Crimson

by Warren Fahy

  Trevin and Neuvia hardly heard a thing other than the pounding of their hearts as they finally climbed the marble stairs to the landing outside the arched door of the Lightstone Tower, where Artimeer waited.

  The old sage handed Trevin the Ring of Wife, an amethyst set in a circle of gold, and then gave Neuvia the Ring of Husband, a band of cool platinum. He smiled. “Begin.”

  Trevin began: “Upon this day I wake to see…”

  She replied, “Your eyes looking back at me. And what I see, I’ll seek to make…”

  “Fairer ’fore the new day’s break. And when I see your every pain…”

  “I’ll seek to make it well again,” she answered. “And when you wander from the road…”

  “I’ll look for you down paths unstrode. And if a burden bends you low…”

  “I’ll carry the yoke and eat the crow.” She winked and they both laughed, and the crowds chorused their nervous mirth. “And if a star shines bright at night…”

  “A sister to your eyes, I write. For you are the pole-star in my sky…”

  “So far for you and me to fly. I’ll trim the sail, you point the prow…”

  “I’ll lift us high, you’ll show me how. For having you just doubles me…”

  “Twice the world and twice as free. And what today we make as one…”

  “No Hala god…”

  “Shall make undone…”

  “For Death could not…”

  “Tear us apart…”

  “For I am half…”

  “Of my own heart.”

  She finished, and the people swooned as she slid the Ring of Husband over his left index finger as he slid the Ring of Wife over hers. They kissed and the heralds blew their horns as silver confetti spilled from the windows of the Lightstone Tower. And the people sobbed like a tossing sea.

  All the most honorable guests had already squeezed into the throne room as Neuvia entered alone to climb the dais and stand in front of the Queen’s Throne, which had sat empty since Trevin’s birth. The crowd applauded as Trevin and Artimeer waited together outside.

  “The music of your vows will be the harmony of your reign.” He bowed solemnly before Trevin.

  Artimeer now held in his hands the onyx case that held the Scepter of the King of Ameulis, which he must have produced from his robes.

  “Thank you, Artimeer. You go first, I believe?”

  “Yes! Of course.” The old man chuckled, delighted to feel giddy for the first time in decades.

  The walls of the Lightstone Tower were luminous and let a phalanx of yellow sunbeams over the aisle to the dais. An apple-scented incense sweetened the air from censers waved by attendants spaced along the aisle. Artimeer carried the heavy onyx case, wearing his black-and-white robes and no jewel or plume or ornament. Trevin entered behind him.

  The crystalline thrones of King and Queen gleamed a thousand smiles under the ancient banners of Gieron and Elwyn. The wind from the open arch stirred the torches and banners and smoke. Artimeer ascended the dais and Trevin followed him, facing Neuvia before his own throne. Artimeer stood between them, facing the audience.

  “Trevin Gheldron, Third King of the House of Gheldron, born in Ameulis and wedded to her daughter this very splendid day of days, you are destined, desired, and rightful heir to the Crown of the Tintilisair.”

  As the crown jewels were safeguarded in the capital city of Gwylor, a Gwylorian guard now offered Artimeer the golden, emerald-tipped Crown of King on a pillow of orange silk, and Artimeer set it upon Trevin’s head as a delirious chorus sang from the audience.

  Neuvia found Trevin’s ring in the pouch at her hip, pinned there by Artimeer that morning. She dropped it now into the sage’s trembling hand.

  “The Ring of King,” he recited, “of amber nostalgic, tempers his mighty hand.” The old philosopher placed the yellow band on Trevin’s left index finger. “Neuvia Gheldron, the third queen of Gheldron, born in Ameulis and wed to her son this day of days, you are destined, blessed, and rightful heir to the Crown of the Tintilisair.” Artimeer took the high-fanged platinum crown from a blue silk pillow. Over nine centuries old and worked with pearls, diamonds and amethysts, it was the same crown she had seen depicted in bronze on Queen Conilair’s statue. Artimeer lovingly set it upon Neuvia’s head.

  Trevin found her ring in the doeskin pouch pinned at his hip by Benelvia then, and he handed it to Artimeer.

