The Poisoned Crown (28 page)

She went downstairs, looking in on Nathan, who was still dead to the world, if not to all worlds, sprawled on his bed fully dressed as he had been when they came in. In the kitchen she set about making coffee. And suddenly there was a footstep behind her, the draft from the opening of the garden door.

She knew who it was even before she turned around.

“Kal,” she said.

In daylight his battered face looked paler and even more battered, like a sculpture in rough concrete. His eyes were no longer rubies but had darkened to the color of burgundy. There was mud on his clothes.

“Would you like some coffee?” Annie asked. She was still frightened of him, but it was a reflex of her nervous system rather than her mind.

He said “Thank you” after a long pause, as if unfamiliar with the word.

She meant to say
You saved Romany
, but instead she found herself remarking: “I gather we’re old friends.”

“By my standards,” said Kal. “I daresay you measure your friends by the years you have known them, but you’re wrong. Friendship is not measured in years.”

“Fair enough,” Annie conceded. “But
old
is.”

“I
am
old,” Kal said with something like a grin. “I’m the oldest person you know.”

“I doubt it,” Annie said tranquilly. “Bartlemy was born in Byzantium in the latter days of the Roman Empire, or so he once told me.”

“I date from King Arthur’s times,” Kal said. “I’ve no idea which came first. History never interested me, unless I was part of it. Do you deny our friendship?”

“No,” Annie said. “Of course not.”

“That makes you almost unique. I have very few friends. In fact, I’m not sure I have any.”

“Your habit of tearing people’s heads off might have something to do with that,” Annie said, a little rashly.

He laughed—a real laugh, without mockery.
Human … humor
, Annie thought.

She said: “Do you take sugar?”

He looked confused. Clearly coffee was something new and strange in his life. “Should I?”

“Probably.” She added two teaspoons with cream, not milk. He sipped the resultant mixture doubtfully.

“I had another friend once,” he said presently. “She gave me a soul to grow—and then she forgot about me. Humans are so fickle.” Curiously, he didn’t sound bitter about it.

“I won’t forget you,” Annie said. “You saved Romany. Why— why did you do that, if you don’t mind my asking? Was it because of your soul?”

“No,” he said, looking at her very steadily over the coffee cup. “It was because you invited me in.”

Annie smiled the smile that lit her face, making her suddenly beautiful, though she didn’t know it. “You are always welcome,” she said, even more rashly, not completely sure if she meant it, but feeling it should be said.

Kal swallowed the coffee hastily, hissing at the heat in his throat. “I am leaving now,” he explained. “I came to say farewell. But maybe I’ll come back, ten, twenty, fifty years from now. Your door is open to me for as long as you live. Will you still call me welcome when you are old and frail, if I stumble in here with bloodstained feet, seeking sanctuary?”

“Couldn’t you just come for coffee?” Annie said.

“I will … bear that in mind.” He set down the cup, turned to the door.

“Goodbye,” Annie said. “And good luck, wherever you go.”

“You, too. I fear you may need it. There is trouble in the air. You hadn’t told me your son’s name. Still, he is not like the other. Nor are you.”

“No, I’m not,” Annie said.

And then he was gone.

He could’ve shut the door
, Annie thought prosaically, shivering in the icy air. Presumably werefolk didn’t feel the cold.

She closed the door herself and took her coffee into the bookshop, switching on a small radiator by the desk and settling down with her laptop for a while.

Upstairs, Nathan was no longer there.

H
E WOKE
up conscious of cold, a cold far colder than December in the south of England. An open-air cold, ice-tipped and dagger-sharp. He had dropped off in his sweater and quilted jacket, and happily was still wearing his shoes; otherwise he thought he would have frozen to death in minutes. He was lying on snow—powder snow mantling a surface of ice. A pale winter sun had evidently just lifted over the horizon, hollowing blue shadows in the snow and making a diamond glitter on the nearby sea. A few yards away a huge gray-brown hump shifted slightly, making the snorting, bubbling noise of someone who has half woken and is determined to go back to sleep. The walrus, Nathan thought. What was his name? Burgoss … He walked over to the big sea mammal and sat down beside him. He smelled of the sea, a salty, wet-fur
smell with a tang of fish. It wasn’t something that, under normal circumstances, Nathan would have wanted to smell from close up, but he realized immediately that the walrus was warm, or at least warmer than his surroundings, and sharing his body heat seemed like a very good idea. He leaned his back against Burgoss’s sunward flank and decided that, like this, he might not die of cold just yet.

