Crimson

by Warren Fahy

  “Close the net!” Trevin shouted. “The beast is stunned. When she lifts her head, fire the harpoon, Nil!”

  But Knot had already raised her head, draped in net and seaweed, and she had already caught Nil’s eye again with her drowning gaze.

  Trevin saw her begin to wind the net around herself for another leap which would pull the net and boats around her like a shawl as she crashed into the mast and dragged the White Shark over.

  Trevin sprang across the deck to the harpoon. “Let me man it, Nil!” Nil staggered aside. Trevin sat on the wooden seat to fire the heavy crossbow and spoke to the harpoon as he wound the aiming mechanism, finding the beast’s eye in the sight: “Always true the flight of your arrow,” he whispered to the sinews of its timbers. And the crossbow creaked, tightening as Trevin saw a crimson light flash in the monster’s eyes again. It opened its jaws. “GHELDRON!” it roared.

  All turned to Trevin as he released the harpoon.

  It sailed over the sea as if time was dreaming, and all saw the shaft gore Knot’s left eye, boring through its brain. A long high-pitched shriek escaped from the sea-worm’s jaws as a single convulsion jerked a high loop down the length of her massive back like a bullwhip.

  Then her head and arms plunged forward, pushing a wave over one of the longboats, which capsized and threw all the men into the water.

  The men quickly righted the boat and climbed in, cutting loose the net, but Knot’s head emerged behind them snapping her jaws wildly and breaking the tarnished swords of her long teeth.

  A gush of blood as foul as her countless murders spiraled from the harpoon sizzling in her eye, and one arm coiled around the shaft, pulling desperately as she exhaled a reeking breath like a cemetery filled with lost souls over the men. As the boat rowed furiously away, Knot’s other arm reached out and hooked a red-haired sailor around the chest, lifting him to her mouth.

  The sailor wailed as Knot opened her jaws one last time even as her arm slackened. The sailor twisted out of Knot’s grasp and slipped into the sea. And she sank her teeth into her own gray arm as her head splashed into the water.

  She stretched out, long and straight, ripping the net as her muscles winched tighter and bulged until some central mooring burst deep inside her. Then the ancient serpent’s body rolled, limp, onto her back, showing her orange belly that rippled and turned pale on the waves.

  The red-haired sailor emerged from the water beside the expired monster and climbed onto her, straddling her orange throat as it gulped on the swells. Plugging his nose, he waved a fist at his mates on the White Shark, to a gale of cheers.

  Neuvia ran to Trevin and kissed him on the forehead as he sat at the harpoon. “What a wonder, my love!” she said, in awe of her fiancé. She stroked his head in relief as she looked at the frightful monster he had slain.

  “Thank the Gairanor!” Bulgar cheered, counting his blessings.

  “Aye, lord,” agreed Karlok. “Well done!”

  “You’ve saved ten thousand men today,” said Lince.

  Artimeer, who had come up to see the results of the battle, set wide eyes on the reeking sea creature heaving on the swells amidships.

  The grimy gulls that had followed Knot for generations to share in her killings screeched and turned now with the wind to tear off bits of her own flesh before she sank, a treacherous feast that quickly dispatched them with their poisonous host.

  “Do not eat this monster,” Artimeer warned, observing the perishing birds.

  Trevin forwarded his caution. “Eating this beast is like eating its prey,” he said.

  “Aye,” Lince yelled. “Ten thousand sailors, who never rested until this day!”

  “Haul her alongside,” said Bulgar, delighted. “Let’s take her in. This fish will fetch a fortune!”

  The mariners led a boisterous cheer for Trevin then as some composed songs to remember the undoing of Knot.

  The White Shark hauled the corpse of the infamous monster to the Dimrok’s harbor. And from there longboats dragged her past the breakers. The waves pushed her out of the sea and onto the shore, where the chimera stretched a hundred yards on the strand.

  Court engravers and painters gathered to capture the scene for posterity, racing Selwyn’s silver crabs, which emerged from the sea by the thousands in an uproar to strip her ancient bones and tidy their fouled beach.