  “The Ring of Queen completes her office with leverage all her own,” Artimeer said, without completely understanding the customary words. He was stating the text Elwyn had written 500 years ago at the occasion of his own wedding and coronation. Artimeer slid the ring onto Neuvia’s left index finger above the Ring of Wife, and noticed the gem shimmer.

  “Now!” Artimeer said, taking the onyx case from a guard who had held it, he opened its end. “Let the ancient Cronus Star manifest the numen of the King and the age to come.”

  Artimeer removed the Scepter by its handle from its case and held it up to see.

  Its stone and metal were icy silver, its handle cold in Artimeer’s hand. Wrought of all precious metals mingled in a swirling alloy, it shone sometimes like pearl, sometimes silver or blue, sometimes like a dull iron thing, or even like burning copper. Only in Elwyn’s hand did the metal shine pure gold, and only in Selwyn’s pure silver.

  The Scepter’s handle was wrought of an intricate design that spiraled to its head, where eight platinum thorns held its jewel—which was seven inches tall and five inches wide, a diamond beveled into fine vertical facets, weighing three pounds.

  Artimeer waited for the traditional response but Trevin was dazzled by the glamour of the Cronus Star.

  “Clear as water and cold as ice,” Artimeer prompted Trevin. “You shall take it…”

  “I shall take it in my hand,” Trevin remembered, “to show my soul to all!” Trevin took the handle and his hand hummed as he lifted the royal mace, and the Lightstone Tower darkened as a cloud passed over the sun. The throne room was perfectly quiet then as a prismatic luster rolled inside the Scepter’s jewel.

  Faster, brighter, the diamond scattered facets of light on the multitude of watchful faces. Artimeer noticed Neuvia smiling in awe by Trevin. A speck of color ignited inside the jewel and, as it caught and spread from the center, all leaned forward intently. They saw the nascent hue with their own eyes even though at first they could not acknowledge or name it as their confused minds assumed it be blue, purple, even gold. But as it blushed so deep a match, so unmistakably the vivid hue of blood that it drenched all who gazed upon it in a gore of dripping crimson, they turned to each other in terror and despaired to name what they were seeing.

  Cursing the gods that had switched a promise of centuries for a bitter age without some violent coup, they rued the vision of their young king, bathed in bloody radiance, and recoiled even as Trevin himself seemed to transform in the red radiance.

  Neuvia stared incredulously at the diamond bleeding like a fissure of fire over Trevin, imbuing his crystal throne with a bloody shame.

  Artimeer studied Trevin without expression as the impossible hue gushed from the diamond, staining the lightstone walls and ceiling like an abattoir.

  Trevin peered into the jewel as the evil his father had foreseen arrived. His teachers were right, he thought in dread as he looked at the horrified faces shrinking away from him now as his people ran through the lightstone arch, crying out in grief. Trevin shouted after them with contempt: “Be gone then!”

  “No, my lord!” Artimeer implored, for he saw the terror in Trevin’s rage.

  “You, too, Philosopher!” Trevin pointed. “Leave me, and leave this island now!”

  “My Liege, this cannot be true…”

  “Be gone from me with all your mortal’s logic!” Trevin scowled. “Right is wrong for me and love is hate. There is no sense to make of it—Go! And die in peace, as you deserve!” He sat, defeated, in his throne that flowed like carnage behind him.

  Artime
er tried to reply but found his mouth would not open. He looked at Trevin then, his heart riven, but seeing no more chance for reason here he turned away.

  And so the old philosopher followed the others, who rushed to their lodgings to pack their belongings and set hasty sails for home, carrying the bitterest of tidings.

  The throne room was cleared long before Trevin finally pulled his eyes from the sticky red depths of the diamond. And it was only then that he noticed her. For Neuvia had been sitting beside him on her throne.

  Her throne gleamed lavender beneath her.

  He wavered over whether to send her away.

  The diamond bled like his wounded heart, drenching everything, including her bridal gown.

  She rose, glaring at the carbuncle on his scepter, where she saw a jealous demon leering back at her through the long slits of its facets. She reached for the Scepter’s shaft, meaning to smash its head on the lightstone steps. But he seized her wrist, his eyes blazing.