“I know you’re there,” the walrus mumbled from the other side of his huge bulk. “Impertinent cub! Lost your mother?”

“Not exactly,” Nathan said. “But I suppose I
am
lost. And it’s too cold for me here.”

“Too
cold!”
The walrus started to roll over—Nathan had to move quickly in order not to get squashed. “What is he talking about?” And then, as the boy came into view: “Who are you? Come from the south, did you? Spy of the merfolk?”

“No, of course not. I’m not a merman. I’m human.”

“Human, eh?
Human.
I never heard of such a thing. No human has been seen on this planet for two hundred years. Some say they’re a myth. You don’t look like a myth.”

“I’m not,” Nathan said. “I come from another world.”

“Hrrmph! My great-aunt told me about other worlds. Said they would break off ours like bergs off an ice floe, float away, and evolve all by themselves. Can’t say I ever believed her—she was mad as a puffin, poor old dear. So what’s this world you’re from?”

“Warmer,” said Nathan. “A l-lot warmer.”

The walrus lowered his big head, peering into Nathan’s face. “You
are
a chilly little thing, aren’t you? No fur at all. What’s all this?”

“Clothes,” said Nathan shortly, determined not to get sidetracked. “That’s not important. P-please—”

“Lean against me,” Burgoss said grudgingly. “Before you freeze to death. If you’re a spy, you’re a bloody inefficient one.”

“I told you, I’m not a spy. I’m a friend of Ezroc’s.” The walrus’s body generated enough heat to stop Nathan’s shivering, and the smell, like all such smells, disappeared when you got used to it.

“Are you indeed? That I
can
believe. Ezroc would make friends
with a two-headed shrimp if it told him there was a land beyond the sun. Where did you meet him?”

“I have to see him,” Nathan said, ignoring the question, since the answer was too complicated. “Rhadamu’s shaman-priestesses are telling him to go to war. I don’t think he’s that keen—it’s all Nefanu—but he’ll do it. If we don’t stop it there’ll be a bloodbath. And Denaero’s in terrible danger.”

“Sounds like you’re a spy of
ours,”
the walrus said. “Didn’t know we had any. Where d’you get all this? You seem pretty well informed for someone from another world. And who’s Denaero?”

“She’s a mermaid,” Nathan explained. “Rhadamu’s daughter. She’s a friend of Ezroc’s, too. Where is he? I
really
have to find him.”

“You don’t find him,” Burgoss grunted. “He finds you. You should know that, if you know anything. It’s been two full moons since I saw him, and albatrosses fly swift and far. He could be halfway ’round the world by now.”

Nathan was silent, wondering what to do. His dreams were usually more helpful than this.

“So he’s friendly with the coldkin, too, is he?” Burgoss mused. “That figures. Like I said, a two-headed shrimp … All this about the war—is it true?”

“Yes.”

“You better talk to the selkies, young’un. If there’s an attack coming, we need to prepare.”

“Will they listen?” Nathan asked. “You said they were complacent and apathetic.”

“
I
said?
I
said, did I? Who—”

“Ezroc told me,” Nathan said desperately, taking shortcuts to avoid awkward explanations. “Nokosha’s the only one who really believes in the threat, and he’s so hostile he wouldn’t be any use.”

“Knock me down with a sea lion’s whisker! You really
are
telling the truth, aren’t you? All right, cub, I’ll talk to the selkies. You—well, you’d better talk to the Spotted One. He won’t like you at all, but then, he doesn’t like anyone. And he’ll listen—
if
he believes you.”

“He won’t,” Nathan said gloomily. “He’ll probably kill me, too— just for the hell of it. He’s obviously psychotic.”

“Sy—what?”

“Never mind. Look, I can’t—”

“If you’ve come all the way from another world to help us,” Burgoss said, “it’s pretty stupid to chicken out now. You don’t look like you’d be much good swimming in these seas, so I’ll go find Nokosha. He’ll be curious if nothing else. I’ll see to that. Wait here. And try not to freeze over.”

“I’ll do my best,” Nathan said. In fact, he seemed to be acclimatizing, though he had no desire to go near the sea. The temperature, he reckoned, would kill him in seconds, long before he had time to be afraid of drowning.