  As Trevin and Neuvia climbed the rock path to the forest, Trevin looked back at the ancient man-eater steaming on the sand below. And he remembered its crimson eyes that had pierced his soul. It knew my name, he thought. “She may have swallowed stones, that old one,” he said. “They say that Gieron carried a scepter. Perhaps that legend is true!”

  “One legend per day, my love,” Neuvia said, dizzy at the pace of miracles and revelations. “If there are prizes in Knot’s gizzards, they will wait for your discovery, my lord. There is more in life than stones of sorcery, surely?”

  Trevin felt a flash of anger. “Would you rein me in, Neuvia?” He sensed Dantair’s chiding in Neuvia’s words and for a flash he was reminded how, for all of his life, he had been kept from stones of power by his elders. “Do you fear the heights that I might reach?” he wondered aloud.

  Neuvia paused on the path. She turned to face him. “No, indeed, my love. I am sorry someone gave you that cruel doubt. Please be rid of it. I glory in your power and hope that it is great. I only meant to say that each part of life informs all others.” She kissed him softly. “You are a wonder to me.”

  He closed his eyes and sighed, touching her chin. “Of course. Such a wise guardian for my soul.” He let her miraculous beauty steal his heart again.

  Chapter 7

  The New King

  Left to themselves for three days before their wedding, as was custom, they journeyed through the unfolding surprises of the island’s forest.

  Throughout the woods Trevin’s father had planted species imported from across the world, which he hoped to cultivate one day on Ameulis. Some sections of the forest were moistened by steaming pools and spraying fountains to suit tropical varieties. Other sections he had made open to the sun and filled with sand and golden mirrors to nurture strange cacti that grew like dreaming sculptures. Selwyn had even planted specimens native to the Isle of Damay twining amidst the forest’s greenery.

  The marmosets on the island existed elsewhere only on Norlania three thousand miles to the north, and yet they were not brought here by any man. The miniature monkeys arrived so long ago they had divided into three separate kinds with uniquely colored manes, even inhabiting different kinds of trees. One day they followed a troop to a clearing in which stood a bronze statue of Trevin’s mother, Queen Conilair.

  It had been sculpted by Poladoris Martharr, the current mayor of Gwylor who had attended their table. Trevin remembered his red-haired daughter, who had stared at him from below the dais that night.

  Trevin knelt and bowed his head before the splendid statue. “I never knew her. She died giving birth to me.”

  Neuvia knelt beside him.

  “I used to sit here when I was a boy and ask her questions, but she never answered. She never forgave me. And I never forgave me, when looking at this statue.”

  Neuvia admired Conilair’s bronze face, which was both stern and gentle, with eyes that seemed far-seeing. Her hair was short under a small, high-fanged crown. She wore tights and a jerkin, high boots, and a short cape. Neuvia noticed the braided snake carved in ivory wrapped around her neck. “She does not appear to be a woman who would blame another for her choices,” she concluded. “I think she must have been as proud of you as she was of herself.”

  “Perhaps your words are true,” he said. A shifting ray of sun dispelled the grief that shaded his face. “And yet,” he paused as a shadow replaced it. “That which killed my parents… came for me.”

  “Tell me.” She sensed again the undertow in Trevin’s heart that troubled her. “What is it that you fear?”

  “Speak of it to no one. I trust on
ly you.” He looked at her with a shameful dread. “Selwyn told me an enemy has stalked me since my birth.” He bowed his head. “I fear for you!”

  “Why, Trevin?”

  “The curse that my father left me might take a course I could not see until now. Losing you would surely slay me, more utterly than death. Perhaps that is what my father meant.”

  Neuvia took his hand. Rain pattered the leaves of the forest around them and stained the statue of Conilair. “My promise to you is complete,” she said, calmly. “I will brave death for love, as all must. It is the way of the world. It is the fate of love. But you shall be king and I, queen, of a kingdom of loving subjects. We will couple great power with good sense. And you shall have your father’s own scepter to defend us from harm.”

  Trevin raised his head. “My father’s scepter! Yes.” Confidence ignited in his eyes as the rain fell more steadily now. He smiled in awe as she had reminded him of the giant gemstone he would inherit with his father’s crown. “The Cronus Star! When that jewel is passed to me, my skill will be focused ten-thousand-fold… Neuvia, there is no end of possibilities with such a lens! My love, my love, with that stone no harm could ever reach us!” He laughed as the rain came down.