  “The jewel lies!” she cried.

  “It cannot!”

  “There is evil in that stone, but it is not yours. I know your heart, and I see none of it in that stone!”

  He pushed her away, slumping on his vermilion throne. “How could you know?”

  “Because you would send me away.” She knelt before him. “Do not believe your eyes. Believe your heart!”

  He looked into the diamond and wished she could be right even though he knew she could not be. “This is my father’s prophecy, made plain. I am my own curse. I am the crimson.”

  “That stone is your enemy!”

  “Such a crystal can only reveal truth, Neuvia. And yet only a jewel this great could battle my fate. This diamond alone could protect you and us, at least, from me.”

  “No…” she moaned.

  “You, Neuvia, more than any other, must leave me now. My birth killed my mother and brought death to my father. To cause you such harm would destroy me more utterly than death or damnation.” Trevin shut his eyes and closed Neuvia’s lips with a wave of his hand, turning away from her.

  “I will never leave you with that wicked stone!” she cried, her lips immune to his will.

  He was startled and watched her stride down the aisle of the reddened hall and leave through the corridor that led to the Tower’s stairs. Her footsteps faded like his own heartbeats. Trevin sat heavily in the crimson shame of his diamond after she had gone, and he peered warily into its deep fathoms.

  He spied reflections of long ago events at certain angles in the diamond’s facets. Trapped in eddies of light mirrored in spirals endlessly reflected from ages past, scenes of his earliest ancestors founding the Sarkish Empire flickered before his eyes. Churning glimpses flashed at different depths inside the stone, and he witnessed moments he had only read about in books on the Isle of Damay. There were terrible scenes of chaos, too, glimpses of the Sarkish Empire falling decimated by plague and war as Trevin’s ancestors took refuge inside a snowy mountain where they carved a vast metropolis with the aid of the Cronus Star.

  The legendary diamond even recorded moments from when his ancestors dared to venture down from their mountain sanctuary to where the grass finally grew again, only to find the animals and birds they had known before replaced by others they did not recognize. Heartbroken, some went back to their mountain sanctuary and were never heard from again. Others left across the sea, not heeding Bochael Gheldron’s urgings to stay and rebuild their kingdom. Abandoned by his kin, Bochael set out alone with the Cronus Star across the great ocean. And through the dark age that followed, his scepter passed from hand to hand down a long line before it was taken by Elwyn, Selwyn, and now Trevin’s hand.

  He searched the perfect stone his grandfather had used to woo the Winteg and raise the Lightstone Tower and the Lightstone Jetty in the Gulf of Gwylor on Ameulis. During his grandfather’s reign the Scepter had been called the Golden Hammer. During Selwyn’s reign it had been called the Silver Coin, after the Second Moon, and through its diamond his father saw the world’s morrows and persuaded birds, beasts and bees to scatter seeds, nuts and pollen, spreading a hundred new plants across the wilds of Ameulis.

  What would its name be now, in Trevin’s hands? The Bloody Scythe? The Crimson Terror?

  And yet—perhaps the violence of his power could be turned against itself. He had slain one monster already. Perhaps with a stone like this he could spare the world from another.

  Peering into the sharded carnage of its yesterdays, the young Cirilen lost all sense of time as he fell headlong into the Cronus Star’s red depths.

  No one approached the throne room. The crimson diamond burned through the lightstone walls and menaced the hearts of all who looked at the wounded tower.

  On the second day of the King’s isolation, the sea captains convened a meeting aboard the White Shark anchored in the Dimrok’s bay, and Karlok Isopika rang the bell to call them to order. “A grim day, mariners!” he said.

  And all grunted their agreement.

  Nil Ramesis stepped forward. “Whatever it was that stole the King’s Scepter was not him. For he did not ask us to stay so he could torment us, nay, not even the fair Queen he loves like his breath! The King sends us away, banishing himself to a life of loneliness and danger to spare us from whatever menaces him. But things will be different someday, mariners!”