Burgoss was gone a long while. The sun traveled a little farther on its low arc across the sky, its rays blinking off ice and snow in a dazzle of almost unbearable whiteness. Nathan wished he’d thought to go to sleep in dark glasses. He got up and walked about, determined to keep warm, slithering once or twice on the treacherous surface.
No wonder they don’t use their legs much
, he thought after his feet shot out from under him and he sat down hard.
Easier to start where you’ll finish
—
on your bottom or your stomach.
He struggled to get up again and resumed his pacing, taking more care this time.

The voice behind him took him by surprise. Nokosha’s voice. “Burgoss was right. You
are
a legwalker.”

Nathan turned to face him. He was sitting on the edge of the floe, his tail dipping in the water, his spotted features as inscrutable as those of a cat. A leopard, Nathan decided, a sea leopard, ghost-gray and deadly, his feral eyes not white like those of the shamans but silver, glittering as though chipped from ice.

“Yes,” Nathan said, “but legs aren’t much good on this surface. It’s easy to fall over. I wouldn’t want to try running.” He was determined to preserve his coolth, if at all possible. After all, he was in the right place for it. His coolth had rarely been cooler.

Nokosha said: “Running?”

“Moving fast. One foot in front of the other.” He kept his distance
from the selkie, an instinctive precaution, realizing that on terra firma he had a slight advantage. Selkies evidently used their legs for walking purposes little more than merfolk. “Where’s Burgoss?”

“Gone to try to rouse the northfolk. It’ll take a season or more— and Burgoss isn’t a rouser by nature. More a grumbler.”

“Maybe he’ll grumble them into action,” Nathan said.

“When penguins fly. He believes your story—merfolk massing for war. I don’t. Not because war isn’t coming—I know it is, soon or late. But I don’t make a habit of believing strangers who pop out of nowhere and try to stir things into a maelstrom for their own ends. What was the idea? Get us all into a group and lure us into a trap? Or wear us out with false alarms, so when the real attack comes We’re exhausted and off guard?”

“You’re off guard already,” Nathan said. “And I don’t know when the attack is coming, or where, so I can’t do any luring. You’ll believe me when there’s a spear in your gut, though it won’t do you much good.” He didn’t feel like being diplomatic. Besides, he was sure it wouldn’t work.

“So who are you?
What
are you? And why are you here?”

“My name is Nathan, I’m human, and I’m here to get the Iron Crown. What Nefanu calls the Crown of Death. It came from another world; it has to go back. Getting mixed up with your lot is just incidental.”

The selkie was silent for a minute. “That sounds almost convincing,” he said at last. “I like it. There are many strange stories about the Crown. Easy to add one more.”

“What stories?”

“Don’t you know?” Nokosha sneered.

“I know Nefanu can’t wear it or touch it,” Nathan said wearily. His patience was growing thin. “She’s a werespirit: iron is anathema to her. And it would rust in water, so she keeps it in a cavern of air under the Dragon’s Reef. Wherever that is. I’d still like to know how she got the water out of the cavern.”

“I heard the story from the whales,” Nokosha said, watching Nathan with cold concentration. “They have long memories. They say she
closed every exit save one. Then she made a great whirlpool and drew the air down through the vortex into the hole, forcing the water out, until all the caves were filled with air. She sealed the entrance with a boulder, so no one could go in or out, and the Crown was shut inside. There’s supposed to be a secret door where she gets in sometimes to gloat over it. Apparently, it’s an object of power, though what the power is for remains a mystery. She collects such things, the sunken treasures of civilizations long gone—broken, useless, lifeless artifacts. The caves are said to be full of them.”

“That must have raised the sea level,” Nathan said, diverted by his own speculations. “That’s why the lands drowned. If you could open the caves—move the boulder—it would be like pulling the plug out. The seas would sink again. The islands would reappear.”

“Why should we want that?” Nokosha demanded.

“You
wouldn’t,” Nathan said. “You’d prefer to massacre all the merfolk and live on the Great Ice forever. Alone. That’s the way your brain works—or rather, doesn’t work. Burgoss once said you were clever, but I haven’t seen much sign of it. The selkies need a leader. They probably wouldn’t have you, but from what I’ve heard there isn’t anyone else. Yet you don’t even try. You’re too busy not caring.”