions about life than answers, but he was unwilling to condone the princeling’s blasphemy against the gods. Whoever they were and whatever they intended. “The Princeling Sargon has it mostly right,” he said to Baaly, smiling to minimize the princeling’s reaction to an opposing opinion. “The story of Equus comes to us from our forebears from the time of the great tower as part of our creation story.”

  “Creation myth,” Sargon chortled.

  “Some believe it to be more, m’lord. Much more,” Raahud said.

  Chor moved next to his drunken brother and put a hand on his shoulder. To anyone looking on, it was a brotherly gesture, but Raahud knew the contentions between them and was satisfied the heckling had ended. He turned his attention to the larger group.

  “Equus is a legend, some might say a myth, but if that were true, why are there so many stories about him told by so many over countless generations? As a boy, I heard an old man say that Equus lived in the unknown realms of the Oodanga Wilds. Until today I gave the story little mind, but . . .” He raised his eyebrows, unwilling to rule out the possibility the legend was true.

  “The Oodanga Wilds lie beyond the Swamps of Dead Men,” Baaly said.

  “A realm of horrible beasts, behemoths, and dragons,” the captain of the kings­riders said.

  “And serpents that can swallow a man whole and keep ’em alive in his belly just for spite,” another said with a sodden bellow that was clearly intended to mock his fellows.

  Algord, son of Gorshon, was a heavyset warrior with a face ruined by fire. The melted flesh had hardened into crusty scars and frozen his expression in a perpetual glower of hate. His left eye peered over a lump of purple flesh. He was the kings­rider appointed by Kublan to look after Sargon, but Raahud suspected that early in the expedition the princeling had twisted Algord’s allegiance to his own.

  Sargon joined in the rude laughter. “You are all fools,” he slurred.

  “Perhaps, m’lord,” Raahud said. “I was a horsemaster many years before your father brought me to Blackthorn. I have seen much, and I cannot easily explain why, but after what we’ve seen today, I believe the legend is true.”

  “Even if the horse we saw was this mythical stallion,” Baaly asked, “what difference does it make? We can’t go chasing after him across the swamp.”

  “Boy’s right,” the captain said. “The few men who’ve tried to get to the wilds south of the swamp were never heard of again.”

  Raahud squatted on his haunches and poked the fire with a long stick. Sparks erupted like a thousand fireflies taking flight. The flame reflected in his eyes. “While I lived at the stables of Rockmire Keep with my father, there was man named Kotar, son of Korlsis-Baan of House Murrain. He swore by the gods old and new that Equus was real. He said he knew the fables and folklore of beasts and wild men. He took an army of two hundred men across the swamps to look for Equus in the Oodanga Wilds. He claimed he found the horse, but . . .” Raahud twisted the stick and squinted into the flame. Another storm of fireflies. Most of the men had slowed their breathing to listen.

  “But what?” the captain asked.

  “Kotar returned a skeletal rag of a man with a fevered mind, mumbling incoherently. A strange state of madness, my father said, and yet . . .” Raahud paused and looked to the tent of the prince. Kadesh-Cor pushed through the flap, his wounded face illuminated by the light of the fire. He listened, his expression intense. Raahud nodded, knowing he was compelled to finish.

  “Something horrible had happened to the man. I don’t know what. My father said Kotar could never quite explain it, and when he tried, it made no sense. All two hundred of his men were killed, or so he said. I admit it is hard to know whether his recollections were the fables of a feeble mind or the memory of what he actually saw.”

  Even Sargon leaned forward through the fog of wine with a curious intensity.

  “He spoke of ferocious beasts, behemoths, and a savage race of primitive half-men who ate the flesh of humans. My father heard it himself from Kotar’s lips, and I heard it from my father.”

  No one spoke. No one suggested going south. No one talked of crossing the Swamps of Dead Men. The mandate of their expedition was not to risk death for the sake of a horse. A wave of relief rippled over the company.

  Horsemaster Raahud sent another explosion of sparks into the night and dropped the stick into the fire as he stood. “I believe the gods created Equus,” he said with such confidence no one doubted his words. “A preeminent immortal first horse to sire all the horses of the earth. The great Equus of legend. It is possible the splendid stallion we saw today might be him, but that is not what I meant.”

  Still no one spoke, but the emotional reaction to his words was as palpable as if the god Zéphuros had buffeted their bodies with a fierce west wind. Sargon inhaled to speak, but Chor put an arm about his shoulder and a hand over his mouth, holding it closed.