  The captains growled approval. “Aye. There lies in Trevin’s soul a child we already knew was true and courageous,” Karlok said. “And if he hadn’t done so much good for us when he was but a lad I might question my allegiance today. But whatever burns the royal scepter is not the King’s heart! And though we can’t do a thing against such Cirilen magic, we can bide our time for our chance to play our hand, for surely what threatens him is a threat to Ameulis, as well, or he would not be trying to protect us from it.”

  Karlok raised a stony fist, and the captains there shouted agreement, for once in accord.

  “Karlok’s said the truth for every mariner,” Captain Skylar said. “Tell it round and make it fast!”

  And the captains dispersed to sail for home ports around the coast of Ameulis.

  Neuvia waited for Trevin in his room, but when the hours passed into days she battled her grief by reading Selwyn’s books for some key that might release her husband’s soul.

  While thumbing through a book bound in white leather, written by Selwyn and entitled General Observations, she came upon a page marked by a white feather.

  In the old King’s shaky hand was a prescient passage:

  A NOTE FOR THE WIFE OF A CIRILEN—When a Cirilen marries a Bondairtlen, and if their love is true, the first time that they make love and reach the peak of passion together there occurs a transfer of some kind of magic, it seems. The Bondairtlen mate is endowed with intuitions in that moment, which carry magical influences, as well as inheriting the life span of a Cirilen. Though certain powers are limited, with training, some of these powers may be focused and amplified, especially with a stone of power.

  The fruit of Bondairtlen and Cirilen is potent, indeed. Alas, the birth of Trevin was a cataclysm. After 186 years of marriage, my wife did not survive his creation.

  Wait for children, I say. Life is long for Cirilen. It is best to allot ripe youth for those things that will enrich the reflective heart of old age. Yet, I wonder if Trevin’s birth alone could have killed his mother. Or if grief alone ages me so quickly, now.

  —The Fifth of Foxtail, 1061

  Neuvia decided to take this book with her.

  She also took a small red book with the title “My First Book of Magic by Trevin Gheldron,” written in her husband’s boyish cursive. There was one journal entitled “After My Death.” She opened it and leafed through the pages, which were blank, though at certain angles her eyes caught flashes of writing. She saw the word “prophecies” on the first page before it faded. She flipped through the rest of the book and saw the words “take—this—book” appear on successive pages.

  She too
k this book, as well.

  Thus armed, she descended the tower to the abandoned kitchen.

  Neuvia took some pots and many tins of food, a large amount of smoked meat, a sack of yellow rice and a smaller sack of onions and garlic, knives, rope, flint, three boxes of yellow candles, soap, towels, three kidskin flasks of berry brandy and seven of red wine, material, needles and thread, two extra uniforms with pants, sheets and pillows, and every last tool or item she could stuff into two great burlap carrot sacks.

  She lashed the sacks together and dragged them down the polished marble hall outside the throne room.

  A carmine sheen splashed through the open door. She stepped lightly through the crack on her bare toes and saw him.

  He sat on the crystal throne, his mouth open as drool spindled from his lips, gaping at the gemstone. Behind him the curving crystal back of his throne smoldered under the banners of Elwyn and Gieron.

  Neuvia pulled a pear from one of the sacks she dragged and hurled it across the room. Then she slipped quickly out the lightstone arch onto the verandah, dragging the bags down the marble stairway.

  The pear sailed high and came down on Trevin’s face, perfectly targeted, splattering and bruising his nose as it knocked the Crown from his head. His chest filled with fury as he looked at the empty doorway. With a gruesome grunt, he pointed and the ashwood doors that had stood open past all memory slammed closed.

  Neuvia heard the bronze bolt fall like a gong across the doors as she dragged the two bursting sacks down the wet marble stairs on her bare feet. Her wedding gown fluttered as she looked over the confetti-dusted terraces and lawns.

  The tents and tables had been abandoned, their bright canopies caught like sails, ripped and rippling as a storm approached. She shivered the fresh rain off her face and she noticed the ships fleeing north on the sea before the wind.

  She dragged her provisions across the greensward and into the forest.

  At dusk, she watched the bloodstain spiraling up the Lightstone Tower, and she knew that Trevin was going to his room at the pinnacle. She used his own golden spyglass now as she lie on Trevin’s bed in the miniature replica of his room on the highest branch of his treehouse.