  She squeezed his hand. “So we need not live in fear, then?”

  He touched a fingertip to her chin. “We may live for love, my lady. No matter what fate my father foresaw.” He smiled, and the world grew bright even in the rain.

  The sun was setting on the day before their wedding and coronation as Trevin and Neuvia wrote their marriage vows at different desks in his room at the orange pinnacle of the Lightstone Tower.

  As was tradition, each said a line, and the other finished it with a rhyme in secret, then wrote another line, and so on.

  “‘And if you wander from the road…’” Neuvia read.

  Trevin wrote down a rhyme, hiding it. He gave her his: “‘And if the burden bend you low…’”

  She laughed and wrote down her vow, hiding it. “Stop sneaking a peek!” she cried. “‘And if a star shines bright at night…’ Go on, that’s it…”

  Trevin stroked his long hair back from his brow. “That… is a challenge.” He wrote his line, hiding his parchment. “All right: ‘For you are polestar in my sky.’” He looked at her.

  Neuvia’s eyes welled. “All right.” She wrote her rhyme. “I’ll trim the wing, you point the prow.’”

  Trevin stared solemnly at the page for a while. “‘For having you just doubles me.’”

  She laughed. “A pun?”

  He shrugged and took her hand, feeling her heartbeat in her palm. They both were hardly breathing when the bell rang and Nil Ramesis was loudly announced.

  Trevin called him up and the mariner pushed open the trapdoor, climbing up with a few wooden tubes under his arm. There was something familiar about Nil Ramesis, but Trevin still could not place where they might have met.

  Nil cleared his throat and presented two polished tubes of Norlanian teakwood. “Charts of the southern reefs, my lord. The most accurate in existence, I think.” His smile revealed a curving constellation of white teeth in his midnight beard.

  “Thank you, Master Ramesis.” Trevin spilled one of the rolled vellums from the tube and spread it on his great desk. Nil had used red, black, blue, and green ink to delineate the contours of the reefs scattered across the Gulf of Gwylor. “Splendid.” Using different inks to indicate depths, Nil had made it easy to see the six red spaces around the Dimrok where the most dangerously shallow reefs in the southern waters were located. “Beautiful work, sir.”

  “May you find good use for them, my lord.”

  Trevin rolled the chart and replaced it in its tube. “I shall! I will see you after coronation tomorrow afternoon, good mariner. Here.”

  Nil accepted two heavy bags of gold coins. “Surely, you overpay me, lord.”

  “No, Nil Ramesis. You strike me as a good investment. Let this fund your next venture.”

  “Bless you! I shall be a shipwright, after all, it seems. Until the morrow, then. And the mariners send all blessings for the slaying of Knot. She rots on the sand like a graveyard of sailors, but a glorious stench it is to us servants of the sea that she so sorely wronged. Good even, milord. And sweet dreams, milady!”

  “Farewell,” Neuvia said. “Thank you, good Master Ramesis.”

  Nil bowed to her and descended the stairs, leaving them to finish their vows.

  The old white cock, with his drooping yellow crest, stretched like an aging acrobat on the wall of the courtyard. Dabbing his beak tentatively at the sky, he puffed out his chest and, after a cough, heralded the great day of the Royal Wedding and Coronation.

  Trevin woke at the fanfare and noticed that his bed was empty. She was gone. Custom, he scoffed, rubbing his eyes. The trapdoor rose, and Benelvia and Artimeer entered the room then, bearing food for flesh and food for thought.

  Benelvia set a tray of breakfast on the low table beside his bed. Then she took a hot towel from the tray and pulled back his hair, swaddling his entire head with it. “Wake up, me Lord, we’ll have to look lively today!” she crooned, unwrapping his head and swabbing his face while combing out his tangled hair.

  “How many hands do you have, woman?”

  “Drink the black coffee, my Liege,” she crooned.

  “You’ll find it most invigorating.” Artimeer agreed, handing him a tiny cup.

  Trevin drank the coffee and felt his chest fill with fire. He poked a cube of purple fruit with a silver spike and munched it.

  “A fine day for a wedding,” Artimeer exclaimed, smiling.