  “Our stallion. Our Equus,” Horsemaster Raahud said, “may not be the immortal sire of legend, but he is an ‘Equus’ just the same.” He spoke the name with a heightened awe that was not missed by the men or the prince. “I believe there is more than one—a great sire appointed by the gods in every age. I believe the great horse we saw today is the Equus of our age.”

  Kadesh-Cor watched from the opening of the tent and listened with pointed interest. The juice of the poppy flowed in his veins, and the pain was gone. He floated in a blessed euphoria and was consumed by a sudden desire to own the mythical horse.

  It is not just a horse. Drifting in the stupor of the opiates, there was no question whether Equus was the sire of all horses, created by the gods. Some things simply must be. The thought swirled through the fantasies of his mind. A covetous passion to posses the great horse swelled in his chest.

  As the sweet juice enveloped his brain and he sank again to his furs, the vision of his dark dream returned, and he flew into the heavens on the back of the immortal Equus. By the gods, he would have the great horse, even if it meant the death of every man in his company.

  “Bring me my sons,” he croaked to Nimra.

  The squire stared at him longer than a squire should. The corners of his mouth quivered but refused to fall. “Your sons? Yes, m’lord.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Meesha and the Raven followed the keeper of the prison and two of his men from the dungeon in the catacombs to the open yard of the bailey before crossing to the great manse of Stókenhold Fortress, where Tolak and his family lived.

  “My brother and I came for the prisoner when we heard he was moved from the cells and thrown into the pit.” Meesha glanced over her shoulder at the head jailer with a tiny shrug.

  His mouth hung open, his face twisted and incredulous. Meesha knew what he was thinking. How could a prisoner be taken from the deepest levels of the catacombs without being seen?

  Meesha took pleasure in the befuddled look on the burly man’s face but tried not to show it. Because she and Valnor had spent their childhood exploring the entangled labyrinth of the old Stókenhold Fortress, she knew there were ways in and out of almost everywhere. She would never reveal her secrets.

  “He is old and sick,” Meesha explained to the Raven as they walked. “He did no wrong.”

  “No one in prison is ever guilty,” the Raven said, his tone mocking.

  “He was condemned by the jealousies of the high pontiff. You, who are so close to my grandfather, must surely know the high pontiff fills his ears with flattering words and blinds his eyes to what is right and wrong.” She deliberately referred to the king as her grandfather, confident her bloodline gave her a measure of protection.

  “You have described the high pontiff perfectly.” He smiled, and Meesha had the curious feeling she could trust him.

  She distrusted anyone who traveled beneath a banner of the peacock with bloody ar
rows in its claws, so why she trusted the man with the same bird burned into his chest she wasn’t sure. She pushed the feeling away.

  “The prisoner had been attacked by bandits on the King’s Road and left for dead,” Meesha said. “He was taken by pilgrims to a wisewoman in Village Isthmus.”

  The Raven nodded.

  “You know?” She was surprised. “Do you also know he was taken from them in the night and cast into prison without a trial?”

  The Raven wrinkled his brow and tilted his head. “What else do you know of him?” he asked.

  “My father appealed to the king to undo the injustice and release the prisoner, but his letter was never acknowledged. The accusations of the high pontiff toward the prophet deepened the king’s contempt toward my father—toward his own son!” She said it as if expecting the Raven to share her outrage.

  The Raven remained silent.

  Meesha continued. “The prophet endured the ignominy of prison in spite of being sick and aged. He was moved to the pit because he refused the captain’s demand to blaspheme the god of the mountain. He was punished to amuse the keepers and relieve their boredom.” She took a deep breath. “When my brother and I learned the poor man had been condemned to the pit, it was enough.”

  She led the Raven up a dozen stone steps to a small room off the corridor of private chambers on the third level of the manse. The small chamber was where she and Valnor had secreted Sage Granswaan when they took him from the prison. Meesha’s governess had nursed the holy man back to modest health and continued to care for him in secret.

  The governess was attending to Granswaan when the visitors arrived. She was immediately wary of the arrival of the man wearing the sigil of Kingsgate and moved closer to Granswaan as if to protect him.

  “It’s all right,” Meesha said to the governess as she entered the room. Turning to Granswaan, she said, “This man is an emissary of the king. He has come to grant clemency and pardon. The king has asked that—”