  “A splendid one, me Lord,” said Benelvia, her round face blushing.

  Artimeer clapped his thin hands once, as if to contain his exuberance. “Such harmony of ceremony! A wedding and a coronation! They are so familiar they should always be paired, I think.”

  “You sound much less logical than usual, Artimeer,” Trevin marked, flinching under Benelvia’s determined comb.

  “Perhaps, lord. But you have chosen love, and that shall be the basis of your destiny, which shall be fair indeed, I believe. If my logic may see any part of the future, I see great good.”

  “It is great to hear such good words. Ow!”

  “Sorry, me lord.”

  “Do you have any last questions, about love or life? Any at all, good prince?”

  “Any—and all.” Trevin smiled at Artimeer and rose. “I am ready.”

  “Your clothes are laid out for you to choose in the room below, Trevin,” Benelvia said. “I’ll leave you to it then. Come along quickly now!” Benelvia winked at him as a tear irrigated her arid face.

  Then she and Artimeer climbed down the stairs ahead of him.

  Below in the King’s dressing chamber, Trevin was left alone to choose his clothing for the ceremony. He chose a shirt of gold-embroidered sky-blue silk, a deerskin vest worked with sculpted emerald trees and an eagle with eyes of lapis lazuli, and a dark blue cape embossed with pearl stars.

  Benelvia rattled the bell on the floor below and Trevin descended the stairs to the third floor down, where she waited. “Your broach is upside-down, Lord Trevin,” she groused. “I’ll get it, then.” She fussed under his chin. “There it is—the sign of Elwyn Gheldron. With the diamond star and all, much better right-side-upways, if you pardon,” she hummed soothingly.

  “Is Neuvia ready?” he asked, hearing how foolish he sounded.

  “Nervous as you, me lord. Not quite maybe. Steady now. Happiness and more. Such a big day ahead.” She slipped each comment between straightenings of this and buttonings of that.

  “Thank you, Benelvia.”

  “Down you go,” she said. “Here’s the ring for your bride.” She pinned a small pouch to his robe. “It’s right here. Remember now.”

  “Yes.”

  “A bath below and then the maids will dress you pretty and proper.”

  “Eh? How’s that?”

  “Artimeer’s waiting at the
bottom of the stairs, so be along then! Must move quickly. It’s a tight schedule, me lord. Fare thee well.” She sent him down the curving stairs. “Long may you live!” she cried, her voice quailing only then. “Long live the Queen!”

  At noon, in scented robes with tresses starred with lines of tiny wildflowers, Trevin emerged from the arch of the throne room onto the verandah. At his hip shone the haft of a golden sword that the legendary Gieron, the first King of Ameulis, had carried.

  From the top of the marble staircase Trevin saw the throngs of people below, who were decked in clothes of brightest dyes and silk embroideries and glinting jewels lining the stairway and all along the path across the greensward to edge of the forest: where she was waiting for him.

  Even at that distance he felt Neuvia’s eyes, and Trevin held them as he descended the stairs.

  She stood perfectly still, feeling his eyes as she watched him pass through the cheering throngs on the terraces and finally cross the lawn before her.

  As he approached he saw her wedding gown, made of striped white silk and lavender velvet. Over her breasts was a gossamer of golden thread spun by Norlanian spiders, revealing the nourishment of the crown. Her hair was combed back with blue and white diamond pins starring the midnight currents around her face, which was like morning snow. A silver circlet, fashioned like a braided snake with amethyst eyes, clutched its tail at her throat.

  He crossed the last distance between them and took her hands. “You are the name and shape of my own heart,” he whispered in her ear.

  “And you are mine,” she whispered back; a private wedding.

  They strode back together down the aisle hand-in-hand as minstrels strummed guitars, which were drowned out by the hurly-burly of the amorous crowd. Children ran behind the lines to climb through legs and sneak more peeks as the King and Queen passed. Old women who prided themselves on matchmaking fainted as they witnessed the royal wedding party, and they had to be hoisted up by old men and boys as little girls fanned them with pigeon-feather fans. Dogs bayed, pet fuzzy pigs chortled, and purple parrots screeched above the forest behind them, which piped a winsome march as the wind swelled.